domestic economies, and we see it in energy markets around the world where we see increased constraints around international investment agreements, really becoming constructive as compared to the past when they were quite open and willing to let international forum investments flow quite freely. ..

>> business z to thrive need the ability to mauve capital -- to move capital and talent freely without hassle and across borders. as we see the increase in the nationalism around many fronts in the world, we see that at odds in the multi-national businesses that become less capable of dealing with localized politics. this is creating conflicts certainly, between the business. -- within the businesses. we are seeing as well a significant increase in the amount of the gross domestic product globally that is produced in medium to high political risk environments around the world. so that's increased over the last decade of 15% of global gdp coming from medium to high political risk environments to 39% in the last year. and that means we're trading a lot more with higher political

risk environments around the world. the economic output of the world is going towards those environments. and if we look at the last year, we see the political risks increasing in a variety of ways. we see it in a series of coup d'etats from around the world from thailand to burkina faso. we see it in significant security crisis around the world, ukraine and yemen are great examples. we see it as the possible end of a political dynasty in cuba most recently and we see it in what used to be very stable and predictable environments becoming less predictable; poland sweden and spain, all great examples of what were very stable. so this is really creating an environment where historically safe areas around the world are less stable, less predictable and much more complex for businesses operating in those environments. and i think the final point that i would add is sort of a global

theme is with the proliferation of technology around the world and weaker state power, so governments being less powerful than they have historically been, we're seeing this change the way terrorists are doing business. if we look at technology itself, it's really changing how the nonstate actors, so talk the islamic state -- take the islamic state is able to hold and project power around the world. and the competition between the old jihad, the al-qaeda network, and the new jihad, the islamic state, is increasing, and technology is really aiding the ability of the islamic state to proliferate its voice and its power around the world itself. we're seeing obviously we can't read a newspaper on any day without reading about the cyber attacks that are occurring around the world. we think 2015 is really going to

increase the proliferation of cyber attacks especially as groups, criminal groups, terrorist networks, etc., learn from each other and start using those tactics in different ways. so we're going to see, if you will cyber jihad u.s.es begin to learn from organized crime -- jihadists begin to learn from organized crime and use malware organized by criminal networks for their purposes. we're going to see certainly criminals use mall war that was crafted for state-level or state-sponsored espionage for their purposes. and we're going to see the proliferation of nationalists, cyber hackers or freelance cyber recruits start acting on behalf of nationalist governments in order to project their power and their will. and the weak law enfor and international framework currently around cyber protections is go continue, and we'll see weak law

enforcement, enforcement in certain areas like india and brazil and south africa enable those environments to be breeding grounds for continued cyber activism, etc. and finally, i would just add that we will probably see a large increase in the amount of cyber attacksy chains around the world. as those supply chains are largely operated by multi-national companies which have become easy targets, again back to that same nationalism that we're seeing emerge across the world itself. so i think without taking too much time i'll save perhaps for question and answers what we might see from russia, what we might see from iraq and syria and other places around the world, china or elsewhere, for an open panel discussion and hand back to you, janine. >> great thanks. go ahead. >> well, first, happy new year to everyone. and i'm hoping that as we talk about what to worry about in

2015, that as a result of the actions that you all take at the end of the year, we can talk about the wars that were prevented in 2015. and let me thank paul and janine and jim for allowing me to participate in this panel. i think it's important to recognize that we start each year not with a tab la raza -- tab you la raza, that we start with the history now unfortunately, the realities of history, power, ideological fervor. the past year saw crises flare out in almost every corner of the globe. the handout that our new president, former undersecretary general for peace keeping at the u.n. under kofi, has put out indicates ten of the three conflicts that we see likely in 2015. i've added a couple where i think there's a greater likelihood of direct impact if

you don't, unfortunately, if they occur for the u.s., u.s. national security. there are a series of crises waiting to happen that will be trigger ored by faulty elections -- triggered by faulty elections, economic mismanagement and corruption succession issues and/or a combination of the above. in sri lanka, perhaps as early as tomorrow. nigeria, next month. venezuela, later this year. zimbabwe thailand central asia. and there are additional risks in all of the west africa ebola-affected countries which are barely a decade out of conflict and attempting to recover from civil conflicts that want to cross all their borders. now, the only good news that i see coming up in 2015 very quickly, colombia. i believe there will be a peace agreement. the last couple of days you had

farc announce an immediate and indefinite cease fire, and president santos announced an end to on thive military -- offensive military actions. i think there'll be an agreement before the end of the year. second cuba. normalization of relations with cuba really does put an end to the cold war. we have not seen obviously any opening of political space in cuba but we had 50 years of an isolation policy that clearly failed in that regard. and third and probably the most important in terms of impact on the united states is and the rest of the world is the slim possibility of a nuclear arms agreement with iran. from an analytic point of view it's in the interests of both countries and the region. on iran, however, there's a darker side which is why you'll see it listed as one of the potential conflicts in 2015. so what are the four trends that unfortunately, we see likely to produce more conflict

in this coming year? and first, as we've already herald, it's the return of geo-- heard, the return of geopolitical competition, hostility among the great powers and an exacerbation of regional competition leading to a less controlled and less predictable world. the most obvious expression is between russia and the west that's upset the post-cold war paradigm in dangerous ways. beyond that rivalry we've also seen unsettling risk taking. this is one of the areas where i've added between china and japan and china and southeast asia countries, particularly the philippines. and we can go into why. but no one really knows whether there's any kind of effective early warning mechanisms in the event of accidental military clashes as a result of china's more aggressive deployments. and finally -- the second trend is the jihadi group glossary is growing in numbers and arenas.

often reinforcing one another and producing brutal acts obviously, of terrorism, human suffering and realtime national security threats. now, i think that it's important to recognize that we have not been automobile to deal with one of -- not been able to deal with one of the scariest aspects of their continuing ability to recruit new members from large, disenfranchised, presumably disenchanted youth populations around the world. and that reflects government's failure to provide a sense of opportunity for that population. third, the international community -- and here's where we have much more of an opportunity to do something where we failed -- the international community continues to accept imperfect peace processes and to be accessories to failed transitions in which the u.s. and other western bulwarks of what should be an effective international system of peace

and security and justice arrive too late offer too little and depart too fast. and we saw that in iraq and we saw that in many of the african conflicts as well. you could look at car, how many agreements mali, sudan south sudan. and what also needs to be examined -- and hopefully the current secretary general mandated u.n. peacekeeping will do that -- is whether those nations with more capable militaries than most regional forces whose security council votes establish those peacekeeping operations should do more to contribute to financing in the future. and finally as in the past weak corrupt states continue to set the stage for internal wars. usually with external enablers. and while this is often portrayed in some cases partly accurately as a lack of capacity much more frequently a question of political will.

so you have the list in front of you. i'm just going to talk about one, because i think it's crucial to u.s. national security and international stability, and that's ukraine and russia. from the standpoint of the obama administration and for the european union it's one of the most dangerous situations in the world, and it's coming to a head this spring. what i mean by that -- and you'll see we have a report published just a few weeks ago on the makeup of the eastern ukraine separatists, how they think, what they think and the relationship with russia. and the report describes hopefully, a way forward to avoid that clash. but the reality is that since the beginning of this year you've had 5000 deaths, a thousand since the ceasefire agreement in minsk in september. you have more than 540,000 displaced persons, and this winter -- a very cold winter --

you see increasingly vulnerable, large scale human suffering in eastern ukraine. and while no one can easily predict russia's next steps, even if there's less than a 10% chance of a new russian military action the wes must plan i how it -- the west must plan how it will respond, and we don't see that. we also don't see enough action taken to discourage some of the voices in kiev about the possibility of a military action by the ukrainians in the spring against the eastern ukrainian oblas which would undoubtedly offer an excuse to president putin. that's the one area that i would single out. obviously, we talked in the report syria, iraq, lebanon, isis the serious problems that are faced there china and

japan, china and philippines particularly, pakistan. and i would emphasize the concern in pakistan is about still the failure to see any kind of strategic change in the way they view the relationship with certain jihadist groups. they obviously are going after in a very serious way much of the ttp but we've yet to see them take serious action against l.e.t. which raises the issue with india and we don't see any action with the haqqani nation in relation to afghanistan. and why don't i end there and just to note that if you think that the secretary of state, secretary of defense expect president don't have anything to worry about in 2015, you're wrong. [laughter] >> excellent. paul, go ahead. >> thanks, janine. let me echo my appreciation to the co-panelists and all of you

