pose on themselves and i hope that after doing such tremendous work working with patients with ebola and being on the front line dealing with the situation that he will have enough sense to stay indoors for 21 days. ..

professor wallace recording the cooperation or the international cooperation in fighting even an epidemic like ebola and terrorism still very low. and i believe actually the cooperation in fighting terrorism is much lower than cooperation fighting the epidemic disease and so on. what isis is really doing in iraq and syria is not only contradict with the islam but also contradict with human values which all actually believe in and so on. the egyptian government, for example, have been calling for international support to fight terrorism in the region. every single western country were reluctant in cooperating with this regard until a few months ago when the foreign

fighter problem emerged and just like, to give you an idea, what really will happen if the changes in egypt didn't take place lately, "washington times" i think a few days ago, a few weeks ago, published the statistics about the foreign fighters in middle east and iraq and syria and they mentioned a little thing, very interesting regarding tunisia for example. they say that actually they have more like, more than 6,000 tunisia foreign fighters in the region. we have 350 something from egypt. we're wondering if really the regime stays in place or the former regime in egypt stays in place and compare the two population of countries, how many thousands of tens of thousands foreign fighters from egypt will be there? and what really is very, with in my opinion just like professor alexander mentioned the situation in the sinai and what really happened, we still find

many critsystems towards what the egyptian government is doing to fight terrorism. if we look at the statement, public statement made by the former government, they were actually supporting the, thema. lai -- the mali terrorist group to try to siege power. the in syria and turning whole situation in syria from mere aspiration by public for better life into a sectarian conflict. i think we still need by you and all the presidents, we need to explore the opportunity for more cooperation in fighting isis and through the moderate institutions linked to islam and other religions. thank you. >> yes. >> my name is craig childress. just a quick question, excuse

me. we talked about decontaminating, training of health care workers. and the thought just struck me that, i haven't heard anyone in the press describe how you decontaminate a health care worker? seeing as how this is you will being taped and presumably going out to a fairly wide you audience, i'm sure there are some of us in the room, myself included, who have actually been through decontamination for a nerve agent, you know, from full mop-4 down to skin and beyond. it is not a quick process. it is very time-consuming. it is resource intensive. then you got to decontaminate the decontaminators.

so it is not easy, which goes to your point, sir, about training and training often and continuously. if you know, can you describe how you decontaminate a health care worker that has been treating someone with ebola? >> well, thank you. because actually the analogy between nerve agent exposure, particularly persistent agent, is very similar to what you would be concerned about in the cases of being exposed to the ebola virus through human secretions of one sort or the other. so in many ways, that the principles are the same, in terms that, though the equipment is different, in terms of some of the types of equipment that are available out now. but, the principle, the principle measure is using bleach. so that is the principle rinse or some kind of bacteriaside or

microside that basically will sender the ebola virus dead. it is time-consuming, in a sense it is a buddy rule like you have in the military. basically you would start primarily with removing the gown first, retaining gloves or removing boots first. going through probably a shuffle pit like you would in a nerve agent exposure. retaining if you will, the last thing the respiratory protection and gloves as last pieces of equipment you would take off before you would be clean. now obviously in settings that are in africa which are very different than in the united states you probably have people then probably shower out as a final step and change their clothing because it probably wore scrubs underneath. in africa they don't have those opportunities. in fact in africa they're reusing gloves and reusing gowns and many personal protective equipment we see as, as kind of disposables, they reuse them because of limitations in short

supplies of some of those materials. so that's kind of a rough description. >> [inaudible] >> or can they -- >> just like,. >> just to give you an example, i can't remember exact numbers for each individual that needs to be decontaminated you need approximately 32 gallons of water, eight gallons of bleach. about a day, six to eight change of gloves. at least two to three complete offer-alls which did, cover-alls which cost approximately $32 in africa. you have to have boots that go over your boots. it is very expensive and intensive process and as dr. kadlec mentioned you don't have all the abilities and resources available in africa. a lot of things are hop happening over there in africa should not be happening.

we, not we, people in these situations have to improvise and that's why the cost of this epidemic is so high. it is, right now the united states is approximately spent $700 million, or is spending about $700 million and sending troops over there, et cetera. you have to, you have to, you have to put in the numbers, you know, that are going to be used for gowns, gloves, et cetera and all the equipment that is needed to decontaminate them. it is a very expensive and tedious and resource intense process, yes. >> not only there but you know, you just, spouted off all of that equipment list. so -- >> [inaudible] >> being ex-military guy i look around and say, in going back to this preparedness and professor wallace's comments about spending it for the public good, outside the defense department, how many sets of all of that

exist, let's say in the state of texas that could be brought to that hospital in dallas? >> not enough. >> not enough. >> and that is, raises the real critical thing is, the old military axiom, amateurs talk strategy or policy, professionals talk about logistics. this is all about logistics and the answer is whether domestically, internationally, the logistic supply chain for these kinds of materials to address this outbreak whether in monorovia or in dallas are not sufficient. >> i'm afraid i thought -- add [inaudible] >> the statement that you made is a they'd, arthur said a poem. that poem belongs to a persian great poet named saudi, that all humanity are made by it same creator and belong to the same body and if any part of the body

aches and nobody bothers we can not name those people human. that was not arthur turek's statement this was saudis. >> [inaudible] >> one quick statement about isis, the statement you spoke about, it is true. some parts of the territory you referred to. , they declared their allegiance to isis but aside from the territory elements which is very important, is the financial capability of isis with

something from kidnapping to oil that capability is important for them to put people in the refugee camps as well as in casablanca and elsewhere. they have many thousands of dollars to allocate to for those that would join them and volume steer. by the way the military background will get more funding because of their experience. so number one, when we talk about refugees, this great humanitarian issue that you discuss deserves much greater attention and support, but it is also a, i think, a potential for future equipment for many years to come -- recruitment. in other words the children of today can become the terrorists of tomorrow. now because of the interests of time, let me ask one question

and each panelist and audience are welcome to respond. to try to link the issue of the disease in this case, the ebola and terrorism the problem it seems to me can disasters be predictable? in other words, can we do the homework to prepare ourselves as you indicated before that it wouldn't happen again? this is number one. and number two, in the broader sense, we refer to it to some extent, can we be prepared to mitigate disasters in the future, and can we have a list of what works and what doesn't work? >> well, thank you, professor alexander. that's a great set of questions and i'm recalling a contrary

philosopher, yogi bear remarks that the future is hard to predict. i take, i take my page, if you, from a book, that is called, the black swan. which has nothing to do with public health. nothing 20 do with disasters of classical sense but certainly economic disasters. and it is the whole notion of whether you can predict those things from happening. in retrospect you can. of course we could see the recession of 2008 coming. look at all the abuses. look at all the loopholes. but the answer is in some ways his contention is that in some ways you can't predict these things and really the approach is really about prepareness and become resilient. by the way there are good black swans and bad black swans. you have to bed to recognize

each one and be ready to plan for the good and mitigate the pad. that is how i leave it in some ways, that in some way we probably are not going to be 100% accurate in terms of our predictive capabilities but we certainly know what works for better preparedness for these things and it certainly seems, in light of investments we've made in other areas, and i will use national missile defense as an example, that investments in these areas which are insurance policies for an uncertain future are probably reasonable and affordable. >> so, quickly yes, dr. kadlec mentioned we honestly can not predict anything, right? but we can be prepared for things and what i was pushing for, for in my talk when i talked about, you know the resources that are needed for science and technology in this nation, that have been, the

switch, which used to be on all the time, has somehow, somehow been shut off and the numbers, in terms of funding has declined. if we continue to do that, we will never have the safety net that dr. kadlec, you talked about because we won't have those labs. we understand and appreciate that sometimes those labs and those manufacturing facility that we need to have in this nation are not going to be doing a lot of active work, but if we don't have them, when the time comes, they can not do that active work. we also need to invest a lot in, looking at the ecology of diseases and we have not recognized all the diseases. now if you folks feel that you get influenza vaccine every single year and you will not get influenza you are mistaken because what is it? 65 to 70% of the people who get the vaccine will be protected but 30% will get the virus.

