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THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2016

GLOBAL AFFAIRS: OUR AGE OF INSECURITY

HOMELAND INSECURITY: HOW MUCH DANGER DO WE REALLY FACE IN THE

WORLD?

Paepcke Auditorium

Aspen, Colorado

Thursday, June 30, 2016

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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

DAVID PETRAEUS

Partner & Chairman, KKR Global Institute

Visiting Professor, CUNY

Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

WOLFGANG ISCHINGER

Chairman, Munich Security Conference

JANE HOLL LUTE

Special Coordinator,

Special Advisor to the Secretary-General, United Nations

DAVID ROTHKOPF

Director, President, and CEO

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Trustee, The Aspen Institute

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HOMELAND INSECURITY: HOW MUCH DANGER DO WE REALLY FACE IN THE

WORLD?

(12:00 p.m.)

MR. BARNABO: I'm Gary Barnabo from Booz Allen

Hamilton. Booz Allen has been a proud underwriter of the Aspen

Ideas Festival for 12 years, since inception. It's always good

to be here. I know many of you feel the same way, absolute all-

star panel here this afternoon.

Hopefully, you've all had a chance to wolf down a

hotdog, but you're in the right place for this discussion on

Homeland Insecurity, How Much Do We Really Have to Fear? I

think asking an essential question, how worried do we need to

be? Terrorism, cyber threats, political risk, economic

challenges, pandemics, disease, how concerned should we really

be?

David Rothkopf from the Foreign Policy Group is our

moderator. He is the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, the

president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, a global advisory firm and

the author of a wonderful book called National Insecurity, which

really dives into the mechanics of national security policy

making in the United States. So you are in wonderful hands.

David, over to you.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Thank you very much, welcome to all of

you for what will certainly be the most disturbing panel of your

day.

(Laughter)

We have got with us, an absolutely great story panel,

including Wolfgang Ischinger, who chairs the Munich Security

Conference, which is kind of like the Aspen Ideas Festival for

security nerds from around the world, and then we have General

David Petraeus, who is one of the leading security nerds from

the United States.

MR. PETRAEUS: And proud of it.

MR. ROTHKOPF: And proud of it, exactly. We are

proud of you. And then we've got Jane Lute. Jane and I did

this routine yesterday, we are back by popular demand. Jane was

the deputy secretary at the Homeland Security. She knows a ton

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about a ton of things. She is working at the UN now, she does a

lot on cyber security and I want to kind of have one of those

panels, you know, we get this door closed here, we will just

have a private discussion among us in this room, okay.

Because there are, when we get to these issues of

homeland security and security more broadly, a bunch of things

that ought to be said that can't be said in public.

If a politician were to stand up and say terrorism is

a problem but it's not such a huge problem, they'd be done. And

yet we would all benefit from trying to put these issues into

some perspective. You know, I used to work with a guy named

John Gannon (phonetics) who was a deputy at the agency, a really

good sound guy, and from September 11, I actually stood next to

him and Tony Lake and Susan Rice on September 11, 2001 in our

office watching on the television as this happened.

And from that moment onward, one of his mantras was

"They're not 12 feet tall." The terrorists are not 12 feet

tall; try to keep it in perspective, because when it gets out of

perspective, they win, that's the objective.

The objective is to create terror and so the tally of

a terrorist success, the metric isn't how many people are

killed, it's how many people are frightened, how many laws are

changed, how many policies are changed as a result of that. And

so I want to start with that and, you know, I want to sort of go

through what we see as -- as another friend of mine was fond of

quoting Jack London -- as the wolves closest to the sled. And I

want to sort of see, which ones we think we ought to be

attending to, and which ones we think ought to be put in some

perspective.

And so Dave let me start with you. Let's take this

terrorism issue and try to put it in perspective, because you

came up in the military at a time when there were existential

threats, and where we were trying to contain and manage those

existential threats. And we seem to have gone from that era to

equating these new threats with being existential threats, and I

am wondering if that isn't potentially a mistake?

MR. PETRAEUS: Well, yes -- first of all, let me just

say thanks for the opportunities. It is great to be with you

David and with Jane and with Wolf and back at another Ideas

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Festival. You are absolutely right to say they are not 12 feet

tall or 10 feet tall or whatever it may be.

The problem is there are a lot of them, and the total

height of these on a given day can seem quite considerable. But

at the end of the day, the Islamic extremists threat to identify

that which is so significant, which is changing the landscape in

the Middle East, which has created this single biggest challenge

for our European partners in terms of domestic political

situations in many decades; a far bigger challenge than the Euro

crisis; has certainly led to or been part of violence here in

the United States. But it is not an existential threat and so

it may be the dog closest to the sled right today on (inaudible)

and that situation room, talking to those who have been in the

real situation room.

