president deborah rudder discusses issues relevant to the performing arts. the carnegie endowment for international peace recently hosted a discussion on radical extremism. speakers looked at specific events in the middle east and how they are led to escalating violence in places like afghanistan, syria ander remark. this is an hour and a half.

welcome it is my particulare to afternoon to say that this event is co-sponsors by the middle east program as well. in that regard, i'm happy that we have our dear colleague fred with us. the question is entirely in the title, jihadist movement in afghanistan, syria and iraq. i mean what are the reason for what we see today and where does it lead and where do we go. to what extent these are social phenomenon, or it's the result of perhaps not so smart policy for the past decade or even longer. this is not totally ann er rei

irrelevant question, it's the question we will try to address this afternoon. to do so, we have three speakers, or four speakers. gilles doronsoro serves as professor of political science and has authored numerous reports on afghanistan and syria. next we'll have the fellow at the french institute which located in three places, and which is proud of a larger network of some 27 research institutes across the world. of next we have the number of

young french researchers to get accustomed to the field, and i insist on a field for the countries in residents in the field going from one year to three years most of the time. the older conflict and violence fellow at the university. he is a student in political science in paris. to counter this french commando, we needed no less than the u.s. air force reserve, i'm naming of course my colleague frederic who is the associate at the middle east program, and was previously as you all know, a fellow at the rand corporation and has done two of a number of field

research. he focuses on gulf political situational affairs, libya and u.s. policy in the middle east and we could dream of no better discussant for him this afternoon. with no further adieu, i'll leave the floor to gilles and we'll move on to the other speakers and as usual, we'll have a q & a at the earned of it. >> thank you for the kind word. so what's the question, we were in filed work, the three of us, in field work in iran, afghanistan, syria. and the u.s. policy is some kind of an enigma, it's something you

have to understand from the field, from outside. the question we're going to try is to understand if the u.s. policy is at least partially responsible of the chaos we're seeing now in afghanistan, iraq and syria. and trying to understand this question, i would like first to say that in the three crises, we have the same moments in the u.s. policy. first, intervention. and most of the time, too much money, too many men or too much something. the second time is always, withdrawal. but not kind of slow and controlled withdrawal, because something or somebody in washington decided to withdraw from this crisis. and the third is that because the situation is totally out of

control, we are going to -- we are obligeded to be back in the crisis. and more it is describing the crisis, the u.s. policy and the crisis. first we have a failure to build allies. most of the time we're speaking with statements. but i would like to speak about allies building. allies building has been a favorite in these countries for a different reason. then the withdrawal was not done in very reasonable condition because it was tainted by april work. then the conduct is dilemma,

why? because the u.s. is coming back without allies on the ground. and what we are seeing now in iraq and syria, what we are going to see the next few years in afghanistan is this problem. how can you intervene in a country when you don't have anymore allies. so first i'm going to speak about building allies, and afterwards we'll speak about withdrawal and consequences and then we'll finish with the dilemma of being back. so the first one is building allies. so here we have mostly two problems. the first problem, and it took me a few years to understand, what was exactly this problem, is the perception of the local society by the u.s. administration. and more than that, inside the

u.s. diplomacy, you have a perception, a very politically significant of mideastern. the first very wrong idea is almost without exception, it's overplaying the local, the ethnic, the tribe. all that is about fragmentation in this society. it exists, it was tried in afghanistan, or iraq or in syria. but at the same time, the way to -- as if the tribes were the basis of the political society in these countries. this is a very -- it will explain at least partially that the state building in these

countries was extremely ambiguous, on the one hand, you have plenty of money to build a state institution in iraq and afghanistan. at the same time, you have plenty of practices from the military, whatever, that are destroying the very idea of a state in these countries. and the reason for that is a situation where of course state building was failed. the second point i will make is about sectarianism. the u.s. policy beyond the question of the local, plan to put -- on sectarianism and the difference is between -- and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy to a certain extent. especially in iraq, where in 2003-04, you remember that the

country was not divided between shiia, sunni and so on. this is also on the demand of the perception of these societies. the second problem is about resources. one of the most fascinating aspects of the u.s. policy in iraq and in afghanistan has been the fact that there was a lot of attention to the input and output on the you're putting in the crisis, how many men you're sending to the country, but not much about the outcomes. so in fact all american strategy isn't a question is about what shall we do? do we need more men? do we need more money, do we need to be more in this crisis, but never what are we going to do with it? the most perfect example of this

is the surge in afghanistan. the surge in afghanistan is a moment where the sheer amount of minute sent in this country was on brbliged to create totally dysfunctional processes. corruption, for example, it is a logical consequence of sending too much money in the country that has no infrastructure to use it. it's absolutely, i mean corruptation is the logical result of this. there is also and this is part of the corruption process, the fact that the state, when you are -- in this country, the state cannot be neutral. the state actually is a state for the political parties, the local groups, whatever. i it means you cannot build

consensus among elites, to the political -- what we are skiing in both iraq and afghanistan, the whole process actually stopped the minute the u.s. went in there to be sure that you had some kind of respect for the legal opposition. and this is a key element. election in iraq went directly to a very sectarian movement, election in afghanistan, led to a totally policies of the state, as far as i know, i didn't check this morning. but there's still no government in afghanistan. while there it was perfectly okay, there was a huge amount of enthusiasm in the political diplomatic community, and more than sick months later, it's

still -- all this has led me to conclude for the first point, is the way iran is using it's -- the way to destroy the country, to destroy the allies that are supposed to be built with these resources. and this is something we have to think about for probably for the future. >> quickly after the arrival of u.s. forces, i would say, the institutions led by the american institutions, were not about to ruin the country, for tourism, that say, first there's a huge gap between the elites, the regime and the public.