for coming out here today. always good to see you, and this is, i think, at least the third or fourth year that mark and i have done this briefing at the beginning of january, and it's always a lot of fun. what i thought i would do in this short time i have is just give you a brief overview of the findings, if you will, of our annual preventive priorities survey. many of you actually participate in this each year. essentially, the end of each year we poll around 2,000 experts both within the u.s. government and outside and ask them to rank 30 contingencies that we consider plausible. in fact, we do a kind of crowd sourcing exercise earlier in the year to take suggestions of what those 30 contingencies will be. and it's essentially a risk assessment. it's not just asking people what they think is the likelihood of these particular crises happening or conflicts escalating, but also -- and this

is, i think, an important distinction two with many other -- from many other exercises of in this we ask them to rank hem in terms of their importance to u.s. national interest. and we give some criteria for allowing people to make that judgment. and on the basis of that we distill the results and we put them into these three tiers of relative priorities. so in terms -- i'm not going to go through the whole list, obviously, but what i thought i'd do is focus on i think, the three, i think the three concerns that i take to be of most concern to the respondents to the survey. and i think there are sort of three clusters. i think the first is the intensification of the conflict in syria and iraq and concurrently the potential for a major deterioration of the situation in afghanistan. and i think the concern here is the fear that the u.s. will be pulled back into both theaters.

and we're seeing some aspects of this. the mission in afghanistan has been extended, advisers have gone back into iraq with the likelihood of intensified operations in iraq in the coming months. there's a possibility of u.s. more direct involvement of u.s. in addition, of course, to the air operations. so i would say that's sort of the first cluster of concern. the second is i think as mark says concern over both an intensification or deterioration of the situation in eastern ukraine and concurrently the possibility of another flare-up or flashpoint in south china sea. and both obviously raise the risk of the u.s. developing a more adversarial relationship with russia and china. obviously, it has profound

implications not just for our security but for cooperation on a whole range of global issues. and i think that came through very much in the survey. the third is as sort of these hearty perennials as i call them, concern over the nuclear-related activities of north korea and iran. and there are some signs that, obviously in the case of iran that the agreement the temporary agreement or provisional agreement has, will not last, and that might sort of unravel. there's always an abiding concern about the unpredicts about of north korea -- unpredictability of north korea. we've seen this in recent weeks with allegations of the hacking activity. and so here again, of course, is the concern that the u.s. will be directly involved in any escalation of those two conflicts. so they are, i think the three

main themes. i just want to add that there are, i think, some outlier concerns that also came through in the survey and i also think are worthy of us paying attention to. in no particular order, deterioration of the situation in the west bank, third intifada. i think that there are signs we could be on the cusp of a major eruption of palestinian-related violence on the west bank. there are all kinds of indicators of that. the upcoming elections in nigeria, i think, could be extremely violent and have profound implications for the stability of that country. thirdly, the power transition underway in zimbabwe could also unraffle in ways that -- unravel in ways that are unpredictable and also violent. yemen, the situation there has deteriorated in recent weeks.

major bombing, in fact, today 35 people were killed in an attack today, right? and finally thailand. there's always concerns about how the royal succession will play out there and the instability that is sort of latent in that country. so there are the kinds of other areas that i would be mindful of in the coming year. thank you. >> great. um, reading through some of the work that you all have done and listening to you here, it strikes me as, you know, there are just so many different ways to think through what may happen and what that means. i mean what i think is interesting about paul's work is that you really try to say these are most likely, moderately likely, you know not very likely and then also this is most consequential versus least consequential. and with respect to primarily the united states, right? >> through a u.s. listens. >> so it's -- lens.

is. >> so it's very highly scoped. sort of the so what because lots of bad things are going to happen in the world. so you've got this most likely lens which all of us can think about. most dangerous is something mark talked about, but not always clear most dangerous to who? most dangerous and violent to civilians and regular people? nobody's mentioned much of central america which is, i think, one of the most dangerous places in the world. is it because why? you know because we can't do anything about it? because it doesn't affect us much? most impactful, which is a word i hate, most disruptive. most disruptive to who, to the united states' interest? most destabilizing to the international system? and i think also, jim, your lens is more towards global business and would be -- so things that are disruptive as opposed to

violence. you can have places that are inconsequential to the global economy spiral completely out of control and really pull at our heart strings from a human rights perspective or really gross us out in other ways. and it wouldn't really necessarily be at the top of your list. so i just, you know, seeing the different ways in which you can look at these i think, as we ask questions and try to tease out some more of these issues, i think it's important to sort of present what lens you're looking at, at this with first. so let me just, with that in mind, what is your sort of response to this, you know none of these lists or none of these lenses really do take on the sort of issue of, you know, just horrendous violence that could potentially, you know, spin out of control in places like central america because they're not normal conflicts necessarily. or how do you see that in the context of -- >> actually, in the past we

did -- central america dropped out this year only because the other countries are are those where the likelihood of deadly violence actually is greater in terms both of numbers and in terms of something new. there is violence in central america, transnational crime continues to produce a huge number, but it actually has increased in the past year. >> okay. >> and it's also one of the reasons why we did include this year both libya and south sudan and sudan as a link, was -- because the conflict in south sudan is directly linked to sudan supporting the rebels in suit sudan and sudan's own internal violence against, in darfur and blue nile. and we see that level of violence increasing in both places during the year unfortunately. so it is a matter of looking at this coming year where to we

see the likelihood of greater deadly violence, greater impact on, in this case, my looking at it was u.s. national enters and in the case of the group as a whole was the fox on overall -- was the focus on overall instability globally. >> great clarifications. paul? >> yeah. we, i think the potential from spillover from mexico was classified as a tier ii, second level priority in our survey, and i think what -- as you alluded to, janine, a lot of people have a hard time grouping what is essentially criminal violence related to organized crime in central america and mexico with more political violence and sort of more identifiable type conflict and where does that fit in. i think we all recognize in terms of the number of people affected and killed and so on

criminal violence is extremely costly, and the numbers are horrific from central america. and if they were occurring anywhere else, it would be classified as a war probably. >> politically driven. >> right. we also recognize that political violence has a criminal element too, and so there's this sort of blurring of the two. but it always leads to the problem of how you classify it and, therefore how you rank it and what does one deserve more attention than the other and so on. >> as you look at it, i mean you raise the point whether it's the humanitarian side in that aspect of the crisis or for business. certainly from a controlled risk perspective, the world is open for business everywhere. it's a matter save potentially north korea, but what do you need to do to operate and mitigate the risks in those environments and succeed and what's the cost of doing so. so while if you look in central america's a great example, not a lot of foreign direct investment

relative to other parts of the globe in central america. you see the risk from criminal activity organized crime certainly the risk of violence in guatemala and el salvador particularly increasing last year all for organized crime. it doesn't get a lot of attention in the international media or elsewhere. and on the other hand you see mexico and mexico has very -- is very well covered from a security risk standpoint, but you see high levels of direct investment, you see a very close tie with the united states, with the dollar itself. you see an influx of manufacturing into mexico particularly in the aerospace and heavy industrial space because the risks are manageable. if you understand them and you put it in the right context. it has very business friendly environments, it's going through, certainly labor sector reform as well as the hydrocarbon reforms that's opening up for the first time in recent constitutional history in

mexico the ability for foreign concessions in the oil and gas industry. so a huge change within that environment which is driving a lot more attention. >> um, i'm going to ask one more sort of question. you made a very interesting comment, mark. you said something like the international community, they arrive too late they do too little and day they depart too fast. and i'm thinking about these teetering conflicts for 2015, and you mentioned colombia. you might also think about myanmar or some other places, libya, where we're going there. but, you know the degree to which the norms associated with the international communities' intervention into peace and conflict resolution associated with human rights. and i think it was one of the other reports where you said we need to sort of moderate that a little bit. i mean, are the international communities' standards for human rights and the idea about war

crimes tribunals and retribution after the fact undermining our ability to get to yes in places like colombia where you have both sides that have pretty bad track records all wondering, you know, what's going to happen fife years from now or ten years from now, you know? how do you get beyond that? how do you manage these very important set of human rights and values norms with the international community and the need to get to peace in these other conflicts? >> actually, we focused on traditional justice in the colombia with the report that looked at how do you move forward in dell cooing with the -- dealing with the question of impunity for maas atrocities? -- mass atrocities? at the same time, do you enable a peace agreement to take place? and we believe that, in fact that the colombia and the farc negotiators are conscious of the need to deal with that issue in an effective way because if you