But in the real situation room, I think you would be

seized with a lot of other issues, because you are trying to get

ahead of some of these issues. And whether it's the cyber-

crime, cyber threats that we discussed in a previous panel

today, whether it is Putin, North Korea, the potential for

nuclear proliferation, and that getting into the hands of

Islamic extremists would be potentially closer, not an

existential threat but a very, very significant threat, enabling

them to do damage in the likes that we have never even really

seen or contemplated in the past. But then all the way on up to

what I think or actually sometimes overlooked, and these are the

challenges to the so-called liberal world order that the

systems, the structures, the norms, the principles, whether

formal or informal, that have stood the world a reasonably good

stead for many decades, since they were established in the wake

of World War II are under greater challenge now I think than

they have been at any time during that period, at least

certainly since the end of the Cold War.

I think that that's very significant as well. It's

not the wolf closest to the sled, but it's one that informs the

overall context through which, we are sledding and is something

that I think we have to be very concerned about as well.

MR. ROTHKOPF: I don't want to tip the balance of

this conversation as the moderator, but I do want to ring a

little bell and say ding, ding, ding because I think that's the

big issue.

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MR. PETRAEUS: We didn't rehearse this; we had no

preparation for this panel, whatsoever.

MR. ROTHKOPF: But I think it's true, I think -- you

know, first of all the security order that came up after the

Second World War, is past retirement age. We haven't spent much

time revitalizing it, whether it's the Atlantic Alliance or the

fact that there really isn't much of one in the Pacific, even as

issues arise there. The mechanisms of managing security,

whether it's NPT or whether it's domestic institutions are

facing problems, there's general distrust of institutions.

Europe, well, let's just stop there.

(Laughter)

Europe, the institutions of Europe seem to be at

risk, and I don't, you know, I mean I don't think it's an

exaggeration to say the Atlantic Alliance is still the

foundational alliance of global security, how much should we be

worried about that?

MR. ISCHINGER: Well, I think we need to worry about

a lot. I don't disagree with a word that was mentioned, but I

think that we face a double or actually a triple crisis. First,

there is a crisis at the level of what we call, in our language,

global governance. The Security Counsel of the United Nations,

an institution created by the United States by the way, not by

China or Russia has become actually rather dysfunctional. It's

been quite a long time since they last resolved an important

conflict.

Look at the inability to get their hands around the

Ukraine crisis or even more importantly the Syrian war et

cetera. So that's the first reflection point. How can we

strengthen or re-strengthen global institutions and the respect

for some kind of global rule of law, right.

Second, it seems to me, not in all parts of the world

but in parts of the world that matter, in the Middle East, in

Africa, in the greater Middle East, there is an important crisis

of the nation state. We have, as we speak, the clock is

ticking, and each year we seem to have more countries around the

Mediterranean in Sub-Sahara and Africa, looking at Afghanistan

as it was and as it is and as it will be.

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We have states that are either failing or are failed

and are thus becoming almost automatically, potential home bases

for the bad guys. So we need to make sure that we have a

strategy that allows us in the West to help countries prevent

drifting into this kind of failure to control their own

territory and to have decent government that's a historic task.

So unfortunately, I don't have any good news to proclaim here.

I believe we are in this for a long time, I think the

threat represented by ISIL is not going to go away, even if we

were to eliminate it in, let's say, Syria or Libya because like

a Hydra they are coming -- they will reappear at some other

place in the region. And my last point is returning to Africa.

From a European point of view, it's important to note that the

number of people killed, the number of victims created by Boca

Haram in Africa far exceeds the number of victims created so far

by the Islamic State.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Well that's -- but I think that's an

important perspective and I do think every once in a while we

ought to let facts guide what our fears are. You know I mean

the reality is we look at the poll of the top 10 fears of

American people, it tends to be things like public speaking,

flying, things that will never kill anybody, when it really

should be sugar, which is killing more people than any of the

things that we have talked about here. I want to get to you on

this point but Dave extended two fingers but he wants to hop in

and something that Wolf just said.

MR. PETRAEUS: I think it's hugely important to

underscore what Wolf said about un-governed spaces because

particularly in the Islamic world they are going to be

exploited, it's not a question of if, it is just when they will

be exploited by extremists. The effects will not be contained

to the area in which they are. You can't admire the problem

until it goes away, US leadership is imperative in responding

and it's a generational struggle. And that has to inform all

that we do and we have to do it in a comprehensive way. You

just can't drone strike your way out of this. These are serious

lessons that I think we have to take to heart.

It doesn't mean we do it all, it doesn't mean that we

don't get as many partners and it doesn't mean that we don't get

others to be on the frontlines whenever that's possible et

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cetera, et cetera because it is going to be a generational

struggle. But the other point that Wolf had, which is that you

could put a stake through heart of an individual organization of

an individual leader and we will do lots more of that. You

can't put a stake through the heart of the ideas that are

inspiring some of this and that's I think a challenge that's

going to be with us again for a generation.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Let me pick up on that Jane, you know,

we talk -- I don't know, maybe it's because we are Americans but

we talk a lot about personalities and brand names. So we talk

about Osama bin Laden or we talk about al-Qaeda or we talk about

ISIL. When the problem is extremism and we discover when you

decapitate one group and another one emerges, or a franchising.

You know I mean I see the threat posed by ISIL being that it

started world's first open source terrorist organization.