apart from that, you know, a lot of people who get the vaccine still get something which is similar to influenza every single year. those are other viruses we have no idea about. we have not invested enough money to investigate in those things and that is what is needed from a national policy perspective to invest and we don't do that we will never be able to be prepared for anything. >> thank you. this is a little bit out of my -- we certainly could predict hurricane katrina. we knew it was coming and but which brings to my mind the comment that you made, dr. kadlec, about rocket science. actually this is harder than rocket science. the laws of physics don't change. you put the right numbers in you will hit the moon. so when hurricane katrina comes ashore all, like a pinball machine, you pull a handle and you hope you get three cherries but if you don't it is a disaster. you don't really know what

you're going to get. you have combination of human failures. you have got bureaucrat issues. you've to the all of these things that things that affect these things. and finally yogi berra, great american philosopher also said, you know i didn't actually say all those things that i said. [laughter]. >> somebody go through his book. >> just -- this still working? well, i certainly just, as a extraordinarily intellectual group of presentations here and i think we're all a little bit smarter this afternoon than we were this morning. i think many would say your first inclination would be to throw up your hand, it can't be done, it's just too much. i happen to be the eternal optimist. and so, i think that something

can be done. on page 2 of the, recent study on africa, you will notice that yonah said what we need for the ebola challenge in africa is some type after marshall plan approach and that is what i would sort of underscore for this whole global topic that we're confronted with here today and will be for a long time. it's going to take a long, long, long, long time, a lot of investment, a lot of brain power, a lot of thinking in a whole bunch of different areas that sometimes even seem unrelated before we can come up with a reasonable capability in my opinion, to confront these various challenges. on the other hand, we face these kind of things before, not only in the manhattan projects and things like that, and i have to say that the second manhattan project i knew a little bit about too.

i grew up, and i was born in rahway, new jersey and over in east rahway is the whole merck establishment and so on, so forth. so we learned a little bit about that as youngsters and so on. but the thing we need to remember is all of these challenges, the medical challenges, the nuclear, biological, chemical challenge and all of that, and they're all, the solution to all of these is many times different. you don't do the same thing in the chemical threat as you do in the biological threat. one case you gather up and the other case you spread out. so these are kinds of techniques that we have to think about. when you look at the enormity of it, it is kind of interesting to throw up your hand. but you know, we face ad big threat in the 1970s. it was extraordinarily complex in terms of weather, in terms of physics, in terms of ocean, et cetera, et cetera. and it was called the russian submarine threat. it was called the u.s. american

antisubmarine threat as well. it was enormous. so much so we almost didn't want to tackle it but we did and we used an approach where we bit off a little bit of the apple at a time. a little bit more at a time, a little bit more at the time and you know after a while in about 10 or 15 years we had it pretty well whipped and that's what i think we have to do here. we have to, we have to develop a long-range conceptual plan, i call it a campaign plan. we start out by saying, this is the end state that we really want. we would like to really be able to say that is with, 75 or 80% chance we will lick these kinds of challenges whether they're chemical, biological, medical, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. then we put together an organization to do that. it will look like the military. it will involve the military because the military today in the united states of america is

the only organization that is really big enough to comprehend the challenges here. big enough from the standpoint of command-and-control and intelligence and reconnaissance, surveillance. big enough from the standpoint of logistics, none, all that type of thing. so we have to, that is one of the reasons why in the mid 90s, we formed, the army developed a command for this kind of thing that pulled in different dispersed outfits, government and otherwise, that were doing these kind of things because they were big enough to comprehend this, big enough to make a challenge. the marine corps, small as it is, for 15 years now has had a chemical, biological instant response force down at indian head, maryland. which is a national asset. it doesn't belong to the marine corps anymore. it's a national asset. happens to be marines doing it. their whole job is to be able to handle chemical and biological

challenge and have decontamination, all that kind of thing. so we have spread out now throughout the united states instant response units in each state. and they can be, they can be used by the state and local. there is an inroad here. and many of these units are in the national guard. and the national guard is a state controlled organization until the president for whatever reason federalizes. so we have embryonic capabilities in all of these areas. we have to marshall the national science ends foundation. we have to have a tremendous amount of focused research in these different areas and we have to have the ability to then pull all this stuff together in what the common word today in government is, integration, above all we need to be able to integrate these disparate pieces of knowledge, and capability into a whole.

it is enormous challenge. it would be much simpler to forget about it and worry about luck, that kind of thing. i don't think that is the american way. i think we can tackle this challenge. it is going to take a long time. we ought to get started yesterday and so on and that's sort of what my suggestion would be. thank you all very much pour being with us today. i think it was a very great panel and it was helped immeasurably by your comments and questions and thoughts. thank you very much. [applause] >> on this veterans day a live look at the area around the korean war veterans memorial here in washington, d.c. in the west potomac park area. southeast of the lincoln

memorial and just south of the reflecting pool on the national mall. this memorial comb misdemeanor rates those who served in the korean war. it is dedicated july 27th, 1995, the 42nd anniversary of the armistice that ended the conflict by president clinton and south korean president. it commemorates the sacrifices of 5.8 million americans who served in the armed forces during the korean war which lasted from 1950 to 1953. over 54,000 americans died in that conflict. [inaudible conversations]. >> and as our coverage of veterans day events continues, coming up this afternoon, arizona senator and navy veteran john mccain will profile the

lives of american soldiers who served in conflicts from the revolutionary war to iraq and afghanistan. we'll have live coverage starting at 6:30 eastern here on c-span2 some members of congress are sharing their thoughts on this veterans day via twitter. new york congressman brian higgins says standing with the color guard at the veterans day ceremony. new hampshire senator kelly ayote tweets, joining veterans across new hampshire in the annual veterans day observes in boscawen. thankful for their brave service. thankful for my dad that landed on beaches of normandy on d-1 and my son who served in iraq and afghanistan brought son, proud dad. both house and senate gavel into session tomorrow starting at 2:00 p.m. eastern. as always watch live coverage on the house on c-span of. the senate live here on c-span2. 2015 c-span studentcam video

competition is underway. open to all middle and high school students to create a five to seven-minute documentary on the theme, the three branches and you. showing how a policy, law or action by the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the federal government has affected you or your community. there are 200 cash prizes for students and teachers totaling $100,000. the list of rules and how to get started go to studentcam.org. former iraq and afghanistan war commander, general stanley mccrystal shared his recommendations for political and leadership. he spoke at powe lit toe leaders series and united service organizations president j.d. crouch. this is hour and 15 minutes. [applause] >> hello, everyone. how are you?

welcome to, to this event this afternoon. it is real privilege to host dr. j.d. crouch and susan glasser and later on general stan mcchrystal and jim vandehei for today's conversation. it is an extension of our innovative partnership with "politico" and really it couldn't be a better day to do this, right? i mean on the eve of veterans day, a day that is set aside for, to honor those who are serving and those who have served this great nation. nobody really signs up in the military for the recognition. i mean they stand up, they take the oath and they're going to jump into something and be a part of something important. they're going to make a difference and they are going to make contributions. it is not really any easier today with the drawdowns and the budget cuts. really a more dispersed threat but if you take a look at this all-volunteer military that we

have, it is a smaller force. and they're at a very high operational tempo. but i can tell you with certainty, that those coming home today, it is a little more complex than it was when i made the transition a few years back. that is why i'm so proud to have this role at bank of america with my good friend lewis runnion to drive change, to have that opportunity where we can support the men and women who serve and in the bank, this company is fully committed to supporting those who are transitioning to the civilian life. it is pretty neat to see. and so, what else is very valuable today is to be able to hear from a couple of very distinguished gentlemen and listen to what they have to say and what shaped their careers to where they became the superb leaders that they are today. if you're here with us today or you're listening in and you're military, member of the military, then we want to thank you and we want to thank your families for your service and for your sacrifice.

