c-span will have live coverage of all of the day's events and. ♪ >> watch live on c-span and c-span.org and listen live on the free c-span radio app. >> now former secretary of state madeleine albright and senator tom cotton discuss national security priorities and global threats facing the trump administration. this foreign-policy and national security conference. [applause]. >> it is great to be here. thank you to the institute. i think everyone here probably knows these panelists, so i will be brief and you have them in your program as well. we will start with secretary madeleine albright who served under his president bill clinton as secretary state from 97 tilt 2001 following four years as us ambassador to the united nations and is the founder and chair of

albright group. >> he is dean of the fletcher school law and served as commander of southern and european command and is nato supreme allied commander of europe. he is currently the chair of the board of directors of the us naval institute. frederick. yes served the atlantic council overseen the expansion of the scope of work and was an award-winning journalist in the "wall street journal", covered the collapse of communism in europe and served as editor of the "wall street journal" based in brussels. senator tom cotton who has served as a republican senator from arkansas since 2015 and his committee assignments include

select committee on intelligence and armed services committee. after graduated from harvard law school senator cotton left a legal career following the september 112001 attacks to serve as an army infantry officer including service in afghanistan and iraq. thank you and welcome to you all. our topic this morning is a simple. i have a easy job because i have four very smart people here and they have a lot to say, i have a feeling. this is quite simple and i will start with you, admiral stavridis and go down the line. tell me your three national security priorities for the next ministration. >> i will start with one that may or may not surprise you. i think cyber is extremely important and the reason i put it at the top of my list is because i think in cyber we have the greatest mismatch between the level of threat, which is quite high and our level of preparation, which is quite low.

in other words, we worry about north korea, but we are kind of prepared. we worry about russia, we are kind of prepared to in cyber we are really not there, so cyber. number two, broadly would be the return of grade power politics and this is often categorized as russia and china, but i would add to it this is a bully makes that time will include the return to the world stage of germany and japan, which i think will be fascinating and above all in this century the rise of india, how we move those pieces around. i think that will be challenging. this gets into south china sea and crimea and everything else we face. second, great power politics underlying disorder and the third would be the continuing strains from violent extremism, which we tend to identify-- identifies radical islam and

that's a significant part, but we also have racial challenges. dylann roof is a violent extremist. political challenges. so, that string of violent extremism kind of other the surface and booming out there like a tower, i think, is cyber. >> secretary albright. >> i would agree with all of those and then have my own kind of list in a bit different organization. i do think we are living in a completely changed world in terms of the international system and how we operate and governance questions and the discussion as to whether it's all state actors, i would argue that the presence of nonstate actors has added an awful lot of challenges, especially since our national security toolbox is setup to deal with state and not

nonstate actors, so governance. of the second, i think, is the challenge of how the great power rivalries go on and there i really do think that we have to be concerned what china and russia are doing and then also as a secretary carry said i think what is going on in europe , so those aspects are looking at regional problems that come up and fight you that you have not been ready for. the third aspect has also to do with the more processed peer to there is no faith in institution this goes a bit, not just cyber, but to information. i stole this line from silicon valley, but it works well to explain is that people are talking to their governments on 21st 21st century technology. of the government hears of them on 20th the century technologies and are 19th century responses and therefore, there is nothing in and try to

figure out how to deal with all of this i have an elegant term for this, though world is a mess. that will let ordinary people understand what we are saying. i think there has to be some way that we look at the institutional structure and i think we need to understand the following thing and i hope we have a chance to talk about this more is foreign policy, national security policy does not come in four years or eight year segments. no president comes in with a clean slate and so there has to be a look at what is out there that has to be dealt with and then the things that will bite you that you don't know are coming. >> to senator cotton. i found it interesting the way you look at this that we talk about national security priorities, not necessarily threats and you view those quite differently. >> think you, martha, and thank you to the institute for peace. i can disagree with admiral-- i

