and these thieves are ripping us all off at the same time. >> and ms. wolf was going to answer for me, too, and i know i'm over time. >> i'll keep this very brief, not necessarily an alternative, but i do want to thank dr. and mrs. kroot for coming forward. b.

>> very excited to be on stage with general bleedlove. i need to do a blanket apology.

. i just got out of den tangherlini surgery this morning sorks if you see me drooling on this side of the face, that's why. we were talking you'd like to begin. i'd like for you to do that with a broad brush through of the coming nato summit that's next summer. the last one was last year and i remember covering that, covering president obama and then secretary of defense chuck hagel. the big news was all about the coalition against isis. that's not going to be the case, i imagine, next year. why don't you start off with your thoughts about what the key outcomes of next year's summit should be and i'd love to hear me tell you what you think they will be. >> thank you, first of all, and thank you for having me. it's good to speak to this crowd. as i looked at the diversity of

those in attendance, i expect a lively question and answer period. that's all very good. i think that in talking about warsaw, you start at wales. i was privileged to be at wales. i think we saw an agreement to make probably the most substantiative changes to our alliance in the history of the alliance. i was privileged to sit in the room with the heads of 28 nations, encolluding our president, and watch them with their deliberations. i think the things that struck me most and right up front was how quick and how firm their commitment to solidarity, their commitment to collective defense, their u commitment to the bedrock of what nato is all about. how quickly that came and how they carried that message. the military commander that our

leaders saw so clearly that commitment to our solidarity and to collective defense. and then we talked about all of those changes to to nato that you have seen begin since wales. some of them already come to fruition since wales. changes in the readiness and responsiveness of elements of our program, changes to our command and control structure, to better address some of the issues that we saw in russia. how those now in large are you've seen the standup of our nato force integration units in our smaller nations forward. you have seen the multinational northeast given the mission of being ready every day, all day for an article v contingency.

you have seen us implement, we tested it in its alert and deployment and it's already been exercised. clearly, it's step one of several steps to get to the final adaptation of our force structure, but i think what is good to see is that the tasks that the leaders of our nations gave us in the military at wales we have made great progress on already. and that's why i also mentioned that i don't like to talk about the road to warsaw. it makes it seem like warsaw is an end. warsaw is anything but an end. it is the net set of agreed to adaptations that we have to make to continue to prepare ourselves and better position ourselves for the challenges that we see

out there. and i think that if i could sum it up into just a couple words, the road through warsaw is about looking at the readiness and the responsiveness of the entire nato force structure. lots of talk about the vjtf. it's a very robust brigade-size capability completely enabled by fires and other things. but it's a brigade-sized unit. a brigade-sized unit is not a big deterrent value. it's a great capability to meet challenges we see. e deterrent value comes in the entire nato force structure being more ready and responsive. so i think that the road through warsaw is about the continued adaptation of the nato force structure. how we continue to bring our forces to better responsiveness and readiness to meet those

challenges. so that's what i see coming down the road from warsaw. >> you just did that without ever once mentioning the word russia. >> well, i think that's important. let's talk about that. since wales in nato we talked about strategist direction east and strategic direction south. and they are two very different issues. strategic direction east is all about russia, it's about russia changing the rules and your force is now to change international boundaries. they continue to occupy the peninsula of crimea. and so strategic direction east is about addressing russia.

strategic direction south is more about dealing with the problems that our southern allies see every day in the flows of people, criminality, terrorism, foreign fighters that are escaping these ungoverned spaces starting in western iraq, going through the la vont into northern africa. so a very different problem. now i'm sure we're going to get into it in q&a, but the two are beginning to merge as we see russia apart of the syria equation. let me also point out and i think it's very interesting that in our last ministerials, one of our bright, well-thought ministers brought up that general breedlove, you talk about strategic direction east and strategic direction south.

we in the north are worried about strategic direction north and what we're beginning to see happen in the arctic with the militarization of the arctic by the russians. so now there's a voice that begins to talk about strategic direction north, strategic direction east and strategic direction south. so it is bigger than just russia. >> today is a huge day because as we all know at 5:05 this evening will be the long awaited bilateral between president obama and vladimir putin. the last time the two of them sat down for a formal face to face was in 2013 in northern ireland. a lot has happened since then, as we are all aware. the cancelled meeting with putin because of edward snowden. we have had the russian invasion of crimea. we have had arming separatists in ukraine. back when this meeting took

place, there was a g8. there's no longer anymore. if it weren't for john kerry i adopt think we'd be having too many conversations with russians. i'd like to ask you how much of importance do you place on this meeting today and what realistically can we expect to come out of it? >> i u think i can answer the first half, not sure about the second importance. what importance do we place on this? i think it's incredibly important. we have said, and many nations have said, that we need to have a dialogue, we need to be able to communicate with and engage russia. we talk an awful lot about europe whole, free and at peace. i probably am out of step, but i add prosperous to that.

if you want a europe whole, free, at peace and prosperous, you're going to need to engage a nation that has a vast energy reserve, a nation that has vast energy infrastructure, a nation that has incredible rail and road capability to connect. and so if we are truly going to find that final way forward to be whole, free and at peace and prosperous in europe, i think we have to find a way to engage russia. i think that before we can truly get to that level of engagement that giving us the opportunity we want, we also have to find a way that russia can rejoin a community of norms that does not embrace changing international boundaries by force. so there's work to be done. but all of that work starts with dialogue and so i think it is

very important that our senior leaders talk. >> russia rejoining a community of norms can syria possibly be that route? >> well, that's a good question. how to answer it. any way we can begin to have a conversation is a step towards where we need to be. i think that as the european commander and certainly as a nato officer, i'm more focused on the european piece of this. and i think if truly russia wants to rejoin that world of norms, a first step would be to begin in ukraine. show that they are ready to rejoin the world of norms and

western value in ukraine. so that's what i would put on the table first. >> do you think you understand the view within the administration as sort of on russia in part because of your position right now? do you think that we understand what exactly russia is trying to do with syria? >> in syria, well, i think that there are let me answer. i can speak for myself as the military commander in nato. first of all, i think that russia very much wants to be seen as an equal on the world stage as a great power on the world stage. i think that russia very much