with that, let me turn it over to susan glasser who will facilitate today's conversation. susan. >> thank you so much. [applause] well, hello to everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. i'm delighted to be joined by jd crop, who doesn't need very much introduction but suffice it to say, not only is the new head of the uso but i think he brings incredibly different array of experiences here in washington, whether it's at the pentagon, at the white house, in his new role and even in the private sector, imagine that. so you know, i thought we would really just jump right into the topic because on one hand it seems almost crazy, right? we're doing a series about leadership in washington, right, like it sound like a punch line

of late-night tv. and so, you know, i thought we should really start with that fault line that you have observed first-hand between political leadership or lack thereof, how difficult it is to be in our political climate today and that military culture and how it works. which is to say almost the definition of you know, organizing very large groups of people to take action together. so what, you know, is there an inherent conflict between political and military leadership? . .

and so those elements i think our classic and true on the political and military side and in some respects one of the differences is that we train our military leadership to be leaders. and he loved anyone people in washington come to washington that are smart people, they are bright and well-educated. you see the difference here in this town.

obviously when you solve the political action and the smart people at the national security council and the like. what are the ingredients they haven't been trained on? >> they may not have known how to manage people and how to get the best out of the individuals. they may not have -- one of the points we were talking about earlier is this notion of empathy. leaders need to have empathy and understand what their customers are thinking and they need to understand what their opponents are thinking and the context for example we are an organization that has 400 employees and over

29,000 volunteers. so me having to understand what it means to make them tick and why do they come to do what they do i think that is a question of empathy that has been lost. we are already thinking about scoring the next set of points rather than really understanding and putting your shoes in the other persons socks as it were to figure out a way forward. >> that is an interesting point. one of the differences between military leadership and political leadership and the lack thereof is we are missing the purpose and goal to organize the chain of command and sends us what you're trying to do when the nation has been framed for

you. how much do you see that as one of the things that hampered the political leadership in washington to? >> they have a broad palette and cannabis and they have to take into account a lot of other factors. but don't kid yourself. military leaders have to operate at a political level as well and they have to know how to deal with political leaders and how to deal with people in the countries that they may be operating in whether they are friendly forces or non- friendly forces to think that there's not much of a difference between the

two. it's not in accident comrade. >> there is no accident. >> exactly. let's talk about some specifics in the action or not. probably one of the most interesting examples was late in the presidency and the decision to iraq when people in the administration and in the party as well as outside of it were questioning shouldn't we just pull out of iraq. this was seen as a risky move at the time. clearly there were as leadership involved. tell us what that was like from the inside. how has the clarity gotten around we should make another audacious decision at the time that it's going back. >> president bush came to the

national security advisors and said look we need to do a review of iraq things are not working and he gave the following guidance. i am not going to quote it directly but something like if we can when i want to win and if we can't, we need to get out and we need to find a way out. so we did a comprehensive review and we went to iraq and of course pulled all of the elements of the government together to look at this and basically came to the conclusion that there was a way to turn this around. but you're right it was against the conventional wisdom in washington at the time and one of the elements of the leadership is being willing to have the courage of their convictions and act on that and that is what the president did whether you agree or not or

every on the decision to do the surge he had the courage and was willing to stand up and say i am going to take this and go all in an interesting element of that in the decision process before it was announced some people said you may remember we put in about six combat brigades and as somebody said why don't we put my name and then if we need another we will put another. i remember him saying i'm not going to make six decisions about this. we will either make the forces available to the military leaders and use them as they see fit or not. and i think again that is another example of the leadership which is you have to have trust in your team that they can execute once they

understand what the strategy is. >> many people would say that example is a decision by president bush that stands in stark contrast to the decision-making early on both not just the decision to go to war. we were talking about and one of the things that that leaps out in that account for happened in 2003 is that there was no one moment. you could argue there was kind of a decision-making process around the actual invasion of iraq. but in the different vantage point was there something that changed in terms of the leadership into the decision-making was there a better process or different team? >> we used to talk about the fact when it hits you between

the eyes. it needed to be turned around and fundamentally changed. there was a narrative out there called the baker commission report that basically was talking about a slow steady pull out. that forced people to be more clear. i give a lot of credit to steve hadley for running a very positive process that was inclusive of people's views from the distinctive set of provisions. one of the things we love to do in washington is not all things together. take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then you

end up with something where everybody walks out of the room thinking their particular position prevailed. and i think that you saw a little bit of that in the beginning where people walked out thinking that there position had prevailed and therefore there really wasn't a clear vision and a direction. >> there is a creative advisor bill clinton was famous for that at times. there've been a lot of examples in the american politics of it that doesn't mesh very well at all. >> you need to be very clear. >> in terms of your own personal learning is about the leadership that had to do with us leaving it with the decisions are in

finding a way to make them. >> the first thing that starts with what is going on the ground going back in 2006 that but had the marine operations testified on john mccain's committee it was headline news and the "washington post". some of the folks on the ground and i said we are being told back in washington that it's lost. and the military guys kind of shuffled their feet and through the mad cow and said we are going to dumb it down next spring. it's simple. there is a river that runs

through this thing and right now we can control about two thirds of that with the force that we have and we are beginning to see the sudanese in the area getting tired of all qaeda wanting to push them out but they are upgraded to come over to our side of we can protect them. that was a nice moment. we have a group of people on the ground up living there of living there every day that's not what's going on. so i think that it's not just listening to experts back in washington but there is an important part of leadership and that's again having that year old in. >> so you can't be a leader if you are mouthing your own talking points to your self. you have to see what the situation is. >> the other thing is once you you decide, you have to move forward. i like to think of myself as an inclusive person when it comes

to making decisions but incisive once the decision is made and a military leader will tell you if you make a decision to do something, halfway through the execution is not the time to be questioning your self. >> so tell me a little bit about that coming to the pentagon and working there, what kind of leadership styles did you see along the spectrum from the more to the less successful there is a sort of caricature of the military leadership style that wouldn't necessarily be called inclusive. >> i ran into all different kinds of personalities it's hard to isolate one. one of the things donald rumsfeld was good at is focusing on what is important, trying to figure out what's important and focusing on that. and i think that that he's would've collected them over the years and said he managed

through the outbox, not the inbox meaning it would've very you if you go to the pentagon. the secretary secretary defense basically has enough work to develop 24 hours just from what the staff is preparing. so somebody that says i am going to figure out what is important, i'm going to stay on that message i think it was an interesting lesson that came from that. >> that does get at an interesting question which is where does accountability factor into leadership? the secretary in the end left the pentagon and the president asked him to leave after the midterm in the 2006. there was the sense that the war wasn't well-managed in its early days. how much leadership is luck and how much of it is -- can you be a good leader and have a terrible result?

>> anybody that serves as a senior level whether it is the ceo of a company or an organization or senior government position, you are there at the behest of the people that you're serving. that is the ultimate accountability. and you have to expect it isn't a question whether it is fair or not it is a question of what is right in the country and what is right in the organization and the people serving and if that means that you exit stage left, that's what it means. and if you don't walk in thinking that, i think that you are fooling yourself into question whether you could be a good leader. >> how much do those go together? >> sometimes people have been faced with situations and so in

a way you can ask yourself how well did they manage that situation but i find that usually they will turn a positive result. they are not going to be remembered for failure. >> maybe they are smart enough not to take on those challenges. i want to make sure that we get a chance to get questions from the audience. give me a little bit of a sense about your new challenge. in the first few months when they are coming as an outsider you have a very crisp scents of what strikes you so what is the outside view of three exciting things i can do at this place.