can disagree with admiral or the secretary. threats to some degree are already expressed here, the great powers of russia and china , rogue nations like north korea and iran, transnational actors like islamic terrorist groups and there's no telling what any of those will do over the next 10 days. all those who have been in government know you often have to react to contact, but where could the new experiment-- an ministration may contact? set priorities that would advantage the us and strategic competition. i would say there are three areas and it's a good time to pursue them because i knew administration is a time when people expect a new path and it's a time when you have the most domestic political capital in congress. substantial increases in our defense budget, maybe going back to the national panel from 2014 based on bob gates' budget 2012,

the last time the department of defense budgeted for the act that went into effect. second, foregoing review of our strategic posture about the bush and obama administration in their first years in office undertaking a nuclear posture review and the world has changed radically since then. russia and china are excel or did their nuclear. rush is frequently violating the treaty, and if russia reports are to be delivered they are developing an underwater drone that could send nuclear missiles to our coastal cities. third, domestic issue that has far-reaching international consequences is to accelerate that shell revolution in american energy production. we are blessed to have a country of great innovators, other risktakers, investors, fantastic

scientists, geology that permits shall production in a way that almost no other country in the world has that coronation. that has helped us become a global energy superpower and that's something that will give us more freedom throughout the world in particular it will put more strategic plan shirt on russia. when you think about priorities those three priorities if the administration would pursue them whatever happens in the world will give us greater strategic flexibility to pursue specific policies about the tickler countries in the region's. >> think you. fred. >> for decades i have been stealing secretary albright's ideas, so let me first to say i want to grab off that the world is a mess as a fact and the other fact and it won't become more orderly unless the us gets more deeply engaged.

there is no one else to substitute for us and if we don't do it then chaos will fill the void, so remember where you were a mistake because we are at a defining moment in history. you can pick your date, 1919, 1945, go back to 1815 or 1789, but that is where we are. couple that with one of-- with the transition to a new president, new party with an untested president. we had been in 1961 with the youngest president of all time john f. kennedy. we ended up with the bay of pigs disaster in april, with they'll be in a summit where the soviets decided the president was a week with berlin wall and then a year later you had the cuban missile crisis, so that set the parameters for the rest of the cold war, but we almost had a nuclear war. on not saying anything like that will happen this time. the cold war was at stake than. i think the global system is at

stake now, so can we save, readjust, reinvigorate the global systems, values that we have always had and then there are three pillars in the army three issues, europe and russia. i think it was terrific that the secretary pointed to the european union because the european union it if they unraveled or more dysfunctional he cannot have a strong america in the world with a weak europe took it just doesn't happen. both of those things we need to reassure-- we need a reassurance for europe and we need russia to know that there are certain lines that cannot be crossed, redrawing borders, testing nato allies of s-uppercase-letter. the second is the middle east. here i want to embrace a report that the atlantic council has done, secretary albright and steve hadley where the outline

not a crisis of the middle east, but a crisis from the middle east where you have extremism and migrants exported, again undermining europe. we can deal with that in the short term. a has to be dealt with in the long term with our allies, redoubling and deepening our relationship with allies in the region. means our traditional sunni allies and then working over the long term to tap with secretary albright and steve hadley bradley's as a very promising tendencies in the middle east as well. finally, in the last point is china. if russia is the biggest threat short term to global system, china could be a threat over time to the global system, but it's also a stakeholder now and has this huge amount at stake right now. we can't put herself into conflict with china if we want the global system to be reinvigorated, to adjust and to

survive. we have to do do it together with china. along those lines i think with a double down our relationship with our allies in the far east because if we are strong with our allies with japan, south korea and others we will be able to have a more positive relationship with china, so those would be my three us, europe, middle east, china, asia. >> thank you. senator koch in, to the you. what do you sense donald trumps priorities will be. we have all seen tweets and things he said during the campaign and since he has become president elect, but what is your sense of his priorities in terms of foreign-policy. >> he's going to make america great again. >> and how will he do that. >> some of the issues i touched on which the president-elect campaign as well, increases in military spending, fundamental reconsideration of our nuclear posture, oil and gas production and these are things whatever