people are elected in this country with the support of international community, removes any legitimacy on what should be a democratic election process. the money, the resources put inside the police security forces in iraq and in afghanistan is totally amazing. you cannot find a solution, you cannot discuss, negotiate the problem if you only have security forces as a trustable institutions to deal with the population. then the local elites must be -- considers was made by u.s. forces in iraq, was not working too well because of the support of malikis element.

many people lose representation by choosing american elected during the elections that make them not able to rule the country on specially to negotiate with the people. to control the territory where they have to deal with or to go around. the second point, the failure is the -- the politic of u.s. in afghanistan and mostly in iraq was to deal with the different mineral riches, the -- to find a way to stabilize the situations and to decrease the -- that was working, in 2011 when the u.s. withdraw from iraq, for example, the group maliki were virtually

destroyed. if you don't have any more resources to fight, a lot of people left, insurgent groups to try to get a job, try to get -- but the sec tarization just after the withdrawal of u.s. forces, maliki, the day after try to arrest the most popular political elite, sucnni elite, that started a big crisis, two or three years in the country of sunni demonstration, the come back of al qaeda and isis. in afghanistan, we are now fronting to the deal between the different network of one side and there was the side of abdullah abdullah who tried to take more and more position and

that's very dangerous because of the role may be to start inside of the afghani institutions. the second point that i want to point out is the arrival of u.s. forces, which was the failure of the afghan army and mostly iraqi's army, as we saw the last, 10 june 2014 when mosul fell into the evidence of the iraqi insure negligents and isis. the problem was saying that there is too much resources put in the different institutions and the different regime. but there is no coercion inside,

the unit that we tried to create in iraq or afghanistan. the sectarian dynamic inside iraq was used to be on the field with the iraqi army at different points, it was amazing to see how much iraqi soldiers were not able to deal with each other, because the commander maybe will be shiia and no one can trust each other. this lack of leadership cannot explain the fragmentations when isis attacked in the army, even if they are huge resources, especially in mosul was the main base in the north of iraq, the army was not able to confront a small radical group coming back into iraq. in afghanistan, the fall of the army is clear.

of course after one, two years the cities in the different afghanistan cities can be traced really quickly. the situation in afghanistan went from hundreds of men to thousands of men. there is no more road in afghanistan that you can take, no more safe roads that you can take to move from one city, from one point to another. that's making extremely difficult the situation for the new regime. the response with syria--was magistrate for the insurgents in syria. the lack of response from the international community, the failure of international community to find the solutions and put the regime in front of -- make a huge gap between

the insurgents, syrian insure jenlts. right now the game in syria is going through dwimpt -- gulf countries, turkey, iraq ander ran. to create some new states, institutions, and achieve to the bashar regime. that's also a huge problem that we -- we are not able to even in syria where we have allies, where we have people fighting, a credible institution inside to deal with, even with this allies, we are not able to do anything to disrupt any strategy on the field, or the legitimacy

of the u.s. administration, very weak. >> thank you. so now that the u.s. having falls back in any of these three countries, they have tried to avoid getting stuck in afghanistan, iraq and syria. one can remember a year and a half ago, when there was an op-ed in the "new york times," it was a brilliant title, let them bleed to death. he has proved that cynicism is not a proven intelligence here. in a sense when we see today, the u.s. army and -- when asked to come back in iraq and syria, the main problems that have been plaguing the united states in

the past show time consideration, internal consideration, are still here. in iraq and syria, the bombing campaign was a clear will to have no troops on the ground and looking for allies when none exist anymore. in afghanistan, though we do not speak about it anymore, drones attacks had become very important. they're daily in the south in helmand. there is american ad campaign going around. there's many signals of pressure on the united states to come back. think of the simple fact that the report on the economy has been classified. it's already something very telling. so so why coming back to three conflicts in which the obama administration has been promising that it would avoid, that it would avoid from.

his vision is very washingtonian, it's not related to what happened in the region. the -- a huge role in the decision to intervene. much more than structural factors. think of the role played by the decapitation of hostages by the islamic state, which is a tragic moment, u but certainly not a strategic issue. how much terrorism play a bigger role in discussion than the strategy factors in the middle east, despite the fact that the middle east is going through one of the biggest crises since the end of the empire. the way we have tended westerners to be very selective with might have been norths. the choice of bombing -- when the campaign started in syria is very revealing. there is a rationale to nusra,

the organization was suspected of planning terrorist attacks in europe. but by doing so, america has alienated one of its central al rye in syria, which is the free syrian army, which was needed at the moment which it was -- needed to avoid anything else the fact that -- the fear that the u.s. would start building the free syrian army against the syrian state. the situation is simple today, it is the main province of the free syrian army, using the fact that the fighting is already in the islamic state and the regime at the same time. the choice to intervene on the yasidi front is a sprorimportan thing to do. why do we decide that the

yasidis are so important and the sunni iraqis are not? or when you get big problems around shiia villages, it's not the same problem, right? we're being very selective. the choice to rely on air force is also telling, right? when you decide to bomb in helmand and kunar, you are alienating populations. it's also the islamic state territories when the s air force bombs mosul, and targeting within the city military targets, which also affect the lack of infrastructures, lack of electricity, again affecting the population, you can't explain or you can't make people understand in those two countries that there is an aerial campaign that will at some point give them freedom from the islamic state.

