us. where do you think there's general agreement. second question, where do you think there's not agreement. and how do we go about reconciling that lack of agreement if we can. >> do you want to go first? >> senator carper, i think there is broad based agreement about the potential of a digital economy and virtual currencies, i think there is absolute agreement that there is enormous potential for social good, and that this is an emerging technology that needs to be protected. i also think there is clear agreement that we can't just ignore the misuse, and misuse jeopardizes the virtual ability of the currencies in the longer run. i don't think there is

disagreement at all on those points. as it relates to areas -- i just don't think there is use for the laws at the exchange level. know your customer, those kinds of provisions. the greatest challenge, the greatest area we have to grapple with is how do we enforce the enforcement techniques. and the fact that this is a global phenomenon. this is something that was just issued in march of this year. the guidance that directors just talk about, the financial action

task force, their guidance on this issue was just issued this summer, i think in july. my sense is that most of the world is not applying money laundering principles. getting from here to there is really the issue that the four of us would have to grapple with. >> thank you. how do you go about reconciling the consensus? >> i'll take the second part first. i don't know that i heard a lot of disagreement or anything we would generally disagree with from this panel or even really from the first panel. i was heartened by that. i think that ernie is correct, that as we move forward, an open dialogue is good, as those

disagreements do crop up, and they likely will, we can address them quickly, in a safe and sane way. as to where we have agreement, i think what i heard from the other panelists is, there's a real need to create on ramps into the traditional financial system. by creating those onramps, especially here in the united states, you help to protect the system from abuse. the biggest obstacle from that happening today is not from regulation or law enforcement. it's from the ability of businesses in the space to get bank accounts and to be integrated into the banking system. there is currently a chill in the banking system and the banking industry that is preventing businesses from getting just simple checking accounting. there are stories that if you have the word bit coin anywhere in your nim or documentation, you will immediately be placed in the circular file as it will.

i think there's a way to create some leadership within the banking industry, to make sure that these companies are on board, into the traditional system where some of the systems can be redacted. >> there's consensus around the innovation we see that the potential for financial inclusion. there's consensus that many of the regulatory frameworks and tools are sufficient. i think there's consensus that the open nature of the technology it's technology, use and oversite is a positive framework. i think there is some tension around the balance between anonymity and privacy, and bath there are new laws that are

required to end the possibility of anonymity or to address that in some way. i think, you know, as i stated in my comments, we are very focused within our business on having very deep levels of identity verification, we view that as critical. others within the digital currency world, particularly within geographies that don't have the same type of regulatory regimes do not. there are other things we need to be thinking about that could address those issues. i think that arena needs additional and careful consideration. >> thank you. >> i think there is broad consensus among the panel here, i was very heartened to hear the first panel's message, and i think we have a lot of consensus, i'll pick two issues to give you an answer. first, i was interested in listening to the gentleman from

the secret service that said that centralized currencies pose the greatest risk as far as money laundering. and bit coin, because of their nature, they were not a greater risk, i think there was a great point of agreement there. to pick a point of disagreement. u.s. businesses may move overseas. her suggestion is if someone leaves the u.s. seeking -- the danger is not someone who is trying to facilitate and elicit businesses is going to leave the u.s. the danger is real hardworking entrepreneurs don't find a regulatory environment here that is amenable. that's something we don't want

to allow to stretch for too much of a period of time. >> thank you. i want to mr. allen. i think you mentioned the guidance issue i'm not going to ask this -- probably -- respond and lead off to this question. the issue earlier this year back in the spring stated that administrators would need to register as a money service businesses and apply for money transmitter licenses. in the 48 states that require such licenses. somebody alluded to this guidance. i just want to again -- get your

thoughts on guidance. i'm told that your company is registered with ensen and has applied for money transferred licenses. you could maybe if you would, just offer the first response. >> a business that is going to handle consumer funds, store and manage those and is going to interact with the banking system to protect consumers and ensure that bad actors are not able to operate. we think these are appropriate guidelines, and i think the

digital business is different from other prior internet businesses. get a billion users, i don't think it's appropriate that two guys should be able to build a financial services business and operate that without a sufficient investment to protect consumers and protect society. i do believe that the bar needs to be higher for financial services businesses in the united states and that it is not real estate. some would like to see that level of compliance. i don't think that's realistic. we understood that the bar was higher and we raised sufficient capital to be able to launch our service and hire professionals and put in place the systems. we think it's appropriate there are challenges -- the broad number of states, the diverge

end approaches each state might take. that creates cost and complexity, and could be argued to be an unnecessary regulatory burden. but that is the system that we have, and that is the system that we are pursuing and operating within. >> thanks. >> others on the same -- you want to -- >> yes, just briefly. i agree totally. what i think is most appropriate about the guidance, it's focused at the exchange level. it does not apply to users. only to those -- it's an application of basic money transmitter law. it is an appropriate use of the law, existing law, and i think it's a reasonable approach. i agree with him, one of the great challenges is creating consistency and uniformity. because of our federal system and the fact that there could be 50 different approaches, that's not unique to this issue.

>> any thoughts? >> the 50 state license trans t transmitter regime has come up. the states have an interest in protecting their consumers. at the same time it is a bit burden some and has slowed down progress in the u.s. i don't know what the answer to that question is, i know in the eu, they have a system of reciprocity, where they have a minimum this remember hold for each country. perhaps that's a framework that would work here. but that would be best left to the legislative garage. >> thanks. any thoughts? >> one small point. i think it's very clear as it applies to exchanges and administrators. i think it's less clear when it applies to users guidance says

you are not required to register if you are awaring bit coin in order to buy goods or services. my mother's from spain, recently i helped her send money back home, it cost 5% of the total amount. what if i were buying bit coin to remit money overseas. that is not covered by the guidance. i think the guidance could use further clarification. and i think if they would put it up to further comment they would iron all the wrinkles out. >> let me go back to you if i could, mr. allen. i understand that your organization was one of the

forerunners in bringing together currencies. >> who was involved in your working group, and why did you form it? >> mr. chairman, we formed it, because several years ago we had a very positive experience in bringing together financial industry leaders around the fact that the mainstream financial system, the mainstream system were being used for the purchase and distribution of child porn. i called the chairman of a major credit card company and said, how is this possible? and he said, we don't know what these transactions are for, if you can finds for us show for us, where the account resides. this is an illegal use of the system. we can shut down the accounts. we brought together coalitions in north america, europe and asia, and had enormous positive impact. there was a dramatic decline. but as i began to talk to law

enforcement and other leaders around the world, what we determined was that we didn't end it, we just moved, and we were seeing evidence of a migration into these opportunities. in an effort to try to understand it better and determine if it was a problem to use that same model to bring leaders together. private sector leaders together to try to develop shared common sense solutions, that's why we joined with thomas reuters to create this task force, and it includes the bit coin foundation. it includes the gates foundation the brookings institution. the human rights group. law enforcement groups and representatives.

