 Okay. Maybe I'll begin. I'm going to be very brief. I'm a strong believer in very short introductions. Let the keynote speak, so to speak. It's always a pleasure to welcome back CSIS alumna, especially one as successful as Michelle. As the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, I think she's one of our most prominent security experts and a vital Pentagon policymaker in an increasingly complex and confusing international environment. Now, among her previous positions, and you have the bios, I'm not going to read it, but let me mention a few important posts that she's had. I think it's important to mention she was president of the Center for New American Security and, of course, senior advisor at CSIS, our organization. She was a distinguished research professor at the National Strategic Studies at National Defense University and served also before this position as principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Threat Reduction and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy. And in this capacity, and this shows the breadth of her expertise, she oversaw three policy offices in the Secretary of Defense's office for strategy requirements, plans and counter-proliferation, and Russia, Ukraine and Eurasian affairs. So there's a lot of material there to ask if you run out of things to talk about on the strategic concept. Thanks for being with us again, Michelle. We are eagerly awaiting your analysis and prognosis in the aftermath of the Lisbon Summit. So please take the microphone. Well, thank you very much. It's actually quite wonderful to be back at CSIS. It sort of feels like coming home. And in fact, I spent many, many hours in this room, the famous B-1, rolling out reports, hosting conferences like this, participating in discussions and debates. But many of you may not know that the real fame of this room has to do with, it is the site of the famous annual CSIS holiday party. And I'm sort of half expecting John Hammery to walk through the door with his, you know, Santa hat on. It's usually involves some, you know, unsuspecting RA, usually either the biggest or the newest, being forced to wear a Santa costume and give out presents to all the kids, or watching Kurt Campbell sort of disco on the dance floor with a sea of toddlers around him. So anyway, lots of good memories in this particular room. A lot of the work I did here, particularly at the end of my tenure in CSIS, was with Julie Smith on the Transatlantic Alliance and with her European defense capability. So it's great to be back here to speak with you today about NATO and particularly the developments that we saw at the Lisbon Summit and where do we go from here. Two of the most significant achievements at Lisbon involved obviously our strategy in Afghanistan and also the Alliance's efforts to rebalance to meet future challenges. I want to talk about each of these in turn, but also a third area where I think we made very important progress and that's in NATO's relationship with Russia. But before I address these three points, I want to emphasize a theme that really runs throughout all of them, and that's this. While the Lisbon Summit was certainly a major milestone for the Alliance with a number of achievements, the hard part, the hard work of implementation still lies ahead of us. That's true whether you're talking about NATO's work in Afghanistan, about rebalancing to meet future challenges, or about our relationship with Russia. Each of these represents the national security equivalent of a long-term construction project. And as with any such project, the work doesn't end when the blueprint is completed. There's still a lot of heavy lifting to be done. And our responsibilities now shift to making sure that the construction crew actually translates the blueprint into actual brick and mortar. So let me start with Afghanistan. Since that represents the most immediate, and I would argue the most consequential, priority for NATO. Alliance military forces and civilian personnel, as you know, have been serving there bravely for some nine years. But it's only in the last 18 months that we've really put the right strategy and resources in place to reverse the insurgency's momentum, protect the population, and build the capacity of the Afghan national security forces to secure their own country in time. After months of tough fighting, we have arrested the Taliban's momentum, and we're actually reversing it in key areas while doing the hard work of training the Afghan forces and supporting Afghan governance and development. This progress received a further boost in Lisbon, where allies and the Afghan government demonstrated a very high level of commitment and solidarity and resolve. We universally endorsed a transition process in which the Afghans will gradually take the lead in providing for their own national security. We agreed that in early 2011 that will mark the beginning of a transition to Afghan responsibility, and we embraced President Karzai's goal of Afghan forces taking the lead throughout the country by 2014. This transition will be based upon a careful assessment of conditions on the ground, on the ability of the Afghan forces to take the lead in security in those areas. The NATO allies also, and importantly, unanimously welcomed a declaration of enduring NATO-Afghan partnership, one that extends beyond 2014. This signaled the allies' commitment to the long-term support of Afghanistan. The principle that we're operating under is in together and out together, meaning that just as we were united going into Afghanistan after 9-11, we will remain united in the way we draw down our military commitment there over time, so that Afghanistan is never again a safe haven for the terrorists who might threaten North America and Europe or free societies elsewhere in the world. The transition agreement we reached in Lisbon is fully consistent with the point that President Obama and Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton have made several times. July 2011 won't