but when you have a campaign that's clearly and expolilicitl saying that there's no plan to go on and retake those territories. but to have their electricity stop and have bombs falling every day. this strategy is opening the space for nonstate actors of various types. this is not a convince dense here, in afghanistan when it's a core element of the strategy of washington to withdraw from afghanistan has been to support militias all over the country, which increases the risks of confrontati confrontation. it's actually one of the factors that supports the taliban,

discourses are shifting to if you want order, you need to support another action. in syria, the united states is doing what it expected never to do, support the pkk wils a group on the terrorist list, or it ended up being supported to support the basra militias in iraq, the kdp and the pkk was asking for more autonomy and having big tensions with turkey. so what was the implication of such a strategy? the implication of several -- the iraqi state which has become more and more important. despite the genuine attempt to train for example, sunni iraqi army units in an bar province, which the iraqi states do not want to really use, you end up having an iraqi state which is

more and more closing itself on one of the sectarian groups. in syria, the free syrian army is still not supported. we are in a situation which strategically a victory over the islamic state builds daily, every time the islamic state won a territory--but now we say in iraq, every time iraqi state lose -- the dpe feet of the islamic state can have dire consequences, and when you have two bad possibilities, it means there is really a problem. in afghanistan, the

militarization strategy and the fact that the election ended up in a deal where the tension went out from the political -- inside of the state institution, it did effectively manage to slow down the taliban advance but the risk is a pandora's box. what happened in the 1990s, in which you always have deals, more or less. so you don't have a country like in pakistan, or syria, which is on sectarian land, opening an ethnic box and opening an ethnic strategy could one day outweigh that risk. to conclude, what we're trying to explaining, what we have been trying to do, looking at the fact of the american policy on

the ground is that the u.s. has gone from high investment to its role in coming back. we argue that in evidence which seems to be not bad evidence, structure factors are -- the use of resources has followed u.s. internal logic, the withdrawal has been on the agenda following u.s. -- and the coming back today follows largely the u.s. domestic agenda, with afghanistan, iraq and syria, there is a will today to forget the lessons of two wars and a decision not to engage in supporting an insurgency. i think that's very porvet. if you think of the situation we have today in those three country, if you'll allow me just

to conclude on that, there's a couple of things that could be interesting to think of. one is in afghanistan, if in any case, there was a will to advance a political agenda, stabilization will only make sense if it has a noti-- being several movements does not hold anymore, you've got a tax in every province, by thousands. and in so much uch a context, i is a will to find a settlement, it will go through negotiations with that movement. in iraq and syria, there -- islamic state. if that would happen, because the islamic state doesn't have the resources to replace every weapon it is losing, because

momentum might dissipate quitely, there's a plan for what might happen in sunni iraq and sira. in iraq, there is a need to engage in -- and to be prepared for more and more slaughter, as much as the iraqi army and the shiia militia advance on the front. and syria, the risk of the falling of the islamic state in the east of the country, at some point, this actor which has been major in transforming a water into a regional war, if we want to calm down that issue, we need to engage again with the revolutionary elite, the people that build that syrian institutions, to give them a possibility to build an alternative solution. >> we have covered a lot of ground, we're probably opening a few controversies.

>> thank you again for inge viting me and i'm delighted, i would like to host our colleagues from across the atlantic. i'm sensing a lot of common threads throughout these three presentations. and when i reflect on them, i'm struck by the title of a very well known book on america's foreign policy in the middle east by lawrence friedman called a choice of enemies. and what i'm struck by is the fact that u.s. policy in all of these cases is really a series of tradeoffs, we're dealing with compromised allies. we're dealing with imperfect partners, we're searching for new allies. in many cases, those allies are drawing us into very localized power strugglesa we don't fully understand, and here i want to reference the misreading of the map where we tend to see things

in terms of a patch work of tribes or sects, we get drawn into very localized power struggles. i wanting want to caveat some of these presentations with a limit on the u.s. policy. the u.s. was not responsible for the sectarianization of iraq or the rise of militia politics or tribes in iraq. i think you can -- saddam regime, he began tribalizing iraqi society, he began hauling out the military, evolving power to militias, the same thing in a country that i work on, in libya, a lot of talk about the nato convention, and what it did. but many of the after effects of that, the genesis of it was really under gadhafi. so we're fronted with a number of fractured states in the region. i raek, syria, yemen, where we have the hollowing out of security structures, we don't

have sufficient partners, we don't know how to operate in those environments so it's natural that we're trying to deal with nonstate actors, tribes, militias and the question is what are the future contours of these states going to look like? i think it's a fractured security environment, where you have very hollow, state institutions, working longside paramilitary. how does the u.s. as a state power that is used to dealing with ministries of defense, ministries of the interior, how does it assert itself into those very fractured states? i completely agree with much of what was said here about the sli, the corruption of many of our allies and the fact that we're working through centralized regimes that are in fact fuelling the extremism that they purport to be fighting and this is a problem that's not