don't deal with that issue of accountability, if you don't deal with the issue of somebody being held accountable the very least to tell the truth about those mass atrocities, it's unlikely that a peace agreement is going to hold. so what we've argued is there is a way to deal with this issue that holds some accountable, at the same time recognizes the need to view the political consequences of continuing in the conflict which will be more victims reaching an agreement now that puts an end to it. and we think they're pretty much down the path of finding the right balance. the other point you mentioned, i think, at the outset is important to focus on which is that when we go into a postconflict situation we -- the international community and the u.s -- have to recognize that this is not a three years ask you're out situation. that you're not going to rebuild, help countries rebuild institutions that are going to sustain peace in a short time period. the world bank development

report about three years ago basically said it takes 17 years on average to get from war with a peace agreement to sustainable talkingses and peace. and that the idea after three or four or five years that you've done it is simply mistaken. and that's also what paul collier found in his studies. my point simply is that we have to recognize that if we're going to assist countries in reaching a peace agreement and sustaining one, that we have to be there a lot longer. and we should know it now in the case of iraq. leaving iraq in the way that we did clearly did not produce in its wake stable government institutions and a stable security force. and i suspect that's the reason why in afghanistan now we're basically saying well, maybe we better rethink whether we should pull all of the troops out on the same timeline or at least with respect to combat enablers insure that the ansf has the

capacity to withstand what is likely to be -- and we've already seen -- accelerated taliban attacks over the course of the next several years. >> anybody else want to comment? >> i'd just make the sort of general point that most of these conflicts with very few exceptions are all internal conflicts, and you're constantly grappling with how to reconcile these sort of universal norms of sovereignty and nonintervention with these growing norms of human rights and responsibility to protect. and, you know there's no good formula for reconciling this. the problem is, and this is the real challenge is that as relations amongst the major powers -- particularly those who are the permanent members of national, of, excuse me, of the u.n. security council who can veto any action by the u.n. to provide legitimacy to dealing with this once their relations

fray, then the prospects of getting that high level consensus to actually put aside these general principles become extremely hard. and then you've got a gridlock world in which these local conflicts fester, and tensions increase, and almost by definition the international community will come to those conflicts late and find them very difficult to deal with. and we all know that coming late means they're usually a lot harder to deal with, and that's the challenge we're going to face. >> i think mark's comments on colombia are exactly right. i think colombia's going to be a good news story. i think certainly the paramilitary, etc. have all been significantly degraded over the last decade a lot through foreign assistance, u.s. funding, etc., to the point where there's a real ability to get that agreement and i think it's being handled very well and will come to a good conclusion. i think if we draw back to the

global governance system i think one of the challenges we're seeing on the global stage itself is as governments around the world have refocused on domestic politics and we saw sort of really the push to the g20 to start being a larger global governance group, we're seeing that it doesn't have the maturity and the diplomatic space actually to handle global crises. and we've certainly seen over the last year real weakness globally in hard power and, certainly, the limits to it. i think as we put that as a backdrop to everything going on, these local crises sort of diminish in significance on a global stage. there's no will to act which is quite a difficult position to be in. >> i want to go ahead and open it up for questions. remember we're on the record. there are microphones and so if you could raise your hand and also state your name and affiliation and talk into the microphone that would be great. right here in the front. >> [inaudible]

capital trust group. one country that is critical to the global economy and energy prices in 215 is yaib ya, yet none -- saudi arabia yet none of you mentioned saudi arabia. saudi arabia's surrounded by problems in iran, in yemen in iraq, in syria, you had the terror threats and i would like your assessment on that subject. also there could be a succession issue in the 215. >> i'm -- >> go ahead. >> we're kept to seven minutes. [laughter] saudi arabia's definitely there. it's definitely there. when i mentioned one of the trends in terms of e geopolitical competition and regional rivalries, the rivalry between saudi arabia and iran is a fundamental driver of the conflict in the region. and what we, i think what we're concerned about is trying to see whether there's a way to duh minish that -- diminish that

conflict in order to help deal with the role that each are playing in syria with respect to in yemen and at the same time one of the concerns that we have about saudi arabia which is a partner in many ways in counterterrorism effort is what saudi arabia can do to help diminish the level of financing of jihadi madrassas in pakistan which continues to be a driving force for the pakistan taliban. and so when you talk about saudi arabia, it is a fundamental concern in the region and elsewhere. >> just if i could add, you know, it comes up every year. this year it was not mentioned as a particular concern, and that was interesting why that was the case and i think there was, you know, in retrospect there's been some fear that with

the prices falling, balance of payments issue is becoming a bigger problem in the kingdom there could be more unrest. we keep sort of probing experts on the kingdom to get their assessment, and they feel that it's still fundamentally a stable place. the king and others essentially through various payments bought off dissent, and they have the resources to do this indefinitely, and it will remain a table place. now -- a stable place. now, i'm not an expert on saudi arabia. i'm always nervous when people make those pronouncements because next day you read on the front page there's been a coup or something else. so i'm always worried about that, but we, you know, this is continuingly the dog that doesn't seem to bark in terms of political instability. so interpret that how you will. >> other questions? yes, barry.

>> hi, barry blackman, stimson center. mark, it's no doubt true that these conflicts would be greatly helped if the international community could go sooner, stay longer and understand that you can't get in and out in a short time. but i don't know who is going to do that. i mean, we all here can recognize that, but it's certainly not the europeans entering a period of deflation and rising nationalism with a xenophobic element to it, and it's not the united states. and, you know, john mccain and lindsey graham can hold their breath until they turn blue, but the united states and the congress are not going to support ground forces in iraq.

no matter what happens there. so i don't know if you have any suggestions about what happens to the these conflicts if they are forced to resolve them more or less on their own or to continue the persistent conflicts. >> i think first, i'm not willing to accept that it's not the united states to engage more actively and over longer period of time in some of these areas. not all. but i think let's just take the question of syria. the u.s. now has said that there's a need to more effectively support the moderate rebels and that has, that is one element in dealing effectively with the threat of isis. i suspect that that means that there's going to be more even beyond what's already been discussed in support of those moderate forces. and three years ago that wouldn't have been even within the realm of possibility.

i think there's, currently there is beginning to have some u.s. military involved with some of the u.n. peacekeeping forces in africa in south sudan, in carr, in providing let's say planning. i suspect that that might be possible to increase because one thing that the u.s. clearly has said is that mass atrocityies and seeing another i rwanda is not acceptable. and i suspect that there's a broader range of political support for trying to insure that that doesn't happen. now, how you manage it and how you put it together i grant you, there's no there's no clear road map. but i suspect that it may be possible to see more u.s. direct involvement in supporting effective peacekeeping. >> i just add something quick? >> sure, go ahead. >> you know, we've seen this

video before, barry and you remember the early '90, almost the same constellation of factors in terms of our, you know, the lack of political will to intervene and then things flipped very quickly. and so, you know, just because there is this very unpromising environment for doing things early and getting intervening and so on doesn't mean to say it's going the stay that way. so i think the other trend you're likely to see is greater empowerment of some of the regional organizations rather than hoping for the u.n. to sort of ride to the rescue, that we will see coalitions within the leading organizations, regional organizations maybe being more active, whether it's the a.u. gcc, i'm not sure about asean i'm not sure about oec but certainly some of these. they will take matters into their own hands i think, and you could see that.