>> it is absolutely a national treasure. they were founded by franklin roosevelt in early 1941 well before we were in the war understanding that it was coming. talk about someone in the strategic vision that really saw we were going to need something to bring to help support the troops overseas and it has really been a treasure providing support and connecting people and the like that in some ways are hard to explain if you haven't been a customer. if you see a young 18-year-old show up waiting to go off and fight in afghanistan has never been out of iowa before and walks into the center and somebody is standing there that looks like mom who hands him a cup of coffee and says sits down, soldier relax i will make

sure you get to your site. the impact of that a thousand times a day in fact 30,000 times a day that's how often we see these people. 30,000 times a day. it's unbelievable. >> there is a data opportunity. 30,000 interactions. having said all this, the that, the organizations have to change and stay relevant so where do we see this? one of the things we've learned to be very agile i like to say we have facilities in kansas and kandahar and we have learned how to be in all three of those places that the same time the military is going to be deploying smaller deployments. we are supporting west africa

but by providing the satellite networks that can connect the troops to their families back home it is the one thing that the commanders felt strongly about a it was concerned about the potential exposure so being able to connect with families back home is an important thing and something that they've really specialized in but figuring out how to do that in an environment where we may be sending 500 troops or a thousand troops, not the large numbers that you've seen in the past. and finally we are focusing a lot on the transition right now. we are not a veterans organization. we support the active-duty military's and their families. we will keep that focus. but making sure that they can be successful veterans as they transition out is an important part of what we do and so we support a program across the hundred 60 centers that have to do with hiring heroes and

building stronger families. a lot of stress on the families as a result of these multiple deployments and in some cases both mom and dad are deployed. so that is a very unique thing and the stakes to this are huge because it is an all volunteer force. >> host: but you're talking about a real-time reinvention of your model into the different models. >> host: is reimagining the programs and along the way we also have to do something which is called refreshing our brand because most of the people in the room i'm going to guess when they think about what they think of bob hope and airport centers and we do so much more than that

i want to make sure people that are under 50, under 4001 it does and know that it is a national treasure. >> under 41 don't even know who he is. >> that's right. but they know who robin williams is and he's a huge supporter. >> let's grab a couple questions if we can. i enjoyed your input on the satellite. >> the leadership in the tough situations recognizing the veterans what about the tough situation of the va and how does a leader get a hold of that and turned that around? >> as you know, my predecessor

who was the president and ceo is now the deputy secretary of veterans affairs, said he's going to have an opportunity to work that problem along with his boss. again, i would go back to what i said earlier which is you have to have a period where your figuring out what is wrong and what is the hype in the newspapers and things like that and once you've done that, then focusing on the two or three things that are critical to the success of your organization i don't know what those are for the va. i do know that he is focused on that and i wish him a great success but i think it's the

same thing. you can't do everything. so particularly in a time that is limited by the politics of our system. so, for somebody like him and his boss to make those kind of changes they have to figure out what is important. >> there's been a long-running debate about having the freestanding va versus the pentagon obviously people have a lot of opinions about whether this should be more connected. we have the right to succeed? >> i don't have a view on it but i think that in washington all too often we are not open to looking at the radical solutions whether it is collapsing an

organization or putting things together in a way that makes sense. having said that the pentagon has a lock on its plate right now so to give another mission on top of that i think that there is logic in separating the two and a there are different activities. and you really want military and active-duty military i think focused on the fritz of the country however defined and not necessarily focused there. but you need somebody obviously focus on veterans issues. >> lets me switch tables for a second. >> can you get the microphone, sorry. >> in your discussion of military leadership and the skills to young men and women gain in the military that is different from a lot of other sectors in society when we talk

about veterans we hear a lot about the employment and how the soldiers transition out of the military i'm wondering if you have thoughts about as a country we can do a better job of tapping into that unique set of leadership skills when people are coming out of the military. i read the congress will have the lowest number of veterans in generations. and i'm wondering if we have given enough thought of how you tap into that. >> that's why the health of that all volunteer army is important to all of us in this room because they are in a sense of doing the job that we expect of them but they're also doing a job that we are not doing. it's not the same as it was in the post world war ii or vietnam. a. i do have some views on that

subject. i think that incredible leadership skills have been built up by these young folks. we trust them for example with an enormous amount of direct reports under very stressful circumstances. it's not unusual for a staff member to have $500 million worth of equipment under their command. can you imagine getting somebody at that age access to control over 500 or a billion dollars worth of capital your board of directors farewell fallout we have the the captaincy of the major sighting in the morning having tea in the afternoon and building projects into villages in the evening so they are pretty good multitaskers.

so i think the problem is often on the soldiers inside is helping them understand how their skills translate into something that is useful in the private sector. people can help them take that exponential leadership skill set that they developed and turn it into the kind of language and understanding that the companies would appeal to and on the the company side bank of america is a good example. they are all in on trying to handle more of the veterans but i think that on the hr side we need to invest in the people that know how to help people be successful once they get the job. getting the job is the easy part and it's staying in the job and

being successful but it's going to be a bigger challenge. they don't just want a job, they want a career path like we all do. so i think those two things can really be helpful creating a successful environment for the transition. we have time for one more question. >> you talked a little bit about the service and there've been several discussions of the problems recently in this area in afghanistan and the bush administration they certainly didn't agree with that. the question for you is you think that there is a problem in the relations and did so is that institutional or personal and

what can be done to make it better or sustain whatever there is? >> well you can go back and see the problems of the relations so it isn't exactly a new phenomenon and in times of stress those things tend to come out. i think one of the things that is very helpful to our military is when you have clear decisions about the direction that you're going to take so one of the reasons why it was successful was even though there were different points of view on the military and quite frankly you want the next best you don't want to suppress them and the process we ran out loud a lot of that to come out and people would debate the various points

so that the president had all the information he needed to make the decision but once the decision is made they are very good about okay we got it now we know what we have to do and i think that's where you see the worst aspects is where the decisions go on made and that's why that decisiveness is an important part of the leadership >> we have to get to the next panel. i will exercise and finish up my lunch over there. tomorrow we are looking at being right back in iraq and see via and president obama tried very hard to avoid having to make a military decision. we heard a lot of criticism about how long it took to make

the decision and what is the goal of the conflict. i'm curious having seen the whole arc of the decision-making from 2003 down into iraq what are your thoughts as we return to that country where we sacrifice so much and there was so much national anxiety around why we were there in the first place and here we are i'm curious what your views are. >> the truth is we have been in iraq since the gulf war. a lot of people forgot that bill clinton waged the war over iraq throughout his entire presidency and that it was president clinton signed the legislation that talked about the need for the regime change.

iraq is an important country. in the part of the world that's very important to us i think that's one of the reasons we see the desire to see whether or not we can sustain our position of our friends in the regions of it's not surprising to me that we just have an announcement had an announcement this week in another 1500 soldiers going in a support role but the stakes are very high and the presidents learned in a way that you can't ignore iran. >> this has been entered into conversation and i am now going to welcome to this page my friend and colleague freeze our

leader. thank you. thank you for your service and to all of those serving in watching in the lifestream lands that serve the country. great person to talk to about leadership, soldier and leader in the military cannot lead, lead your own business, good author, star and there is ted talk very never thought you could get so many chuckles.

