strategic and non deployed systems, that may take a long time. is there an interim step you might take that might create a zone in which you would remove the non strategic systems as an interim step to the broader negotiations? >> my colleagues may want to comment on this as well. i would just refer you -- i would refer everybody who hasn't had a chance to look at it, the remarks secretary clinton made past april when she spoke about these very issues with the nato foreign ministers. that federal remark is that the core of our policy with regard to this very issue and she does take note of the fact that further reductions involving non strategic nuclear weapons must take into account overall

negotiating. in other words, these are the kinds of things that we would involve in a negotiation rather than unilateral action. that is a very important mark to look at and i refer all of you to them if you are not familiar to them. it lays out a policy very succinctly in my view. very interesting proposal. there are a number of proposals in and out of government. i am not at this stage in my own deliberation or with my interagency colleagues ready to endorse the -- my colleagues may have some other things to say on that. >> when you look at just europe now, there is a lot of pressure building up in european countries basically to say we don't use american nuclear weapons in europe anymore but the american extended deterrence can be extended by strategic

forces like forces now extended to japan, south korea, australia. if you look forward i see three ways american nuclear weapons could come out of europe. one would be is the result an individual country decision? right now there is -- the german air force -- to their designated aircraft and designated weapons' between 2015 to 2020. and not only program to have nuclear capability. if the german air force goes out of business the personal that puts a lot of pressure on holland and belgium. that is one way. a second way to do it would be as a nato policy, nato is withdrawing all nuclear weapons. the third way that is most preferable is to put the new negotiating mix and hopefully i am not sure how large as a a bargaining chip it would be but

hopefully we could use them to get something in terms of russian readiness for non-strategic nuclear-weapons. clearly feathered way is the most preferable. >> one more time. >> good point. unless nato figures it out, for first wave may be the default mode. the point you made about the interim step of doing something, certainly there might be the negotiation in withdrawing nuclear weapons away from borders in centralized storage and locations in the interior, i would be nervous about -- those pushing this junk -- that generates a host of problems and

because they are fairly transportable i am not sure it buys you all that much. >> to echo steve's third point, they should be done in a consulting way with the allies. if you look at the decision in the nuclear posture, retired the tomahawk missile which provided at the time tactical nuclear deterrent to u.s. allies. that was retired on the basis of many complications with u.s. allies to make sure they were still comfortable with u.s. deterrent support through conventional systems and offshore strategic weapons. if you look at the trends within europe, weapons that are based on classified estimates. in 1990 there were 4,000 u.s. nuclear weapons the year and now there are 200. now probably in five places. at one time eight types of

bombs. now there's one bomb. it has been a sort of steady stream down. what you are left with is a small number that could potentially be bargained away if the russians make cuts in their tactical nuclear weapon forces which are primarily based in operational status in bases third nato allies. and the split within europe between basically history and geography from russia. the country's closest to rush are least comfortable with nuclear weapons in europe. countries for this to our most comfortable. nato should make a decision for the entire alliance based upon article 5, commitments the united states makes. only collectively should that be done. countries put a call for u.s. nuclear forces, it is a bad starting point for nato. >> we go to the back somewhere,

anyone? >> price mcdonald, you as institute of peace. thank you for mentioning possibilities of additional cooperation between the united states and russia and i hope you will be able to elaborate more on that next week when you are speaking at a conference, the national academy of science is holding on future technical cooperation of science diplomacy. small plug for all interested. going beyond that, several comments about bringing in additional nuclear power as you go to lower levels. i want to ask in addition, certainly from a quantitative point of view that makes sense. the numbers the u.s. and russia have are higher than the others. but another dimension of arms control is qualitative limits. there are qualitative limits even in the new s.t.a.r.t. with

verification. given how sticky a multilateral nuclear arms negotiations might be, might there be some merit in establishing a completely separate -- you wouldn't want to muck up the fallen s.t.a.r.t. agreement but separate negotiating for where these non quantitative issues could be discussed for two reasons. for what ever value it might have and to get our feet wet if you will in what would eventually be a multilateral negotiation and i throw that out to all three of you. >> perhaps i will start because already some activity underway in that regard but it emerged in the aftermath of the treaty review conference that took place in may of 2010 in new york. out of that came an action plan agreed to by consensus.

very important. one of the items in that action plan was to get together and show progress -- non-proliferation and nuclear energy cooperation. again, it is not well-known but in london in september of 2009 there is an interesting conference where all members of the b5 started to talk about verification and transparency technology. the very kinds of things you are talking about. b5 has agreed to continue that process pursuant to the review conference, action plan and government and the french announced in september that they will host the second of these conferences to talk about verification and transparency, cooperation. that is a very welcome step. we are planning to hold this

conference in the first half of this year and it will get together and continue basically along the same trajectory that was lost by the london conference. i welcome this very much. basically setting up a process that will be very beneficial. the next review conference already on the horizons of thinking about showing results in that context. just in terms of beginning to shape dialogue and discussion allow all members of the p 5, important issues of this kind. it is not been advertised a lot but it is out there for all to see. you are interested, a very worthy project that we will be continuing now. sometime -- i think it will be later in the spring. it will be in the first half of

2011. >> these consultations can be important. there is room for one more negotiation. the numbers between the united states and russia and everything else. having consultations that allow you to get measured transparency with regard to britain and france and nuclear china plans to do. one concern you mentioned from time to time is the united states and russia come down. chinese will make a huge investment. i am not sure i buy into that. the chinese talk about their nuclear forces, where they plan to go and weather doctrine is. that makes people more suspicious. if you have these consultations with greater understanding about chinese forces in particular, that make the united states and russia more comfortable in terms of the reductions we might negotiate in their bilateral

challenge. >> we are out of time. i would like to remind everyone that this meeting has been on the record, i like to thank our panelists and all of you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning. welcome to the cato institute. i'm the director of foreign policy studies here. it's my distinct pleasure to open today's proceedings. i want to begin by thanking my colleague, charles ecabe, for his hard work in helping to pull this event together. also to our marketing department to help promote it and to our conference department for what they do behind the scenes to make it run so successfully. i should also thank the construction crews who i'm told are about to stop their rat a tat tat for a little while.

of course, thank all of you who are watching online at c-span, who are watching on cato.org. for those of you in the auditorium, i want to ask that you please turn off your phones. silent isn't good enough, because it does interfere with our sound system. to please turn off your phones and silence any other noise-making tnoise-make ing devices you might have out of courtesy to attendees here. as a courtesy to our attendees, make room here in the auditorium. we have had an overwhelm ing response to this event. we're expecting a completely full crowd and also a number of people will be watching on television set outside of this room and i'm sure they'd like to join us all here in person. so if you have a space next to you, slide every toward the wall or invite someone to sit down next to you. on january 17th, 1961, president

dwight david eisenhower delivered one of the most famous speeches of his storied career. the full text of the speech is available in the handout that you all should have received. those of you who are watching online or on c-span can access the speech via the internet. we have a link to the speech. in this address, eisenhower warned the american people of the burdens imposed by a large and seemingly permanent military establishment. something that the nation had managed to avoid for most of its history. in one of the most frequently quoted lines from that famous speech, he charged his countrymen to be on guard against a military industrial complex acquiring unwarranted influence in the halls of power. eisenhower called on an alert and knowledgeable citizenry to balance the need for effective defense against the nation's peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. for decades, scholars have

suggested ways to restrain the military industrial complex and to limit its effect on civil military relations, the economy and our political system. by any objective measure, efforts to control the expnansin of the military industrial complex have failed. in inflation adjusted terms, americans will spend more than twice as much on national security in 2011 than they did in eisenhower's last year in office and without a nuclear armed adversary to justify those costs. so today we explore why these spending patterns have persisted for 50 years and what, if anything, can be done to effect meaningful change. ourspeak er today, it's my distinct pl distinct pleasure to welcome her to the cato institute, mrs. eisenhower. her complete bio as with all the

other speakers are in the packet that we passed out. i call attention in particular to her long and distinguished career as a commentator on national security policy and also energy policy. she is perceptive and outspoken observer, occasional critic of u.s. policy. it's a pleasure to welcome her back to cato. susan? >> chris, thank you very much for that nice introduction. what a pleasure it is to be back at the cato institute. we have a wonderful panel here to discuss one of the important aspects of dwight d. eisenhower's farewell address. i have worked in the national security field a long time, myself, so i'm going to be an interested consumer in the panel's deliberations here today, but i think my function really in getting this event started is to say something

about the man who gave the speech in the times in which he lived. again, scholars have examined this speech in great detail over the years. certain things about the speech have now become known that weren't before. it's one of those amazing stories about how to be careful with what's in your garage. it turns out that the son of the speechwriter, malcom moose, was moving the lawn mower to a different part of the garage and discovered five boxes left from his father's life. his wife said it's time to clean it up and get it out and discovered in these five boxes were malcom moose's notes about the crafting of the farewell address. this collection was given to the eisenhower library. many of those documents were just recently released. we know eisenhower had been planning to give this speech for a long time. it was not the afterthought many historians had suspected. it was a very deliberate speech

that eisenhower was planning to give. he played a writ call role in the crafting of this. as a matter of fact, malcolm moose later told my father the president was the architect, we were simply the carpenters. and you know, for anybody who knows the way eisenhower wrote, you can hear his phraseology throughout this speech. in any case, it is a reflection of an eight-year career. to me, i think the fascinating thing is the farewell address is really a bookend to the first major speech he gave of his presidency which was called "a chance for peace." this was given in 1953 just after the death of joseph stollen. in any case these two speeches most important of which we are marking on the 17th of january really underscore the transformational times in which dwight eisenhower served as president. i think one of the reasons we're

here today to discuss its relevance is there is a contemporary resonance to this speech because we are, today, also living in transformational times. these transformational times are actually in some ways no that different except that i think it would be fair to say that the united states is not in as strong a position as it was in 1953. after all, in 1953 though money was constrained and the united states was the world's largest cred creditor nation and we were really the country that emerged from world war ii as preeminent globally, today we have many rapid changes in technology as they did back in the 1950s. the united states, today, is changing its position on the world stage. either voluntarily or involuntarily, but we feel that those changes are under way. again, today we have economic constraints the way we did in the 1950s as i just mentioned, but at a slightly disadvantaged

situation. and we have changing views of threat assessments. that's exactly up lly one of ts of these bookend speeches of the eisenhower era. we have a set of changing world values, how eisenhower observes this. as he gives his speech. and frankly, there's also a very radical changing way in which we communicate. back in the 1950s, television was the new technology. every president from eisenhower onward had to master the usage of this new medium. today, of course, we speak a lot about the internet and of course the blogosphere which has really changed so many things. so to take ourselves back to 1953 for a minute, that was an extraordinary year. it was a game changer many in m ways because of the death of joseph stollen. then in august of 1953, the bomb was tested by the soviet union

which broke the u.s. monopoly on this fearsome weapon. it's rather interesting that eisenhower despite these important changes was really willing, able and politically courageous enough to link this defense spending with domestic spending. i would challenge any political leader today to try to draw equivalences eisenhower did in his chance for speech. he said, quote, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children, the cost of one heavy bomber is this. a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. it is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. we pay for a single fighter with a half a million bushels of wheat. we pay for a single destroyer

with new homes that would have housed more than 8,000 people. this is not a way of life at all in any true sense. under the threat -- under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from across. well, if this isn't relevant from a contemporary point of view, i don't know what is, as we have seen extraordinary figures of what the defense security complex, we can call it that today, is spending. since 2001, these expenditures have risen by 119%, and of course, discussion about how we're going to reign in costs are on our agenda today. let me just close by saying something about transformational times and then an observation about transformational leadership. i believe dwight eisenhower was

a transformational leader. this guy had guts. you see reference to it in his farewell address. the original film is "all business all the time." it's spoken in a very somber, very serious way. he did have political courage. we could go into that if the seminar today were on dwight eisenhower, which it is not, but i would point to any number of decisions including the handling of the suez crisis just before the election of his second term. this was something that was so potentially controversial that he figured that he might even not be elected for taking a decision like that but was prepared. we need to only mention, of course, the imposition of federal troops in little rock in 1957. these were tough decisions by somebody who i believe in his own frame of reference would say that he was putting america first.

one of the critical parts of the farewell address is his references to bipartisanship. it is rather amazing with the democratic congress that this republican president manage to get 80% of his legislative agenda through congress and manage despite the rampup during the cold war of military spending, managed to balance the budget three times in eight years which was the cold war record. in any case, we, today, will mark this speech that raises a number of very important and intriguing issues like the military industrial complex. also i would say the scientific technological elite which is another idea that eisenhower advances. but there are certain parts of this speech that i like because of this changing environment in which he was addressing the public. he was worried about a changing american values. americans by 1961 were newly

prosperous. there was a new television culture that was emerging. americans were increasingly bitten by the desire for good life. and eisenhower worried about these values. he linked, in this speech, as he did many times during his presidency, defense spending or defense posture with our economic health and what he called a third pillar which was he referred to as spiritual. in fact, i think i would interpret that as our moral authority. in any case in his speech, and i just mentioned one wonderful example, he was worried about how america would project itself as it emerged as the global leader. imagine how useful it would have been after 9/11 if we'd had a president say, quote, any failure traceable to arrogance or lack of comprehension or

readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both home and abroad. that tells us how we should think about who we are in these changing times. as a member of the eisenhower family, it's deeply gratifying that perhaps among his biggest legacies are these two speeches that i mentioned. the fact that an idea and a set of ideas that he advanced 50 years ago could still serve as a platform for debate today is, indeed, a wonderful thing. i'd like to just say, i knew my grandfather very well. i knew this even as a kid. he was playing for the long game. how many times in his speeches does he mention his grandchildren? and of course, i'm one of them. but we're all one of them. we are the grandchildren of that

generation. eisenhower was playing the long game so much that i discovered to my great distress that he put a time capsule in his house in getties bur gettysburg. it's buried in one of the walls and to my distress it's not to be opened until 2056 which means that i'm long gone. doesn't seem fair, does it? this is so eisenhower. to be talking to generations still to come. only in this timeframe it's not 50 years, it will be 100. thank you. >> thank you. now, let many introduce my first panel today. one short programming note which you probably noticed. professor andrew was forced to withdraw from the program late yesterday because of the bad weather in boston. he sends his regrets. andy has one of the feature essays in this month's "atlantic

monthly." i recommend it highly. the good news, bad news is depending on your perspective, andy prepared his remarks and i get to read them. i will not do this service. i'm going to try my best to deliver a few passages from andy's remarks then i will introduce our other speakers today. title of his essay is "who's army?" the interaction of civilians and soldiers takes place in two distinct and different domains. on the one hand is the relationship between senior military officer s and senior civilian officials. on the other hand is the relationship between the armed forces of the united states and american society as a whole. call this civil military relations for the rest of us, fakie i taking place. a well known principle is set to

exercise a governing influence, civil wrol implemented by the congress and executive. the principle of civilian control by no means guarantees effective policy. it however serves against the danger posed by military dictatorship. students of civil military relations see the control as foundational. in the realm, another well known principle once exercised a governing influence. this was the conviction that national defense qualifies as a collective responsibility, citizenship and military service being inextricably linked to one another. andy continues, truth to tell, in the actual implementation of these principles, americans have always played fast and loose, whether in the elite domain, the reality of civil military relations has seldom conformed to the theory. he goes on later, the vast

apparatus of the national security state affirmed and institutionalized the exalted role senior military officers had come to play. in the 1950s and 1960s when presidents ventured into the white house rose garden to make a national security announcements, they took care to have the joint chiefs of staff with ribbons lined up behind them. the message was clear, look, i have consulted the chiefs, they concur, therefore, my decision deserves to be treated with respect. the officer corps' ultimate responsibility and loyalty to the constitution remained in tact was beyond question. yet the implausibility made all manner of schenn thhenanigans impermissible.