>> i mean, i think as we look at different environments, i think the u.s. has always been very good at planning military assistance in the form of planning training in assistance of foreign governments around the world either overtly or through proxy, and i think that'll long continue and expand and ebb and flow in different directions. i think we need a much stronger push towards countries around the world also taking stronger ownership. if you look at the islamic state in iraq, it is not going to be solved -- the issues are not going to be solved by an air campaign, and it's not going to be necessary necessarily solved by boots on the ground, and there are no credible ground soldiers that'll go into iraq any place around the world. iraq needs to take control of its own political system and allow inclusive involvement across the spectrum in order to get durable change that's going to support a defeat of the islamist state in iraq.

and it's not likely. in fact, it's more likely drifting towards full sectarian violence right now and will likely look more like syria in the months ahead than it does the old iraq. >> i think also just -- i'm going to add something to in this, because it seems like we're, the conversation is sort of focused on boots on the ground intervention, military things. and in this 17-year thing you're talking about, there are so many other things that need to be done. and i think you saw this in libya, right? it didn't necessarily mean we had to have a robust american military intervention and presence over a long period of time, but we needed to do other things to help the libyans or, in this case the afghans to sort of take control of the peace that they potentially could have. and it's that teetering middle right there that i think there is probably more of an appetite for those kinds of things even though they're not sexy and big

and they don't get a lot of news that may actually be helpful. there's just more appetite for that or more ability to do that if you have the political will than big interventions like i think is driving that lack of appetite that you may be talking about. over, in the back there. >> tom downing with the middle east broadcasting. i want to follow up on the saudi arabia question with a question about egypt. it is, obviously, potentially an explosive place and mark, it's been that way for 2000 years so i don't think the 17-year world bank rule applies there. so could all of you or some of you comment on the egyptian economy, the lack of reform in egypt and the egyptian the egyptian effort against terrorism, and that includes

egyptian/israeli relations which i think are warming up, strangely. >> who wants to take that one? >> tom, thank you, as always. i think that the reason that it's not on the list is not because it's a problem in egypt for the region or for the united states. it's that we don't see an explosion of deadly violence likely. unfortunately, there's likely to be a continuation of the same. obviously, economic problems a unfortunate continued political closing space within the country that's not going to move in the direction that we would like, democratic opening that we would like but it's also unlikely to result in major civil conflict internally over the next year. and at the point that you just made it's relative to the relationship of conflict in us

rail and palestine that egypt is appears to be a stabilizing force many that regard at the moment. that's the reason. >> i would just point three things. one is the economy, as you point out, quite precarious. essentially being heavily subsidized by the gulf countries, and if that were to end, i'm not sure, you know i think egypt would go into insolvency if that were to happen. this is very ugly and burgeoning insurgency in the sinai. the government has done a very poor job -- well, good job in alienating the bedouin tripe -- tribe there, and that has sort of cross-national problems and that group now i think, is formally affiliated with isis. so that's a concern. and i think thirdly um, i think many of us or worry about still the strong latent support for

the brotherhood and how that might manifest itself in the long term if there's no real reform politically inside egypt. >> we have a question over here. >> i'm perry -- [inaudible] with the state department. to paraphrase the great political theorist owely berra, prediction's hard especially about the future. and thinking about some of the most important geopolitical events in the past years, it would be the annexation of crimea, fall of mosul and we knew with the removal of yanukovych, we had a very unstable situation. obviously, people were waiting for the spillover of iraq -- the syrian civil war to have a spillover effect in iraq, but i think, you know, i guess the question is how as you think through your presentations, how do we structurally prepare ourselves for these black swans?

we can't make con contingencies, but maybe there are structural things we can do that we're more adept that when these black swans do arrive, that we're a little more nimble on our feet and can be a little more proactive as opposed to being stuck in a kind of reactionary mode. thanks. >> let me start. i took a look at all of the countries that or organizations that had listed as likely conflicts from 2011 until now, and there's only two that we missed. and one was, one was ukraine. and the other one was the -- was isis as a separate conflict, if you will. it wasn't iraq. we all saw the failure to establish inclusive institutions

including the sunnis in iraq as a precipitator or likely violence and civil conflict. that we saw. what we didn't see was isis. and in the case of ukraine, we really -- we saw the internal conflict, we did not see the russian, likelihood of a russian military action that went across international borders and put together the results in terms of cry -- crimea. in terms of trends, it goes back to janine's point, is that what we all, i think, all of us recognized but we haven't been able to figure out how to do it perfectly is the need to strengthen institutions in these countries, in these fragile countries. economic institutions political institutions and civilian law enforcement institutions. that protect citizens and give citizens the feeling that they are protected. and that it's not a power structure for its own interests that uses security forces for

its own interests and the widespread population simply is left out of it. >> i mean, i would just add to that a i think certainly if we look across the last let's just pick decade, we could go any period of time, but the world has moved increasingly away from being able to come up with multilateral agreements. and over last couple years we've seen more unilateral agreements, and i think we're seeing as people really begin, countries really begin to focus on investic politics we're seeing -- domestic politics, we're seeing multilateralism globally. and i think the way to get beyond -- we do need to strengthen institutions we do need to strengthen the law enforcement apparatus and criminal justice system, etc. all the institution-building things within environments around the world because we're never going to see the black swans, and we shouldn't be in the business of trying to predict everything that's going to happen. we need to actually refocus on a global governance system and bringing together the parties to

actually get back to multilateral cooperation to solve acute crises that emerge that we don't see in advance. >> paul? >> i'd just make a general point. i think we're enamored with the idea that if we can just tweak or improve our early warning we will see these thicks coming -- these things coming and be able to do something about it. i think this is just a chimera, it's a false idea and instead of trying to improve early warning or at least in putting everything on early warning as your trigger for action for early preventivity action, that we should move -- preventive action, that we should move more to what i call this foresight risk assessment process in which we try to anticipate areas of risk without necessarily trying to be precise about how a potential crisis might evolve. and on the basis of that, start taking early preventive and

preparatory measures. we also missed ukraine in last year's survey. but we've had it before. we've done what we -- we do these regular contingency planning exercises here, and we did ukraine several years ago. we did egypt -- we've done sabia. this is not rocket science -- we've done saudi arabia. this is not rocket science to see where certain places are at risk of instability and moreover have real consequences. and that's the key. it's combining not only the risk of something happening but also an appreciation that if it were to happen, that there would be serious implications. and that should drive early action rather than waiting for these precise definite signals. because by the time you get that certainty, it's too late. it's already happening by definition. so we've got to get away from this early warning paradigm, in

my view, and move to more of this sort of anticipatory, strategic foresight approach. >> even then we don't necessarily know what to do about it. >> that's a whole other issue. of. [laughter] >> it's a problem, though, because you can have these little shocks to the system like what happened in ukraine even though we saw bad things simmering, but even when we see it happening we still wring our hands and wag our fingers and we're not quite sure what to do. and i think, you know that's part of the work that you do, you know? how do you think through how to prevent what is potentially likely to happen and i think that stymies a lot of our ability not only to act in advance, but sometimes to act at all. and so that's part of the problem as well. in the back. i think we have time for this may be the last question. >> jim loeb, interprison service. just -- interpress service. just to go back on what mr. brooks said global governance should be the focus. what are the implications, if any, of an increase of

republicans in the u.s. congress? >> i give that to paul? [laughter] >> be my guest. >> um, you know i'm optimistic, actually, that certainly with time we're going to realize finish and i think we're probably, already there or nearing on the verge of a breakthrough -- that american politics is about inclusiveness and working on both sides of the aisle, and we are going to move away from being bitterly opposed on two sides of the aisle and get pack to actually having -- get back to actually with having considerations, substantive considerations that will move us back into a position to reassert ourselves in a global leadership role that's positive, to support the development and diplomat you can maturity of smaller governments around the world and to really do what we wanted to do for the last couple years,

push the costs of their security back onto them and not shoulder that so much within the u.s. economy itself. >> my comment is from your lips to god's ears. [laughter] but, and i do hope that that, in fact occurs. i will say though that it does seem to me that one test will be the degree to which there is a bipartisan response on a series of the issues that we've been talking about. on ukraine there needs to be at the very least a really thoughtful effort to help that country move towards and in a sense push them towards the reforms that everybody knows need to take place internally. on libya and the sahel when i talked about too little too late and departing too soon, the lack of security sector reform dealing with those illegal armed militias in libya early on was the major reason we are where we

are today. and it seems to me that there's a way to have a bipartisan recognition of that and a greater degree of active, positive support for making that happen. i would just say the same kind of issue, not getting in early and doing something on the central african republic before it exploded, was also available. and hopefully in the future we'll see greater bipartisan willingness to deal with those issues. >> i'll cede my time to one last question. >> all right. one last -- oh no, one last question. right here in the middle. >> thank you. i'm amy hawthorne from the atlantic council. we saw today the terrible attack in paris, and obviously we don't know exactly what took place or who was behind it, but assuming that it was a jihadist group acting in some fashion against

not just civilian targets, but civilian targets for a very specific political reason using a level of sophistication, this seems to me to be a potential game changer. so i'm wondering if we we were to see other attacks like this in the west, first of all, do you think that's possible and, secondly if that did happen, what would the impact be in the international system on u.s. foreign policy european foreign policy and so forth? thank you. >> do you want to start with that jim? >> i'm happy to start with that. while i'm not going to speculate on the details surrounding today's incident in paris, i will say certainly if we look at it from a european perspective, i see no possibility of a sustained terrorist campaign across europe in inty way. i think we will continue to see sporadic localized incidents that occur. you know same thing we see within africa itself. i think certainly the counterterrorism campaign going on globally -- which is,