i think that russia very much wants to take the world's eyes=á off of what they are continuing to do in ukraine. watch here the good thing we're doing in syria. don't pay attention to what's going on in ukraine. so i think that's very important. i think that russia very much wants to maintain warm water ports and airfield capabilities and they saw that possibly being challenged by the progress on the ground of those opposing the assad regime. i think that russia very much wants to enable and prolong the assad regime because that is their legitimate door to their ports and their airfields in syria. i think that russia wants to be able to slow the advance of the opposition to mr. assad in syria

and then after all of that, i think that they will do some counter isil work in order to legitimize their approach to syria. >> you listed many things before you got to isil. >> that is the way i see it. >> defense secretary ash carter said last week when he was speaking to the press standing next to the ukrainian defense minister that he doubted whether or not, i can't remember how he put it, but he said there's doubt interests truly converge in syria. he said it was possible that the russian military build up could amount to just pouring gasoline on a fire. are you similarly concerned or pessimistic? >> well, i think that if nations could come to an agreed tact to

how to deal with isil, this would be a good thing. i think that, as you heard explained there, that is the question. is this really about isil or is it about all those other things that i just list ed. and so i think that what we need to do is watch what they do. i have said more than once, i'm always asked what is russia doing and now in eastern ukraine or excuse me, been asked more than once what is mr. putin doing now in eastern ukraine. what i almost always answer is if someone walks up to you and said they know what mr. putin is thinking, you should discount what they say. i have learned that you very few people know what mr. putin is thinking. so what we do in a military sense is we look at the capabilities and the capacities that mr. putin is creating in

eastern ukraine and then derive from that what they could do, rather than try to guess what is on their mind. so here's what concerns me about what's going on in syria. we see some very sophisticated air defenses going in. we see very snis indicated air to air aircraft going into these air force. i have not seen isil flying any airplanes that require sa-15s or 22s. i have not seen isil flying any airplanes that require snis indicated air to air capabilities. so what i'm doing is what i have always done. i look at the capabilities and the capacities that are being created and i determine from that what might be their intent. these very sophisticated air defense capabilities are not about isil. they are about something else. >> can you complete that thought

then? >> as i said before, i think high on mr. putin in russia's list is preserving the regime against the those putting pressure on the regime and those who might be supporting putting pressure. >> you said people are always asking you what is putin thinking. so i will rephrase that question. do we even understand what mr. putin wants in ukraine? >> so i go back to the original premise. i'm not sure what mr. putin wants. i agree with most of them. and i look at the capabilities

and capacities that mr. putin is creating, and i ask to what end would they be? so what we see now, some like to call it a movement towards a frozen conflict. i don't like that term. i think it's more of a warm conflict. i think mr. putin is continuing to provide those things that allow the conflict to simmer in the southeastern part of ukraine. and why would he do that? i think what he's demonstrated is he can destabilize and keep the situation unstable in the southeast. why would he do that? if the situation is unstable in the southeast. this discourages foreign investment. it keeps the ukrainian forces in the field, which is a cost and a burden to the government and if

te keeps the situation in southeast ukraine unstable and continues to demonstrate to the people of the rest of greater ukraine that the government can't influence or retain control of this area, so all of this is e destabilizing and not help tofl a government that needs to get on with reform. that needs to get on with economic recovery, that needs to encourage international investment, et cetera, et cetera, and a warm conflict in ukraine is detriment to all of those possibilities. >> do you think nato is eventually going to get okay with the idea of just sustain ing a warm conflict? >> again, i'm at great risk to speak for nato, so i won't do that. i think what is important is that the nations of the west

more than nato continue to see what is happening in eastern ukraine. we talk about getting to michk to where we measure what's going on in ukraine. and the implementing agreements of february last year point to the agreement and in that agreement there are some pretty important points. one of them, which i like to talk about often is the reestablishment of the international order of ukraine. the reestablishment of the sovereign actions of ukraine inside of its internationally recognized borders. there are a lot of things that need to be done before we are there. and remember that we have had

well over 1500 armored vehicles, armored capabilities moved into eastern ukraine. we have air defenses there now. we have russian command and control structures there now. we have the stockpiles of equipment to support those forces. in order to get all of that out to reestablish the border of ukraine, that will take months and months. what about a good show of faith? show that we have a responsible way forward to e reestablishing the international border of ukraine. >> what do you think are the chances of the agreement coming into fruition in the next coming months? >> next couple months? >> not couple months, in the coming months. i mean, the krem lin have continued to provide military

support. >> i think this is a long-term proposition, not a short-term proposition. >> so ash carter has, in some ways, become the secretary of reassurance. everywhere he goes he seems as if he's reassuring allies that america's military will be behind that. and definitely in the case of our eastern european allies. almost all of the reassurance steps that we have taken so far militarily seem to be temporary. we have seen rotational deployment. we have seen more exercises. we have had had supplement l funding. what needs to be permanent? what is the new normal? >> so i like the second part of your question better than the first. i won't use the permanent word.

what the new normal is i think we'll see these assurance measures for quite some time. it's more than the united states. it's about our nato allies being a part of assurance. i was tasked as the military leader to develop assurance measures. it was described as air, land and sea, north, center and south. so we have set about building those assurance measures, air, land and sea, so we have done that. and we have a great rotational presence of several nations, but certainly the united states, of ground forces which we say heel to toe and continues in theball tick nations, poland and romania so we have a land presence there

to train and then that land presence facilitates exercises or receives increased presence to do more exercises. in the air presence, we have tripled our air policing stance so that before the russian invasion of crimea, we had one set of air policing operating in the northeast. now we have three. it's taken several forms, increased positioning of our groups now the u.s. has four forward destroyers. each is capable that we have continually presence from the med and other locations.

