fairness to the turks a lot of their anger and unhappiness and some of the reason they've denied us access is because their view of what's going on in syria, with which they share a very long border, is that president assad must go is and that the u.s. is not doing enough to try and promote the departure of president assad, and it's their belief, and i think there's some merit in it that you can't just teak on the problem in syria by only taking on isil because as long as assad is there others generating more recruitment and more support for isil with his assault on the syrian people use of barrel bombs chlorine et cetera. and i think that's a very large part of the turkish frustration. that has led them to deny us use of insidar lek, deny us use of ceca. i don't think that's an excuse.

allies have a disagreement they don't say we're not going to help rescue your downed pilots. i think that's not an excuse for turkey's behavior in this instance but just an explanation. the broader point though, on allies and partnerships i think we have to wrestle with is we're at a junction because of where we are in our own budget and because the international order is fraying so bodily where we need our allies our treaty allies in asia and in europe but also our partners who are parts of special relationships who may not be formal allies but clearly are partnered with us in various efforts in the middle east, like israel, like the kingdom of saudi arabia, united arab emirates, et cetera. in most cases however, our allies are spending less and less and less on defense themselves. and so they have less and less capability for us to draw on and that's a sort of paradox.

i think one -- it's a little bit beyond the work of our panel, but i do think one of the things we need to think about more is actually being much more forthright with our allies about where we want them to spend their money on defense. and developing capabilities that will complement, supplement ours, replace areas where we may have less capability so there's a better division of labor between us and our allies. i think that's true in both europe and in east asia as we see defense spending declining in most of those countries. we need to do that so we don't have, you know them wasting money and not being able to be there when we need them. >> senator o'donnell. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you both for being here. when you look at syria and you look at isis, what would be your

recommendation as to the next step for the coalition to take to move isis out of syria? we're making progress in iraq. do you wait in syria till iraq is done? or do you begin to take action right now to move them out, and does that action also include assad? >> this is again something that the panel, senator donnelley did not look at. >> i understand. but this is also about global strategy and national security. >> i just want to make it clear that this is my personal opinion. >> and that's all i'm asking. >> it doesn't reflect the other members of the panel. >> we have your presence here. i want to take advantage of it. >> my own view is we should have been doing much more much earlier. again, the president has said long ago assad must go. i agree with that. i don't think there's any way this problem can be resolved as long as assad is there. >> what do we do now moving forward? >> the problem in syria is we're

relying almost totally on air power. we have not very good intelligence because we have no presence on the ground. and we have to find some kind of surrogate as the fesh merga have been to some degree in iraq and unfortunately at some points shia militias in iraq. we have to find a surrogate on the ground in syria with whom we can work, and that i think goes to the issue of arming of the moderate syrian opposition o'and getting them to a position where they can actually do something. we would have been much better off had we been doing this going back to 2011 rather than having to face this problem now. bad news never gets better in my experience. >> miss fluornoy. >> i would agree that -- i wish we would have begun arming of the moderate opposition when they were far stronger and in greater numbers a while back. but we are where we are and i think building up a credible

surrogate force is key. i think the air campaign could be used in more of a robust manner to put more pressure on isil and in some areas on the jooem. the key is eventually you have to put pressure on the assad regime if you expect them to come to the table. if we were to do that and bring it to a culmination point right now, unfortunately the main benefactor in syria would be isil because they're the strongest force on the ground. so we've got to focus on building up more alternatives to isil and more moderate surrogates before we get to that point. >> let me ask you another question that's more about national security strategy global strategy. and that is vladimir putin. what do you think his end game is? you can go one after the other. you know, what his -- where his plan ends here. >> i don't think that president putin is solely interested in the donbass in ukraine.

i think he has a broader agenda. i think his agenda is first to destabilize ukraine to the point that he can impose regime change in kiev and dominate ukraine and prevent it from associating itself with the european union in the direction of the west. i think he fundamentally rejects the post-cold war security order in europe. and i think it's taken a while for a lot of our friends in europe to recognize this and i think some of them are still in a bit of denial about it. they still seem to hope that there's some way to negotiate, you know, a limit with him on ukraine. but i think this is just the beginning. i think after ukraine he's going to be pursuing this in moldova. and i think we're likely to see efforts to create problems and

drive wedges between the united states and its allies and particularly it baltic allies. >> would you agree that if nato doesn't live up to its obligations in latvia that would be the end of nato? >> absolutely. >> miss fluornoy? >> i don't disagree with anything ambassador adelman said. but my sense is that putin may not have a clear strategic end game. he's a very tactical thinker. and he's sitting on top of a former great power that is unquestionably in decline. demographically, economically, plagued by corruption, poor governance. but that doesn't make it any less dangerous. because i think he will lash out along the way trying to re-establish his sphere of influence -- >> do you think he will take advantage wherever he sees a weakness? >> i do. and i think that's why it's so important that we follow through

on the reassurance initiatives for nato on our posture, bolstering our posture, underwriting article 5. and my own belief is we should be doing more to help the ukrainians defend themselves. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator sullivan. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and again, i want to thank the panelists. i appreciate your great service to our country and the joint statement. it's very helpful when we get those kind of joint statements. you know, we've been discussing a lot of the challenges certainly that we have as a country in terms of national security. we also have a lot of strengths. to me the ultimate strength that we have is men and women in uniform who continue to volunteer, raise their right hand, post-9/11 so, they know what the risks are to serve our

country. i've had the great honor, i get to spend a lot of time with our troops. i'm sure that was a great part of both of your jobs. and just in the last two weekends i was at the national training center a couple weekends ago with thousands of young alaskan soldiers, training out there. and this past weekend i was with a smaller group of anglico marines reserveists. and this time with the troops for me raises a very interesting question i'd like the two of you to maybe comment on. what we hear from our civilian leaders a lot, president included, is we consistently hear we're a war-weary nation. there's a subtle element to that i think that it kind of is used as an excuse in some ways that we're not going to be taking any kind of action because we're weary.

but when you spend time with the troops, and they've sacrificed a lot in the last 12 years, we all know that but one of the concerns that they raise, at least with me, and these are just anecdotal but i'm throwing it out there, is they want to deploy. they joined the military to serve their country. they don't want to be sitting around. so i want you to help us think through this conventional wisdom that somehow we're a war-weary nation, we can't take on global commitments, when the truth is that less than 1% of americans have actually been doing the fighting. and the ones that i'm associated with certainly seem to be ready not necessarily to fight but certainly be ready to deploy. how can we think through that? i think this issue that we're weary has become conventional wisdom in such a way that nobody seems to challenge it. and when you talk to the people who are actually really at the pointy tip of the spear, god

love them they seem to be ready to go. >> first of all, senator, it's a great question. and i would agree is that our men and women in uniform are one of the greatest strengths we have as a nation. they're remark ableable. i think that when the american people, when it's explained to the american people what the nature of a threat is why we have to meet it what it means for the nation, what are the risks of not going after it as the president did recently with regard to isil, i think the american people will rally and shed whatever wearyiness they have and support a cause when it's well articulated and explained and the sacrifice or the risk seems commensurate with the importance of the interests. so i don't think we are generally war weary. i think, yes, we've spent -- had

a lost blood and treasure that we've spent over the last 15 years. but i think when -- you know and that is something that weighs heavily on everyone as it should. but i think again when there's the interests are clear, the objectives are clear, the mission is clear and it's well explained and people are mobilized i think they are very willing to follow that strong instinct you described with the troops of we have a mission and we need to get it done. so i think that is the challenge for everyone who's in a leadership public leadership position, to be making that case when it's necessary. >> ambassador? >> general marshall i think once said that he thought it was difficult if not impossible for the united states to fight a war for more than four years. i think what that reflects is americans tend to want to see -- they tend to want to see a decisive outcome to a conflict.