-- his innocence remains in tact and he's free to do as he pleases. this describes the way the principle of civilian control actually works in washington. politics is a blood sport. the making of national security policy is nothing if not political with blood and treasure, power and access, ego and ambition on the line. so senior officers learned how to lobby, aly with strange bedfellows, manipulate the nemea and play off the congress against the white house. that's how you get things done in washington. later andy writes, the ideal civilian control stands in relation to actually existing civil military relations as the ideal of the common good stands in relation to actual existing politics. it represents an aspiration rather than a fact. it will never define reality. responsibility for this unhappy circumstance does not lie with one side or the other but with both. to insist senior officers and

senior civilians should find a way to work in harmony recalls rodney king's appeal during the 1992 los angeles riots, can't we all just get along? any such expectation of human behavior in politics lies in the face of the record of history as with the poor, the competition for power will be ever with us. now, when generals overreach, they should have their hand slapped. when ignorant or arrogant civilians ignore military advisers and thereby commit costly blunders, they should be called to account. inside the beltway, civil military conflict is not a problem to be solved. it is a situation to be managed. elite civil military relations require constant policing. whenever evidence of inappropriate conduct leading to defective policy becomes evident, folks like me rush to write op-peds decrying the latest civil military crisis, in quotes.

this is necessary and honorable work, once critics raise the ruckus, the internal self-correction kicks in. it's the same thing when people get up in arms about potholes or lousy service at the bureau of motor vehicles. to quiet complaints and preserve status and prerogatives the people in charge respond. corrective action might tepid tend to be partial or cosmetic. andy concludes, that's the boast best we can hope for. this periodic awareness of dysfunction in civil military relations distracts attention from the significant problem of dysfunction in the realm of civil military relations for the rest of us. he closes on a note that many of you will be familiar with from his past writings. pertaining to civilian

responsibilities as part of the whole. rather than harmonizing military policy with political values, the all-volunteer force seemingly accomplished something much trickier. it reconciled american culture, adversed to the idea of corrective civil -- political elites in washington that exercising global leadership required the availability of large forces ready for instant action. the creation of a new class of warrior professionals made everyone happy. those residing outside the beltway could live their lives unbothered by the prospect of being summoned before the local draft board. somewhere around 2004 or 2005 americans began awakening to the real implications of having deep sixed the citizen soldier. if americans don't like the way the army is used, they need to reclaim it. this can only happen by resuscitating the tradition of the citizen soldier.

i have no expectation this will happen any time soon, he writes. indeed, i judge the likelihood of essentially nil, the entire national security establishment remains wedded to the all-volunteer force and anything that could increase popular influence on policy. worst, our civil culture continues to have a low tolerance for anything that's collective obligation. the only people willing to consider a military obligation tend to be too old to serve. yet on one point i am quite certain. as long as the tradition of the citizen soldier remains, reversing the militarization will remain a pipe dream. the halls will resound with calls for peace but war is likely to remain a permanent condition. in washington people will wring hands over the unseem bli state of conditions between elites as brass hats and politicians maneuver against the other for advantage. that's their problem. the problem for the rest of us

is a far greater one. grasping the implications for our democracy, moral as well as political, of sending the few to engage in endless war while the many stand by, passive, mute and whether they like it or not, deeply complicit. those, again, are the words of andrew, who due to the storm in boston was not able to join us. i hope i did a service in rendering his remarks. the good news for the rest of us is that our other three speakers managed to get here through the rain, sleet and gloom of night. i'm going to introduce them very briefly. again, their bios are in the package. they're going to speak in the order they're listed here on the sheet. our first speaker today is major general charles dunlap, retired major general in the u.s. air force, distinguished legal scholar. i've gotten to know charlie a little bit over the last few months. we are both members of the warlord loop and enjoy exchanging ideas there.

he is a legal scholar. he also is a distinguished strategic thinker and has written about this topic we discussed today. that is the state of civil military relations. the first thing i ever read by charlie many years ago was an article entitled "observations on the military coup of 2012." our second speaker is larry core. he began with a stint in the u.s. navy on active duty then retire retired after a number of years in the reserve. i've known larry over the years and on a personal note he and i had a chance to travel a bit. he's one of most impressive story tellers i've ever encountered and he'll regale us today in stories. our third speaker, lawrence wilkerson, a retired colonel in the army after a distinguished 31-year career, several of those spent as an assistant to general

colin powell as noted in his bio as well as an assistant to ambassador richard hos on the policy planning staff. colonel wilkerson now teaches and has commented extensively on national security policy and again the state of civil military relations. with that, join me in welcoming general dunlap. [ applause ] >> thank you very much, chris. >> could you speak from the podium, please? >> okay. >> thank you. >> that does go up if you need to adjust that. >> chris, thank you very much for those kind words. i'd like to thank the cato institute for sponsoring this very, very important symposium. and, ma'am, it is an honor to have heard your remarks. can i differ with you on one point? you said the remnant of the

speech has -- the entire speech still has contemporary value. i think it's one of these things we ought to make every kid, if we can make any kid do anything, read as they're growing up because it has so much relevance to society today. i know we're going to have another panel later this morning that's really going to focus on the industrial complex portion of the speech, and we're focusing kind of on the military side. but just as a scene setter, let's remind ourselves of the differences between 1961 and 2011. specifically with respect to the department of defense budget. as you know, or as you may know, in 1961 it consumed almost twice as much as the gross domestic product as it does today. i think it's 9.6% versus 4.7%. my colleague will certainly correct me on this. in addition it consumed 49% of

the discretionary budget, and today it consumes a smaller portion. but probably even more important was the relative size of the armed forces. the active duty armed forces in 1961 was about 2.4 million as opposed to 1.4 million. so we have a million less americans serving from a much larger population base. but as professor basovich, believe me, it's tough to follow him, he's one of the great intellects in the area of civil military relations. as he pointed out, i think the most significant thing is the rise of the all-volunteer force. allow me to differ with my colleague, professor basovich, a little bit here, is that i don't think that the psychology of the typical person in the active duty, full-time active duty military today is really the elite professional. many people in the armed forces,

and this is a problem from time to time, do conceive of themselves as citizen soldiers, even those who aren't in the guard. they conceive of themselves as the classic yoman farmer who goes to serve in the military and will eventually leave the military to go on and do something else with their life. and for that reason they have a very strong sense of their rights and privileges as americans. and this shapes the american military in ways that, perhaps, other armed forces aren't shaped. and i also think that probably one of the most significant influences on civil military relations, particularly as we look forward, is the kind of wars we've been fighting for the last decade. as you know, we've been fighting essentially a counterinsurgency type of conflict. and what our policy has been, what our strategy has been, it's one where supposedly we win hearts and minds by doing

principally nonmilitary task. we have grown a whole generation of officers and enlisted personnel in our military who have been told by the department of defense that stability operations, in other words, learning how to run civilian institutions, governments, schools, enterprises, is on a par with combat operations. so in other words, their mindset is very different. they're not focused on what president eisenhower would have thought is fighting the external threat. this has lots of implications. when you send a young man or young woman to a remote location and you tell them virtually to be the mayor or send a lieutenant colonel to a remote location and tell them to virtually be the governor of that area, they take on that mission with the energy that you would want people in the armed

forces to take on. but it leaves them with a different idea of what their role is. now, we ask them to come back to the united states and completely abandon that kind of mindset. and i think that that's going to be very difficult. and just as one canary in the mine, i would invite you to read the article written by a marine lieutenant colonel, published in official u.s. government publication, "joint force quarterly" this fall, wherein he opines that military officers have the responsibility to disobey lawful orders if it conflicts with their moral view of the world or as a way of offsetting unwise policies. as chris pointed out, almost 20 years ago i did write an article called "the origins of american military coup 2012. "as i go back and read it now, i'm thinking i'm not a very

smart person but i'm disturbed by what i read. here's the central issue that we have. what is the appropriate role of the armed forces in policymak g policymaking, understanding that you really can't do anything in the defense area that doesn't, you know, involve policy. and to what extent should the expertise and how should that expertise be expressed? lets me address one of the things that andy raised. the role of retired generals. as a retired general i have some interest in what this should be. it is kind of ironic, here we have president eisenhower who was a retired general who became rather involved in politics and policymaking. but since that time, since 1961, a number of things have been put in place that really do limit the role of retired generals.

especially in relationship with the industrial complex. recently we saw secretary gates implement some rules that will make it very difficult for retired military officers to be mentors to active duty. i think this is quite unfortunate. there was a perception that retired generals are making all this money and it is, i think i'm well compensated as a retired general. i will tell you, on the day i retired i made less than a brand new lawyer who never practiced a day at a top washington law firm. i, believe me, i'm very happy with the compensation and i'm very grateful because i came into the military with $200. i left with $201. i'm very happy with it. i'm very well compensated. it does give you a perspective.

it's a tragedy to me, i think as we talk about what we're facing, we're spending $2 billion a week in afghanistan. we're not buying airplanes and ships and things like that. in fact, another one of the changes is we're really down to about six major defense contractors. i worry that we're not going to have the competition that we once had that made our weaponry the best in the world. we are who we are, not because of our military, per se, but because of the capitalistic system which provides the kind of creativity and innovation which allowed our troops in the field to have the best equipment and the most modern equipment. i think that that is in jeopardy today. but returning now to the role of retired generals, much has been put in place and there's been much criticism of retired generals getting involved in politics and endorsing. i personally think that's a

little unseemly for a retired general to endorse a candidate. it's one thing to run for office. it's another thing to wind up behind the candidate. but on the other hand, i'm not as worried about it as some people are. i think that the american public pretty much knows the difference between an active duty officer and retired officer, because if they didn't, i think we'd be talking about president clark and some other people. and i don't think it has all that much impact on the average person. even though the polls over and over show the respect that military officers have. at the same time, i would rather have for benefit of a democracy, i would rather have retired generals speaking out in public than meeting behind closed doors, among themselves, and talking quietly to different

people in organizations. you know, general jack king, and you know, he did -- he was one of the principle moving forces behind the counterinsurgency strategy, but he did that all behind the scenes. if you read bob woodward's book, general casey, of the army, was not happy about that. we have to reconcile, how can we exploit the expertise and do it in the right way so that the understandable tensions are accommodated? finally, i would like to make one other observation that concerns me. the nature of today's threats is such that the military is becoming more and more involved in domestic security. i would suggest to you that there aren't very many models where you take the armed forces and use them for internal

security, and that's been a good thing for democracy. some of these threats, in particular the sybra threat, we're seeing the attempt to leverage the capabilities to help protect their to midwedome systems. i think we need to be very, very cautious about this and ensure there is oversight, that there are firewalls between the domestic law enforcement role and the national security role to make sure that we don't have any kind of a -- and the reason i say this is because the armed forces are the most trusted institution in american history. i'm not sure i'm 100% comfortable with that honestly. is it a good thing the armed forces are more trusted than the supreme court? is it a good thing the armed

forces is more trusted than the ko congress? is that a good thing? be that as it may, that popularity underpins the success of the all-volunteer force. in other words, people are willing to send their sons and daughters to join an organization which is perceived as so trusted and so respected. if the armed forces becomes involved in domestic security in a way in which it is perceived that they're invading the privacy and rights of the average american, that could upend the admiration that the a armed forces needs from the general public in order to sustain itself to have the best and brightest continue to volunteer and serve. i do want to get to your questions. i'm going to cut my remarks right there. and i very much look forward to it. and thank you again. [ applause ]

>> thank you, chris, very much for inviting me and having this. it's a great privilege to be on the panel with people like andy basovich and even with only with his words and with general dunlap and colonel wilkerson. i've always admired their work. larry speaking out about how the bush administration got us into that mess in iraq. i remember general dunlap writing an op-ped in "the new york times" about hey, we ought to stop and think whether we want to go whole hog with counterinsurgency. we have other things we need to worry about. in looking at eisenhower's speech, a couple of things are important to keep in mind. you have to remember that president eisenhower in a sense last control of his defense budget after sputnik. what happened was, those of you who were alive at the time, i happened to be, was a sense of panic.

you had this committee come in and talk about all this horrible stuff and what the soviets were doing. eisenhower was criticized for being soft on defense if you can imagine that and basically the budget began to go up and it continued under kennedy. i think that was obviously a concern. in his original draft of the speech, he said military congressional complex. the reason he didn't do that, he was supposed to give the speech in front of congress which did not happen. he gave it before the american public. so in effect that word would have been in there had he known, you know, what the venue is. and i think obviously that's important. he also mentioned, this is relevant to what general dunlap said, he was also concerned about military officers going to work for defense companies. so in other words, a lot of the issues that are still there are,

you know, are relevant. you know, if you go back and read the gaither committee, it was followed by groups like team "b," for example, and this year with the defense review came out, they brought a bunch of people in and talked about, you know, we have to spend more on defense and, of course, if you've been following the papers lately, the chinese are coming now. okay, you know, they just got -- you know, it always amazes me. the chinese are building planes. so are we. chinese are building missiles. so are we. we're going to tell them they can't. every time i see one of these things about what the other side is doing, about how this could be to some intended consequence. reminds me of a story i heard recently when i went to the middle east. it seems this ederly couple who have been marriedy eied many ye. to say the least, the passion had gone out of the romance.