so we have developed these air, land and sea assurance measures, north, center and south. i think that's the new normal and i think we saw that affirmed through the last series of ministerials and that will be, i think, further defined as we go through warsaw. >> what's your view on that? >> i think that we will never see -- you're talking with hospitals and dod schools? >> you can ratchet it back. maybe not the schools. >> i don't want to speak for our nation's decision makers. i'm not hopeful that we would see a large new movement of

forces out of america into europe for a lot of reasons. one, you don't uproot all the jobs of a large force of america in today's world. i think what you're going to see in the future is increased rotational presence and i think you're going to see an increase in our forward stations of stocks and supplies and capabilities and then forces can go back and exercise and work to create a presence. in all honesty, i do not see large u.s. forces permanently meaning hospitals, schools, commissari commissaries, returning. >> what are the next steps in ukrainian military training and assistance then? are we training these guys to do legal things? i know we're not providing legal

aid at this point, but why won't we give them -- if we are training them, why won't we give them weapons? >> what we will do in the future with the ukrainians is largely up to the ukraines, what they ask for. curre currently they are training their national guard troops. i've been there and visited the training. and we are training them in skills just like we train ourselves in small unit skills. this is really how do you apply the words. so we're in the midst of

training program for the national guard troops. >> can you walk through for me, though, the rational at this point in not providing them lethal weapons? >> i think i can best do that by reciting what you have heard the pundits say. and that is that lethal weapons may be seen as provocative in a situation where there is hope that we have reached a wall or at least a decrease in the fighting. i think that's what you hear most say. >> but you sound like a man who doesn't believe that.

>> you have heard me, many in this group, has heard me before. i testified that i believe that as we approach this problem that we should not take any options off the table. that all options should be considered. that has been my advice and that hasn't changed. >> warsaw, can we talk a little bit about what before we get to problems in the east, what can nato do about problems in the south? i'm speaking specifically on migration. what should the rule of nato be here and is this something that will be taken up in a real way next year? >> once again, i will not put words in the mouths of 28 political deciders. what i always talk about is that

nato has things that it can offer if our political leadership chooses to do that. let me point you to two great examples. the problem of piracy off the horn of africa. nato partnered with the eu. the military competency, the military command and control structure, the military force structure of nato married with the eu's unique other governmental capabilities reaching into the judiciary policing and other assured functions so that the military competency afloat married to the eu other governmental e competencies have essentially eliminated piracy. clearly the tactics and techniq techniques and procedures of the ships and the merchant lines have also helped. what you saw was a great marriage of what nato can bring

to a problem with what the eu can bring to a problem, eliminated piracy off the horn of africa. so we have competencies and capabilities that we can bring to a problem. and just one more quick example. i think it's the ongoing progress slow but measurable progress we're making in kosovo. the mission working with the rule of law, judiciary, policing, coupled being recognized by both capitals as the force keeping and maintaining what we call a safe and secure environment and guaranteeing freedom of movement. so we have a nato capability

unique military capacities and disciplines, married to the other governmental capabilities of o the european union bringing opportunity to kosovo. so i think there are places where nato in concert with other entities that can address part of the root problem, there's opportunity there. but again, this is entirely a decision to be taken by our nato political leadership. >> do you see a challenge for nato in figuring out a way to balance allies, concerns in the east versus the south? >> i think it's best been said probably three ministerials including at wales. you're tired of me saying that, but the capacities that we build

and sustain in our capabilities these are applicable to both problems. the maritime parts are equally applicable in the medtarian as they are in the north see or black sea. so there are things that apply to both. so as we go forward building and enhancing our readiness and responsiveness, all of that brings tools to the table that can be used either east or south. the problem in the south is there are so many more tools that need to be in the kickback that are beyond nato's core military competency that we would need to be in concert with others to truly get out the

issues in the south. >> thank you, general. we're ready for question and answer. >> thank you. my question to you is about the issue of russia's antiaccess area denial in the baltic e sea region. there's a fleet of russia. we have air incidents have more of them. we have issue of deployments. we have them already rockets brigade. we'll have them the next few years. what ir respectable what nato would do on the issues and these

are dangerous weapons with a range of 1,000 kilometers offensive weapons. also we have a new air base so my question to you is what should be the proper nato response towards that and what you think could be feasible in that matter. thank you. >> i think i saw three questions emb embedded in that. let me first because it's the easiest to deal with talk about the sea and air instance that you mentioned. first, i think we need to recognize that all nations have a right to exercise and train.

we do as well. what is important that we do these exercises and training it rations responsibly. that we adhere to norms in how we conduct them. that we properly announce them when they start, when they finish, who is going to be a part of it, what the objective is. and invite each other to come and be a part of view said exercises. so when it comes to exercises, if done properly, we should not challenge this it. we do them. clearly there are some issues and you have brought some of them up. wrong air space, flying through congested air space, not announcing start and finish, large size, not invited, there's things that need to be worked out. but let's at least say that

russia as well as the west has all the rights to train, if done responsibly. we have mechanisms. one of the places we actually still have good mill to mill communication, we do a series that stands for incidents at sea, but we have broadened it to talk to air, land and sea so we can continue to try to deconflict what is happening out there. so as to a antiaccess area denied, typically we talk about this in terms of building anti-ship and anti-air capabilities, but as you have brought up, you broadened it some to land attack capabilities.

anti-access area denial is a growing problem. a large platform for capability, as you have pointed out. i would also point out that in their occupation o of krocrimea russia developed a very strong capability in the black sea. essentially, their coastal defense cruise missiles range the entire black sea and their air defense missiles range about 40%, 40 to 5% 50% of the black sea. so it's not limited to the baltic region. it has grown. already in the black sea. frankly it's one of the things we're beginning to watch that they develop in the northeast mediterranean. as we see these capable air defense capabilities beginning to show up in syria, we're a

little worried about another bubble being created in the eastern mediterranean. so how do we react to that? first and foremost, we have to realize that in peacetime, we need to exercise and operate in this air space to assure that we have and declare that we have open access to the baltic seas and the black seas. you have seen a responsible series of exercises which have been announced and conducted both in the baltic and black seas and those will continue as a part of the assurance measures that we talk about. we need to contest that those are not forbidden spaces. they are open areas of water and air. and second of all, as an alliance, we need to step back and take a look at our

capability in a military sense to address a challenge. this is about investment, this is about training and capabilities, et cetera. >> there were a slew of questions in the back. all the way on the end. >> i've professor at princeton university and a senior fellow. so you have called on the europeans to do r more militarily, maybe spend more. but the europeans are doing a lot of other things and it's a low growth area. take the sanctions estimated to cost them a quarter or half a percent of gdp. they are spending a lot of money on economic renewal and things like that. to spend money on defense now would mean to take money away from something else. in fact, a lot of the big countries are spending less. so if you think they should,