and i think inconclusive wars and long difficult fights sometimes can be a bit exhausting to the public. particularly if as my colleague suggested they're not being explained properly to the american public. i agree with everything you said, senator sullivan, about the incredible competitive advantage we have with our people. it was always incredibly inspiring to go to either iraq or afghanistan and see our young folks out there. they're truly incredible and doing incredible things. and i would frequently when i talk to folks particularly enlisted, and say do you think people out here the people back home know what you're doing out here? and the answer i used to get was no, they think all we do is step on ieds out here and they have no clue what we're doing. i do think it's important to explain exactly what the stakes are as my colleague you know just said. and i would also note one other thing. americans are war-weary until

they're not. if you look at the poll data about how the public felt after the videotapes of the beheadings this summer came out, it was a very different set of numbers than what you'd seen previously because americans, you know, feel these things very deeply and see them as a sign of disrespect to the nation, which they don't appreciate. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator king. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just to put into perspective the numbers we were talking about at the beginning looking back on the history, if we had the gates budget of 2012, the defense budget this year would be somewhere around 612 billion 3.4% of gdp. instead at the sequester level we're at 492, 2.8% of gdp which is just about the lowest level of gdp since world war ii. it's also -- this is the lowest

level of federal spending, lowest percentage of federal spending for defense since world war ii. 4%, which is a kind of post-world war ii average. would be 700 billion almost 100 billion more. we are definitely at a very low point in terms of funding of defense. at a time of escalating challenge on multiple fronts. i just -- putting in a percentage of gdp is a sort of good way to look at it because it really puts it in historical perspective. a question for both of you. ambassador you mentioned about arming the ukrainians. that seems to be a developing consensus here in washington that that's something we ought to do. and i understand that. i understand the precedent of the sudetenland and if there had been force in 1939 we might have avoided the catastrophe of world

war 237 on the other hand i also understand the precedent of the guns of august and stumbling into a catastrophic world war. and we're playing chess with a russian here. if you play chess with a russian, you'd better think two and three moves ahead. and my concern is a, russia has a historic paranoia about encroachment from the west. and b, putin probably wouldn't mind a manageable little war in ukraine right now to take the people's minds off the domestic problems. margaret thatcher's approval rating the day before the falklands war was 23%. two weeks later it was 70%. i suspect putin may not know those numbers but he knows the phenomenon. persuade me that the escalation by arming the ukrainians would not lead to a matching escalation and in fact an increase. we don't live in a static world. we can't assume that we arm the

ukrainians, putin says oh this is tough i'm going home. he's not responsive to bodies in bags or tightening sanctions. give me your thoughts. >> well, a couple of things. and i know my colleague will want to speak to this because she, with some other colleagues has just been a signatory to a really good paper on this subject, the brookings institution, atlantic council and the chicago council on world affairs, i guess, or foreign affairs has put out. i think your question is a good one, senator king, and it has to be answered, i would say at multiple levels. first, it is true that it is in some sense president putin has what we used to call in the cold war escalation dominance in ukraine. he's -- the stakes are higher for him. the region is closer. he has more force. he's got more chips.

exactly. having said that he's also signatory, his country is signatory to a number of agreements that make it clear that countries have a right to belong to whatever alliance or multilateral organizations like the eu that they would like to associate with. >> you seriously care putin cares about agreements he signs? >> no, but we should. we should care about it. the point is he doesn't have a legitimate way to protest that we are helping a legitimate government defend itself against his aggression. i think we have to think about it in terms of the moral obligation to do that. when people want to defend themselves, we have an obligation i think to try and help them if we can. i think secondly we need to raise the costs for him of what he's doing. and he perhaps is a little more sensitive to some of these things than you were suggesting.

the body bags coming home, the protesting russian mothers. the capital flight. the amount of money that's been expended defending the ruble. these are real costs. and they're costs that are hitting his base of support, which is the oligarchs. they're suffering from this. so he has to respond to this in some way. but i think it's also important to remember that while there are potentially costs to action there are very serious costs to inaction here. >> there are risks either way. and the cost to inaction could be i suggest the catastrophic miscalculation. we need to make him understand that if we are willing to provide this kind of assistance to a country with whom we have no treaty legal obligation that he ought to think twice then about doing something with a nato member state like latvia as mr. donnelley asked me about earlier with whom we do have a legal treaty obligation. it's the importance of

underscoring our commitment to defend our nato allies in europe that really is at stake here i think. and if we don't do this the risk that he will miscalculate in a place like latvia or estonia i think will go up dramatically. and i think that is something in terms of regret that we will feel very seriously later on. >> my father used to say there lies the body of jonathan gray, who died defending his right of way. but in any case -- >> i would just add that i think one of the things we've learned since the collapse of the cease-fire is that putin is going to continue to escalate because he wants to keep destabilizing ukraine and eventually cause the regime to change. he's on an escalatory path anyway. the question is whether we can provide ukraine, ukrainians with the weapons they need to impose a level of cost on the

separatists and their russian backers that might make him think twice. and particularly battery radars that can locate where the artillery and rocket fire's coming from. that's what's responsible for 70% of the casualties in ukraine. and anti-tank systems that could stop armored or heavy armored vehicles from taking further territory. so i think he's dish think he's demonstrated, he's on an escalatory path. the question is whether there's anything that we can do to help ukraine impose costs to make him stop and actually come to the negotiation seriously. i think it's worth seeing what happens on wednesday in minsk and seeing if by some miracle an agreement is forged. but barring that i think it's very important that we help the ukrainians defend themselves and enforce greater costs on the separatists and the russians for

their aggression. >> thank you. very helpful. >> senator ayotte. >> i want to thank both of you for being here. and secretary flournoy i wanted to ask you about afghanistan. i know that last june you were quoted in the "new york times" about the administration's timeline for withdrawal from afghanistan. and one of the things you said was if it was a timeline with a strong statement that said hey, this is our plan but no plan survives contact with reality. and of course we're going to adjust based on conditions on the ground then no problem in reference to their withdrawal plan. are the afghans on the path we planned for? are they not? is the insurgency as we expected or is it worse? all the things have to be factored in. have what i'm hearing out of the white house is this is hell or high water this is what we're going to do. i'm hoping you have a different sense of this now and i wanted to get your thoughts on afghanistan because many of us i

think who have had the opportunity to visit afghanistan and then this weekend we had obviously the opportunity to sit down with president ghani and hear his perspective to really understand their plan right now as it stands. president ghani seemed very concerned about our forces in 2015 in particular. sxm of us are very concerned that by the end of 2016 under the current plan it will really be 1,000 people based in kabul. so i wanted to get your perspective on afghanistan and what you think we should be doing. >> it's a great question. thank you, senator, for asking. i think at this point we need to change the frame of discussion on afghanistan. rather than debating the fine points of the final phases of the drawdown and the end of the u.s. combat role and so forth we need to stop and say okay we

need to look forward. we have an afghan government that is trying -- has a good chance of pulling it together and going forward as a democratically elected coalition government. we have an nsf that's continuing to develop its capabilities that is in the fight, that is taking risks, that is trying to hold their ground. but we also see continued challenge from insurgency that remains able to contest a lot of areas. and we see continued activity from al qaeda moving back and forth across the border. so now is the time to stop debating whether we can change the drawdown timeline. we need to stop and say okay looking forward, what kind of posture does the united states need both intelligence and military in the af-pak region, to protect ourselves against future terrorist threats and prevent afghanistan or the border region from becoming a

serious safe haven once again for al qaeda and associated groups? and with that fresh sheet of faper look at what's the intelligence posture we need, what's the military posture we need to support that and to continue to help the national afghan forces develop. i think that shift in the conversation is very, very important. my sense is that's starting to happen inside -- certainly inside the intelligence community. but hopefully that's a conversation we need to have over the next year. >> could you give -- i think thinking about our constituents the importance of really looking forward there and frankly in terms of our own interests the importance of afghanistan and the intelligence that we might need from afghanistan for protecting our own interests. >> this is an area where we need to continue to be able to have a sense of what the remnants of al qaeda that remain there the taliban supporters the hackney

network, we need to still have eyes and ears. it's not something you can do from kabul alone or from bagram alone. and that intelligence posture will require some military posture. it will be far less than what we've had in previous years. it is a small continued investment relatively speaking to try to support the afghan government in continuing on the path of progress and continuing to -- you know, to hold their country and not allow the insurgency to regain any kind of foothold in terms of actually governing or leading the country. >> thank you. i also wanted to follow up briefly with the size of the naval fleet including the attack submarines. as i understand it, with sequester we're on a path really to reduce our fleet size to 260

ships or less overall. and having worked on the qdr, the navy's current fleet size is around 285. and as i look at the aattack submarine size this is something we have even greater need for now, especially as we want to have a presence in the asia pacific region. so i wanted to get your assessment of as we go forward where we are. it looks like a dramatic decline if we continue on sequester, the importance of the attack submarine fleet. and this investment and why it's important for us. >> i think overall the fleet is on a path to becoming too small for what we will need in the future. i agree with you that undersea warfare is an area of american advantage that we want to do everything in our power to keech.keechp. i think that will require continued investment in the attack submarine fleet but also

new technologies such as unmanned undersea vehicles and how we network manned submarines and unmanned systems to get -- to leverage that capability to have much greater impact. i think this is an area very ripe for some new thinking and developing of both -- leveraging of new technologies and developing of new operational concepts. but your core premise about the attack submarine fleet i think it's a very important advantage area that we want to maintain. >> if i just add, we did not have the kind of staffing that would have enabled us to do a real fine-grain analysis of this. but we did conclude as you have suggested in your question as my colleague just suggested, or answered, that we're on a path toward a fleet that's much too small and that we tried to bracket the problem for you and your colleagues by saying somewhere between the number that secretary gates requested in the fy12 budget which i think was 320 something.