they decided to go to the holy land. while they were there, the man passed away. somebody came to the woman and said, look, you can have your husband buried here for $50. she said, how much will it cost to bring it back home? guy said, $5,000. she thought for a couple seconds, said, i want to take him back home. guy said, doesn't make any sense, why are you doing this? she said, you know, i heard y r years ago a fellow was buried here and after three days i rose again and i don't want to take a chance. all right, well obviously, you know, anything could happen, but i think it -- i think this is what president eisenhower was warning us about. i want to take a little bit of issue with what general dunlap said, because in preparation for my speech today i read this series of articles in the "boston globe" by brian bender. he talked about the fact that 80% to 90% of the retired generals, the last three and four stars are working at defense companies or doing

consulting for defense companies, but worse than that, then they get put on boards by the pentagon to evaluate what we should be doing. i do think it is something we need to be concerned about. now, eisenhower also was concerned that other people following him, obviously, would not have the military stature that he had to argue with the generals. and eisenhower used a wonderful term when the military would go behind his back and play games. he called it legalized insubordinati insubordination. i remember testifying before the senate. i supported clinton's attempt to drop the ban on gays in the military. i accused the generals at that time and the admirals of legalized insubordination. senator mccain got all upset. i said, that was ieisenhower's term, not my term. people didn't realize that. but it's worse than that. i think andy basovich made a,

you know, a point. we don't have that many people who go into the service, so it's not just a question of whether you're a general or admiral or done all these things or you're in congress or you're working in a civilian job in the pentagon or in the other agencagencies. if you don't have any military experience you're afraid to challenge them. richard cowen had a wonderful op-ped article in the "washington post" recently and talked about the fact this is just like a -- people are afraid to challenge it. it's very challenging. look when general petraeus testifies. look at their medals. look at eisenhower, bradley, one or two things. it's very interesting. nobody knows what those medals are. chris mentioned i was on active duty. we used to day say live in '65, alive in '75. you get them all. and get up there and people say,

oh my goodness, they were probably at the battle of the bulge these people or something like that. very few of -- i mean, for example, general petraeus doesn't get his combat action badge until he goes into iraq as a two star general. okay? admiral mullen served on a destroyer off the coast of, you know, vietnam. okay? this -- these were not the band of brothers, you know, for example, or anything like that, but people then, you know, they don't want to challenge them. now, chris mentioned about my stories. i'm going to tell you a couple i think are relevant to what we're talking about. as many of you know, i had the privilege of working in the reagan administration as assistant secretary of defense and trying to deal with a lot of issues that are still with us. you know, military pay and benefits and things like that. so i was talking one day at a meeting. i said, you know, the military retirement system is killing us, going to have to do something about it. and i thinks you know, too many good people are leaving after 20

years and getting half pay. can't we kind of cut that down then give them an insensitive to stay until 30? anyway, we're at this meeting and this admiral said to me, he said, if you do that the volunteer military will end, nobody will join. i said, admiral, give me a break. i said, when i came into the service, you know, 22, you don't think you're going to be 30, let alone 40 or 50. he said, oh, you were in the service? yeah. what did you do. >> i was a naval flight officer. he said, why didn't you say something? i said, it has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. he says, well, i would have paid attention to some of the bs you've been putting out. okay, i think, see, that's what happens. again, richard cowen made a wonderful point. if you've been in the service, you realize military people are great people. not all of them are. they make mistakes. and again, let me give you another example of, you know, how it's important to be able to

challenge them. not only was i in the navy, i taught at the navy college. i made a lot of changes in the navy budget. admiral came down to see me and. you made all these changes in the budget. i said, my job is your budget has to support the president's strategy and it's not. and he said, you know, that's the problem. i said what do you mean? the president has the wrong strategy. well, no, that is i think important and i think that's what happens. people don't want to stand up against this priesthood now and it is a problem. there's something else and again general dunlap mentioned it. more and more military people are becoming involved in military campaigns because the candidates are looking for them to put the good housekeeping seal of approval on them. and i think we have to be very careful about that. it started when president clinton had a lot of problems,

you know, before he ran about his military service and lack thereof and all this, people were concerned and so admiral crowell, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff endorsed them and i know admiral crowell. and stayed at his house and remember him from my days at the navy war college but then he got the job of ambassador to the court of st. james. i said that's wrong. and then about a week later i ended up in a dinner sitting next to him, okay, but that i think we have to be careful of and when bush and cheney were there, you know, at the republican convention, it looked like, you know, a meeting of the west point alumni association, with all the people up there endorses him and even president obama, they were looking, in fact, i worked on the pain and people would say do you know any generals we can get to endorse us because they were worried? it's politically cute among the

democrats who are worried about being soft on defense. when you go back and look at it it was the democrats who got us into vietnam. eisenhower wouldn't have gone that. at least from what we know. they increase defense, you know, defense spending. clinton actually spent more on defense than former -- the first president bush had projected on -- in other words, they're very, very concerned about that. the other thing that i think is important is how the military have learned to manipulate the media. in bob woodward's book they talk about the fact they were discussing about whether we ought to add 30,000 more troops to go to afghanistan and according to bob, well, general petraeus was leaking the stuff to "the washington post." now, in my view, that's the worst -- that's sort of a double worst -- first of all, you shouldn't be doing that but, number two, to do it anonymously, okay, to me, that's

even -- even worse and then, of course, he gets called out on it and said well i won't do it again. the question is why would he do it in the first place? okay, and again, general petraeus, still very upset about me. i almost fell off my chair in 2004 right before the election. about a month before i opened up the paper and i read this op-ed by general petraeus that says, a, how well the training is going in iraq and, b, how well the war is going and first of all i thought that is not true. if you read that we would have won the war in 2005 but why is a general writing right before an election? okay, was it his idea? was it the administration's idea and leads me to something else, i think if i ever go back in the government i want to say no admirals on the sunday morning talk shows. that's not your job because you're in a no-win position. you go back and read what

jenniers and pace said about iraq, it looked like it was going much better than it was. now, let me conclude with this. i think we can handle a dilemma created as people talked about about the all-volunteer force and some of andy's points by going back to something that i got personally involved in and that was keeping draft registration for the president. bill, you may have been at the meeting. you know, we had to make that decision because president reagan had campaigned against it because carter had brought it back after the soviets invaded in afghanistan. and my job was to bring this to the president's attention because we had to make a decision if we didn't, it would expire automatically. and in doing that, the point we made, i made, i still believe and the military made it, as well, the all-volunteer force is a peacetime military.

and one of the arguments i made to the president was even if you don't -- you know, think that you ought to call up people that's necessary from at least from a military -- if you get into a prolonged conflict you have a moral responsibility because we're telling people if you volunteer and you spend one year in a combat zone you're going to get at least two years at hoe, one to rest and recuperate and another to get ready to come back. i don't know what persuaded him but he did keep it. where i think the uniform has fallen down here, they should have insisted when we went into iraq, okay, you can be for or against, i happen to be against it but the president wanted it, the congress supported it. they said, okay, you want to go into iraq, activate the selective service system because that would have done two things, one, not only would it have relieved the pressure on the men

and women. what we've done is criminal sending them on back-to-back-to-back deployments and it would have got americans to ask a lot more questions. it's them over there. they can go and unless you volunteer it doesn't really impact you. that's what we need to do. we need to ask more questions about why we do this and finish from a quote from richard cohen's op-ed where he said, you know, the thing about war is too important to, you know, to leave to the generals, it's also too horrible to leave it to them alone. we should be involved. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> okay. i want to thank the cato institute also for having me here today and identify myself with remarks of dr. bacevich who i hope i'll see tonight if he makes it out of boston.

i want to come at this -- also i want to say it's good to see susan eisenhower again. i think i saw you at the screening of "why we fight." i use the cross of iron speech and farewell address as part of the backbone of my seminars on national security decision-making. they are so clear about what the tension is between what michael hogan has called in his book a cross of iron, the national security state which is clearly what we've become and the welfare state which is not a pe score tiff in the sense that we hand out to money for not working. it's the description of a democratic federal republic that takes care of its people with telecommunications and health care and education and good transportation and good energy sources, good jobs and so forth. that's what hogan means by welfare state. that's what eisenhower meant by the american way of life. so this tension between the national security state and the

welfare state is with us big time and out of that comes in my experience a unique aspect of this civil military business that i'd like to talk about because i think i bring somewhat unique credentials to this having spent 31 years in the combat arms and also four years in its diplomatic or foreign policy equivalent on the other side, the state department and i spent them there at the state department at foggy bottom under a man like george schulz before him wanted not only to do foreign policy but wanted to resuscitate the foreign service and those others who work in the trenches in the state department, even including foreign service nationals, those are the people who serve us in our country team, embassies and consulates around the world who come from those countries. so let's look at it from that perspective because it sheds

some light and put over here for a moment the other aspect of our foreign policy which is awesome and that's our economic might. and eisenhower certainly understood that too. that's in pretty much disarray right now. none of us know how that's going to come out. not the greatest nobel prize-winning economist in the world knows how we'll right the ship of state with regard to our economic and financial situation. but let's put that aside for a minute and let's talk about the two other instruments of national power that are daily involved in the pursuit of our foreign policy. that's diplomacy and the military. the unbalance there is so stark that i think if eisenhower were alive today, he'd make a speech about it. it is so stark that as he pointed out in his article in "the atlantic" and was stunned to see that the budget is up to an awesome 48 billion according to andy's article. when i was left it was 28 billion and we had to fight

tooth and neal and it was only because of palace bona fides we were able to obtain an additional battalion. that's three-quarters of a trillion for the defense department and about 40 billion for the state department today. it was joked he lost more money in a year than powell got. he was right. check the records. almost any year the defense department can't find through its audit process somewhere between $20 billion and $40 billion. an incredible imbalance when you understand that money is power. people are also power, resources, 19 bring grades in my army alone, one brigade in the foreign service. our greatest achievement at the state department was to go before our budget committees and appropriators and madeleine can do it. i need $3 billion or $4 billion and i need to hire people.

we hired 117 new service officers. they were all consumed in kabul and baghdad. so we're back to zero. you have no educational float. you have people working around the clock all the time. what are some of the other indications of the imbalance there? the military has in-theater assets. i know. i served in them. they have the world divided up into fiefdoms. if you read dana priest's fine article in "the washington post" about the proconsuls, that's exactly what they are. they are proconsuls. when the four-star navy admiral from st. pak which is my vivid experience, when he goes to japan he is seen by the prime minister because he's trailing in his wake, tactical fighter squad drawns and fighter divisions. when another one goes he's carrying a briefcase and he's

lucky if he is lucky to see the head of the american division. that is an imbalance that puts the military out in front of foreign policy, one of the house committee on foreign relations recently had a title committed is our foreign policy military terrorized? you get it is. >> ease of use is also part of the problem that creates this dichotomy or this imbalance of power. why is it easy to use? it is easy for some of the points pointed out before. it's professional. it's a legionaires. it can go almost anywhere the president wants it to go. the latest attempt to curtail their power was an abdication of the congress to declare war. the congress essentially said, okay, we give up. you can use it but you got to report periodically and every president has although he's protested and, of course, richard nixon vetoed and passed it over his veto.

little did he know it was an abdication by the congress, it has certainly proven that way but every president has conformed to its requirements usual by by stealth in the dark of the night delivering the ports to the congress. no president wants to be seen in any way inhibited in the initiation of hostilities. that ought to tell somebody something. it goes on. the state department does not have a domestic constituency. let's just check what the defense department adds. it has the defense industrial base. it has bases and facilities. it has the reserve component, national guard and reserve and the families of the legions, it has conservatives. it has the american people. it has the congress and it has private security contractors and i could go on and on. what does the state department have? it has no domestic constituency. the state department's constituency is the international public for the

american people. but that does not resonate with anybody enough that it could constitute a political or what i would call a domestic constituency that would fight for the state department. we have a tendency since the 1947 national security act and can you look at the presidents from truman on and see how this begins to build and build and build and gets to the point of nixon where nixon is calling the people at the state department commie pinko dogs. another institutional creation of the 1947 national security act, the security council so you have ambassadors from other countries. you have ministers of foreign affairs from other countries regardless of who they are, china, japan, whatever, they come to the country. they know who to go see. they don't see their counterpart but the desk officer or director director of the nsc in the white house because that's where foreign policy is run.

that's a little different with each president but the tendency and trend to consolidate it there is certainly prevalent and as george marshall said when he was advising truman with regard to that 26, july, 1947 signing of the 1947 national security act i fear, mr. president, we've militarized the process. the decision-making process is what he referred to. if you get it in the white house and it isn't transparent enough that not just the american people were cut out but the rest of the bureaucracy is cut out, and the pre-eminent institute within that instrument, within that bureaucracy is the dod, guess what? guess whose influence will be prepo prepondant? >> i saw this happen. he knew i was the only member of his policy planning taff that had military experience. good pick, i went over and met

general casey at the time j-5 on the time and we set him up. we met three times and then donald rumsfeld ordered them stopped. he didn't want the state department interfering with the defense department's business or having anything to do with what the defense department was formulating. we even had a conversation, the military officer and myself and we decided we'd meet in crystal city off the patch, so to speak then he got selected for brigade command and got fearful whether or not he was caught by the secretary or one of his mignons what he was doing, he would still go to command. i said we understand and we topped the talks so no coordination and defense at the strategic level. the policy planning staff being the only strategic element at the state department. this imbalance is an imbalance of two of the most critical instruments. the one diplomacy should be the leading strumentd. it should be the instrument

that's out there all the time. it should be the instrument that is most coveted by your leadership. it should be one that is most exquisite. it should be the instrument that does most of america's heavy lifting along with its economic power. it doesn't. the defense department does. that is the greatest and starkest imbalance of power within the civil military relationship that i know of. [ applause ] thank you all very much. all right. so we have time for questions and answers. well, definitely question, hopefully answers. we have a very large crowd as you can see. i'd like to entertain as many as possible. we have the jeopardy rule. you must frame your question in the form of a question. no speeches, please, so if you are your question is to a particular panelist please indicate that also.

also indicate your name and affiliation. right here. >> my name is jordan. two brief questions on topics not been raised. one is the virtually every survey shows that the political registration of members of the armed forces is more and more republican than it once was close to an even split between democrats, republicans and independents. so this is my first question i want to raise about how this affects things and also when the draft registration was passed under carter only men were required to register. so i wonder if we face the possibility of going back to the draft, is there any rational reason why young women should not also register, as well? >> good questions, both.

>> go ahead, charlie. >> i'd like to take a stab at both. number one, i think there is a statute that is supposed to preclude surveying the military for their political affiliation. i don't have that on the tip of my tongue but i think that's a good thing. we should not be trying to discern the political affiliations of the armed forces. but you raise another interesting question. my colleague and just for the record i only work for duke university. i'm not a defense contract -- well, god, they probably are a defense contractor somewhere so i probably work for one, but my colleague from unc, dick cone often talks about how officers shouldn't vote and interestingly enough general ordierno and petraeus announced they did not vote. sounds like an apolitical statement, doesn't it? who does -- if people in the armed forces follow that, does that have a partisan effect

based on your comment? is that a partisan act by publicly announcing, encouraging people not to vote? and to what extent is it a good thing in a democracy for the armed forces to alienate -- be alienated from the fundamental act of a democracy which is to vote? and i'd ask you to put that in the context of i guess there's a lot of hate about generals in this room, but, you know, they're not all bad people. i would suggest. but i also think, you know, in a democracy how much do you want them to feel that they are not part of it, that they -- should we fear the silence of the generals? should we have them only in the quiet back rooms? i don't think so. i would rather have them out in the sunshine. i'd rather have them on the talk

shows. people are pretty confident to confront generals so i'm not so concerned about the ability of the democracy to deal with it and your second point -- >> draft information for women. >> number one, draft is not going to happen. and will not happy in the country. the military would be profoundly against it simply because it is such a technical force now and having people who don't want to do the things that you need them to do but i'm absolutely astonished for all of the discussion of don't ask, don't tell and all the pontification of how we need to have equality and access and fairness, no one virtually is talking about the inequality that women suffer today in the armed forces. why on earth should every job not be open to them?