where do you think the money should come from? should they be spending less on things like sanctions or military activity elsewhere? or less on getting their own economic house in order or what? >> so i'm going to answer your question and you would like my answer. that is a question you should pose to our political leadership as a military individual. it's really not me to talk to nations about what they should do in an economic sense. i don't mean to be flip with you, but that's a question better asked to military leaders. but let me do talk to a couple things. the personal pronounce you used was you. i haven't called on the nations to increase their spending. what i do as a military man is call on the nations to invest widely the money that they have and to help them understand

through programs that the supreme allied commander for transformation, we give them investment targets and capability targets so that we can help the nations understand what they are going to invest in, how they can best add to the allianc alliance's capability. so we talk about that. then the second thing that i do do is i encourage the nations to use their military force as a part of our ongoing assurance measures and adaptation measures. this is one of the places we have had a good response. as we set up to build the original, we felt like we needed three or four center nations to have a sustainable rotation of the center part of the very high readiness joint task force. and when we went to the nations

and asked, we had seven nations respond. so while the nations do face challenges in their budgets and their investment packages, what they have done is put their forces into the mix and made them available to nato to do these things that we called for in wales. adapt the national core northeast and build, et cetera. so i do encourage, again, i don't want to be flip, i do encourage the nations to look at their investment profiles. i am as encouraging about inside of those investment profiles hit ing the 20% target, which is that 20% of the investment should be on recapitalization and buying capital assets which enable their militaries.

but as the military, i'm more about helping them shape what they do buy and then employ what they have. >> you had a question, the gentleman in front. right here. >> sydney from breaking defense. general, i was talking the other day with general hodges about his component of command. e he talked about how very different this it russian threat is from the threat officers like you grew up with in the cold war and how it requires not only different equipment, but different modes of operation, really a different culture in terms of initiative, decentralization, what's

different about this compared to the old days and how in terms of investments, organizational structure and the culture on leadership of your forces do nato forces need to adapt to russia take two? >> okay, thanks. i call him the energizer bunny. he's one of the most -- i don't know how to say it. he's one of the most energized commanders you've ever met out there. he's really making a great difference as he engages the armies of europe. now we're talking in my u.s. hat as ben is a u.s. commander, not a nato commander. so how do adapt?

let's turn that back a little bit to when i first became the u.s. commander. two years and three months or so ago, we were looking at how we were going to bring ourselves out of afghanistan. what the draw down was going to look like in afghanistan. and then how as a u.s. commander and a nato commander we would adapt our force structure after that mission began to draw down. long before the invasion of crimea, we decided that we had become an alliance that was very good at counterinsurgency operations. we have really perfected this business of exski quit intelligence and striking that

on the ground in a e precise way at exactly the right time to get the right effects. that is an important skill set and that skill set does contribute to other military capabilities. but what we had not done for over 14 years was that larger kinetic battle that collective defense battle the ability to fight at brigade division and even core level that we just had not done forever. so even before the invasion of crimea, we began thinking about how do we adapt u.s. force capability and nato force capability post isaf. and of course, then e we had crimea, other issues, and we saw that truly we do we saw that truly we do need to

get back to our core capabilities and capacities in nato, those higher end capabilities that enable us to do collective defense when we now have a threat that demonstrates that they will change international borders by force. and so, i think it was presheci what we decided to do and we have refined the approach to build exercises and training that sort of re-enable, re-train, re-grasp those skill sets that allow us to meet our collective defense capabilities. and so you have seen a series of exercises and pretty soon jaguar 15 in the southwest mediterrane mediterranean, primarily centering on spain, italy, et cetera.

we will have a fairly large exercise to help us to hone those larger force skills. >> right in the middle. uniformed officer. thank you. >> thank you, sir. spanish defense a tachement always happy to see you. about the strategic direction south, you mention, what is the ucom's operational relationship with africa? >> okay. so the question i think is what is a -- good to see you, my friend. what is ucom's relationship with africa? so it's two fold. as you know, the afri-com commander, my good friend rod rodriguez really has no forces assigned to him other than a marine force which is at -- as you know.

and so, all of the afri-com force structure is really shared with ucom. we are a force share ere with rod rodriguez so the bases of u.s.-european command shared with our great allies like yours from no rhone around through the mediterranean are those platforms by which ucom helps support afri-com's missions. item two, clearly your nation and other nation who is are in the ucom area of responsibility are affected by everything happening in north africa. all the things happening in north africa spill across the mediterranean into your nations. and so, ucom supporting nations like yours our relationship is how do we help you deal with those issues.

so i say all the time that my command has its own war fighting responsibilities. we have our own issues. but one of the things that ucom soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines do every day is enable centcom and afri-come so we have lots of responsibilities in both directions. >> let's go back to the back. second row from the end. >> hello. i'm poland's dcm. first, thank you very much, sir, for your leadership in leading nato, you know, in this effort to reassure the allies and to deter any possible disturbance in the region. i cannot overstate the importance of nato's presence of u.s. presence in the region as a factor to prevent any possible destability in the region.

i have a question but one a centers a road for warsaw. as a historian i can't help thinking about this in historical terms. there had been different roads for warsaw in the past. better to say different powers, use those roads for different purposes. to attack poland or to attack each other. the fact that we are talking in the context of a road through about increasing nato responsiveness and readiness and capability, to prevent any possible conflict, i think it speaks to a great historical achievement of nato and how nato was efficient in breaking up the geopolitical curse over poland and our neighbors. my question is, though, about the future. sir, you mentioned the long-term adaptation of nato in the -- as a kind of a perspective for nato summit in warsaw.

could you please dwell a little bit more -- i mean, what would be the main ingredients of that adaptation and what kind of, you know, ambition we should set to ourselves to make it substantial and real. thank you. >> so thanks for that question. and the answer is a bit broad because, again, what will happen is that the military commanders, myself, the saceur an ennew -- well, in here in a couple of days we'll have a new sacdeed. denny, french air force four star. the military commanders will put on the table a series of recommendations for our political leadership to consider. i would not want to right now sort of put that cat out in the open. but i think that you could broadly understand that they will follow along the lines of what i said before.