mean the end of our commitment in Afghanistan or even the reduction in the intensity of our operations. Rather, it's the end of our troop surge and the beginning of a responsible, conditions-based drawdown of U.S. forces over time and consistent with the transition process I just described. This administration strongly believes that we now have the right strategy, the right tactics, the right leadership, and the right resources in place to achieve success in Afghanistan, but it will take time. It will require patience, and at times it will be hard. In Lisbon, we established a joint framework for achieving that success, but we also established something else, a series of commitments from our allies to provide the military and police trainers who will help build the capacity of the Afghan government to take full responsibility for the security of its own nation. There's a good saying that's been making the rounds. Trainers are the ticket to transition. Remember, troop reductions will be conditioned on the Afghan's ability to provide security in their own provinces and districts and communities. The key to all this, the ticket, is the development of a credible and effective Afghan national security force. We've seen some real progress in the development of the ANSF over the past year and a half. In fact, the Army and police have both exceeded their growth goals ahead of schedule. And more importantly, we are seeing steady improvement in both the quality and the retention of personnel. Any continued success in this vital area will depend on NATO allies committing the necessary Army and police trainers to assist the Afghan government. I especially want to tip my hat here to our Canadian friends who announced just before the summit that they would be providing 750 trainers and 200 support troops going forward. And we expect many others to come forward with additional such commitments in the force generation conference that began today. Now, we'll have to ensure that these pledges and others made in Lisbon are actually realized, particularly as we move to begin the transition process early next year. We have to continue to make sure that the necessary number of mentors and critical enablers are in place to make that transition work. We must also ensure that the various trust funds providing support for Afghan forces are properly resourced. There's a long way to go in Afghanistan and innumerable challenges lie ahead, but we have seen before what happens when we abandon Afghanistan. In Lisbon, we saw a real commitment on the part of the NATO allies to ensure that we do not make that mistake again. While Afghanistan was perhaps NATO's greatest priority in the near term, the Lisbon summit also launched a number of other important initiatives focused on rebalancing Allied forces to meet the future challenges around the world. The centerpiece of this effort was, of course, the new strategic concept, essentially the mission statement for NATO for the next decade. I know that CSIS's own Steve Flanagan, I'm looking for him, there he is, worked tirelessly with Secretary Albright and the group of experts on the strategic concept. And this was the first such NATO document since 1999, and many observers actually feared that it would split the alliance, the development would split the alliance. In fact, the allies ended up agreeing to a very balanced concept for NATO's future that reaffirms the centrality of Article 5 Mutual Security Guarantee in the post-Cold War world. Crucially, this strategic concept also includes missile defense as a new mission for the alliance. I'll say more about missile defense in just a minute, but I wanted to highlight it here not only because it's such a singular achievement, but also because it's a great example of a theme that runs throughout the strategic concept, the need for this great alliance to adapt to address new threats. The strategic concept clearly articulates the real threats to our collective security in the 21st century, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, cyber warfare, disruption of the global commons, environmental and resource constraints, and the chronic instability that can foster extremism and erode the rule of law. The strategic concept, as you know, was also supplemented by a number of other important documents and agreements that came out of Lisbon. All of them intended to carry out the objectives of the strategic concept itself. One of these was the Lisbon Critical Capabilities Commitment, in which the allies committed themselves to meet some of the alliance's most pressing capability needs, ranging from helicopters for Afghanistan to improved cybersecurity. Let me just focus a minute on cyber. This is such an important element of our 21st century security, but it's a wide open field with very few markers and guideposts. The Cold War notions of deterrence that are so familiar to us simply do not apply in the cyber realm, nor do a lot of other established security concepts such as escalation control or even traditional military notions of offense and defense. Unfortunately, NATO's ability to defend its own cyber networks is not what it needs to be. This is why we agreed to undertake a cyber policy review for ministers of defense to discuss in June. This review should result in a plan of action to improve the protection of our systems. When it comes to cybersecurity, we do not have time to lose producing endless reports or proposals that languish in NATO committees. Of course, these critical capabilities, whether it's cyber defense or missile defense or helicopters and others, they all cost money. Any talk of funding requirements has got to take into account the reality of the global economic downturn that has created profound uncertainty in Europe and in North America. As governments seek to address the downturn by cutting spending, we in the NATO Alliance must take care to avoid hollowing out our military strength. We cannot claim to launch NATO into the new future and then deny the Alliance the capabilities