So anybody can be a member, you don't have to be in a

hierarchy, all you have to do is you know declare allegiance and

it's a force multiplier for them and it makes them seem much

bigger than they are. Are we focused on the right bad guys or

the right bad actors, or are we too guided by what dominates the

headlines?

MS. HOLL LUTE: I think we are way, way too dominated

by a national security mindset. And I think we need to

understand the difference between looking at these issues with a

national security mindset as opposed to a homeland security

mindset because they are entirely different. National security

is strategic, it's centralized, it's top driven. Homeland

security is transactional, it's decentralized, it's bottom

driven, driven by the states and the localities of this country.

You know in national security you know the watchword is unity of

command, in homeland security it's unity of effort.

You know information is shared in the national

security setting on the basis of need to know, in homeland

security it's duty to share.

You know so there is an entirely different

relationship between fear and the public and the leadership as

against the national security or homeland security. In national

security, the country has to be attacked before the nation will

go to war. In homeland security, if you are a society, you are

a community and you are fearful for your lives or your

children's safety the mayor and the police chief are fired.

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So there is a very different orientation on these

problems and we talk, you know, sort of in the -- I have

enormous respect and I have been colleagues and friends with all

of you. I mean, and learned from all of you for generations --

decades.

(Laughter)

MR. ROTHKOPF: Wow, she is trying to lift us up and

she casts us down.

MS. HOLL LUTE: You know I wasn't going there, I

wasn't going there. I am way older than I look. But I think

it's really important, you know, because when you are dealing

with these problems, this is all interesting how we think about

it and it's important that we need a theory of the case. Let's

take terrorism; what's been our theory of the case for 12 or 15

years following 9/11. Our theory of the case is the bad guys

are out there trying to come here that's what we think. How are

we going to deal with that? We are going to find them and fix

them in a military sense, abroad. We have three tools. We have

an intelligence tool, considerable; a military, best in the

world; and we have our partnerships, our security partnerships

with NATO and with other countries bilaterally. That's great.

What if they are here? What if they are already

here? What terrorist strike can succeed in this country unless

there is already a basis of support? How good is our

intelligence capability going to serve us, military deployed

domestically, the Brits, NATO not really.

So we need to think about the questions that you are

raising, which are the real questions from the perspective of

homeland security this country can protect itself. We can

protect ourselves. And as we said for a very long time, we need

to be prepared not scared. And the homeland security agenda of

looking at borders and immigration and of cyber security and of

national resilience are all tools that we need to put on the

table.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Yeah, I think you know -- by the way

embedded in Jane's comment there is something else to take away.

You know we sometimes look at bad actors or external threats and

we say this is where the risk comes from. But very often the

risks are magnified or exists more greatly closer to home,

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whether its absence of leadership, institutional weakness,

growing divisions within society that organically fuel some of

these things. And so, you know, we can go and eliminate five

terrorists and not address the core problem that put us at risk.

You agree with that?

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah, I mean, this is why again, you

have to have a comprehensive approach. This is more than just

again killing or capturing bad guys with either precision

strikes or Delta force raids or whatever. You have got to get

at the root issues. Now, you have got to do it in a way that is

informed by the knowledge that this is going to be generational

in terms of longevity, and therefore, you've got to be as cost

effective, you've have got to be as inclusive with your allies.

By the way among our most important partners in these

endeavors are Islamic countries. This is much more of an

existential threat to Muslim countries than it is certainly to

our countries, as big as the biggest challenge caused by the

tsunami of refuges from Syria is certainly for our European

partners. But -- and so therefore disparaging them or their

religion is not a particularly helpful way about going about

getting partners.

And by the way in most of the successful cases that

we've had or areas where we have made periods of sustained

progress, we have inevitably had very important Muslim partners

and institutions of Muslim countries working together with us.

MR. ROTHKOPF: So disparaging them is one thing that

we see some candidates do. Another thing we have seen a

prominent US candidate recently do is disparage our allies. And

he started -- by the way the President of United States you know

said that some of our allies in the Middle East were free

riders. Probably not so great for the alliance that you are

talking about there. And then Donald Trump starts talking about

how the Europeans are free riders. These are global problems.

They can't be solved by any individual nation acting

alone. Do you feel that a Europe that's weak institutionally,

stressed by flows of immigration, unsure of its own future, and

still reluctant to have any kind of foreign policy that's a real

foreign policy that they can follow through on is up to the

challenge of being a partner? How do you feel about the Donald

Trump criticisms?

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MR. ISCHINGER: I don't like it. And no I --

MR. ROTHKOPF: There is not a big approach from

constituency, right?

MR. ISCHINGER: As you know, if I were still, you

know, a senior official in the German government I wouldn't say

what am I now saying because now I speak as an individual and

it's only my own responsibility. I think for the leadership

role of the United States, which we will need even more urgently

because of these issues in the future than we needed in the

recent past. It would be an unmitigated disaster, if you ask

me, if Mr. Trump were elected because I think that would create

at least for a while, a rise in uncertainty about the role of

the United States.

What about his comments about NATO? And what about

his comments about dealing with all sorts of other allies? And

do we really believe that he could, if he wanted to, strike a

deal that would not be the advantageous to the West with Mr.