the president-elect those on twitter says immediate interviews are not good things for countries like russia. they are not good things for a rant some of our other adversaries in the middle east at if you look at some of his appointees whether it's jim maddox or mike pompeo, these are not shy in retiring the violets who have a constrained role of american-- [inaudible] >> based on some of his nominations i believe he will take a farmer-- firmer line around the world with some of our adversaries and project greater strength and demand more respect for united states and less willing to make concessions without receiving concessions in return and i think those are good things. it's a good change after eight years of the obama administration in which the fame it-- the president said he wanted to extend an open hand rather than a clenched fist, but sometimes a clenched fist have to proceed to open hand of. >> on to talk about the tweets for a second and is obviously

something we have never seen before to this number of tweets like this. it's usually a statement and very formal, but those tweets have that moved moved markets, moved aboard, moved carrier, how will that work with foreign-policy? cannot move foreign leaders, secretary albright? >> i will try to be polite. let me say i'm very concerned about the tweets and it generally about the messages that are going out and if i could sate secretary kerry said i invented the term indispensable nation, actual to -- actually secretary clinton did. there is nothing about that term this is alone. it means the us needs to be engaged and i think that is a message that we need to get out there, not as america first, but as america as a partner. there's nothing wrong with partnerships. i know americans don't like the

word multilateralism. the bottom line is all it means is partnerships and understanding that the world as we see it in terms of what you call the global issues that are out there whether it's terrorism or disease or nuclear proliferation, those issues require partnerships and so i do think there has been a system in place in the world for a very long time of how governments communicate with each other, how presence committee with each other, how those documents are developed. are they a part of some kind of decision-making process that does in fact reflect what the government thinks and what the congress thinks and what the american people think and the tweets don't deal with that. in fact-- >> if you went to shake things up, if you want to reset or

really get someone's attention, get taiwan's attention, china's attention, why not? >> let me just say it's five your disruption is an interesting theory, actually and i don't think it hurts. destroyed is not a good thing and i think part of the issue is that i think it's absolutely essential-- i said this that foreign-policy does not come in four or eight year segments and every administration especially if it's a different party tries to do things differently, but it has created great concern. let me take one example from the transfer from clinton to brush. i was in the middle of negotiations with the north koreans. bill perry just wrote about this of the decision was made by the bush administration not to continue those talks. i now would put north korea into one of the most dangerous aspects of what's going on out there, so i only use it as example of the fact that you may

disagree with what president obama did. i might disagree with what president bush did. steve and i took a pledge not to talk about the past, but i think that it is what it is and it's essential that there be some understanding of what the track is, what the role of the united states is, how we behave as a responsible power in cooperation with others and tweets doesn't do it for me. >> anyone went to jump in on that? >> i agree with secretary albright that think of it as a diet. if your diet is exclusively shots of espresso that's probably not a good thing, but as part of a wholesome diet where you are conducting normal diplomacy, you are executing agreements and negotiating treaties, moving military forces i think an no caps off shot of espresso can jazz you and actually energize things. where are worry about it is i

think of young officers, military context to it, which is let's say a tweet appears that says the next iranian vote that crosses the bow of the u.s. navy ship will get blown out of the water. >> i don't think that was a tweet, but you are close. >> what we need to recognize his bat particular shot of espresso has an affect all the way down to that young commanding officer where he or she is dealing with these kind of rules of engagement moments and so you potentially kind of create the short circuit that goes from the ultimate commander-in-chief down to operators on the ground. i think it can be the same in diplomacy and work the same in economics, so i guess where i cannot is an occasional shot of espresso is okay, but it can be exclusively your diet. >> i think senator cotten said it wouldn't be. you would probably have madison and their other doing other

things. >> let me actually embrace the tweets. as you know, i'm a little schizophrenic here journalist and foreign-policy analyst and as a journalist really just capture the new story every day and it's brilliant twist he is doing. i also agree with admiral stavridis that the tweets have to be accompanied with a strategy, but you can expect the strategy to be there yet, but it will have to come relatively soon. there's no predict ability that the president elect has embraced and on many issues that can be useful politically. on the global stage the us has to be predictable. its allies has to know where it stands and adversaries has to know where it stands. the company by tweets, that's fine. i don't expect the president elect to put on a bumper sticker : save the international world order, but if he wants to