and the number that secretary perry identified in the bottom-up review which was in the 340s, was the place where we ought to be looking to try to get. >> thank you. >> senator shaheen. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and again thank you for holding this series of rather strategic looks at what our defense capability should be going forward. i want to thank both of our panelists for being here and for your long service to this country. and follow up first. and i should apologize for missing your statements. in the earlier questions, i was at a briefing on iran and those negotiations. but i wanted to follow up on senator ayotte's question because i'm not -- i'm not sure if she asked very directly if in your assessment should we be drawing down troops, the

remaining troops in afghanistan as rapidly as we are this year? or do you think that sends the wrong message to both the afghans who are trying to make a new start with a new president and address their internal issues as well as the taliban and the other enemies who are fighting them in afghanistan? >> my sense is that the delay in the government formation process that we've seen post-elections in afghanistan should put some more time on the clock in terms of the drawdown and we need to examine that. but most fundamentally what i was trying to say before is we need to re-examine the pace and scope of the drawdown in light of what we're going to need in the future. i don't believe a zero posture in afghanistan is going to serve our interests in the long term given the continued terrorism threats that we face, given the continued importance of our support to the development of

the ansf. so figuring out instead of looking back and drawing down, looking forward and saying what are we going to need in the next five to ten years? it will be more modest than what it's been certainly. but it won't be zero. and so figuring out what that looks like and having that inform the pace and scope of the final stages of the drawdown i think is very important. >> ambassador adelman, did you agree -- >> senator shaheen, you asked a very good question. i am very concerned we're going to go down too low. i think it's a great concern for most of us that we left iraq without any residual presence. and the consequences are staringous us in the face with the rise of isil, collapse of the iraqi security forces. i worry we may being ourselves on the same path in afghanistan and i hope we don't do that. >> with respect to europe and

what's happening in ukraine how important is the effort to beef up nato to encourage the european countries to follow through on their commitment to provide 2% of gdp for support for nato? and to what extent do you think actually doing, that actually taking some of these steps with nato to put more visible operations on the borders of eastern europe will be helpful in deterring russia from future aggression aggression. >> i think it's absolutely critical. there is a plan to bolster our posture, exercise our cooperation, our prepositioning with our nato allies. particularly the front line states baltics poland, so on and so forth.

i think doing that consistently reliably visibly is extremely important to bolstering deterrence and to reassuring our allies allies. i also think that getting more of our allies to meet the 2% of gdp defense spending target is essential. as is engaging them as partners in developing capabilities for the future. we talk about an offset strategy and innovation agenda. we need to have that on a trans-atlantic basis as well. great opportunities for pooling resources, sharing, having a clear division of labor and so forth. >> and i know you both were in munich this past weekend. to what extent did you hear nato members, countries that were here talking about their appreciation that this is important for them as well? if at all. >> senator shaheen, there was

not very much of that. i heard a lot of discussion about how there was no military solution to the problem in ukraine. that is demonstrably. if we do nothing there will be a military solution in ukraine and it's going to be the one that's imposed by vladimir putin. i think the importance of all the things and i agree with everything my colleague said about the importance of the nato reassurance effort and all of that in terms of deterrence i think we also need to remember it's an important part of diplomacy. i also carry around with me a he quotation from george cannon, this was a speech he gave in the national war college. how gently it contributes to diplomacy when you have an armed force in the broungsd. i think we tend to lose track of that. what is now going on and i hope maybe there will be some success to it on wednesday, but we

should be clear about what's happening. the europeans are discussing this and calling it minsk plus. but it's really ukraine minus because what it does is it reaffirms the principles of the minsk agreement in september but makes concession for the reality of the continued aggression by the donbass separatists. should have no illusions about what's happening here. and it's the reason why i think i -- i'm not going to speak for my colleague but why i do believe we need to arm the ukrainian government to raise the cost to president putin. i will say senator king has raised this and raised rightly the question of how do we respond to further escalation by president putin? one thing i think is absolutely important to bear in mind, which is if we do this we have to do this seriously. we cannot arm the ukrainian government the way we've been arming the moderate syrian opposition for the last three

years. because when we do that we have all the effective provocation of president putin with none of the benefit of increased deterrence or military capability for ukraine. >> thank you both. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would like to be noted as voting in person for dr. carter. >> without objection. >> thank you. thank you both for your testimony and your service. secretary flournoy i do appreciate your noting there is a shift in the conversation that is beginning regarding what we need to do in afghanistan. and certainly in the intelligence community that this shift is happening. i think that moves us forward as opposed to talking about what we should have done et cetera. i also would like to thank both of you for stressing the importance of maintaining our sea power and your concerns about our decreasing size of our fleet. dr. carter was asked at his

confirmation, and i'd like to paraphrase the question he was asked. he was asked how do we respond to the threats in the middle east sxfrk of course, ukraine and still be committed to the rebalance of the asia pacific. i'd like to ask both of you the same question but first why you believe that the rebalance is important to our national security. >> let me start since i can be blamed for that is right of that initiative. when you look long term at what region of the world will have the greatest impact on economic prosperity and i think our security asia pacific is undeniably sort of the most important important. even though you have to deal with crises in the middle east, you have to deal with russian aggression in europe, over the arc of the long term we want to be ensuring that we're adequately investing in asia in the foundations of continued

economic growth in the maintenance of the rule's international order, that's been underwriting stability there in our alliances in our partnerships. it's very important that the rebalance continue not only militarily, shifting more of our assets there and investing more with our partnerships and alliances there. but also in economic terms. i think that's why the transpacific partnership is such an important initiative. to signal u.s. commitment to the region u.s. staying power, that the u.s. will remain a critical economic partner as well as a security partner going forward. >> mr. ambassador. >> the region obviously is growing in wealth and importance in the world. and obviously america's future is very much tied up. we've also been an atlantic and pacific nation but the impact of

the pacific is much greater now and will be in the future for some time to come. i think it's for that reason that all the members of the panel agreed that the general direction that the president announced in the strategic guidance in january 2012 was the right direction. i think what we expressed in the report is some concern about whether at current budget levels this will be sustainable. and that's why we talked about the importance of growing both naval and air capability, because this is a 245er9 where large largely we're going to be operating because of the tyranny of distance and geography over water and air. so i think the need is clear. it's important we move ahead in the rebalance. i'm concerned that what we've done already is fairly limited

on the military side. and i'm not saying that we shouldn't do it. but it's basically 2,500 marines rotationally deployed to darwin. fcs is headquartered in singapore. and some rebalance of a shrinking fleet. and i think we need to do more and it's one of the reasons i believe we need to lift the bca caps and sequestration. >> thank you. mr. ambassador, you've noted in a response to one of the questions earlier asked that other nations are decreasing the amount of resources they're putting into the military. would you say that's where japan is also? >> under prime minister abe japan has obviously done a bit to increase its defense capabilities. i don't think they've done enough. and we need to make sure the money they spend -- japan spends

about 1% of its gdp on defense, which is given the size of the japanese economy a considerable amount of money. i think where we need to help our allies in japan is working with them as i said earlier in response to one of the questions to focus on the capabilities we think they can provide that will really be additive and help complement what we're doing. that's what i think we ought to be doing with japan. i think prime minister abe has done a lot to change the direction in japan in a more positive direction. >> mr. chairman, may i ask the secretary to respond to that too? >> i think japan is moving in the right direction. prime minister abe is seeking to have a discussion that will allow the japanese military to

play a more fulsome role in our alliance as a partner i think. the depth of the alliance relationship is really unprecedented now. and we are deeply engaged in looking at the region, developing common understandings of the environment, the threats we see, the capabilities that are needed how we'll invest together, so on and so forth. so i actually think the alliance is on a very strong footing and moving in the right direction. but the question really is the internal debate within japan about the proper role of the military and what the japanese people are comfortable with moving forward. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you to the witnesses. i was a proxy for ash carter but i'm a proud yes now that i'm here for my foreign relations meeting. thank you for your testimony. especially your strong testimony with respect to the foolishness

of the sequester in today's global environment. big picture strategic question. since you're both good strategic thinkers. i know questions have been asked of afghanistan. we'll have a hearing on afghanistan later in the week. should our activities be based on a calendar, based on conditions on the ground. those questions have been asked already. but from a strategic standpoint talk about what failure in afghanistan will mean. if we were to pull out precipitously, for example. and then the gains we've achieved are lost. what would that mean to u.s. credibility? what would it mean to the people of afghanistan? what would it mean in the region from a security standpoint? >> if history's any guide it could be very dangerous for the afghan government and afghan society society. recall when the soviets ended their aid to the afghan government the government