Putin, who was been in office now for 15 years or so; who is

probably at least as smart, in terms of handling national

security issues; as Mr. Trump, so I am not happy about.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Is at least?

MR. ISCHINGER: At least, at least.

(Laughter)

But the other -- but let me come back to the, sort

of, to the more serious part of the question about Europe. Jane

made the point and I appreciate that from the US point of view.

The focus has been primarily on how do we prevent bad guys from

coming here and then of course you have to think about what if

bad guys are here. We know in Europe that they are there, we

know they are in France, we have just seen it happen. We know

they are all over the place. It's probably a little miracle

that in my own country, in Germany, no big terrorist attack has

happened, knock on wood. It will be statistically unlikely that

we will be spared forever, so we know they are there.

We know that it's much easier for them to come into

our countries because it's -- for all practical purposes, not

possible to completely control these many, many different

borders et cetera. It's a little easier for the United States

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with only two neighbors and the open sea on both sides. In

Europe this is more complicated. So our challenge is to make

sure that this "Weak European Union" becomes stronger, where it

matters. And one area where it matters is a more coordinated

intelligence and homeland security effort.

Quite frankly, I published a piece; a little while

ago, which created quite a bit of excitement; I said in the

United States of American -- I mean, correct me if I am wrong --

for the first 150 or almost 200 years they didn't have a federal

police. And then for some reasons, they created the FBI, which

is sort of a countrywide executive police institution. Has the

point not arrived where in the European Union in order to hunt a

terrorist from Sicily to Norway and back we need some kind of

capacity to act that does not respect national borders, a

transnational kind of police like "a European FBI."

Well, you can imagine the reaction, some people said,

"Great idea that's what we ought to do." Especially those who

are in charge of homeland security, they think this is good.

Others who are more concerned about privacy

protection and about the rights of the individuals say the last

thing we want is that a Spanish policeman, you know, shoots

people in Denmark et cetera. So there are concerns, there are

fears but I think that's what we need to do in Europe.

And my last point would be this, there is admittedly

a kind of a malaise in the European Union about the functioning

of the EU, whether we call it a weak EU or an EU that is

increasingly been disliked, look at Brexit et cetera. Part of

the reason is that many of the projects which the European Union

has correctly tried to advance have been seen by our broader

public as elitist projects. And when you ask -- when you look

at the polls, when you check what would people like to see the

EU do for them, the one answer EU, where -- even in Britain --

you get a positive response, is security.

People want to have the EU act as a security actor,

not necessarily only in -- I mean our military forces in the

context of NATO in Afghanistan in Mali, in other places. They

also one the EU to provide more homeland security. So if you

look at the expectations of the people there is actually a good

basis on which to act and create a slightly stronger and more

resilient homeland security structure in the EU. Is that going

to happen in the next weeks or months? I am afraid not as

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quickly as I would like to see it happen because we will be --

our leaders will be busy discussing Brexit, Brexit, Brexit and

Ukraine and Syria. They are overwhelmed at the moment with all

these other major crises.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Go on Jane.

MS. HOLL LUTE: I think there is a dimension of

security again which you see vividly from the homeland

perspective. I mean one of the things about the national

security institutions of this country that -- you know by and

large at the level of generalization, there is almost no

interaction with the American public.

Our intelligence community doesn't have a lot of

interaction, it's not designed to with the American public. You

know, the State department looks outward et cetera. You know

the military, we have long lamented the fact that it's was not

drawn broadly from the American public.

Homeland Security, we interact with 5 to 7 million

people a day. So you get very vivid feel for what people mean

when they say security, you are absolutely right Wolfgang I

believe it. People want to feel free from fear of attack.

That's what they need fundamentally, at home and abroad. But

they also want guarantees against the unbridled use of power

that's the less articulated version of security.

You know, I mean, I think whatever the next president

faces, whomever she or he is they are going to have to lead the

global recovery from the next six months because we are in for a

very rough ride as we have this public conversation about all of

these issues, all the while facing what people believe is a

deteriorating sense of security, whether it's financial security

or actual security.

So what are the tools that we have in place to

reassure people because people are angry everywhere. I mean and

this is an anxiety based anger. You know this is not a purpose

driven anger, when you have purpose-driven anger people kill

each other.

This is an anxiety based anger, we don't trust

businesses, we don't trust the banks, we don't trust the media,

we don't trust markets, in many cases we don't trust governments

or institutions. And I think the anxiety stems from the fact

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that we may not know how to architect trusted institutions at

scale in the public space. We are trying to -- and we are

seeing that in evidence again and again and again.

You mentioned earlier the UN is a weak organization,

compared to what? I mean we -- our institutions, you know,

their weight bearing effectiveness for social problems of

enormous complexity has been called under question now across

the board. So as we address proximate threats, what am I afraid

of, what am I going to take action on because I am afraid? And

what responsibility should we assign to individuals, should we

assign to communities, should we assign to police forces?

