 Good evening. My name is Nancy Lindborg, and I'm the president here at the United States Institute of Peace, and it is my honor to welcome everybody here this evening, as well as everybody who's joining us online, and following the conversation on Twitter, and it is hashtag MadisUSIP. I want to extend a particularly warm welcome to members of our board, of our International Advisory Council, and to our senior military advisory group who met with us earlier this afternoon. And of course, a special welcome to our guest of honor, Secretary of Defense James Madis. Thank you for being here with us tonight. The US Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 as an independent, nonpartisan national institute that is dedicated to reducing the kind of violent international conflicts that pose a threat to US national security, the kind of conflicts that Secretary Madis has spent a career addressing. And in fact, our most passionate congressional founders were themselves veterans of World War II and Korean Wars. And their searing experiences on the battlefield, in fact, created their determination to found and support an institute that was developed to, that was dedicated to how to prevent, how to resolve violent conflict. And so we pursue this mission by linking training and analysis with action on the ground in conflict zones here with policymakers in Washington, DC, and with partners in people, organizations and governments around the world. And over the course of our 34 year history, USIP has worked closely with the State Department, with USAID, and with the Department of Defense. And in fact, by legislation, Secretary Madis is a member of our bipartisan board of directors. He's ably represented on our board by Under Secretary of Policy, John Roode. And our work with DOD through the years has included facilitating the National Defense Review Commission, which is a body convened by Congress to examine and make recommendations regarding national security. And it includes working together in conflict zones. In 2007, at the request of the 10th Mountain Division, USIP worked with local leaders in Makhmadiya, which was then the most violent part of Iraq, to foster a local peace accord, and local tribal leaders credit that accord with enabling their community to withstand the invasion of ISIS. So we are also proud every year to host military fellows. We have three of them here with us in the audience somewhere today. Yes, here they are. Welcome, gentlemen. So we know these are the kind of partnerships that enable everybody to do their best work, and they remind us what research tells us, that the more inclusive a peace process, the longer lasting is the peace. And there are few who understand us more than tonight's guest of honor, Secretary Mattis. In 2003, when then Secretary Mattis was commanding the first Marine Division in Iraq, he prepared his soldiers not only to be an effective fighting force, but also to build ties with the local community. And he knew that fostering that kind of trust, that kind of respect would lead to the kind of strong relationships that would help their mission succeed. In the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Secretary Mattis has renewed this call for building partnerships based on trust, respect, and accountability. And the strategy asserts that the United States will strengthen and evolve our alliances and partnerships in an extended network capable of deterring or decisively acting to meet the shared challenges of our time. So we are certainly in a time of great change. We're seeing changes in the national security landscape, challenges to the free and open international liberal order, the continued challenges that emanate from fragile states, and the resurgent competition with great powers. Certainly these kinds of sustained partnerships and alliances cannot be overstated. So I thank Secretary Mattis for joining us tonight for a very important conversation about the National Defense Strategy at this critical time. He brings the experience of a long and decorated career in the Marine Corps, as well as his deep knowledge of history and an unwavering commitment to public service. So joining him in this conversation is another distinguished, dedicated public servant, former National Security Advisor and current Chair of the USIP Board, Stephen Hadley. So please join me in welcoming both of them up to the stage and enjoy the conversation. Good evening everyone, Mr. Secretary. Thank you so much for being with us. What we thought we would do is the Secretary and I will have a conversation on some of the issues of the day. We'll probably go about 35 minutes or so. And then probably the last 20 minutes or so, we'll have questions from the audience. The way we'd like to do that is there are three by five cards in the audience. Please write your questions on those cards. We'll also take some from the media. They'll be passed up here and we'll offer them up to you. So we'll try to start on time and end on time. So let me begin with the National Defense Strategy, which if people have not read, they ought to. It is an extraordinary document. It describes the present time as one of global disorder, talks about the decline of the rules-based international order established at the end of the World War II. And we see that disorder today in the headlines, whether it's about Russia, North Korea, Iran, and in a different way China, all of which is contributed to what the National Defense Strategy characterizes as the most complex and volatile security environment we have experienced in recent memory. Ms. Secretary, as you survey this landscape, how do you prioritize the challenges to American and global security? And you've talked about alliances as our partner in dealing with those challenges. How do you assess the health of our alliance relations today in order to serve that role? First of all, thanks for doing this, Steve. And President Nancy, it's good to be here. You know the regard that the Department of Defense has for this organization. You have time to reflect and think, which is unusual in this town. So we really appreciate that. How did we look at the threats in the world? We looked at them really from three different angles. One was