collapsed. i think if the u.s. were to have and the international community would have no follow-on mission in nato that international assistance would quickly dry up and you could see a sort of accelerated decline of the afghan government's hold over territory and the country. so i think it would be very, very dangerous. on the opportunity side i think with continued modest but consistent international support i think the afghan government has an opportunity to hold the key urban centers, the ring road the strategic territory inside afghanistan and keep governing governing. given the region remains a home to various terrorist elements

that still harbor our very dire intentions, like very dangerous intentions against the united states, it's some place we have to keep an eye on and keep investing to make sure those threats are kept at bay. i think the stakes are very high. i also think it would be very damaging for u.s. credibility to have put so much into getting afghanistan to the point where it is today and then to pull the carpet out from underneath their feet. i also think it would be very damaging in terms of civil-military relations. given the degree of sacrifice our men and women have been asked to make to create the possibility for afghanistan to suck sooetd and then to walk away from that before we complete the job would be very damaging. >> ambassador edelman, i have one more question. would there be something you'd add to that? >> i agree the reputational risk, homeland risk. i would add one more thing. it would reduce our strategic leverage on pakistan and we

should not lose sight of the large number of nuclear weapons pakistan presides over. >> one other question on the big picture strategy. i was a mayor worrying about my police force and i was a governor worrying about economic development. but you guys have been doing national security for your whole career, so i want to hear your thoughts on this. we often hear questions in these hearings about where's the strategy and i'm kind of sympathetic to those questions. as i look kind of quickly at what we've been up to, we had a national security strategy, like it or not the truman doctrine from 1946 until the soviet union collapsed. i think we then went into on ad hoccism period. that may p be a bad thing but we kind of dealt with challenges as they arose and often not in consistent ways. 9/11 began, our policy was the war on terror. this is that's not a security policy for a nation as great as the u.s., as mag nan nous as the u.s. so i think we're now recognizing the ongoing battle with terrorists, still looking for a broader definition of what is a big picture national strategy. are we back to sort of ad hoc

hoccism or as folks who've done this for a lifetime professionally what would youing is to us the big picture national security strategy should be? >> and to me. this is the $64,000 question. and i think that it is something, we've got to rise above the crisis of the day and get back to having a strategic framework, a sense of american purpose in the world that can garner bipartisan support. i personally believe one of the key elements of it is to defend the international rules-based order that we put into place. we architected after world war ii that has been the basis for stability in so many regions and has been the basis for economic growth and our security.

we have a lot riding on that. and it's being challenged in asia with the rise of challenge that is questioning that order and challenging and trying to unilateralry change the status quo. it's being challenged in the middle east as the boundaries of nation states start to fray and you have sunni-shia conflict, the rise of extremist terrorist elements. and now it's being challenged in the heart of europe with russian aggression across international borders. so i think sustaining that rules-based international order is something that's got to be at the heart of any strategic framework we develop. >> mr. chair, could i ask ambassador edelman just to answer that question as well? >> i agree with everything my colleague said senator cain. so that makes it a little bit easier. a few years ago there was an article in the journal "national security" that had the provocative title of "strategy is an illusion." i teach a course in american grand strategy at johns hopkins

sise. and my students at the end of it, some of them say, well, it was easy to have a strategy when you had a bipolar world and one adversary. now it's just so complicated it's too hard and secretary flournoy said in our opening statement we're dealing with a volatile and complex security environment and therefore we might just say well, it's just too hard to do. my view is that as hard as it may be marrying objectives to ways and means is just the essence of good grofrnsovernance and if you don't try to do it it just becomes an excuse for, you know, going, taking any road that, you know will lead you where you think you might want to go but you won't have the road map. i think it's a necessity. i think we have to do it. i think there's a lot of merit in what secretary kissinger has said, which is we're faced by

primarily regional challenges now not a global peer competitor and we need to develop regional strategies but strategies that are interconnected with an overarching global vision. and i think that's the beginning of wisdom on that on that subject. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. i do recall a thing called the reagan doctrine which was in the words of margaret thatcher won the cold war without firing a shot. maybe there are some of us that have different views of history. senator sullivan did you have additional question? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just had one quick follow-up question, and it relates to some of the broader issues that we're struggling with here. and i'd like your views on -- your thoughts on what's going to be looks like an upcoming debate in the congress on the authorization on use of military force, and you know secretary flournoy, you mentioned a fresh

start, looking forward. how would you advise members of congress to look at that whether it is years troops geographic scope. there's a lot that can go into something like that. it is going to be important. i would just appreciate your views on that, thank you, mr. chairman. >> first of all, i would say i think it is important to have the discussion. debate about aumf would be a good surrogate with regard to what should our strategy be on terrorism and the middle east. i think that as you have that discussion, it is very important to remember something said earlier, we are very bad at predicting how conflicts are going to unfold, how enemies are going to act how things are going to morph and change. so being overly restrictive saying categorically no boots on the ground don't do this being

overly restrictive i think could become a problem over time. that said, it is very important to recognize that the aumf that we have from 2001, you know a lot of realities have moved beyond that and we need to update it and recognize that there are groups who have distanced themselves from al qaeda but nevertheless pose a similar threat to us and we need to have an authorization to deal with them but again i would caution against being overly predictive off specific in restrictions because we don't exactly know how the threat williewill will evolve, how our response will need to evolve. >> i agree with everything that michelle said. i would add the other element is there's lots of interest in some

kind of time line, we frequently talk about this. i think that to do that is to set up potentially a very divisive and difficult debate later on down the road things don't always work out in war, there are mistakes, you have problems, you have to let the people fighting the war fight the war. and i think you also don't want to signal lack of resolve to the other side and tell them how long they have to wait you out. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thank you you, the witnesses. we covered a wide range of issues. >> mr. chairman, can i ask another question before we close. >> senator from new hampshire. >> thank you. i wanted to follow up on senator kaine's question of strategy. there have been a number of high profile articles in the last few months about the lessons learned in afghanistan and iraq and

there's been the dod commissioned report from the rand corporation about those lessons learned that have suggested that we ought to also take a look at our decision making structures and think about how we can better make those decisions. i wonder if i can get each of you to comment on whether you think that's an accurate analysis of some of the challenges we face and what we should do better as we are thinking about how to make these decisions in the future. >> i think it is really important to try to pause and catalog what lessons we should be learning. there's, you know, kind of a desire to get all of this in the rearview mirror and just move on but it is very very important to understand what we should take away from this and capture some of the best practices that were developed on the ground. i think it is an important exercise. i do think that the decision

making element particularly at the interagency level is something that bears study, something that actually being looked at going forward. you can look at different models of nfcs, different ways in which they operated different results over time and history and you can draw some conclusions about what works better and what doesn't. similarly, i think in the field some of the innovations for fusing intelligence and operation and having all of the interagency players in one operation center, you know, sharing authority information and conducting joint whole of government operations, that's something we don't want to lose, you know, the next time we may have to face an operational challenge, so i think it is really important line of inquiry. >> senator shaheen, i have to

confess to a certain degree of skepticism about reforming the interagency process. it is a little like the weather. people are always talking about it and you know, it doesn't ever change. the national security act of 1947 is an incredibly flexible -- has created incredibly flexible system and the reality is that it is flexible enough that each president that we've had has developed a system that suits their management style best and for better or for worse, and our system is so presidential centric in terms of national security decision making that i think unless you want to really tinker with the constitution, i'm not sure anything else that you do is going to be more than moving boxes around on a wiring diagram diagram.

so i think, you know, it is certainly worth looking at lessons learned and there are always better or worse ways to, you know, to do it but i'm struck by the fact that the relationship between process and outcome is not always clear and direct. you know, if you read through, for instance the transcripts of the executive committee of the national security council during the cuban missile crisis and were graded on process, you would give it an f because there are no agendas, they're not talking from common papers they're not doing anything they teach you to do at the kennedy school of government, for instance, but president kennedy came roughly to the right decision obviously somehow, and i think that's just testimony to what i was saying. this is a system that really ultimately revolves around the president and he or she i think should not necessarily be constrained by efforts to tinker with the machinery. >> thank you both. thank you, mr. chairman.