we need to continue to develop our readiness and responsiveness. we need to continue to invest in and develop a lot of capabilities. as you know, the alliance has nations which have a lot of great what i would call blocking and tackling center of mass capabilities. ground forces. certain air forces. certain naval forces. what we lack are exquisite things like strategic lift, intelligence surveil listens and reconnaissance. cyber defense. et cetera, et cetera. so, we need to take on developing those capacities in places where we are thin right now. and then again, as we talked about, we have -- we have already succeeded at changing the readiness and responsiveness

of portions of the nrf. we need to continue to adopt the nrf but that's not the end. that's why i say through warsaw and you correctly point out that may not be the best choice of words but i'm trying to communicate. but the point is we should not stop at the nrf in addressing our readiness and responsiveness. what truly will deter nations is as we bring the entire nato force structure, even just incrementally, more ready and responsive. and to the gentleman's previous question that takes money, doesn't it? prioritization and aloe case of money in order to do that. but i think as we go through warsaw into longer term adaptation, it's about capabilities that are shored in and about continuing to address our readiness and responsiveness. >> i think we have time for a couple more questions. right in the middle.

>> thank you. let's see. is it on? okay. joseph, cis. i'm going the try to provoke a little bit, i guess. nato has a lot of very good capabilities in terms of industrial scale war. which i think it was originally designed for. this spear tip force is also a pretty impressive new addition to that in terms of how quickly it can respond. but it seems when we discuss both tra steenlgic direction south as well as strategic direction east, we are seeing a lot of shall we say a mixture of internal and external security factors. so, you know, russia in eastern ukraine, well, there's also a separatist force there, too, which, you know, there's sort of intermingled and the ability to undermine state sovereignty even

from, shall we say, from the south, as well. you know, we look at the refugees coming in on a massive scale. you know, what kind of capabilities could nato develop in order the address this sort of internal/external mix that you see? perhaps either the streamlining of the communications between the internal policing forces or even the integration thereof. that would be my question. >> so i don't see that as provocative at all. i think that's heart of the matter on what we need to look for and that's what we're talking about all the time. some people label -- you talked about two things that i have written down as hybrid and south. some people like to talk about hybrid war. i normally call it unconventional war. hybrid makes it sound neat and new and flashy and all that. really hybrid is just old tools being applied in a different way and i call that unconventional

war. and then, south. let me attack that one first because it's easier. as we talked about earlier, in the south, this problem is i think bigger than the core competencies of nato. there's a lot of thing that -- a lot of things that nato can do about the problem in the south but the answer in the south is not military. it's military plus a lot of other things. diplomatic. informational. economic. et cetera, et cetera. and so in the south, nato can continue to develop capabilities and capacities that address the root problem or the problems of foreign fighter flows, extremists, terrorism, et cetera, et cetera. but the rest of governmental approaches will have to be applied to the bigger part of the problem.

ungoverned spaces. governments that cannot meet the expectations of their people. et cetera, et cetera. those are not core nato militaries. we need to be able to enable and pair with other organizations like the eu or the u.n. or whatever. i'm not a real -- i don't think that we should be developing specific capabilities outside of what really is nato's remit. we should pair with other organizations that have capabilities and capacities outside of that remit in the south. i hope you understand how i answered that. to the degree of this quote/unquote hybrid warfare or what i call unconventional warfare, this is an interesting issue. and in nato, we are already working on this to a certain degree in many of our nations

that are along our eastern periphery. and this is interesting because, again, most of the problems of unconventional warfare are not truly military to begin with. most of the problems are addressed by capabilities inside the moi. the little green men as they begin to show up will first be addressed by policing and legal functions. not necessarily military functions. until we determine what they are and that they're a military force. and so, we partner with our nations to help them understand and develop capabilities and capacities. there are those words again. inside of their nations to deal with these issues. we talk about recognize, characterize and attribute. recognize that you have an unconventional activity going on. not something legitimate.

charact eerize it as not a legitimate political movement, characterize it as not something emanating from your nation. and then, third, attribute it to an aggressor nation. if that is, in fact, the case. you might find out that it's a legitimate internal movement. but if we recognize, characterize and then attribute to an aggressor nation, now there are things that the nations of nato can talk about how do we more directly aid a country that's under such an attack? in nato, through several of our military capabilities, to include our special operations forces, both in nato and ucom, we are working with nations to look at this problem. inside their own country and how do they work it. i'll just tell you that in some of the nations we work with, it's done completely differently. in one nation it's almost an

entirely a military remit. and the chief of defense is given the mission. in another nation, actual nation, it is almost entirely a ministry of interior remit and it is handed over almost completely to policing and judiciary functions. so we work with the nations in their own way of dealing with the problemment we help them to build capability and capacity to address it and a framework of recognize, characterize, attribute in order to bring it to a position where we can look at in it a more nato or alliance way. >> we have about six or seven more minutes left. let's see if we can get as many as we can. right there. >> i'll try to answer shorter. >> i'll try to ask a shorter question so thank you. general breedlove, i'm from bucharest, romania. i'll have a parochial question.

obviously, the summit for my country perceived as a watershed moment and the renewed commitment of nato to the flank. still, not so much maybe romania but in other countries of let's say the eastern arc i'll call it with the balkans, poland and bucharest. there are voices who are talk about maybe an insufficiently developed deterrent of the article v commitment of nato, both in operational and political terms. obviously, i will not ask you to comment on the political aspects of this but i would be very interested in hearing what you would have to say from your standpoint as to the necessary and feasible ways that operationally nato could develop and strengthen the article v deterring capability and also in view of the warsaw summit of next year. thank you. >> that is not a short answer.

