tv Key Capitol Hill Hearings CSPAN November 14, 2016 1:19pm-3:20pm EST
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when you said balancing risk. that's essentially what these jobs are about. we have this resource. we have incredibly potent lethal force. it's just a matter of determining how you balance that risk based on, as debbie said at the start, the enemy getting a vote in this. so we have not walked back from that concept at all. we can do more than one thing. we are now doing more than one thing. north korea plays heavily in my mind, because it is so -- the situation is so unpredictable and the the pace seems to be increasing there. and there are quite a few soldiers that are sitting right there ready in case something happens. so making sure that we are prepared for this increasing threat, as north korean capabilities increase is a very important part of the calculus when we're putting the budget together. >> but it's not just north
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korea. i think any incoming administration has got to be ready from day one from any of the threats that are out there. that's part of our job to pass to our successors is the readiness that's there, the thought that's gone into it. you can take north korea as an example. again, i come back to the word presence. our soldiers are there on the ground in south korea. our ships, we've got a carrier home ported in korea -- in japan. we're adding destroyers to that effort and ballistic missile destroyers. they are there. they are forward. if there is a crisis, you don't have to wait. we're not going to have the luxury, whatever the next ideas, when there's the next fight of
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being able to take weeks or months to get forces there. it doesn't matter what those forces are, you've got to have them forward. you've got to have them ready. they have got to be ready in the marines terms to fight tonight. i think that not just north korea, but that has to be what we pass on to our successors. >> and i certainly agree and believe that as soon as we know who the next president will be, and as soon as we have a transition team specifically at the pentagon, that very quickly there will need to be a strategic review by this team of the threats, perhaps larger quadrennial defense review down the line. as you said, speed will be very, very important. to understand the threat profile, to also i would imagine conduct over time nuclear posture review. that is something most new
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administrations will do to look at state of nuclear enterprise and where do we go from here with that nuclear enterprise. the new administration is going to have to also address quite up front whether or not we stay the course on some important space investments, a direction we have been going in space which is near and dear to my heart. in addition to being secretary of the air force i'm what they call principle space adviser. whereas some years ago we thought space was a peaceful domain. today we recognize it is contested and congested by lots of satellites, debris and all sorts of things. space is very important. we'll have to make some decisions going forward on that as well. there will ab lot to do. of course on our behalf, we're about organizing, training, and equipping. i know i will be stressing some very important people issues go forward. some important training type issues for our readiness and the
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importance of modernization across the board. >> let's go to some questions. i think everyone probably is curious about what this person is asking, which is how are your services preparing for the upcoming transition period. of course there's a new law on the books that actually allows some preparation for transition prior to election day. can you give everyone some insight into how the pentagon is thinking and preparing for transition, for new secretary, for new secretaries. how are you getting ready for this? >> i think because debbie and i are both in the clinton administration the first day, i think. and then i was in this administration very early on. i think there are really two phases to transition. there's a whole bunch of work that's taking place right now where we pull together governing
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documents information papers, explanations on what the budget is and what we're thinking about in terms of the budget we're getting ready to submit. but the second phase really kicks in, in my experience, and michelle would know this as well, the day after the election. the teams are thinking about staffing. they are thinking about substantive issues but it kicks into high gear the day after the election when teams actually show up, in our case, at the pentagon. then you really are focused on making sure the needs of those teams are met as they try to get a sense of, in my case, the army, what the issues are, what issues we're concerned about, what issues they are concerned about, what the budget is, what the budget maybe should be or how it should be organized differently. and so that's -- many of us, you know, really prepare for that to be available.
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travel dries up right after the election, so we can make the transition as smooth as possible. we have a whole series of binders and information papers and information available for the team when it shows up, but they are going to give us whichever one it is guidance on that day. >> i don't think i can improve much on that answer. we're ready today to transition big programs on the budget on the way forward. after the election, it will be more the one-on-one. it will be the sort of explanations. one thing the pentagon does very well in my experience is get you ready to go in, in terms of briefings, in terms of where we are in any specific thing, in terms of making sure that nothing falls through the cracks as you move from one administration to the next. because as michelle knows better than anyone here, there is no --
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there can't be a scene. there's no luxury of having a couple days after the inaugural to figure things out. >> at any time? >> you've got to be ready at 12:01 on january 20th to meet whatever comes. >> i would just maybe add that for the department of defense, it's a centralized effort for us. osd is running this effort gathering up these papers and documents. each of us has thoughts about what the next team needs to know about. so at the moment, all of that is being given over to the office of the secretary of defense for central management so that when the time comes we'll be ready to go. >> if you want a copy of the pentagon press corps on these documents, we'd be happy. pentagon press association -- >> we'll keep you posted.
