of california is facing off against idaho congressman raul lab rudor. they will be done by secret ballot with the winner needing the majority of the caucus to win. it's scheduled to get under way behind closed doors at 2:00 eastern. our cameras are there just outside the doors. we'll bring you the results and of course any reaction as it becomes available. while we wait for the president's statement on iraq at 1:15 eastern, we show you more from the wall street journal conference with a discussion on cybersecurity with former nsa deputy director chris inglis. >> almost afternoon. i appreciate your willingness to engage on these issues. i guess i would just like to open it up with, if you could just scare everybody a little bit.

what danger do you worry about most in cyberspace? >> i think that's impressively not necessary. if you have been reading the papers and talking to your friends and colleagues across the private sector, but i would say four things about cyberspace, not entirely well understood by the public that makes use of that. i think therefore we still have some surprises that have insidiously crept up on us. the first thing i would say cyberspace, the internet writ large is not really this massive technology that acts as oftentimes is considered as just another version of the voter poll, fix it. whatever technology, whatever aplukys we need to make it resilient, just do that. it's of course, a mix of technology and people and critical process. and they're so interlocked it's almost impossible to tease one out from the other so you can't delegate this to the i.t. shop and say fix it. the other thing is everything is connected to everything. convergence is the reality.

for those who think they have an offline system, a protection that is homless, their hearts are generally broken. two kinds of people, you know, those that essentially know they have been hacked and those who don't know they have been hacked. the third reality in this phase, i think increasingly well aware in this audience, is that we're storing wealth and treasure in that space. it was once a place where there were communications racing back and forth that reflected or spoke of things of value that lived outside the space. you would move resources or reflect command plans or property secrets that were outside and it was coordinating and largely under the influence of people saying at this moment in time, i choose to take a risk. i'm going to push a secret from place a to place b or exchange a confidence. now these things are stored in that place 24 hours a day. a couple weeks ago, i was about to travel and go through my standard routines and said to my children visiting home from

college, i'm going to go to the bank and get money. they said, why? they said, dad, you're so not with it. >> they have glommed on to that effect. it's not possible to secure that. the things people do in that space, the technology in that space, and the fact you want to connect this to transactions, people who generate revenue for your companies that you want to do business with, even in a diplomatic realm, says that you're taking risk by design. the goal of trying to find a way of making this statically secure, we need to give up on that. we need to presume breach, that these things are deficient by

design and defend them accordingly. it is possible to do that, but it requires a fundamentally different approach to cyberspace. >> what do you worry most about? >> the fact people are worrying about a future problem. there's a lot of discussion about a cyber pearl harbor. that mishes the fact this problem is already with us. it's not that we're going to hear a clap of thunder in the night. what we're seeing is the sapping of our strength, whether it's through the theft of our property or that it will be resilience against some threat that comes at us in the future. they will not be because we have not made the necessary investments at this time. any number of companies have suffered the loss of their property and think they can weather even that because they will outinnovate whatever adversaries they have in the world. that's increasingly less true that it was 20, 30, 50 years ago. there aresary worthy adversaries in the world of competitive sense who not only have our

intellectual property but can innovate with the best of us. this insidious aspect of it which is the damage done. >> what types of companies are most likely to be targeted? >> if you do something that has intellectual property of value to a competitor, that's for mischief or haktivists or who want to get a scout. that's less and less the problem. more and more the problem is if your wealth and treasure is stored in cyberspace on a network somewhere, then it's going to be interesting, lucrative to a potential adversary. 100 years ago, a judge said to willy sutton, why do you rob banks? he was in the court for the fifth or sixth time. and willy said, it's pretty simple. that's where the money is. i think cyberthreats essentially loom large because we store wealth and treasure in this space. the things that depend on it beyond wealth and treasure are more critical. whether it's electrical grids,

control systems. they say their ability to move materials from place a to place b is 90% dependent on the competence in cyberspace because most of that occurs in the private sector. even the coordination occurs in the private sector. they have gone so far to take all of the slop out of the system. there are no warehouses, everything is choreographed by cyberspace. you need to think through not just wealth and treasure but vital processes that constitute your treasure is also in that space. >> getting a little more specific, tapping your many years at nsa, what is the most frightening cyberissue you ran into on wall street, either an attack or a vulnerability. what really got you -- >> i think many of you experienced this alongside the government in across 2012, 2013,

there were service attacks on the infrastructure of the united states and by extejz, london and sydney suffered some of this. what was surprising at that moment in time is the rate in which the adversary, they contributed this to iranians, the u.s. government is more circumspect about naming names, but the rate they could up the ante, scale up, tell communications providers who provide a level of service and scale serve so many customers per hour per minute were prepared for something on the rate of 20 gig abits per second. someone is asking service of your system. they're saying i can do that at the rate of 20 gigabits. but we'll do it at 10. the adversary quickly went to convict, 60, to 80. the only thing that prevailed

was the adversary's increase was so slow, and the ability to build and shed infrastructure was so invigorated that we essentially prevailed. but if the adversary had chosen to go faster or use more of the stolen infrastructure, those systems would have gone down to a greater degree. not simply from minutes of time, hours of time, but some would have gone down hard. we asked the telecommunications providers what does it mean to go down hard? they said, we don't know. we don't have much experience or practice. how do you bring it back? does it come back eloquently, gracefully? we don't know. there was more work done to create a robust structure, but they're very concerned about that. think about what the primary drivers are for the internet or cyberspace writ large. almost never in the formative moments was security a consideration. it's i want to build this feature, this application, exchange this data, and once i figure out how to make the data flow, i want to make it such that the user experience is good. i want to then compress it so i

can do more per minute. i want to make it so i can squeeze out the cost that essentially is rendered to me for doing that. and all of those things are essentially the common drivers in an economic marketplace. security was always something that said we'll catch up with that or we'll self-indemnify. if we have risk, whether it's fraud or cyberthreat, we'll essentially cover that by essentially having some margin, but the slope of that curve is steep and it's controlled by the adversaries, not those who build the systems. but that's no longer the way we should do this. security has to be a primary consideration up front. that's why it's got to be a board issue, that's why it has to be coherent across the multiple facets of what you do on the internet or network connections. if there's an i.t. component and hr component and business component and a critical business compone want, those all need to be integrated and done in a coherent fashion and need

to be done against threats up front. threats that you may previle in defending the system against an adversary who is doing totry to outmew uver you. >> let's try to attack the wealth and experience of the audience and go to the first audience response question. >> when i have a cybersecurity problem, i think of the government as, a, a helpful resource. b, entity to be avoided. or c, i don't think of the government. >> do i get to answer this question? >> if you want, you can. but this is -- how would you answer that question? >> hopefully, you know, i think by design, the government should be helpful. and i think that that bent is a nice middle ground. neither imposing burdensome regulations processes with reporting requirements or standing off and saying this is simply the issue of defending private property. let's take the case in point that i offered earlier. let's say on some future

morning, iran gets up one day, determines the best way to bring the fight to the united states is to hit us where it hurts, take on the infrastructure that underpins critical activities within the united states financial systems. is that an attack on private property? or is that an attack by one nation on another? what's the role of the sgumpt? at a strategic level, at a coordinating level? and if we're going to create a system to defend our way or get our way out of that such that the iranians have less of an interesting target, whocourages that, incentivizes that? it's not to say the private sector doesn't have the largest piece of 80%, 90% is owned and operated by the private partnership, but if the government is not seen as helpful, there's an opportunity cost, if not a critical flaw in our ability to make the space defensible. >> looks like you got a pretty good grade. 74%, helpful resource. 26%, i don't think of the government.

no one seems to be avoiding the government. >> good. >> more on sort of the corporate government relationship. what is your sense of impact of the snowden disclosures at this point on american companies, business overseas, their relationship with the american government? obviously, particularly thinking of technology companies that have a stake in this. >> unfairly maligned and therefore unfairly, i think, injured in terms of their ability to take the global marketplace. there's not a country in the world that doesn't have what we call lawful intercept and the ability when it's necessary to acquire information from telecommunications providers under the rule of law. there isn't a country in the world that does it with the discipline and oversight that the united states does. in may of 2013, there was a report published by a law firm which essentially compared all of the various systems that the west, at least, what's we know as the western world, has

devised. they say the united states alone brings a judiciary into the mix. that said, all the companies who under rule of law cooperate with the united states government, were essentially maligned, i think, by an exaggerated set of stories in summer of 2013. there then is this flashback, this essentially response by foreign nations, unsome cases because they're generally concerned about perhaps a relationship that places them at risk with perspective to the united states government if it wasn't to be responsibility in the exercise of that opportunity, and in some cases they see a market for their own indigenous industries so it is useful to talk that up and trump that up. long story made short, i think the snowden revelations, the unauthorized leaks have done damage, unfairly, inproemently, unfortunately to the private sector. they deserve, right, the government's assistance in reestablishing the kind of confidence that what they do, they do under the rule of law, and they do that for the benefit of nations, plural, not just the