now let me tell you i'm not a feminist. i'm not talking about gender norming standards and everything else just -- hey, make the test whatever you want it to be but if you can pass that test you ought to be able to do that so this idea that somehow our military today can't handle h e having women in combat, i would say that they haven't seen what combat is today because we have had women in combat. they've been wounded and killed. one of my young j.a.g.s was severely wounded after she came and briefed me in iraq. by an ied, so that is something i don't think -- if we ever did have a draft certainly, but i think that we need to address the inequality that women suffer today in the armed forces. it sends all the wrong messages to young people. >> let me comment -- it was a court challenge to that when we put draft registration about women not and the courts

basically said that, congress had the power to exclude them. e cause basically women old up can -- i mean even though there are certain legal things they can basically do everything. there is a report coming out that congress did set up a group about dropping the final restrictions on women, you know, in combat. i agree with general dunlap, decide what women should do and what the jobs are and just let people compete for them. those surveys -- if you look where the people come from in the volunteer source, it's not surprising, but interestingly enough in the 2008 election, again i don't know how they do these, there was a change because people were so fed up because of what bush had done to the military a lot of them were changing, but i think admiral mullen gave a speech this week telling you where the people come from and, yeah, they would

do lead in lean in that direct. i think we ought to encourage them to vote and there are provisions in terms of absentee ballots and things like that. >> chris, two ink thing, jason dempsey just back from afghanistan, west point faculty, the state of our army, amazon.com, he gives you the stats for his surveys and his analysis and it's pretty balanced. people forget that the officer corps is one thing, enlisted and nco is something else and they make up the bulk of the army. so it's pretty balanced. on the second point, casey, general casey, chief of staff of the army, is opening serious suggests about women serving in all positions. >> in the back, david aisenberg. >> david aisenberg, and three points. first, the most important line

in president eisenhower's speech was always the part about the necessity of an informed and alert citizenry to restrain the influence of the -- how you define it and the citizenry is capable of being knowledgeable due to the myriad of information freely available to everybody out there who is interested in looking. they don't seem particularly alert. they seem to have largely bought into the idea that the military is the most trusted institution and therefore they know what they're doing and we should just trust them to continue doing what they're doing and it's basically good which i think is radically wrong. how do the panelists think that could be changed if at all and secondly, what do you think president eisenhower would think of the rise of the private military and security treaty contracting we've seen in recent years. >> two very different questions. who wants to take it? either one. >> well, i think, david, on the

private contractors, you would have been appalled. remember, that basically started when we went to the volunteer military because we started contracting out kp as they used to call it back then and of course we went over the line. if you look at the first gulf war one out of ten people in theater was a contractor and iraq and afghanistan is about 50/50. i would argue one of the reasons it is is because they didn't activate the selective service people to call people up and have more active military people so that's why they relied on it. >> private contractors very simply stated allow the president of the united states to get around constitutional mandated in strength limitations on the armed forces, they allow them to go to war. >> yeah, on the first one, i think that the military is the most trusted institution because quite honestly and i'm not talking about people like

myself, when you see thus young kids they really are our best and brightest and it saddens me in a way that so much of our talent has to be bled off into the military because if you think about president eisenhower's speech about every dollar spent is a theft, so forth and we can talk about intellectual capital, as well. getting back to your central issue i for one very much believe that a civilian who has never served can educate him or herself to the point where they can confront, if you will, the military on more or less an equal plain and we're talking about on the strategic level and defense policy level. you're not going to get down to the point where you know as much as a corporal about how to drive a tank but you don't need to. that's not the big policy issue. you can and you educate

yourself. part is self-education but seeing more and more universities and i would like to see it even greater have national security study, not just for people going into the foreign service and i'd be happy to comment about the foreign service if anybody asks a que question, but who will be citizens and business leaders and so forth. and not to plug duke but duke and the law school, that's why we have a center there and you see when they first started years ago, you wouldn't see that at all. now there's i think 160 universities that have some sort of national security studies. it's a hot topic and it is possible and necessary for a democracy to educate itself. >> down here. >> i'm christine with p. sax in

montgomery. i want to thank you, mr. wilkerson, for your interesting analysis. i read that there are more people in army bands than there are diplomats. and but my question for you is you talk about the lack of a constituency for the state department and the lack of a constituency for diplomacy. how can we change that? how would you see -- i thought your analysis was very profound and i don't know how we go about making that change. >> a good question, one we deal with in seminar because i ask my students how would you change it and i've had interesting responses to that. including i'm going to help change that and they go and -- i'd say probably a third of my students will take the foreign service exam. they will probably -- about 50% of that will go on to the oral

exams and maybe 50% of that will get into the foreign service. others are going into other instrumentalities of the government not the least of which is the peace corps which doesn't get much want anymore but i get the most interesting e-mails from my students who have gone into the peace corps, el salvador, mexico, incredible eye-openers for them and come back and hopefully be policymakers so one way is through education, a long-term solution but through education. another way is to recognize, i think, this division of power, that imbalance of power. secretary clinton and gates have made headway in recognizing it and trying to do something bit but now the physical situation of this country is such that no one is going to give up a single dollar because they know they'll give up billions across the board as this physical situation gets worse and worse, which it's going to. so i'm into the sure how you do

it in a fast way, given the physical situation that we have today and the fact there's not enough money to go around for everybody. the long-term solution, i think, for the american people and for those who will go into policymaking positions is education. it's opening their eyes to the fact that diplomacy is still an instrumentality that ought to be used. interestingly, if you studied the demise of empire and history, you will see that one of the things that becomes atrophied as the power becomes more arrogant and more dependent on its force as its principal instrument, you get this frittering away of that power on the fringes of power, think afghanistan and iraq today for example and then you get a -- if you're smart like the british were, you get this reaction that says, wow. we do need a civil service and a foreign service that can do

things for us because our power is no longer that way can do everything. and so you get a resurgence of the diplomatic instrument. i'm hoping that that will be an attribute of what's happening in the world today, that is the defusion of power, not just our power that is being diminished but others coming up in terms of our relative power, so it's a mess if you want my real appreciation of it but it has ways it can be ameliorated and one ways i'm work on myself is education. >> let me give you a more specific 30 seconds. you need a unified national security budget age look at all the instruments together and goes up as one then the president can make the trade-off as head of time, missile defense or diplomats or whatever it might do and that will do it quickly. now, congress may or may not go along with it completely but if you send it up there you at least started the battle and

gates talked a good game and said we ought to spend more on diplomacy. well, where are you going to get it from? the sky so that's what you need to do. >> and you also need to go after the congress because my party, i'm a republican. my party in some of its more right wing members takes great pride in not even owning a passport or never set foot out of the united states and doesn't want to. takes great pride in the fact it doesn't speak any language but english. you've got to change that mind-set too. >> if i -- i've often heard that thing about the bands and foreign service and i assumed it was just a flippant remark and wasn't serious because my flip apartment remark serious back would be when they become effective at representing the united states as our military bands do maybe we'll increase the size of the foreign service. but let me say this, nobody in the military would prefer to

take the lead in foreign appears. we all would rather have things resolved through diplomacy but i think it's a mistake and i do agree, we need to have a larger diplomatic core and it needs to be opened up to more than graduates of georgetown and princeton, i might add and duke, yeah, seriously, more than just the graduates of the elite universities. but we have to understand that what gives our diplomats leverage is our military power. so the idea that we could be militarily insignificant particularly in a particular theater, for example, and have the same kind of leverage that we would hope to have i think is not very realistic. there's interconnection. >> right there and then i'll come down here. right there. >> paul sloan, retired military

served both in the draft era and the volunteer. is it a possibility that the military of the all volunteer today with the civilian contractors equaling as much as they are could morph into truly a mercenary army? s>> well, that's why i think if you go to war, we kept draft registration and that's one way to prevent it. if you just say, you know, forever we'll never draft again i think you do, you know, run that -- run that risk. particularly with your private contractors because you have virtually no control, you know and we've seen all of the stories. even the military doesn't like the private contractors i mean because if you go back and you look at what happened in fallujah where the marines had to go and fight when they really were not ready for that

particular engagement. >> let's distinguish between security contractors and the vast, vast majority of contractors which are not performing security duties, the vast majority of contractors are leaning latrine, serving food, doing logistics and things like that. i totally agree that when you have contractors guarding the u.s. embassy, i remember going into the green zone. it just shocked me that we had contractors guarding that compound. in the interperimeter. that shouldn't be. i don't think that they'll -- and a lot of them, most of them are not americans. most of the contractors we hire get subcontractors from all over the world so i don't think this is a good thing but do the american people want to pay the incremental cost to hiree ssentially security guards? what we're paying for now, what

we're buy something a highly trained sophisticated infantryman that the decision has been made it's better to use that sophisticated infantryman in other tasks other than standing the important much simpler task of guarding point defense. but the rise of military contractors is troubling especially since more and more are being employed by nongovernmental organization and media and so forth so even if we got out of the business of security contractors, i think that there would still be a market for them. >> down here. >> boday aberdeen. i have a question for the three panelists about the imbalance of power within the defense establishment which we heard about, the imbalance of power between state and defense but is there any balance of power in the pentagon between the civilian leadership and the military leadership?

>> okay. good question. >> in terms of what is the proper balance. >> is there? is there an imbalance? >> well, i think it changes depending upon the personalities. i think you can -- you have secretaries of defense who are not afraid to confront the military. you have some people who don't want to confront the military. i do worry, you know, in terms of somebody, you know -- i mean in secretary gates was in the service and he's also, you know, an ncia. he dot not seem to be afraid to confront the military. you may disagree with him but he's not afraid to confront them. it's important and doesn't necessarily have to be military service but understand the background. i see it even now, you got

people there -- they want to be popular with the military and don't want to take them -- you know, take them on. and, you know, for example, we all talk about military health care and the cost for retirees. if you don't take that on -- they finally made a little bit of change this year but we haven't changed it since 1995, okay. and nobody wants to take that on because you don't want to be seen as unpopular. people forget and bill would remember when stockman was in there, we froze military pay one year, no raise like civilians. would you try that today? let me tell you nobody would do because the men and women and all this. if you look at the military pay it's higher than it's supposed to be right now because you have an index and it's been going over it all year but, again, i think, you know, that is very, very difficult than -- i do worry about that, you know. i used to tell people working for me, if you leave here after a couple you have years and the

military loves you, you haven't done your job, okay, because you've got to take the bomb. >> so quick question to all three of you. will congress pass an increase in the co-pays and fees for care? for the first time in its history every time it's been floated up congress has shot it down. >> i'm afraid so, but it's wrong. it's wrong because we're in the middle of two wars and you're going to balance the budget on the back of 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds and 25-year-olds? if you want to cut charlie dunlap -- if you want to increase my co-pay and co-pay of every general officer, if that is somehow going to solve the budgetary problem, have at it. but don't do it on the backs of -- >> so that's the distinction, charlie. it's between active duty personnel and retirees because otherwise they don't affect the rates much the retirees either. >> i can tell you in the great

keep of themes this is not a lot of money. let's start with entitlements to people who have never served. >> there is a -- >> because if -- if -- yeah, if -- if we are -- if we have to -- if we have to make a decision, i think we can do both. i don't think it is -- we may have to increase taxes or whatever, i think we can do both but we should not try to balance the budget on the backs of that small portion of this country that served -- is either serving or has served in uniform. chiefs, we ought to look someplace else than to take away the health care for them and their family or make it more expensive or more difficult to obtain. we're the united states of america. we don't do that to people we have set in harm's way and so many have come back very different than how we sent them. >> we don't. we've done it since the

revolutionary war and i will tell you something going on right now i'm following very closely as are many of my retired colleagues. if you belong to a military associations, used to be retired association, they're the lobby group for retired people, you guys know about them, i'm sure. there is actually very sophisticated orchestrated i think from the pentagon who's oshth straighting, i can't say campaign going on to divide the veteran committee and steal from the old veterans to give to the new veterans and the rhetoric accompanying it is being put out by varous and sundry congressmen who come down on either side of the fight but that's very dangerous in my view. you divide and conquer in this way and of course the most acute ve veterans group is the ones who have the athengs are those veterans from afghanistan and iraq particularly because some

of them have some really horrendous wounds due to the fact that we can now save pretty much almost anybody on the battlefield so this is a dangerous thing to be doing to start the fight within the community as to who should be the bill payer? i agree the sums are so small this shouldn't be necessary but it is necessarily apparently because it is so difficult to get into cutting any of these. >> let me disagree here and i can't emphasize this too much. first of all, what is happened -- we were not at war from 1995 on so number two we've increased the benefit, okay, if terms of you didn't have dry care for life in until 1999 so this idea that you can't touch them is nonsense. and nobody is saying you're going to balance the budget on the -- with the defense budget but it has to be part of it,

okay? and the fact of the matter is, you get -- you have the same thing with police and firemen. well, how much can you, you know, pray somebody to put their life on the line? look, i'm going to give away -- when i went into the navy i got 220 a month. why did i go in? because my father said you deserve to serve your country. we didn't go in for money and say how dare -- i took a cut from being a new york city high school to go in, okay and we never said, oh, you owe us this, no. we love this country. we owe them -- owe the country so you can't -- mullen says health costs are eating us alive. what are you going to do about it? and that's the key thing. if you were paying right now, admiral allen when he retired, head of the coast guard says i pay $19 a month, okay, for, you know, coverage? you have military people what retired have a health care plan. they don't take it because they

stay on their own. that was never intended. nobody to talking about wounded veterans and the bill that gates proposed is for retirees under 65, okay? that's what he's talking aboutle now, you ask me how to do it i'd means test it and we've made changes, for example, it used to be if you served, you know, you could only get 75% of your pay regardless of how long you save. now it's 100%, we changed that. that wasn't part of the agreement. who came in after 1986 said you'll get 46% then 50 perhaps we changed it before the war stated. you can do it. you've got to take it on because if you don't, you're not going to be able to buy some things that you may like to defend -- to defend the country but this argument -- nobody is trying to bat the budget on the backs of people but has to be part of overall. don't give me this, we're

helping people who haven'tered it. you haven't earned it? you paid your social security. we use the social service surplus to go to war. that's what we did. we took that surplus, we didn't raise taxes on people. that's the big mistake. this is the first wars we have's ever gone into which we haven't raised taxes so who do we expect? this again and i'm not demeaning it. i know what it is, okay. i went and the reason i went is because my family told me, i could have had deferments ras a teacher and all that. that's what killed the draft. we got all these politicians the last two vice presidents and the president they didn't serve, okay? that's what killed it and we let them get away with it. so this idea that somehow, you know, and i among to -- you should see the stuff they write about me. i love it when i get my thing every month with all these horrible things that these people write about, this type of

thing, no, okay, so i think, you know, in terms of pay, we have a standard. employment cost index. we're way over it. that's the standard. that's the law and nobody ever said when you come into the -- you know what you promise military people when you came in, read the contract. you will be entitled to health care at a base on an availableability basis. that's what you're promised. there was no tri care. >> we got the one thing that could get the panel ifs to disagree and get larry fired up. >> if we talk about means testing why limit it to only those who served in the armed forces. i'm not into it but if we're getting into means testing and go down that route. that takes us in a whole different direction and we immediate a new panel. >> two more questions, 10:40. go. right there.