Security is typically something communities assigned to their

governments to handle. We want safe streets, governments should

run the police. We want to save country, government -- you run

the military, et cetera. And here again the difference between

national security and homeland security is stark. I mean

Washington is not the national command authority as it is the

national security, it's the federal partner. So the FBI, an

investigative agency at the federal level has really defined and

limited responsibilities compared to, you know, the state --

850,000 state and local law enforcement in this country. So we

need to look at both parts of the picture.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Okay, I'm going to open it up

questions in five minutes. But I don't want to fall into the

trap that I was trying to avoid at the very beginning, which is,

it's easy to talk about terrorism, it's especially easy because

of what you just said, people don't want to be afraid of an

attack. But leadership, it seems to me, is sometimes about

saying this is what we should be focused on, this is where the

real risk lies, let's be able to move pass this.

And there are some countries where there have been

multiple terrorist attacks where they are able to manage them

and digest it and handle it a little bit better and it causes

less terror as a consequence. Apart from that, Dave as you look

at it, a new President is coming in, what are the risks that

ought to be prioritized, if you were advising this next

President, as she came in. See what I did there?

(Laughter)

And she said, you know, where should we be focused,

where should we allocate our resources? You listed some things,

you said cyber, you said the rise of the emerging powers, we

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talked about Africa as a place, you know there is a whole of

host of things. And we know that in terms of terror attacks a

tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of Americans die as a result of terror

attacks than as of -- the use of guns in the United States in

sort of the normal course of action, 50 or 60 or 100 a year

versus 30,000 year.

MR. PETRAEUS: 33,000.

MR. ROTHKOPF: So it's grotesquely out of proportion,

and one should be much, of course, a source of concern. Where

would you focus?

MR. PETRAEUS: Well, I think the biggest challenge is

to avoid focusing too much on the dog closest to the sled and

you do get sucked into that. You know, I have been again in

these different organizations, privileged to lead very large

ones, and it's almost inevitable that you get wrapped into that

day's dog closest to the sled -- that day's significant threat -

- that day's topic de jure in the morning shows, in the

afternoon shows and what will be on the Sunday shows.

And so that's the risk actually. And the antidote is

to make sure that you don't end up, you know, nose to glass on

that particular issue or stuck to that issue and unable to

address all of them. Because I think what the Commander-in-

Chief really has to be is like that guy in the circus, who gets

a bunch of plates spinning and then goes back and gives them the

right spin to keep them all up there. And you know, you keep

adding to it to the extent that you can, with your bureaucracy

you do that.

Certainly there are limits. You know, Jean, knows

very well, I mean there is only one situation, you can only have

so many meetings during the day. I mean, we used to calculate

how many crises, every now and then waiting for another NSC

meeting or a principles committee meeting, just joking, how many

crisis can the country handle at a time?

MR. ROTHKOPF: But the people from inside felt that

they were too many meetings --

MR. PETRAEUS: But -- and that's why, it is three to

five, that are really pressing at a given time. And the

challenge I think for the Commander-in-Chief is actually to look

at other than just that three to five. By the way the deputies

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of the these different organizations; which Jane was, of course,

and Michael Morell, my deputy at the agency; they spend almost

all day at the White House. I mean Michael would disappear

after the morning meeting and sometimes you wouldn't see him

again until that night because they just have deputies after

deputies after deputies, that is the one that meets at high

frequency.

And again the challenge has to be focused on

additional topics is again the long range issue here, that's why

I went from the very close fight, if you will, the tactical to

the very strategic global issue that I think is the big

challenge, which is the challenges to the so-called liberal

world order and all of these different organizations, norms,

principles and so forth that have stood us in reasonably good

stead.

And figuring out how do you deal with a China that

benefited more from this system than any other country during

recent decades because they achieved something no other country

ever has, which is really two decades of almost unbroken double-

digit growth in their GDP, it is unprecedented.

But they're are among the biggest challengers of this

system whether it's building islands where there weren't any in

the South China Sea, floating what will be the World -- the

court on the law of the sea, aerospace identification zones that

interfere with other countries, just one after the other. And

dissatisfied with the IMF so you create the Asian Infrastructure

and Investment Bank, again we can go on and on and on.

MR. ROTHKOPF: But I think it's a perfect —-

MR. PETRAEUS: These are issues that you've got to

focus on even as you are knocking down the close fight targets.

I mean you can't let them come over the walls they say, you know

they're right outside the wire, you have also got to be engaging

in the deep fight -- that is the challenge.

MR. ROTHKOPF: I have written two books on how the US

national security process works, and I've been in the government

and talked to a lot of people in every single administration. I

have spoken to every single national security advisor, the first

thing that they say is, "We do foresight really badly." And

this is --

17

MR. PETRAEUS: And this is what you're going to have

to do. And if you have to have a special cell that does nothing

about -- think about these long range, you know the beauty of

commanding what is the main effort of your country at a

particular time in the military is you can get the most talented

people. I had -- I knew every Rhodes scholar in the US military

was, and they were either working for me right then or had just

finished working for me or were going to work for me.

And we'd have these cells called the Commanders

Initiatives Group that would be thinking about these longer

range issues. And again that's the kind of development that I

think you have to got pursue so that you just don't get riveted

to dealing with that day's issues.