going to go away. we often hear in u.s. circles, this talk of regionalizing the -- the regionals are just as capable of messing things up as we are. in fact in many cases they're more partisan, i certainly think see this in a place like libya, again in the absense of sort of on the ground u.s. presence as we have heard, the regionals are stepping in. i didn't hear very much in the presentation about the enablers of jihadism. meaning the funding from gulf states, foreign volunteers from tunisia, arguably one of the successors of the arab spring, why is this state is providing so many of the foot soldiers for jihadie movements in syria and iraq. i think question have to dial back the policy failures perhaps even further to look at the role of prisons. i really think much of this is

about judiciary systems in the arab world. we can go back to zarqawi is the jordanian prison system. how much le raj -- so i think we're in a very difficult bind on a number of countries, i completely agree with what was said about airpower, the question, though, is, you know, what would be a better strategy? i mean when i hear u.s. officials justify the national guard program in iraq, and you're absolutely right to warn about the dangers of that program increasing fragmentation, increasing militia rule, what is the opportunity? they're framing it in terms of a provincial defense force, they're aware of the fact that this force needs to be tethered to the central government.

and i would argue that it's not something that the iraqi government does not want. abadi is trying to work out the command and control issues. so again, i guess in terms of the theme of this panel, you know, is it a policy failure or an inevitable rise? i mean let's go back to, say, january of 2014, and we start hearing the first intelligence briefings about the rise of isis and it's movement toward iraq. if you were advising president obama, what would you tell him to do at that point differently? and it wasn't an intelligence failure. at that poifblt could we have stopped in it and i want to press you, a little bit more, you said a lack of support for the fsa paved the way for radical actors. and again its goes back to this notion of allies. if only we had backed the right allies in this fight.

we know from history that our allies are often imperfect, they tend to use our aid in is certain ways, it perhaps imparts too much credibility of the fsa in terms of their combat capability. if you could just explain that a little bit more in terms of the time frame, from what i understand the amount of training that would be required to make this entity into a fighting force. there is a lot . >> i expect some debate to be debate. >> thank you for your nice comment. i cannot insert your question, so maybe we'll focus on syria right now. what actually after our first -- insurgency control in syria in december, january 2013, we were

to report and we were trained to do exactly this, we were trained to edadvise the people in washington, please, i prefer field work. and what was the argument? the argument was that we were actually seeing in syria and that was -- there was a strong movement of institutionalization, means that many policies were working and aleppo was much more pleasant to live. we wrote that there was two, one was the pkk, which was in the north. we were very clear that the way to manage these two interests

was to tip-off the free syrian army. we're very clear that the free syrian army wasn't p efficient and would never be very efficient. that's why there was a key point, was that it was all about the strategy of bashar al assad. bashar al assad what a very clear strategy of producing refugees, bombarding sere yachb areas to empty the north of syria and then to be able marginalize is insurgents. most of them were led by people coming from bashar al assad's jails. the key thing, actually, at the point was to say, okay, we have to have enough reason or to give

enough anti-aircraft weapon, to the insure ends. these people could have stayed in the northern part of syria, it means it was possible to rebuild an alternative interstate and would have been extremely difficult for marginal and radical groups that have no -- it would have been much more difficult for them to do something. and the dynamic would have been totally different. and the same question was asked in the summer, in september actually of 2013, when the -- the attack on the syrian population was very clear, we are not going to intervene, we are not arming the insure jepts.

and again, i remember it's important point, the beginning of 2011, there was a huge clash and all the groups united against the islamic state. and to the islamic state lost not only it's position suddenly, but a lot of its position in syria. at this time the logical move would be to say, okay, guys, we did a very good job, we don't have almost -- except in some parts of the west of syria, but basically, the north is clean of the islamic state, so at this time we're going to give you some kind of support. we did not do that. and when the islamic state came from the outside, in the summer of 2014, so your free moments were the united states were dpe siding, okay , these guys are not perfect, they are not very good fighters, they are brave but not very well organized

fighters, but at the same time, you can strategyize 1 million or 2 million in the north. if we protect them again bashar als a sat sad. the game in iraq is much more korp indicated because actually we lost almost all leverage. here we are in this situation, and afghanistan is the same, when you're doing a mistake in 2004, 2005, 2006, you're going to pay for your mistake ten years later. there is no good solution right now in iraq. we're stuck in this situation for the foreseeable future. >> maybe we have to come back to about the de-baathification of iraq. i think it was the u.s. and the administration was leading this

movement just when you say that u.s. don't have to deal with c sectarianizati sectarianization, that's why the u.s. don't have all the power to do anything, that's true. but when you talk about, you know, the perfect ---in 2007, when the u.s. created the tribal leaders, that was working, people were going with the u.s. army or were doing a good job against isis in 2011. it was totally destroyed in iraq. but in the which is come of america, and the lack of support for the militia, made the system very weak. i know that olt of them joined

isis and they explained to me why and how and that it is perfectly logical for them. why? because in january 2013, when falluja fell into isis in iraq, the u.s. sought to remove the shiia militimilitia. you have a lot h a lot of shiia militia in the fight against sunni insurgents. while maliki sought to sec t-- what should happen if the arab sunni in iraq was moving. at this time it was exactly the time the months where isis in syria was launching a huge attack against isis. and isis was expelled from all the west territory in syria.