>> alex dirk with national legislation. i wanted to go back to the idea of the unified national security budget. we've heard secretary clinton and others argue that could increase the state department's stature as the budget goes through the congressional appropriations process but do you think it's also possible given the imbalance of power that already exists that could actually exacerbate the balance of power between dod and state? thank you. >> go ahead. >> in brian stek, captain u.s. army national guard. my question is back to the all-volunteer versus draft. it seems me the reality of it regardless of the political imbalance is a socioeconomic imbalance. you do not have members of all walks of society continuing to serve in the united states military. as a result, the policies that are being put out by the politicians are now being carried on the backs of 1% and

mainly a. >> reporter: affected by it. isn't, in fact, the question is, is that really good for democracy for the fact that everything that we're doing everything, everything that we're imposing is in fact not in any way shape or form whether through taxes or mutually service good for the democracy. >> you brought up the unified security budget. are you putting the kitten in the cage with the lion? okay. so that's number one because you raised that, as well, colonel wilkerson and unified security budget? >> well, basically what you would decide can how much you want to spend on defense, diplomacy, development, okay? the decision based upon, all right, then you would be able to make trade-offs and you'd have to say do i want to buy another submarine this year or do i want to spend more -- we're not just hiring foreign service people but talking about development. you know, development of foreign

aid an you would make that trade-off so that basically you could say, well, for this dollar in foreign aid i can deal with what the military says is a big claimant change. i can deal with that or deal with the scarcity or something like that. then when you send it up, yes, congress can change it but you've already made those changes and congress accepts about 90% of what you do and what i want is get the executive branch to sit back, the president and his team and look after you make that decision and, bart, the other question, basically that's why volunteer military is a peace-time military. go back and read it, 1981 the military wrote that to president reagan. it's ray peacetime because then in war you would get, you know, to deal with the problem you want. >> senator? >> i think it's a reality -- it's a reality, and we're going to have it.

we have to make military service attractive enough so that the best and brightest will continue to solve to do the things that need to be done. in terms of putting the lion with the cage that is always going to be a problem because of this factor. at the end of the day we can have battalion after battalion after battalion of diplomats but they're not going to be hunting al qaeda in the hindu kush so there's things the military has to do which requires a much bigger infrastructure so i do think there will be imbalance but i do think it's a good idea. i support the idea but -- >> last word. you do have the problem for some of the reasons i pointed out and others that you may be letting the fox into the henhouse, but i think if you reorganize the congressional committee structure to provide better oversight of the process you would be a long way down the road to trying to stop the head or prevent that. you'd need probably a joint national security committee sat on by both members of the house who have the power by the constitution of the purse and by

members of the senate who by historical precedence or a little more shall we say sagacious when it comes to long-term thought but a joint oversight committee and eliminate all the committees that have their own fief domenici fiefdoms could go a long way in preventing that. >> thank our panelists. we'll take a quick break. [ applause ] we'll take a quick break to allow the panelists to leave and our second panelists to come up on the stage and reconvene just before 11:00 so pay attention to we'll flash the lights or i'll make an announcement. thank you very much.

this next panel will discuss retrar restraining the military industrial complex. >> -- worried about the early indications of the development of a military industrial complex and what he regarded i think quite legitimately as disturbing if unintentional for the most part consequences of always having this country prepared to cop front t

confront the soviet union and wage the cold war. but there is a very important aspect of his view and that was as many policymakers at that time, that the cold war would be an aberration in american foreign policy. that once that rather brittle and confrontational by poll hip structure would change for the better, would return to something more resembling normality, hen there wthen ther chance to at least undo many aspects much the emerging industrial complex. what we have discovered in the intervening half century is that the dynamics that gave rise too industrial complex. what we have discovered in the intervening half century is that the dynamics that gave rise tou industrial complex. what we have discovered in the intervening half century is that the dynamics that gave rise toc industrial complex. what we have discovered in the intervening half century is that the dynamics that gave rise toh industrial complex. what we have discovered in the intervening half century is that industrial complex. what we have discovered in the intervening half century is that the dynamics that gave rise to the industrial military complex turned out to be not just a temporary emergency response to an unusual international development but it became institutionalized and it has persisted indeed intensified in

the post-cold war period. one wonders what president eisenhower would say about our current situation where the united states spends almost as much on the military as the rest of the world combined. and when one sees the many tentacles of influence when the political system, indeed within the social system of the united states, exercised by what he identified quite correctly as a military industrial complex. we have an extremely able panel this morning to address these and other issues. i'm going to introduce them as a group and since you to have their bios in your packet of material, i'm not going to spend the time reading that.dto have their bios in your packet of material, i'm not going to spend the time reading that.o have their bios in your packet of material, i'm not going to spend the time reading that. i'll just highlight a couple

major features. our first speaker is eugene gholz. he is considered a rising star within the u.s. foreign policy community. at the present time he is on leave working in the u.s. department of defenses office of industrial policy and i want to stress, therefore, that the views he expresseses this morning are completely his own, they do not represent the views of the office of the secretary of defense.are completely his o not represent the views of the office of the secretary of defense.morning are completely they do not represent the views of the office of the secretary of defense.are completely his o not represent the views of the office of the secretary of defense. he is also involved in producing a lot of very interesting writings. i want to mention two books that he has written. one by military transformation, technological innovation and the defense industry, and another, u.s. defense politics, the

origins of security policy. both of these books have considerable relevance to the topic that we're discussing at this conference. our second speaker is john holsman, who is the president of a consulting narm does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers.f geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers. of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers.mnarm does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers. narm does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers.thnarm does lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers.tanarm does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers. does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers. does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers. does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers.at does a lot of geopolitical risk analysis if a variety of corporate customers. i first met him about 15 years ago when he was a very young scholar at the heritage foundation. and we found that even though he was a self-described conservative it and i was an a vowed libertarian, we agreed on probably 70%, 75% of defense and foreign policy issue, a percentage that i suspect has actually grown quite a bit over the last 15 years.

since then, highway has had a very impressive career both in the think tank community and with a very successful consulting firm. and i want to highlight two books that wrote that really deserve a lot of attention. one is ethical realism, which i originally thought was a rather redundant title since realism properly understood is ethical. but i understood the need for that given the tendency of some purported realists, including a secretary of state in the 1970s, to rather i go more ethical considerations in american foreign policy. and i think that book is a very useful corrective. he also wrote an extremely worth quhil biography of lawrence of arabia, but that book is much more than a biography.

takes bo it is a book that provide as lot of lessons for the follies of nation building. our third speaker is professor richard bet richard betts from columbia university. again, one of the most distinguished scholars in the american academic and foreign policy communities. author of several books including two very, very important volumes. one soldier states man and the cold war and the second one enemies of intelligence.man and cold war and the second one enemies of intelligence. he is as i said -- he has a tremendous reputation and we're extremely pleased to have him here today. the final speaker on the panel this morning is my colleague,

christopher preble, who is the director of foreign policy studies here at the cato institute. a book that he published last year i think deserves a tremendous amount of attention. the book is the power problem, how american military dominance makes us less safe, less prosperous and less free. and he documents in great detail how the united states, assuming that by amassing great power and utilizing it around the world has produced a lot of counterproductive results. very much like a golfer who assumes that if he just swings harder at the ball, he'll end up having a good golf game. those of us who play that sport know that it's exactly the opposite. before that, he wrote a very interesting book, john f. kennedy and the missile gap, which of course deals with a number of issues at the end of the eisenhower administration.

and most recently, he coe- editd the book terrorizing ourselves. chris is another one of the rising young stars in the american foreign policy community. so i think we'll have a very interesting discussion here this morning and i'm going to ask eugene gholz to kick it off. >> i want to thank you for the very kind into dukes and thank cc ochco a it to for orpging will s event. i think it's a great opportunity to reflect on extremely important issues for national security policy and the future of the united states and this wonderful speech from 50 years ago, which i think really can

guide us in a lot of ways. so i should follow-up on what ted said in the introduction, that i'm speaking here as a scholar and as myself, none of this is official and i'm not only obligated to say that, but it's clearly true. i guess the only other thing i'll say about my job is it sounds from the title lie i really am now in the bows of the military industrial complex. the fact that there is an office with this name, the office of industrial policy, probably suggests there's something to the concept. what we try to do is balance the positive aspects and avoid the negative aspects of the military industrial complex. and you'll hear through my remark, should you interpret for yourself what it might mean what

someone who thinks the way i do can actually show up in that office. and i can't go further than that, but there you go. so i'm actually going to wear this quite relatively scholarly hat for this talk in the sense that i'm going to deal with history and then try to bring its implications of that history into the present or draw some contrasts. and i'm going to talk about the economic issues in the military industrial complex. i'm going to talk about it actual companies a fair amount, industrial itself. and i know that some other people on the panel may talk about kind of the lobbying and interest group politics and i'm very eager to hear their remarks and i think that's -- it should offer an integrated panel to get the full picture of how of military industrial complex works and what's dysfunctional about it. so i'll try to focus on the

economic issues. and what i want to pick up on is from the farewell address spooef speech itself, president eisenhower expressed a number of concerns about the military industrial complex, but one of to me the core concerns was the fear of or a warning against crowding out civilian, commercial dynamic economic activity by a focus on military spending, military dominating industry, dominating in some ways taking the best and the brightest of technology and focusing it on military continukiconcerns as opposed to social concerns and realizing that that rock of the way of american life depends on now crowding out too much of the commercial industry through

our necessary military efforts. it's not that the military was bad, we had to defend ourselves against the soviet, but we had to be cautious not to let it get out of control. and so there's a key line and i'll paraphrase because i didn't write it down, but where he talks about the fear that people will decide what to do based on the hope of getting a government contract as opposed to deciding where to invest and where to spend their time and their energy and their efforts trying to make products that keep a want and would buy willingly in the marketplace and would make people's lives better. so that's the fear that i think on the industry side we need to understand, does that come on pass or how do we guard against that. and i guess i would say that after -- there's a counterveiling view that's important to weigh against that

which really came to prominence mostly in years after president eisenhower's speech, maybe in the 1970s kind of hit its first pay day, i think, which is the story about spinoff technologies and how military effort can actually help the commercial economy and increase our dynamism by investing great products. there are all sorts of examples people point to. maybe the funniest one is tang. the idea that we'd be much worse off if we hadn't had all the investment because in the commercial market, we wouldn't have tang. but there are many other example, zippers and microwaves and people talk about lots of different things. so there is this counter didveiling view that might actually say there's not so much

a problem of crowding out.count might actually say there's not so much a problem of crowding out.idveiling view that might actually say there's not so much a problem of crowding out.view there's not so much a problem of crowding out. what i'm going to do is offer a few vignettes and kind of a logical explanation of why i think president eisenhower was right and the spinoff story is exaggerated significantly and we should be cautious, but in fact president eisenhower also had the answer and we've actually done a good job. the reason why defense spending in absolute terms is much higher today than it has been in the past but in relative terms of chance of it crowding out and taking over the whole american economy is much faded is that we've had statesmanship and leadership of certainly people like president eisenhower and a few others, maybe not enough, but just enough that we kept it in check, that there has been

some amount of balance. and so i guess the punch line of the history that i'm going to tell you in a minute is that there is actually a defense industry, there is a real military industrial complex, where their focus is exactly on what president eisenhower warned about, it's on getting another contract. they're completely responsive. in fact, this is how you get to be a good defense company, a good defense contractor, is through ghn straigdemonstrating responsiveness to any little wing, nudge, chance that there be a contract on the government. they're watching and they changed their investment behavior and they do whatever it takes to get that contract. they act very differently from commercial companies. and that's a good thing because it means there are a lot of commercial companies out there not paying attention and watching the goecht livernment

hawk. they're watching consumers and other companies that might buy their products and they're still a very dynamic economy parallel to this enclave of the defense economy. so i'll give a couple examples to i also straigllustrate this . i thought it would be useful to look at the time frame eisenhower was looking at when he first observed that there was this will arriving. people were excited about jet aircraft. seemed to be related to the military. we're entering the era of commercial jet travel. and, in fact, these stories, or at least one them, the story of the bowing 707, is the hero story for the spinoff people.

they say thank goodness for military investment, we got jet travel, look at the boeing 707. and i'll talk a little bit about that and then a contrasting story of the 880. which was not such a success. and i'll do that in the next five minutes. why it's easy in the next five minutes, some of you may have seen, i have a new article in the enterprise society, and they did a special issue on the 50th anniversary of the speech. so this is drawn from that. so if you want gory detail, there are copies i think upstairs. any anyway, the key thing i'm going to investigation, and there are many bits of the story you can pull out, i'm going for focus on

the power of customers and the need t to focus on customer relationships to make your sales. so on the 707, i don't think there's any doubt that some of the basic technology that went into the 707 and many other airports like swept wings came from military research. and that's what we would all expect, basic research that the government does, private companies by themselves do applied research, they don't do a lot of basic research, and so you want to look to the government to do those basic things like figuring out the core technology of swept wing, but then when you actually make a product that people want to buy, swept wings isn't enough. you've got to decide how far does the plane go and how past does it go and how many passengers and will it be quiet or noisy and how much fuel it uses. so when you get for that next level of making a product, the question for boeing is was boeing better off competing in the commercial aircraft market

selling their 707 because they also had military aircraft contracts like the b-52 and especially the kc-135 at the same time. were the actual products helping them in parallel. and the answer is not really. and it's because the military was such a powerful customer that when boeing was offering them products like the kc-135, they had to really tailer to military requirements and they had to pay attention to the military first. from the military's perspective as a customer, if a company wants to go sell products to commercial airlines, that's a distraction. the military's not going to reward you if as a company you say, yes, i'd really like to make your product, that's great, i'll make you a fighter plane or bo er or whatever, but first i'm going to take care of this thing for american airlines and i'll get around to the military when it's convenient.thing for ameri

i'll get around to the military when it's convenient. that's not how it works. if on the side you have a little free time to do something for commercial people, that's fine, but actually we don't believe you have free time because we think every second of every day, in fact, when you're sleeping, you should be working for the military contract, right? pay attention to us. and so boeing when they were trying to sell commercial airplanes had actually a problem that the airlines didn't trust them. they thought, well, our order is going to get delayeded because the military is going ask them for a hurried up production on the tankers. or something else is going to divert them so they can't pay attention to our needs as an airline. boeing it manage to sell commercial planes. the 707 was a success because they did manage to separate the production activities, separate the development activities, and

make products that were customized for the airlines and for the military, and it was a near run thing because a number of airlines said we don't trust you and they went to douglas. the dc-8 almost sold as many airplanes as the 707. the 707 you remember because boeing is still doing great things today, but there were other planes at the time. and then my quick second story is about convair. it used to be an independent company, but by that time it was a part general dynamics. they were branded in congressional hearings of trying to become the general motors of defense. in a way they embodied the military industrial complex because they were a big and powerful company involved in a lot of lobbying. they tried to make a commercial aircraft, the 880.