it needs to be effective. This is one of the reasons why Secretary Gates and others have placed so much emphasis on the need for Allied defense spending to meet the 2% of GDP goals set by NATO, even in these very tough economic times. Mindful of current economic realities, in Lisbon the Allies took meaningful steps to reform the organization of the Alliance itself, to strip out some of the bureaucratic layers in order to make more funds available for vital operations and capability investments. Specifically, the Allies agreed to change as a NATO command structure to make it even more deployable, effective, and efficient. The Allies actually include the elimination of some seven headquarters and the reduction of headquarters personnel by about 4,000 people. The Allies also agreed to a blueprint for consolidating NATO's 14 agencies down to three. While many of the details remain to be worked out, this consolidation will reduce overhead costs and needless duplication of support services. Reform will remain a key component of NATO's post-Lisbon agenda, but reform will also need to be pursued in the NATO nations themselves. It's important that decisions made by NATO members at home, particularly on defense resources and investment, reflect the changes and priorities on which we've agreed at Lisbon. Here in the U.S., we're trying to set an example by shifting defense funds from the so-called tail of defense, the defense enterprise, bureaucratic and headquarters functions and the like to the tooth, investing in capabilities that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines need to conduct operations and meet emerging threats. In the Pentagon, Secretary Gates has personally engaged spearheading a new major efficiencies review focused on eliminating unneeded overhead. And as we've urged NATO, reinvesting those funds to give our forces the capabilities they need to be successful now and in the future. In addition to the need for individual governments to reform the way they allocate scarce defense resources, there's also a need for member nations to collaborate more closely with one another. If done correctly, such collaborations can save money and increase military capacity. The recent Defense Treaty signed by France and the United Kingdom is but one example of countries finding creative ways to pool resources and capabilities. The U.S. fully supports this cooperation between two of our staunchest and most capable military allies. And we call upon other members of the Alliance to seek similar opportunities where appropriate. We also need to do a better job of ensuring that consequential defense decisions made in our respective national capitals are not made in a vacuum without adequate consideration of how a decision to cut or alter a program in one country might affect the capabilities of the Alliance as a whole. NATO members are not doing enough to share their defense spending plans or systematically identify opportunities for pooling resources or pursuing role specialization. Without adequate coordination, we could end up with duplication of effort in non-critical areas or worse serious shortfalls in core capabilities. Such a lack of coordination, if allowed to continue, will dangerously undermine NATO's defense planning process, a process that we've spent decades fine tuning to meet future requirements. CSIS has actually been a leader in pushing for a greater degree of defense integration across the Alliance. In 2005, Julie Smith and I authored a report in which we argued for a much more integrated approach to defense planning and investment in Europe. More recently, I understand a new report from the CSIS Defense Industrial Initiatives Group discusses the potential benefits of greater specialization and collaboration in an era of reduced defense spending. As the report indicates, such reforms do face substantial structural obstacles, but they are well worth considering. Once again, the progress we've made in Lisbon, in this case in rebalancing our capabilities to meet security challenges and the fiscal realities of our time, must now shift towards the hard work of implementation. I'd now like to turn to the third area where we saw great progress in Lisbon, and that's in NATO's relationship with Russia. It is no exaggeration to say that at Lisbon, the Alliance reset its relationship with Russia. The mood was more than positive, and Alliance leaders and President Medvedev reached important agreements on three fronts. First, they signed a joint review of 21st century common security challenges. The joint review was a year in the making and focused on cooperation in five concrete areas, counter-terrorism, combating weapons of mass destruction, addressing man-made and natural disasters, piracy in Afghanistan. This document charts the way ahead for concrete cooperation between NATO and Russia in all of these areas. Second, Russia agreed to create two even greater cooperation on Afghanistan, including enhanced shipment of coalition supplies through Russian territory, expansion of our joint project on counter-narcotics training, and a new initiative to help Afghanistan maintain its growing helicopter fleet. If the agreements stopped right there, I think you'd have to say it was a pretty successful summit when it comes to our relations with Russia. But one of the biggest headlines from Lisbon came from the meetings on missile defense. NATO and Russia agreed not only to restart their program of theater missile defense cooperation that had been stopped in 2008, but also to develop a comprehensive framework for future missile defense cooperation in time for the June Defense Ministerial. Here too, though, the proof of Lisbon's ultimate success will be in the implementation. Now that we've reset this relationship, the role work is getting started. We'll need to ensure the agreements we've signed are actually fully realized. We know that the Russians have additional questions about NATO's role in missile defense and how it links to the Obama Administration's phased