>> your testimony has been very helpful. we begin our conversations about your work on a commission and now we have branched out and covered a lot of very important areas that i think that needs to be an important part of the discussion and dialogue that we have on both sides of the aisle and both ends of pennsylvania avenue. so you have contributed a great deal to our knowledge and our thought process and i thank you for it. jack? >> i simply want to express the same feeling, appreciation for your efforts, not just today but for many, many years. thank you very much. >> thank you. the hearing is adjourned.

tonight on cspan 3, the house armed services committee holds a hearing on the threat posed by the militant group isis. congressional republicans on the keystone xl pipeline. a discussion about oil prices at the hudson institute. and the senate armed services committee questions the commander of u.s. forces in afghanistan. at a house armed services committee hearing today retired general michael flynn, the former head of military intelligence, testified about the threat posed by isis. he calls for a more aggressive strategy against the militant group in iraq and syria.

president obama has asked congress to pass a new authorization of military force against isis. congressman matt thornberry chairs this two hour hearing. >> on wednesday, the president submitted to congress proposal for authorization to use military force against isis. although the president ordered combat operations against isis take place in iraq, since last august and in syria since last september, only now has he sought congressional authorization required by the constitution. despite air strikes, press accounts say isis expanded control in syria, the world has been horrified at its barbarrism. the u.s. has a setback in yemen abandoned our place there a plays the president held out as model for counterterrorism approach. now we are in a much weaker

position to prevented attacks by the organization that posed the most serious threat to our home land in recent years. elsewhere, boko haram is killing thousands and steadily advancing in nigeria. libya is a breeding ground for terrorist groups. aqim in several north african countries, and concern that al qaeda in afghan, pakistan region is becoming reinvigorated as u.s. troop levels are reduced. congress will consider the president's aumf proposal in the context of this wider fight against islamic terrorists. the purpose of today's hearing is to evaluate how that broader struggle is going, among questions i have what are the trends we see with islamist terrorists. is the threat to the united states more or less serious. many in congress want reassurance that the president has a strategy to succeed against this threat and that he is personally committed to

persevere until we are successful. it is clear that before we are successful we have to understand the threat, where we are, and where we are headed. that's the purpose of today's hearing. mr. smith. >> thank you. i thank the chairman for the hearing on this very important topic. i think it is the largest national security threat that we face as a country. i know all three of our panelists have a lot of knowledge on the issue, i think it will be helpful for the committee to hear from them engage in questions and answers as we figure out how to confront this threat. part of the problem with the threat is it is not easy to define, not easy to put strategy around. it really is a broad ideology that has many different components. you know, post 9/11 we saw al qaeda as a terrorist group with a centralized leadership that was plotting and planning attacks against us and i think we responded accordingly to try to defeat that organization, to

try and defeat that network and did a reasonably effective job of it in afghanistan and pakistan as we prevented that group being able to mount further attacks against us. that's the positive. the negative is that the ideology itself has metastasized. it has grown into a number of groups the chairman mentioned and even more than that, in a lot of different places, and the root cause is a lack of solid governance lack of solid economic opportunity in the middle east and north africa and much of the arab muslim world. they have an exploding youth population that has nothing to do. no jobs and no prospects. so the ideology that comes along and says i have the answer for you has plenty of willing recruits. meanwhile, they don't have much in the way of example of a good government anywhere that they could look to and work with. so it is going to be very difficult to contain this.

i think the chairman laid out the challenges with isis in iraq and syria the collapse in yemen, the difficulties in libya, but overall i think we need a long term strategy. one of the things i think has hampered us is a notion that we have to be able to confidently say a, that we are winning, or that we are going to win and here is how. i honestly think this is a long term ideological struggle not something that we can say we are determined to defeat it, so let's just suck it up and three or four years from now it will be done. it took 75 years to defeat communism. we have to figure out how to have a long term strategy for dealing with this ideology. that doesn't mean that in the short term the ideology runs rampant. huge piece of that strategy is containing the threat, figuring out how to protect our interests from violence and figuring out how to begin to roll back these

groups and roll back the advance of their ideology. it is an issue that defies an easy answer. so what we hope to hear today is some ideas on how we can proceed and move forward, mindful of the fact that it is a very, very large problem that's going to take a long time to deal with. the final point that i will make, one of the things that hamstrings us, it is not something that the u.s. or western world can take care of. the muslim world does not want the united states to show up and tell it what it ought to do. and this is true even of the moderate muslims that we look to work with. we have to figure out how we can be helpful to support the moderate voices so that they can triumph, so they can defeat the extremist ideologies. it cannot be western driven by the very definition of the way those folks look at the world. so we can help but if we help too much in an odd sort of way, we wind up hurting the overall effort. i think that's the lesson we

learned in iraq and afghanistan. with that, i look forward to the testimony, questions and appreciate the chairman holding the hearing. >> i thank the gentleman. i mention to members i think we are supposed to have votes on the floor roughly around 10:40, 10:45, so i am going to try to be fairly strict, be strict with the time limits so we can move along smartly. i ask unanimous consent the full written statement of all our witnesses be made part of the record. without objection, so ordered. let me again thank our witness force being here. very pleased to see retired lieutenant general michael flynn, former director of defense intelligence agency, mr. william bran ig executive director, national consortium for study of terrorism and responses to terrorism with university of maryland and dr. mark lynch with the george washington university. all of these gentlemen have done very serious helpful work for

the committee and for the country on this topic of terrorism and we are very grateful to have you with us today. as i said your full written statement will be made part of the record. if you would like to summarize at this point and we will get to questions, we would appreciate it. general flynn. >> great, thank you. chairman thornberry ranking member smith members of the committee, it is an honor to be here today. i really appreciate the invitation. you have asked me to comment on the state of islamic extremism. today i have the unhappy task of informing you that according to every metric of significance islamic extremism has grown in the last year whether it be the scale and scope of isis and it's associated movements, the number of value payment islamic groups, the territory these groups control, the number of terrorist attacks they perpetrate, mass numbers and suffering of refugees and displaced persons due to islamic groups, that's approximately 15 million people. the amount of kidnapping and rape of women and children by

these groups. the numbers of casualties they inflict. their broad expansion and use of the internet, which is very serious, or just their sheer barbarrism that we witnessed, i can draw no other conclusion but to say the threat has reached unacceptable level and is growing. we are at war with violent and extreme islam, and we must accept and face this reality. this enemy has an engrained unshakeable vision how the world and society should be ordered and believe violence is a legitimate means of bringing about this ideal state. the violent islamist is serious, devout, committed and dangerous. his ideology justifies the most heinous inhumane actions imaginable, and he will not be reasoned with, nor will he relength. this enemy must be opposed they must be killed they must be destroyed and associated extremist form of islamic ideology must be defeated

wherever it reers its ugly head. there are some that counsel patience arguing violent islamist are not existential threat and can simply be managed as criminals. i respectfully and strongly disagree. i have been in the theaters of war of iraq and afghanistan for many years faced this enemy up close and personal, and i have seen first hand the unrestrained cruelty of this enemy. they may be animated by medieval ideology, but they are thoroughly modern in capacity to kill and maim as well as precisely and smartly message their ideas intentions, and actions via the internet. in fact, they're increasingly capable of threatening our nation's interests and those of our allies. furthermore, it would be foolish for us to wait until our enemies pose an existential threat before taking decisive action. doing so would only increase the cost in blood and treasure, later for what we know must be done now. our violent and extremely

radical islamist enemies must be stopped. to that end, i offer the following three strategic objectives. first, we have to energize every element of national power, similar to the effort during world war ii, or during the cold war, to effectively resource what will likely be a multi generational struggle. there is no cheap way to win this fight. second, we must engage the violent islamists wherever they are, drive them from their safe havens and kill them. there can be no quarter and no accommodation for this vicious group of terrorists. any nation state that offers safe haven to our enemies must be given one choice, to eliminate them or be prepared for those contributing partners involved in this endeavor to do so. we do need to recognize there are nations who lack the capability to defeat this threat and will likely require help to do so inside of their own internationally recognized boundaries. we must be prepared to assist

those nations. third. we must decisively confront the state and nonstate supporters and enablers of the violent islamic ideology and compel them to lend support to their enemies or be prepared to move capacity to do so. many are currently considered partners of the united states. this must change. if our so-called partners do not act in accordance with internationally accepted norms and behaviors or international law, the united states must be prepared to cut off or severely curtail economic military, and diplomatic ties. we cannot be seen as being hypocritical to those we partner with to defeat radical islam. finally in pursuit of these objectives, i fully support congress' constitutional role providing authorization for use of military force. this authorization should be broad and agile, but unconstrained by unnecessary

restrictions, restrictions that today cause not only frustration in our military our intelligence, and diplomatic communities, but also significantly slow down the decision-making process for numerous fleeting opportunities. it is important however, to realize that such an authorization is neither a comprehensive strategy nor war winning one. if there is not a clear coherent, comprehensive strategy forthcoming from the administration there should be no organization. with that chairman i am happy to take your questions. >> thank you general. mr. brennan. >> chairman thornberry ranking member smith, esteemed members of the committee i would like to thank you on behalf of the star consortium for inviting us to speak with you today. in 2013 over 22,000 people were killed and nearly 8500 terrorist attacks. when star releases the full database, set for 2014, we anticipate it will include over