when was that moment that you said i can be a leader? like most people don't have the ambition to do it. when did you think i can? >> you first focus on trying to be competent at what you do. parallel to that i think that when i was a lieutenant at first assignment you are making every mistake done to -- known to man. you try to be a really nice guy coming you try to be a heavy-handed autocratic, bounced back and forth and so i think that for me it was probably about five or six years into that when suddenly i started to

think about who i yam. i didn't try to be anybody else. >> how old were you click >> 27 or 28 and a suddenly you suddenly you can do things that seem right for you. you're not reading books and trying to be george patton or ulysses s. grant or anybody else you're just sort of figuring out what your abilities and limitations allow you to do and so i think at that point i thought i couldn't do it and i also found out that i liked doing it and i wanted to do it. >> what did you think that you were good back then the nurture specs you were not click >> i became a good micromanager and had 13 armored vehicles on the same radio frequency so i could talk to all the vehicles that turn off automatically and i thought my god i'm an amazing

leader. to some extent that's the most obedience i've ever got incensed that i found out that if you understood and made the decisions you could control things to a level that you could get the standards that you wanted. i learned not long after that that's true to a certain organization. maybe about 120 guys like an infantry company but once you get past that it doesn't work anymore and you try to do that with two people into suddenly realize that model was wrong to begin with and so, what i learned to do and i had some help with subordinates that wanted to put up with micromanagement and they particularly when i commended they said we know how to do this business. your role is not to do the job but to help us do our jobs, to

give us the ability to do that and that started to change. >> they are learning to trust. critique yourself of the greatest weakness. like i have a bunch of them and i'm not being modest. i don't do my homework all the time, i won't do all the reading or study something. when i went to most military schools i don't think that i read them i is get from my career not having read a lot of those things. i will make decisions quickly sometimes if people come to me with information i will get a certain amount of information and sometimes that isn't

informed enough. i get frustrated and that makes it hard for people to interact. it's not stuck at one time of the day it's not morning or night but i will tell you when i get tired i'm not as good particularly if i'm exhausted physically i lose my patience. >> what adjustment have you made stomach i try to sleep more now but stepped back and don't make yourself responsible for giving too much. one of the first things you learn is to create an ecosystem that people can operate. so don't follow the temptation of giving what you did when you were younger you were still good at it or you think you are still

good at it because that isn't your job anymore. when we were going to afghanistan i remember a classmate of mine was selected to be my deputy and he took combined forces in afghanistan and he said we are going to go over there and you are going to deal with the president and i'm going to fight the war. so we are going to do that and you are going to do the politics which would have been even better. but he said you don't get it. only the commander can do those things. only the commander can form a relationship and only the commander can do those things. so, we have to do this. so it took a little bit of self-control to move around on the map because that wasn't where i should spend my time.

>> if you haven't made the brilliant positions behind the way, other people in that situation wouldn't have done what i did i made a smart decision and save lives were changed the trajectory of the battle or the institutions those are the specific ones you can walk us through. >> i asked my wife to marry me that was brilliant. [laughter] the thing i am most proud of of wasn't a single position in the joint special operations command what we did is have an organization that was functioning and excellent. we were better than any organization has been that the kind of things that organization was designed to do for a very specific high-end counterterrorism special operations mission and because we were so good that was our

identity. the problem was we were not right for the problem at hand starting in 2003 when i took over what i found was we could do what we were doing at this incredible level of effectiveness but it kept getting worse and we were not making a big enough contribution to change the fact so it was one of these moments that we continue to do what we do and we do it well and people pat us on the back and say you're great and things can get worse or we can step back and say we have to make a bigger contribution to the overall effort at the risk of stepping away from that. that's one of the ones i became the most committed to and carry on the whole time in the command because we were changing what we did, who we were somehow we interacted in the organizations and we were doing it in a way that was upsetting to the organization.

it was well received by some of our partners and not by others, other federal agencies and military groups and whatnot, but it was fundamentally essential for us to perform the part of our role to fight in iraq and of course afghanistan. so there wasn't a really answered a single decision i made about once you make a decision like that, it is consistent commitment. it's never giving up the energy. you turn something and then you start pushing it on the momentum there is resistance and people that go around and sometimes i think the genius lies more in persistence then some type of a sudden --.

>> it's hard to get ten people to do what you want them to do. how do you get the entire military to go from the mindset created in the vietnam. >> the thing that was noteworthy about us it's already a great organization and yet we need to change because the requirements change but not only does the requirements change the requirement is changing. but having to work a perfect solution. but the associated movement was this resilient network of associations that was constantly morphing. it was a dynamic moving target and so as a consequence i didn't have a clue. all i knew is what we were doing was not right and so what we did

is overcame the momentum to get everybody to the idea is that you can't steer anything until it is moving so let's get it moving. a lot of people, not a lot but they said we shouldn't risk of failure we should do the study but the reality is we didn't know where we were going and we haven't yet figured out what worked so instead the mindset and the command became what we are going to do is move and develop this organization that is learning and condemning communicating faster than i had ever seen before and that's when the organization became this organism that took in information and hard lessons but at a great cost but instead of having a top-down structure where the lessons had to be

pushed to the top we created this organism where it flowed everywhere so that decisions were made much closer to the problem because everybody was running at the same time. it's contextual understanding gives you the confidence that you don't have to ask permission how to do this task because you know the big picture that needs to be done and nobody can give you the guidance at the top because things are changing too fast for that to work. >> what is the worst decision that you've made? >> i think the places where i failed were in certain relationships and every time i spent a lot of time making sure the relationship of an organization or individual was right in other cases it wasn't

as functional as it needed to beat and for any be and for any number of reasons i didn't fix it and i didn't put enough effort in to command. if somebody in another organization doesn't like them every once in a while you say i'm not going to deal with it and i will find an excuse not to. the price for that is in cultivable and so when you were in a leadership position, you don't have the -- you can have whatever settings you want. you don't have the luxury of allowing them to be operationalized by what you don't do and i was very lucky because at times i would literally go against the wall of the situational awareness and i would pound on the plywood and say that if we are cutting off diplomatic relationships in the government when they talked me back from the ledge and to say those are you've already said that relationships -- and they

were right. my own mantra back to me. but i think that's the thing that can so often submarine great plans various >> you spend a page and a half on the posts recently. what were you thinking going into it thinking i'm going to give them access. >> first it's the content. >> you've done a lot and you are savvy on the public relations side of things. >> i wouldn't give myself credit for that because i spent years where there was no public so i wouldn't give myself credit but it was important. contextually we did a bunch of press. the war in afghanistan and the fall of 2009 and in 2010 wasn't very popular in the u.s. or europe and so we felt this incredible need to communicate

the story to build up support. i did the first 60 minutes interview in december the summer of 2009. literally i did it kicking and screaming. i said the last thing i want to do is be an extreme close-up sort of thing. but they said if you don't do this we are not going to be able to get the public into people to make the case on how we need to change the strategy so we did then we did a whole bunch of media and a member of embedded entire member they came to me on this one and like you i said rolling stone and i don't even read it. why would i do that and they said it's a different audience and it can be focused on this. so it was one of a number of embeds it wasn't a unique thing until the story came out of course. >> you spend a lot of time

thinking about what works and what doesn't work. what is afghanistan look like five years from now? >> it's impossible to say with confidence. i can tell you what it would look like. the afghans are survivors and they've proven that many times over. the question is are they political commentators to the point. that is the question. they have a police force but they have an army they are proud of and they have the capacity to be an effective society that is durable. the week before the challenge, the people of afghanistan lacks confidence in external relationships or the neighbors like pakistan will give them the breathing room to do it and then they lack confidence in their local politicians and they lack confidence in the national politicians. and so, when you like the confidence in something you withhold your participation and support.

think of the most confident person in the world because they planned something that they harvest later. >> many people are taking a short term view of things because they think that things will stay to motionless so you have to protect what we have right now. if we lack similar confidence we wouldn't put our money into banks were sent orchids into the military or things like that we wouldn't invest in the society. afghanistan has to get over that and governance level governance levels albeit the most public part of that. so if they can pull it together and i think they have a reasonable chance to do that then i think that it will roll along. it won't be perfect. if they can't do that then it is going to be different.