and it failed substantially. when it got canceled in the early 1960s, convair took the biggest corporate loss at that time of any company that didn't delay bankruptcy. they lost more money in an ford lot on the edsel. it was a complete blood bath for convair. and the problem was they were a military company and they didn't understand how different commercial markets worked. so they tried treat it like a commercial market. how do you succeed in the military? you promise to be very responsive. whatever you say, even if the task is impossible, you want a plane that can fly 10,000 mile do, a round trip in ten minutes, we're on it, right? so convair took that to american airlines and twa and especially howard hughes who some of you may know was an eccentric ceo of

twa and tried to follow his every twist and turn. and in the military when it drives up the costs, the military pays because they really needs the product. in commercial markets when the cost goes up because you're doing all kinds of crazy stuff, you should pay me twice as much as you offered, there's a contract. twa and american airlines said what are you talking about. and convair lost all their money. but they said it will be really fast, but twa and american said it burns fuel like -- i don't know. whatever burns a lot of fuel. it was terrible. they couldn't fly this airplane and make any money. it would have been great for the military, but the fact that convair walk seeking military market, it crowded them out of commercial market. but boeing stopped making military airplanes. the b-52 was the last that

boeing delivered until now when they're back in the -- well, now they're -- well, when they took over mcdonnell douglas in the late 1990s, they got some mcdonnell military aircraft. but for many, many years, boeing made commercial airplanes. they knew their market, they understood it. and so the companies that tried to make military aircraft and get in the commercial markets, general dynamic, lockheed martin, they struggled. it was the dedicated companies that did it. and so that's the distinction. it is in fact an enclave economy. as long as you have people who are willing to -- you have political leaders who understand the enclave can't grow too big because it would crowd out and you hold a check on that, then you actually can have the benefit of a highly responsive

defense industry to protect america without crushing the commercial of the united states and that's the important legacy. it's what i want to focus on in the economic side of the farewell address. eisenhower demonstrated the ability to do what he said we needed in handling the american military industrial complex. thank you. >> well, it's good to be home. for those of you who know me, i left washington this 2006 and i'd like to thank ted and chris and cato for a good reason to come home and see many of you, a little bit older and hopefully a little bit wirz. but i'm going to focus on something different from the last speaker. i'm going to talk about mind sets which is something that i

know a little bit about. when i left washington, i was a made man, a member of the -- life member of the council on foreign relations, senior research fellow at the heritage foundation, a rather young guy, and i fell out with the kind of foreign policy establishment over nation building and the iraq war. so that's where i'm coming from. returning to talk to you about this lovely topic. we talked about eisenhower in-sain incein in-says auntly. he said the thing that's different has to do with mind set. we can talk all we want about the things that i hope the other panel lists talk about, the lobby i go and the nuts and bolt, with ybolt but there's a mind set that underlies this.lists talk abouty

i go and the nuts and bolt but there's a mind set that underlies this.ists talk about, i go and the nuts and bolt but there's a mind set that underlies this.s but there's a mind set that underlies this. well meaning people make mistakes, but they're based on things that might make sense in the council but not necessarily the medical hand process. well intentioned people do dire things and are often wrong. one of the things that i loved about eisenhower and that we talked about was a very different mind set that you see in either party and that's a totally nonpartisan comment. and that in fact is my lament, that both parties grow only a couple things, one is a way overly expansive foreign poll that i has absolutely nothing to do with geopolitical realities of the world that we live in today. and they wonder like charlie brown when lucy moves the football away what went wrong

and let's just do it again. and if we do it enough time, we're bound to hit something. as i live in europe, it's very odd to watch. but i like to start by talking about another eisenhower moment that implies the mind set. i see the farewell address which i agree is fantastic as really just a culmination of the way the man ran the presidency au. and i think it's sad that it sounds rather odd now because i think he was right. and the story i'm going to tell is in 1954, the french are in agony and there's tremendous pressure on eisenhower to intervene including from some of the joint chiefs. so eisenhower realizes that general ridgeway is against intervening and he says cost what it would -- cost it, what would it cost to go in and

intervene in in-dough china. i was in the room when he said it will be a neutral cost. i thought i misheard. and i hasn't. that's not a small mistake. and now i say do you want your trillion dollars back. and there's no doubt we do. we simply don't know what will happen and we might need the trillion down the road and these a totally different way to look at the world. anyway, the number comes back from ridgeway $3.5 billion. i don't know what a that is now, but it's a large number. i'm confident it's a big number and so then what does he do? does he daulhe call in a knee o conservative?

no, he calls in the secretary of the treasury. he says i made three campaign promises in 1952. what would it mean for the promises and he says it will mean a deficit, mr. president. and eisenhower says, well, that's the end of it. boy, do i miss this. when i'm reading this, i'm getting teary. i remember at the time. what happened? and indeed what did happen. because the thing that eisenhower got right in terms of mind set beyond keeping his promises, which is great, is the notion that economic strength really is the load star of national power. that's what's missing. and he did this institutionally, the national security council at the time included the treasury secretary and the budget director at every meeting so they would say it costs too much, it costs too little, that

was intricately done in the bureaucracy because he did not divorce the two things. as the '50s went on, particularly after "sputnik," he was asked why he was not raising defense spending and he said without fiscal soundsoundness, is no defense. again, words that i don't hear at my council meetings very often. i'm coming in to give you three numbers that i repeat all the time to my clients. to give you an idea when they say how bad are things in america economically, and these numbers are kept simple for me. one-third of americans today have no retirement. private retirement of any kind before zero. one-quarter of americans live in houses where their mortgages are underwater. and one-fifth of all wealth has been wiped off with the great crash because of the value of houses going down. one-third of americans have no

retirement of any kind and a quarter of the houses are under water. we're not going through a little difficulty as both main parties continue to say. and part of the problem is that there has been a decline for a long time. the end of the story is the wolf does show up and eats the boy, but nobody believes him. and i feel for that boy as you can tell. because that's it, you could always say we thought the japanese were going to take us over and that didn't happen. this is almost unimaginable suffering in the last few years. and, yes, the spending continues. let me give you one more number. according to president obama's own ridiculously optimistic numbers assuming growth of 4% a year until 2020, which is true it if you're brazil, but probably less true if you're an established power like the united states, assuming these

numbers are correct, # 0% of the budget about be for a i have things in 2020, medicare, medicaid, social security, interest on the debt and defense spending. will in the words of the great coal porter, something's got to give. you can't cut the interest on the debt. you have to pay the bankers. we've seen the efforts of medicaid and medicare. social security we'll have to deal with, but nobody wants to. and the reality is that means whatever do you, you are going on have to cut defense spending on have to cut defense spending. frankly, we're fiddling while rome burns. that's not a discussion that i hear from either party, okay? i hear it from democrats who i've known since my think tank day, it's all george w. bush's fault. i'm not a big fan of george w.

bush as you can guess, however, to blame the hapless ex-president is a bit much. and our secretary of state says once we get over these little local difficulties, it will go back to the way things were in the 19 '90s. that's a curiously reactionary comment for a supposedly progressive person. are we supposed to get in our time machine and go back? think about what it means. it's before 9/11. it's before iraq. it's before afghanistan. it's before the great crash p. its be of course they wants to go back. could you you could do any of. you had give. you lose vietnam in the by pl lar world, doesn't matter.amount of room for makes mistakes was huge. in a multipolar world, the margin of error is very, very

small. and you can't do everything that you want to do. and that's the world that nobody in washington seems to be able to fathom. of course she wants to go back. utterly understandable and poisonous to think that you can, that these things will go away, that the rise of the rest -- it's not just china. this is shorthand for india, south africa, gulf states, turkey grew at 11% year on year. this is a change of 500 year change in power in the world. and staring us in the face and nobody's doing anything here. republicans, it's take taking the american view of the power of positive thinking it a ridiculous extreme. john, if you talk about decline, we're in decline. so it's me talking about decline that's the problem. well, if we don't talk about decline, won't our decline speed along? isn't that what happens to people this will decline? no, no, it's positive thinking that we need.

no, what we immediate mee need thinking. and we need to say -- i said to mr. kay again, what's the bitter tears. the british were in decline and london was the best place in the world.he british were in declin london was the best place in the world.ears. the british were in decline and london was the best place in the world. but you can't manage it if you don't go back and say there are limits to what we can do and prior size. the prioritize. the foreign policy of both parties is impossible. in the end knee owe conservative will fail n. you we're out of money.

if you consult the micut the mi, which you're going to have to do, we have to set up a foreign policy that is tailered to that limited military spending. those two go together or we will continue to wonder why things aren't working.military spendin. those two go together or we will continue to wonder why things aren't working. he's arrogant, he's corrupt, but that's not the problem. the problem is the american mind set and the problem is the spending and we simply don't have the give that we used to have. so to conclude, what should we do? take our ball and go home sf how would the new world work? first, we have to live within our means. the dos are the indian ocean rim in china is where it's at. it's where all the future growth of the world is. look at the ten year numbers.

it's compelling that this is where it's coming from. but almost every problem in the world emanates from this region, too. what shouldn't we do? asian building. it's eloquently silent about darfur from the left because there's simply no money. who is going to do what on what terms. they will tack with the wind not because they like it, because they is no options. this is a change. no, it's a distraction. i think the war on terror, which isn't the key to the 500 year change, has gone from a second order problem that was incredibly understudied to a second order problem that's incredibly overstudied. this will not destroy our way of life and i lived here on

september 11th and i'm acutely aware of my friends who are not with me. but when i come home to america and i see the chance if militarization here and i stand in an endless line and i hear please bring alone someone to check my pass port and bring him to the command center, this is not a place i necessarily want to do much business with and the other people in line tended to agree with me. let's not give terrorists what they want, which is our overreaction. nobody wants to live in a cave like them. the reason that people still admire us around the world has to do with freedom. has to do with what we're trying to defend. and i think that's what knowing the distraction is. the last thing is to get our house if order economically. we have until 2020. if you look at the cbo numbers, we're looking at 90% debt to gdp, but that's an enron number.

that doesn't include state and local government debt. and we know they are not doing real well. we're greece in 2020 if things go along as they are and trust me, markets in europe are moi g i noticing this even if we don't talk about it here. so i would end by saying let's look at what we're trying to protect, let's use the genius, let's look this thing square in the face as eisenhower did so often and realize the wonderful things about the country, but for goodness sake, let's realize that we live in a different time. >> i appreciate the invitation from cato to speak today.

politics makes strange bedfellows. i'm not a libertarian in the normal sense and although eisenhower does look a lot better to me today than many who followed him, i vividly remember being one of only three kids in my fourth grade class who voted for stevenson in our 1956 straw poll. and in the cold cold war, i was usually considered a moderate hawk. back then i probably seemed part of the problem, not the solution. yet when the cold war ended, i naively thought that total victory over the only great power and ideology that could compete on the world scale meant that the united states could stand down. so today on matters of national security policy, i don't have any trouble identifying as much with cato types as with the mainstreams of either major party. a dwight eisenhower, too, is something of a strange bed fellow. he came to power as the

international alternative to senator robert taft and while he may have been a states man, he wasn't really a dove. he simply believed that the cold war would be long and best won by endurance running rather than exhausting sprint. in his farewell address remembered by so many in the sense of even general eisenhower warned us about the military spril c industrial complex was an argument about thousand maintain military power over the long haul. and this was in the context of his assumption forgot ten in later years that as nato allies regained their footing, u.s. forces could be withdrawn from europe. eisenhower's cautionary pair well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.fpair well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.apair well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.repair well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.air

well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.ir well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.r well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today. well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today.well address seems a beacon to the forces of frugality and restraint today. the united states remains intensely engaged militarily around the world fighting twice as many wars, though smaller one, in the two decades since the berlin wall fell than it did in more than four decades of cold war. the wave of ambition to reshape the world has crested since set backs in iraq and afghanistan, but the sources have a been resilient and i think are in constant need of the reminder about costs that was so well emphasized in eisenhower's farewell address and in the an effect dote just mentioned. u.s. policy has gone beyond what eisenhower expected, but i think not so much because of the warning about the military industrial complex that's most remember remembered, true corporate interests and to a smaller degree the direct influence of the professional military has something to do with it, but i think the more important reasons have been a perverse convergence

of pail i don't liberals and knee owe conservatives promoting intervention abroad, the evap igs of con statistic encities, victory disease after the surprisingly liberation of gate kuwait, and the institutionalization of empire and government organizations and habits of operation which have become second nature over the course of the half century since eisenhower reflected on what was then the new permanence of peace time mobilization. first point, the paradox cal consensus. the main reason for ambitious american behavior lies less in the mill area complex than political developments beyond it.

at the time eisenhower said good-bye, huntington pointed out that military contractors then competed and lobbied over which programs would be funded within a set defense budget ceiling. they couldn't compel an increase in the aggregate level of spending. what changed after it eisenhower was it that presidents stopped imposing formal and, frankly, arbitrary limits on the defense budget. truman and eisenhower had forced the services to bargain and log roll rather than simply ratchet up programs. p what changed as well was the further evolution of what eisenhower had wanted to call the complex in the original draft of his speech that was changed before delivery and that was the military industrial congressional complex. eisenhower could get away with setting an arbitrary cap on military spending because his credentials as a warrior were bulletproof. subsequent presidents had to claim that they'd spend whatever

security required and the formula for trying to measure that became a hopeless political football. and the decade of retrenchment after the tet offensive, it took a dive. but after reagan took ownership of the national security issue, the constituencies in both parties evaporated. 1950s, fiscally conservative republicans had restrained democrats who aimed to spend more on defense and this in the 1970s, it was the only way around. but 1990s, however, no check remained on either side of the aisle on capitol hill or even constitution avenue. this happened for two reasons. republicans abandoned fiscal conservatism in practice while pretending to honor it in principal, and democrats an ban

conned skepticism about the use of high defense spending in reaction to repeated punishment for wimpiness on national security. reagan wanted balanced budget, but he never once submitted a budget that asked for a deficit. lower than what resulted. the bushes were no less hypocritical. since the financial crisis of 2008, republican legislators are once again talking the talk, proceed claiming the wisdom of milton friedman, but for decades after eisenhower, in action, they validated richard nixon's famt famous line that all containians now. there is no evidence that they're pi more willing to start walking the walk. today we hear plans to slash the

deficit, but exempt not only domestic entitlement programs where most of the money is, but defense spending as if that, too, has become an entitlement. the democrats presided over the only significant budget surpluses since eisenhower left office, but they didn't match that success with restraint abroad. as a morally impaired draft evader, clinton dared not challenge military needs. and in fact he wound up with defense budgets higher than his republican predecessor had proce provide jekted. desperate for popular credit ability, the democrats nominated a war hero for president in 2004 and john kerry's criticism of the bush policy in iraq ended feebbly. now, critics remained but only

on the fringes rather than the mainstreams of either party. but it's taken a decade of bleeding in this iraq and afghanistan to make argument for restraint beginning to being politically potent again. while american politics became more polarizeded on domestic issue, elite attitudes on foreign policy did not. for all the sound and fury during the years after the cold war, i think there was much less difference between mainstream republican and democratic foreign policy positions than met the eye. neocoms have been liberals in wolf's clothing. liberals decried bush the younger's un lat alism, yet wanted as much as he did to exert american power to set the

world right. clinton's aim was multilateral about we can, unilaterally if we must and the junior bush's was the reversion but they both wanted to come out in the same place. using american power and leadership to force the world into proper shape. second point. nothing pail fails like sus sc. saddam hussein was cut down to size quickly and as wars go, cleanly. in victory, the coalition did not overreach. operation desert storm was truly a model for take steestrategic. as a war, it was just right. the problem was that it was too easy. and subsequent leaders applied the model where it didn't

belong. american military seemed invincible. americans tend to like using force when it works effectively, quickly and cheaply. all too many forgot what the old soldier eisenhower knew well, force is rarely more than a blunt instrument. kosovo initially opposed a reminder, but it ended if a victory at low cost. not a single casualty on the american side. the first venture into afghanistan after september 11th also appeared to end in decisive victory. from the korld wworld war cold states was on a roll p about unlike eisenhower who had ended the korean war as bush the elder did without demanding unconditional surrender and destruction of the enemy regime and on destruction of the energy

regime, and it would hold back industry in indochina, they wound up with bloody noses. third point: public detachment. the second war in iraq became very unpopular before u.s. forces disengaged and the war in afghanistan is becoming so. but have you noticed, there is no real anti-war movement? at least for anyone who remembers the turmoil, bitterness, general asianal conflict, shrillness, sometimes violent disorder in the vietnam era, the public silence today is deafening. in part this is because the wars now are smaller, but it's also because part of what worried eisenhower in his farewell address has ghana wone away, an that's the extent of the peace in society.