power, one was urgency, and one was will, because we're in a competition of sorts to maintain this world and turn it over, hopefully, in slightly better condition than we received it. In terms of raw power right now, I look at Russia and the nuclear arsenal they have. I look at their activities over the last 10 years from Georgia and Crimea to the Donetsk Basin to Syria. I can go on and on and on. They're violations of INF, for example, but in terms of just power, I think it's clearly Russia that we have to look at and address. In terms of urgency, there's two. One is the current fight against the violent extremists. For example, the Defeat ISIS Coalition is 70 nations plus four international organizations working on that fight that is ongoing. We must continue that, that character of warfare that is very unusual. We call it irregular. But at the same time, in terms of urgency, is the DPRK, the North Korea nuclear and missile programs, that are clearly a violation of international sanctions, are clearly a threat to peace and stability. In terms of will, clearly it's China. Now, in China's case, we look at it as different than Russia. Russia wants security around its periphery by having insecurity with other nations. They want a veto authority over the economic, the diplomatic, and the security decisions of the nations around them. China, on the other hand, seems to want some sort of tribute states around them. We are looking for how do we work with China. I think that 15 years from now, we will be remembered most for how did we set the conditions for a positive relationship with China. In that regard, we look for where we can cooperate and we will cooperate where we can. You see that in unanimous Security Council resolutions on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We will confront them where we must. For example, freedom of navigation in international waters and that sort of thing. I've met with my counterpart, both in Beijing and in Singapore 10 days ago, and he will be here a week from now to continue that dialogue as we sort it out. So how do we look at our real strengths here? Our real strengths are the network of alliances and partnerships around the world. And in that regard, quietly below the radar, below the radar of what is often in the public domain, I'll just run through what I've done in the last 30 days. In the first week of October, I was at NATO, our most important alliance, 29 nations that work together. Every one of them has its own interests, its own perspective. But at the end of the day, NATO is stronger than ever in terms of 27 nations clearly raising their defense expenditures. Nations that were aligned with us. When I rolled out the nuclear posture review, I can go on. It's a strong alliance and it's getting stronger. My next trip was down to Cancun, where I met with the Latin American, South America, Central America, Mexico, ministers of defense. I looked back on 2017. I thought that was a pretty crummy year for democracy around the world. Not so in South America. Not so in Central America. Not so in Mexico. Imperfect, it may be, full of economic headwinds. Clearly the American appetite for drugs and European is dumping a lot of money in that corrodes their institutions. But democracy is alive and well. They're holding elections. They don't know who's going to win. That's the way it should be in a democracy. And it's going well down there. First time I heard my position described as being minister, you'll love this, President Nancy, minister of peace, not minister of defense. And then I just got back from, went out to Singapore, met with ASEAN two weeks ago, where we are welcome, where many nations in private will tell us why they need us engaged out there, because they're concerned about what China is doing and the piling of massive debt to quote Prime Minister Modi on nations that they know China knows cannot repay it. And then you see what happened in Sri Lanka, where they lost sovereignty over their own harbor. And one of those issues I'll be talking obviously with my counterpart about here in Washington shortly. And then two days ago, I got back from the Minama Dialogue in the Middle East, where we were talking about how we move forward on a security architecture that maintains peace or what passes for peace right now in the Middle East and restores peace in several key areas, Yemen being foremost, obviously Syria moving towards the Geneva process against Russia's example, frankly. But we're at least all on the same sheet of music about it. So there's a quick rundown on how I see the threats and what we're doing with the alliances and partnerships. Thank you, Secretary. Let me shift to another problem, which is I know on your agenda. Congress charged the USIP to convene a task force on extremism in fragile states to try to address the root causes of violent extremism, a big task, needless to say. In its recently published interim report, the task force noted that the time is right to adopt what the 2004-9-11 commission called a preventive strategy that is as much or more political as it is military. How do you see the military's role in a strategy for dealing with violent extremism, where non-kinetic measures focused on strengthening fragile states and building resilience are the priority? As we look back over these difficult years, we just recognize the anniversary, the 35th anniversary of the attack on the French paratrooper barracks and the US Marine peacekeeper barracks there in Beirut 35 years ago last week. And you look at what has happened since that time, you recognize that in most cases the breeding ground for this is not something that can be addressed by the military. Our general view is that state department has to lead with AID and we lead with ideas, we lead with the example of our own country, and we work with like-minded nations in this regard. My personal view, during the three years I was out of the Marines and I was on a university campus, had time to think about what had happened. I believe that the US foreign policy had become militarized and so I come back into this job and my view was that we had to have state department in the lead and the military had to be an enabling, supporting element to this because you