frankly, a concerted international effort -- is going to keep at bay any large scale global network sustained attacks on a global basis itself. so i think that is the good news. i think the home grown terrorists, the lone actor those sorts of things, we're probably going to see more frequent localized attacks occurring in europe, in africa depending, west and east africa perhaps spreading down to tanzania next year as well. >> i agree. i think, actually, i would also say that it's unlikely that you're not going to see some individual actions like that that hit the united states. we were successful at the u.n. in getting the resolution adopted to go, essentially, to work to prevent foreign fighters from coming back. but it's impossible to stop every one. but it does go, again, to what i

said earlier which is we need to do a better job to focus on those pools of disenchanted young people and figure out how we can encourage governments around the world to offer greater opportunities to them. and otherwise strengthen civilian law enforcement in the process. not to take actions which reduce civil rights and civil liberties hoar or abroad -- here or abroad. >> fine line. >> i think this is going to play out in three ways in europe. one is in terms of the debate in europe at the moment about immigration. and as you know there's a surprising anti-immigrant sentiment in many countries and i think again, we don't to know the details of what happened here, but i think this could sort of resonate in that debate. it's going to, secondly, have an impact on this whole question of surveillance, public surveillance of, you know,

communications, media and so on. and i think it could affect how people what they're prepared to accept in that area. and i think thirdly in terms of certainly again in european context, in internal border controls and checks as anyone who travels in europe knows, you know once you're in that region in europe you can travel right across europe without any kind of check on who you are what you're doing and so on. and a nice thing, but i think that's going to possibly change, certainly if there's another incident of this kind. >> very good. well, we're out of time. any wrap-up comments very very briefly? >> oh, just to thank you all for coming here again and keep answering the survey each year. [laughter] >> yeah. go on each of the web sites our own cfr center for preventive action international crisis group and control risk and get

more on this topic. thank you very much for coming. have a great day. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> friends colleagues countrymen and especially the people of ohio's 8th congressional district, thank you for sending me here, and let's today welcome all of the new members and all of their families to what we all know to be a truly historic day. [applause] ..

>> c-span2 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings and key public policy defense. and every weekend booktv now for 15 years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span to created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> and we are live now for the rethink on the pentagon on u.s. market presence in europe and more specifically consolidation

of european infrastructure. live coverage here on c-span2. this is expected to get underway in just a moment. >> still some folks straggling in so we will give it another minute. [inaudible conversations] >> as you may or may not have heard, this briefing on u.s. military presence in europe expected to get underway in a minute or two. we will have live coverage when it starts on c-span2. very quickly the senate will be gaveling in at 11 a.m. eastern. among the items on the chin is the authorization of construction of a keystone xl

pipeline. also a terrorism risk insurance bill approved by the house and we expect for the work on senate committee assignment. live coverage of the senate when lawmakers gabble in starting at 11 a.m. eastern. also the keystone xl pipeline continues to be discussed in committees. natural resources committee will mark up the bill. live coverage of those negotiations begins at 10 a.m. eastern today and we will carry it live on our companion network c-span3. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, good morning. welcome to the pentagon. we will have a briefing today about the european infrastructure consolidation. our briefers today we have the assistant secretary of defense for international security mr. derek chollet and on his left is mr. john conger perform the duty of the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. they will make opening statements. we'll have time for questions afterwards and let me know if there is questions beyond that. >> good morning. is this on? good morning.

european and translink security is more important than ever. the united states remains committed to nato and our presence in europe. for generation just service members have lived with trained with and fought alongside european allies and partners. we currently have approximately 67,000 military personnel stationed in europe and our troops trained and deployed european counterparts across the globe. our european allies remain our strong partners in addressing shared security challenges whether in respond to russia's actions against ukraine or the operations in iraq and syria where european countries are a vital part of the coalition. u.s. forward basing and access to facilities in europe are an indispensable component to that partnership. they enable the united states military and our allies to respond to crises quickly come and our operational presence in europe is critical to our common global security goal.

yet at the same time, we must ensure that we pursue these goals in a way that is as efficient and effective as possible. that's why two years ago the department initiated a process to review our force presence and facilities in europe known as the european infrastructure consolidation or dic. today, we are announcing the result of the eic process which aims to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of our presence in europe by consolidating and realigning access infrastructure. in this process the department maintained a close and consistent engagement with the congress, with the state department, with joint staff with the services, and our european partners. over the past several years secretary hagel has discussed these issues with his european counterparts and just yesterday he had phone conversation with the defense ministers of the united kingdom, germany, italy and portugal that will continue

this engagement as eic implementation of hers over the next several years. withwe these eic decisions we are consolidating and reducing some existing support infrastructure in order to be more efficient, but we are not affecting our operational capability. the eic adjustments do not diminish our ability to meet our commitments to allies and partners. in fact, these decisions will produce savings that will enable us to maintain a robust force presence in europe. we are also investing in new infrastructure and expanding and enhancing our partnerships and joint and combined training opportunities across your. this includes investments in infrastructure, greater rotational presence in their land and sea and enhanced exercises. such efforts will be supported by the nearly 1 billion in additional funds that congress provided at the end of last year. and through the eic we ensure the united states will retain

the infrastructure in europe needed to support are probably stationed forces, additional rotation forces and contingency requirements. on that note today we're announcing that the united states air force will permanently base the f-35 joint strike fighter in europe and that the second defense of selected raf in united kingdom as the first location to host two squadrons of f-35s. this decision is just the latest example of the special relationship between the united states and the united kingdom. the presence of u.s. f-35s will lead to new possibilities for collaboration to the united kingdom such as the potential for greater training and wider support opportunities. taken together, these decisions on a force presence in europe will enhance our operational readiness and mission posture that reduce funding levels, all towards the objective of maintaining a strong transatlantic alliance and meeting our common security interests. with that i'd like to turn over

to my colleague john conger led the european infrastructure consolidation effort for the details on the process and the decisions made here. >> thanks. so i'm john conger and am responsible for installations and infrastructure of the department. i've had responsibly for managing the eic process as it unfolded over the last two years. past and ongoing force structure changes, changing security environment and the ongoing top -- tough fiscal climate, the department defense undertook a comprehensive review of the infrastructure requirement necessary to support u.s. forces and omissions in and around europe. let me add a point for context. we have continually sought efficiencies as we manage installations worldwide. that's when the resort requested base realignment and closure or bracket authority from congress to do a review of our u.s. installations. in this fiscal environment it would be irresponsible for us not to look for such savings.

similarly without a review of our infrastructure in europe was important to conduct. we is a process very similar to proven u.s. brac process and analyzing bases in europe. we look at capacity requirements, military valley cost and as a diplomatic dynamics involved with each action. bottom line force was that we wanted to preserve our operational capability while reducing the cost of supporting it. therefore as we consulted our footprint, the infrastructure remain in place will continue to support our operational requirements and strategic commitments. we did not contemplate changes that reduced for fighting capabilities. that was a fundamental constraint of the analysis. the largest installation that is part of this announcement is our return to the uk. apprise me 3200 u.s. personnel from mildenhall will be re- stationed elsewhere. this move will be partially offset by the addition of about