be successful and here's the tweet i would have, which is, i want president trump to make global america great again and to do that he has to lay out a strategy that truly embraces this order that we created after 1945 when we had 50% of global gdp had now with 18 or 20%. of that means we have to lead more collaboratively and lead in a way that inspires people around the world so that they want to follow. if he can do that and tweet every day how he's doing that, that would be a wonderful way because it will reach the entire world in that fashion and so i don't think you can expect a populist presidents, maybe the most populous president elected since andrew jack should to not be popular and office. you can be populous and sustain the global system that has benefited us all so much at the same time. >> senator cotton, do you think other countries need to know

where we stand as he described and if so, where do you think russia thinks they stand at this point time? >> i think like most countries around the world, their view of the future of us policy has been somewhat frozen 46 to eight months in the election since election. donald trump has said it would be a good thing if we had a better relationship with russia incorporated more. that would be a good thing for the last pre--- three presidents at one time or another have tried to take that tactic and they have been wrongfooted every single time and i'm sure vladimir put-- vladimir putin can back foot donald trump when you get back to the fundamental matters and some anomalies that donald trump has chosen i don't think there is a clear signal

being sent to moscow from the trump transition team. >> we will open it up to questions soon. i want to-- i know the threat, priorities going forward, but how you view donald trumps foreign-policy agenda or his strategic thinking in terms of foreign-policy and whether you really have to define that i mean throw my career everyone has defined this is the clinton doctrine, obama doctrine, bush doctrine, do you need that in every case or can it be a case to case basis, admiral stavridis >> i think it's premature to scope it out simply because the nominees that president-elect trump has put forward were not anticipated to say the least. if you go back 60 days ago and you said we are going to pick a four-star general to head at the department of defense and have another four-star general at dhs and the ceo of exxon mobil all of which i think are good pics, by the way, we would have never

anticipated its. i think to wait and see that team come together, interact with mike flynn and kt mcfarland and do the traditional role and we have to give them some space. knowing very well the two military officers as well as mike flynn, i think i can sense the kind of outline of where things will go, but we need to wait. we have got to get rex tillerson into the mix in a significant way as well, so give him some space and see where it goes, but i want to agree with both the senator and fred and that we have got to have a consistency and a view and so we should give them time to develop it, but we should not allow ourselves to remain on that diet of espresso. >> secretary albright, you brought this up and mike flynn, general mattis, general kelly, a lot of retired military and their.

do you think that is an issue? obviously, they are leaders in a know how to get things done, but they go to the same schools. they have been in the military their whole life. is very different perspective therefore solving problems? >> well, i do actually think there is a different perspective and some of it very useful, if i might say. this might surprise people, but whenever i flew on a military plane i would sit behind the pilot and i would see that even though they had taken off many many times they would go through the steps every single time hurt civilians don't do that. there is something very-- >> that the disciplined. >> it's very interesting. i do think there are some things that the military can input into the system. i think also and we talked about this, the whole issue of civilian military relations i find fascinating in terms of teaching and how things are carried out and your example

about what happens to the people as they hear something from the top. so, i am not opposed to the military people there. i think it's going to be interesting. what is the thing, though, that needs to be looked at is process. i've been involved in the transition now a number of times and obviously i was interested in what secretary kerry said how little is going on. it means it has to go on because this is turning over the ground-- crown jewels and i think that the process that ultimately produces the national security strategy or the documents in terms of a nuclear doctrine has to take place and it's the nfc that makes this happen that brings the process together since 1947. so, i'm hoping the time immediately or already now and as the hearings go forward at that process takes place because unpredictability occasionally is interesting.

constant unpredictability is a dangerous, so i think that process has to take place and the military and civilians have to figure out how to operate together. it will be crucial and i think we need to support that civilian military relationship. >> at the atlantic council we deal with a lot of military brass and i think one of the things that has really impressed me as how the military invests in the education of its officers if you want to have the most fascinating conversation you could ever have on military history and what to the lessons are for today, then talk to general mattis. these are the people that i have these deep intellectual conversations with. these are some of our best thinkers and strategies and i wish other parts of the us government would invest as much in the further education other-- as the military. one thing that will be interesting to see the president turns to for military advice at

this crucial moments when he will have general mattis and general dempsey both marines sitting there, one of whom is his job and the other one of whom has done that up until recently. >> senator cotton, i have to say covering these wars are all of these decades the military wasn't just doing military duty, they were diplomats as well in these situations and thrown into situations where they had no idea what was going to happen in a war that was going south early on in iraq and try to turn that around and the skilled diplomats as well. i want to go back to-- yeah. >> i admire the military, but i think we also have to respect the people that have the been serving the united states as diplomats or as civil servants, people who have dedicated their life to government service and should not be viewed as traders are people that cannot do the job.