so at this critical time, we called it, i mean the u.s. and our country called out and tried to stop maliki, to push on maliki to not open the way to a sectarian strategy. of course rise the power of isis in iraq. >> again, a lot of ground has been covered. let's now turn to the audience, please introduce yourself and also indicate to whom you're directing your question. thank y >> thank you very much for the

opportunity to participate in such lively discussion. on the preview that we want to get rid of the weapons of mass destruction. and then they changed the agenda and said we want to bring democracy to the country and want to get rid of the tyrant of the country. and it took them so many years. so again, in the stated policy and the intentions, they become questionable to the people. so there was a perception change and a gap between perception and reality, and look what happened subsequently, the man is gone, and the nation is still paying a price through the nose. and on the other hand, in the case of afghanistan, they had asked them to hand over osama bin laden otherwise we are coming. the taliban didn't believe it, they said they are coming anyway, so why should we release

osama bin laden to them. my question is, do you think usa needs to review after so many years, to the policy toward the middle east in particular, or in general that can help. and if they do need to review their policy and revamp their policy, what recommendations does this distinguished panel give them? thank you. >> who would like to answer first? >> you want to take three questions at a time? is so we have time to think about these? thanks for putting me on the spot. >> please, sir, i apologize to my colleague. >> i think to answer the question whether the jihadist movements are a policy failure, we would have to consider what our policymakers considered

success in those three countries. and i think it's obvious that success would have been to british compliant regimes that saw the world the way we see it, so the sort of regimes we have in -- the modern history centered on resisting the intrusion of imperialists? so what's second best? the second best may be failed states, proxy armies, what we're seeing in the middle east today, consider that syria was the one arab country left that was de defying israel'sleft. it's severely weakened today. i don't think we care whether that becomes a failed state. prior to the second -- right before the second world war, after germany invaded russia and the soviet union rather and before we got harry truman who

was a senator at the time suggested we should support the germans so they would kill as many of each other as possible. right now the muslims are doing a good job of killing other muslims which maybe distracts them from bothering us. am i right? >> well, that's -- well, there is a short and longer version of the answer. any way, who would like to start? >> we have one more question. we're taking three at a time. >> go for it. >> okay. i'm taking the easy one about should we kill or just wait for them to kill each other? so of course the answer is no. i think your question, just the way you ask your question means that you know it's not first not possible and it would be very

un-american. and there is one thing here, syria is a very good example. you know first you think that it's a local crisis and then you let the thing become more and more complex, complicated. and then you understand that when you are 5 million refugees, who is paying for the refugees? basically it's us. us means also turkey. so the idea that you can have a local crisis that stays local is going against everything we know about civil wars that last 30, 40 years, at least. there is no civil war that is strictly local. 90% of the civil wars have regional dmingss. and when it has regional dimensions, one, you have to pay for the refugees, you have to pay in terms of security. you're in the crisis any way.

so the idea is maybe not to wait the last minute to intervene and when you intervene, you're probably obliged to send planes or troops on the ground but maybe to do something bigger. so, to answer the question about the review of the u.s. policy, too ambitious agenda just to speak about in five minutes. but my point would be to stop thinking that you can ignore crisis and exactly what you're doing in afghanistan right now. i think i wrote a paper in 2009 say i saying -- the idea five years ago was that it was going to fail so at some point we will be obliged to withdraw, but the idea that it was that, you should not withdraw too quickly

because that would destabilize all of afghanistan. and instead -- and it was not very -- i mean, it was reasonable strategy. but it was a reasonable strategy. and instead of doing that, what we do a search, too much money and then we withdraw. and if there is one advice would be stop playing this game. try to deal with the crisis when they're small, local crisis. and think about all that's possible in afghanistan, for example, or in syria would have changed totally the game. >> sure. >> well, i mean, on the u.s. policy question, i mean, look, the u.s. -- i mean, has inherited i think the mantle as an imperial power since the '70s. we're tied to a network of

authoritarian arab regimes. our history of involvement in that region has been a succession of broader it theres. i think now it's trance national terrorism and i think these strategies of confrontation and containment have blinded us to things that are creating additional threats down the road. so, you know, what i'm arguing -- and there's a policy paper that i've coauthored with a colleague now that -- in the rush to solicit arab support against isis, we're ignoring some very dangerous trends under the surface inside these states that could lead to greater extremism, the creation of new threats. you talk about a preemptive strategy, i would argue for just greater scrutiny of what's happening inside the states that we call our allies. i'm not talking about a return to the very vocal demockization agenda that defined the bush eras, but perhaps a greater

focus on rule of law, on reforms as an insurance policy down the road, looking at the prison systems in these countries, that it's not all about an external containment strategy. i'm very worried about the fact that we have these allies in the gulf that have signed up for this campaign against isis and you have, for instance, a state like bahrain that we've got a major strategic presence there and sunnis are going to join isis, there's a radicalization threat. so this is an age-old problem and just strikes me as i mention with the title of this book from lawrence freedman the choice of enemie enemies. do we deal with the near-term threat. how long do we manage long-term threats looming on the horizon? in an era of absolute exhaustion, i think, we can't underestimate this in the u.s. domestic sphere, exhaustion from the middle east, financial, moral, psychological, it's going to be very hard to see a real

coherent constructive policy emerge. >> thank you very much. i think you have mentioned the key factor in the whole thing, exhaustion. let's go back to the audience and who wants to -- not all at the same time, please. yes, please, jessica. >> thank you. jessica matthews from carnegie. [ laughter ]. >> you know, it is -- we could sit here until tomorrow at this time and discuss all the mistakes that were made in these wars, but setting aside the initial decision to go into iraq and setting aside the catastrophe over the red line in syria over the chemical weapons