>> let me share with you, what you've been able to learn, about the exploitation of children around the world. >> one of the challenges is, most of the evidence is anecdotal, because recommendtively few cases are being made as we've talked to law enforcement, i talked about that earlier in interprets of the absence of investigative techniques to probe these kinds of things. i think we have learned that there is broad based interest in searching for and finding reasonable solutions that work.

we have learned, i think that the digital economy is far broader than bit coin, so the issues we're focusing on are not just bit coin, but, for example, they're 22 million users today of russia's web money. we have talked about liberty reserve, and the case that was made there, $6 billion in illegal money laundering. i think we're discovering it's a complex issue, but i think it's one that is addressable. and i think the most encouraging thing to me, i now believe it's addressable using many of the tools and laws that we already have in place. that one of the biggest challenges for policy makers is simply to increase the level of awareness so that countries around the world will begin to use the tools they already have. >> well, that in part is the reason why we're having this hearing.

good. i was talking with a fellow that goes to the same church as we do in delaware. he's in the auto business. sells a lot of cars in our state. and he was talking about the work of the consumer finance protection bureau. established a couple years ago. hopefully to look out for the interest of consumers throughout this country in a lot of different ways. i want to focus just a little bit on consumers if we could. and the -- i've been told that virtual currencies pose a number of questions as to their use by consumers. and i have maybe two questions, but the first is, maybe we should go down the panel or up the panel. i'll start with you, and if you will, just give us some of your thoughts on whether virtual currencies have sufficient protections built in to them for

consum consumers. the virtual currencies raise any additional new issues for consumer protection? for example, do we need to do anything to better protect consumers from fraud or to protect consumer privacy as a result of these virtual currencies? >> so i think that we're still trying to find our way, as a result, that means the folks who are at this point participating in this economy really have to try hard to participate in it, so these are not your average consumers just yet jumping into the space. so at this point i think it gives regulators some time to learn more about the technology and learn more about what the industry players are doing to address these concerns and whether the existing concern protection laws are enough. as far as opportunities, what's

interesting about especially decentralized digital currencies, they provide a new choice for consumers. today if you want to use electronic payments you're going to use a credit card or pay pal, that am coulds with fees. sometimes high fees, and those fees are important, because they provide things like insurance. if you have a -- your identity stolen or something you received, it's not what you ordered. you can always have the charge reversed. decentralized currencies are like cash, there's nothing to reverse, it also means there are very little fees. this now presents a new choice for consumers. they can choose insured more expensive or less expensive. >> thank you. >> i think there's many issues around consumer adoption of

digital currency. i'll touch on a couple of them. we emphasize that bit coin as a death tag currency offers great potential to lower the fraud risk that both consumers and merchants face on a day to day basis when we conduct payments. when we go into a restaurant and give our credit card out or when we enter that information online, we're effectively giving out the keys our bank account. it should not be a surprise that we've seen a dramatic growth in the amount of identity theft, and specifically financial information, private financial information being stolen and sold on black markets and used for nefarious reasons. protocols like bit coin reduce that risk, because the keys to your bank account, the keys to your money are never transmitted, that's one of the brilliant aspects of the design of the system, there's real potential to lower the currency as a financial fraud and consumer transactions, and increase consumer privacy as a

result. i think those are key benefits. but there are risks, clearly for consumers, one risk -- and this is one we take very seriously, as we look at this, is increasingly because of ease of use, consumers that want to take advantage of things are using online services that essentially host their bit coin on servers orrin the internet. and because bit coin itself, the mechanism by which funds can be used is based on keys that we then inturn would store. there's a real risk around the security of fundses, we've seen occurrences in the past weeks of start-ups did not have security around those funds and funds were stolen. industry is driving forward on that, but i think that's a key issue that the cfpb may take a

look at. i think there's other -- the flip side which is this question of what i will call merchant fraud, which is the charge back scenario, you didn't get the product, you got the wrong product. someone had inappropriately used your account. i think that there are methods for addressing that within the technology of bit coin today. and within improvements that are coming in updated, upcoming versions of bit coin, mechanisms to create refunds to consumers, mechanisms to provide greater transparency around what you're paying for, and there are mechanisms that are not well understood, i think, generally, but which will become available where funds can be held in escrow until a product has been delivered to a consumer. there are ways to address some of that merchant fraud risk as well. i think you're going to see industry participate abts coming forward in the coming years. >> there are consumer protection

issues. i'll reserve my comments strictly to bit coin and decentralized currencies. when you look at bit coin especially, we haven't even released version 0.9 yet, so we're not on version 1.0, it's very much still an experimental currency, and it should be a high risk environment for consumers and investors at the moment. that's changing over time, as businesses like mr. olairs and others are coming into the space and building the service layers on top of the protocol, to make it safer for consumers to move in. those service layers are technological, bit coin is referred to as programmable money, you can build in layers of escrow and dispute mediation and things like that, right into your payment structure, which is a very interesting concept as most of the laws that exist for consumer protection and payment space were built around traditional methods where those aren't possible.

you don't need as much regulation on the consumer side in the long term to the midterm as the system grows up. in the short term, consumers should be aware this is a high risk environment, and it's not quite ready for mass adoption today. that time is it coming, but it's not here yet. >> thank you. >> mr. allen opinion. >> i don't think i have much to add, other than to say, one of the groups i met with are industry leaders. they view as the other panelists do, virtual currency akin to cash. there is no fdsc. there is not that level of protection. so i think it has to be viewed as high risk, and i think the points that the other pannists made about the fact that consumer protections are part of a work in progress, but

certainly something we need to be aware of. >> the -- in anticipation, this hearing is asking our staff -- tell me a little bit, who was the creator, who are the creators? and i'm told that the protocol was developed by -- either by a programmer or by a group of programmers, that go by the name toshinakamato. is that correct? and with all the money and attention that's been given to bit coin, it seems strange to me that this -- either this individual or group would choose to remain anonymous. what do we know about this person? what do we know about this group. does it matter that his or her or their identity remains a mystery? who wants to go first?

mr. murck. >> i'll field that one for everybody. so toshi nakamoto is the creator for they who develop the bit coin protocol into the world in addition to the code base, that was open sourced to the entire community. this person or group of people has since left the scene, at least if not more than half of the code base from the original code has already been rewritten. while i think everybody is grateful for that incredible contribution at this moment in time, who sitoshi is is a story of bit coin going-forward. that was intentional and possibly why a pseudonym was

chosen in the first place. >> i want to address, it is a little strange that bit coin, we don't know who the creator is, and so that often conjures up the idea that there's a risk that we have not seen -- >> you don't think it was al gore, do you? >> you know, he's never denied it. >> but i think the key thing to emphasize is open source. open and audible and available for anybody to look at. mr. murck said, more than half of the code base has been written by others. i'm confident that it's -- the software is what it says. >> we're just about to start voting over in the capitol, so i

think we'll wrap it up by -- i just want to say -- i'd love to quote albert einstein. he said some memorable things, one of the things he says, in adversity lies opportunity. but inadversity lies opportunity. god knows there's plenty of adversity with respect to these virtual opportunities we talked about. it's not just potential, it's not just possible, it's real. we need to be not just mindful of that, but make sure we contain it and eliminate it where we can. i know one quote attributed to mrs. einstein. i find it relates to my -- mr. einstein was asked if she understands her husband's theory

of relativity? she responded, i understand the words but not sentences. when i first started trying to understand what this was all about, i sort of felt like mrs. einstein, i understand the words but not the sentences, with the help of our first panel and all of you on the second panel, and with the help of my staff and a lot of other folks, i'm starting to understand more than just the words, but a few of the sentences too. that's why we wanted to hold this hearing, to understand the pitfalls that come from this technolo technology. i said earlier, i thought the first panel gave us a lot of

information. i thought they were thoughtful. it was encouraging and i find that that's been true here with this panel as well. on behalf of my colleagues who are not here, who are flying in from all over the country right now, in order to make this 5:30 vote. thank you. they don't know i'm thank you, but i'll thank you in their absence. >> we have a shared responsible aeblts in trying to make this work. with that, i think we'll wrap it up here, and i'm going to note that the hearing record will remain open for 15 days, that's until december third at 5:00 p.m. submission of statements and

others for the record. i would ask you respond to them promptly. our staff, especially months ago, i want to thank our staffs, both majority and minority staff, and for you and our first panel for joining us today. on that, we're adjourned and thank you so much.

