inundated some of those shelters, even if they withstood the wind and rain. >> this was an ef-4 tornado strength winds. what were the shelters built to withstand, do you know? >> there is going to be certainly once this initial period of intense activity settles down there will be a lot of probing of those questions. >> it might be advisable for us to work with them so we might be able to give them a good recommendation as to what the strength should be given kind of the predictable nature of intensifying of storms. water expands when it's heated, oceans are getting much warmer. as a result, the waves are much higher. as a result, the storms are much more devastating. so this is something that is scientifically indisputable and something we should work with

them to help them think it through. it's worth noting this typhoon was forecast to potentially hit vietnam after it just struck the philippines. last month the united states and vietnam agreed to a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. i think we should begin to think about whether or not we should be putting nuclear power plants with u.s. cooperation in countries like vietnam knowing without proper protection there could be catastrophic consequences that flow from the interaction of a natural disaster and a nuclear power plant that is not as strong or well positioned as it could be. we just saw that in japan. they are going to be going several generations with the consequences of a natural disaster link to nuclear power plants. so from my perspective, i want

to congratulate everyone who participated in helping, especially in these early stages of relief. but i think for usaid, for the state department, for the defense department, i think that we all have to come together in a way that deals with the national security consequences s of climate change. the impact that it's having upon our allies and our enemies that modifies their behavior in terms of how they are able to, in fact, control their own environment. and understand then what the consequences are for our national security because theirs is undermined. so again, it's just one more warning. if we needed it, it's a domestic issue as well with 65 tornados all dropping down in one day out

in the middle west, in the middle of november. this is unprecedented. the impact climate change is having and has severe long-term national security consequences. we thank you for your work and i thank you, mr. chairman. >> let me join senator markey and his concerns. it's clear that the realities of more extreme weather require us to be engaged internationally on mitigating as much damage as we can with the new reality. senator markey is one of the leaders is someone to do something about this in terms of climate change. both are important points that the cost of these storms and loss of life and in the cost of rebuilding communities is enormous. beyond the capacities of governments to be able to respond to. then when you put certain

facilities in these high-risk areas, the security issue becomes even greater and the cost greater. i thank senator markey for raising those issues. i am very impressed by the u.s. response to this storm. i thank both of you for your leadership. mr. konyndyk, wish you safe travels tomorrow. mr. marciel, wish you a speedy return here tomorrow for the second hearing on this subcommittee. we thank you both for your public service. we will continue our interest and thank you -- not only your testimony today, but willingness to keep us informed as we look at the long-term rebuilding process that's going to be necessary in how the united states plays a role in that and following up on senator markey's points as to what we should be doing to try to mitigate these types of disasters in the future. with that, the subcommittee will stand adjourned. thanks.

live coverage on cspan3 continues this afternoon with a hearing on the develop pavement of virtual currencies and current potential uses will be. we'll hear how national security issues could be impacted by the currencies. the hearings held by a senate banking subcommittee and starts live 3:30 p.m. eastern. >> also today, remarks from outgoing federal reserve chairman ben bernanke on monetary policy. he'll speak at the national economist club. you can see it live 7:00 p.m. eastern also here on cspan3. both chambers of congress are in session today. the senate gavelled in this morning to continue work on the 2014 defense authorization bill which sets defense programs for

the next fiscal year. votes are possible this afternoon. the house is working on a measure that increases the amount of federal lands available for oil and gas production, amendment debate and votes this afternoon, as well. follow the senate live on c-span2 and the house on c-span. today marks the 150th anniversary of president lincoln's gettysburg address. look for our coverage from soldier's national cemetery, including the keynote address from civil war historian james mcpherson next week thanksgiving day. this is cspan3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every weekend 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. join in the conversation on social media sites.

ahead of next year's nato summit in britain, the atlantic council held an event looking at the future of military alliance and missile defense capabilities. a former u.s. ambassador to nato and several former defense department officials took part in this event. it's an hour and 35 minutes. >> those in the back, come up closer. good afternoon. my name is ian brzezinski, a senior fellow here. i have the privilege of serving as your moderator for our afternoon panel. nato posture, nuclear conventional and missile defense. let me start by thanking our partners in crime here at the norwegian institute of defense studies, it's been a great relationship for them and sponsorship the norwegian ministry of defense has provided to us. we started this morning with a

focus an asymmetrical threats. over lunch we drifted back into the current realm of contemporary operations and had a provocative statement on a more traditional long-standing dimension of deterrence of the nuclear weapons. that is going to be one of the foci of our panel focusing on long-standing, but argue nonetheless relevant set of challenges and tools, nuclear forces, conventional forces and missile defense. i have to remind myself because missile defense looks new but dates back to the 1950s when the united states first started testing and '60s deploying missile defense interceptors. these capabilities have been in the past and many would argue been the back bone of the