as eisenhower said goodbye, the united states had been operating with a decade and a half of conscription unprecedented in peace time and the draft continued for little more than a dozen years and was in no small part a reason for the anti-war movement in the 1960s when graduate school defermentes were ended. in korea and vietnam, they had to pay the piper not just with treasure but with their own blood. it has cost most citizens nothing extra in neither blood or treasure. combat is taken care of by volunteers, and funding isn't demanded of taxpayers. passing the tin cup to allies paid for virtually all of the war over kuwait. no tax increase was asked for the fight over kosovo, and taxes were even cut, probably a first in wartime history, as american

forces have fought harder and harder in iraq. as fewer civilians share the sacrifices of war making, they naturally become more grateful and differential to the soldiers who do the dirty work. at the same time, they lose the skepticism that comes with war and often military service. veterans used to be overrepresented in congress compared to their percentage of the population at large, but since the cold war, they are underrepresented, and data indicate that legislators without military experience tend to be more faisvorable toward t use of force than are veterans. fourth point, finally the habit of empire. the national mobilization of our era has ghana wonuantanamone aw

military movement has not. the cold war has been down sized but it's been pursued by w warmongers but secured for global formism. it is reflected in how government came to organize defense capabilities and plans almost completely in terms of operation far from home rather than at our own borders. the national security council and department of defense, which were created in the 1947 national security act, have come to concern themselves exclusively with defense lines far forward. on other continents and the protection of allies, not direct defense of u.s. territory. military forces were organized for combat in terms of a worldwide set of unified

commands, each one with a huge headquarters and bureaucracy overseeing a bitter region. scent .come for the middle ooels and now for africa. each with a pro-star military council overshadoweing attacks since the soil since the war of 1812, brand new organizations were created to handle the threat. homeland security council. as if the security of the the united states for the nec. and a new department of homeland security, as if protection of the homeland wasn't the responsibility of the department of defense. no other country in the world that i know of, not even the former european imperial powers,

have military structures organized so thoroughly in terms of functions so far from home. in sponsoring the system of worldwide military command organizations that was legisl e legislated in 1958, eisenhower is in large part responsible for spawning the institutionization of the american empire in that sense, maybe some uneasiness about everything associated with that had something to do with the farewell address, but there is no indication that he saw this as anything but a temporary necessity, however long it might be, for waging the cold war. the changes in society and the are pretty much beyond the rimplt of that struggle was not

unamerican optimism to control war at low cost, to make modest conceptio conceptions, pretty viable options, again, but at least we shouldn't let policymakers of the. and costs that eisenhower saw so long ago. [ applause ] >> at risk of going forth on a panel with three other eloquent speakers, fearing that they would steal my thunder, which they did, i'll go on as best i can. during the first 150 or so years of our existence, the united states maintained a small standing army, mobilized additional personnel to fight the few wars declared by congress and then sent most of the men home when the war was

won. in the latter half of the 20th century, however, they went through a new interventionist foreign policy. critics charged that state of affairs had made a permanent imbalance between the branches of government and many believed it threatened individual liberty. no leader worried more about this fundamental shift in the nation's character than dwight david eisenhower. as has been repeated many times this morning, the departed president warned its country to be on guard against a military complex with unwarranted influence in the halls of power. thus, one of the most important lines in the speech also become the most famous. snerds, it is easier to contribute to that it. >> i would like to place it in a

conference. why this industry has persisted so he much longer than the soviet union, the establishment it was temporarily connected to, has ceased to exist. and i'll close with a few helpful suggestions for what we can do about it. so scholars have studied this connection, the workings of this loose alliance between industry and military. and they on trace it to back to world war i. as well as billions of dollars for the war effort. the image of the wib is a band of well-meaning industrialists who sacrificed for the country and was shattered by the interim

engineer old pete. he commented with a frujt assaultly olt. wilson claims that u.s. intervention advanced waynedog security. critics such as nye said it will sit in the merchant of death vpt -- wasted countless lives on a pointless and unnecessary war. but his critique was far more so fist cade than nye's, and he approached it from a very different philosophical position. the title of the book is "unwarranted influence" and eisenhower was deeply concerned about prebting private property rights. he treds this notion in

eisenhower's thinking back in tt 1930s, he had worked for a commission created by congress to explore the relationship profit and war. nye, senator nye, proposed to solve the problem of the industrial complex from moving the positive motive to the military industry. i recognized this would be a horrible idea, first from perspective of efficiency, but also inconsistent with american traditions and values. the. it is the forced expiration of the material assets and label by the government was an anatha. it was un. in short, eisenhower's critique, bt r not just in the final

speech. -- when we return, conservative. he wanted the needs, especially the trade-offs inherent from private government to the federal government. he also worried, correctly in my view, that educational institutions and even individual researchers were becoming too dependent upon the largesse of the federal government, and this would discourage them from scrutinizing growing state power too closely. to put it most crudely, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. and the end result, in part, is where we are today. lots of push on the part of people who benefit from massive federal spending and relatively little push-back from all the rest of us who pay.

political scientists and public choice economists call this the problem of concentrated benefits and diffused costs. this is yet another theme that typically resonates with right of center audiences. but the problem, and one of the great tragedies, i would argue, of the speech, of the farewell address, is that the fundamental conservatism of eisenhower's critique was lost almost immediately after the speech was delivered because the concept of industrial military complex was picked up, and the anti vietnam war was left and turned into an assault on are the paft of the. the effects are far more subtle, i would argue, and perhaps more insidious than this leftish critique would have you believe.

it's an outspoken. they were liberal economies. men such as paul toeb in, paul samuelson. hence the concept not always of mill temporarily. the pentagon's budget has become just another pot of money and a lae vrnl as well, from when kohl tigsz could flow uneasily to september gee grachblg money to their and punish those who do not. these political realities would persist even if the government somehow managed to remove the profit motive from the process, the process.

you can call it business if you like, but i think eugene makes a pretty good case for why it's not business. it's a process whereby material and equipment and food and everything else that the military needs is provided to the military. you can call that business if you like, but i think it's a fundamental misconception. so combatting this alliance, this very loose alliance tweens t between the military and the business community, either directly or indirectly by the military is, as we have seen, resistance to reform. and it is likely to be as resistant to reform in the next two, thee, four decades as it has been in the past fooi. defense spending servings as a thinly veiled job

it's even easier now to capitalize on public fears and a new round of spending. think about this for a minute, everyone. after 9/11, washington didn't merely spend more money to fight terrorism, it created an entirely new department os sentenostens ostense -- os tentensibly ignor

things. they put the increase in the budget synonymous with strength and national security. eisenhower saw things differently. i could quote you from many, many different places in the course of his life. my personal favorite is from the state of the union address in february 1953, his first day of the union address. our problem, he explained, is to achieve adequate military strength within the limits of the endurable strain upon our economy. to a mass military power without regard to our economic capacity would be to defend ourselves against one kind of disaster by inviting another. such sentiments may strike many of you today as timeless principles that need not be

dusted off during momentous anniversaries, but i would argue that they seem especially significant in the state of affairs that was documented so eloquently a few minutes ago. and yeah, we must not forget that 50 years ago, liberal democrats, men like henry jackson, missouri stewart simonton, and a young senator from massachusetts, john f. kennedy, knocked eisenhower for con straining the military's budget and allowing fiscal considerations to shape the nation's strategic objections. the charge that eisenhower was forcing the nation to fight the war with one hand tied behind its back. especially limited the nation's flexibility to engage in land wars in asia. again, we didn't organize this. how appropriate he references the food decision in 1954. he said he had no desire to

recreate the nuclear war and he thought there was enough to make descend ants. they are equally dismiss sieve of deter rents, but i would also say they are dismissive of american geography. the democracy in north america depends on democracy in southeast and south central asia. they call for us to drain the swamp where terrorists could poke out in their heads, seems poized. there is a continuum here. an intellectual continuum, and there are people who are fighting just as hard as they

were 50 years ago. let me conclude. i'm not crude. neither was eisenhower. he said the institute over politics would be difficult to break. he hoped that the engaged and the knowledgeable citizenry are noted. but, as i can see, americans do hope to benefit handsomely. but that might be changing. the depths of our physical crisis have created warner such -- in inflation dollars since 1998 is one of the few administrations in the future, but as more americans come to understand the high cost and dubious benefits, a bad clash is all but inevitable. at this point in time, we wish we had another eisenhower or someone like him. articulate, knowledgeable, whose

credentials on national security would be unasailable, for mass security that does not depend on a. struggles to bring the costs of our enormous military under control, washington, the city of washington, should embrace strategic restraint and characterized by the minimum use of force skpen gaugement around the world. that is a foreign policy befitting of a. it is consistent with the model set 50 years ago by dwight eisenhower. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. we now have time for about 20 minutes of questions from the

audience. let me outline a few ground rules. first of all, would you raise your hand if you have a question. wait for me to call on you. also wait for the microphone so that we can hear your question, and then there is the jeopardy rule. please make sure that it is in the form of a question, not a speech. and we try to gep this as brief as possible. and also please indicate if your question is directed to just one panel member, or if it is a general question for the entire panel. so with those ruined lu-- fine words, we're ready to begin. >> there we go. this is only a sentence, so i hope i don't get sent out to the hall for one sentence. what a fabulous set of presentations today, period.

now, here's my question. chris, you raised a very interesting notion that the concept of military industrial complex, and actually maybe even the speech itself, became hijacked, if that's a fair word, by forces other than -- by unexpected forces, the liberal forces in america. to what extent do you think the change in the republican party might have had something to do with this, too? in other words, the republican party of 1964 no longer had many eisenhower republicans at the forefront. >> well, that's a good question. i mean -- i'm going to answer a different question, but hoselly we'll get to your choice.

in fact, i think we're -- we would much rather quote thomas jefferson and they don't want conservatives to even know anything about this man. they failed, not just because of this meeting, but a lot of people are talking about the speech now. i understand there is something like 14 books about eisenhower due out in 2011? something like that. so, anyway, they failed. but the budget keeps going up and the debate between -- you know, the natural string does have a troubling pournt part from them rkt the other things that john noted in others, the entitlement over hahang and is

true breaking point. i don't think that makes or breaks the defense, but they do have a point, and it makes it hard to argue what eisenhower did, and yes, it's a major achievement and we wish we coul close to that. we're a long ways from that. yes, in the back on the left side. ashley. >> for the panel, if you have your way and there was this significant change, how, then, would you set up or address the question that confronted us at the start of world war ii when we were completely unprepared? >> who wants to start?

richard? >> i think the solution is not to go back to 1939 when we spent, i believe, 1.4% of gnp on defense. we learned our lesson. that was too low. i think the solution is to have a robust mobilization strategy whereby defense policy aims to maintain the critical ingredients from which a much stronger, all-out effort can be generated quickly if the need arises. and this would mean at the margins more emphasis on cadre's training, professional development, more organization on faces and being. it would be essentially a strategy that rested on willingness to get ready. i, frankly, have said this over recent years and have detected no interest or like-minded

thinking among anybody who count. i don't see this as yet a politically salable alternative. but that's the weigh station between the unpreparedness before world war ii and the excessive preparedness after the cold war. >> can i just briefly add to that the level of imbalance or outside spending now is so great, you could cut the american defense budget and effort in half and still be far more prepared than 1939. so, you know, realistic scale of cuts, i think dick is right, this is not how people talk if you talk to people in the building in which i work, and i'm not representing, it's all about delivering things to the warfighter today. the way they talk is all about,

we're right on the brink, we need to focus on the current fight. there is no discussion of, gee, shouldn't we think about balancing that with a mobilization strategy? this would be a very productive discussion to have. >> yeah, just briefly, i think in terms of the shift, we're so far from there that i don't worry about it. i think mobilization strategy would be great but i do think there is room for opty mission to hear me say that word. we're in the era which most of us were in before the cold war came upon us. this has this very odd point of view of a pick-up and that's how you have to pay different for

defense and have it mobilized and lift and have a navy and have it go together, but you certainly don't have to spend what you do. then there's the disconnect between policy people and the real. one of those things i learned in washingt washington, it's almost impossible to lose your job in a think tank. i worked hard at it on a policy difference. but it's really hard to lose your job. in the real world, it's really easy to lose your job. if you look at the few pun opposites in year and what avrnl people do. it the second more popular ways to cut the budget. 73% says cut defense spending. the 36 ers, and i think that's really, really healthy. >> one thing i would point out,

in 1939, the united states had an army that was smaller than that. today we spend five times as much as the country with the next large military investments on that, so that does, as jane suggests, leave a lot of room for potential cuts. >> in the left on the front section. >> hi, pat span representing myself. i wonder if the panel could maybe explain what happened after the '50s and '60s that both parties became

interventionalists? what happened? >> the explanation that i think works best is the structural explanation. it's not so much the '60s and '70s, it's the '90s. so someone here, even in the previous panel, pointed out there were more interventions in the 15 years after the end of the cold war than in the 45 years of the cold war. why? because even a small-scale -- a brush fire war could result in a, you know, confrontation between the two superpowers, so they danced around, trying to, you know, not be directly confronting one another. and there is a structural explanation, or to put it even more crudely, we, the united states, did more stuff, invaded more countries because we could. and, again, the selective reading of the histories of the war, the first gulf war, the war in kuwait, allowed for, i think, a fairly pro mimiscuous use of

force that is only recently beginning to be corrected by our wars in afghanistan and iraq. >> one of the things that happened positiliticallpolitica disappointed. they saw the serious hippy movement around mcgovern, hence writing him out of history. suddenly you have the chastening among one state, and the government is saying, me, too, me, too. well, we have to be tough on this, because this is an issue that the country owns. you have truly, you have kennedy. and that really changes the balance, but both parties from.

it no longer scoop jackson who challenged carter. you go from that to supporting reagan as part of the very broad tent that supported reagan being one of the elements that did that. in the '9 ons, as chris said, you get open warfare. all of us eisenhowers. i'm against that in america and i think that's where that battle comes from. >> i think it had a locality to do with the end of the vietnam war and the end of a cold war. there was no, and the perception that the left had let the country down. any enter p ventalists, were not

present, especially after the cold war, and eventually the democrats felt chastened with identification and about foreign policy and became more meat on it. but also at the end of the cold war, liberated kohl sake yann war with informants personally. so there was a con jungz of hoom thought that the military. >> yes, the woman on the far left there. >> i would add to that last discussion is the brilliant lobbying that the defense industry has done, so when you see robert gates today trying to make very modest kulcuts in the

military, you immediately see congresspeople, both republican and democrat, coming back and saying, we can't cut that weapon stm. given the public media wants to attack the military. how can we work together from different sides of the idealogical spectrum, and what would be the thing to focus on? that that's not a very consistent smds for? is it the wafds the american public no longer wants to fight. >> i do think it going to be a menu of those option so they don't have local constituencies. it's easier to cut weapons, alternative bases.

they can do something besides build a chip. that's a difficult thing. but i also think, somewhat naively, that strategy should drive for structure, not the other way around. as it is today, we have a four-year structure and every four years the defense department comes up with a rationale why sef. leet start with a strategy first and then build the floor structure to meet the, but thaet the way it supposed to work. it doesn't work that noi. mack the case for a smaller, well restrained ground strategy on purely strategic ground. then show the that would go to

down with that that's what i think is an opportunity given the other things we've talked about today for fundamental shift. >> i would just jump in and says, i'm the last bun tie that were in terrible trouble force cally which is what we should do, anyway, about nrg. but if he with do, you're playing with my children and grandchildren's patry money. as i said, the new pugh numbers are compelling, that people want this change. as chris pointed out, they're not represented. i think paskagula has a big naval base, so guess what in they were funded whether it needed to be funded or not. that's the way it works.