united states of america. >> let's compare that to the next audience response question. >> revelations of the nsa spying abroad have, one, hurt my business. two, not had any effect on my business? people are weighing in. if you could talk a little bit about sort of the interplay between the snowden revelations and cybersecurity, there was a big push on cybersecurity regilation right around the time the snowden leaks happened. where are we? >> in spring of 2013, the united states government and in full dialogue, open dialogue with the chamber of commerce, private sector entities even other governments was pretty close to essentially signing off on legislation the administration could support that would essentially effect a greater collaborative relationship between the public and private sectors. it was going to be less about regulation and imposing liability and more about creating incentives and

suppressing liability such that there might be a freer flow of information between the parties that share cyberspace, making it such that not all of us need to suffer the threat before we're prepared to protect ourselves against it on the second acursion. that somebody well to my right, well to my left detects or understands some nature of threat, we should have an ability to exchange that kind of something approaching real time or ahead of time. the ledgislation would have bee very helpful in that regard. i think it would have also increased something in the commonality of standards in the normative behaviors in space. that all got pushed well to the right when the snowden affair came out, in part because we're trying to understand whether the government has been a responsible player in this space, that's my sense, and i'm not impartial on this has the government has been very responsible in this space. but we've got to figure out how to get that story back on the rails. in part because there isn't any room left on the legislative agenda to essentially consider that, and then in part because

the private sector and telecommunications companies in particular are smarting from the relationship they had with the government before. so it makes it hard with that legislation on the table. it therefore holds it back from perhaps bringing to bear some positive contributions to a collaborative relationship between the private sector and the public sector and just between disparate entities in the private sector. >> the poll went away, but it seemed like the government was actually fairing well on that, too, with 19% talking about hurting their business, and 81% saying no effect, although i wonder if we had aggregated it out by sector if it might have been different. what is your -- what's your sense at this point of the relationship between particularly the telecos and nsa, how has it changed? >> the telecos and not surprisingly have essentially said i'm reading sarbane's oxley, looking at my share ho holder value, and the expectations of the global customer base, and i perhaps

need to be somewhat more declarative and careful about making sure i understand what is the rule of law, what am i compelled to do. and that's simply making sure that that's right behind a closed door, but i can to some degree talk about that, that i can give confidence to the share holders and my international marketplace that i'm doing what i should do, nothing more, nothing less. i'm on the straight and narrow. they then have been somewhat more demanding of the government with respect to transparency. somewhat more demanding in terms of the government needs to publicly, kind of transparently compel them so there be no suspicion they're doing something that is illicit or inappropriate. that then sometimes looks like an adversaryial relationship but it sometimes feels like an adversarial relationship, but i don't see it that way. i see it as they're simply trying to do right by all the equities, all of the stakeholders they've got and we have to help them. we have to figure it out with them and through this problem. >> your successor talked about

an openness to the notion of amnesty for snowden. i'm wondering whether you think that should be considered? >> he took care to say that was a personal opinion. rick is a good friend of mine. and i respect his personal opinion. i think mr. snowden deserves his day in court. he should get his day in court. i think it is inappropriate in society for individuals to aggregate to themselves the responsibility to stand in and speak for a whole of government. in the case of the authorities that were much discussed and i think much maligned in the summer of 2013, what you find is that you had an executive branch under the rule of law, laws enacted by congress and with those two particular cases, right, fully participating judiciary, actually determining that's the right answer for this nation. across two administrations, you know, multiple parties, and very disparate ideologies. it's interesting to me that the house committee that rides herd on the nsa and other entities,

you had staunch supporter of nsa who essentially were dyed in the wool tea party, dyed in the wool republicans, dyed in the wool republicans, this is long story short, mr. snowdon has to answer for why he took it upon himself to essentially take the wheel and drive the ship aground. and he might have a perfectly good answer. our system of justice essentially allows people to make that case and defend themselves, and he should have his full say. >> quickly, because we've only got a minute left before we geinto question and answers, but what's the main lesson that you take away from the experience of the last year with snowden? >> i think that there are three things. somewhat narrowly focused on the nsa equity that i remind myself that nsa doesn't have an equity, only the nation has an equity so it needs to support it. with respect to what nsa does and its cribsontribution to the game, we talk about balancing security and privacy.

there's a third kind of leg under the chair that is sil essential which is sufficient transparency. not complete transparency because that's impossible, but sufficient transparency where they have confidence in the balance struck in the first two. even before mr. snowden came out and they said how do you do this? conflicting that is the scales of justice where you trade privacy for security, we said it's got to be like two rails under a car, right? a train car. if they're not straight and true, sitting on a proper foundation and giving equal to each of those, there's no way to meet your obligations. transparency is the thing that i think has been lacking to give people confidence. that's new and different, sufficientance transparency about how do we do it, what do we do? >> let's open it up.

>> it's printing out an nsa office -- that was unfair. i'm sorry, but i couldn't resist. >> you know the first question, right? >> any questions? >> i have one. huntsman and dennis blair, governor huntsman and governor blair issued a report that said, look, maybe what we should be thinking about is giving business or those hack ed licene liberally defined to hack back. at least in the form of diminishing the damage that has been done, perhaps locking the data in the hackers' files that has been taken from their company. or shoving down their computers in some manner. this has been described as vigilanteism.

but is there -- these are pretty distinguished individuals, dennis blair and jon huntsman. is there some reason to that in your mind as one of the arrows in our arsenal for dealing with this big problem? >> as in all things, i think it's dangerous to pick an extreme in that regard, to say that you can never defend yourself or to say that you kind of have the authority to go all the way back to the adversary. either of those is an extreme option. there are analogs to this. if somebody is shooting at you and you're kind of in your own home, you have the authority, the right, to responsibility to defend yourself, but if somebody is shooting at you from, say, across the neighbor's yard, you also have the responsibility to be incredibly careful about how you shoot across the neighbor's yard. and if somebody is merely harassing you, you need to kind of bring that up to the police and let them stand in and deal with that. the same thing plays here. my concern about that taken to the extreme is what you then say is this is all about the defense

of private property and then people can essentially hack back to defend themselves. what they'll wind up doing is two things. one, they'll be hacking back on neutral territory. we have seen the attacks coming at the united states, right, as i described those across 2012, 2013, you would not have seen where they were coming from. what you would have seen was the last point of approach was pl e places like germany, england, australia. of course, that's not where they're coming from, but if you unleashed the lob you would have created mayhem. >> and the second thing is even if you did get it right and you essentially said i'm going to take this back to the miskreeant, if that's a nation state or someone with other capabilities in thar tool kit and you provoke them, you cross their red line, they haven't crossed your red line, you cross theirs and you have created a diplomatic incident and a nation on nation incident, now the government needs to step in and deal with a much bigger mess. that said, my theory of the case is to prevail , the u.s. has to

figure out what it role is proactively and how it exercised the role so the private sector doesn't need to. what we have been asking is who is in charge? who has the baton for the defense of cyberspace. i don't think it works that way. >> is the government doing enough? >> with the answer to that questi question. >> it's doing what it can, given what understanding there is at this time. there are many challenges in this space. first and foremost, i don't think we've got a strong enough understanding on what it really works and what the internal democraciys are, and second, therant is a well defined set of normative behaviors that said you stole my intellectual property, you're way out of the line, and they could say, i thought you wanted me to have it. that's disingenuous, because there's some options inside of that that are not entirely clear. we need to be very clear with ourselves, how does the space work, what are the dependencies? very clear about what the rules are, what we find accept,

unacceptable, about the consequences and who has what role, and those roles need to be assigned to individuals, to organizations, to sectors, to governments. i don't think we have done that to the degree necessary. we think of it as a domain unto itself. we think the right response is in cyberspace back at it, it might be that it's legal action is required or a public shaming. >> within that construct, mandiant whom we heard from last year at our conference, located the hacking activity into a building outside of shanghai, the people's liberation army, they work 8:00 to 5:00 hacking into the united states taking a holidays off. >> and weekends. >> and saw the hacking traffic. giving your construct that you just presented, would it be in the purview of the u.s. government to shut that building down with its own hacking attack

or its own cyber activity? >> might be, depends on the nature of the provocation. in the conduct of national affairs, there's always this question of what is the necessity, right? and in proportion to that necessity, what is the right response. you have to apply limited means. so the u.s. government is actually, i think, taking the problem on and giving it a rendition of the answer which i find elegant. a few weeks ago, the u.s. government as opposed to hacking against back against the chinese states, indicted five individuals they found partially responsible for some of that theft of intellectual property. very interesting kind of application of national power. right? it gives the chinese an interesting situation where they say, hey, that wasn't us. we didn't do it. now you can test the proposition. stand in and defend the individuals or stand off and the five individuals now swing in the wind. right? what message does that send to others who may or may not work for the chinese government?