simply couldn't shoot your way out of this problem. At one point I was frustrated enough with some aspects of state department's budget that in my testimony I said if you don't fully fund up on Capitol Hill, my testimony, if you don't fully fund the state department please buy a more ammunition for me because I'm going to need it as a rather blunt way of saying why we needed to keep America's foreign policy and our diplomats foremost in this effort. But at the same time I have also dealt with this adversary that we're up against in the Middle East since 1979 in one form or another and I've watched it morph since that rather eventful year in the Middle East and it is very clear we are going to have to get better with our allies on the military side feeding information to police off the battlefields and collaborating together so that we buy the time for diplomats to amass the larger effort and it's going to take a big effort to to blunt this hate-filled enemy because I'm under no illusions about what they're like. They did not arrive where they're at through a rational process and in some cases too many cases perhaps we're going to have to deal with that in a in a military and police manner but the next generation we're not going to address in a military manner we have to address that one with education and economic opportunity. We have to give people hope and hope cannot be unilateral anywhere in the world. If it is unilateral you're simply breeding the antibodies to what you're trying to do. It's going to have to be multilateral it's going to have to be inclusive and the military's got to remain steadfast while supporting in every sense of the word not just with its military alone activities but with its enabling military activities it's going to have to be supporting state department. Let's follow up if we can with a specific example in Afghanistan. The U.S.-South Asia strategy called for a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan that protects the U.S. its friends and allies from transnational terrorist threats. Key to this strategy was increased support for the Afghan national security forces including more robust U.S. counterterrorism operations. More recently Ambassador Khalizad was appointed to lead a diplomatic effort to initiate talks between the Taliban the Afghans in the United States. So how can our military strategy and operations in Afghanistan support and not undermine the peace effort? And do U.S. and NATO military forces have a role in Afghanistan after a peace agreement is reached? Well any U.S. military coalition role after the peace is reached would be conditions based worked out with the Afghan government and depend on the threat. But when we put the strategy together ladies and gentlemen what we did we put some together we called the four Rs plus S. S being sustain it. First R was to regionalize the approach. You did not start with Afghanistan come up with a strategy say well I guess now we better look at the countries around it and see what do we do as far as their inclusion. We started outside and worked our way inside. Next we recognized we had to put more troops in. But the reason we had to put more to reinforce it the second R was for the third reason realign those troops to supporting the Afghan security forces directly by training advising and assisting. What we had done is created an army and then we pulled the training wheels off too early. And in that I mean that the only the Afghan special forces had mentors from NATO nations with them and every time they went against the enemy the Taliban they won against the enemy. But spread out in penny packets around the country were Afghan security forces that we had pulled all mentoring away from. So we were going to look at this as a regional problem reinforce the troops and realign them so that more Afghan forces had our mentors with them with NATO air support. As you know for those of you who've been there when you fight in mountainous country the high ground is very tough ground to take if the enemy's got it. With NATO air forces overhead no longer prohibited from supporting the Afghan army and I did say prohibited from supporting them. We would be able to always own the high ground and that changes the tactical situation. It is protection of the people is what we are trying to do there so in some cases we surrendered ground where few of any people lived since it's not a matter of militaries holding ground. The Afghan lads are doing the fighting just look at the casualties over a thousand dead in August and September thousand dead and wounded in August and September and they stayed in the field fighting and the Taliban has been prevented from doing what they said they were going to do which was to take and hold district and provincial centers also disrupt an election that they were unable to disrupt but the most important hour was the fourth hour reconciliation and on that you saw ambassador calisade has been presented with the portfolio he's working it he those of you who know him know him he's a force of nature and he is hard at work on this on an afghan led afghan owned peace and reconciliation effort so this is the approach we're trying to sustain right now it is working from our perspective but is heartbreakingly difficult to accept is the progress and violence can be going on at the same time and I understand those who are disheartened by this but we never thought in the military this was going to be an easy job but we are there because if we want to protect ourselves from what happened on 9 11 and so many other countries this is worthwhile so that's where we're at right now the president when he put this forward I can guarantee you that he challenged every assumption he challenged every sentence he challenged every aspect of what we are going to commit to and it was a very robust discussion in every sense of the word as allies realized we were going to stay what had dropped from 50 nations in the fight to 39 has now reversed we're back to 41 by the way the two nations that rejoined are both Muslim Arab Muslim nations and we also have over a thousand more troops coming from our partner nations and NATO allied nations that have been added in addition to the 3000 that we added when