15,000 terrorist attacks. our preliminary data from the first nine months of 2014 suggest that 7 of 10 mosley that will groups were violent jihadist groups and isil conducted more terror attacks than any other terror organization. the trend lines are largely driven by two factors. proliferation of groups associated with al qaeda in hot spots around the world, second, the rise of isil and strategy of escalation through sectarian violence. what we have, therefore, is the makings of a global competition involving the most violent terrorist organizations in the world. this is even more troubling when one considers that both the theoretical and empirical work in terrorism studies field suggests that competition among terror groups is one of the most important predictors of increasing lethality over time. to better understand this, i would like to contrast operations and strategies of al qaeda and associated movement or

aqam with those of isil. al qaeda is waging protracted war of attrition against the west, aiming to bleed the united states. if they're able to get the military, economic or will to remain in the muslim world, they can overpower regimes and establish what they consider proper thee objecting kri see. al qaeda sent operatives into conflict zones across the world to reor yenlt violence of militant organizations and individuals, refocussing wrath on enemy targets like western embassies or tourist destinations. al qaeda uses mass casualty attacks for heavy handed military response from western and other governments -- thereby polarizing muslim and nonmuslim worlds enabling jihadist to motivate for conflict. isil is not waging war of attrition but one of escalation. instead of inviting muslim versus western violence it is

benefitting from resources already being mobilized by sek taern polarization taking place in iraq and syria and beyond which it actively seeks to interstate. instead of the far enemy, isil's military operations focus on attacking competitors who do not submit to their organizational prime see, seizing resources necessary to build the caliphate. given this competition, several implications for u.s. policy and regional security. the first, was al qaeda or enemy strategy relies on provocation to pulverize the masses isil is ratcheting up elevated levels of sectarian tension in the post arab spring world. continued presence of assad is more a problem for isil. it helps to dampen government responses to isil and groups. and al qaeda affiliate.

sek taern tensions remain high isil and aligned groups foster and exploit those tensions. isil veterans travel to new fronts outside iraq and syria bringing escalation strategy and sectarianism with them. worst case scenario, this contagion effect runs risk of sectarian civil war in the muslim world, regaiting west to observer unable to take meaningful action for itself or others. in addition, every new isil front opens a new set of grievance narratives and mobilization pathways seek to go radicalize and recruit foreign fighters. three, they have incentives foray tax against the west. for isil attacks against the west can be used as form of deterrents, making foreign countries think twice or pay the price for large scale military interventions in iraq and syria. we cannot be fooled into thinking al qaeda's focus on the caliphate presents them from

actively seeking capability to conduct attacks against the home land. for al qaeda and associated movement, the antagonistic rise to prominence incentivizes them to use enemy attacks to regain the spotlight. if isil continues to murder muslims, overstep bounds as we have seen with respect to murder of jordanian pilot, al qaeda and associated movement may wind up looking more legitimate and mainstream by comparison as long as they remain focused on the true enemy of islam the west. we cannot take pressure off aqam. we are seeing escalating competition among violent sunni groups when sectarian tensions are high and many government holds on government are weak. it is essential that any u.s. strategy works with sunni nations and communities to marginalize violent sunni extremists. the u.s. must find a way to ease sectarian tensions and allow

them to focus on marginalizing groups like isil and aqam. >> thank the chairman and ranking member smith, it is an honor to have the chance to speak with you. as you heard from my colleagues, isil poses a serious threat to american interests, to the people of the region, to our partners in the region and it is he extremely important to not underestimate the nature of the threat or misunderstand the nature of the threat. it is important to not exaggerate its novelty or perhaps magnitude of the threat. it is not -- these are not super humans with unprecedented ability to form states or to seize territory or to inspire. the world history is full of insur general sees that captured territory and sought to govern by extracting resources from the local population, the world's history is full of insurgencies

that used graphic violent terrorism to intimidate their enemies and to ensure control over their local populations. we have seen both islamist and other ideological movements other world history. this is a dangerous, violent organization which must be confronted, but it is important to place it in proper perspective. to understand the dilemma extremist groups faced from the beginning, islamic jihad in egypt or armed islamic group in algeria or al qaeda in the 2000s, or isil today. that fundamental problem is while they have the vision that general flynn described, characteristics that general flynn described and that extreme dogma tichl, the vast majority of muslims in the world do not agree with them and they failed every time they have attempted to reach out and mobilize the

world's muslims on their side. the ideology and strategy of al qaeda and isil is to create a clash of civilizations create unbridgeable divide between muslims of the world and the west, and what we must keep in mind as we formulate any effective strategy is that the way to defeat isil, al qaeda and all forms of violent extremism is to marginalize them form alliances with vast majority of the world to reject their barbarrism and reject their extreme ideology. the face of muslims in the minds of americans and face of muslims in the mind of the world should not be osama bin laden, it should not be the faceless murderers of the journalists of "charlie hebdo" in paris. it should be the student that

was murdered in north carolina this week. to defeat isil america must be seen as their champion, not as their enemy, and if we are able to align ourselves with as mir agencies and hopes of muslims all over the world then isil can be defeated, and only then. so i do not disagree with general flynn's characterization of the threat posed by isil. but i believe it is extremely important we approach this threat from perspective of the need to constantly seek to deflate their pretensions, to marginalize them, to expose their extremism in the eyes of not only us but muslims they seek to recruit to mobilize and ultimately to lead. now, this was i believe one of the great accomplishments, great bipartisan accomplishments of both bush administration after 9/11 and obama administration. the immediate understanding of the strategic divide and need to

not allow al qaeda after 9/11 to provoke this kind of clash of civilizations. president bush despite some missteps early on i think did a fantastic job trying to reach out to the muslims of the united states and ensure that this divide did not open up. and i think that's the bipartisan commitment that we should build on today. in my prepared statement i go through in some detail explanations for why isil has emerged in the form that it has today. i won't repeat those here. let me hit some of the bullet points because i think it is important to place this into specific political context. mentioned failure of government, failure of arab uprising is a key part of emergence of isil in the form it is today. enormous number of young muslims and arabs around the middle east seen their hopes raised and then

crushed. military coup is unfortunately proving to people that peaceful political participation is not an option. if we are going to respond to kwlil in the way as again i agree with general flynn that we must, we need to address the underlying causes of despair, alienation, and building the possible pool of recruits for isil. that includes reversing sectarian misgovernment of iraq, includes trying to find some kind of peaceful deescalation of war in syria. and it means trying to find some way to align the united states with forces of moderate, peaceful change. that's no easy task. i have some ideas about how we may go about doing that. for now, i stop and welcome everyone's questions. >> thank you. i appreciate the testimony from each of you. i would like to ask hopefully a brief question from each of you. general flynn, toward the end of

your statement you make a point an aumf should not be overly constrained. you had a lot of experience fighting folks in the middle east and south asia. do you have an opinion about how difficult it would be for our troops to follow a restriction that said they could not engage in enduring offensive ground combat operations? >> yes. so we need to be very clear in this aumf that may come out of an agreement between legislative and executive branches, when we give military commanders a mission, we should allow them to execute that mission, not overly constrain them with approved authorities but then have to

come back to the administration for permission. so if we authorize use of force to do something with the many times fleeting opportunities there that our military forces see, then they have to come back up through a bureaucratic process to get permission, even though there's authority given to them, then we need to review the authorities and those permissions or we need to change the commanders because we apparently don't trust them to do the job we have given them to do. that's a real problem today. give the commanders the authority to execute the mission they have been given if they are not the right people, remove them, put somebody else in that can do that. otherwise, allow them to do the things they have been assigned tasked, and very capable of doing in what is currently the aumf that we have. we have become so overly bureaucratic in coming up through the system to get permission to basically do things that frankly colonels on

the battlefield or captains at sea are very capable of doing. >> thank you. mr. braniff, i was struck in your testimony that as i read it that just in the last 12 months we've seen a dramatic rise in these terrorist organizations and in their attacks. as i understand it, one of the things your organization does is keep track of these with objective metrics. and am i reading that right that even in the last year we have seen this problem get dramatically worse? >> mr. chairman if you compare the most violent terrorist organizations in 2013 to those in 2014 the level of violence from isil taliban, she bob, boko haram have increased between 2013 to 2014, according to preliminary data.