1200 personnel that will support the f-35s being stationed in raf -- both will occur in the 2018-202100202100 the number of disasters that will be occurring but this is the largest example. the overall eic process will see the deity the vesting access infrastructure that will save the department approximate half a billion dollars a year. all while maintaining the same operational capability as a result we will not need as many support personal to maintain a reduce infrastructure in terms of both u.s. military and civilian personnel and health nation employees. approximate 1200 u.s. military and civilian support positions we've eliminated, and about 6000 more u.s. personnel will be relocated within europe. up to 1100 host nation positions could also be eliminated and

approximately 1500 additional europeans working for the u.s. could end up being impacted over the next server years as many of their positions are relocated to areas we need to maintain for the long-term. as i stated earlier the largest local national job reduction will come from the closure of mildenhall in the uk but that will be partly offset with the f-35 basis. you may have questions about exactly how many u.s. are host nation personnel will be affected by each installation or site but for that level of detail i refer you to the u.s.-european command eucom and their component. these recommendations will be executed over the next several years. that doesn't mean everything will remain static while these changes occur. there are consolidations may be for eic and it will undoubtedly be future actions. however, today we're talking about the holistic review we conducted over the last two years which i believe will strengthen our posture in europe. thank you very much for your

attention. >> as you may know, the threat that is facing europe now, may figure in the future, is an estimated threat from nongovernmental groups such as al-qaeda or isil or other groups. how do you explain the region or the purpose of keeping 67,000 u.s. troops in europe? what's the objective from the? >> there are several objectives. clearly we continue to security interest in europe and security threats to your. the recent crisis in ukraine illustrates that. so part of our force presence is to work with and reassure our nato allies who we have treaty obligations to defend but it's also important to note europe is a critical platform, particularly in the middle east and north africa where european facilities bases and capabilities that we stationed in europe are absolutely

critical to military operations throughout the middle east and north africa. and, in fact, the world as transit points to asia and elsewhere. so i think our military presence the course has come down in europe significant since the end of the cold war over the last quarter-century, but maintaining a strong, robust force presence in europe is absolute the final tour national security interest. [inaudible] >> do you think with the eic process that strategy would be better to face integration of the federalist throughout europe? >> i'm not sure i understand the question. >> do you think we will expect better strategy to counter the infiltration of terrorists throughout europe? >> they are two separate issue to the eic process is about infrastructure and gaining greater efficiencies to allow us to maintain a strong force presence in europe into the future. separate set of issues about

metric threats that's something and a general breedlove in mr. methot about and secretary hagel has talked about as challenges for the nato alliance and it's something nato partners talked about at the summit in wales last year and will sure to talk about later this you at the defense ministerial in february. >> a follow-up all of it on the. is there any element in this realignment, reorganization that either you worry hinders your military intelligence counterterrorism capability, or is there anything where maybe on the other and you might have saved some money, relied thanks and it might actually enhance it and free something up for you? is there -- >> yeah, one of the challenges are the effort year was to match both the desire to grain -- to gain greater efficiency in for lunch -- and infrastructure but

maintaining the infrastructure to allow the force presence to ensure we can defend our national security interest. none of the infrastructure consolidation efficiencies will be getting out of the process will have any bearing on our ability to operational capability or our ability to defend our intelligence capabilities. in fact, the savings that we will be gaining in this process will allow us to maintain a strong force presence in the future. >> sidney friedberg, breaking defense. you folks have made it very clear that you know you are consolidating but not reducing the operational mobility, the security of europe, et cetera. i guess question is how? is assaulting a matter of finding leftover stuff from the cold war that has been sitting idle? or is it a more, is there a little more to it than cutting infrastructure without actually getting rid of the stuff that you need?

>> let me take that one. it's closer to the first idea that you floated. what we were doing was looking at, we look at capacity versus requirements. and we found that we were able to consolidate the same capability on fewer locations. there were some places. i'm not sure i would characterize it as left over from the cold war whether certain our lot of individual sites that are smaller in our european footprint that we are able to collapse together. and some of them were small but a lot of the things you'll see in the list, the general publicly may not be familiar with. there were several recommendations that added together had a large impact. mildenhall is the one most people have heard of the. but when you leave a site that reduces the requirements for not, for supporting the site. so that's security the public,

et cetera, et cetera, individual staffs that are at that particular location our duplicative. >> overhead of? >> pardon. >> overhead spent yes. >> they had a point when they are first greeted. >> i can't speak to the initiation of the hundreds of sites we have been europe and why at the beginning, but i understand in some uzbeks it's a characteristic at the end of the level. >> in the scheme of the department overall budget, 509 it seems doesn't sound like a whole lot. have you contemplated closing more installations but change course because of what's been going on in ukraine and russia's? >> i don't think so. keep in mind that this was not an effort designed to solve the

and our fiscal problem of the department. we have looked for base rely me enclosure upward in the past which would have had a larger impact. this was a practical sensible, holistic work we could do on a subset of her footprints, and we took that action. half a billion dollars a year is while not large compared to the rest of the department but a survey not an amount of money to sneeze at. >> could we talk more about the relationship between this and the european reassurance initiative? on these savings specifically designed to bolster that effort? to expect that $509 a year you'll be able to continue to redirect that annually towards ash that $500 million -- towards its? >> this effort is over two years in the making. it is something that president

obama as for these additional funds last summer from the congress. certainly greater efficiencies help, these savings help but they are disconnected. so the one, nearly $1 billion that we proceed from our congress at the end of last year will enable us to have an infrastructure improvements in facilities that were used for our rotation the present particularly in central and eastern europe also help fund a robust exercise schedule. so separate processes but i think savings are savings, and although they're not directly connected, the more efficiencies we can get out of our system and the less were spending money on things that we judge obsolete, the better off that we will be and more able we will be to spend more money on things that we believe will be more consistent with pursuing our interest in the future. >> will you be able to redirect the savings, to your knowledge or these going to end up body counts? >> they are not connected, not

connected. >> these the another round of eic is? >> we are not planning and eic 2 per se, but my point is that this was not the first time anybody looked at european infrastructure, not the first time that any installation was returned in europe. and it won't you last time anybody looks at europe infrastructure. >> this is an evolutionary process. just as we have been undertaking this effort to take a close look at the existing infrastructure, we have been looking at how to upgrade new infrastructure to support our efforts in central and eastern europe. so a lot changed from a year ago, and who knows what 2015 will hold. >> use of the process has been going on for more than two years. how did the process changed at all after russia invaded

ukraine? >> i can speak to that. obviously, when events occurred in the ukraine we took a look and asked the questions were so should we pause this? we decided to continue with the analysis because the conditions were not particularly affected by the events going on in the world. the questions we're asking ourselves is how can we do the same thing for less money ask that question is still pertinent. we were talking reducing our ability to conduct a nation. we're talking about our ability to do that same mission for less money. that wasn't effort worth continuing. we conducted, we then decide to complete the analysis and allow the secretary to decide whether to go forward in whatever the current context would be at that time. and the secretary approved the recommendations. >> different subject. have these decisions all been commuters dictated to the host country's? >> yes, but as i mentioned we've

been engaging with our host country counterparts throughout this entire process, and secretary hagel has been doing so at all of these meetings with the affected countries, and just yesterday he had these phone conversations with the four countries that are most affected by this. and it's been an open process so far and we will continue this as easy to implement because of these changes are going to happen overnight and it will take some time. we've also committed to work with these countries as much as we can to help mitigate some of the downsides because the would be job losses in these countries that will affect local communities and women interest in doing what we can to try to help them mitigate the negative consequences. >> i will fully been with politico. first, can you tell us when you expect to know where in italy this next batch of f-35s loco questions to the first two squadrons will go to lakenheath. when will the department no where in italy the next

aircrafts will be deployed to? >> we haven't made a decision on the next round yet. there has been a decision made for italy to host a maintenance facility. that was announced last month for the f-35s, but the future deployment decisions have not been made. >> and with respect to brag and the departments repeated request to congress for more rounds of the brac, deplete the department believe that this process will strengthen its hand politically in going back this year with the budget and asking for brac again because you'll be able to say that we've consulted infrastructure in europe that want to turn our attention to the united states? >> i think so. i think that's a fair statement. congress has raised several issues with regard to brac in the past. one of which was please look at what you're access is overseas before you start looking at the domestic installations again. this was in part to that and i think it was a responsible effort that we can go back to congress with.