so that's, i think, a surgical elegant application of national power. proportionate to the challenge that perhaps late to me, but we're all late to need in this regard and there's a lot more that needs to be done, but we need to take steps as opposed to careening in to the woods at night with no headlights on. >> can we get a microphone over here? just a reminder to identify yourself. >> yeah, henry from deloitte. my question is on the cost. and the level of investment. private sector spending enough currently or underspending? how quickly is that spending going to go up? maybe a second part to the question, are there innovative things that the private sector could do to, you know, band together, kind of reduce the cost on any one enterprise by

maybe going to industry groups or other types of innovative -- >> i think you would all know, and so i kind of simply join this, but i think we're spending an enormous amount of money, financial dollars on this problem already, and i don't think we're spending that well. when you go to most companies and say what are you doing, what they throw up is a plethora of icons, all the various devices they have put at the perimeter of their information technology and i'm cartooning this a little bit, but what you see is this massive application of band-aid after band-ad, after band-aid. they're not well integrated which creates shadows, things to worm into, and they're not taking advantage of knowledge to the left or to the right within that sector or even from the government. and so i think that the amount of dollars probably shouldn't go down, but i'm not sure that the answer is a significant slope in the increase of dollars. maybe applying the dollars, defending the data, not perimeters, not networks, not operating systems. examine behavior, not

yesterday's behavior, malware, virus signatures and have a collaborative effort that means if you suffer a threat, i don't need to because you're going to share it with me and vice versa. and frankly, if you could tell nsa and this isn't a government policy, this is just a crazy idea, you could tell nsa i am being vexed by something from a foreign corridor, that might put nsa in a position where it could use its appropriate international abilities to learn more about that and to tee that up for the nation, right, the national apparatus to do something about it. but that exchange doesn't occur freely today, so it's essentially every man for himself and a boat with a huge hole in it and they're saying it's not my hole. it's on your side of the boat. >> that exchange doesn't happen in part business says, because the government is very cautious about what information it is willing to share. and business is quite concerned that if it shares too much with

government, the liability that it then faces for customer complaints about sharing their data with somebody outside, are too onerous to contemplate. it seems there's a stand off. >> both of those thendz, i think, have been true to some degree. i don't know that they have been the principal thing that held us back, but they have been true. the contributing aspects of the problem. the legislation in part was going to try to resolve the second part, which is suppress liability. if you acted in good faith, shared information, or taken information and acted in good faith, your liability will be suppressed such that you'll be held harmless or get the benefit of the doubt. the government does have a tendency to restrict the free flow of information into classification sources and meth methods. you'll hear this from jeh johnson this afternoon, it's bun been much more proactive in figuring out how to share the information. it should be pushed ardor and faster and i would say that if i was still in harness with the nsa because if it collects that

information simply to protect itself or it own systems than i know how we can save a lot of money, but it must be done for the national or the international benefit. another big idea in this is that this really isn't a national effort any more than it's just a private sector or public sector effort. it's an international effort and the collaboration needs to cross those boundaries. >> any last quick questions? of course, chris, thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> a live look at the white house briefing room, coming up in just a couple minutes, the president will have remarks on the situation in iraq. the house of representatives now in recess, so we're going to have that live for you on our companion network, c-span. the president expected ipjust a few moments. later this afternoon, also at the white house, the president will award retired corporal william kyle carpenter with a medal of honor. corporal carpenter is the eighth

living recipient to be chosen for actions in iraq or afghanistan. we'll have that live for you here on c-span3. it's scheduled for 2:15 eastern time. and back on capitol hill, house republicans today holding their party's leadership elections. this coming after majority leader eric cantor's primary election defeat last week. majority w.h.i.p. kevin mccarthy of california is facing off against idaho congressman raul labrador, the election by skrelt ballot with a winner needing a majority of the republican caucus. it's scheduled to start behind closed doors at 2:00 eastern. our c-span cameras are there just outside the doors and we'll have results for you and any reaction as it becomes available. earlier this week, foreign policy expect discussed the escalating violence in iraq, national security, and a case for restraint at a conference hosted by george washington university. this is just over an hour.

>> good morning. thank you all for coming. welcome to our conference on the new internationalism. i would like to thank george washington university and the institute for security and conflict studies for hosting this event and thanks also to our co-sponsors, the american conservative and american prospect. my name is daniel. i'm a senior editor at the american conservative, and i'll be moderating this morning's panel. this will be a discussion on threats and responses and the focus on how to manage threats without resorting to military action. we'll be addressing some of the following questions. what are the real threats to u.s. security and just interests more generally? which u.s. interests are truly vital and take priorities? how should we best respond to the threats that exist, how can the u.s. get the best action without military action, and what actions should the u.s.

avoid? each of the panelists will begin with some of his own remarks and we'll remain with the remaining time with question for the audiences. joining me, william lind, columnist for the american conservative, seating opposite me on the end, dan, professor of international politics at the school of law and diplomacdiplod contributor to the washington post, and most recently, author of the system worked, how the world stopped another great depression. and policy analyst at the center for american progress where he focuses on u.s. national security, policy in the middle east, with a concentration on iran and the israeli palestinian conflict. to begin the conversation, i'll tell you a little bit about how we in america tend to discuss threats and our interest in foreign policy debates and how we need to change this.

then i'll try to answer the questions i just mentioned. in general, american foreign policy debates suffer from an overly expansive debate of interests in every crisis and conflict. the interests that are supposed to be at stake are frequently wrongly taken to be of vital importance. the overall number of u.s. interests is exaggerated and so is the significance of those involved and that causes a tendency to perceive threats to the u.s. that aren't there. the u.s. does face real threats from terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but these are minor or manageable ones. however, the more manageable threats are, the more you are inclined as a country to ov overrate them and overreact to them. the more grandiose rule for the world, the more we'll be dealing with rules that have little to do with american security. we're perceiving threats to the

u.s. that don't exist, and dealing with existential threats. senator john mccain just relaid it last week, when he spokes of threats in iraq as a threat to the forces in america. as long as the united states is in global order, americans will be encouraged to inflate dangers and the system since world war ii. but the u.s. isn't in a reality far more secure that than. the translation is a dangerous habit that needs to be broken. but there is an alternative to exaggerating threats and overreacting to them. it requires us to focus on the few truly vital focuses that the u.s. has, such as the security of europe and east asia and to distinguish them from peripheral concerns that don't require substantial u.s. commitment. instead of attempting to respond

to each new conflict as if the u.s. had a huge stake in the outcome. we'll be hearing much more from professor barry posen on the subject of his new book later this morning, but for now, i would like to quote from the preface of his book to give us an idea of what it might look like in practice and how it would address threats to the united states. he rites, the united states should focus on a small number of threats and approach those threats with subtlety and moderation. they should do that because the world is resistant to heavy-handed solutions. it can do that because the united states is economically and military strong, well indowded and possessive of an ability to generate itself. any effort to reorient u.s. foreign policy away from the overreliance of military action would have to include preventive wa warfare. it's dismissing the role of deterrents and overreacting to manageable threats such as

cannot be obtained. there is no reason to believe that such government exists. the u.s. would also need to be extremely wary of calls to use conflict in other countries whether it's asked to do it for humanitarian reasons or some other purpose. while the u.s. has proven itself capable at toppling or defeating regimes that attack, it has proven that it shouldn't be used for state building efforts. it should have no part in destabilizing them in the first place. one thing that the u.s. can very easily do to contribute to international civility is not to undermine it through ill-conceived and unnecessary regime change. neither should it indulge allies or clients that wish to destabilize their military rivals. i'll suggest two other possibilities for what the u.s. can do to promote long-term stability before turning things over to matt.

the first is to minimize tens n tensions with the other major powers in a chance to return to great power conflicts. one of the greatest dangers to long-term international peace is a resumption of that kind of power conflict that caused so much devastation and dent in the previous century. armed conflict between great powers would not only be severely harmful to all countries involved and the global economy, but it has a potential however remote of a nuclear war. to reduce the chances of this, the u.s. ought to avoid premature or unnecessary paulyishes of containment directed against other major powers. after focusing on those aspects of the relationships, whether it's potential to better improve cooperation with the states, another possibility should invest more resources and attention to efforts to mediate conflicts before they escalate into major crises. that might involve submitting outstanding disputs to arb trashz or issued mediation for

political crises that have the potential to turn violent. in order to be perceived as a mediator, the u.s. can't be backing or subsidizing any of the parties to a conflict. appeals are frequently successful because they seem to provide a quick response to conflict, but other efforts, sanctions, coordination through institutions, necessarily can't have. all the more reason why a foreign policy to respond to threats should make an effort to diffuse crisis before they deteriorate into open warfare, and they should not add to instability and conflict. it follows what the u.s. should not do. the u.s. should get out of the business of regime change, whether it's direct intervengsz, army interference -- in recognize of the change of government and complete collapse of regime, produce instability throughout the region. inu.s. should avoid military

action when it's not strictly necessary for the security of the u.s. and its allies. that doesn't mean fighting wawar just because allies want to do this and it doesn't mean taking sides in another country's conflict because they would prefer us to do so. the u.s. shouldn't extend half-hearted commitments to clients. that can be interpreted as promises of military aid or direct involvement and shouldn't be willing to ignore its basic obligations. we shouldn't enable what the professor called reckless driving which they do when they give unconditional support to clients who behave in unduly aggressive or undesirable ways to their neighbors and we should discourage our allies from treating our security guarantee as an opportunity to take provocative actions to their neighbors thadica s that could

haastilities to draw us into conflicts. as he writes in his book, restraint is not a panacea. however, it is much less expensive and more sustainable politically and much less destabilizing approach to policy that would increase peace and security in the decades to come. i'll continue with remarks from matt. >> hi, good morning, everyone. thanks so much to the american conservative and the american prospects for putting this on, including me. it's a real privilege to be part of this event. all of the panelists and participants, some of whom i'm personal friends. i was asked to address america's role in the middle east post-iraq and afghanistan, the negotiations with iran. with the goal of the conference thinking about ways or the panel to think about ways of maintaining stability without military action, with methods other than war. i would say in light of the