iraq afghanistan yemen somalia, libya have increased terror violence in our preliminary data from 2014. pakistan is the only sort of effected nation which has seen a decrease, out of countries where al qaeda and associated movement are active. so we have seen a year on year increase over the last 12 months, over the 12 months before that, and 12 months before that. the trend line is continuing to rise. partial explanation is that a lot of strategy now focuses on trying to build capabilities of partner nations to deal with the issue, and that's a slow process, things may get worse before they get better that's opportunistic read. pessimistic read is the organizations enjoyed greater safe haven in post arab spring world and seized on less stable governments and are exploiting

that safe haven. >> so dr. lynch, i am a little perplexed by a sentence you have in your prepared statement that says the u.s. has thus far crafted an effective strategy in responding to isil which has halted its momentum. is that the way you see the developments in the last year or so? >> thank you, chairman. yes, actually i think the way the administration has crafted the strategy as initial step has been quite effective. they managed to leverage the increased military commitment in iraq into the most important move, which was a change in government of iraq, and the removal of prime minister maliki who carried out misgovernment and corruption which lost and squandered all of the gains of the previous years by managing to then get new iraqi prime minister willing and able to reach out to iraqi sunnis, then to use air power and limited

military support the momentum of isil has been halted. they're no longer able to advance. they suffered a serious defeat in kobani thanks to coalition air power. and they have now seen significant reversal in the eyes of arab public opinion after the brutal murder of jordanian pilot. and momentum matters for them, their appeal was rooted in the idea they were a winner. now people aren't so sure. i think we may actually see people jumping off the band wagon faster than we think. >> appreciate it. obviously i hope the optimistic scenarios prove right. i worry we see momentum through our eyes, not necessarily through their eyes. at this time i yield to mr. smith. >> thank you just following up on that rather key point, there's problems all over the world. yemen ironically is a shiite uprising that overturned the government there that gets us

into the whole issue of decent governance in that region will depend on believe it or not saudi arabia and iran figuring out how to get along in that part of the world, neither one can advantage kwish the other and meanwhile doing dach to each other, that's perhaps subject to a whole other hearing. but this notion it is all falling apart, these guys are superman, going to take over everything, the analysis of isil is interesting. you watch the news reports, and the chairman's comments about how they're spreading that's what people believe. that's simply not the case. several months ago going to get my time line wrong, when they went rolling through, out of syria, went rolling through iraq everyone was saying they're going to be in baghdad next week. well, they're not and they're never going to be. they were as you mentioned rolled out of kobani. they have not taken any territory since that initial

surge and they have given back territory. they were also within miles of irbeal, but with allied support and support for the kurds, they were pushed back. you have to keep it in realistic perspective perspective. the greatest strength is what you said, these guys can't govern. they cannot deliver for the muslim population. in mosul it is falling apart. electricity is off pretty much every day, nobody is picking up the garbage they can't govern. the people there are only staying with them out of fear. so i do believe isil's momentum has been blunted and it is interesting, blunted in part with the help of u.s. military but blunted more by their own weaknesses, and that's what we have to remember. and that's what i want to ask general flynn about. i get this, it is an existential threat, i agree with you therefore we have to amass all

of our forces and figure out how to defeat them, but fundamentally do you disagree with the statement that u.s. military might is simply not in position to defeat this ideology because of this clash of civilizations, because of the way the muslim world looks at western aggression and that the only way we are going to be successful is if we get moderate muslims to rise up against these folks and support them? do you think it would be good to drop a bunch of troops into syria and iraq and get them? or don't you see how that would perhaps play into the hands of isil, and if so, what does it mean to say we are going to mount all of our military might and go get them? don't we have a little bit of a knot in that regard? >> so the answer quick answer is -- >> sorry that was like six questions. it is early in the morning. >> you typically do that to me.

so overall, the answer is yes. >> yes, you believe -- >> yes, that i don't think i don't believe what you said about dropping in, you know hundreds of thousands or u.s. forces, you also said that they are an extension threat. i wouldn't sit here today and say isis is existential threat to this country. >> broader ideology. >> but the broader ideology is one that will get inside our bloodstream, get inside our dna if you will and will permanent ee ate over time if we don't do something about it now, so it doesn't help us to just wait to do something. now, when i describe you know, and what i recommended about the combination of the elements of national power i mean, you look at the information campaign that's being waged not by just isis but by al qaeda at large and the way they're able to do

it, the sophistication they're able to do it that campaign alone, the military has some little bits and pieces of trying to counter that on a tactical battlefield, but there has to be broader imagination that this country working with partners, working with some of the so-called moderate nations, and i say that in my statement about we have partners out there, and you know, we got to really be honest with ourselves about some of the partners. i mean we can't continue to fund and do all of these kinds of things and have some of these nations sit at the table with the united states of america when in fact we know they're funding some of these organizations. that's a diplomat i can tool that we have to leverage. there are economic tools that we have to lever. when you say we are going after terror financing, going to stop this guy, shut down this money being made by the oil refinery those are tactical things. we have to look at how are we

dealing with the moderate frankly the moderate arab world and these nations where we have economic partnerships and relationships and we need to ask them are they doing everything they can from the role of being moderate. >> to clarify, i think dr. lynch would agree, i am not going to say that there's a moderate muslim nation, we are talking about more individual people and groups than one nation or another. and for instance, i mean, the biggest success that we had in iraq was the on bar awakening and that wasn't a government, that was sunni tribes rising up and saying, you were there -- >> you know, i agree. it took 50,000 more troops too. the anbar awakening was in sent advised by another 50000 troops on the ground. >> the anbar awakening was force multiplier by 2 million. >> i talked to some of the individuals almost on a daily basis involved in this.

i guess what i'm telling you, congressman, is that we have to be far more sophisticated and we really do have to use our imagination to defeat this ideology. tactically need to go after isis and any other safe haven, we have to be more sophisticated in application of all the instruments of national power to achieve what it is i believe we need to achieve over a long period of time as you recognize in opening statement. >> i won't disagree with that. the only thing i say is i worry a great deal about the notion that people are focused on the u.s. military as the solution to this problem and i worry when we talk about oh the aumf has to be open to go anywhere, any time. believe me, i love the military. you work with them you ask them if they can do something is the answer ever no? it is not. you got five guys, can you defeat these that's how they're oriented. that's terrific. but that isn't always the right

strategy. because sometimes there are things that military might can't do, and in this case can really sort of turn it back around on us if we aren't careful. >> but there is i'm sorry, i don't want to get into too much of this but there is a benefit to applying pressure on an enemy. >> absolutely. >> so you have to not let them not have a sound night's sleep anywhere where these vicious individuals exist and groups exist. and in the meantime all the other pieces we have to bring to bear. that's really my argument. and that's one administration to the next because i think the last administration struggled and maybe came to that realization later on. >> not an easy answer to know when to apply force and when not to. and it is there's a lot more tactics than strategy. you have been generous with the time, i yield back. >> thank you very much.

general flynn in 2002, the authorization for use of military force basically said the president is authorized to use armed forces of the united states as he determines to be necessary and appropriate. why do you think we now have an aumf before us that puts restrictions on it on things that the president claims he can do without an aumf. >> my answer would be whatever the decision is between this body and the executive branch of government, we have to make sure in one sense we have to play our cards close to our chest meaning don't discount any option that the united states of america has by telegraphing what the options are or not going to be. we're not going to commit

troops, do this or that. i think that we have to play a very smart card game with the aumf. i think on this aumf thing like i said that's not a comprehensive strategy, that's a component of something we need and like i said to the chairman we have to make sure that we -- when we lay this out to our military forces primarily and to a degree some inside of our intelligence community that they have the full authority to be able to execute the tasks that they're going to be assigned. otherwise you're tying our hands behind our back, so to speak, and we are slowing the system down through unnecessary bureaucracy. >> thank you. dr. lynch, do you really think that a group of barbarrian thugs that would make a human being kneel down before them and cut their heads off really care if

they're marginalized? do you care, do you really think a group of barbearian thugs that put a fellow muslim in a cage, douse him with gas, set him on fire, watch him burn to death really care if they're marginalized? and if you think that, how long do you think it will take for this marginalization to take place. >> thank you congressman. that's a great question and a really important one. i don't think they care. but the nature of their not caring is extremely important. so basically when you're a group like al qaeda or like isil, you have two basic strategies to pursue, same as election here play to your base or try to reach out to median voter, and what you're seeing with isil is very much a base strategy, right? they have decided that they want to mobilize the already