this wednesday on washington journal, how to save bitcoin. he's also the author of the book, the end of money. the cashless society. you can read the article on the washington journal's website. you can watch the interview wednesday live at 9:15 a.m. eastern and call or tweet us with your questions or comments.

today, john kerry talks about how the administration planned to address climate change. here's a quick look. >> more than two decades ago i visited brazil as part of the u.s. delegation to the rio summit. this was the first time the global economy came together united to address climate change. it was also where i met theresa. we talk about a 12-year-old girl from vancouver, who took the stage at that summit in order to fight for her future.

21 years later, i still remember what she said about climate change, as follows. i'm only a child, she told us, yet i know we are all in this together and should act as one single world toward one single goal i never understood something that a lot of folks today need to grasp. something's still missing from our political debate like the saying goes, i said a moment ago -- speaking foreign language -- we need that now. decades later, we have a lot to learn from that young woman. the americas have become the new center of our global energy map. our hemisphere supplies one fourth of the world's crude oil and nearly one fourth of its coal. we support over a third of

global electricity. what that means is we have the ability and great responsibility to influence the way the entire world is powered. we need to embrace the energy future over the energy of the past. i'm well aware. i've been through these battles in the senate. i know how tough it is. i know how many different industries and interests there are to push back. we have a responsibility to push back against them. climate change is real. it is happening. and if we don't take significant action as partners, it will continue to threaten our environment and k3450u7b9s, friends in the caribbean and other island nations.

it will threaten our entire way of life, certainly there's challenge of climate change will cost us far more. for its negative impact, the investment we need today in order to meet the challenge. every economic model shows that, and yet we shy away our economies have yet to factor in the cost of doing nothing or doing too little. the devastating effects that droughts can have on forests. the hefty price tag that comes with rebuilding communities after every catastrophe, hurricane, tropical storm trails through and leaves destruction in their wake. the extraordinary cost of fires that didn't burn as ferociously and frequently as they do today because of the increased dryness

the increasing signs of loss of water for the him leahs as the glaciers shrink. and, therefore as the countries are threatened as billions of people see their food and food security affected. these are real challenges, they're not somewhere in the future, we're already seeing them now. for all of these regions, we know that we are one of the largest contributors to the problem. there are about 20 nations that contribute to 20% of the problem the good news is, the agenda he's put together is one specifically designed to be able to be done by administrative order, so you don't have to wait

for congress to act. >> you can watch all of secretary kerry's remarks online at cspan.org. mrs. johnson as first lady, loved to show off the country and her home. the guests to the ranch would often informally gather here in the den. various heads of state came to visit. we have a few things that speak to her connection to the room here. one of the things that she wanted to highlight was the native american heritage here in the hill country. we have a small collection of arrow heads over there, she had an eye for copper and collected various items through the years and had gifts from various friends. mrs. johnson gave a tour of the house in 1968 that was filmed where she featured the china you see here purchased in mexico, very colorful. mrs. johnson spent a lot of time here at the ranch. it was very important because it provided such a respite from all

the turmoil of washington, particularly later in the presidency, where the johnsons could come home, recharge their batteries and make that connection back to the land and this place they valued so much. >> first lady lady bird johnson tonight live at 9:00 eastern on c-span and c-span 3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. ahead of next year's nato summit in britain, the council addressed the capabilities. this is about an hour and a half. >> those of you in the back, if you want to come up closer, please do. >> good afternoon, my name is ian brzezinski. i have the privilege of serving as your moderator for our

afternoon panel, nuclear conventional and missile defense. let me start by thanking our partners in crime here, the norwegian institute of studies, it's been a great relationship with them. we started this morning with a focus on asymmetric threats. our panel in the morning talks about cyber, terrorism, energy and space. barry talked about a post civilian world. and overlunch we were drifting back into the contemporary operations and we have a statement on a more traditional longstanding dimension of nuclear weapons. that is going to be one of the focus on our panel, focusing on the longstanding. challenges and tools. nuclear forces, conventional forces and missed events.

i have to remind myself, because missile defense looks so knew. these capabilities have been in the past and many would argue been the backbone of capacity. elements are critical to alliance cohesion. so it's only prudent particularly in a dynamic environment, dynamic strategic environment to constantly check these tools and update them, update their postures and postures. it concluded, the alliancesing capabilities are sound. our goal today this afternoon is to re-evaluate that, and explore

where further progress can be made, either to enhance or justice as needed in these key elements. all with an eye to the 2014 summit. we need to determine how they fit into the next chapter. these reviews may need to be done more frequently. there are four that capture my mind. an evil talked about, which is europe's declining military capabilities, a process that seems to be ongoing, and we don't see any real reversal in them. second is a withdrawal from europe over the last several years. third is the rising instability. we talked about the crisis in syria the risk of looking pail. there's a fourth concern on my

mind. that's the growing risk for changes going on in russia. this is a country that features a disturbing mix of internal conflict rising zeno phobia. coupled with increasing assertive foreign policy that is backed by growing military capabilities. we mentioned today, nato exercise 6,000, a major undertaking, major collective defense exercise. compare that to 2013, which took place in october. that involves 70,000 troops. maritime landings. that's exponentially much larger than steadfast jazz. i'm not saying it signals a new confrontation, but it does give credence to those who are concerned and asked whether or not nato is giving adequate consideration to these -- those contingencies on its eastern

frontier that could precipitate the limited territorial incursion by russia. could that be part of the equation when we look at nato's future. how these relate to the new deterrence challenges of the 21st century, we have an outstanding panel here of current and former policy makers and commanders. in the center is the assistant secretary of global strategic affairs, she took that position in august of 2012. in that capacity, she and her office oversee policy development in areas of encountering weapons of mass destruction and missile defense, but also the department's activities in cyber and space. she also might add, chairs the high level group on nuclear issues and what i like best, she brings ten years of experience from capitol hill, in some much of that was spect as a de facto

staff director. paul slocum to my immediate right here. i know him as the secretary of the atlantic council. his day job is senior council. served as undersecretary of defense for policy under president clinton. since then he's been involved in numerous senior government commissions. the commission on intelligence capabilities. he recently sat on the congressionally mandated national academy of sciences study, making sense of ballistic missile defense that came out in 2012. to his right is general james cartright, now at csis where he holds the haired brown chair. he brings a -- i hope i have this right. when you look, you look so young. a four decade career in the marines. he was an aviator in the marine core, what's unique about his