i was very proud to be secretary of state. and that is something. 050 and-- both need to be looked at together. [applause]. >> you want to modernize what is already there, but what does this look like? what is the nuclear deterrent in your mind look like going

forward? it's not the 60s anymore, i mean, we were talking also about walking or those missile silos in wyoming and colorado, and how 60s it feels and it's scary, but talk a bit about what needs to be modernized and i want to bring you in on that, also, admiral stavridis. >> it's not the 60s anymore in part because large arsenals are no longer restricted to the united states and soviet union. one issue i had with the new start treaty is it treated the us as if russia was our only strategic competitor in the nuclear domain as opposed to china being a competitor and free from all constraints and that's something we have to account for and that china continues to extend its nuclear arsenal and that russia is a modernizing and changing its doctrine as well as countries like north korea and india and pakistan and one day, hope not, it ran. domestically in terms of our nuclear capabilities with that

means is reinvestment in all legs of the triad and develop a new missile system. we need a higher class replacement submarine and the new be anyone bomber or congress has committed to this as part of the commitment. it will defend heavily on donald trump and jim mattis as secretary of defense to drive those programs forward to make sure we are getting the best value, on-time delivery requiring capable management. that something bob gates wrote about in his book that is only the secretary of defense who can drive a program that is finally important. if you don't want to be 212 and up like the b-2 or f35, those are decisions that were made 25, 35 years ago when i was in grade school. the beach when he won decisions are being made now and we want

to make sure those programs are effective. >> what we have heard from donald trump in terms of military budgets, adding ships, adding people, tell me briefly if you will whether you think the budget-- what does the budgets line to in terms of threat? >> the reason people go back to the gate's budget is that it was the first-- last budget done before the budget control act on the department of defense and the last time the department of defense engaged in full on strategic based budgeting as opposed to budget great-- based strategizing. it was also done when the work was not nearly as dangerous. in my opinion, we have to take into account the security threats that our country faces and it's not just the military as secretary albright said. it's her diplomats, intelligence officers and so forth, but whatever the threats our country faces we have to find the money

to counteract the threats to their many important functions of government that we need to fund, but we have to take into account their constraints. we need more ships because of china and we need more ships because of russia as well. we need more ships because we are a global superpower that is largely a maritime power because we are in the new world and most of the threats are in the old world in québec to 350 ships which donald trump has committed its fundamental to our ability to subject power into the old world and to turn great power war as our global navy has done for 75 years. >> i agree with that and i'm happy to see an army captain speaking so well that the navy. well then, sir. i see why you are in the senate. i went to quickly give a shout out. we talked about military and talked about diplomats. i want to draw a line under those who do developments,

usaid, ngos, peace corps, many of them stand in risk every sunday and that is also part of our security and also an underfunded part of our security. to your question, i agree completely with senator cotton's analysis both with the overall nuclear peace and the larger dod budgets. i will draw a line and i stipulate i may navy admiral, so here it comes, but the ohio class replacement because it is the vulnerable leg of the triad at least at this point and i think it's of a particular value. i do support the triad. i can tell you from experience those of ohio's need replacement and that is the ultimate bank. last thought, bill perry who is going to be here with us today has a new book out called: my journey at the brink of nuclear war. it is a terrific book about his

feeling that we are edging back towards a world in which the use of nuclear weapons is far more imaginable than it was over the previous decade. i think that is deeply were some needs to be part of the conversation and it's also sadly a fundamental reason we need to continue to have that deterrent. >> if i could just add it's exactly the point i'm making about a new posture review. it's not just kim jong-un who rattles the nuclear saber regularly, but russian defense minister he-- notary officials talking expressly about using nuclear weapons to offset their disadvantages and regularly happens in the russian press. it is this change we have not seen for the last 25 years that's reminiscent of the cold war that demand us to contact this review. >> then we will go to questions. >> very brief comment on admiral