radicalized, most dangerous people the disenfranchised, ones that are already radicalized, want to get them to syria and iraq. what we are seeing by press accounts, the mid open source accounts, flow of foreign fighters is increasing. in other words, the brutal videos are actually inspiring that very small number of people and getting them to leave cairo leave tunis and come out to isil. but at the same time, they're alienating the broader mainstream public. so the way i would reframe your question is is this drying up their pool of recruits faster than they can get them and extract them and bring them foo their fight, and i think the answer to that is still unclear. that's why i am advocating a strategy in which we try and accelerate their marginalization and alienation from that broader pool of potential recruits. and so no i don't think they care in the slightest. many of you remember the old

battles between about the strategy of al qaeda and iraq. response to criticism he was alienating muslims by butchering shiites said i don't care, i am closer to god than you are. i don't care about the muslim that abandoned gone. he chose a base strategy which is what isil has done, we need to recognize that and try and make them pay the cost for that base strategy. >> and that cost is? >> that cost is to continue to -- i think we already started this, and i think our arab allies have done this is really strong strategic communication campaigns to highlight the barbarity, deflate detentions to power, and to puncture their mystique in such a way that the alienated disenfranchised youth

in tune is or libya doesn't see it as attractive, noble or heroic thing to go and join the group. i think that's the way we need to approach them, to undermine them deflate them, rather than to exaggerate their capabilities. >> thank the gentleman. mr. o'rourke. >> thank you. general flynn thank you for your testimony and service. i think you made a number of excellent points, including need to have a clear comprehensive strategy from the administration before we move forward with an authorization for use of military force. you also talked about our need to rethink our relationships with regional allies and i think you said something to the effect if they fail to adhere to global standards and norms and values, and international law, we need to rethink our ties. i think you maybe even said cut off those ties. when i think about our allies there, the royal family in saudi

arabia, the prior leadership in yemen, alma law key in iraq these are governments that in many cases are amongst most corrupt or venal or oppressive in the world, yet they are our allies in this fight. how do we pursue a strategy in that region and be consistent to the advice that you gave us which i think is really good advice. i think those repressive regimes and our relationships kbi indicate our ability to be effective in the middle east. >> thanks very much for asking that question. this is the essence of the problem. this is not a military phenomenon that we are facing back to the ranking members. what he was talk about with military, boots on the ground

everybody sort of throws that phrase around we need to stop using that need to understand what does that mean. this is a social cultural psychological phenomenon particularly in the arab world and potential breakdown of arab world order over time, if we do not change this mindset and really move some of these countries to change their internal behavior, what we saw in egypt as an example of essentially three regimes, nowal assist ee in there, now he is trying to bring a sense of security and stability before they can think about returning to any form of prosperity. i think a country like jordan the king and how they treat their population and how they are being you know, really

exceptional, moderate example within this very very difficult part of the world that we are in there are others, there are other templates if you will out there. the underlying conditions that i think everybody recognizes, all of us recognize, if those underlying conditions don't change, then what is going to happen is this problem is going to continue to grow and it is going to undermine the stability of the countries to the point they're going to lose. they're eventually going to lose. it is not just iraq and syria and what we are seeing there. i mean, we were already talking about a lot of other places around the transregion area that are at risk. what happened with the houthi separatist movement in yemen this movement has been going on for a long, long time and then of course you've got al qaeda that took over this military base.

i mean libya, those two states now, and we should look at ourselves, those two states right now are failing or failed states or will become that way because who will recognize yemen? will it be us or is it going to be iran? iran fully backs that houthi separatist movement that just took over yemen. that was a country we were trying to defeat the threat this sunni version of radical islam. that's the essence of the problem. we have to look at how do we want to act. when somebody sits at the table of the united states of america they better be sitting there fully recognized in international law and at least having a recognition of internationally accepted norms and behaviors. if they don't we are being hypocritical. >> i wonder if we have the will to act on that and to really

deliver some consequences, withdrawing military aid isolating those countries, rethinking our relationships. in the past we have proven unable to do that or unwilling for probably important tactical or strategic reasons. i think we will really be tested now. my time is up. thank you. >> real quickly, we are not chained by oil. the united states is no longer chained to the middle east for oil. that's a big deal. so sorry. sorry, chairman. >> appreciate it. mr. lan born. >> thank you, mr. chairman. general flynn, i have a question for you. i am really concerned that just this week president barack obama was interviewed and compared fighting isis to a big city mayor fighting crime. and that really troubles me because there's no comparison. that's a horrible and poor analogy. in a big city, if you have criminals like muggers

carjackers, drug dealers they're not trying to kill the mayor and take over the city government, which is what isis is trying to do in the various countries in the middle east. which is what isis is trying to do. there's just no comparison to a big-city mayor fighting crime. >> what i have said is that you cannot defeat an enemy that you do not admit exists. and i really strongly believe that the american public it ice

noet to take away the danger of the thugs and the criminals that exist in our own system. but that's not what it is that we are facing in this discussion that we're having right now. it's totally different. >> also, let me change subjects and ask about guantanamo bay. there was an interesting exchange over in the senate. my friend and colleague was talking to an administration official and making the point that the fight was brought to our homeland, before guantanamo bay ever existed. and even if the president succeeds in shutting it down, the fight will continue against this. do you agree with me that it's important to have a place where we can detain the worst of the worst until such time they can

go before a military tribunal. >> thank you for asking that question. a couple things. there are three ways to deal with a terrorist. you kill them. you capture them. or you turn them. and you work with these patter in nations around the world. and the saudis actually had a pretty effective program a few years back turning them and things like that. those are the three way to deal with terrorists. we say -- this gets back to the question on the aumf. right now, we're not capturing anybody. we might go out and detain somebody and, you know, in its work between the military and

the f.b.i. like we did with this guy in libya. but there's a lot of others out there that we probably would benefit from capturing. i mean, we used to say when i was in the special operations community, that had we not had the ability to professionally interrogate those that we capture, the high-value targets or the mid value targets, we might as well take that cadillac and bring it on home and park it in the garage. i've run those fa silties and we know how to do them very professionally because we learned a really ugly lesson over teb years ago now. you have to be able to do that. >> thank you. mr. chairman, i yield back. mr. cooper.

>> first, thank you very much for being here this morning. you've touched a bit on other terrorist groups in the region. can you please provide an update on hesbollah? >> so hesbollah is an arraign yan-backed group. i believe we are still designating them as a terrorist organization, our state department. hesbollah is deeply involved in syria. so they are fighting in syria members are fighting and they're ag which youly leading and doing some of the special operations operations-type training.

some of the disruption of things in that particular country. so hesbollah is a very dangerous organization. ther responsible for killing many, many americans. we need to not let them sort of get passed on any of this. >> thank you, congresswoman. let me just say very quickly, hesbollah has been in a very difficult position for the lst e last several years because of its role in syria. it's exposed now in ways it never was before. it enjoyed in the past a very

solid, impregnable base. and, from there it was able to play a dom nantd role in not just politics in lebanon but in the overall political system. now, lebanon is a state that is hanging on by its fingernails. there's increasing signs of dwrumbling. but, also, at the same time radicalization of those communities saying whooi aren't you fighting israel?

>> they've seen men out there killing and murdering civilians. so they've lost that card. they're much weaker because the lebanonese state is much weaker. >> thank you, congresswoman. i mentioned the word sectarianism. i find this to be a very important issue that we have to understand that one of the ways that extremist ideologies can become more mainstream is when soets are polarized and people feel like they have to pick a side.

general flin, how worried are you about american citizens becoming radicalized, training overseas and returning back to the united states? and are there additional steps that the u.s. should take in addressing those citizens that travel to train with isis in sere yad e ya and iraq? and then later return back to the united states and the threats that they would pose here? i'd like to get your perspective? >> yeah, first, i think that our f.b.i. and the leadership of the f.b.i. is doing a phenomenal job

dealing with this issue here obama the homeland. just to give you a little perspective. when somebody shows up to syria okay, and this has been going only for a while. they do a little vetting. in the other parts of the vetting them they look for individuals who have different skill sets and who have savvy with the internet. so they're sophisticated in how they recruit, particularly when they arrive. and those individuals then get put into a different pipeline. they may not get into into the suicide attacker pipeline, but they maybe get put into a different pipeline. and those are the individuals that there will be sort of a

different future for them to maybe come back to this country and get involved in additional recruiting additional activities and maeb you know, larger-scale types of attacks that we're trying to avoid. so i just think that a variety of reasons why they get reyuted. the internet is a big, big part of this. i think the f.b.i. is doing the best job that they can. but what we really need to recognize and track who these persons are. to be honest with you, if somebody is going to conspire to fight against us, which is essentially what they're doing, there also has to be a discussion, at least, about their citizenship. >> so you think the additional steps is to look very carefully at those people who travel. my concern too, is turkey is a con duet for people traveling into syria in those areas. are there additional steps we