marine career, he was the only marine who served as a commander of the u.s. strategic command. he culminated his military carrier not in the distant past, as the eighth vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. at the end, we have kurt volcker a long time colleague and friend of mine, the executive director of the mccain institute. he brings 23 years of service to our country in the foreign services. with a number of senior nato positions. nato related positions. on the last career, he was a representative to nato, or ambassador to nato. he also served on the national security council staff as a senior director for europe. assistant secretary of state for europe and eurasia affairs. and served in the nato

headquarters as a deputy chief of staff and immediately to his left, general pat o'reilly. he comes from us from the missile defense agency which he led, his last post in the military. he's a long career of command staff officer positions on both sides of the atlantic. he is not just braun he has a lot of brains, he's senior degrees in physics. taught physics. and he's led the programs that have produced energy programs, the patriot pact three, and gbi programs. intense operational and problematic experience in missile defense. we're all welcome to have you here. i'm going to start off with madeleine and work through our panelists and we'll have a

moderated discussion. madeleine, last june in berlin, president rolled out -- delivered a major speech, in which a key element called for traumatic reductions in u.s. an traumatic reductions tactical weapons. is now the time to further that process and if so, how should evolution be related to efforts to manage more asymmetric threats? >> the institute for defense studies, it really is a pleasure to be here. i think your question rielle reflects on a lot of the work that is going on in parallel between nato and the u.s., so in june, the cull min nation of the oh so much longer 90-day study

resulted in the issuing of new guidelines under policy. and that guidance really was the result of a very long exhaustive process that allowed u.s. to come to conclusion that we could very safely in conjunction with russia, go to about a third fewer strategic nuclear systems. at the same time, since nato put out its gdpr, nato and specifically the hlg, which is you mentioned i have a privilege of sharing and having done a lot of work with my colleagues from over here in the front row, but the hlg has done a tremendous amount of work in updating the nato guidance and so for the very first time, since 1992, the

hlg provided a new political guidance for the nato, which then was recently followed by some implementing guidance for both military staff and for shape. so, with these two new guidance documents in place and in nato and then with the u.s. ppt in place, both of them have now set the stage, the strategy for what are really more the 21st century threats. not cold war, but the real threats, the different threats, the evolving threats. the ballistic threats from the shorter and medium range systems. looking at how you both maintain a strong, incredible deterrent. at the same time, setting restrictions for future reductions.

it's important to have russia as part of this effort on both sides. neither one of these efforts will be successful without it. >> by the way, i might add walt will have to leave at 2:15, not in protest, but because he's got a plane to catch. do you see a need for more radical change to the alliance's nuclear posture? a need for tighter length between that posture and its conventional terms? >> i think it is important that the united states actually modernize the strategic force. you can argue about on what pace needs to be and so on. and there may be an argument about how to maintain ground core. but i think the core remains

u.s. strategic nuclear turf. it's also true of the british and french forces. both of which are committed to be modernized although there will be debates, at least in britain, on what scale. it's always a pleasure to agree with evo and i'm also one of those who has real reservations about the military utility of the dual capable aircraft in europe. the most dramatic way to put it is if we ever got into a condition in which the alliance wanted to use nuclear weapons, given a choice between invulnerable submarines in other systems, within essentially 100% assurance of reaching the target and very high precision, would we reject them in favor of air breathing airplanes with pilots in them that may even have to be

refueled on certain missions, dropping gravity bombs. on the assumption that the russians or somebody else, it's hard to imagine targets other than the russians, would be pacified by the fact that the airplanes came from europe and not from america and british french platform. that said, i think the central point of nuclear weapons in nato is that they're not primarily military forces. they are primarily political in some sense deterrents is political because it evolves shaping the adversaries decision. they're also political in a sense of serving purposes far beyond what they could do if they were ever used and in this context, we should never forget horrible consequences of use of nuclear weapons on any scale.

but for some europeans, the commitment of american nuclear weapons in europe for reasons that you can argue if they ever made sense, but very definite, are seen as a fundamental symbol of american commitment. there are a lot of europeans in the room and i apologize for saying this, but the europeans tend to operate in two modes. like angels can move from one to another without passing through intervening space, one is that the americans are about to embroil them in stupt conflicts which they have no interest and the other is that the americans are about to abandon and leave them open to their enemies. to some degree, things like the presence of u.s. nuclear weapons in europe help with that. i think in some ways, they are

also important as a symbol of alliance solidarity. awkward. maybe not efficient. maybe not the way you'd do it if p you had to do it all over again, but in some sense, the fact they are there, there is some role, at least for some of them, they are in some sense under the dual key. that has a political significance. i have reluctantly come to the conclusion, well, it is no secret that united states air force is has wanted to get rid of these things for years and years and years. frank miller and i and i suspect my successors over the years have had to go down and throw ourselves in front of the united states air force, which would save money and say this will be the end of the world. the collapse of nato. and since it's only relatively modest amount of money out of something between 5 and $700

million, they stay. so i think that's that's for the foreseeable future, a fight about this issue is not worth it. i think however there are things that we should be doing to prepare, maybe to prepare for an eventual reduction and if the russians were going to agree there was going to be some substantial reduction, the politics would change. i think some things we should do, one is there was a time when and it was no secret, there was a time and i'm honestly not sure whether it's still true. where there was a formal commitment of some of the u.s. and in principle, all of the british submarine force to nato. that's a force which in military terms is much more relevant. i think if we should, if that is not the existing arrangement

today, we should ask seriously why not. second, i'm glad that -- is sharing the -- and i'm sure it's a very important instrument. i was always pleased at that level was called the worst level. implied there are other kinds of levels. the level, however, which was very important at one point, at least in my experience, it was late in the meeting. the europeans, a cigarette, and the briefing went out there. warmly received. as a sign of how much the americans were consulting the europeans. i think one of the things which ought to be done to educate at least the nato community about some of the realities of newark leb weapons is to revive and

make more serious the nato nuclear plan. and really to involve europeans. there are very few good things mr. snowden did, but one is let's hope we will stop lecturing the europeans about how lousy their security is so we can't tell them things that you could get out of the newspapers. much more openness about the realities of newark lehr weapons. i think a core issue for nuclear policy in nato is that it is broadly understood. the work being done by specialized people -- as far as linking nato's nuclear forces to conventional forces, i'm not sure i understand the question, but one of the real divisions within the alliance on nuclear policy is do we regard nuclear

weapons as almost if not exclusively if not exclusive, a deter ens of -- i got to say, in spite of all the problems about declining capability, it is hard for me to imagine the situation in which nato as a whole would not have the conventional capability to deal with any circumstance in which it would arise for article 5 defense and therefore, the question of using nuclear weapons arise. and i can also understand the argument if you were to make a -- that you were telling the truth. not necessarily convincing the people who are about to attack.