capacity. allied confidence in these elements is critical to alliance cohesion. it's only prudent, particularly in a dynamic environment, dynamic strategic environment to constantly check these tools and update their postures and doctrines. it was discussed in may 2012. it concluded, "the existing mix of capabilities and plans for development are sound. snchl "our goal today this afternoon is to revalidate that assessment and retest exertions and where progress can be made with an eye to the 2014 summit. indeed, we need to think about how they would fit into nato's fifth chapter. these reviews may actually be needed to be done more frequently in many changing

dynamics we are facing, increasing rapidity of change. there are four that capture my mind. one, europe's declining military capabilities. a process that seems to be ongoing and we don't see any foreseeable real reversal in that. second, a withdraw from europe, significant u.s. combat capability over the last several years. third is rising instantability. we talked about this, most notably crisis in syria underscores threats to some of our allies and most notably turkey. a risk looking paleolithic, there is the growing risk from changes going on in russia. this is a country that features a disturbing mix of internal conflict, rising zdeno phobia coupled with increasing foreign policy backed by growing military capabilities. we mentioned today steadfast

jazz, nato exercise of 6,000, major undertaking, major collective exercise. compare that to 2013 which took place in october. that involved 70,000 troops, strategic bombers, maritime landings, missiles. that is larger than a steadfast jazz. i'm not saying it signals full-to-back confrontation, but it does give credence to those who are concerned or ask whether or not nato is giving adequate credential to those contingencies on its eastern frontier that involves in fast-breaking political crisis that could precipitate the territorial incursion by russia. should that be part of the territory equation when we look at nato's future? to assess nato's defense capabilities and how these relate to the new deterrence challenges of the 21st century, we have an outstanding panel of current and former policy makers

and commanders. marilyn creeden is assistant secretary for global strategic affairs and took that position august 2012. in that capacity, she and her office oversee policy development and execution in areas of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear forces and missile defense but department of defense's activities in cyber and space. she also chair as high-level group on nuclear issues and what i like best is former hill staffer, she brings ten years of experience from capitol hill in armed service which was de facto staff director of subcommittee on strategic forces. paul slocumb, i know him always as the secretary of the atlantic council, but his day job is senior council for kaplan and drysdale law firm. served as undersecretary defense policy under president clinton. he's been involved in numerous

senior government commissions including relevant today commission on department of ballistic defense that came out in 2012. to his right is general james cartwright at csis where he holds the chair of defense policy studies. he brings -- i hope i have this right, but four decades. you look so young, but four decade career in the marines. he was an aviator in the marine corps. unique in his marine career is i believe he was the only marine who served as commander of the u.s. strategic command. he culminated his military career not in the too distant past as the eighth vice chairman of joint chiefs of staff, a position he held across two administrations and noted for innovation in the areas of strategic deterrence and cyber

security. at the end, we have kurt volker, ambassador volker who is executive director at the mccain institute for international leadership. he brings 23 years of service to our country in the foreign service with a number of senior nato positions. nato-related positions. he was a u.s. permanent representative or ambassador to nato. he served as under national security council staff as senior director for europe, principal departmenty secretary of state for euro nation affairs and served under secretary-general lord robinson. and general pat o'reilly. a new nonresident senior fellow. he comes from initial defense agency which he led as his last post in the military.

he has a long career of officer positions on both sides of the atlantic. he is not just brawn, but also brains. he taught physics at the united states military academy and led the programs that have produced the energy programs, patriot pac 3 and ground base defense programs. intention operational development in missile defense. we are all very welcomed to have you here. i'm going to start off with madeline. we'll washing through our panelists and have a moderated discussion. last june in berlin, president rolled out, delivered a major speech which key element he called for dramatic reductions in u.s. and russian tactical nuclear weapons. is now the time to really further evolve nato's nuclear

posture? if so, how should evolution be related to efforts to manage other more asemmtric threats? >> it really is a pleasure to be here. i think your question really reflects on a lot of the work that is certainly going on in parallel between nato and also the u.s. so in june, the culmination of the oh so much longer 90-day study resulted in the issuance of new presidential decision guidance on nuclear foreign policy. that guidance really was the result of a very long and exhaustive process that allowed the u.s. to come to the conclusion that we could very

safely, in conjunction with russia go to about a third fewer deployed strategic nuclear systems. at the same time since nato put out its ddpr, specifically the hlg which is, you mentioned i had the privilege of chairing. having done a lot of work with my colleague here in the front row. they did a lot of work updating the nato guidance. the first time since 1992, the hlg provided new political guidance for nato, which then was recently followed by implementing guidance for both the military staff and for shape. with these two new guidance documents in place in nato, then

with the u.s. ppd in place, both of them have now set the stage, set a 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 missile threats from the shorter and medium range systems. looking at how you both maintain a strong deterrent, a credible deterrent, at the same time setting the conditions for future reductions. all of this is going on in both nato and the u.s. it's important to have russia as part of this effort on both sides. neither one of these efforts will be successful without it. to be frank, we are not making much progress on that front, but will continue to try. thanks. >> walt. by the way my dad walt will have to leave at 2:15. will be leaving not in protest