we when we reinforced the force there so it right now that's the way we're going forward but the goal is reconciliation and ambassador calisade has been a very welcome addition to the campaign I want to switch to Syria if we can USIP has been advising the 10th mountain division during its missions in Iraq and Syria over the past year as the United States and its coalition partners seek to fight decisively defeat ISIS and prevent its reemergence we also see in Syria a despotic regime sectarian strife humanitarian disaster and great power competition in terms of Russia and of course Iran as well in February of this year US forces found themselves in a firefight with Russian contractors that left as many as 300 Russians killed and wounded how do we sort out and how do we think about complexity of this sort and what are the lessons learned from how to confront challenges in non-state actors like ISIS in fragile states while meeting the threat from great power great power competition at the same time and how do we operationalize deeper cooperation as you talked about among our diplomatic defense and development establishments to respond to these complex conflict situations well no one said this is gonna be an easy evening you know but this is a tragedy that has grown beyond my ability to articulate it I've seen the refugees in the refugee camps and I've seen refugees in Bosnia I've seen them in southeast Asia I've seen them in Africa I have never seen refugees as traumatized as coming out of Syria not even close if it were not for Russia's regrettable vetoes in the united nations that marginalized the UN I think we would never have gotten to this point and certainly if it wasn't for the Iranian regime not the Iranian people the Iranian regime giving full support to Assad he would have been long gone and when that support was not even sufficient and Mr Putin came in we see the reason that I think eventually Assad will have to be managed out of power I don't think any election run under the auspices of the Syrian regime is going to have any credibility with either the Syrian people or with the international community but what have we learned along the way one point I would make is it has been a partner a non-state partner the Syrian democratic forces about 50-50 now between Kurd and Arab that has done the bulk of the fighting in Syria remember that at the same time the Iraqi security forces and popular militias were fighting in Iraq when we came into office with the administration we reviewed the situation and determined that we would have to change what was going on I had gone early to NATO and sat down there in Brussels with my counterparts talking about a host of issues in Syria Iraq and ISIS loomed large and it was clear the foreign fighters returning home with the veneer of civilization long rubbed off them we're going to be a strategic assault basically on our european partners and other parts of world africa southeast asia that sort of things so we changed the tactics from what I would call a christian warfare where you pushed them out of one place and they fall back then you push them out of that place we took the time to surround west mausoleum tabqa telefar or raqa surround it first and then move against it and trying to get the civilians out of the way the non-combatants the innocent out of the way because every battlefield we're in over there is also a humanitarian field we were not always successful at that where you remember we're up against an enemy that is merciless and used in many cases the the locals the innocence as shields and we did our best to avoid those deaths but some of them as a consequence of war were more than we ever wanted to see happen but it was part of the fight as we moved against them and they're now down to less than two percent of the ground they own we can see that the most important effort is the sustaining in other words after we go through when we push them out of the area you must immediately create local security forces in order to hold the ground and then get locals back into positions community councils so that locals feel like they're now in control the international community has actually been very helpful we do have the money to help the people who are trying to recover but it's just emergency services inside syria inside iraq where we have a government and they did go through an election as you're aware they're putting the government together there we have a government that we can support in syria we have to support the locals and then we're going to have to work through the geneva process to to make a way forward for syria we are committed to it russia's best efforts to divert it into a stana process or so she have not produced anything worthwhile and so we're calling on russia to support the un geneva process and stefan d must hear his efforts there will they do it i think eventually it's in russia's best interests that syria not be the cauldron of what of violence that it is now so we're going to keep pressing on it supporting the um and their effort let me ask you a related question there's been a lot of discussion about iran wanting to create an arc of influence if you will from tehran all the way to beirut and the possibilities that that could be disrupted in iraq and particularly syria could you say a little bit about what we're doing to counter iranian influence in syria and to uh frustrate their ability to establish this kind of strategic arc well our authority to be in syria right now is clearly on the defeat isis campaign that is the authority i have from the president uh that's the authority of the congress under the authorization for the use of military force uh and that is the only specific military purpose that we're undertaking there now at the same time secretary of state pompeo taking the lead as he should in something like this has doubled the number of diplomats in the liberated parts of syria uh bret maghurt has been magnificent at orchestrating the international coalition including the funding for the emergency services and that is continues to go on now will that in itself by getting the locals uh empowered to represent their own communities to defend their own communities against a return of isis in itself