>> great. we have a pretty strong lobby here, it strikes me, in terms of questioning that the operational e y eutility of nuclear weapons. those nuclear weapons. what are the con tin wansies that you tried conventional threats and how do you link them to nuclear deterrents and these new athreats we discussed earlir today? >> i find myself in a very uncomfortable position in that i so strongly agree with evo and madelyn and walt that i'm having a hard time coming up with a good argument of why they're wrong. the one thing that i would point out and we don't need to get into russia bashing here.

but it is clear in the current constructs of the new start and levels that we have committed to there and then the potential to come down another third from that, the vector that we're on and two, that the russians are far ahead of us. russians are far ahead of us in h compliance with the current. ahead of us being the united states. so, you know, i want to make that known. and i find myself where arlen's question from this morning, should we rename deterrents. there are a lot of terms that have baggage in their definitional genere that leave us having a difficult conversation and often talking

past each other. extended deterrents. deterrents. strategic. all of these have with them a set of meetings that almost always take you to nuclear. and the question is, in the realities of the world we live in, i know we want to kind of like all normal humans, live in denial to some extent, but in grand strategy, what's really being said in the u.s., in nato and europe and other places in the world is that we do not have the means or aspirations we have for our national security. it's just not matched up. we can't afford as the united states, the standing armies that we currently have, to keep them standing forever, number one. number two, the recapitalization of the nuclear force that we have today in a form that is like it is today is unaffordable, so and, we've got to come to some understanding

collectively b about what our aspirations are and what of those are realizable. we in the united states have been a global power. forward based, forward operating. more and more countries, mostly all countries, do not want large american armies on their soil. that's a reality. the cost to have those courses on mobile platforms is unaffordable. so, we have a disconnect in aspiration and the reality of the resources that we have. that's just, we can live in denial of that, but wer also living in a reality of it day-to-day when you look at the reductions that are going on.

we fought those as armies. we put together armies and fought against our foes. if you come forward to the cold war, we fought as positions. that's how we fought about the cold war, how we constructed forces, et cetera. come forward to the current conflicts, we're fighting for days. in other words, the emotionmobi the capability of the forces today are substantially better than they have been in the past. most people will look at precision and conventional arms and say, oh, that's the ability to hit your target and hit it. sometimes, that works. sometimes, it doesn't. the reality of what precision really brought us is the number of trucks and people and equipment on the battlefield today is expo nen shlly lower than it was in the past. that's the realization. what is it about the future

that's going to allow us to match the reality of the resources we have and are willing to put against our security and the capabilities that we can actually field with those resources. where are we going to fly in what i call cost inversions. the ability to do what we want with the resources we actually have. not just to wish for something else. and from my perspective, strategic, not in the sense of nuclear as we always have thought, but in the sense of some of the things we need to do are a long ways away and yet, are urgent and must be done now. some of the things we need to do are right next door and equally time sensitive and must be dealt with right now and we won't be there physically to do it. how do we start to think about a construct of defense for nato, particularly when you're looking at countries in nato that are more threatened that other countries, that allow us to have great strategic reach at quick speeds and not have that be what

it is today only nuclear and how are we going to think about our next door neighborer attacking us and being able to close with that problem very quickly and put it into a position where we can have more decision time and more capability. how are we going to think about those things? there are new capabilities out there in defense and other areas that are going to allow us to start to move in that direction, but they're not real yet. so, what is the aspiration that we have for these vexing problems and the thought process in the past was the first thing i'll do is i'll use my strategic, i'm sorry, my conventional -- and then if that fails, i'll use my strategic courses. i tell you it's going to turn around. don't think about it in a nuclear sense. but you're going to have to think strategic first. coming from great distance or no distance to solve a problem and last, you're going to think about your conventional forces

and moving and the huge cost of standing arms and move iing theo the problem. it's just the reality wee going to have to deal with and how with are we going to do that. how we're going to afford it, those are the questions i think we're going to have to as an alliance, comes grips with and understand how we're going to do that, otherwise, we will not be matching our resources and capabilities with the security that we desire to have. >> thank you. >> other than that, in a good place. >> curt dealt firsthand with this type of issue. just dealing with -- he was involved if not leading the effort to bring kind of -- reality. make it actually occur, concerns to europe. when you hear those speakers, particularly general cartwright's point about be able to exercise leverage and increase speed, do you see this happening in nato? has nato positioned itself to

leverage deployability of its forces so it can provide adequate deterrent against threats both near and far? >> straight up, yeah, we saw -- so, the way i want to answer that if i can and i want to -- agrees with each other. det deter is when somebody decides not to bother. so, we are deterring successfully. the u.s. nuclear -- anyone from thinking about even contesting u.s. nuclear balance. it's off the table. that's good. we should be happy about that. that there is no nuclear challenge we're after. that extends to nato, but is

only credible if we have theling linkage. he's right operationally, but the burden of that politics has to be there, or else it's not credible that europe is part of the strategy and also starts to raise questions does the u.s. nuclear deterrent really extend. the other thing we're deterring is a conventional attack on the territory of european unions. there, i think what are the components of the terms? capability. will. both individual and collective. your track record and your message. these are all lined up perfectly on an attack against nato territory by conventional means. everybody knows no one has a doubt, nato can and will respond to that. now, the flip side is we're not deterring anything else. we're not deterring the taliban from attacking us in

afghanistan. or trying to overthrow the government. we're not deterring assad from killing his own people, iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon. and we're not deterring terrorists trying to attack us. so, those things are not working. and what to we see on the horizon now? this is where we need to bring in this planned question. we are all cutting our defense budgets including this. we are withdrawing u.s. forces from europe. we are not talking about what to do about crises outside of territory, whether it's libya or egypt or what to do about iran. we thought about these events, but not against whom and what the issue is there. we are in process of eroding

capacity and what we are projecting is an erosion of will. so, this has some serious implications for our able theil keep this deter rans up. the u.s. i'm not so worried about as long as we keep that small nuclear linkage with europe, but i am worried about nato's credibility for the sake of deterrents. will we continue to convince people that if there's any thought of an attack on nato member territory, that that will be immediately met and dealt with. i think that question can start to creep up in people's minds and since my friend, the former georgia ambassador to the u.s. just walked in the door, i'll mention an example of this. we were having a decision at nato having russia invaded

georgia and a comment from one of the larger allies was that thank goodness, we didn't invite georgia to join nato. because then we should have shown it's not real. that's why if i pointed to -- we have to do the things that are necessary to keep the conventional term credible. have military forces that are actually available. plan for when they might be used and exercise that use. i slightly disagree with some of the comments used today about the importance of the expedit n expeditionary roles. i don't think you can agree in advance on what role we can do. kind of in bosnia, we never

talked about going to bosnia, but if you do your homework on article 5, you can -- >> thank you. could you talk to us a little bit about how this defense fits into both deter rents of nuclear threats and conventional threats? >> i think it's very hard to make a distinction between the two. because the missile defense systems are set up to counter mi missiles. whether it's a weapon of mass destruction, we don't know. where they're launched. but there's obviously some intent to do harm or the missile wouldn't be launched in the first place. i believe there's ambiguity, whether or not they're putting it to a nuclear strategic sense or a conventional attack.