so there's always going to be this broad constituency that would agree with us that the consistent people who do well at it are far more motivated than broadly. the key to that is talking about the money because it affects everyone, their children, their grand business. they'll come bang and say, you don't care about the country. absolutely the reverse. i care intensely about the country, and the reason is because if we take our fiscal help out of the equation, we're not doing our chin children on the berchl made. >> i think a lot of the other things were, unfortunately from my sper tech active americans don't to want knowing as how many dollars do we need for the

bare minimum to protect ourselves from being captured by the enslaved martians? think of the opportunity and they want a vision of the world. i think chris wants us to have a strategy-derived defense budget and spending, and that's good. that kind of analysis sounds good to me, but there is actually a whole raft of people who have strategies on the shelf and offer them to the administration and they think they have -- it's transformational diplomacy. there are all these words that come in. they think there is a strategy, it's just not the one that we prefer, there is the one that says, there is a tremendous balance on the world, let's go, and it's hard to tell people just in the abstract strategic sense, well, there are some

costs to that, and actually your. it's very hard to control this without --. t this is the appeal we might have made earlier, but part of what allowed president eisenhower to have that appeal was, oh, we need to keep powder dry for the long haul, we need to have an endurance race. there is a real threat out there, and unless people perceive -- well, there is money gns the feature. i just think the intellectual argument responding to that is it pessimistic. since that happening by, jat gee

is not to be the rescue. >> unfortunately, i think we have come to the end of our allotted time. >> on that? >> i would ask all of you, i think, to focus on the last question that was asked, because i think that is the most pertinent one. is dwight eisenhower a prophet and one that is a guide to a much better policy, or is he cassan dra, someone who gets a warning that no one lichbsz to. i tried to remainty mystic. concentrated benefits diffuse costs. to change the system that has developed and return to

eisenhower's vision of a society with far more balanced priorities. but that is the task awaiting all of us, and i think people across the political spectrum have an interest in seeing some constructive fundamental changes. please join me in thanking the members of our panel for their excellent participation. [ applause ] >> you're all invited to a reception up

>> if i could get you to sit down, we have a full house this morning. if you have not already turned off your cellphone, that would be a great time to do that. since we are going to be talking about workplace safety, in the unlikely event of an evacuation, the exit signs taking to the stairwells.

you have got two choices. one level down takes you to k street. one level up takes you to 18th street. i am be senior vice president at the center. it is my great pleasure to have with to michael bromwich, the director of the bureau of -- i am going to screw this up. the director of ocean energy management. it has been a bit of a roller- coaster ride. when you listen to the new administration coming in, the

situation was transitioning to a green, a low carbon economy. not a lot of discussion about low emission fuel. you started seeing it more and more because those in the administration started talking about keeping the ad -- keeping the conventional system robust. in march of 2010, the president acknowledged that oil and gas are part of our future and said that because of the success of the energy in the past because of their safety record, we should expand drilling in the gulf. less than a few weeks later, we were confronted with the horrible news of the macondo accident and the explosion and the tragic loss of people. then we dealt with the oil

spill. we watched the flow rate on youtube and prayed that it would not hit the beaches. secretary salazar announced a reorganization of the bureau in may. on may 21, our speaker, michael bromwich, was sworn in as the first director. you have been a busy boy. the bureau has launched an aggressive reorganization effort. they have a recruitment campaign to enhance the capabilities of the organization and to expand inspection. they have put in new drilling and workplace safety rules. they have begun a comprehensive analysis of drilling in the arctic so that we can be better informed on new leasing decisions.

they have initiated leasing activity for commercial offshore wind projects. that has been an effective six months. . over the course of the past 30 years, michael bromwich has had a distinguished career in the public and private sectors. he has been a litigation partner in a law firm. he served in the office of the independent counsel investigating the iran contra. he has most recently been inspector general in the justice department. he got his undergraduate degree at harvard college and his master's at the kennedy school. he is a graduate of the harvard law school. we look at a mid october date

when we contacted his office. about one week before the expected date, we got a call from the interior department that said, we will postpone this until january. about the time we were going to have the session, they announced the suspension of the moratorium. we did a session in -- we wanted a session in mid-october. we look at january with the full expectation that the oil spill commission report would be out. that was because we wanted to have something to talk about the case we ran out topics. please while come michael bromwich. the turnout today is a testament to how interesting this topic is. we will take some questions and answers at the end. thank you for coming. [applause] >> thank you for that warm

introduction. good morning to all of you. it is a real pleasure and a privilege to be here with you to discuss the profound changes taking place that involve drilling in the waters off our country's shores. these changes are long overdue. when it comes to serious reform anywhere and in any field, these changes are being spurred by a major catastrophe, the blocked by the macondo well, the explosion and sinking of the deep water drilling rig, the deaths of 11 workers and the spilling of oil into the gulf of mexico. the deepwater horizon tragedy has shaken government and i hope also industry out of complacency and overconfidence that has developed over the past several decades. that complacency and

overconfidence -- hubris is not too strong a word -- increased chances that drilling was not matched by concern for the safety of those operations. i want to discuss the steps our agency is taking to renew its commitment to the irresponsible stewardship of our nation's resources on the outer continental shelf. i will also discuss the reforms necessary in the government and the oil and gas industry to ensure this activity is conducted safely. not quite seven months ago, i became director of the bureau of ocean energy management. it was created by ken salazar after the deep water horizon accident to replace the former minerals management service. the mandate i received from president obamas and secretary salazar was as daunting and

ambitious as it was urgent, to reform offshore energy development starting with the agency responsible for overseeing it. since that time, we have been working to make the changes necessary to restore the public 's confidence that offshore drilling and production are being conducted safely and with appropriate protections for marine and coastal and diamonds. my remarks today will address the changes that have occurred and are ongoing in the oversight of gas and oil operation on the enter -- on the outer continental shelf. this topic could not be more timely. the national commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil spill released its report. the report is a comprehensive analysis of the spill and the history and development of offshore drilling and the regulation of offshore drilling.

i want to commend the commission and its staff for their hard work, their professionalism, and their willingness to cooperate with us and listen to different points of view. i encourage each of you to read the report. even though we had many discussions with the commission and its staff over the past six months, we are thoroughly analyzing the report and its recommendations. as the commission described in its report, regulatory and industry reform in the wake of an offshore disaster has happened before. the united kingdom and norway changed their oversight of offshore drilling and production following an incident in that area. austria is facing many of the same issues we are confronting following a blowout that occurred before the deepwater horizon. the specific challenges facing us are unique in many

significant effect. the scaling in the gulf of mexico are vastly greater than in the north sea. the economy of the gulf states are closely tied to the offshore industry. the gulf account for more than 25% of domestic oil production and approximately 12% of domestic gas production. one of the problems we are addressing and that cannot be avoided is this, how will government and industry make the fundamental reform is necessary to improve the safety and environmental protection in this mass of industry while allowing for the continuity of operations and production? to illustrate the problem, consider this. united kingdom offshore production, which is at a much smaller level than in the gulf, dropped off substantially toward

two -- for two years following their incident. we want to improve the safety of children in the gulf of mexico, particularly -- said the of drilling in the gulf of mexico, particularly in the -- particularly deep water drilling. let me be specific about what we have done and what we plan to do in the future. we have undertaken the most aggressive reform of offshore gas regulation and oversight in u.s. history. this includes the reorganization of the former mms to establish mission clarity and strength and oversight. it also includes the development and implementation of heightened

standards for drilling practices and environmental safeguards. these new rules set for prescriptive spenders that industry must meet. the also established for the first time performance based standards focus on the identification and mitigation of risks associated with offshore operations. these changes are substantial. more work is being done to ensure these changes are lasting and effective. the ultimate goal is to establish an industrywide goal -- industrywide culture of safety. both elements are necessary to keep pace with the challenges and risks of offshore drilling as those operations push into new frontiers and faced increased technical challenges. let me outline the main elements of our fundamental

reorganization and reform of the as has been previously announced, in place of the former mms, we are creating 38 strong independent agencies with clearly defined roles and -- creating three strong independent agencies with clearly defined roles. we will -- the reorganization of the former mms is designed to remove complex by clarifying and separating missions across three agencies and providing the agencies with new resources necessary to fulfil their missions. we are designing and implementing these organizational changes while lethally take into account the

crucial need for information sharing and the other linkages and interdependency among the former mms. this is critical to ensure the regulatory process does not succumb to bureaucratic paralysis. on october 1 of last year, the revenue collection arm of the former mms became the office of management and revenue. the next step in the reorganization and are more difficult -- reorganization is more difficult. on the one hand, we will have the new bureau of ocean in management, that will be responsible for developing the nation's offshore resources in

an environmentally response away. we will have the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement that will enforce environmental regulations. we have been gathering the facts necessary to complete the reorganization in the most rational and sensible way. we have been busy interviewing agency employees, collecting and analyzing data related to the bureau's processes and developing the various models for restructuring and reforming the bureau. this work has been painstaking and time-consuming. it is critical in informing the decision making in transforming the bureau. we are close to being ready to lay out the detailed framework for the reorganization. we will separate resource management from safety oversight to allow our permit engineers

and inspectors greater independence, more budgetary autonomy and clear leadership focus. the goal is to create a fair regulator that can effective lead guy with the risks of offshore drilling -- can be effectively deal with the risks of offshore drilling. we will create a stuck to that ensures thorough environmental analyses are conducted and there are given appropriate way to -- appropriate weight. plan approving activities must be properly balance. these processes must be read auras and eat fish and so operations can go forward in a -- processes must be rigorous so

operation can go forward in a timely way. we will also strengthen the role of environmental lead you and analysis in both organizations proof structural and organizational mechanisms. -- we will also strengthen the role of environmental analysis in both organizations to improve structural and organizational mechanisms. as part of our broad and continuing reform efforts, we have created a 11 implementation teams that have been hard at work for several months.

they are the focus of our efforts to analyze critical aspects, functions, and processes and to implement our reform agenda. these teams are entered world and are considering various recommendations -- the steam is our -- are integral and are considering the various recommendations. they are laying the foundation to lasting change in the way the successor agencies do business in the future. let me briefly describe the key areas and issues these teams are working on. we have 18, voted to reviewing the approval process -- we have a team devoted to reviewing the

approval process. we do not want permits unduly delayed by the process. they will address work load. they are also developing companies of handbooks up policies and practices which will assist permit reviewers in carrying out their responsibilities and bring greater consistency throughout our offices. we have a number of teams focused on various issues associated with developing effective risk based approaches. these teams are focusing on an analysis of alternative organizational structures, development of risk-based structures, the distribution of inspection personnel throughout the organization, internal management and oversight structures.

the fighting near and long-term strategies. this includes the safety measures imposed by the drilling safety rules published last fall. we are also developing infrastructure and will be recruiting expert personnel necessary to create -- to conduct real-time monitoring of deep water drilling operations. this is a capacity we feel strongly that must be developed and is consistent with the review by the national academy of engineering that secretary salazar commission. we are developing training programs and curricula for inspectors involved in our safety compliant and enforcement programs. as i recognize soon after arriving at the agency, substantial improvement in our training programs are critical.

the design and implementation of professional development programs are essential to our reform agenda. this team is working on developing appropriate in-house training programs, which we do not currently have, to give up refresher training curriculum and to give up a formal field training program. we also want programs to ensure government personnel keep up with ecological developments related to offshore operations. we're also discussing how to provide our personnel with greater inspection and enforcement tools, including technological solutions for improving the bureau's ability to conduct real-time monitoring of drilling activity. we are developing the use of

laptop computers by inspectors and environmental personnel. we are also beginning to analyze the potential of satellite imagery and live data feeds to enhance our inspectors' capacity and effectiveness. we have also introduced performance based standards for the advocation of environmental risks. these performance standards are embodied in our workplace safety rules that we published last fall. we have a team devoted to developing an oversight program and developing compliance for these new safety requirements. the third category of implementation team once you get from the multiple inspection teams is regulatory enforcement.

we are evaluating the adequacy of the enforcement tools, including the system for documenting and tracking systems for non-compliant or prospective --prescriptive regulations as well as a system for debarring and save operators. we are reviewing potential gaps in our operations. we are looking for ways to enhance the civil penalties. our view is that legislation is required to make these more meaningful. the current enforcement frame work permits maximum fines of only $30,000 per day per instance is inadequate to deter violations. we have 18 that is focused on designing new inspections -- a

team focused on designing new inspections. they are developing systems for obtaining information to support environmental enforcement. we have an investigation team working on developing procedures relating to specific accidents, including industrial platforms. we are identifying the type of expertise necessary to support these programs and design systems to track the status of these investigations and the implementation of improvement to safety and environmental regulations recommended as a result of investigations. finally, oil spill response. we have 18 conducting a comprehensive review of oil

spill response and the adequacy -- a team conducting a comprehensive review of oil spill response and its adequacy. as you can tell, the goals of these implementation teams are ambitious. the teams have become the main engine of our reform efforts. in addition to the important work of the implementation team, i want to mention some other significant reforms we have implemented. we are in the midst of our reform and we are working closely with the council of environmental quality. we announced a policy that will

require that cite specific environment assessment -- site specific environmental assessment will be conducted with all new build a plant in deepwater. to address conflict of interest, we have implemented a tough recusal policy. employees must notify their supervisors about any potential conflict of interest and requests to be recused from performing in official duty where a conflict exists. inspectors are required to recuse themselves from inspecting their former employers. inspectors must report any attempt by industry or other agency personnel to inappropriately influence, pressure, or interfere with their official duties. soon, we will be issuing a broader version of the policy.

i know that this policy will present operational challenges for some of our district offices in the region, which are located in small regions where employees are also in the company. but the need for boundaries is necessary and compelling. these rules are necessary to assure the public that our enforcement programs are effective, aggressive, an independent. we will continue to recruit internal and external candidates. a team of professionals whose mission is to do several important things, first response to allegations or evidence of misconduct by bureau employees. second, to pursue allegations of

misconduct against oil and gas companies and bob in --oil -- involed in oil and gas projects. i have discussed many of the reforms we are pursuing to improve the effectiveness of government oversight of drilling. these challenges and changes are substantial and necessary. as the commission's report makes abundantly clear, industry must change as well. my agency has a clear and important role in helping spur that chain. we are doing so with prescription of regulations to enhance safety. we have raised the bar for equipment, safety, and environmental safeguards.

we will continue to do so in the open and transparent ways in the coming months and years. we have also introduced performance based standards similar to those used by regulators in the north sea. we have done this by the implementation a two new rules. the first rule, the drilling said it will, was prompted by deepwater horizon. it has put in place tougher standards for well-designed and casing. for the first time, operators are required to obtain independent third-party inspection and certification at each stage of the proposed drilling process. an engineer must certify that blowout preventer is meet standards for testing and maintenance and are capable of severing the drill pipe under anticipated well pressures.

the second rule is the workplace safety rules, which aims to reduce him in an organizational errors that lie at the heart of many accidental oil spills. the development of this rule was in the process before the deepwater horizon. the promulgation of these standards was frustrated for a number of reasons. unfortunately, it took a major accident to provide the impetus necessary for these standards to be imposed. operators are required to develop comprehensive safety and environmental programs that identify potential hazards and production strategies for allphases of -- for all phases of activity.

our reviews had demonstrated that the percentage of offshore operators that have adopted such programs voluntarily was declining. in addition to the new rules, we have issued npl's that provide additional rules to operators. operator oil spill response plans must include a corporate statement from the operator that they will comply with all standards. we will evaluate as to whether we will evaluate as to whether each operato