red line, one can ask the question whether the logical end result of the arguments that you're making just simply arrives at a bottom line of the u.s. should never have gotten near it because it seems to me that gilles, you started by talking about the failure to find allies and then a few minutes later about policies that actively destroyed the states we were trying to create and those policies were generally policies to create allies among various tribal entities and leaders. at the same time, you know, the president's initial conviction

about syria was an attempt -- i think, to learn the lesson of iraq that you don't go in unless you can see at least the outline of a political solution. and neither kofi annen nor us, nobody could find such an outline. on the other hand, the world has hated the u.s. attempt to wait for such an outline. it's called, you know, withdrawal. the u.s. -- i mean, the world feels naked without the u.s. providing the security that it has provided since the end of world war ii that allows everybody else to live and grow in relative peace. so, i'm sympathetic to the arguments being made but i must say i cannot see a logical

conclusion to them other than that we should never have gotten in and that doesn't seem like a good -- or at least it seems like a very highly risky strategy or recommendation in and of itself. so i wonder whether you can really take on the -- at least what seemed to me to be some significant contradictions in your criticisms of u.s. policy. >> hello, jessica. i feel obliged to answer to my former boss. well, actually it all depends on how you define jumping a crisis. my point that the u.s. should

never sent troops into iran and syria should be absolutely clear. but this is really what we think, never, just never. at the same time, if you remember what happened in iraq in '91, it was a real way to stabilize this area. so instead of comparing syria and iraq 2003 the good comparison was to compare enough in iraq, there was a huge stabilization of the situation. refugees came back from turkey. let's imagine now that the u.s. did not intervene in '91, what would have happened to this refugee camp in turkey?

trust me. you have the same scenario inside turkey would have been an extremely bad civil war. it shows entered sbr at the right moment, in syria, the idea was not to send troops. the idea -- it was going against the strategy of beshar in a very efficient way. that's one thing. the second thing is -- and this is crucial. this is the most difficult. there is no clear thought on what i'm going to say. but the tradeoff between short-term and long-term, let's take two examples. the drones in yemen and the drones in afghanistan. in both cases the drones are in a way useful because they're killing enemies. from time to time, they are not

enemies, they are mistakes but basically you can say that it's useful. but at the same time, you know that drones are very, very, very destabilizing effect on local societies. and i'm not sure it's working actually. drones are working in yemen? they are working in eastern part of afghanistan? what i think is that you have a trend in the u.s. policy to make the tools the end -- the beginning the end of everything. it's a drone, it's working so we are going to use drones until the end of the time. no, drones can be useful for six months but then you have to stop because it can be extremely dangerous. and the idea now we have in afghanistan is that all we can

do is shock them and we don't have really the leverage and the resources to change the game. so honestly, i don't see very clearly a solution. negotiation would be perfect and i'm sure frederic would agree with me, but i'm not sure it's going to happen. but i'm trying to answer your question, jessica. >> if i may interfere in that debate. let me just say one thing. we can always -- this is not about an initial decision that was wrong, right. there is also ways of conducting the war. and, of course, there was a period when something like the power doctrine existed which precisely you are referring to with clear said objective, exit strategy which i think made a lot of sense. now, in the way things are conducted, i'm referring particularly to afghanistan, i mean, there are a number of things that could have been done totally differently.

and of course, it's much easier to be smarter afterwards because we have the luxury of the experience, failed or successful, but there are things we could have worked differently. among the things which we have observed for example in afghanistan, even the political process has been at the very beginning of it framed in a way so as to facilitate the military intervention? well, then you introduce a problem within the local dynamic that will make you impossible to solve later on. and in many ways what we're facing now is also paying for that mistake as well. and you can say, well, but now that they have been done, what should we do? well, again, i mean, this is a whole and we cannot ignore that. and there are lessons that can be drawn from it. and i'm not sure that they all have been drawn. any way, sir, you wanted to say something? >> stanley cope. i'm wondering if we're not being

too focussed on our own experience. let me refer to two experiences in foreign countries, one that ended badly, one that was successful. the one that ended badly, israel/lebanon. they went in there, stayed for years, tried to create a proxy army, they failed, badly. how long did the south lebanon army last? the success, vietnam in cambodia. they went in there, they cleaned out the rouge. they were destroyed. vietnamese went back across the border. what did the cam bodians do -- what did the vietnamese do right? what did the israelis do wrong? maybe we should look beyond our own experience and gain some

lessons from what other countries have done? >> yes, sir. and we'll come back to the panel later. >> i have a more fundamental question on what's wrong with the arab world that it can't govern itself. my son says that obama if he can carry it out -- the right thing to do. >> any other question at this stage? yes. madame over there. >> hi. i'm just responding -- thanks. madeline stokes, i've been in lebanon for the last three years. comment on frederic's comment about u.s. coming out on january 2014. isis coming out. i was on the ground for the last

three years and it was very clear what was happening for the last three years. we knew what was happening. we were screaming at the top of our lungs to all of our contacts, all of us. so, i mean, my comment is that there are plenty of people who are willing on the ground -- there are plenty of potential allies on the ground, i just think the u.s. has been really selective. so my question is this a lack of will to get involved period? or is this a lack of competence in the american government and its affiliates to communicate with the ground and use all of its resources to make small changes happen? >> thank you. who would like to answer first? >> i should go with what's wrong with the arab world? >> that's a big one. you take that. >> come on, i took the last one. >> perhaps we could save the