probably the greatest range would be the missile that you're lo looking at unfortunately as we've been talking about the relevancy of the nato missions in the future, in the area of missile defense, proliferation and the threat of ballistic missiles unfortunately is not static. and a lot of reviews were done four years ago and architecture was developed with nato and the united states. i believe if you've looked since then, the growing concern is that the emergence of user friendly, if i may say, ballistic missiles that are able to nonstate actors. number two would be the emergence of the antiship ballistic missile and the possession of countries around the world where you can actually affect commerce with great distance and third would be a long the lines of your question, is the continued development of long range missiles by iran with

capabilities to the united states. and when you look at that mission or those threats as i just said, we have to have the capabilities to respond -- that's a long-term commitment to development, so i honestly believe that the answer to your question is you have to be prepared to engage missiles without knowing ahead of time of what the threat is. >> let me throw in a question to you that's almost another softball. but what are ways in which the europeans can contribute more to u.s. homeland defense when it comes to protecting homeland, u.s. homeland against u.s. ballistic missile threats? >> in the case of u.s. homeland defense, about 60 to 70% of a trajectory of a missile we're concerned about coming from the middle east toward the united states is over european

territory or nonu.s. nato territory. so, in the 70% of that flight, there's a tremendous amount of data that we would great ly be able to leverage with our own system that we currently do not have access to, yet there are sensors in europe today that could make tremendous contributions to u.s. missile defense. >> could you be more specific? >> there's a network, space object tracking sensors. when you attempt an intercept of missiles coming in, a lot of those sensors are in locations that would be able to make very accurate assessments of whether you were successful or not much earlier than just relying on u.s. sensors where they're located and then they're saying growing emergence of mobile

countries on nato. a whole array of frequencies out there that number one, make it much more difficult to counter and number two, adds robustness. so, i believe there's tremendous amount of contribution that could be made and in period of austerity that we're looking at right now, these are not expensive undertakings to link these sensors to a u.s. nato system. would greatly enhance the whole network. >> yes, madelyn. question from kerry's visit to poland. also from missile defense. when he was in poland, he said that u.s. commitment to build the epa site in 2018 is ironclad. does that mean that the obama speech, provision of obama

speech in prague 2009, when she was it was an agreement with iran over its nuclear weapons program, if that were to be achieved robustly, that there would be a rethinking of epa? >> so, we've made a substantial commitment to to epa missile defense and to the strategic deterrent, so when the department went through its strategic choices management review, those were among the three, plus cyber and space capabilities that were going to be highlighted and protected and preserved. part and parcel of that, as we've gone through the various budget deliberations, becomes really hard, even to protect those things that you want to protect and epaa is clearly one of those things that we want to

protect and so we've done so far, a pretty good job of protecting phases two. phase one, phase two and phase three. obviously, we canceled phase four, but that's really where there is a connection between your connection and iran. so we saw a more rapidly emerging north korean threat and moved some resources and some assets to go after that. more emergent, more near term threat, the long-term threat from north korea, to put additional 14 gbis in alaska and also begin to look at how to improve the capabilities of that ekb. and so we were able to do that because frankly, that long range threat from iran hadn't emerged on the timetable we thought and so, we were able to take some of the stage four concepts and move that to alaska. that said, you know because they

test they had all the time and they have lots of them, we have a no kidding threat from iran in the area of the short and the medium and to some extent, intermediate range and those are there and they are real and that's where the resources are. so, the phase two ground breaking, which we just had in poland or romania rather and then the upcoming, the upcoming commitment to poland, which you'll see that completed in 18 that we are definitely committed to because those are real threats and iran has those real missiles. i think the bigger question really becomes and it's not just for epa. it's really for all of the defenses and it's how many defensive systems do you buy to off set how many systems and that's the question that

ultima ultimately, we really have to have because as many have said and looked at this, this is the losing end of a closing proposition, so you know, how often, how far do you want to go one for one or two for two or however many it is that you need. but that's really the next question. so, it's not where is iran going. it's where is anybody going that has offensive missile capabilities and how do we think about defending them if we within the always afford that one-on-one or two on two defensive capability. >> is that the quote on say iin that regardless, we have a -- with iran. we're still going to need missile defense capability, so the sites are -- >> define what that looks like. with we no longer treat russia an enemy, we still have nuclear weapons. so, define that box and then we'll define our capabilities.

>> to walt on missile defense. as you were part of that commission that looked at missile defense, nato's posture's development not supported against russia. why is it impossible to reach out to russia on this defensive cooperation and simultaneously develop capabilities against the missiles? because in fact, that's what's happening in nato today. why would not necessarily undermine the relationship? they heavily -- nuclear weapons and ballistic technology. >> well, it's not that you can't develop a missile which will shoot down a target with -- writing, it's that the russians

have capability for exactly the republicans just mentioned. to overboil many plausible defense. so the most you can expect if they want to do it. well, so missile defense, particularly the kind of thing -- are building, as i understand it, which is to build specific targets as well as to offer some protection for the country as a whole, is to raise the cost of entry. is to make clear that there is some defense that is they're not absolute vulnerable and you then rely on other nations to deal with the broader nations. i think that one of the issues that we tend to slide over is that most of the people in this room know it. nato has remarkably few military

capabilities. there used to be a pipeline given how expensive it was and i'm pleased to know that ags is going to happen some day. but they are systems designed almost invariably with a national and collective mission and as you know, the principle that everything is a national responsibility means they usually get paid for by the nations and that therefore, the national mission not an absolute priority, not to the exclusion of others, but it's very important. i must say this is sbeerly out of the government. i'm not 100% clear that if there were and this is -- right in the tell me what the agreement with the iranian and i'll tell you

what kind of impact it might have on the defense program. i find it hard to believe it's the really worried, fundamental change in iranian policy. the united states congress could be quite so keen on providing the funding for a system which is quite rightly heavily oriented toward the defense. and there's another question about the relationship, the role in missile defenses. it's been addressed indirectly, but not explicitly. you asked general riley about the relationship between missile defense and deter reince. i believe that the most serious threat from countries like iran is not that they will decide they're going to fire off the missile for the hell of it and to wipe out the -- it is that they will embark on some regional aggression, which is

very much not in our interest. very much in the interest, very much in our interest to sprent it. they will hope that the capability is is enough to discourage us and to discourage other countries from coming to the stance of where they attack. i think in that sense, missile defense, because it offers the prospect of frustrating that strategy, making it much harder to rely on, i think missile defense makes a major contribution to conventional deter rent, which has nothing to do with shooting anything down. to quote my good friend, the chief barbarian handler in the chinese military that you won't trade los angeles for taipei. that i think in many ways, the

central role limited missile defenses that are practice kl. as to why i don't know how many reams of good will and paper have been spent on tryi ining t convince the russians that we would like nothing better which no kidding will help to demonstrate that unsurprisingly, few hundred american intercepter missiles will not defeat thousands of russians and they usually get vary ration on no followed by colorful adjectives, but maybe they'll change. >> follow on my first point of demonstrating capacity and political will of the alliance to deal with the challenges. of today and tomorrow. you talked about the mobility. of allied forces.

i have the sense that this mobility may be demonstrated for expedition nar operations, but i really wonder if the alliance is properly con figured today to deal with contingencies on nato's border, poland, turkey. am i understanding nato's capacity or is this something that needs to be addressed? if so, how would you build up that capacity and demonstrate it? >> i think first, in the construct that we've been discussing here of nuclear weapons and missile defense, today if somebody attacks and nobody's around, it's not interest of our countries and other countries and is perceived as some sort of threat, the only response that can get on the other side of the earth quickly is a nuclear weapon.