stopped the iranian influence no it will not but that is where the geneva process comes in to say iran you have no business in syria you've not been helpful there your militia that is destabilizing in lebanon against the government the lebanese hezbollah and their fighters inside syria and ones like that need to get out of syria if we're going to have peace inside iraq i think it's a matter of united states and nato training mission iraq a nato element that's going to make iraqi military something that stands up for iraq and is not reliant on the on the goodwill of the of the tehran regime again this is not a contest with the iranian people this is a senseless war for the iranian people to be in syria or to be trying to make iraq into a rump state of tehran it's not going to work and it's just wasting a lot of the resources that would help the people in in iran if that was not a revolutionary regime if it was really a government that cared about its people so it's it's more about the long-term view than anything we're going to do with the u.s. military to rebuff the the iranian influence in those places that is best led by diplomats and political leaders who represent their own people and our diplomats in the international community supporting them let me ask you one other regional issue and then we'll move to a couple other questions that come from the audience one area where we see increased challenges in managing partnerships is in the red sea for example in jibouti and along the coast of samalia erotrea and sudan there's a proliferation of military bases and deployments sponsored by the gulf states turkey china and other external actors how do you see this region what priority does it have for you and what is the administration's approach yemen has had more problems than any people deserve to carry and we're calling on all the parties specifically the hooties and the arab coalition to meet in sweden in november uh and come do a solution not talk about subordinate issues about what town they're going to meet in or what size the table is they meet around but talk about demilitarizing the border so that the Saudis and the emirates do not have to worry about missiles coming into their their their homes and cities and airports and ensure that all the missiles that iran has provided to the hooties are put under international watch and in uh in uh parks somewhere where they can be kept accounted for that sort of thing as we set the conditions for a return to traditional areas inside yemen and a government that allows for this amount of local autonomy that hooties or that southerners uh want uh this is this has got to end we've got to replace combat with compromise and we are working uh as we speak uh with uh mr martin griffin's the un special envoy i've met with him myself secretary pompeo is talking to him frequently as we try to amass the international support we just met in uh in manama in the manama dialogues and this was brought up forcefully not just by myself but by others as well that it's time to stop this and right now what the iranians have done by bringing in any ship missiles and this sort of thing is interrupted freedom of navigation uh they are the ones who keep fueling this conflict and they need to knock it off uh they may do it through proxies as they do so often in the middle east but they do not escape accountability for what they're doing through proxies and surrogate forces we still will hold them accountable thank you the president has said the us is leaving the i n f treaty how does this decision affect the military's readiness plans how does it affect the role of nuclear weapons in our strategy and how will it affect us posture in europe and the pacific rim you know i was going back through some papers when i came into office and i noticed that roes gupmular who is then the under secretary of state for arms control in 2008 2008 10 years ago called out the russians for violations of the i n f i can go through matter of fact i can take 10 minutes going through year by year the efforts of our diplomats to try to get russia to come back into compliance through denial and deceit russia has continued not just to do research and development and fielding but now standing up multiple units that are armed with a weapon that is clearly a violation and eventually russia i believe through a a slip revealed that the missile they said did not exist it did exist and once they realized that it was revealed they then said but it doesn't violate the treaty and by the way you're violating the treaty over some things that we cannot make sense out of we have done everything we can i think diplomatically the diplomats are still trying by the way as we speak we have made it very clear that when two nations sign a treaty and one uh violates it and even denies the violation and then continues violating as they field the weapon that is an untenable situation it also jeopardizes the trust you need for any other treaty so right now where are we uh we came out with our nuclear posture review we went around talked to all the nations in the nato alliance plus other partner nations about what was in it took their ideas on board and when we rolled it out it was received uh generally across the board and in the u.s congress with support uh as far as the i n f as a follow-on issue uh we have briefed the nato uh council and the nuclear council in nato uh more than once we have had detailed briefs by our technical experts and my last time there here a few weeks ago i said if any of you have any advice please send it to me i want to know what options you can find because the only ones i see are highly unpalatable so where are we right now uh the national security advisor carried the concern directly into Moscow uh secretary Pompeo is engaged with his foreign minister counterparts and nato the foreign minister meeting goes uh i think it's december fourth and this will be i'm sure a front and center topic i was just in prog uh yesterday before yesterday and i met with uh two of our nato nations ministers there i met with two other nato nations when i was in manama on last saturday and we are doing everything we can to try to find any option and if any of you have any good ideas please send me