debate for later on. but at least i think there is something in your comparisons, sir. what went wrong in lebanon for israel. could you elaborate a bit on your own question because the fact that you asked -- you asked the question this way sukts that you have some answers. >> i don't actually. to be honest, i've tried to look at what the vietnamese did right. i don't speak vietnamese. i would love to see a study on it. that one seems the most successful. they totally crushed them. they went back across the border. cambodia has survived. they've had trials recently and i would love to know how they did it. >> i have absolutely nothing to say on cambodia, but what i

think is that the -- obama framed the situation in syria is exactly the thing you should not do. i mean, it seems obvious. you take syria as a new iraq. and syria is not a new iraq because the structure is different. so, we should stop -- the idea that all interventions are going to fail, it's not a good idea. right? i would -- most of the time i say do not send troops on the groun ground. ed the problem in washington is that when you're saying i want to intervene or i don't want to intervene, actually there's a political sub text. are you liberal, are you neutral? are you whatever, whatever, whatever?

nobody is looking at what's going on on the ground is the problem. everybody is playing politics. and i would argue at least just looking at the problem not the political undertone of the solution is the key to answer things. and the lady was perfectly right. everybody interested in syria was very clear, there are two years that we are going to -- it was clear. it was written. we wrote it. other people wrote it. the strategy -- was very easy to understand. international -- sorry, i should not say that. you don't need necessarily to have opinions or understand the crisis. it's quite simple actually. what we wrote in spring, 2013,

was easy. it was predicting the next six months. no big deal. >> yes. in a sense it also comes back to question of what we mean when we say what we say. i think that elaborates on what gilles is saying. we are doing comparisons in afghanistan, syria here. the situations are very different. the situations are different and they should require discriminated policies. in a sense, it looks like if after -- well, it started before. there's always a debate about should the u.s. be isolationist and not intervene or should they intervene? i think the two positions only make sense in university courses. it does not make sense in policy. intervention can work and intervention in the context of

which you are going -- i mean, at least one difference that you have between cambodia and lebanon i would not elaborate on the cases. rouge were hated when vietnam intervened. and not liked when intervened in lebanon among those populations. you know, if we look at the islamic state and the taliban, we have two very different movements. and you don't engage with the taliban the way you engage with the islamic state. the islamic state is a movement that die bollically refuses any intergregs -- is someone acceptable to them. the borders do not make any sense. the taliban -- you should engage them. on the contrary, they have tried to uphold afghan border to take

a very precise example in 2009. you've got the movement which whose dream is to integrate international order as the afghan state. so you should not look at them in the same way. >> thank you. other questions? yes, please, sir, over there. >> lauren heresy. i was a scholar in 1968 in india and i continue to read the india story. it's hard to formulate a good question for a panel like this because you're brilliant and that's a compliment. i want to ask you to give me a scenario for the retaking of the large city of mosul in northern ra iraq. vietnam, lebanon, cambodia,

israel, et cetera, we had a civil war in the united states that lasted four years. this is civil war territory. mosul is an iraqi city but it's in the hands of another self declared state authority. so, each of the four of you or five, if you will, mr. moderator, give us a scenario how long will it take before mosul is maybe like the city of atlanta, georgia, part of a union again? >> somebody want to answer that? >> yeah, please, please. >> loogs k, as this new york ti article brilliantly highlighted, we're dealing with a military in iraq the most effective combat forces on the ground are -- for

mosul to be liberated it has to come from the sunnis themselves. i think the u.s. strategy is empowering a provincial movement, a provincial armed wing under this national guard. there will probably be some sort of effort to split sort of the prague thattists twn isis' ranks who can be bought over. the question is not so much the liberation but what comes next? terms of the government structures that will replace it and are you going to have enough confidence being conveyed to the sunnis that they're part of the national project, that they have representation? i mean, this is the real long-term struggle. you could argue that we've done this before where we have air power, we have indigenous forces, probably some use of ground advisers on the ground to coordinate air strikes. we have these tribal para militaries that come in.

but then what comes next? i was in iraq in 2008 in baghdad working on this surge. as we heard, aqi was declared dead. the tables had turned, but we know that these movements can re-emerge, like a cancer coming back. and so the question is what kind of government is going to replace isis in mosul? >> yeah. mosul, i was not far from mosul when isis attacked. of course, i left with a lot of people from around the city. but what to do with moes? you're right. it's a strategic city. you cannot break isis in iraq without taking back mosul. the problem is the way of our u.s. are dealing with mosul right now with the iraqi army. booming isis, it's not the solution. the program is political. you have to deal with the sunni

arabs but also on the field with the different groups. i mean, when you bomb mosul, when you try to kill them in this way, of mass bombing, you know, you kill off a lot of civilian. you destroy mosul, the local elite. it's impossible to dream about -- to stabilize the situation by -- then the second point is which forces do we have on the field? kurdish are not effective. they're very dividing among them. you need maybe to train them for two, three years and then what will happen probably is that they will try to make a competition between them to know which one could increase -- they are not convinced at all that

they have to go back to mosul. then you have the iraqi army. will try to slaughter, you know, different arabs and try to secure baghdad. the center of iraq showed that its really difficult for the iraqi army to progress itself and they have to go through different militia which is a really bad sign for the arabs. and the last point, i spoke -- i was in iraq two weeks ago and i spoke with a lot of arab people who are still living in mosul. and for them, they have more fear that the iraqi army come back to the city than isis stay. i mean, they know that if the iraqi army come back, it will be