MR. ROTHKOPF: A number of you would like to speak, I

know a lot of people here would too. So what I would like to do

is -- are there people with microphones in here?

So what I would like to do is, if you got a question,

raise your hand, identify yourself -- stand up, identify

yourself and ask your question in the form of question, keep it

brief.

And then we will try to get some answers, because

we've got only 20 minutes. So let's go to this gentleman here.

MR. MALLARD: Frank Mallard (phonetic) for David

Petraeus. In the course of your talk, you mentioned the

cooperation you were getting out of the Islamic countries.

Could you elaborate on that? As far as I can see the

cooperation is coming from countries like Saudi Arabia, which on

one hand are helping you, on the other hand they are the

greatest financial supportive of Wahhabism in which they are

exporting and is creating most of the problems that exists

within the Islamic world.

MR. PETRAEUS: Sure. And let me just start with

Saudi Arabia. First of all I think they are doing less of you

talked about. There is on question of what they have done in

the past. Indeed, the mosque in (inaudible) was one that was

built with their money. I watched to a degree the

transformation of Bosnia in the wake of their civil war serving

there for a year. And in other countries as well.

18

But I can tell you that when I was commander vis

Central Command -- actually Iraq Central Command, Afghanistan

and the CIA, if we took anything to them about people that were

financing extremists groups or anything like that, they would

deal with it and they did it quite expeditiously because this is

an existential threat from them much more than it is for us.

Keep in mind that the current crown prince when he was then the

deputy minister of interior and our single best partner for the

fight against al Qaeda, when it came to the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia and really in the GCC writ large, Mohammed bin Nayef was

nearly blown -- he was blown up, he just wasn't killed by a bomb

that was designed and put inside the brother of the most

talented and single most dangerous man in the world Ibrahim al-

Asiri, who is this explosive expert in Yemen that we have been

seeking for quite a long time.

Beyond that you've got countries like the United Arab

Emirates, which are helping enormously in a host of different

ways, again a very comprehensive approach. The other members of

the GCC by and large doing the same thing, we have got

partnerships across North Africa with various countries.

So again, if you -- by the way you can't deal in a

country, you can't take action in a country, without that

country either approving or at least in some cases providing

tacit assent to what it is that you might do. The best of all

is the active engagement. And you do see that as well right now

in this partnership against the Islamic State that does include

Muslim countries flying along side and certainly dropping bombs

on some of the Islamic State targets. Although that -- some of

that effort was diverted of course for the fight against the

Iranian-supported Houthis in Yemen, which is another whole

challenge for that region and really for the world.

MR. ROTHKOPF: And I think you would acknowledge --

and this -- any of you wish to speak about it -- that cutting

the heads off of terrorists groups or killing terrorists doesn't

address the extraneous problem, the only way to address it is to

come up with a counter narrative to the extremist's narrative

that is a positive narrative. And that's not going to be one

the United States can offer, those countries must critically

play the role. Right?

MR. PETRAEUS: No. If you're going to counter the

voices of extremism in cyber space and particularly now, and

let's remember that the distinguishing feature, the single

19

differentiator of the Islamic State besides the fact that you

have a leader actually who is willing to establish a caliphate

is the expertise that they demonstrate in cyber space. And that

is really a significant threat. It's been there in the past,

al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had this Inspire magazine that

was very important. And you may recall it was led by an

American Yemeni who ultimately was killed along with the editor

of Inspire.

But at the end of the day, you've got to have

credible voices, so these are voices in that language, in that

dialect understanding the religion in a very scholarly way. And

that is invaluable. And it's not something that is in great

supply in the United States.

MR. ROTHKOPF: If only we took our foreign policy

magazines and web sites as seriously as they took.

(Laughter)

MR. PETRAEUS: Your subscription would jump.

MR. ROTHKOPF: It would double to 20.

MS. HOLL LUTE: I think it's -- I mean the one actor

Dave did not mention is not Iran. I mean this region is not

going to stabilize or succeed unless Iran successfully

normalizes and back into the international community. Whatever

you think about Iran, it is a strategic player in the region and

more broadly.

In addition, it has borne a very large burden with

respective displaced populations and refugees. I mean there is

-- it is a very complicated relationship that the United States

has with Iran right now at this moment, you know, the US and

Europe have not always agreed on the approach to Iran. But I

think it's safe to say, in this particular region the

historically great player, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt I mean these

countries must succeed for this region to succeed.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Next question. Yes, ma'am.

MS. BARON: My name is Adrian Baron (phonetic) I am

from California from LA. As a child we learned about speak

softly but carry a big stick. And after dismissing a lot of the

20

propaganda in the media I want to know, do we have a big stick

or is it really outdated equipment in case of an emergency?

MR. PETRAEUS: We have the biggest stick in the world

by a factor of -- I don't know what --

(Laughter)

Look, let me again, you know, people are entitled to

opinions but not their own facts. And the facts are that even

with the cuts, and sequestration is the most horrible way to

ever cut a budget. We have done some really dumb stuff, you

know, it's not uncommon to hear people say on certain days that

among the top five threats to our national security is

Washington DC itself. But at the end of the day you know we are

spending 600 billion on our military alone that is four times,

yes China has increased dramatically, it's still four times what

they have.