reopened apparently iraq debate of the past week, i did not plan to have to come here and kind of restate that one of the best ways to maintain stability in the middle east is not to start destabilizing wars, but i think just apparently that needs to be repeated, and i guess we'll continue to be repeated -- >> how do you spell destabilizing? >> i think it's on google. so rather than kind of pick a more abstract approach, i think as i was thinking through this, just looking at the way the obama administration has handled the middle east, and i think, you know, i and others would have some criticisms about the way they handled a number of things but let's look at afghanistan and iraq. the iraq withdrawal, first of all. very much based, and this is really, really important, for the administration, is basing this in legitimacy, in terms of domestic support, this is something the administration is

very conscious of, it seems to me, but also in terms of international legitimacy, what john kerry referred to as the global pest and was widely mocked, but i think he's cret, that we are stronger when we act within what is seen as an international consensus. now there's a whole range of questions how one establishes or cultivates or understands that consens consensus, but understanding that is occupation should end, the united states should withdraw from iraq. it was democratically supported by the iraqis themselves and overwhelmingly supported by the american people. you know, just speaking as a progressive, i think this sense of legitimacy is possibly, you know, a defining characteristic of the way progressives understand foreign policy. i'm thinking of a quote from josh marshall's talking points where he said legitimacy is one of the ultimate force

multipliers. we're going to be able to achieve our goals much better to the extent that we're able to bring allies along and be seen as acting in a legitimate, fair, and appropriate fashion. and i think another key word here over the last few years is prag nuicism. this word is thrown around a lot. it's not a doctrine in and of itself. it's not a principle of foreign policy in itself but rather a lens or tool we use to ask the very important question of what can we actually realistically achieve and at what cost? now, as someone who actually believed that the united states should look for ways to support freedom, to support democracy, to support, you know, self-actualization of people and people kind of determining their own destinies both individually in their own communities and countries, i think that should be a part of american foreign policy, but i don't see a

cricktion between that and how can we realistically achieve that. we have seen over the past decade very good examples how we don't achieve that. we don't invade and occupy other countries and set up new governments, and then, you know, leave people to figure it out. i would say, however, that those lessons, you know, hard ones certainly for us, almost most definitely for the iraqis with estimates of well over 100,000 civilians killed over the course of the iraq war, i think that this skepticism toward foreign intervention, certainly on the part of the american people, toward a large part of the american foreign policy establishment, though i don't know if it's yet large enough that i think this is one of the goals of the event, to expand that circle of people who see skepticism toward military intervention as an appropriate baseline, but i think that skepticism deserves to be put in the plus column of the iraq war. very few benefits of the iraq war provided, and one of them

was, we're just not super crazy about large-scale military intervention anymore, so i think the neocons for that. i mean, looking at iraq and then turning to look to iran, i think they're very, very useful example and counter example of how american power should be used. i don't want to overstate it, but i actually do think obama's iraq policy has been a fairly judicious and effective use of american power. we're seeing the slow and undeniable progress of a two-track policy, some elements were in place in the bush administration, to be fair, but i think it's really important to recognize the extent to which obama when he came into office made it opoint and even before he came into office, let's remember, he started and won a pretty vigorous debate even within his own party, with his democratic party opponent, hillary clinton, about the usefulness and appropriateness

of engaging with enemies, specifically iran, sitting down and talking with iran, and advancing american security toward talking to our enemies. and i think he handily won that debate. i think the consensus was well on his side by the end of the campaign. which five former secretaries of state all indorsing his idea before election day. he took office and made clear both to the american people and to the iranian people his goal was to reach out to try to find some new level of a relationship, try to overcome the tensions of the past decade. a huge challenge, no doubt. it was frustrating. there were rounds of talks that went nowhere. another round of sanctions. again, the most important and effective sanctions being one we were able to bring allies onboard with us. our european partners both in terms of the u.n. and broader u.n.-backed sanctions but also individually, the e.u. and other countries, countries like china, even though you know they're not

going as far as people would like, they are taken important steps in lessoning their reliance on iranian oil. russia, i'm sure everyone could have criticisms of what russia is doing. i would agree with them, but i don't think there's any doubt the iran issue has been effectively siloed, you know, the iran negotiations have not been indexed to, you know, u.s.-russia tensions over ukraine or other things. i think that deserves to be recognized as a victory. so yeah, i can see, you know, look at this counterexample. on the one hand, you have a massive military deployment, a military occupation, a destructive war, an expensive war. on the other hand, you have a recognize it's in the united states interests to prevent an iranian nuclear weapon. either for just some people would claim iran would use that. i don't find that very convincing. i think that's probably a minority view. it's somewhat more plausible it

would embolden them to act in destabilizing ways in the region. i also think there's reasons to doubt that, but it's not an unreasonable claim. and there's also the proliferation question of whether countries in the region would feel compelled, saudi arabia, egypt, turkey would feel compelled to obtain their own nuclear deterrent so understag standing nuclear nonproliferation is in the united states' interest that less nuclear weapons is better than more, you know, i would say on the whole even though we haven't reached the goal, we are on track, i think, to achieve something pretty significant for american security. and i think that that agreement goes to what i would see as really underpinning, you know, something in the region that could be and obama has articulated this, others have articulated this, but i think the idea that iran can be sort of encouraged induced to be a more reasonable, responsible actor in the region.

now, you know, they say and do things that i think give reason force skepticism but understanding iran as, you know, as a state with interests rather than a cause that is going to act ideologically if you looked at iran's behavior over the past decades, iran has had lots of opportunities to commit suicide to further its ideology and has not taken those opportunities. i think it's clear iran acts in ways to preserve its own regimes, it has interests as it sees as legitimate and pursues those interests and this is a bet that obama is making, whether those interests can be brought within a broader framework sort of, you know, whether iran can use a foreign policy buzzword a responsible stakeholder in the region. i think the jury is still out. the think the move toward coordinating or talking to iran over iraq formally i should note because we've been talking to iran in various ways about iraq for decade, i mean that is one of the other pluses of the iraq war, it caused the united states

and iran, put them in close proximity and got to know each other ways not always good, not always bad, in ways we haven't been. so, again, the jury is still out on this question of whether iran can be brought into kind of, you know, a regional framework that adds to regional stability rather than regional instability and in this way, you know, obama, this administration has really acted, you know, over the protests of some of its closest allies and partners. saudi arabia, the gulf states, israel, all of whom have problems for some of their own reason, some different, some the same, who are made very nervous by the idea that the united states might be willing to see iran and treat iran as a more rational actor with legitimate goals and concerns in the region. so, you know, i'll just finish up by noting once again how glad i am to be part of this conversation. it's one that i'd really hope

continues and will have more events and talk more but as we -- as progressives and conservatives, some of the views that we share about the role that the united states should play, the ways to use non-military tools to advance our security, but i'm really interested and i hope to engage on this more, as again speaking as a progressive, one of my beliefs as i said about my, you know what i think about democracy and freedom, these should be a part of, you know, overall how we approach foreign policy. i do believe we are all in this together. it goes to, you know, both my own -- my local community, my state, my country but i think globally, i think that's something progressivism does bring to the table. but again, the question should always be and i think this is where we'll all agree, the question is with who tools and at what costs? so i'll finish up there. >> thanks, matt. now dan. >> thanks. i would also like to thank the

american prospect and american conservative for organizing this and mazy allison who would have moved mountains to get me here and figuratively did move mountains. i have a built-in excuse if any of this sounds incoherent i came in on a red eye from seattle so i've gotten two hours of sleep. so that's the reason this is incoherent, it's not my own way of thinking about it. i'm also in task to talk about asia-pacific, pacific rim and talk about both in terms of the economic side and security side, because as dan noted i do have a new book out and it does address this somewhat. if you take a look at what's happened sort of on the one happened and on the other hand security in the pacific sphere you see very discoordinate fairtives since 2008. because on the economic side, on the whole, the sort of institutions that were responsible for what you're supposed to do in the wake of a financial crisis, actually worked surprisingly well.

there were many excellent reasons to believe this sort of great power concert and the institutions they created pre-2008 were going to crack up in the fall of 2008. i'm old enough to remember when a lot of people were saying that in the fall of 2008 and yet that didn't happen. but you can't say that on the security side specifically with respect to the pacific rim and want to explore why. so on the economic side, you know, there were a lot of fears basically going to be revisiting the great depression and you know that in the midst of an economic crisis in some ways crises metastasize into depression the moments states sort of eliminate economic openness. and that was why the great depression became the great depression not just because of the stock market crisis of 1929 but in 1931 when a credit stall on the banking crisis and no one cooperated to help anyone else and in 1923 when the london

economic conference collapsed. but what happened after 2008 was different. most of the sort of key global public goods, think of about it wwkd, what would kindleberger do in terms of a crisis, most were provided. markets for distressed goods were provided. no return to protectionism. the one tinge that even skeptics post that time would agree upon there were significant injections of liquidity into the system. there was by historical standards a surprising degree of macroeconomic policy coordination. there was provision of exchange rate stability as well despite a lot of very loose talk about currency wars. and international institutions actually functioned reasonably well. whether it was the case of the world trade organization, the imf providing monitoring or the g-20 or other informal mechanisms providing a reassurance mechanism or blunting domestic pressures for protectionism. and it also should be pointed

out on the economic side the u.s. also acted like, you know, a surprisingly confident leader. you know, whether you talk about the federal reserve engaej gauging in a whole variety of actions and opening up its lending window to european and japanese banks, or the u.s. taking a lead in terms of imf reform and the only thing stopping that is the united states congress. or reforming the basel banking supervision rules or rules regulating sovereign world funds. so that in fact you're operating in a world where in fact the global economy has been surprisingly resilient post-2008 to the point now where people in the fed and elsewhere are concerned not about market volatility but the fact that markets seem way too calm in response to a lot of geopolitical shocks which i find amusing for a variety of reasons but it does suggest that perhaps there's been more resiliency built into the system post-2008 like almost the system worked.