but because he has a plane to catch. do you see a need for a more radical change to the alliance's nuclear posture? do you see a need for a link between that posture and its conventional terms? >> well, i think it is important that the united states actually modernize the strategic force. you can argue about on what pace, how big it needs to be and so on and there may well be an argument whether we should maintain a ground-based icbm force. i think the core of nato nuclear deterrence remains the u.s. strategic nuclear deterrent. it's also true of the british and french forces, both of which are committed to be modernized though there will be debates, at least in britain, about on what scale. it's always a pleasure to agree with evo and i am also one of those who has real reservations

about the military utility of the dual capable aircraft in europe. if we got into a condition which the nuclear weapons, given a choice between the submarines with an essential -- and other systems with an essentially 100% assurance in reaching the target and very high precision, would we reject them in favor of air breathing airplanes with pilots in them that may have to be refueled on certain missions, dropping gravity bumps. on the assumption that the russians or somebody else, it's hard to imagine targets other than the russians, irrelevant in this context, that the russians would be pacified by the fact that the airplanes came from european bases and not from

american british/french platforms. that said, i think the central point about nuclear weapons in nato, they are not primarily military forces. they are primarily political in some sense deterrence is political because it involves shaping the adversary's decision and serving purposes far beyond what they could do if they were ever used. in this context we should never forget the horrible consequences of the use of nuclear weapons on any scale. i mean, but, for some europeans, the commitment of american nuclear weapons in europe for reasons that you can argue whether they ever made sense and argue whether they make sense now but definitely, are seen as a fundamental symbol of american commitment. they are a lot of europeans in

the room and i apologize for saying this, they tend to operate in two modes and like angels can move from one to the other without passing through the intervening space, one is that the americans are about to embroil them in stupid 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, aukward, maybe not efficient and not the way you would do it if 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 for european forces as well as american, they are in some sense

under a dual key. that has a political significance. i have reluctantly come to the conclusion -- well, it is no secret that the united states air force wanted to get rid of these things for years and years. frank miller and i -- and i suspect my successors over -- our successors over the years had to go down and through ourselves in front of the united states air force which would save money and say this will be the end of the world. it will be the collapse of nato. so it's only a relatively modest amount of money out of something between 500 and $700 million, they've stayed. i think that's for the foreseeable future a fight about this issue is not worth it. . i think, therefore however things we should be doing to prepare maybe to prepare for an

eventual reduction and if the russians were to agree and there was going to be a substantial reduction in russian nonstrategic forces, the politics of the issue would change. there are some things we should do. one is, there was a time when there was no secret about it. there was a time -- and i'm not sure whether it's still true. where there was a formal commitment of some of the u.s. in principle all of the british submarine force to nato. that's a force which in military terms is much morree relevant. if that is not the existing arrangement today we should ask seriously why not. i'm glad madlyn is the chair of the h.o.g. and it's an important instrument -- i was always pleased that that level was called the working level, implied there are other kinds of levels in the alliance.

the nato planning group, however, which was very important at one point, at least in my experience, the meeting, it was late in the meeting, everybody wanted lunch or being europeans, a cigarette. and the briefing went up and it was 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 nuclear weapons, is to revive and make more serious the nato -- the nuclear planning group and really to involve europeans. there are very few good things about -- 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 can get out

of the newspapers. much more open about the realities of nuclear weapons. i think a core issue for nuclear policy in nato is it is understood and broadly understood within the alliance. i'm not sure that despite all of the excellent work that's being done, by specialized people that it is in fact the case. 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 -- almost exclusively if not exclusively for the deterrence of nuclear attack or is there some connection to conventional forces. i've got to say, in spite of all of the problems about declining capabilities, it is hard for me

to imagine a situation in which nato as a whole would not have the conventional capability to deal with any circumstance of which it would arise for article 5 defense. therefore, the question of using nuclear weapons in response to conventional pressure doesn't arise. i can also understand the argument that if you were to make a formal no first use pledge, you would convince the people that depended on you for defense that you were telling the truth without convincing the people who about to attack you. >> we have a pretty strong lobby here that strikes me in terms of questioning, the operation utility of nuclear weapons. let me move to kind of conventional demand and ask general cartright -- what are -- those nuclear weapons.

general cartright, what the contingencies involving threats and how do you relate them to nuclear deterrence and the asymmetric threats we discussed this morning and this afternoon. i find myself in an uncomfo uncomfortable situation, i'm having a hard time coming up with a good argument of why they are wrong. the one thing i would point out but it is very clear in the current construct of the levels that we have committed to there and then the potential to come down another third from that, the vector we're on and the

russians are far ahead of us in terms of compliance with the current treaties, ahead of us being the united states. second thing that kernsz me and i find myself where harlan's question from this morning, should we remain deterrence. there are a lot of terms that have baggage in their definitional genre, that leave us having a difficult situation and often talking past each other. extended deterrence, deterrence, strategic, all of these with them a set of meetings that almost take you immediately to nuclear. the question is, in the reali realities of the world we live in and i know we want to like all normal humans live in denial to some extent. in grand strategy, what's really being said in