>> sorry about this. >> i'll try to hit a couple of high points. this is the $64,000 question. what deters? remember that out of wales we were first tasked to assure our nations and then as we developed our assurance measures we started to talk about what are and are there deterrents values in what we're doing. what deters? and many pundits 0pine and i agree that mr. putin understands the difference between a nato nation which has an article v attached to it and a non-nato nation. i mean, just tick out some of the places around the world. georgia. ukraine and other places where these are non-nato nations where

russia has invaded and holds portions of their land mass. so, we have to ask ourself what is deterrence. i'm going to give you a really short answer. i keep telling the nations that we have made a great progress since wales. i have said this a couple of times now. we have increased the readiness and responsiveness of the nrf and certainly of the vjtf. we have given the sacreur tasks back to alert stages. et cetera, et cetera. we have sped up and increased the ability to respond but it is not enough. what i think deters is that the entire -- i have said this now this will be the third time now i think. what deters i think is increase the readiness and responsiveness of the entire nato force structure. we have to get to these investments, exercises, and

training scenarios that raises the responsiveness and the readiness of the whole force and that's what i think deters in the long run. very short answer to a much more complicated question. >> in the back. right there. thanks. >> greg, arms control association. with the iran nuclear deal going forward and with the absence of any iranian irb or icbm flight testing ever, is it time for nato to reconsider its schedule for the european fazed adaptive approach? perhaps adapting the schedule to a lower anticipated threat level? >> so the short answer i think i would give you is there remains

a very dense and deep capability in iran to fire conventionally tipped weapons that can threaten multiple parts of our alliance. and so, i think that we should stay on course with our epaa. >> yes, sir? >> pardon me. kelp smith, stanford university student. question, you were mentioning south asedia. what do you think should be done about these geopolitical anomalies and why do you think what you think? >> so, i have never heard them called a geopolitical anomaly. i'm not a stanford graduate. i'm a simple georgia tech graduate. i would -- i would offer that

the frozen conflicts of which there are several out there are -- are not conducive to any sort of forward progress in places like ukraine and others. these seem to be tools that are used in order to preclude a nation from being able to develop a leaning to where they want to lean. whichever direction it is. we don't go out and try to force a nation to lean one way or another. a nation makes its own choices. et cetera. and then, we see sometimes actions taken to have a quote/unquote veto on how they might progress. and so, i don't think that we should accept incursions across internationally recognized borders, holding the sovereign lands of another nation in order

to preclude that nation's aspirations of taking whatever steps they want to take in whatever direction. we don't recognize that as an appropriate tool. and i don't think that we should into the future. again, if a nation wants to become a part of the responsible nations who address great problems of the world, like isil, then show responsible behavior across all spectrum of these kinds of issues. >> that sounds to me like a great way to end. karen gave me her watch to m

scams. and later an interview with nato supreme allied commander phillip breedlove. today arne duncan announced a proposal to divert $15 million from spending on prisons to fund more teachers and support staff in the country's most troubled school districts. he also answered reporters' questions on other issues. from the national press club, this is an hour. [ applause ]

>> in addition to our guests here in the lounge, i want to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences, as well as those watching on the live stream on our website press.org. you can follow the action on twitter as well. use the hash tag npc live. that's npc live. well, arne duncan grew up in chicago. his mother started an urban tutoring program for kids from low-income families on chicago's south side. young arne was there tutoring, playing basketball, and learning the value of a good education in stark terms. later, he would head the chicago school system. he became friends with the future president named barack obama. duncan and agriculture secretary tom vilsack are the only two

remaining members of president obama's original cabinet. since being confirmed for his post on january 20th, 2009, duncan has changed education policy in important and sometimes controversial ways. states are increasing the rigor of their academic standards. they are turning around their lowest performing schools, and they're opening new charter schools. these reforms were triggered by funding available through the race to the top and waivers given under the no child left behind act. after a legislative overhaul in 2010, the department of education is now the lender and guarantor for billions of dollars in student loans. duncan has used regulatory power to hold for profit colleges accountable for preparing students for jobs rather than loan defaults. he just unveiled a college

scorecard to give students access to more federal data about colleges to help inform their search. he's been a lightning rod for some of the more controversial issues in education. these include the common core state standards, annual testing, and what role the federal government should play in education. both major teachers unions in one way or another have suggested that he might need to resign. as congress considers reauthorizing no child left behind, some lawmakers are working to limit the levers of power that duncan has used to enact changes when congress was gridlocked. as i said, he has a fascinating speech topic today, and so now it's our turn to get an education. ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm national press club welcome to education secretary

arne duncan. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. it's great to be back. and i want to start by telling you about something that i'm not proud of. early in my time as ceo of the chicago public schools, we set out to make our schools safer places for our children and adults. we knew that too many of our students were going to jail, so i went to the police chief there and asked if we could find out what time of day or night our kids were getting arrested. i figured if we knew when the arrests were occurring and it was after school, we could target an intervention to keep kids more engaged in those after school hours. and if this was happening late at night, we would have to challenge parents to step up and actually parent. what i didn't expect was the actual answer was that the

majority of the arrests were occurring during the school day in our school buildings overwhelmingly for nonviolent misdemeanors. most calls to put kids in jail, we were the ones making them. we were responsible. we met the enemy and it was us. i know no one, none of our teachers, principals, or administrators, had set out to criminalize the behavior of our students or start them down a path towards incarceration, but those were the facts. the fact that america today locks up black people at a far higher rate than south africa did during the height of apartheid. the fact that young men of color are six times more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers. the fact that one out of three

black men, one of every three in america, is predicted to go to prison at some point in their lives while just one in five of them receives a college degree. facing the facts on incarceration leaves us with no choice. we, as a country, must do more to change the odds. you can try to reduce those statistics to just numbers on a page, but there are people behind those numbers in ferguson, in baltimore, in new york, and hundreds of other places. if you spent some time in those places with real people who have real families, you'll be left with no doubt we have to do more. and that's why i want to lay out an idea today that will strike some as improbable or impractical, but which i think is essential. it's about setting a very different direction as society, a different priority, one that says we believe in great teaching early in our children's lives rather than courts and jails and prisons later. let me tell you why this is so

important to me. in close to seven years as the education secretary, i've had the chance to spend a lot of time bearing witness to great teaching and learning and meeting amazing young people who are finding ways to share their unique talents with their communities and their world. i think a lot about those young people who we, as adults, have not done the right thing by and honestly their story is hard to me. there's brandon, who at the age of 11, wrote graffiti on the bathroom wall. brandon was sentenced to what they called community service alongside adult offenders. he told me i was definitely the only 11-year-old picking up trash on the side of the highway. simply mind boggling. that experience also left brandon with a criminal record and years later when he set out