an email it seemed like every nut in america has my mail address i'm sure you can find it and and and send it to me uh i don't think this is uh the military this is the us military we belong to you uh we're accountable to you if you have any ideas please send them and that goes for our allied officers in this room as well i don't think all the great ideas come from the country of the most aircraft carriers if you have ideas please tell me what you recommend but we will continue to collaborate very very closely with our allies and consult with them and that's uh both through the ministers of defense and the ministers of foreign affairs what does it do to us in terms of military terms um i i don't want to go into too much detail but there are options both symmetric and asymmetric that are available so i'm not committing to anything right now that's a grave decision that the president will take counsel from all of us and it will be up to president trump his views on nuclear weapons i think are pretty well known that he hates them and uh and we'll be working this issue with him thank you this is a question from our audience currently i see competitors and adversaries relying on illicit trade influence and messaging to win their national goals without military conflict how do you see do d and the u.s government competing and winning in this very different age illicit trade influence and messaging yeah um um first of all my i have a uh an organization that's probably got 95 percent of our cyber capability in the u.s government called us cyber command obviously and the number one mission that us cyber command has right now is the protection of our election infrastructure and blocking or aiding the blocking and identification blocking of the influence campaign so we reveal obviously a lot of this information we keep track of it we work with private uh internet providers uh content providers uh you know their names uh and we alert them via the fbi the police the law enforcement effort but right now it is a all hands on deck uh at cyber command uh effort to keep our democratic processes uh free and unencumbered it's very difficult because we have freedom of speech in this country and how do you ferret out what's going on from foreign countries that are actually uh using uh basically biased information or false information to incite cleavages inside our own society it's going to take an informed electorate in order to maintain this this is not something that military does alone but certainly the military has an obligation uh to protect the country from that sort of thing and to alert the fbi and the department of homeland security uh when we see it coming so we're working hard at it but it's it's an area that we have got to balance our constitutional freedoms and not inhibit those even as we try to maintain the integrity of the election and of the campaign's message the campaigner's messages so they're not having their their message uh misconstrued by others uh tough but uh we're up for it and and we're looking forward to it because when it comes to protect in the country it's in this day and age it's not just about uh you know guns and ships and that sort of thing this is a very powerful weapon in the hands of people and know what they're doing and our adversaries do and secretary i want to move to space for a moment um and this is a question from the audience with space now being considered a war fighting domain what do you think our objectives should be and from a planning perspective what are some new factors planners should think about when considering space time and force yeah space has definitely become competitive uh we watched the uh when the chinese shot their their obsolete satellite out of the air our blew it to pieces and we've watched other nations putting capabilities into space and i would just tell you that it's it's basically two pronged one it's defend we have to defend what we have in outer space that is used for navigation communication peaceful purposes commerce banking all these kind of things uh and and military uh intelligence surveillance satellites we need we're going to have to put satellites up that uh can be defended or can be resilient against attack resistant to attack or can be replaced swiftly that sort of thing so we're going to have to defend what we have but also we're going to have to be prepared to use offensive weapons in space should someone decide to militarize it and go on the offensive you cannot simply play defense no no sport in the world a competitive sport in the world can just play defense and win and this is not an area that we want to uh be second place in so the points i would make that first that we're going to need some sort of of uh i would call it concept of how we're going to conduct ourselves in space that's all of us internationally what are we going to do then we're going to have to recognize if nations are not willing to live by those rules such as we've seen on this planet down here below we're going to have to have the ability to defend and the ability to uh to do offense in that regard the president has been very clear that he wants to organize accordingly so what we will do is put together a command that can compete in space on whatever level an adversary wants to compete chooses to compete and then we're going to ensure that we go to congress with how we believe we can best organize not for a bureaucracy but for the capabilities the president the vice president rightly directed that we have so we don't surrender uh what we do in space uh using space for commerce or navigation or anything else it's critical to our economy it's critical to our way of life now we've grown reliant on it so we're organizing appropriately and we'll go forward uh with the obviously uh with congress right alongside us since they have to enable it with legislation and carry out the president's direction if you did not see it the the secretary had some very interesting remarks at the manamon dialogue in Bahrain about uh Yemen about the the killing of Khashoggi um and i want to pick up on that thread and one of the questions that has come from the media in the wake of the death of Jamal Khashoggi and a continued uptick in civilian casualties in