i'm sorry. i'm shameless. on security, though, it's obviously a more disturbing message if you take a look at the pacific rim. if you look at the broad indexes like the global peace index or human security report you don't see a major spike in sort of instability and so forth. but there's been an undeniable ratcheting up of tensions in east asia and pacific rim. you know, just rattle off south china sea or east china sea or north korea and you get the point. and it's worth pointing out international institutions have been spectacularly unhelpful as these things go. the u.n. security council hasn't really done anything on this issue. the east asia summit and the regional forum basically serve as a nice venue where the chinese and the americans can accuse each other of various acts. asean has been split by increasing crises as china was able to use cambodia as a way to sort of provoke dissent within that group. the u.n. conventional law notes

it's adorable people think it will work but it's not really going to work because china doesn't seem to want it and china's interpretation of things like the exclusive economic zone are very much at variance with sort of traditional customary international law on this. and the u.s. response on the security in the pacific rim also seems not necessarily more ham handed but less sure of itself. there was the pivot that started in the fall of 2010 and that was certainly embraced about by a lot of countries in the region in response to various sort of perceived chinese provocations in 2008 and 2009. indeed the pivot was embraced in some ways too warmly by some countries. you could argue that pivot emboldened the philippines to take a more bellicose position on scarborough shaw which led to the situation where the united states said we won't go to war on it. but the u.s. has actually committed to basically going to

war over the senkaku islands even though they don't recognize japanese sovereignty, they recognize it's a disputed issue but their alliance -- we have said our alliance commitment would get us into a war in that should china challenge that. so, you know, you can talk about two different narratives. even realists that tend to argue the u.s. should retrench in various parts of the world. when you start asking them about china they actually their eyes light up because they do think people like john think that's where the next big conflict is going to come from. but why is there such a discordant relationship on what's happening on the global economy and security sphere on the pacific rim and there's a good answer. if you take a look at least in part in the distribution of power you realize that despite a lot of perception in this town, the u.s. still retains significant amount of structural

power. you know, post 2008. susan strange wrote a great article back during the last debate about sort of waning u.s. and gemny pointing out the ways in which the u.s. has structural power distinct from things like gross domestic product or economic growth or things like that. you know, military power, financial power, ownership or production and production of ideas. on all four of these metrics the united states still retains an overwhelming preponderance of power. the u.s. is still the military superpower in terms of finance, the u.s. is actually a more central part of global financial networks now than we were before 200le which is really extraordinary when you think about it. but nevertheless true. in terms of ownership or production as well and production of ideas also despite a lot of loose talk about challenging the washington consensus what is striking is the absence of any counterveiling ideas on that on the other hand what did happen the traditional u.s. supporters namely the european union and japan were devastated as a result of the 2008 financial

crisis and really did suffer serious dramatic declines in some cases because policy own goals and there's no need to go into details but the important thing most sort of theories of hegemonic stability or leadership, however you want to phrase it, tend to acknowledge at this point yeah, you want a leader but leaders need supporters, followers. it's not enough to have one big state. so what's happened is that in the wake of sort of waning european and japanese power, you now have the rise of china ras a great power and china's done something interesting with respect to the economy, to repeat what something matt said they acted like a responsible stakeholder and actually done just about everything that you would have expected them to have done in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis ranking from provision of liquidity to eventually letting their currency appreciate to not engaging in new bouts of protectionism. i'm not going to deny they

engage in various acts of espionage, but that's a constant, not unique to the post-2008 situation. so they've been perfectly willing to act as sort of, you know, a supporter to the u.s. created what bob kagan used to refer to as the liberal economic order for quite some time. on the other hand when it comes to the security sphere, you know, china is perfectly willing to act in a newly assertive manner on a whole variety of things and, you know, you can argue about why they're doing this and the extent to which there's a reach, you know, is this because they actually care specifically about chinese sovereign territory and that's it or is it a case of they're just trying to get influence over this sort of inner island chain with the idea eventually they then want to expand their influence to the outer island chain so the question is whether -- the chinese side whether they view it as a border issue or sort of the first step of what they see as regional hegemony. here we come to a important point, it's worth pointing out there

are a lot of debates about military interventions with idea if you use power that implies the use of force. in the pacific rim i don't think it quite works as well there because there is a way in which the use of extended deterrents meaning, you know, pledging to commit to use force in case there is a conflict has the potential to reduce conflict. or reduce the actual use of force if it deters another actor. so in the case of the senkakus it's fair to criticize the obama administration for making that commitment. it's worth noting that china's responded to by focusing energies a little more on the south china sea than east china sea and worth asking whether or not those sorts of actions do potentially act to tamp down great power, actual great power war even if it ratchets up tensions in the short term. but i do think the more interesting question to ask is that despite the sort of rising tension in the east china sea and south china sea and so forth

there's not a lot of evidence that those tensions are actually affecting patterns of economic exchange. you know, if you go back to sort of the pre-world war i era, last great era of globalization, one of the myths is that world war i broke out despite large amounts of interdependence and as a constraint on state action. but if you take a look at the history, you start to see that, you know, from 1890 on states actually did start to take significant efforts to try to wean themselves off and the least independent states that wind up launching the great war and what's interesting sort of post, you know, 2008 and despite recent tensions there's no real shift in trade or finance suggesting china or the united states or any other actor is trying to sort of divorce themselves as what they see as other security rivals. indeed, what's striking, despite the ratcheting up of tensions there haven't been significant moves in the way of geoeconomic

responses. the transpacific partnership has not been accelerated because of chinese actions. tpp has slowed down to a crawl because of domestic issues and by the way it's also true in europe, you know, edward snowden has been more of a break on tea tip than the annexation of the cry nia has been an accelerant. so there are two ways to think about it. it's possible this disconnect is temporary and eventually we will start to see some sort of economic segmentation. which in some ways in and of itself is useful because it's a useful trip wire to think about when we are shifting to real great power tensions that could lead to a great power war. but, you know, you could also suggest a more heretical thought that maybe great power rivalry ain't what it used to be or operating in a case, where, yeah, there's disputes over islands and don't mean to diminish it but it's possible that the great powers in the region recognize it's not worth going to war over these things

and it's not worth sort of destroying the sort of global engine of prosperity to claim a bunch of coral reefs in the south china sea or in the east china sea and leave it at that. >> okay. thanks. >> i'm bill lind with the american conservative magazine and our thanks, indeed, to all of our sponsors once again for this opportunity. my message this morning is that too often foreign policy debates particularly that between interventionism and what is intentionally misnamed isolationism, the united states only pursued a policy of isolationism for three years under president thomas jefferson, his embargo which was such a disaster we have never done it again. [ laughter ] that this debate unfortunately too often occurs in a vacuum. it occurs without reference to war. obviously foreign policy and war are intimately related in the real world because war --

foreign policies often lead intentionally or unintentionally to war. the fact of the matter is, that the choice between interventionism and a policy of a defensive grand strategy which i'm going to talk about is at this point not just a matter of, well, which one is nice? it's a matter of which one is consistent with where war is going? and war is at present undergoing the biggest change it has seen since the piece of west fail ya in 1948 with the rise of what i call fourth generation of war. with the peace of westphalis did was give the state a monopoly on war and we think of that automatically. but before that, many different kinds of entities fought wars not just the state, the state

was rather a new thing at this point. is religions fought war, races fought war, tribes and business enterprises fought war, dynasties fought wars and they used many different means not just formal armies and navies. the fourth generation means that the state is now losing the monopoly on war it established with westphalia. again, this is the biggest change in war in 350 years and it is going to affect foreign policy. as the israeli military historian martin von creffelt says what changes with the fourth generation is not how war is fought but who fights and what they fight for. and these are larger changes than changes in how war is fought. at the root of this change in war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state itself.

a crisis which is present virtually everywhere although it varies enormously in degree. but all over the world including in the united states a growing number of people are transferring their primary allegiance away from the state to once again a wild variety of other entities. to, again, tribe, ethnic group, races, religions, sects, causes like animal rights, business enterprises, legal and illegal, gangs are one of the principal elements in a fourth generation world and the same young men who have no interest in fighting for the state are often very enthusiastic about fighting for their new primary loyalty. four times in recent years in the last few decades the united states military which proclaims itself the greatest in the world

and certainly in terms of the amount of money spent on it is the greatest has come up against fourth generation nonstate forces, lebanon, in somalia, in afghanistan and in iraq. those forces had no fighter planes, no tanks, no artillery, no body armor, they were armed primarily with rusty ak-47s and improvised bombs and four times they have defeated us. the measure of success in a fourth generation situation is whether when we or the other intervening great power leaves, we leave behind a real state. in none of those cases were we able to do that the pretense that we left behind a real state in iraq has just dissolved within the past week. as we have seen historically over and over, a vichy government and its army disintegrates when faced with literally any opposition.