>> just a clarification mr. conger, when he said it won't be the last time that people look at european infrastructure does that doesn't mean reducing or not necessarily so? and you mentioned adding some infrastructure in eastern europe. and then also my question would be, how much will it cost to close the facilities, and 20 expect to see the savings of? >> so two parts to question mark let me answer the first one first. i wasn't alluding to a particular action. if you look at the f-35a seen as a separate non-dac actions that is an example of abasing action that occurred in parallel at the same time but not part of the eic process to announce it today that was a part of our analysis. so that's the case in point. regard to cost we project cost of about one point for billion dollars over the entire time

treated to implement the closures to go along with the half a billion dollars in current savings. it's a pretty good payback. i would say slightly more than a third of that is military construction. so it's not like we we're building $1.1 billion worth of buildings to accommodate this. it's a smaller figure. >> where, when and where without start? >> the foldable edition of the recommendations is expected by come the early 2020s i would say. the smaller recommendations will be a much more quickly. the larger ones will take more time and so the entirety, you'll see the entirety of those recommendations and all of the savings probably in five or six years. >> mr. chollet, ugly descent in

the uk it would be a downsizing of about -- i believe you said in the uk it would be a downsizing of about 3200. what kind of jobs are being eliminated the 1200 -- [inaudible] >> so i'm going, over all on the specifics of the jobs being consolidated as well as the new jobs i'm going to have to defer to eucom. on the f-35a she we do have a college or today, i'm not sure where he is the follow-up specifically with you afterwards on the these f-35s decisions. >> you have a breakdown on how many military and civilians are being affected? >> i don't but that's an issue you can follow up with eucom on. >> does eucom have all this information available? >> andrew with military times. you said that the current force levels of active duty troops is 67,000 but do you have a number overall for what would be at the end of all this?

and also to ask you to talk more about the rotational presence? is there any long-term plan to have the rotational presence there, you know, beyond the 12 month timeline and/or is that something that would just be addressed on an annual budgetary bassist? >> at the end of this process our numbers of forces injure 67,000 will be roughly the same. it's not always exactly 67,000. roughly the same. in terms of the rotational presence the intent is to continue this rotational presence into the future. in fact, some of the infrastructure improvements we are seeking to do as part of european reassurance initiative will enable us to continue the rotational presence by building facilities that would allow our rotating troops to live and work. so that is our plan. of course, we will overtime have to seek funding for that and as

things change in europe, things get better or perhaps things get worse, we may adjust accordingly. we will probably adjust accordingly. >> does that plan call for the rotational trips to be moving into eastern europe from existing eucom forces, or in did you plan as much detail to know whether that would be the troops coming from outside of eucom? >> i don't think that is planned yet. i can see the rotations that have occurred up to now been both from within europe as well as from from the united states. >> craig, go ahead. >> could you elaborate a little bit on why you decided to close molesworth and mildenhall? >> let me speak broadly. i know that eucom is going to be speaking to specifics of any of the individual recommendations but the analysis writ large looked at excess capacity and

so commented also look at military value. so we essentially come we are trying to make sure that the assets that we needed were at the locations that have the highest military value that was based on a complicated numerical, a lot of different factors. the result of that allowed us to collapse the assets from mildenhall into other locations, and to recommend that the future of that installation. the molesworth recommendation, i will actually speak to a little bit more because it's part and it was part of last year's congressional budget request to start the construction and croughton and to collapse the intelligence activities for molesworth into the facility at croughton. so that's a fairly self-contained set of recommendations into collapsing multiple locations into a single one in the same geographical

area. >> is this plan, do you have to go to congress for approval on any of this, or is this something you can go forward with? >> congress always has the right to decide what we get appropriated. so that by definition, that's going to be, congress will have a role in anything that we do. the decision to close and installation overseas is not a particular one that you quote-unquote permission from congress, but that doesn't mean we haven't been talking to them for the last two years about each step of the way and working with the committees and to tell them what we could about the analysis as it was ongoing. so do we need an authorization, legislation to congress? no. we need the appropriations in order to actuate the next steps. >> just a follow-up you mentioned several times bri is

going through some infrastructure improvements. you take and you give. i'm curious if you give us some examples of the kinds of things you were adding even as some of these other installations that date back years are going away? >> so first just repeat. with 67,000 troops stationed in your. so we have a robust force present to a significant infrastructure presents. so what we saw to do with eic is to gain greater efficiencies in that infrastructure presents that will enable us to stay there for the future. in terms of infrastructure improvements, this is for example, building or augmenting barracks on existing basis in europe that our troops are currently rotating through to exercise with our european counterparts, building certain facilities. up to this point our troops have

been, who have been rotating through in eastern europe have been piggybacking on existing facilities that are perhaps necessarily -- art perhaps mrs. with up to the capacity that taken care. so that's the kinds of things will be seeking to do. that will therefore enable us down the road to continue our rotational presence but at a lower cost. >> pay for ad hoc solutions as to how people -- >> absolutely. >> any transportation infrastructure in terms of railhead? >> i will have to get back to under specifics but i don't have those with me. >> time for a couple more. >> i want to ask you about how they eic process changed a little bit like markets, which change when russia invaded ukraine. clearly this started out as an infrastructure exercise, and then you had russia and ukraine and allies calling for more

capability. and avoid it if at any point you considered increasing the capability? you said a couple times you are not decreasing it. is it fair to look at this announcement today as a policy decision by the department or a strategic decision that europe does not need more u.s. military capability? or is that essentially a separate discussion occurring elsewhere? >> so i guess two thoughts. first, in terms of what change i would argue that the urgency of the eic became more apparent, because as we were more focused on maintaining our force structure in europe, we needed to take a close look at infrastructure and ensure that we are spending our money wisely. and general breedlove, who i know has released a statement this morning in support of these recommendations was very clear to us that he wanted to protect

force structure for q1 us to take a very close look at infrastructure. and so i think if anything over the last year it sort of put more focus on our necessity of having savings. and i would argue that the purpose of eic is a reaffirmation of having a robust force presence in europe ma and the importance of the transatlantic relationship to it, in order to ensure that we're able to be there for the future and we have the funding and resources to be there for the future. we need to ensure to ourselves to the congress, to be reckoned people that we are there as efficiently as we can be. >> final question? all right. folks, thank you very much for coming. the air force has been gracious enough to provide an expert or to talk about the f-35a sing if anyone has a follow-on question to the. gentlemen, i think you very much for your time.

thanks, thank you for coming. that concludes our briefing for today. >> [inaudible conversations] >> coming up at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span2, we will be live with the u.s. senate. members will likely consider the house passed terrorism risk insurance bill. also were continued on to authorizing the keys to xl pipeline to get canadian oil into the u.s. live coverage of the senate here on c-span2 again starting at 11 a.m. eastern. the senate energy and natural resources committee will be marking up that bill today. live coverage just getting underway on our companion network c-span3.

actually it will start at 10 a.m. live coverage on c-span3. >> friends, colleagues, countrymen and especially the people of ohio state congressional district, thank you for sending me here and let's today welcome all of the new members and all of their families to what we all know to be a truly historic day. [applause] >> today is an important day for our country. many senators took the oath this afternoon. 13 for the first time and the new republican majority accepted its new responsibility here we recognize the enormity of the task before us. we know a lot of hard work awaits. we know many important opportunities await as well. >> follow the gop led congress and see the new members the

best access is on c-span television, c-span radio and c-span.org. new congress best access on c-span. >> and the massachusetts senator elizabeth warren and labor secretary thomas perez speak at the afl-cio's national summit on race and wages in washington. the conference focused on ways policy workers in such as the less than income and make increasing wages a priority in america. this is one hour 20 minutes. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> if everybody could please take your seats, we're going to get started. i am marybe mcmillan, secretary-treasurer of the north kill an afl-cio. welcome. [applause] >> welcome to the afl-cio's first ever national summit on raising wages. to all of you who joined us in

person or via the live stream on the web thank you for participating. and i expect that we will have many more people join us and to go in, so please make them welcome. i also want to thank tell you get university for hosting us today. afl-cio organize -- value to university. inequality has become the defining economic story of our generation. for too long now workers productivity has gone up but our wages have remained flat. here in the richest country in the world we have bank tellers who count money all day but have not a dollar of their own to save. grocery clerks who stock shelves full of food but have nothing to feed their families.

construction workers who build houses i have no homes to call their own. it is no accident that workers are struggling. lawmakers have deliberately created policies that have driven down our wages, undermined our bargaining power and weekend hours safety net. inequality didn't just happen. inequality is the result of deliberate policy choices by our lawmakers. it is not random and it is not inevitable. there's a simple fix to inequality, and it's not rocket science. raise workers' wages. [applause] brothers and sisters if we did that, if we paid workers a

living wage, consumer spending would increase, and the need for public assistance would decrease. if working folks got their fair share, our economy would work for everyone. today is about changing the narrative. it's about shifting the debate. instead of asking how much it will cost to pay workers more, we should be asking how much it will cost if we don't. from the pope to the president from standard & poor's to morgan stanley, there is growing agreement that inequality hurts our people and our economy. so let's do something about it. [applause] today is about solutions it's about seizing this historic moment and forging a future

where all workers have good jobs and living wages. and we mean all workers. laborers and professionals nativeborn and immigrant's, men and women, from new york to california to my home state of north carolina, and all through the south, we will fight for policy changes. we will hold politicians accountable, and we will win fair wages for all workers no matter what they do or where they live. [applause] today, brothers and sisters it is about action. it is about the power we have to change the economic policy. just look around you. we have an overflowing crowd, an overflow room, over 360 people.