slaughtering to the people. it will be a lot of mass killing. really for the moment they are not really for that, of course. so right now, to take back mosul will take time and i think the solution is a political solution. we have to negotiate. >> thank you. gilles, you wanted to intervene? >> no, that's okay. all right, we have time for one last question and then i'll give two minutes to the panelists to conclude. yes, madame, please. >> thank you. i have a really simple question. the u.s. is retaining some combat troops in afghanistan and also increasing training forces in iraq. does this signify some changes in national security? thank you. >> well, i don't know who wants to answer that. >> what was the question? >> is there a change in national security -- i mean, that's the

decision to maintain troops in iraq and afghanistan signify a change in the u.s. strategy of those two countries? >> well, i could speak for iraq. i don't see that as a major shift from this prohibition or actual front line troops. but you've heard general dempsey say at some point it may become necessary. i think they want to leave that option open, but i don't see -- at least in iraq, significant shift from what obama articulated in his earlier speech. i don't know if you -- >> yeah. in afghanistan, no, you cannot speak at the moment of a change. what could we see in the future maybe next few months is that probably the u.s. government is going to be afraid by the deterioration of the security in afghanistan. and then they could decide to

give more air support, medevak or things like this and probably to leave more troops in afghanistan. that's a possibility. because if we don't do anything probably two, three years, it's likely that the taliban will take control of afghanistan now. so, probably at some point somebody is going to say, maybe we should do something. but right now, no, it's not very clear. >> on that note, let me ask each of our panelists to conclude for no more than two minutes. please. >> yes. well, in the sense if we look at what we've been saying in the discussion, what we're trying to argue here is that, you know, in how the u.s. act in the middle east, there is a genuine interest for the u.s., for the west, to have a stable region

with states. and in that sense, one of the failures of u.s. policy here has not consider enough institutions, not to consider what is happening not just in kabul but on the borders of afghanistan. not to look enough at what we're doing. not to look enough at how the iraqi state was disinstitutionalizing itself in the last year of its withdraw. not to look at how the army was building their own institution and how important it is in the interest of europe or in the interest of united states to have actually state in this regime. in the moment, you have boulders in such a turmoil. the border might be contested. thinking of having not stabled policies of huge intervention but supporting movement that have already entered strategy is

at least something to consider. >> gilles? >> yeah. actually -- sorry. actually i don't have a great conclusion, sorry. maybe i would say that we have three differentiated polices. the police recommendation would be first in afghanistan to sustain the current government to the point where it's possible to deal with the taliban. i don't think that the idea that you can let it go in afghanistan after the taliban is dead and if the taliban take back afghanistan, it's not a big problem. i think this idea could be wrong. at least we should try to play the negotiation card which means to -- long enough for him to be able to negotiate with the taliban, if possible. the second recommendation would

be in syria. so we should absolutely do something if the islamic state -- because they are going to reconsider. if these two movements are taking syria, we will have a huge major security problem and it's almost done. and my third recommendation would be that probably we should find or try to find a way to open washington to the real crisis, what's happening on the ground, and probably to change the debate. and i think probably it's possible to make it a little better and to be sure that people are speaking about outside world and not totally focussing on all washington

world. that would be great. >> arthur? >> well, only two points. isis tried to do a new revolution in syria. the only way to stop it is -- they are weakened. especially because of the u.s. bombing. we have huge critical situation chgs. maybe they will fall in the next months. fall because of isis. in syria, continue to progress. and they have to know that -- cleaning the territory and institutions, judicial court system and that is still working there. the second point is i want to warn about the -- especially in iraq. gilles and adam were saying that

this is a big it shall it's also the way bashar al assad is acting against sunni insurgents. his army is not able anymore to do any large scale, so he tried to send some different militia. is playing with this very dangerous tools. >> especially to focus which people are training on the ground and to which people are going the weapons and support that we're sending to iraq. thank you. >> thank you. fred, please, you'll have the last word. >> yeah. maybe this is ending for a plae on what the u.s. can accomplish. having served in iraq and this theme of exhaustion. just because we have awareness

doesn't necessarily mean we have -- we are equipped with the policy tools to effect a very complex situation. certainly there are mistakes made. i want to point out one thing to end with or gilles point about a no-fly zone. i like to call no-fly zones, gateway drugs to regime change. i can't think of a place, iraq, libya, where we didn't end up in going into regime change after that. i just don't think u.s. policy given the end state was prepared to do that if we set up a no-fly zone. >> well, thank you very much, fred, for those very sobering last words. it's time now to bring this session to a close. thank you all of you for being with us this afternoon. thank you to our panelists. i think you will join me to give them a big hand for their contributions. [ applause ]. and to all of you, a very happy

thanksgiving. on the next "washington journal" steve king of iowa talks about his attempts to stop the president's executive order on immigration. then we hear from congressman jim mcdermott of washington state on negotiation to fund the federal government amid the tensions over immigration. "washington journal" is live every morning on 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. the c-span cities tour takes book tv and american history tv on the road, traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life. this weekend we partnered with time warner cable for a visit to waco, texas. >> as we began to receive the vinyl to be digitized to be saved, we began turning over the b sides of the 45s that we received. now, first off,