adaptive approach. The United States is committed to working with our allies and with Russia in the months ahead to answer any outstanding questions on this point. There's one last implementation point I want to talk about before I wrap up, and it involves something that is solely our responsibility as Americans, and that's the ratification of the New START Treaty. I am in full agreement with six former secretaries of state, five former secretaries of defense, three former national security advisors, both Republicans and Democrats, who've endorsed ratification. For the record, the supporters of ratification also include seven former commanders of U.S. Strategic Command, as well as the entire current U.S. military leadership. These individuals support New START for the same reasons that President Obama does, and for the same reason that Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton and I do. It's vital to our national security interests. As Brent Scovecroft and former Republican senator from Utah, Jake Garn, pointed out in a recent op-ed, supporting ratification, when the START Treaty expired last December, so did its verification and compliance regime. That means no American inspectors have been able to visit Russian missile sites. That means we've lost a very important source of information on the one nuclear arsenal in the world capable of matching our own. This situation needs to be rectified immediately, and the only way to do that is by ratifying New START as soon as possible. In addition, New START represents a crucial milestone in our evolving relations with Russia. Those relations have taken a significant turn for the better as we saw in Lisbon. However, as I've said throughout my remarks, we have to back up our words and our agreements with real action. If we don't ratify New START, or if we delay ratification too long, we risk putting in jeopardy the gains we've made with Russia, including in areas like Iran, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, and the shipment of American and coalition equipment to Afghanistan through Russian territory. No matter how you look at it, ratifying New START is the right thing to do for American national security. Now, some critics have tried to make the case that the treaty will somehow limit our missile defense programs or prevent us from developing prompt global strike capabilities or delude our commitment to effective nuclear deterrence. It will do nothing of the sort. It will not limit the planned development of either missile defense or conventional global strike systems, nor will it undermine nuclear deterrence. In fact, the administration has made clear that it plans to invest at least $85 billion in modernizing our nuclear infrastructure over the next decade, a significant increase from the last administration. President Obama has been unambiguously clear about America's commitment to retain a safe and secure and effective nuclear deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist and to continue vital investment in our missile defense and conventional capabilities. New START is fully consistent with that. It's necessary for our national security interests and it should be ratified as soon as possible. This is another important example of how we can back up our diplomatic words with concrete deeds, how we can demonstrate America's continued ability to lead within NATO and more broadly within the family of nations. So again, I thank you for having me here today and I look forward to your questions and to the discussion. Thank you. Okay, thanks, Michelle. We have plenty of time, actually, about half an hour. We want to cut exactly at 1.30 and I'm sure there's many, many questions. I'll take the moderator's privilege of asking you the first one, which is one thing you didn't mention. It's the possibility or the prospect of future NATO growth enlargement expansion whatever you call it. Looking at the picture since the Bucharest Summit, I mean, not much was said. I know there were some formal statements, but not much thought or application I don't think was given to potential future eastern enlargement. I'm not talking about the western Balkans. Some would argue that the alliance may have stopped indefinitely at Poland's eastern border. Could you sort of indicate at what point would any other country, whether it's Georgia, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's some other country we don't yet have in our focus, would actually qualify for NATO membership and in that sense, given our warming relationship with Russia, does Russia play any role here in our decisions on future enlargement eastwards? Well, I think it's very clear that the door to NATO membership remains open. NATO, in several summit statements now, has laid out a set of criteria that aspiring members should meet. And those criteria remain in place and remain well known, and I think the door remains open and it's really the timing is a question of when countries actually can meet those criteria and whether they desire membership and that desire can be subject to changes of administration or changes of path. As Ukraine has recently made clear, it is not going to pursue membership for at least at this point in time. So the door remains open. I don't think that anyone believes that Russia has any kind of veto over that process or and so forth. Obviously it would be a transparent process. We would certainly be happy to discuss it with them, but the door remains open to any country that meets the criteria. Thanks very much. We'll start over here. If you could, first of all, name affiliation and please be brief and stick to the question. Sorry. Hello. Julian Linley, French, Netherlands Defense Academy. Nice to see you again. I have a question about how far the US is prepared to push its allies to be creative on the defense spending side. I think the strategic concept was radical on the input side. But I wonder how radical we're prepared to be on the output side because it's not simply a question of spending 2% but