we have top rankings clergy, we have the latest of the afl-cio and our affiliates. we have elected officials, community leaders policy experts. we are building a movement here and we want you to be part of the movement. help us raise wages. help us today by asking questions during the roundtable. help us expand this conversation by tweeting throughout the day using the hashtag raising wages. that's raising wages. and for those of you who are joining us in person, we invite you to launch -- to lunch afterward in the ballroom so we can fellowship and continue this important conversation. brothers and sisters the power is ours. we can change that inequality plaguing this nation so let's

get started. to begin our program this morning, we are going to hear from workers about their struggles in this low-wage economy. it doesn't matter if someone is a fast food server, a brick mason or a college instructor. workers across the spectrum are working harder and harder for less and less. our next two speakers know that all too well. our first speaker will be lakia wilson, a public school counselor in detroit, and a member of the american federation of teachers. she will be followed by shantel walker, at papa john's worker in new york, and the number of fast food forward the fight for 15. brothers and sisters these welcome lakia wilson and shantel

walker. [applause] >> good morning. my name is lakia wilson nominated of detroit, michigan and i want to let you all know that i have worked hard to achieve the american dream. after high school i learned a degree in elementary education and taught first grade for five years. i am an educator. it's what i do and i love my work. still, i wanted to raise myself up further and pursue a passion of mine, which is counseling. that's why i went back to school and earned a master's degree in counseling. after a few years as a counselor at the public schools i realized that i would need extra income

to buy a house pics i picked up a second job as an adjunct faculty member at taking a college. i purchased a home in 2004. in the college cut its adjunct staff. unfortunate for me i lost the extra income. the income i needed for the american dream. i lost my home and i was foreclosed on. i was able to buy it back but losing your house is a horrible experience. i had to cash out my retirement. my credit is shot, and it's embarrassing. i'm not here for pity or for a handout. i worked hard to be successful, and i have so much education but to do that and to still be struggling? my mother was a teacher, and

when she retired she was making $65,000 a year, 20 years ago. i and making $65,000 right now but my costs aren't the same as hers. all of our costs go up and up and up. i have something else to say too. i have so much respect for the wal-mart workers and a fast food workers. i've watched them demand more, and i'm proud of the work that they have done and continue to do. yet i don't want to forget the worker who spent time and money on education who did everything possible to be well-equipped for a job to make it to the middle class, and to have the american dream become a reality. raise workers' wages. that's why i'm here at the

summit to raise wages. [applause] >> hello, brothers and sisters. my name is shantel walker and i worked at papa john's for more than 10 years. i made peaches i answered the phones. i do it all. we all do a good job. my coworkers, me and coworkers throughout the country but the subject at hand is raising the minimum wage. and not raising the minimum wage make a living wage. and raising wages completely. [applause] everything we are going through as workers is hard. i live this every single day. we've got to do more to ensure that there's justice in the

workplace, in new york and across the country and the world. when i was younger i wanted to be a fiber optics technician can work on computers and it didn't turn out that way. i just are working, working working. i had other jobs at movie theaters and had warehouses. when i started at papa john's it was just another job, until something happened. i saw some coworkers not getting paid. at that time my boss never put them on the clock. and they said they never worked for them. this one worker, he was a teenager. it made me upset but i'm proud to say we took things to the next level. we had an action in my store. the whole community came out. i want to say that at least 80-100 people came. we spoke to the owner, to the

managers, and we retrieved the money for the worker. [applause] and that was a big step for us. and that was a big step for me but that was the beginning. i feel like my eyes are open now. it is wrong to steal wages from workers. i want to stand with them and not condone this type of behavior because it's wrong and it's illegal. that's what i'm doing what i'm doing, to raise the wage in america, and this is why we are here now. this is why we do what we do every day. not some days. every single day to ensure that people in america have a fair shot at society, and to make our lives better and to make our communities better coming to make our country better.

i want everyone in america to fall in love with the bigger picture, and with that idea that we can do better and we can be better and we can be productive people out here. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, that's what america was built upon the this is why we are here. this is our idea of, this is what democracy looks like. this is why we have a society that we have. now is the time to stop the poverty wages in america. raise the wage. [applause] thank you. >> thank you, lakia and shantel for telling us your personal

stories, and for inspiring us that we can do better. workers like lakia and shantel are fed up and they're standing up, not just for themselves, but for all workers. they are standing up because working folks need to raise, and we need policymakers who will make it happen. we are fortunate to have one of those policymakers in our secretary of labor. secretary tom perez doesn't just talk about raising wages, he takes action. as our secretary of labor tom perez has helped implement a minimum wage increase for hundreds of thousands of government contract workers. and he helped expand minimum wage and overtime protections for over 2 million home care workers. and currently he is seeking to update federal overtime rules to

include up to 6 million more workers. no showing employers how they can raise wages and improve their bottom line to extolling the benefits of collective bargaining secretary perez is an advocate for workers everywhere. brothers and sisters please welcome a leading voice in the fight to raise wages our secretary of labor, tom perez. [applause] >> good morning. how are you doing? hey, how are you doing? [applause] how is everyone doing? i love to be here. it's one my favorite universities and this is a

wonderful venue with wonderful friends. it's great to see all of you. long time no see rick. chantel, i met her in your city when we lament mayor bill de blasio advocating for working families. i come here with a sense of optimism, a determination and a sense of real knowledge of the unfinished business. and become a with optimism because you listen to people like shantel and try to come and you hear from lisa and leon. we talk of data and all that but this is about real people and the struggles that you're going through. this is about who we are as americans. this is about the definition -- hey, dorian. how are you doing? soar. to look around, you see, you get distracted, you know? this is about who we are as a nation. this is about -- i see i'm

going to be with my wife's uncle this afternoon he suggested at the university of detroit. we're going with the president soon, and this is really about biblical teaching. this is about what is taught in the koran and was taught in the forum and what we learned about making sure we do unto others making sure there's a guy named jim wallis, he does this exercise with his students were to ask them to take the bible and rip up every page that has a reference to the need to help the poor and underserved. and the bible turns into like a "newsweek" magazine. and that's what this is about. this is about who we are as a nation. and i come here as i said, to say first of all thank you. thank you to all of our friends at the afl-cio. have been at the tip of the spear. you continue to give voice. the labor movement continues to

give voice. faith communities continue to give voice. people in the front lines can you're saying poppe john, give me some love. that's what you're saying. and that's so important because this president was a community organizer and he continues to be a community organizer. he understands that change comes from the bottom up to it and that's why i'm so excited to be here with you today. and, frankly, i'm equally excited to be traveling in a few hours with the president to detroit. because we are going to be talking about where we have been, where we are and where we need to go. that's really what today is about. it's important for us. at the counter with a sense of optimism because i remember where we were. we all remember where we were the three months before this president took office, the economy shed 2 million jobs, 2 million jobs. our 401(k) has become 201, for

those we've had a 401(k), for many they didn't have that. the housing crisis, the bubble has burst, the american dream has transferred into the american nightmare. we saw people suffering everywhere. and now you fast forward. we've had 57 consecutive months of private sector job growth. last month it was the third best month in that 57 months stretch. you look at the odd in this right now, it is going gangbusters be to remember there were some folks who didn't want to bet on the outer industry. they didn't want to bet on the american worker. they said let them go. you remember the election last time, 2012? that was a candidate who said there was a jeep plant in ohio that was going to be shipping jobs to china. guess what? that jeep plant has added like 1500 jobs in the last year and a half. [applause] and guess what.

there are things being shipped overseas but it's the products that they are making, because we're exporting because insourcing is the order of the day in the outer industry, and outsourcing is yesterday's word. that's where we're going. that's why the president will be a ford motor company later today. the average person on a similar line in america right now is working 42 hours a week making overtime every single week. the economy is coming back. auto sales are up. construction jobs are coming up. we've got much work to do that in every. i see people every day people like katherine hackett which introduced the president a little over you at an event that was highlighting the plight of long-term unemployed. catherine, she did everything right, just like you can't just like leon, just like all of our speakers. she played by the rules, single mother, both of her kids are in the military, one is in special forces within afghanistan. she walked into work one day and was told her services were no

longer needed. she lost her job. she lost her dignity, and she had to wear a coat in her house because she had to turn the heat down in order to simply make ends meet. you fast forward to a couple of months ago. i was with governor molloy in connecticut and a congressman from her district, and we visited her at her job. just punched her ticket to the middle-class as a result of for resilience. left..