then you fall to conventional forces. the beauty, at least for me, is that it has significant ability to bridge both strategic long range and short range capabilities and to introduce at least doubt into the mind of whether of that adversary, whether they're going to be successful. okay. where i agree with madelyn, we can't afford to get into a game where i'm going to build a missile intercepter for every missile you have. so, we need short of nuclear,

nonkinetic capabilities that have the ability to reach long and short distances to augment what missile defense can do and to fill in gaps that missile defense will never address. the second thing about missile defense to me that is very important in this context is that no one country has what they need to see the missiles coming. you have to rely on a coalition and that binds politically and mission wise objective wise, multiple countries together and that has a conventional deterrent, as pecht to it. a nuclear attribute and symmetric. what you're looking at there is a defensive capability that can address strategic to asymmetric,

has a political binding attribute to it, but you have to bound it with a capability that says if you shoot these things at us, one, you're going to be unsure as to whether or not they're going to get through and two, something's coming back your way quickly. that's the fourth construct that starts to play here. >> could i just add a little bit on that. one of the problems that any alliance has is that some people are on the front line and some are more in the rear. that was the coupling issue in the cold war, that the countries in eastern europe, turkey, conceivably in the nordic countries that are closest to the potential -- leave iing the

politics aside, the problem is and one of the reasons why there is such interest in retaining at least the options of using nuclear weapons in response to a massive attack is that those countries are not keen on being liberated after six months of heavy fighting. they're interested in the attack not happening or at least being stopped. i think one of the issues that the alliance needs to face is one that we face in connection with cokorea. that there are sort of two models on how you address an invader. one is at some point, you will decide that war is inevitable and you mobilize. you start flowing stuff and everything goes -- and we're

talking about when we used to fight in divisions, we used to move ten divisions to europe in ten days. it's a measure of the way this was planned, that the first day was filling out paperwork. >> one of the things i think we have to bear in mind -- this is extremely unlikely to be a -- there's lots of history, tactical surprise. to my knowledge, there's virtually no history in the last couple of hundred years at least that you could believe could possibly have happened. i think the critical operation that nato have a plan for reacting to strategic warning in

ways that are not move everything forward, mobilize everybody and so on. we've developed a much more sophisticated, which is the classic example. korea, long away way, america, far. enemy close. mad people. how you deal with that. it is a graduated set of respons responses. that will be tricky in the nato context because we have the luxury in the korean case of having essentially only two and a half on our side. and people will make the argument, oh, you mustn't do anything because that will make the crisis worse, which is not crazy, but i think one of the doctrinal things that has to be worked on is through the

unlikely contingency of a conventional invasion, how do you take advantage of strategic warning and make effective responses. i always like to recommend articles that i've read that sound interesting because there are not that many. frances has written a brilliant article on of all things, the french operation in mali in survival. and one of the things he points out is that the french were able to operate with lightning speed. literally within a couple of days. they managed to turn the millation situation around. and one reason for this is that they had small, but effective, very skilled, ready forces deployed already not too far away. now, they needed help to get the big horses to the united states written and it took a while, but they were able to get meaningful capability on the ground very

quickly, which had a big impact. now, it's not that mali sets the example for everything, but it sets the principal that you need to figure out ways to respond quickly and not to wait. >> i want to ask a question about deter rans. it strikes me that the most likely contingencies in which nato's capacity with the challenge is not some massive invasion by some eastern party. it's more strike by terrorist organization by the atlantic area or in the case of an increasingly unstable area.

if we go back to machiavelli, he emphasized the word punishment, to lead a potential aggress sor to believe that there's going to be an immediate reprisal. does nato have the capacity to do such a reprisareprisal? a more limited strike, does nato have a political will to really strike back and demonstrate back in a way that will deter that from happening? >> do we have the track record, no, and have we mentioned that this is what will happen if you do this? no. that's where we've got to fall down.

conventional deterrents of an attack like you're talking about, of an attack of a conventional, but these other things, i'm concerned that we're not in a position to deter them and that's eroded. and the trend like is a wrong way. i would love for us to be in a position to deter syria from doing what it's doing. to warn them because they know what we'll do if they don't do what we warned them about, but that's just not the case. and if it's a terrorist group as well, the capacity to go and identify through intelligence means and then to have precision guided ammunitions to land on a training base or if the government was providing support to that, yeah, we would do that. but -- to agree to such a thing takes a consensus of nato among all of the allies and then you

have to define the operation. i just don't see that. i think that means as nato, we really don't have that capability. i don't see missile defense other than making sure we are not -- the example, iran is off doing something in the middle east -- dealing with that ukrainian challenge for that reason. a dozen other reasons that we might be able from dealing with that, how complicated, how long, i think that's what we're seeing with iran and syria today, but i don't think that missile defense gives us an ability to deter someone else. all it means is we're not

deterred from entering for that reason. all i ask, keep your questions and points brief. barry. >> thanks. for a good discussion so far. you raise a lot of the right issues. i wanted to focus on this issue of will. because i hear a lot from administration officials that we're war weary, which is true and certainly, parts of our -- are war weary, but that the question of use of military force is essentially off the table for any type of contingency basis. imagine i do think that sends the wrong deterrent signals, but i wonder how true that is.

is it just complete pli off the table forever. is it only the middle east? what are the dynamics at play that makes the american public now different from other times in our recent history? >> take a shot at that? >> okay. i think you have to maybe balance what the american public is is tired of and not what the will to do -- and i think they are two very different things, so yeah, let me see, the american public is just very tired of intervening in places where they may not see a definite threat to the u.s.

i think they're two very different things and certainly, everything we're doing is certainly supportive of the fact that yeah, we would respond to a definite threat to the u.s. >> i have to go in a few minutes and thanks for having me. >> i think that one's attitude towards the demonstration of this problem is supposed to be soon. that depends a lot on whatever you think it is in fact a good idea to intervene in the syrian civil war. if you think intervening in the syrian civil war is a good idea for a variety of reasons you find compelling, then the fact of the united states is not going to do it diminishes our credibility.

the fact that the american public and conscious are reduck luck tant to do it is a good thing and i would argue that what the public will be convinced of, just what madelyn just said. when it is generally in our interest to do something because the situation presents a serious challenge, ours and our allies security interest and world stability in some way, then the american public is quite capable of being convinced. it takes leadership. it takes effort. not 100% of the people will be convinced. you will get to some degree, the scenario we had in kosovo where on the same day, the republican controlled house of representatives voted against expanding our intervention against and literally tied on whether we need to do what we were doing.

but i think the demonstrated restraint in not rushing in actually helps the credibility of future administration in a situation in which there was a much more clear cut challenge. with that, since i don't think the airplane, the days have passed when airplanes waited for me. >> you can't deter its departure. >> it glosses over a lot. >> i think i owe curt the courtesy of hearing his rebuttal. >> that's okay. you can rebut me later. we had secretary kerry saying that we would be responding, the president saying so and then we didn't do so and then we got off

on a different direction. so i think it has a direct u.s. cape tblty. but the point i was making earlier, is what is nato's credibility and having the will to respond to any of these. that's where i think we really have a problem because i don't see the nato we have today beginning to contemplate expedition nar mission, try to create defense spending. even when we talk about exercising, what snacenariossce one wants to talk about what the scenarios are. there's just a real concern that if nato were confronted with a situation of nato, it would be to respond so it. unless it is that attack on on a member, i would see it very difficult to get it in.