spending an awful lot better. If it's going to work, I could foresee things like a new lend-lease system whereby we spread the cost of critical capabilities across the in-life program or a defense planning audit or even possibly a kind of NATO bank where we work with the financial sector to afford capabilities. Are we thinking creatively? Is the US able to push these ideas? And do you think the bureaucracy is able to drive this kind of thinking forward? Michelle, do you want to take several questions or do you want to launch strains on this one? Let me take this one and then we'll collect some. This is what I was getting at when I talked about the need to have the kind of thinking that was done at Lisbon by the Alliance as a whole be brought back to capitals and influence individual national decision-making processes. I think the Alliance has done a good job of setting a vision for itself going forward. What we haven't yet done is really worked through collectively what that means for individual countries and how they spend their very scarce resources. And I think again I would point to the recent UK-France treaty and effort to really do a lot more pooling and cooperative work. Just a few years ago, no one would have thought that the UK and France were the right candidates. They would have thought that kind of thing is fine for smaller countries that don't have much to spend or don't have broad spectrum capabilities. Here are two of the most capable allies choosing to go that route to get more bang for the buck or whatever the equivalent is for the euro. And I think it's very telling and I would like to see it's a great future role for ACT for example. But to help build greater transparency between capitals on the decisions being made there and how they might affect the others and how they might pool effort or resources to get more capacity and capability out of the limited spending that's possible. Thank you very much for your talk. This is actually the second talk. Please introduce yourself as well. This is a second talk we have today on the Alliance Future because we have had this morning Admiral Stavridis and in his vision he was outlining somehow an alliance that is global and that is dealing with a whole range of new threats predominantly new threats such as human trafficking, migration environment, climate change all this kind of stuff basically all the new threats and the alliance that should be adopting in the future and perhaps it's already adopting a comprehensive approach now for Central and East European plans like in the whole this range of new broad issues somehow the core roles of the alliance might be disappearing and the military ability of the alliance may also be somehow suffering so I wonder if you have comment on that. I think the strategic concept itself was actually very clear on this point. This rock of the alliance remains the article 5 security guarantee, the mutual security guarantee and yet if you look out as the concept does to the 21st century and what kinds of threats and challenges we're going to be facing what kinds of things will be affecting the security of the member nations either individually or collectively many of those threats are global in nature they're transnational in nature beyond traditional state on state aggression sort of scenarios and so I do think it's appropriate for the alliance to be thinking about how it's going to maintain the security of its members in that very changed and changing security environment at the same time when you look at whether it's cyber threats or proliferation, terrorism and so forth it's hard to imagine dealing with those effectively only military means and so a comprehensive approach thinking in terms how we better integrate the full range of instruments of power from development to diplomacy to the military to information strategies and so forth that's also important that said NATO I think is strongest when it's mindful of its comparative advantages and the NATO alliance cannot do everything at all times for everyone so even as we recognize this panoply of challenges that we face and the need for a comprehensive approach we still have to make choices about where is something really in NATO's comparative advantage I think it's broader than just the article 5 piece it has to be given the nature of the world we're living in but we have to keep returning to that question as a filter in terms of what we choose to take on and what we choose to lead on to others who might be more effectively positioned gentlemen over here over here no no you're after him I just want to stick to the order of hand raising thank you very much my name is Hideo Suzuki from the Japanese Embassy thank you very much and congratulations for the success of the summit which Japan has participated as a partner I would like to ask a question on the strategic concept especially on the paragraph 26 where you talk about nuclear arsenal in Europe my question is why didn't you ask the Russians just to reduce their stockpiles in Europe and just to relocate this arsenal I'm asking this because when you negotiated you negotiated the INF Treaty there was a problem with the Russians trying to relocate the missile, the intermediate missiles to the far east and if this same thing happens we cannot accept it so I think that when you go to the discussions Asian partners should be closely associated in this kind of discussions after all I think the security in Asia and Europe will thank you for the question we have actually sought to discuss reducing the non-strategic forces in Europe or in the European environs with the Russians and they were not willing to include that in the new start discussions but we've been very clear that once we have new start ratified and being implemented in these discussions to include non-strategic nuclear forces and we would like to see progress both in greater transparency about what Russia actually has also looking at geographically pulling those forces back from European borders and eventually