this is a very profound change and, again, to try to carry out the debate on foreign policy without regard to the fact that our military can no longer win against forces which by any measure of physical power are incredibly weak compared to us, and if we graft their resources on the same scale as our own, theirs wouldn't even be visible. the fact that our military and the militaries of other states which are designed to fight other state militaries cannot win against these nonstate forces, this is a revolution, folks. this is an enormous change and it changes virtually everything else. now, when we look at foreign policy, obviously the first thing it says is an interventionist foreign policy guarantees failure.

because you find yourself in a war with nonstate forces and the nonstate forces beat you and so a pretty basic rule of foreign policy is you probably don't want to start wars you know you're going to lose. too many foreign ministries over time have done that but it doesn't meet the conservative test of prudens. another meaning perhaps even more profound because the foreign policy establishment utterly doesn't get it is that you don't want to fight wars with other states, why? because the losing states legitimacy already shaky in many cases will disintegrate and with it that state will disintegrate. we saw this, of course, with libia. -- libya. i warned before we started bombing libya that the outcome would be the destruction of the libyan state and another big victory for the fourth generation as libya became a stateless entity.

well, surprise, guess what happened? if you go to war with another state, regardless of which state wins the war, we will lose because the losing state will disintegrate and the real victor will be the forces of the fourth generation, nonstate forces will have another petri dish in which to breed and grow and from which they will spread. the distinction that will drive international relations in the remainder of this century is not some kindergarten level between democracies or places that are free and dictatorships, it is between places that will be centers and sources of order and centers and sources of disorder. and when we go to war with another state, almost certainly the outcome will include the the outcome will include the creation of another center and

source of spreading disorder. furthermore when we intervene in these places we will import the disorder here. it is not just that we fail to bring order to those places, when the root problem is a crisis of legitimacy, what chance do we have when we go in and create a government? a government created by foreigners, what legitimacy is this going to have? beyond that, we are going to import the disorder here. we will import it in the form of refugees, we will import it in the form of veterans coming back who have learned how to build things like ieds and some of whom will now be among other things gang members, again gangs are very important entities in fourth generation war. we will import it in the effects on the legitimacy of our own government of another policy failure, usually at very high cost not only in money but in

lives. so the first rule of foreign policy at this point is don't go to war with other states. the second rule is don't go to war with nonstate entities, now you put those two together and it somewhat suggests going to war isn't the terribly good idea. the absolute worst war we could get into and there is a substantial element in washington puffing the dragon to try to create this situation is a war with china. we desperately need china to be a center and source of order and it is naturally inclined that way because confusion culture is naturally orderly and supposed red china is now paying a great deal more attention to confucius than it does to carl marx. a defeated china could well disintegrate into another warring states. what a catastrophe. a billion people nuclear weapons, a lot of high

technology and it becomes an enormous source of disorder. we could not imagine a worst outcome. the pentagon, of course, likes to puff the dragon because it's desperate for a symmetrical opponent, one that says we can beat these guys because they're like us, but what's the consequence if we do and that's not asked. what we need therefore is a change in grand strategy. the largest change in war in 350 years cannot be accommodated with changes in tactics or weaponry or various other small things. it requires a very large change at a very high level and that is a change in grand strategy, specifically we need to abandon the offensive grand strategy we have been following particularly since the end of the cold war where we attempt to dictate to the rest of the world what their internal arrangements shall be

and threaten them in a variety of ways all of those ways weakening the state by the way if they do not become like us the great conservative man of letters russell kirk rightly wrote there is no surer way to make a man your enemy than to tell him you're going to remake him in your image for this own good. we need to return to the grand strategy that we followed successfully through almost all of our history which is simply a defensive grand strategy. we don't go to war with other people unless they attack us. it's pretty simple. their internal arrangements are their own business. we relate to the rest of the world very actively. but through nongovernmental means through trade and by serving as an example not through playing the great power game with diplomacy and military force. it was said unfairly of wilhelm and can be said fairly of the washington establishment that

its worst nightmare there is a quarrel somewhere in the world in which we are not involved. the defensive grand stage says those are other people's problems. you have these two wonderful oceans east and west that provide a lot of distance. we are going to use that distance and, yes, we are going to do everything in our power to isolate ourselves from disorder, disorder means the disintegration of the state and yes, that can happen here too. it is a very real possibility in this century that the american state will not survive it particularly if it keeps engaging in failed wars. the defensive grand strategy served us extremely well. it cost very little. it made us popular worldwide. it gave the united states tremendous moral power and as colonel john boyd argued, the moral level of war is the most

powerful, the physical level of war is the least powerful, and it is the policy, the grand strategy that is in accord with the realities of the 21st century. the tragedy is that the washington establishment will not see this because it is made up primarily of people whose most important thing is their personal career and if you are a member of the establishment and you suggest any change, you instantly cease to be a member of the establishment. so the question i will leave with you is which falls first, the foreign policy establishment or the country? >> thank you. so we'll start with a few questions that i'll pose to the panelists and then if we have a little bit of time at the end, i will turn over some time for questions from you all in the audience. since we've all touched on iraq or at least most of us have touched on iraq at the recent

developments there in our remarks, maybe we'll start with asking is there anything that the u.s. could constructively do in response to the latest events, the advance of isis in iraq or is it rather the case that's it's time to cut our losses and recognize we don't know what we're doing in iraq, we never have known and then we should not try to remedy a situation we don't know how to fix? >> you know, it was my understanding there would be no math. yeah, a good question and a tough one. i think what we -- you know what we've seen over the past couple days, this idea, normalizing the idea we're going to try to formally discuss the situation with iran, iran, you know, i don't need to remind people here, iran walked in behind the tracks of the u.s. tanks. they have a much broader and

deeper understanding of iraq than we do and certainly their foreign policy, their national security policy over the past several decades was a raid toward preventing iraq emerging as a threat after the iran/iraq war so i think trying to work with them and what we're doing right now to say to maliki one of the roots of the problem here is that you're just not governing in an inclusive way. way, listen, what tools do we have to make him do that? we couldn't do it with 100,000 troops in the country. the idea that we could have done it with 5,000 to 10,000 troops that we didn't leave, i think, is kind of fantastical so i think what we should do is, you know, more of what we've been trying to do with syria is, you know, see -- work with the surrounding countries to see how we contain it. definitely try to work to deal with the refugee flows because i think those are something that get more and more destabilizing down the road but at the end of the day if the root problem as i think a lot of people recognize here is political, we

unfortunately have very few tools to change that reality. >> well, would we be really in the best position to coordinate with iraq's neighbors when our relations with several of them are quite bad? >> well, yeah, they're tense and also working at cross purposes. it is. it's been stated, it's overstated, state it again, it's a cold war both between the saudis and gulf states and iran and some ways a cold war within the sunni community with much more extreme islamist elements and less extreme but islamist element, the muslim brotherhood crowd, the saudis working against the muslim brotherhood and their allied organizations so yeah, given all of these kind of cross-cutting conflicts i think there is, again, the question is what tools, what influence does the united states really have? i think, you know, continuing to stay engage and i think the --

you know, the idea that the obama administration or the united states is pulling out of the region is wildly overstated. but i do -- i do see it as a kind of right sizing of american interests in the region because we do still have interests in the region. i think we do have an interest in doing whatever we can to prevent global jihadist organizations from creating small states here to plan whatever they would. but again, i'm sort of at a loss for what real steps we can take to change the reality. >> well, professor will be speaking in a few minutes, just had an article come out in politico last night where he made the argument the case for doing nothing in iraq. does that sound like something plausible for the u.s. to do? do you think it's possible for the u.s. to refrain from some

activist response in the face of what's been happening there? >> i was told matt would answer all the math questions. no. >> i would say with respect to the middle east what you want to do is eliminate the moral hazard problem for u.s. foreign policy, which is the notion that if, in fact, there is a deteriorating situation in terms of security, that, you know, is unfolding there, that the u.s. will be the actor of first resort. and so i would say in that sense, there is an incentive to not necessarily take immediate action. ? some ways this has a much more profound effect on iran than the united states. there's not a bad argument. this is also a question of where -- what do you rank order of threats to the united states. do you think that, you know, isis having an actual safe zone of territory in which they can do whatever they want is a bigger problem than the iranian state expanding its influence. i think that's the debate that

actually needs to take place or whether or not you think either of these are threats to the united states also. i agree i think there's something to be said for not doing nothing but making it clear, we are not doing anything unless we're acting in concert with others. we're not going to be -- this is not going to be 2003 or not even 2003 again, not going to be any unilateral action by the united states and in the end, if something, you know, bad happens in the region you are going to be affected heck of a lot worse than we are. >> what are your thoughts? >> everything having to do with diplomacy, relations between states, et cetera, is completely irrelevant to what is happening in iraq and syria and in a growing portion of the middle east. the forces that are behind these wars are far more powerful than the states of the region. we're looking at a war of religion. we're looking at the middle eastern 30 years war, vet