to become a police officer, the department turned him away because of that one youthful mistake. i talked to him just a few days after he got that news and he said it killed my sense of hope. there's a young boy from broward county schools who racked up 30 behavioral referrals and received his first battery charge as a 7-year-old after having an anxiety attack after the death of his grandfather. and there were the young men i met recently in illinois prison, which i visited a few weeks ago, with father flager. these young men were locked up for a variety of crimes committed during their childhood years. many of them told us from an early age they had to take care of their families, left meaningful job options, and felt completely alone in a world where nobody seemed to care about them or believe in them. what did all these young people have in common? they all made bad choices, both

charge and small. for many, when they needed support, it simply wasn't there. for some, the system found ways to push them out rather than help them out. as father flager later wrote, all of them are examples of unrealized potential. every day as a society we allow far too many young people to head down a road that ends in wasted potential. sometimes we're complicit in that journey to nowhere. we need to do more to change that. let's fix our priorities in a way that says something different about what we expect from our kids. the bet we're making now is abundantly clear. please take a moment and ask yourself what does that say about what we believe. leaders at the state and local levels have the power to change

that, to place a bet on getting it right with kids from the start and on the power of great teaching to transform the life chances of our children. i'm not pretending for a second that schools can begin to do this alone. they cannot replace broader efforts to deal with poverty and hunger and homelessness and other social ills that effect our young people, but the facts about the impact of great teaching are simply too powerful to ignore. i haven't yet met a parent who needed to be convinced that it was important for his or her child to have a great teacher. parents understand and know what research tells us. so much so that kids who have great teachers end up with months more learning each year than kids who don't. and the benefits of a great teacher put out in life, not

just in school. a single year with an excellent teacher rather than an ineffective one has been shown to have benefits in lifetime earnings for that class. a major impact on the likelihood of attending college or having a child while you're a teenager. the link between education or a lack there of and incarceration is powerful. and african-american male between the ages of 20 and 24 without a high school diploma or ged has a higher chance of being imprisoned than of being employed. today our nation's schools suspend roughly a 1/3 of our nation's children per year. we cannot lay our incarceration

crisis at the door of our schools, but we have to do our part to end the school to prison pipeline. that's going to force us to have some difficult conversations about race, and i'll get into that in a moment, but i want to talk about bold steps our states and cities can take to get great teachers in front of our nee neediest kids. the rewards of this work are extraordinary, but it is also an incredibly hard job, so here's an idea for how to put a new emphasis on schools rather than on jails. if our states and localities took just half the people convicted of nonviolent crimes and found paths for them other than incarceration, that would create savings of upward of $15 billion a year. if they reinvested that money into paying teachers, they could

provide a 50% salary increase for every single one of those teachers doing that hard, but important work. if you focus on the 20% of schools with the highest poverty rates in each state, that would give you 17,640 schools, and the money would go far enough to increase salaries by at least 50%. there would be plenty of money left over to give principals in those schools the raises they deserve as well. with a move like this, we're not just making a bet on education over incarceration, but signaling the beginning of a long range effort to pay our nation's teachers what they are worth. that sort of investment wouldn't just make teachers in struggling communities feel more valued. it would have ripple effects on our economy and our civic life. obviously, this isn't the only way you can redirect funds to

attract and keep talent in our schools. another plan, you can take a quarter of that $15 billion in savings and use it to support teacher leadership, creating five positions in every one of these high poverty schools for these establiaccomplished teach. there are lots of other ways to go about this. local leaders and educators will know what's best for their kids and their community. but the bottom line is we must do more to ensure more strong teachers go to our toughest schools and stay for the long haul. right now, in far too many places glaring and unconscionable funding gaps create all the wrong incentives. to take one example, the ferguson school district in missouri spends $9,000 per student a year. in clayton, funding is double at about $18,000 per student. how is that a plan to give every

single child a fair start? what does that say to the teachers in ferguson about how they're valued? what's the cumulative impact of disparity of opportunity over 13 years of a child's education? today, far too much great talent leaves our toughest schools or never arrives at all. let's step back and challenge everything and make that work the pinnacle of an educator's career. let's invest more in the adults who have dedicated their lives to helping young people reach their full potential, and let's place a emphasis on our young people as contributors to society. i'm not naive at all about doing this overnight. for those already in the system, we can't just walk away from them. we have to invest in education and career training and treatment and support programs that help young people who are

locked up become contributing members of society. that's why we're so proud to be starting the second chance pel program to give those who are incarcerated a better chance at going to college and transforming lives. we're talking about savings that come from alternative paths that involve only nonviolent offenders. this is about finding ways consistent with wise criminal justice to reapportion our resources to we prevent crime in the first place. i'm not suggesting this is an either or. but i am convinced that making an historic bet on getting education right from the start would pay massive dividends for our families, our communities, our society, and ultimate ly fo our nation's economy. according to a report from 2009, the achievement gap between the united states and other top

performing nations is depriving our u.s. economy of more than $2 trillion in economic output every year. a 10% increase in high school graduation rates would reduce murder and assault arrest rates by approximately 20%. and a 1% increase in male graduation rates would save up to $1.4 billion in the cost of incarceration. so you don't have to be a liberal manic to like the idea of investing up front in our kids. a hard nosed look at the bottom line will lead you to the same conclusion. i recognize that what i have laid out might be ambitious, but if we're serious about limiting the school to prison pipeline, a shift is funding is not the only thing we have to do. the need goes way beyond education. what we have to do to take on por poverty, to deal with violence,

to expand jobs, improve health care and so much more, all of that, all of that, is a part of the solution. but in our schools, reducing the number of young people who end up behind bars fundamentally is about changing the odds for our most underserved students. that means following through on the difficult but vital work of turning around low-performing schools and improving those graduation rates, which today i'm proud to say are at historic highs. it means ensuring that all students, including and especially those in low-income communities of color, have access to high standards aligned to expectations for the real world and challenging course work that prepares them for college. it means expanding the opportunity of quality preschool whose power to reduce incarceration is well established.