reducing their number what's clear in this strategic concept is that even as we seek to create the conditions for that to happen we will remain a nuclear alliance as long as the nuclear threats remain Colin Clark G.D. Buzz Michelle, where do we actually stand with the discussions between ourselves NATO and the Russians on radar missile defense and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Medvedev suggestion was rejected completely correct, not correct where are we going do you want me to collect some or do you want me to just answer where we are is that Russia has agreed to re-enter discussions with us about further cooperation on missile defense first to restart the tactical ballistic missile defense exercises we were previously doing but even more importantly I would argue is to really sit down and look at what are the opportunities for cooperation between our ballistic missile defense assets in Europe and their ballistic missile defense assets we haven't nothing's been rejected out of hand nothing's been accepted to date we've agreed to have the conversation and to put all ideas and proposals on the table and we very much look forward to having that dialogue with Russia about this we think there's a lot to be gained from sharing information and potentially for cooperating in terms of how we actually conduct defense in the future okay gentlemen right at the back Richard we want to be all encompassing to take in the entire room no behind you Richard White's Hudson Institute will be very short because I was going to this will be very short because I was going to ask precisely the same question don't know check it green's on maybe red is on red for go is this better? yeah better sorry I was going to ask precisely the same question but just to elaborate then it's true the president did actually propose a sectoral defense ideas something to consider that we would link the NATO and the Russian missile defense systems in which each would control one sector other as a possibility for discussion that's true he did suggest that what I'm saying is that we want to better understand what exactly is he suggesting and we want to also put ideas that we have on the table and have the discussion two hands here please did you bring your own microphone okay go ahead Timothy Walton Doug's consulting studies and analysis thank you very much for your remarks your secretary I really welcome to your thoughts on transatlantic cooperation in terms of finding greater efficiencies this is a question more for the US but how does OSD policy view the importance of rebalancing the force between the services and the shares of the budget moving forward into the future and finding efficiencies in personnel such as healthcare costs that's essential for continuing US force posture well in terms of our own efficiencies effort we've tried to get away from the notion that services are entitled to a particular share of the budget we've tried to take a more strategy driven mission driven requirements driven approach and what the secretary did with his efficiency initiative is to really say look this is not about cutting this is about anticipating a tighter fiscal environment but creating headroom within our top line for reinvesting in capabilities and in vital operations and so it's really about a reallocation or a transfer from headquarters overhead unnecessary bureaucracy and into investment programs and he's given each of the services a lot of say about where they reinvest the efficiencies that they find and that's obviously incentivized the finding of efficiencies so I think there's what you'll see in the FY12 budget going forward is actually a growth in the investment accounts and in the development of future capabilities and support for operations as we squeeze down some of the headquarters functions and overhead that's traditionally built up over almost a decade of fairly unfettered growth and defense spending okay thanks if I could ask our microphone bearers to go as quickly as possible to the speakers question us please my manager secretary Alexandre Scorsia I work with the general library in Norfolk ECT and I will certainly convey your comment about the lead commentary because as a matter of fact what you mentioned as an area of work is very much in general library's mind but my question is on another topic during the development of the strategic concept and the group of experts work there was a lot of talk about this notion of the global commons as you know in the new security environment creating challenges etc do you see this notion as an encompassing notion still of relevance usefulness for the alliance and as an annex question in any case role in each of the comments so air space maritime and cyber thank you very much well I know that a lot of lawyers tell me I shouldn't use the term global commons because commons has a particular legal term but since I'm not a lawyer and I'm a defense a policy person what we mean by global commons is the connective tissue the maritime air space cyber domains that essentially is the basis for global commerce for movement free movement of goods services people etc and when you look at each of these areas they are both increasingly congested and many many cases contested in some areas like the in the air domain the maritime domain we have fairly developed international norms rules of the road legal structures etc but as you look to space on which we're increasingly reliant both economically and militarily but also to cyberspace there really aren't as developed rules of the road nor our capabilities for protecting our freedom of movement and freedom of access as well developed and so we think it's it's a useful frame to think through future challenges we do think it is particularly relevant for NATO going forward as that we need to be able to operate across all of those domains even when they are contested so I think it's useful to work through them and to share frankly some conceptual ideas from between them in terms of how we organize ourselves