Yemen do you believe that Saudi Arabia has made a good faith effort to reduce harm in this conflict and what do you hope to see Saudi and the UAE do to improve as the state department looks toward another certification of US refueling support to those two allies yeah well what was referred to the killing of Khashoggi i'd say the murder of Khashoggi is i would separate it out from uh the Yemen situation that stands unique uh by itself the president said we want to get to the bottom we will get to the bottom of it and as you know uh turkey has uh so far provided evidence for every allegation that they have made about what happened and so no one nation controls all the information and i spoke to the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia uh two days ago in manama and he said there would be a full investigation uh let me swing over to Yemen separate issue what we have been providing uh since the last administration or in the last administration we reviewed it when we came in very carefully in regards to this war that's going on there between the Arab coalition and the uh and the Houthis the last administration agreed to provide certain information refueling support so the pilots didn't feel they had to make a hasty decision about the drop or not to drop that sort of thing we refuel probably less than 20 i think less than 20 percent of their aircraft they have their own refuelers by the way but what is it that we are pushing for at this point for months we have been holding classes on how do you actually establish no fire areas what do you do for restricted fire areas how do you calculate the effects of bombs uh the um how do you then investigate what happened some people have a very high expectation as demonstrated by the U.S. of the NATO air forces of what can be accomplished and we have achieved through enormous effort training technology and putting it all together even then we've had mistakes but in our forces we have set a standard that is very high the commander of the royal side of the air force has been going from base to base as we continue the training and the conferences for them and he's looking at pilots in the eye explaining that there is never a reason to drop if they don't think they can hit the right target now war i will just tell you i've got a little experience in it is basically one tragedy piled upon another tragedy you know welcome to war but our goal right now is to achieve a level of of capability by those forces fighting against the hooties that they are not killing innocent people the longer term solution and by longer term i mean 30 days from now we want to see everybody around a peace table based on a cease fire based on a pullback from the border and then based on ceasing dropping of bombs that will permit the special envoy martin griffin he's very good he knows what he's doing to get them together in sweden and end this war that is the only way we're going to really solve this improved accuracy of bombs is still a war so we've got to move toward a peace effort here and we can't say we're going to do it sometime in the future we need to be doing this in the next 30 days we've admired this problem for long enough down there and i believe that the soddies and the emirates are ready and in fact had the hooties not walked out of the last effort that martin griffin had going uh we would probably be on our way there right now secretary this is a question from peter neilson of the embassy of denmark you spent a lot of time and energy and strengthening cooperation with allies and partners what do you see as the major accomplishments in this area and what are the challenges and opportunities looking forward you know it's it's been eye-opening as i came into this job that i never aspired to i'd never met president trump before he called me back to bedminster as president elect and and met with him i had my views i was out at stanford university and i was had time to study i did not realize just how much other nations i mean i i'd read about it i did not realize how many other nations look to us as a calming or a confidence building uh partner for them and wherever i go i find from south america to the middle east certainly to the pacific certainly in brussels of the nato meetings that they all want us to stay they all want us to keep at it uh so where are we right now i went to nato my first uh my first meeting there i'd been a supreme allied commander before in uniform i knew many of the people that are on the staffs knew many of the principals sitting around the table from my previous days and i assumed when i went there i was going to lose some uh some rapport with nations representatives who represented their own nations uh their own nation's interests so when i said there was no way i could go back uh to america and ask american parents to care more about the freedoms that european children enjoyed than european parents did that they were going to have to pay a modicum for the best defense in the world and what is that modicum two percent i recognize that only leaves 98 for everything else but i think we can afford two percent for what grew out of the renaissance and the enlightenment to survive in this world and i think we have to recognize that after 2014 especially that things began changing that it was no longer the same europe that it was before putin began his adventures and terrorists began shooting up the streets of paris brussels and elsewhere uh i expected to lose rapport i did not now ladies and gentlemen i'd heard this first when i sat behind secretary perry when i was his executive secretary in 1990 rudy what was it back in the last millennium 1997 i think i'd first heard him say that you have got to be paying more we cannot continue to carry this well i heard it also from secretary collin i heard it from secretary rumsfeld i heard it uh from secretary gates as a four star when i was a nato supreme commander this was not a new message the difference was the extremely strong uh statement of the president that he had gone on long enough uh and i was trying to think of how to put it to our allies where it was not adversarial it's not about being adversary or antagonistic and i was coming out of denver on my way east to uh go through