i'm not sure that it has to be of nato responding in a military way. which one would argue it has actually been or will be more successful in getting rid of the chemical weapons in syria than if we had initiated several air strikes. you have right now as a result of the diplomatic solution, our efforts in syria, i mean, you've seen quite a bit of response from both nato upon nato and then nato countries wanting to know what can they do to help. what offers can be made of assistance to make sure syria gets the weapons or gets the chemical capabilities outside of syria, that they meet their deadlines. they really are responding almost to the point that you

can't use everything. so, i think there is nato responding in many, many ways and there is a will to respond. not just -- >> harlan -- thanks to the panel. my question is for general ca cartwrig cartwright. you've open oed up the equivalance lent of a fine bottle of wine. can you answer the question about how you deal with strategic reality especially when sometime before the end of 2020, probably much sooner, buying power of defense is going to be about half of what it is right now, so how would you answer your own question to give us that taste? >> i would offer an alternative triad, a triad of strategic

capabilities and then to get at this issue of the nexus between terrorism of weapons of mass destruction, special operations capabilities. those are the ones that would be -- and out and the intermediy between border and police, and general purpose forces, and as the example that walt used, they would be there in areas where we had worry about being -- having strategic surprise or tactical surprise. and so then at that end of the capability, that's counter-proliferation, nonproliferation, movement around, understanding what is going on at the high end on the strategic side it is the missile defenses, the last resort of nuclear, but last resort, and credible capabilities of far-reaching effects. not all necessarily kinetic and not all necessarily military in nature that allow to us have the

time to have what would appear to be one of a good -- i hate to use that word -- things that have happened in syria, the ridding of the region, particularly syria, of those chemical weapons and all of them -- the sounding nation -- surrounding nations that live under that threat. i do disagree on the missile defense side of it. i do believe very clearly and very passionately, that missile defense is in fact a deterrent, that when you remove, whether you're adversary is a rational state or a totally irrational, undeterrable, that you can deter people by removing objective. if you remove the objective of a cheap strike or quick strike like that, taking in the middle of the night, what we used to worry about 300icbms over the pole, is now scuds or whatever. if you put that threat in question, you are in fact adding

a deterrent capability, i believe to the equation. i don't think we disagree how it would be used. but i call that a deterrent. it is that triad and the rebalancing of you strategic forces, general purpose operations and special operations. >> that's an interesting point you make about the third leg of your triad, which is using special operations forces, and i'm wondering if there's a way the alliance could bind its chemical nuclear biological weapons brigade with a nato response force, creating an almost anti-wmd capacity to go in and seize and secure wmd when necessary. >> the likelihood -- the most important thing is to bring your bored and internal police into close coordination and understanding, common picture, with your special operators, and that special operators trained and equipped to handle

nonprolivation, counter-proliferation, wmd type scenarios. that for each nation state is critical, and then for the region and the alliance it's a critical activity. >> interesting. stephano? >> thank you. my question is more general question. what trigger was his remark about iran, what we could expect from iran missile ability, not so much an aggression toward nato but a regional -- a regional crisis. i think we see a number of -- being confronted recently with -- they do not affect nato

or europe security. but, say, syria, say, libya but as they go on they can create situation -- i mention this -- that become the threat to our own security. do we have the -- my question is do we have the tools -- the mindset, really, to deter or another least prevent or contain crisis before they -- >> curt? >> obviously this question -- had to be wiser than just military. >> well, again, i think madelyn has a good point. not all nato responses have to be military responses. but it's hard to find ones that

nato has actually done that have not involved some military response. the one thing i can think of that nato has done with syria, is to reassure turkey that any attack on turkey would lead to a military response. i have a hard time thinking of other things nato has done with respect to syria. when you talk about crisis management and a broad set of tools, a lot of european allies have prevented nato from developing those tools. in afghanistan, fighting very hard just to try to get police training because the eu said it would do police train budget didn't really do much police training -- some but not much -- and we had to find a way around to help nato create the training for paramilitary police forces so we could bring in another capacity. then when you get beyond that,

which is security-oriented one, the only things i can think of that nato has been really successful at has been disaster relief and negotiations, where, say, secretary general roberts or somebody before him was involved in a negotiation to try to politically dissolve a crisis. but largely, again, because of the way nations have thought about nato for so long, we've never really developed a robust crisis management capacity separate from a military one. >> how far do you want nate to go beyond its military mission. you're going to sap up much political will and getting into realms that are not nato's strong points. i'm struck by general target writhe's idea where leveraging soft as an interface to facilitate other institutions' participation and integration in

nonmilitary realms. >> i think we had a good formula for this, which was you do your planning and exercising for a credibility collective defense, and then, as crises arise, if there's a consensus among nato, we got to do something about this, as in bosnia or kosovo, you have the capacity to do it. so, you can't in advance, pre-agree within nato, we're going to be ready to go to afghanistan. can you imagine in 2000 if anyone brought that up at nato? nonsense. you're not going into afghanistan. so you have to have the capacity to then, as events arise, you choose to deal with. what we said in 2002 was that we have to address challenges from wherever they may arise, threats from wherever they may arise, as opposed to on the territory of nato countries. they're getting out of the area of debate out the door.

i don't think that nato would say that again today and mean it. and i can do think that's something you have to think about because these challenges can exist from anywhere. i don't think we're thinking much about that. the core is to restore the credibility, strengthen the credibility, of our basic ability to do our basic job of defense, which is expedition area for most countries, getting to where they're needed, and then you have the capacity to respond to crises as they arise. >> a question in the back. >> two questions. first one is -- instead of concerns the presence of u.s. weapons in europe, and the future of the debate within the nato as an hld and mpg.

and walter talked about the need to keep europeans involved and educate them and sort of in the use and aspects of nuclear weapons, yet is it possible to imagine that debate being at the same level without u.s. nuclear weapons committed to nato? i ask because -- once said that the japanese are envious of the europeans -- of this relationship the europeans, nato allies have, because of these weapons. the second question is somewhat brief, going to general target writhe, and picks up on your point about special forces. there's been a lot of attention in europe about the two-brigade combat teams and very little attention to the fact that the u.s. is actually boosting its special forces presence in europe. what i'll be seeing a more relevant u.s. presence in europe, or just a smaller one. thank you.

>> on the second, on the special operations, i don't know exactly the intent. madelyn can probably address that better. from a standpoint of relevance, the special operations versus a heavy brigade, today, for the reality we live in, is a lot more relevant to the defense capabilities of nato and europe. >> i'm going to dodge that one and go after the other one. but i think that the nato dpr clearly put forth nato's view as far as being part of an alliance and the fact that there clearly are nuclear weapons that the u.s. assigned to nato, is something that both the hlg, the npg, all the rest of the bodies that nato looks at, and with a good deal of sear yourness. on the one hand there