long-standing war between sunnis and shiites has rekindled, one of the very few benefits, frankly, of our idiotic intervention in iraq, we helped rekindle it, and they're going to fight it out. it's going to be just like the 30 years war in europe and that is to our advantage. because if you look at the demographics of this region you see that it is filled with young men with no prospects, no jobs and nothing to do. what do young men do under the circumstance? they fight. this is the supply side war. you are going to have wars where you have those demographics. what we want to ensure is that we are isolated from the disorder that causes the proper policy for us is to stand on the sidelines to say fight fiercely fellas and let them absorb their energies with each other instead

of directing them against us which what is they do when we intervene in their region. we can't stop it. we benefit from it. and the single most important policy action we need to take is make sure we admit not one single refugee that will be fleeing by the millions from these conflicts. if they examicome here or europy will bring the same conflicts with them wherever they go. >> yeah. just a couple points. one, on the moral hazard point it's a very good one. i remember there was a few months ago when saudi arabia kind of was throwing its big temper tantrum over the u.s./iran approach or so-called approach. there was i think who was it who wrote an op-ed in "the new york times," prince turkey or one of the saudi princes, they had just withdrawn from the u.n. human rights council and he was, you know -- the op-ed said if the united states continues to behave in this way, saudi arabia

might have to start to, you know, take action to deal with security in its own region in its own way. this was intended as a threat which i found really kind of interesting. the idea that they might have to act more. >> the saudi military is perhaps the most worthless in a region of worthless military. >> right. my point being, my first response was that will be the day, and b, i don't perceive that as a threat. that's what we would like you to start doing. just to the point about the middle east, 30 years of war, i take your point but again i think this is where we may have difference. i clearly -- the key concern over the united states government is the security of the united states, but i'm just not willing to kind of say we should stand back and let this region consume itself. i do feel that we -- mine because what we're talking about -- >> watch this event in its entirety at c-span.org. we leave it to take you live to the white house where president

obama will be awarding retired corporal william kyle carpenter the medal of honor. the eighth living recipient to be chosing for the medal of honor for actions in iraq or afghanistan. live coverage on c-span 3. ♪ >> if you would, please pray with me. all mighty god, we pause at the beginning of this historic event to ask for your presence in this place. allow your spirit to move among all of us gathered here, that as we give honor to one who demonstrated the virtues on which this nation was founded, we would be reminded again of your grace that has allowed this country its freedoms that so

many like corporal kyle carpeter have sacrificed to defend. god, we would ask that you would hear our gratitude for molding corporal carpenter's character through the love of his gracious fambly, and the support of his countless friends and mentors. know of our deep appreciation for this marine's faithfulness, that when faced that day when the crucible of self-preservation or self-sacrifice, he responded with valor and entry pidty to safeguard the life of his friend nick. for the nation's highest award for selflessness and courage is draped around corporal carpenter's neck. encircle him with the depth of your stedfast love. sanctify his inner most and unspoken thoughts, so that as he carries the unphantomble weight of this honor, he will be

emboldened to speak on behalf of and encourage those whose untold sacrifices and humble service need his firm and compassionate voice. we lift up in prayer all those who remain in harm's way throughout the globe, and pray your abiding grace on the families and friends of the marines, sailors, soldiers, airmen and coast guardsmen who have given their lives in service to this country. bestow your wisdom on those who lead this nation and shape its endeavors. may all of us as americans yield ourselves to your divine guidance and follow the example of these our heros, who loved country more than self, and mercy more than life. god bless america. amen. >> amen. >> thank you, everybody. please be seated. on behalf of michele and myself,

welcome to the white house. the man you see before you today corporal william kyle carpenter, should not be alive today. hand grenades are one of the most awful weapons of war. they only -- they only weigh about a pound but packed with tnt. if one lands nearby, you have mere seconds to seek cover. when it detonates its fragments shoot out in every direction and even at a distance, that spray of shrapnel can inflict devastating injuries on the human body. up close, it's almost certain death. but we are here because this man, this united states marine, faced down that terrible

explosive power, that unforgiving force, with his own body. willingly and deliberately to protect a fellow marine. when that grenade exploded, kyle carpenter's body took the brunt of the blast. his injuries were called catastrophic. it seemed as if he was going to die. while being treated he went into cardiac arrest and three times he flatlined. three times doctors brought him back. along with his parents who call kyle's survival our miracle, we thank god they did. because with that singular act of courage, kyle, you not only saved your brother in arms, you displayed a heroism in the blink of an eye that will inspire for

generations. valor worthy of our nation's highest military decoration, the medal of honor. now, kyle and i have actually met before during his long recovery at walter reed, he and some of our other wounded warriors came to the white house to celebrate the world series champion st. louis cardinals. some of you may be aware, i am a white sox fan. kyle likes the braves. so it was a tough day for both of us. but after the ceremony, michele and i had the chance to meet kyle and at the time he was still undergoing surgeries but he was up and walking and he was working his way toward being independent again, towards the man you see here today. and kyle, the main message we want to send is welcome back. we are so proud to have you

here. we just spent some time not just with kyle but his wonderful family. and anybody who has had a chance to get to know this young man, knows you're not going to get a better example of what you want in an american or a marine. despite all of the attention, he's still the same humble guy from gilbert, south carolina, population of about 600. i guess today it's only population 590 something. these days, he's also at the university of south carolina, just a normal college student, he says. cheering for the gamecocks. you'll notice that kyle doesn't hide his scars. he's proud of them. and the service that they represent. and now he tells me this and, you know, so i'm just quoting

him, he says the girls definitely like him. so he's working an angle on this thing. you know, i wasn't sure if i was supposed to say that in front of mom, but there is a quote there. in addition to our many distinguished guests i want to welcome those who made this man the marine that he is. kyle's father jim, kyle's lovely mom robin, and his brothers price and peyton, one of whom is going to be joining kyle at south carolina, another gamecock, and then one who is going to be at the citadel. we also have kyle's marine brothers who served with him in afghanistan and through his recovery. and i also want to welcome the members of the medal of honor society whose ranks kyle joins today. kyle and his fellow marines

served during the surge of forces that i ordered to afghanistan early in my presidency. their mission was to drive the taliban out of their strongholds, protect the afghanistan people and give them a chance to reclaim their communities. kyle and his platoon were in helmand province pushing their way across open fields and muddy canals, bearing their heavy packs even as it could heat up to 115 degrees. in one small village, they turned a dusty compound into their base. the insurgents nearby gave their answer with sniper fire and automatic weapon fire and rocket-propelled grenades. that morning, kyle said, our alarm clock was ak-47 fire. some of the men were by their bunks, gearing up for another day. some were heating up their mres. some were in makeshift opt centers, a simple mud building,

planning the day's patrols. up on the roof behind a circle of sandbags, two marines manned their posts. kyle and lance corporal nicolas afranzo. the compound started to take fire. seeking cover, kyle and nick laid down low on their backs behind those sandbags. and then the grenade landed with a thud. its pin pulled. it was about to explode. and kyles into memory of -- kyle has no memory of what happened next. what we know is there on that rooftop he wasn't just with a fellow marine, he was with his best friend. kyle and nick had met in training, in afghanistan they patrolled together day and night, a friendship forged in fire, kyle says about nick he was my point man and i loved him like a brother. when the grenade landed, other

marines in the compound looked up and saw it happen. kyle tried to stand. he lunged forward toward that grenade and then he disappeared into the blast. keep in mind at the time, kyle was just 21 years old. but in that instant he fulfilled those words of scripture, ready to love, no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. they found kyle lying face down directly over the blast area his helmet riddled with holes, his helmet melted, part of his kevlar vest blown away, one of the doctors who treated him later said kyle was wounded from the top of his head to his feet. and for a moment kyle was still conscious. his eyes were open but he couldn't see. kyle remembers everything went white. and yet, even then his thoughts

were not of himself. one of the marines who was there remembers how kyle kept asking one question, and that was whether nick was okay. and then as kyle's strength drained away, he sensed the end was coming. so according to kyle's memories, my last thought was to make peace with god. i asked for his forgiveness. i was trying to make the best and most of my last few seconds here on earth. the medal of honor is presented for gallanttry on the battlefield. but today, we also recognize kyle carpenter for his valor since in the hard fight for recovery. eventually kyle woke up after five weeks in a coma. i want you to consider what kyle has endured just to stand here today. more than two and a half years in the hospital, gruelling

rehabilitation, brain surgery to remove shrapnel from his head, nearly 40 surgeries to repair a collapsed lung, fractured fingers, a shattered right arm, broken in more than 30 places, multiple skin grafts, he has a new prosthetic eye, new jaw, new teeth. and one hell of a smile. and kyle's the first to give credit elsewhere. his doctors at bethesda he says put me back together well. today is a reminder that in past wars somebody with injuries as severe as kyle's probably wouldn't have survived. so many of our wounded warriors from today's wars are alive not just because of a remarkable advances in technology, but primarily because of the extraordinary dedication and skill of our military and va medical professionals. so we need to keep doing everything we can in our power to give our wounded warriors and