going forward Please gentlemen in the middle Good afternoon my name is John Sandrock I'm a principal analyst with the United States Service of Sink I'm struck by the fact that there's been little or no reference whatsoever either Central Asia or the South Caucasus and I'm curious particularly in your discussions about the Russia NATO reset why there was spindle reference or to what extent has there been reference to the partnership for peace member Georgia and the occupied territories the territory that Russia currently occupies in South East Asia If my speech had been 21 minutes instead of 20 minutes I would have mentioned it's a very important question we remain quite concerned about the situation in Georgia we have urged Russia on many occasions to abide by its international obligations to work towards a negotiated solution that restores the independence of the two provinces and so forth so we are concerned by that situation and continue to speak very candidly with Russia about it more broadly when you look into the Caucasus and to Central Asia I think one of the things we are trying to do as the United States is to really build out our opportunities for defense cooperation and our relationships interestingly our operations in Afghanistan and the need to flow material through many of those countries has proven to be an opportunity for reopening some of those relationships for having more interaction for bringing, building more familiarity, more cooperation with a number of the countries in that region and over time what's also been interesting to watch is Russia's initially was very suspicious if not concerned about that and is now frankly much more accepting of it and is actually chosen to become part of this northern distribution network itself let me follow up on this Michel given the potential for spreading instabilities in places like the Fergana Valley in Central Asia Caucasus both south and north given the insurgencies inside Russia to resolve territorial disputes in the South Caucasus realistically speaking what role can NATO play both before during and after any conflict I think it will depend very much on the specific scenarios but before conflict I think we should all be pressing for negotiated resolutions to these brewing conflicts or ongoing conflicts in many cases and continuing to try to maintain some political focus and attention on these sort of festering situations can we have more hands please all those without a question lift your hand please at the back I want to ask you about your personal opinion madam can you introduce yourself and speak up I manage Polish institutes of international affairs your personal opinion on the summit as regards to these are called caveats because caveats are exclusions I'm sorry Andrzej Ananich Polish Institute of international affairs if you could share with us your personal assessment of a success or lack of success as regards of this summit in the context of caveats the exclusions of different countries allies from endeavors or goals of the alliance as a whole especially in the context of let's say this new comprehensive approach plus reiterated emphasis on the article 5 certainly we would like to see a situation where nations come to common missions without any caveats that's the ideal and we continue to urge our partners in ISAF for example towards that goal that said we understand that for many nations caveats are a political reality they reflect the constraints placed on the decision to participate in the mission in the first place imposed by parliament may be imposed by a particular decision maker and that is a political reality so in those situations where they are fundamental to a country's participation we work with them to make sure that they have missions in which they can be fully successful even given the caveats but certainly we continue to press countries to lift their caveats as much as possible and one of the things we've seen over time as countries have come into ISAF for example gotten more comfortable in their situations some of the caveats have been reduced over time but they are something that we continue to work with our coalition partners Thanks Yanush and thank you very much Michelle for your remarks it's a pleasure to finally see you and meet you in person I arrived at CSIS just before you left no coincidence there I'm sure by the way I enjoyed your remarks about the Christmas party I have been requested to be Santa Claus this year so since I've been at CSIS for almost four years I'm no longer new therefore I can only be fat the conclusion that my wife and children agree with ok seriously follow up on a couple of questions on the Northern Distribution Network and the Missile Defense Agreement with Russia the agreements with Russia to expand the definition of what is considered non-lethal I think of allow for MRAPS to come down on the trains as well as the issue of reverse transit have those two issues been agreed with also by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan my understanding was that General Mattis was out to the region about ten days ago to try to work that out on the Missile Defense Agreement when will the first discussions be held at what level do we know that this will be this will be done with and what is the is there a particular document that you hope to come out with at the end of the process in time for the June meeting first I'll take the last question first Julie I don't know if there's been a date said I think it's going to start with really expert discussions to really understand what is the Russian proposal we've had some frankly fairly developed proposals that we've wanted to put on the table for some time in terms of sharing information linking their radars into our system and so forth so we are very I think the first step is just to simply explore the range of possibilities that each side has conceived of at a sort of technical level and then to have those brought back to capitals for policy review and so forth with the hope that by the time