>> if we did nothing to support the mujahedin if we had done nothing in 2001 and al qaeda would have remained there and had we left after all qaeda was objected in late 2001 and left them to their own devices what we would likely would have had as a country that was damaged by the soviet war and then traumatized by another decade in the war and the rise of the warlords and then suddenly the opening of the fall of 2001 they had 20 years of this incredible sort of upset. so had we walked out i think that we would have seen a rise that had been in the early '90s and the taliban were already accepted because they swept it away.

>> we have this debate about whether or not we authorize the force. is there ever going to be a point that we are not at war with some other acronym that wants to use the same means to terrorize is in the isn't that just the reality forever? >> it's something i call the power of one to do things they couldn't do before. the chemical, biological, come it could have an effect. the single individuals or small groups could do more than he they ever did before and they were small groups that didn't

agree with us but they were honored and they on earth and they didn't matter so much on a day-to-day basis. most of us remember that barbary pilots lasted for 20 years that they affect only a part of our economy until we decided to act on it. so i think the difference is that you have these organizations that didn't have the reach or the technology or the media standing to do much which encourages them because they see more about it and say i can do it so for the foreseeable future ten or 20 years it is likely that we will see the challenges from groups from around the spectrum not just against the united states but against other existing structures, business structures, government, religious, have all of those under assault.

there will be a great temptation and the government will get tight control because technology also helps both ways. you know a lot more about people now so there is a chance that we are going to go into this incredible police state in many areas because they are willing to pay quite a price for order so that would be one possible. the other possibility is that you get this chaos that can't be controlled where you have a lack of centralized control people deal with it themselves. in the middle would be a perfect sweet spot of democratic governments with enough control you can have the society and property rights and whatnot but enough freedoms of people don't have their civil liberties infringed.

we are going to have to work really hard and i think it is going to be a challenge. i don't think that kind of society is an automatic in-state to the development. you progress and hit the democracy and all these things. i think it is a balance that you maintain and protect every day because otherwise it is one way or the other. >> one of the big debates is about the context of global leadership and how much certainty and robust military presence we have. if you look at the last to commander-in-chief's and the greatest strengths when you look at them as leaders to the global position.

they got the right intentions and you say that's pretty obvious. that isn't always obvious. both of them were trying to get the right outcome for the right reasons. both of them were challenged in very different circumstances when they came into power and the things that barack obama has changed so i think that both of them had a challenge and the thing that we probably come of the things we probably need to think most about his credibility part of the credibility is the willingness to reflect on them but part of the credibility is the ability to do something and your willingness to do it so if they say we would like this to happen or this not to to have been everyone in happen everyone in the world makes a calculation that give the united states stop

that from happening and are they willing to do it and those are two different things but they go together. if they question both or either maybe we will study american credibility matters a lot in the matters to our allies and it matters to the potential foes so you will able to adapt to the different action. you can't talk your way through it and say these are our values and unless we practiced those values you can't say that we want, we are going to be strong unless you show that you are strong. so credibility is the key thing. >> even if you say you are right

it's complicated and being able to show the credibility or the inconsistency is that even possible? spin that you are exactly right and the president the predecessors established there are personal actions but the reality is you are operating and building it for your successor. the second one is relationships. think about who we do things for. if you got a phone call right now and somebody asked can i borrow x. amount of money, people fall into two groups. relationships matter a lost. they are not just between countries but between people. one of the things that i was struck over time was so much of

unjust politics but diplomacy is the from the personal relationships and people place great value and importance on those and if we think that we can make a case of the logic of your position that's not my experience. people do a complex calculus of duvet trust you and do you have that relationship and do they value the relationship enough to give a little bit on this one so that they can maintain that relationship in the future. so this give and take of relationships is important and it doesn't come automatically. if you think about marriage and you live happily ever after, welcome to the real world. you meet, get married, work

every day or you don't live happily ever after and that is the thing we sometimes do not pay as much attention to as i hoped we finally would. .. >> first is within the military, there's -- it's a two-braided

sword here because on the one hand, exactly as you described, the military can get out of touch with the civilian side of society, and the civilian part of society just doesn't feel it. during the civil war, one out of every 68 americans was wounded, so everybody saw or knew somebody who was wounded. now it's one out of 77,300 americans. so it's not, that sacrifice isn't viscerally felt. that's part of it. the other side of that sword, though, is when you have a military that becomes more insular -- and i used to go to bases, and every time i got to a base a loo toon or size, i almost was sure that the squad leader or somebody was the friend or daughter of a friend of mine in service. now, on the one hand that's very comfortable because you go, hey, how's your dad, how's your mom and stuff, on the other hand, we're seeing ourselves all the time. and a military can start to get

self-righteous. they can start to say, well, you know, we're the only people out here fighting. and that's a dangerous germ to start growing. and it really hasn't proven much in the military, but that's a dangerous thing to have. that's first. second, most americans aren't asked to do anything except vote and pay taxes. and the reality is if we think that's citizenship, that is not my view of citizenship, you know? you may or may not know, i'm the chairperson for an effort to put national service for all young americans into reality. and that is not military service, but something. you know, teaching, conservation, something. everybody does a service year for a modest living stipend, $12-$15,000, not for the work you get done during during that, but for the difference it makes in the perp that does it. because you -- in the person that does it.

because you become different. and in reality, you also get to know people you wouldn't know otherwise, and you suddenly go, wow, they're not so different, or they're not so bad. it changes our view of citizenship, and i think that's critical we do it, and i've got one of my colleagues here with me. >> great. work our way up here. either one. we can move that way. >> general, thank you for your service. quick question, you alluded to it earlier. we saw, obviously, with the arab spring and benghazi with the youtube video and now isis, the role that social media plays in the pr battle. my question to you is what are current or future military leaders doing to prepare for that side of it? is there training there, and what will that play in the future? >> yeah. what you really saw play out is the power of real complexity and speed now. so two things came together, the speed and interconnectedness.

so the reality is that nobody knew what was going to happen when the arab spring started. it wasn't like this disciplined movement that started with a plan and we'll do this, etc., etc. what it was was this series of things that fed off each other in a completely unpredictable fashion, impossible to predict. and so social media allows that to happen, and it produces this swirling level of complexity that our organizations and leaders aren't prepared for right now. because look at what, you know, we saw the egyptian government was just stunned by tahrir square, called for a demonstration a week later. all those people showed up, and the government didn't know what to do. nor did the u.s. government. we were also chasing the information and chasing the developments. so what i think the key is going to be and what i hope the military is doing now, but every organization's got to do is change the mindset. we've got to say, all right, we are not preparing for anything in particular, we are preparing

for this constant change, and we're preparing to be adaptable. and you say, well, how do you do that? the reality is you create teams, and you create ways of communicating very similar to the experience that we sort of backed into in jsoc so that every day you walk out onto the field, and you're playing a different sport. so you go, wow, today it's soccer, tomorrow it's baseball, the next -- it's that stunning a difference, and that's what i think organizations are going to have to do. you no longer are going to be able to perfect your ability to do one thing and get it just right. you're going to go out there, and it's going to be very frustrating to people. and that's why the structures and the roles of the leaders are going to be so dramatically different. or they're going to catch themselves looking at headlights, and they're going to get run over. >> one more from this table. >> a question for -- [inaudible] relations, so there's been lots of discussions over the past couple of years, some people

think it's personal relationships that you've talked about so much. where do you think it falls on both, and what can be done to improve both from an institutional standpoint or a personal -- actually, if you could talk about the personal part. >> yeah, i hi they are related. if you go back and look at team of rivals, what president lincoln put together x we remember how good it was when he and ulysses s. grant had this good relationship, it took some painful years to get to that. you look at the beginning of any of our major efforts where we've got to work together, i think ultimately it takes people who trust each other. but you can't do this thing where you just keep going through people until you find people that happen to be from the same hometown or like each other. you can't build a structure and an expectation based upon serendipity of like personalities or mutually-agreeable personalities. you've got to create organizations, and you've got to create processes that force that.