those who treat them the support that they need and i think this is a wonderful opportunity to ask doctors deborah malone and lauren greer and the rest of kyle's medical team who are here to please stand. i see their amazing work every time i visit bethesda, every time i visited walter reed, it's pretty rare where you got a job you just know you're doing god's work every single day and they do an incredible job. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you for the miracles you work for our wounded troops and veterans. now kyle says he'll wear this medal for all who serve and for those who didn't make it back and for those who struggle

still. so today we honor two members of his team who made the ultimate sacrifice in that deployment, kyle's friends lance corporal timothy jackson of corbin, kentucky, and lance corporal dakota r. hughes of greenwood, louisiana. and our thoughts are also with day, his brother nick. i had the opportunity to meet nick as well nearly two years after the blast on one of my visits to walter reed. nick also suffered grievous wounds as a result of traumatic brain injury he couldn't speak for more than a year. he also endured multiple surgeries. today his recovery continues. he lives at home with his family in plymouth, massachusetts, where he is watching this ceremony. nick, on behalf of all of us, i want you to know we honor your sacrifice as well. your perseverance is an inspiration and just as kyle was there for you, our nation will be there for you and your family

as you go stronger in the years ahead. if any of our wounded warriors seek an example, let me amend that. if any american seeks a model of the strength and resilience that define us as a people, including this newest 9/11 generation, i want you to consider kyle. after everything he's been through, he skis, he snowboards, he's jumped from a plane with a parachute, thankfully, he trudged through a six-mile mud run, completed the marine corps marathon, says he onces to do a triathlon. he's a motivational speaker. an advocate for his fellow wounded warriors. he's thinking about majoring in psychology so he can use his own experiences to help others.

he got stellar grades. and by the way he's only 24 years old. and says i'm just getting started. in other words, kyle is a shining example of what our nation needs to encourage. veterans who come home and use their incredible skills and talents to keep our countries strong and we can all learn from kyle's example. as we prepare for the reading of the citation, i would like to close with his own words. a message i think for every american. it took a life-changing event to get me to truly appreciate the precious and amazing life i have been blessed with. please take it from me, enjoy every day to the fullest. don't take life too seriously. always try to make it count. appreciate the small and simple things. be kind and help others. let the ones you love always know you love them and when things get hard, trust there is a bigger plan and you will be stronger for it.

pretty good message. corporal william kyle carpenter should not be alive today, but the fact that he is, gives us reason to trust that there is, indeed, a bigger plan god bless you, kyle, god bless all who serve and protect the precious and amazing life that we are blessed with. may god continue to bless and keep strong the united states of america. [ applause ] >> the president of the united states in the name of the congress, takes pleasure in presenting the medal of honor to lance corporal william kyle carpenter, united states marine corps. for conspicuous gallantry and entry pidty at the risk of his

life above and beyond the call of duty serving as an auto rifle man with company f, ninth marines regimental combat team one, first marine division forward, first marine expeditionary force forward in helmand province, afghanistan, in support of operation enduring freedom on 21 november 2010. lance corporal carpenter was a member of a platoon size coalition force comprised of two rifle squads, partner with an afghan national army squad. the platoon established control base dakota in a small village in the marsh dwrikts to disrupt enemy activity and provide security for the local afghan population. lance corporal carpenter and a fellow marine were manning a rooftop security position on the perimeter of patrol base dakota when the enemy initiated a daylight attack with hand grenades one of which landed inside their sandbag position. without hesitation, and with complete disregard for his own safety, lance corporal carpenter

moved towards the grenade in an attempt to shield his fellow marine from the deadly blast. when the yes nade detonated his body absorbed the brunt of the blast severely wounded him but saving the life of his fellow marine. by his undaunted courage, bold fighting spirit and unwavering deveegs to duty in the face of almost certain death, lance corporal carpenter reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the marine corps and united states naval service. [ applause ]

>> let us pray. gracious god, may this ceremony serve as a reminder of the responsibility that comes with receiving the grace gift of freedom. and as we depart this hallowed hall and return to our daily lives, we pray that you would ennoble and empower us that when called upon, we would represent the resolute fearlessness of corporal kyle carpenter and all those who wear the stars of valor and live up to our responsibilities bringing honor to you and to this country.

it's in the strength of your name we pray, amen. >> well, that brings us to the conclusion of this ceremony, but not the reception and party. and so i want to thank everybody again for being here. especially kyle's wonderful family and his parents. and i understand that the food here at the white house is pretty good. so i already told kyle's brothers they should be chowing down, but that goes for everybody else as well. and i think the drinks are free. i don't know -- it's still nearly the afternoon. all right. thank you very much, everybody. let's give one more round of applause to our latest medal of honor winner, kyle carpenter. [ applause ]

>> president obama at the white house this afternoon awarding kyle carpenter the medal of honor. corporal carpenter, the eighth living recipient to be chosen for the award. also the youngest living recipient of that honor. if you missed any of today's event you can watch it in its entirety on our website,

c-span.org. house republicans this hour are meet beg hind closed doors as they cast ballots in their party's leadership elections. majority whip kevin mccarthy of california and idaho congressman raul labrador are running for majority leader. those elections being conducted by secret ballot with a winner needing a majority of the republican caucus. c-span cameras are outside the room and our companion network c-span will be continuing to bring you any updates throughout the afternoon as they become available. coming up friday, irs commissioner john coscanan will testify on his agency's ongoing investigation of its targeting of conservative groups. >> the thesis of the book is that there's a whole group of people in america, a big swath of america, that is being

ignored, left behind, not included in the discussion, i think, for either party. particularly, though, i would argue the republican party. and that's, i call them blue collar conservatives. the folks out there that are working people, most of them who don't have college degrees, folks that really still understand the value of work and the importance of work and responsibility and people who understand the importance of family and faith, believe in freedom and limited government. so you can say, wow, those are conservative republican voters. and in many cases they're not. in fact, a lot of them aren't voting at all because they don't really see either party talking to them about the concerns they have and trying to create an opportunity for them to live the american dream. >> former presidential candidate and senator rick santorum. he offers conservative answers to their problems.

saturday night at 10:00 eastern on "afterwards," port of book tv this weekend on c-span 2. and this month on our online book club we're discussing "the forgotten man." the new history of the great depression. start reading and join others to discuss the book in our chat room at booktv.org. television for serious readers. the head of general motors, mary barra, to appear before a house panel this week to address her company's response to safety defectss in over 20 million vehicles. the faulty ignition switch responsible for some of the recalls is believed to have caused at least 12 deaths across the nation. ms. barra says she expects an independent committee to begin processing compensation claims by august 1st of this year. this house subcommittee hearing is just under three hours.

i now convene this hearing of the oversight and investigation subcommittee entitled the gm ignition switch recall investigation update. i think my colleagues and representatives for being here. ms. barra, when you were before this committee almost three months ago, you could not answer many of this subcommittee's questions about why it took general motors years to figure out why the air bags in cobalts, ions, hhrs were not deploying when they should have. it took gm years before finally issuing a safety recall. now it's been made public his report on the gm fiasco in which he concludes there doesn't appear to be a case of a cover-up or conspiracy. instead, according to mr. valukas' report, gm's failure was a case of incompetence and

neglect. perhaps this report should have been subtitled "don't assume malfeasance when incompetence will do." i still have questions about whether gm employees willingly withheld information during previous lawsuits. information that could have led to an earlier recall and prevented some of these tradition from occurring. in many ways the facts surrounding what finally resulted in the gm recall are far more troubling than a cover-up. gm engineers and attorneys who were given the facts, including reports on stalls and air bag malfunctions and who were talked with figuring out who were tasked with figuring out what went wrong did not connect the dots. that's because they were either incompetent or intentionally indifferent. today i want to know not just how it happened but why did this happen? even whoen a good law like the tread act of 2000 is in place, it requires people to use common sense, value a moral code in have a motivation driven by compassion for it to be

effective. here the key people at gm seem to lack all of these in a way that underscores that we cannot legislate common sense, mandate morality nor litigate compassion. and some point it's up to the culture of the company that has to go beyond paperwork and rules. the failures at general motors were ones of accountability and culture. if employees do not have the moral fiber to do the right thing and awareness to recognize when mistakes are being made, and the answer must to be change the people or change the culture. that's a lesson -- another large organization under congressional scrutiny should have also taken heart. i hope officials in the veterans affairs department are watching. what is particularly frustrating about gm is the company appeared in no great hurry to figure out the problems with its vehicles. despite customer complaints, reports from gm's own engineers that they were able to turn off the ignition switch with their knees during test drives and finally reports of deaths was not until 2009 that gm figured

out the air bags had any connection to the power mode status of the car. then it took another four years to link that finding to one of the components that determines the power mode. the ignition switch. and that discovery was not a result of gm's own investigative work but raised in the course of a lawsuit brought by the family of a young woman who died behind the wheel of a cobalt. how was this discovered? an investigator for the families took two ignition switches apart and compared them. something gm failed to do over seven years of investigations. ms. barra, you sought this internal investigation and you have publicly acknowledged how troubling its findings are. your company has cooperated with this committee investigation and i thank you for that. you have taken corrective action by changing procedures and trying to remove road blocks to make sure safety concerns come to light. based on this report, though, there are no easy fixes for the kind of systemic kultsureal