of the next ministerial we would have some concrete options to lay on the table for ministers we don't want this process to drag on for months and months we think both sides have actually done a fair amount of thinking about this so we want to move it forward but I think it will start with an experts group on a date to be determined in terms of the other pieces of the northern distribution network that are relevant to realizing the potential of the Russian transit agreement those are still in discussion and being work there's some additional visits that will be happening to further those discussions okay lady at the back we obviously need to invest in microphones Missy Ryan with Reuters I'd like to return to Afghanistan for a moment if we can and ask you about the strategy review that's being conducted and that is going to be rolled out within a couple of weeks do you believe that at this stage given the fact that the troop surge and the civilian surge have only recently been completed the civilian surge still being put into place is there room for policy adjustments or strategy adjustments or is that going to be as a result of the review or is that going to be something that will happen further off in the future perhaps you know next summer this strategy review that we are in the midst of now is really a review of the implementation of the strategy the president announced at West Point it's assessing the path and pace of progress how are we doing what's working if not why not are there resource allocation adjustments we can make to better support an element of the strategy are there realignments that we need to make based on new facts on the ground and so forth so it's really more of an implementation review in the context of the strategy that the president announced and frankly reaffirmed along with president Karzai and our allies at Lisbon I think the decisions about the scope and scale, pace of the transition process and our own the changes in our own force posture over time that will come that will be very much informed by the afghan-led interqualler transition process that will those discussions will start next year and will inform the decisions for next summer and beyond we have time for maybe two more questions Ariel, you had your hand up and maybe one more after this Madam Secretary Ariel Cohen with the Heritage Foundation just came back from Turkey yesterday and there's a lot of celebration in certain circles in Turkey alleging that Turkey had a great victory at the NATO summit vis-à-vis the missile defense plant including the fact that there's no animalist although President Sarkozy I think clarified that point but there's some lack of clarity with regards to the future command center for missile defense and no sharing of information with non-NATO members Turkey is claiming that there is a commitment not to share any information from the missile defense system with non-NATO members such as Israel although that has not been clarified as far as I could tell from open sources can you enlighten us on that please thank you we were very pleased to have Turkey's support in supporting the alliance's embrace of the missile defense mission we think it's absolutely critical to deal with the 21st century threats although the statement did not specifically reference any threat countries it did reference a joint threat assessment that the alliance had done and that gets into details of particular countries about whom we are most worried when it comes to all the implementation details of exactly how different countries will make national contributions to the NATO system ours will be the phase adaptive approach NATO will use common funding to build out the alt-BMD command and control system others will contribute their assets how all that works how exactly the command and control arrangements the rules of engagement all of that that is still to be determined and discussed within the alliance again starting with experts we have worked this out on air defense we have worked this out in the nuclear domain we have worked this out in similar situations in the past I am not terribly worried about this I am very confident that the alliance will figure out these details in a way that's acceptable to all of the members absolutely last question so it will be through by 130 microphones at the ready thank you very much Ken Hoffman, CNA senior advisor certainly a component of the Lisbon summit was NATO European Union cooperation which we have not talked about much of all if any I am curious particularly in view of the European Union's new emphasis on foreign policy what the position of the US government is now regarding should pushing that relationship or do we want more of a NATO or correction a European Union-Washington relationship are we leaving it up to the Europeans to decide what they want as far as a relationship between NATO and the European Union I think the Obama administration from the start has been very supportive first of enhancing the United States relationship with European Union and our cooperation on areas of common concern be they economic or something like the imposition of sanctions on Iran where we have seen how powerful and how important the European Union can be as a partner in combined endeavors we also think it is very important to have NATO and EU cooperation being enhanced after all there is a huge overlap in membership we are talking about the same military forces that would support either a NATO operation or an EU operation we think there are only upsides to be gained in enhancing that cooperation and what we have been doing is trying to help support others remove some of the political obstacles that have limited that cooperation to date we are not always in the best position to remove those obstacles ourselves but we have certainly weighed in and it has been helpful to try to do that we really feel particularly in the area of resource constraints it is so important to get on with the practical cooperation wherever we can each of these organizations