One of the reasons that the US has to lead is because

when it comes to the assets that are crucially important for the

kinds of endeavors we're enabling; in Iraq, and to a degree in

Syria, and some other countries, Afghanistan still; the

intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance armada

architecture that we have, which is just not all that manned and

unmanned platforms. It's the pipes, it's the communications,

it's the 150 people that it takes to keep one of these in the

air and analyze what's coming out of it, listen to it, arm it,

fuel it, fly it, payload it, fuse the intelligence with

everything else, on and on and do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a

week. Then the precision strike, then the industrial strength

ability to fuse intelligence that is so critical to what it is

we're doing.

Yes, we're still improving what we are doing as we

rebuild what we took out of Iraq. and that's one reason that it

would have been great if we could have kept some forces there.

I am not convinced by any means that would have enabled us to

have the influence to keep Prime Minister al-Maliki from heading

down the ruinous path he did with highly sectarian actions that

undid all that we sacrificed so much to achieve during the surge

and the subsequent three-and-half years.

But we would have platforms, situational awareness,

pipes all the rest of this stuff that would have been enabled to

21

us to get on the front foot against the Islamic State much more

rapidly.

And that matters because the sooner you can show that

the Islamic state is a looser is the sooner it's no longer as

effective in cyberspace.

But make no mistake about it, our capabilities are

more than all of the potential allies and partners around the

world by several factors. And that's why again our leadership

is absolutely indispensable. It doesn't mean we do it all, it

doesn't mean we shouldn't have every ally and partner, we can.

Churchill was right, you know, the only thing worse than

fighting with allies is fighting without them, and all that

stuff.

But work with me here, I know it's lunchtime. But we

have got an incredible capability and we've got to use it

judiciously, cost effectively let others fight in the frontlines

whenever possible et cetera, et cetera. But make no mistake

about the capability that we have.

And I would it's the same in virtually every area of

governance, even extending into the diplomatic and development

and other areas even though we have never funded them to the

tune that they probably should have been.

MS. HOLL LUTE: This is -- we can echo absolutely

everything Dave is saying and not because I went to basic

training in 1976.

MR. PETRAEUS: Because we're professors together at

West Point.

MS. HOLL LUTE: West Point.

(Laughter)

MS. HOLL LUTE: I mean the United States can get

anywhere in the world from Missouri. I mean, you know, we are

really that much better than everybody else.

MR. PETRAEUS: Without landing.

MS. HOLL LUTE: Without landing.

22

MR. PETRAEUS: And come back without landing too.

MS. HOLL LUTE: Without landing.

MR. PETRAEUS: After doing something.

MS. HOLL LUTE: So the question that has been at the

heart of so many minds is what will the US do with this power.

But as -- in Homeland Security what we discovered is every other

country has borders, every other country is wrestling with

immigration, every other country has a federal, state, local or

federal center, periphery you know province problem. And they

come to the US again and again and again. We could not open all

of the bilateral Homeland Security dialogs that countries around

the world wanted.

Because they knew we were wrestling honestly with

these operational problems in highly complex circumstances,

where values compete, you know when borders on the one hand you

want keep out people and things that might be dangerous, but we

also want to expedite legitimate trade and travel, we want to

keep out people who might be dangerous, but we want to welcome

those who would enrich our culture and our economy. And we were

wrestling with these. And despite what again -- whatever

popular mythology may be out there, we are still a pretty

special place.

(Applause)

MR. ROTHKOPF: Europe has a special relationship with

borders. And I would like to just pick up on what Jean said

because you had Schengen agreement, everything opened up within,

and now you've got refuges, rising nationalism in a variety of

different places and questions about whether this idea of

openness can exist in an era with these kinds of threats? Where

do you think that's going?

MR. ISCHINGER: Well two points, first, there are

good reasons for us in Europe to be self critical about the

kinds of institutions and the kinds of things that we've created

such as, you know, for example the euro, we didn't sufficiently

create a hard enough sanctions to make sure that every single

member of this euro system would actually not violate the rules.

And more importantly, to the point here, when we

created what we call the Schengen system in other words no

23

controls along the internal borders, but only controls around

the outside borders of this rather large area comprising a

majority now of European countries from the Mediterranean to the

Arctic if you wish.

The idea is a great idea and it has brought enormous

economic benefit and it, of course, it means that even you as

Americans can go from Denmark through Germany to Italy without

ever encountering, without ever needing to show your passport.

The problem is the same privilege can be enjoyed by our friend

the terrorists. So the question is, have we sufficiently --

have we done enough to make the outside border control as

effective as we should have made it.

And the answer of course is no. When we created it,

we did not reflect sufficiently about a situation where one of

the countries responsible; let's say, Greece, or Italy, or a

country with an outside border in the region of crisis, what if

that one country is either unable or willing or both to do

everything that's needed to control that border? Do we have a

Plan B that can then be set in motion in order to make sure that

the system works? The answer is, we did have the Plan B and we

are now slowly grinding out a plan that would actually create a

force, a European, a new European institution that would have

efficient personnel to execute these border controls.