one of the things i would say is if you think back to a sports team you might have been on from the beginning of the season, your coach typically pulled all the people together, and you started practicing, did some team-building things just to get them together. we take the united states most senior leadership, the national security council, who are going to execute a war, and we take people who really don't know each other -- they might, a few of them might, but often they don't. they come together in a room wearing suits or dresses, so you're still in your stilted personality because i'm not always exactly like this -- [laughter] and you want them to suddenly become this team. and yet they're from different backgrounds. military guys grew up in the military, they speak military. civilians are from different, and thaw didn't for the most -- they didn't for the most part spend time together. they weren't at each other's weddings, didn't read the same books. if you take the intel service and the department of state, they're speaking different

languages. it's all english, but it's different. and so we expect this team to come together seamlessly, and i think that's unrealistic. particularly at the speed it has to happen. so i think we these to step back and say if you want teams like that to work, you've got to create a process to build that team together. i always joke with people, if we were going to go to war again, i'd tell the president to take his top 15 or 20 people and go white water rafting and go -- i'm not kidding. take several cases of beer, don't invite the media. do all those things you do white water rafting and just get to know each other, just pull each other out of the water. just see each other, you know, when they're not in a suit and protecting something. not because you're going to solve the policy problem, but because when you're doing these very difficult interactions, you can look, and you go, you know, i disagree with you, but i know you. you're not a total jerk, and so let me at least calibrate my ears to listen. and people laugh and say, well,

that's the "kumbaya" thing. i tell you what, i don't agree. i think as long as we are going to do this with people -- and i don't see a change in that in the near term -- we need to do things like that. >> i want to get one question from this side of the room, and be that young gentleman wants to think of one while i ask a question. general, what is one thing that leaders on the civilian side can learn from the military? the military just gets it so right, and i wish you could export that to the civilian side. it'd be what? >> they're remarkably similar once you get past acronyms. what i see. i think the military talks about leadership a lot, and we say that's not important. that is important. >> right. >> the military, your efficiency ratings, your -- the name of your job typically, the way you are admired or not admired always has leadership in the terminology. there's very rarely a bottom line that said that person made x amount of money or that person

got this many bills passed. it said that person motivated, took care of soldiers and that sort of thing. and i think just the focus on talking about it and making it so overt in your culture actually helps it be true. and i think that that would be an advantage for any organization. >> good. we'll wrap up on this side. do you have a question, buddiesome. buddiesome -- buddy? >> yeah. >> all right. >> i have a question, how do you see drones getting more involved in modern war fair in the next -- warfare in the next 20 or so years, and how is that going to effect troops on the battlefield -- >> what college are you in right now? [laughter] no, that's a great question. first off, i'm a big fan of unmanned aerial vehicles, and i think maybe not in my lifetime, but in your lifetime, you're going to fly on commercial airlines that are remotely piloted. once my generation said can't

ever happen, it will. i think unmanned aerial vehicles are going to be prolific in everything to include ground vehicles. in war they're funny because there's two things to them. on the one hand, unmanned aerial vehicles allowed us to change the way we fought. there were certain technologies, global positioning system, night vision, the internet, and everybody thinks it's because we could shoot somebody with a missile. what it did was if we wanted to raid your house, we'd use about 120 people because we'd take about 80 of them and create a cordon about a half a mile from your house to stop anybody from reinforcing it or to stop the people from the inside from getting away. and we'd have a very small force that actually raided the house. but nowadays by using unmanned aerial vehicles, all those other things can be done because you see. you had to put security as a hedge against what you didn't

know. so we could do raids with 20 people. so now instead of doing one raid with 120, we were doing suggestion at the same time with 20 each. which sped up the pace of what we could do. and so hugely effective. just, you know, an efficiency and an effectiveness boon. the problem with unmanned aerial vehicles is they allow you to lower the threshold of some things, like you can fly over an area with no risk to americans, and you can shoot missiles down or drop bombs, and it feels almost ain't septic for us -- antiseptic for us. i tell people -- you won't remember this, but people in the room will -- president clinton shot tomahawks after we had intelligence on osama bin laden and what not. and if you'd asked americans the next morning is america at war, people would go, no, no, we're not at war. if you had talked to people near the receiving end of those tomahawks, very different response.

so the danger is you've got different thresholds. you're shooting at someone, and it looks and feels like war to me, and when you're in another position, you're saying, well, we're just doing surgical operations x. so you can get this resentment at american arrogance. americans can be perceived as we're arrogant because we can stand up from the heavens and be like thor throwing thunderbolts. if you are building up massive resentment, then there's a negative cost to it. it's one of those technologies that has to be very carefully balanced as we use it. now, pretty soon everybody's going to have them, a lot of coaches have -- countries have it now. i don't know how we'll feel when somebody does it to us, so that's a great question, thank you. >> with that, thank all of you for participating in the conversation, thank bank of

america for hosting us. thank you, general. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> and still to come this veterans day holiday, c-span2 will be live at the national press club for remarks by arizona senator and navy veteran john mccain. he'll profile the lives of american soldiers who served in conflicts from the revolutionary war to iraq and afghanistan. all in his new book. live coverage from the national press club at 6:30 eastern time here on c-span2. and some tweets from members of congress on this veterans day, on twitter rhode island congressman jim langevin says another great veterans dayer is moanny in warwick, it's so important for us to show our support and gratitude. and congressman bradley byrne tweets: my brother dale, we miss

him every day. and rhode island's david sis lin posting: huge crowd of new dedication of armed services park in woonsocket. really beautiful tribute to our veterans. back in washington, d.c. the hill reports president obama may have to wait for the senate to consider his nominee for attorney general. that's according to a democratic aide. it seems likely that loretta lynch's nomination will not be considered until the next congress when the senate changes parties. again, this coming from "the hill" newspaper which says senate republicans are unified against ms. lynch's nomination moving through the lame duck session, and democratic leader harry reid needs republican cooperation to pass other priorities in december including an omnibus spending bill, a package of expired tax cuts, the defense department or authorization bill and dozens of other lower profile nominees. a look at the 113th congress or what remains of it back from

recess tomorrow. both the house and senate gavel in at 2:00 eastern with votes scheduled later in the afternoon. and as always, you can watch live coverage of the house on c-span and the senate live here on c-span2. >> c-span veterans day coverage continues tonight at seven eastern with selections from this year's white house medal of honor ceremonies followed at eight by the traditional wreath-laying ceremony at arlington national cemetery. then just after nine, the annual uso gala featuring joint chiefs of staff chairman general martin dempsey, also discussions on mental health issues as well as other selections from the white house medal of honor ceremonies. >> next, an assessment of nuclear proliferation and security threats facing the u.s. this is with former assistant secretary of state for political military affairs, robert gallucci. he served as chief negotiator during the 1994 north korean nuclear crisis, and he worked on nuclear safety initiatives with russia during his tenure.