it means giving teachers the preparation and support they need to success, especially in high needs schools. and it means ensuring that children go to school free from fear whether from gun violence or bullying or racial or sexual harassment or assault. none of this work is new, but all of it is essential to changing those odds. unfortunately, some in this country would have us move in exactly the wrong direction by cutting the funds that states and districts desperately need to make opportunity real for our kids. that's exactly what republican budget proposals would do. they would cut funds for vulnerable students, support for teachers, job training, and preschool studeopportunities th all know help our young people become productive citizens. these work and these investments are the foundation upon which long-term academic success can be built. taking the essential steps to expand what we know works in education that should be a

no-brainer, but there's more. there's more than just budgets and policies. perhaps the hardest step of all is taking an unsparing look at our own attitudes and our own decisions and the ways they are both tied to both race and class. in the wake of ferguson and baltimore and elsewhere this has been essential discussion for many in america and rightfully so. those of us in education can simply not afford to stay on the sidelines. unless recognized up front, this is among the hardest conversations we can have in education. people enter this field out of love for students and the genuine desire to see them excel and thrive. suspensions track far too closely to race and class. our high rates of incarceration, our high numbers of high school

dropouts, and our high rates of child poverty are not unrelated problems. as was true for me and my colleagues back home in chicago, sometimes the facts must force a tough look inwards. this is not just about explicit obvious bias. indeed, sometimes when a genuinely transparent moment of bias occurs, the whole country stops and takes a look. more often, it is very subtler stuff buried in privileges and expectations that we're not even aware that we hold. phillip goff is working with hospitals and districlaw enforc. when we become more aware of the biases that we carry, and we all carry them, we can learn how not to act on them. it's painful to admit to one's

own actions. it's painful to admit one's own actions might be causing harm, particularly for us as educators who come to this work from such an altruistic place. when i found out what was happening to our schools in chicago, it was like a punch in the gut. all of us have work to do. all of us. not by asking teachers and principals to put up with more misbehavior or feel less safe themselves. quite the opposite. we know learning

resources. the truth is we don't have those dollars anymore. we have a dysfunctional congress that isn't investing much in education. those resources came from the stimulus act going back to very early on in the administration. the fair question is what can we do across the administration to incentivize states and communities. >> have you gotten any indication from any states or localities that they are interested in this kind of approach you lay out and will they lobby for some kind of funding shift and does your department have an outreach strategy to reach out to further these goals? >> we're just getting started today. but i will say part of the

reason we're talking about this now is there's been a merging sense of bipartisan support for this. whether you're on the far left or far right, there's a tremendous acute awareness that mass incarceration hasn't worked. we're spending huge amount of money each year to warehouse folks and they come back and the vast majority repeat and go back in. relatively, pennies on the dollar to educate the front end. trying to flip this is just so huge and important, so i do think there is a growing recognition for folks who might not agree on anything else that we have a broken system now. what we're trying to drive home is we'd love to give every teacher across the nation a raise, every principal a raise, but if we focus on those communities where the children have the greatest need, where we fail to educate the vast majority that get locked up, i

think you'd change this for decades to come. >> this questioner says an independent study by public policy institute california says that similar prison reform efforts haven't realized savings. what's your response to critics who say $15 billion won't be saved or to put it another way, how confident are you in those figures when you spend the money on the education in the districts it will translate to that savings? >> you have to break down the components of this. if you're choosing -- again, repeat for the third time -- nonviolent offenders, if you're not locking them at $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, that will create a minimum of $15 billion in savings. the question is are you willing to reinvest that in great teachers, in great principals, in struggling schools?

that's a political choice that leaders have to make. we would argue that long term if you do that, rates of incarceration will go down dramatically. >> what would have to happen logistically on local and state levels to execute this reallocation? >> it takes leadership across the board, but again just -- the fact that we lock up more young black men here in the united states today at a higher rate than under apartheid in south africa is stunning. the fact that young men have a greater chance of being locked up than getting a college degree. where there's a little, there's a way. if we look at the facts -- this is not about liberal do-gooders. regardless of what perspective you come at, there's no one who can defend the current system. if you can't defend the current system, do you want to tweak it around the edges or do you want to do something transformational

and revolutionary? often you hear the saying a crisis creates an opportunity. we have a crisis in our country. we're destroying our families. we're destroying our communities. we need that potential. we need that brain power. we need that creativity. so if political leaders come together and say we need to make a very different bet, a very different investment, they have an opportunity now that may not have existed in the past. >> the administration announced pell grants for people in jail. is there any news you can share on that program, for example how much money we're talking, how many inmates are being effected? >> it's too early. it's one of the things i'm just so proud of our team's work. we have the ability through experimental authority to create these opportunities where we have actually now -- i think it's maybe due next week. due october 1st.

we have an rsvp out to universities who want to partner with correctional facilities to provide classes in prisons. we will see relative to the overall pell spend this will be far less than 1%. it's a huge opportunity. inmates from jail who are being taught by barred college want to debate against students from harvard. pretty interesting. pretty interesting. >> the higher education act was recently revised to reinstate federal student aid for high school dropouts enrolled in career pathways programs. given the number of dropouts who end up incarcerated, should this ability to benefit this program be expanded to reach more dropouts? >> whatever we can do to give people second chances and if they need them, third chances, if we don't do that, the cost to society of warehousing them, of

incarcerating them far exceeds any second or third chance. pell grants are under $6,000 a year. locking folks up is around $60,000 a year, so it's 10%. give them a second, and if they need a third chance, to graduate from high school, we should absolutely be challenging ourselves to be creative there. >> does the administration have any plans for something big and meaningful on college affordability plan before president obama leaves office? this questioner says the free community college plan isn't going anywhere and hasn't moved the needle much for families trying to afford college. is there anything the administration can or will do to address college affordability as part of the obama legacy? >> i'm trying to figure out how to print money. i haven't figured that one out, so it's not as easy as we wish.

we're going to continue to work with congress on this free community college idea. that piece is hugely important. having access to free early childhood education is very important on the other side. the k-12 system has served us pretty well for the past century. i think it is vastly inadequate for the next century. many other nations around the world have come to this conclusion faster than we have, and it worries me from a competitiveness standpoint that we're behind them. this wasn't the president's idea. it wasn't my idea. it wasn't a democratic idea. it came from a republican in tennessee, who has made it free for tennesseeians who saw the value in doing that. these are not -- this should not be a partisan fight on these

things, but we're going to continue to try to challenge congress to invest here.