So, yeah, I mean we are slowly learning. But if I

may, let we add a second point. As important as the military

capabilities are, and as important as it is that we in Europe

also try to lift our defense expenditures up to a goal that we

have all agreed to some time ago. Mainly, there was this famous

2 percent, as important as all of that is, I think, the threat

of terrorism and fundamentalist extremism in Europe isn't going

to go away only by showing and demonstrating and executing

military strength. We need -- I echo what you said -- we need a

comprehensive plan. Part of this comprehensive plan has got to

be from a European point of view that we do not regard as we

have done for more than a generation now.

Our policies vis-à-vis the countries in Northern

African, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East as recipients of

charity, you know, classic foreign aid recipients, we make sure

that people don't die from hunger or disease et cetera.

We've got to -- even if it's painful, we have got to

understand that would we need to create with these countries is

24

a security strategy, in which they can be partners and the

strategy that will try to make sure that over the medium and

longer-term we will prevent new failing states, and we will have

resources to make sure that states that are about to fail can be

rescued from becoming platforms for ISIL or Boko Haram et

cetera, that's of course a huge task, I think we can do it.

We need strong leadership support from the United

States for that. And hopefully -- that would be my last point -

- and hopefully the distraction created by, you know, aggressive

behavior by Mr. Putin in Eastern Europe can at some point be

eliminated so that we can focus on these homeland security and

terrorism issues and so that we don't have to spend too much of

our resource on hedging against what is perceived in Europe

today as a renewed threat or at least potential threat from the

East.

MR. ROTHKOPF: I think that's an extremely good

point. I'm afraid we don't have much time left. I think we

will have a chance for one more question. But I want to put one

button on that point. I had a conversation with the National

Security Advisor of Jordan not too long ago and Jordan is an

absolutely vital country in all of this. And I said, "What's

the most important thing for you to maintain stability in Jordan

and fight these things?" And he said, "That's easy," he said,

"7 million jobs," he said we have to create jobs for people.

MR. ISCHINGER: Absolutely.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Now the problem is that when you say 7

million jobs you think of it as development, and when you think

of its development for better for worse that ends up going to

the children's table in the policy discussion, it's not taken

seriously. And we have a bunch of impediments to solving these

problems an other is our terminology. You know I call it

semantic risk, right, if you call certain things soft power, you

denigrate them, you make people think they are less important.

But it is through soft power, it's through cultural outreach and

diplomacy and education and interchange that you actually change

belief systems.

And if you don't change belief systems you can't

fight these issues as well. So I would encourage all of you as

you leave this room, never to use the term soft power again.

Because what people believe, what they're willing to fight for,

25

who they're willing to support is actually the basis of all real

power.

Take one more question, somewhere in the back because

we have been up close to the front. All right, is there

somebody in the back there that you see? Okay, but very, very

brief question, and we will try out to have a very quick answer.

SPEAKER: Thanks, I will try to make it as brief as

possible. When you look at China and you look at Russia,

obviously we've pivoted to the Asian pivot -- and this is more

for General Petraeus, I think, but you're free to answer

obviously -- is China's more bullying for just sort of respect

versus Russia has more longer term desires to sort of regain its

overall dominance from a balance of power perspective?

MR. ROTHKOPF: Thirty seconds.

MR. PETRAEUS: Look they both pose challenges. In

the case of China they're both partners as well as competitors.

Russia, clearly, there is a desire to reestablish as much as is

possible the former Soviet Union or at least the Russian empire

and destroy the world stage, doing so with a significant decline

in revenue because of the collapse of energy markets.

China, the increasing assertiveness is very

concerning. And again, as I mentioned earlier, when you put the

two of these together these are the primary assaults on this

liberal world order that has stood the globe in reasonably good

stead over the last number of decades.

MR. ISCHINGER: Very, very brief.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Ten seconds.

MR. ISCHINGER: Just to underline the point, I mean

China is today and will be even more in the future, the biggest

or at least one of the biggest economic powers right? Russia is

not a significant power in that respect. The gross national

product of Russia is smaller than that of Italy, slightly larger

than that of Spain. In other words, when we think about the

threat coming out of Russia they can't possibly sustain a longer

conflict against, you know, a major adversary.

It's -- in economic terms, not a major power anymore.

And the interesting thing is that how Vladimir Putin has managed

26

to play in the major leagues even though that's not exactly

where he belongs.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Thank you.

MS. HOLL LUTE: When I was at Homeland Security

people used to ask me, what keeps you up late at night? You

know wakes you up, is it China, is it Russia? Like no, you know

if it's not unpatched vulnerabilities, the thing I worry about

most coming back to David's opening question, what I'm most

afraid of? The most afraid of the fact that we will lose faith

in each other.

MR. ROTHKOPF: Bravo.

MS. HOLL LUTE: And we can't afford that and that's

something each of us can do something about.

(Applause)

* * * * *