stavridis's, on development, which is partially lined with secretary albright's reconfiguring of budgets. part of the problem is that development has become a part of geopolitical competition and its strategic, but we don't think of it as strategic and in the 60s, interesting enough, kennedy did look at it that way and we thought that way during the soviet period, but is that we again, so these are strategic expenditures and development and they have to be aligned with national strategy and somehow over the years this has become separated and so i think there has to be eight-- on development and there has to be seen again in geopolitical strategic targets. >> it's incredibly inexpensive compared to the necessity of the high and military systems. of these are really putting on a dollar investments and i spent

10-- seven years as a combatant commander and deployed many ships, cruisers, summaries and perhaps the most impactful deployments i ordered were of hospital ships, comfort, mercy and that's part of our security. you said that very well. >> let's open it to questions. if you would please introduce yourself when you stand. you have the advantage of being in the front row here. >> good morning. vice president of the director of national security and i went to ask a question of admiral stavridis. you raise the question of cyber and we have lots of initiatives within the us government and private sector to enhance cyber resilience. we have a few international activities focused on improving relations expectations, norms of behavior. given the audience, what is the next of ministration need do to

raise the game in this important mission? >> i will give you four or five things. it's a list of 20. i strongly support dividing the national security agency from us cyber command, so you had to senior individuals focusing on two different missions. i think that is happening. i hope the new administration follows through with that. we also need more international cooperation and work on this. we are quite good, many of our allies are very good within the bounds of propriety and confidentiality we need to think about how we can learn more from for example, the israelis, the french were pretty good etc. thirdly, we need better interagency integration including eventually a cabinet level of voice to focus on cyber it's such a fundamental backbone to our society. we have a secretary of agriculture, secretary of interior. wears that voice on cyber

security? could it be part of the director of national intelligence as well, for example, so getting into that level and lastly, better private public cooperation. we will never secure ourselves and cyber using a military or government approach. the real brains in that operation as i think we all know on the west coast we need to bring us together, better private public cooperation and i could go on a long time, but there are some ideas. >> admiral stavridis, are we relate to the cyber security game here? >> i think the way to think of it is is go back 100 years in thing about aviation. we were kind of at the beginning using planes a bit in combat. commercial flights were just kind of starting. we are kind of at that stage in the cyber, so i don't particularly fault or blame us. we are still kind of on the beach at kitty hawk in a certain sense, but we've got to go faster because the cyber threat,

the cyber means, the internet of things will jump from 15 million devices to make 25 million devices-- billion 2 billion within five years. the acceleration demands us to go faster than we did in aviation. >> i do think we are kind of behind on it. of the question is what is the organizational structure for us. we have talked about this and i'm not sure next role the right one because it isn't all and government, but it does need to be within the national security decision-making system and especially since it is divided among a lot of different parts of government. it has to have an intelligence component to it. dni part of it is important. the part that i say fairly frequently these days is that reorganization of the government becomes its own kind of monkey works in many ways. it takes an awful lot of time and a lot of attention and we

need to focus on the substance of this as quick as possible rather than trying to decide who is in charge and who does what. >> senator cotton, how can congress help during this transition period? >> do no harm. >> thank you, doctor. >> we passed cyber legislation last year and now is a step in the right direction. i'm not sure it's all the way we need to go, but to my point about developments of new delivery systems in the nuclear triad is another area where the

ball is primarily in the executive branch's court. it's a threat that we have to take seriously. >> one final comment. >> simply to put it in a military context and think back a hundred years ago. we had army, navy and marine corps. we didn't have an air force because we didn't really fly planes. today we haven't army, navy and marine corps and air force and i would argue we need more emphasis in this area and we will look back and 50 years and say what were we thinking. >> over here. >> you have each talked about areas of potential investment and the senator talked about-- >> watch the rest of this program at c-span.org. look at us institute of