senate confirmation and you've all heard it a hundred times you know what i'm going to say the stewardess got up and she said in the event we lose cabin pressure the mask will drop put your own mask on first and then help those around you what i would call this is we are when we talk about america first it's not america alone we are trying to get our own economic house in order our own fiscal house in order we're putting our own mask on first so we can help those around us we are not a worthy ally we are not a worthy partner for you allies in the audience if we are not on a fiscally sustainable economically vibrant path because no nation is maintained it's military wherewithal that didn't keep its economic and fiscal house in order so that's the approach we're taking it has not cost me the rapport i anticipated in fact in the alliance today like i said early on 27 of 29 nations are raising their uh their funding and in fact all 29 if you look at the overall what they account for in terms of defense spending all 29 today are raising the amount of money they spend they commit to defense so i'm i'm relatively optimistic about where we're at right now with allies with nato being i think a very representative example of where we're at hasn't been easy in a lot of strong words but that's what democracies do with each other they stand up and say where they stand at the end of the day though we're together 100 percent when it comes to putting german battalion into the lithuanian forest and a dozen other nato nations are there under the german lieutenant colonels command who is serving under the lithuanian brigade commanders command you can see nato working from the front edge of the Baltics all the way back to brussels and in the nation's capitals i went on a little bit of length but you can see we only have three lines of effort make the u.s. military more lethal build stronger partnership with our partners and allies and reform how the defense department does business so i can look you all in the eye and say we're spending your money properly and we're getting more lethal for out of it and uh i would just tell you in that regard for the first time in 70 years we're having an audit done of the u.s. department of defense so i can look you in the eye and say in the midst of all this we're not taking your money and flushing it down the drain we're going to find a lot of problem about audit we're going to fix every we're going to tell you about them we're going to fix everyone the secretary want to ask a last question and thank god it's been quite a tour of the world uh and we thank you for for the time and and i want to suggest maybe a fourth line of effort because when you've talked about syria and iraq and afghanistan yemen and and the issue of fragile states we talked about earlier there are a lot of people who say that if you're going to deal with those kinds of problems you need yes defense but you need development you need diplomacy some would say you need democracy but in any event you need some kind of good governance so are we are we adequately resourcing all elements of that pentatook if you will um and how are we doing within the government about coordinating all of these so that we can imply them against the challenges that we see in fragile states that are so often source of conflict well we can always coordinate inside the government better as we look back in history from that nasty argument with king george the third we decided to set up a government that could never be a king over us it would not be efficient and we set it up intentionally that three different branch of government would be co-equal and compete and one of them had a bicameral legislator just to add a little more fuel to the fire so for those of you who are allies partners in the room who we frustrate often i would just tell you we are accomplishing the very purpose of our founding fathers because we frustrate ourselves even more so we can always collaborate better one thing that bob gates when he was secretary defense dr gates used to say to us the only thing that allows government to work at the top levels is the uh is the trusted personal relations between those at the top and for all you young people in the audience who wonder sometimes about going to work in the government if you put others first if you decide to go into government don't forget what dr gates said a long time civil servant because we can make this exact this experiment democracy work but we're going to have to work together on it and we need young people to come in to do it we can always collaborate better and a spirit of collaboration has always got to be there if we're going to make it work um i i don't um i don't know when you said are we providing enough in development funds you know in germany they have to provide for every dollar that goes into national defense they have to provide a dollar to development funds in norway they have very robust uh efforts to teach good governance and reward it with development money they actually it's a very disciplined process my point is one of the reasons we need allies in this world it's very simple in history nations with allies thrive nations without them die our allies have many of these issues worked out in a much more coherent manner because their programs are developed from the ground up in a in a much more i would call less complex government than we have and a smaller government so it's easier for them to apply their resources and areas that we can come in and reinforce what they're doing we can work together with them and get a much better return uh on the effort but we're going to have to work with allies no one nation on its own can defend itself no one nation on its own can deal with bad governance or criminal transnational uh criminals or or something like that we're going to have to work together so are we doing enough i think together we probably are but we could be a lot more coherent on the national and international level but and we're going to have to stay committed to it but thanks very much steve it was a tour de force please join me in thanking secretary madis for his time tonight thank you so much ladies and gentlemen please remain seated until official party departs