this is from johns hopkins university, 40 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, good evening. my name is duncan brown, and i am with the johns hopkins university applied physics lab. welcome to this, the third session in the 11th year of the rethinking seminar series. this year the series is sponsored by the johns hopkins applied physics lab. each year the rethinking seminar focuses on an aspect of national and international security issues. our seminar theme this year is "rethinking global security constructs, threats and responses." specific topic areas that we will try and cover this year include potential threats, adversaries and strategies the u.s. should consider over the the next few decades, where, when, how and should the united states engage militarily, the post-world war ii international order, u.s. leadership, international organizations and

multilateralism and, finally, the economic trade and security relationships between the u.s., the e.u. and east asia. before introducing tonight's speaker, a couple of quick announcements. first, all of our seminar talks are videotaped and posted on our web site. additionally, we do post bulltized notes as well as any presentation materials that our speakers provide to us. to find the web site, simply type three words into google, jhupl, rethinking and seminar, and it will show up. we do use wireless microphones and, unfortunately, your pdas, your cell phones, blackberries and or anything that uses wireless directly interferes with those microphones. so i would ask that everybody at this time, please, shut off all wireless communication devices. and now for tonight's speaker. ambassador robert gallucci is a

distinguished professor can in the practice of diplomacy at georgetown university. previously, he has served as the president of the macarthur foundation, the dean of the school of foreign service at georgetown university, ambassador at large and specific envoy for the department of state. in the latter position, he dealt with threats posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles is and weapons of mass destruction. he was the chief u.s. negotiator during the north korean nuclear crisis of 1994, and he served as an assistant ec tear of state for -- secretary of state for political, military affairs and the deputy executive chairman of the u.n. special commission overseeing the disarmament of iraq following the 991 gulf war. ambassador gallucci will discuss nuclear proliferation, iran and its nuclear program, north korea and its program, strategies to prevent proliferation and his views on the way ahead. please join me in giving a warm

welcome to ambassador robert gallucci. [applause] >> thanks, duncan. ladies and gentlemen, i am -- i know it's required for me to say this, but it's actually true -- i'm very happy to be with you tonight. i understand from cup can you all -- from duncan you all voted with your feet, and you pretty much volunteered for this. so i'm grateful you're here, and i'm happy to have the opportunity to speak with you. so the truth about my remarks tonight, that they are not exactly as advertised, but they're close. as duncan said, i for the last five years have not been doing

things related to international security very much. i was at the macarthur foundation, and in that, in my role there i was concerned with reducing maternal mortality, improving k-12 education in the united states, juvenile justice reform, biodiversity around the world and, of course, we were always very busy finding those geniuses that we announce every year at macarthur. so i haven't been thinking about international security that much. so when i left macarthur in the summer and went to georgetown where i now am with teaching a seminar in international security and i was by necessity reading in in that area -- i'm teaching a graduate seminar this semester -- and i was struck by something. and the something that i was

struck by was nuclear weapons. i was struck by the fact that -- and if i was titling this, it would be "nuclear weapons: they're back." and i was surprised by that, frankly. i mean, i dealt -- that was my area of expertise when i was in government for all those decades, and i thought there was a progression downward. and now they were back, but in most interesting ways. so what i'd like to do tonight, if you all will bear with me, is to go through a little bit of where we've been to get a better appreciation of where we are. and by that i literally mean that i would like to take you on a little horseback ride through 70 years of our thinking on nuclear weapons, the theories of deterrence, of vulnerability, of stability and of credibility.

i don't think without this, without an appreciation for this historical context we are best able to understand where we are today given the complexities of the current situation. so cut me some slack here, is what i'm asking for. it's 70 years, quick ride up to where we are. i'm going to do it by decade to make it more packaged as a presentation. so beginning then, naturally, in the 1940s, this was a period marked by the -- two of the words that i'm going to be using -- vulnerability and deterrence. as you all know, this was a period in which two things came together in technological innovation. one was the delivery vehicle, the v2. it became clear that a ballistic missile will get through.

i know there's a phrase that goes to bombers, but the ballistic missile does get through, and one could argue it still gets through if there are enough of them, certainly. and the second unnovation was the -- innovation was the atomic bomb. putting these two things together, what the 1940s meant to us in our thinking was a unique vulnerability which this nation had never seen before. i could develop that, that's another talk, but that -- it goes from the 19th century and all that we went through and the early 20th century, the mid 20th century, and at that point we recognized that we had actually no way to accomplish what the strategists had called defense by denial. we had no way to deny access to the united states of america.

the ballistic missile will get through, and the what we called the atomic bomb would mean one sorti or one launch means one city. and that was a unique vulnerability for the united states of america which had been protected by a state it could dominate to its south, a state which was friendly to its north and oceans on either side and a very competent navy. that setting which made our involvement in two world wars controversial for some people was no longer the setting in which we lived. and that's the message of the 1940s. it meant that we were without defense by denial, so we were accomplishing defense by deterrence. now, we had had defense by

deterrence b right? but it was deterrence by denial. there's a great book "deterrence before hiroshima." right, but that was deterrence by denial, but having a very substantial defense so that anybody that presumed to attack would have to overcome that defense and by simple cost benefit analysis did not make sense. it's also the swiss theory of defense. they can't actually accomplish absolute denial, but they can raise the cost. right? this was a different kind of defense, of deterrence. this was deterrence by punishment. and this was conceptually a critical difference. this meant we could not accomplish denial. there was no cost there. what we could accomplish, though, is punishment. it's a psychological concept, and we were trading an awful lot; ships and armies and all

kinds of things that gave us a physical defense by denial in exchange for no ability to really deny, but an ability to pun,. which punish. which is supposed to act on the mind. after we're whacked -- to put it in the southern italian vernacular -- the whacker can get whacked by the whackee. and that's what the '40s meant. another element of all this, of course, is the impossibility of knowing when this kind of deterrence works. be i presume here -- the if i presume here to deter duncan from attacking me by telling him that i have a spider coe knife and that if he attacks me, i

will survive sufficiently to stab him and punish him, and i'm going to say i'm deterring duncan from this. now, i'll never know whether deterrence works, because i've just deterred duncan or i haven't. it's a counterfactual. my proposition is that if i did not have this spider coe knife which i claim that i have, then he would have me. but that's not true, right? pause he doesn't attack me -- because he doesn't attack me, so i never know. i only know when deterrence fails. if duncan gets up and whacks me, i never know my deterrent failed. i can claim it succeeded, but i can't actually prove it. all right. some elements of deterrence. we move into the 1950s, a decade you might call the dullest years in the terms we're now talking. it's marked by words credibility and stability. we move in technological terms

from the fission weapon of the '40s to the thermonuclear weapon of the 50es. 50s mr. chairman and orders of magnitude here, if the weapon was close to 20 kill lo tons -- kill tons, the nominal weapon was a hundred times greater. bigger, but also smaller. a hundred times greater. remember those pictures of hiroshima and nagasaki, everything's leveled, you see chimneys here and there that are stone things that survived. that's a weapon. hiroshima, maybe 12 kilotons, nagasaki maybe 18, but multiply that by 20, and you don't see chimneys anymore. you see a crater. a different concept in terms of levels of destruction. in addition to that, of course, many more ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

we thought and hoped, and the terms we've been talking, that these weapons would allow us to put out a theory of deterrence, a policy, a doctrine of massive retaliation, and with that statement of massive retaliation, we could deter everything and maybe even compel some things. over a period of years, 1950s, the truth emerged that we could actually compel nothing and only really be confident of deterrence of an attack on the homeland. but ore things -- other things very hard to deal with. we wished, apparently, to help the french. certainly these nuclear weapons were not going with to do it. we might have wished, some did, to do something about the russian move on hungary in 1956. these weapons had nothing too