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[ laughter ] >> secretary carter is watching, we're not doing that. >> sorry barbara. >> we have to cover needs where we can. >> someone is asking if there's a really good question, the secretary himself has talked about this cyber. i mean, every time you turn around, somebody is hacking somebody else, and yet you are dealing with more of a personnel issue. obviously you're dealing with competition from private industry. what can you really do to attract the best cyber talent without having them go off to industry right away? what are your thoughts on that? it seems that's the warrior of the future. >> cyber encompasses so many different challenges. workforce just being one of them. i think everybody agrees that we can't build and retain a cyber force like we have done
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traditionally with other aspects of the force. there are many opportunities here, i think, to experiment and think differently about the defense workforce. but one of the things we always have, and we do have trouble competing in the industry if you just look at it on dollars, on salaries, what we can fay. we have something no one else has, the mission and challenge that attracts the best out there who want to be a part of defending the united states. >> eric is right. you can't win on salary. but what you can win on is people are making a difference here inside the military. people are making a difference in terms of the future of this country, in terms of the future of all their fellow citizens. and we've got a lot of very patriotic people who want to come in. our job is to make service --
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military service more flexible for them, to give them more avenues. to get in and to move up and give them more responsibilities and reasons to stay because cyber is one of those areas that we've got to have the expertise. we've got to have enough of that broad thinking and different sorts of thinking. we can't -- one of the things that all three of us, i think, has tried to do is open up the force. a military force that is predictable is a force that's defeatable. we've got to bring in people that think differently from different backgrounds, from different experiences and not just become a monolithic culture in either civilians or the uniformed services. >> there's no single approach on cyber. there's not one size fits all but one that i'll add to the
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narrative here is to maximize. we're doing this in the air force. maximize our use of the air national guard and air force reserve. of course if you can attract some of these topnotch cyber professionals in the private sector to serve part time in a reserve unit, the individual can have it both ways. they can keep their civilian job but also have this opportunity to participate in a fantastic and very, very important mission. we're trying to maximize the use of the garden reserve. i will also say under secretary carter's force of the future, one of the key parameters there is to try to get people, perhaps, from different walks of life into service. could be civilian service, could be uniform service." civilian service is probably easier. doesn't have to be for a lifetime. they can take a sabbatical and come be with us in the pentagon and important matters with national security for a year or
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two or three and bring us some of this expertise on sort of a rotational basis. i'll just give you one example that i think has been extremely successful to date relates to the world of i.t., called defense digital service. these are software professionals who largely come out of the west coast. they have come to the pentagon for a year or two or three. they have given of their time. they will one day, of course, go back. but we have used them as troubleshooters on programs where, of course, software is king. we have run into difficulties and they have been able to comment and help troubleshoot for us. so there's a variety of ways if we just open up aperture we can get people into our ranks if not for a full career but at least for a period of time of a adding to that in the other direction, navy, we've established secretary of the navy industry tours to send some of our young
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officers, some of our best people to great american companies, particularly in cyber and i.t. to get best practices and learn from the best and then come back and bring that back into service. >> all of this is making me think -- i'm seeing some of it reflected in the questions. people are asking a lot about personnel, force of the future, where is it going, can you stick with it, make it all happen. let me ask you, as a reporter you sort of hear that you're not quite yet getting the level of interest participation from female service members seeking to immediately join combat units. so let's get a reality check on that. can you bring us up to date? what are you seeing about the
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pace of activity wanting women to seek to join frontline combat units including special operations forces units. are you getting the response you anticipated? >> we are. we weren't expecting -- we were executiving this to develop slowly. the army strategy was to try to build the leadership cadre before trying to move out training in the larger scale. we knew that was going to take some time. all these things take a little time. people need to see that we can stick with it, we are sticking with it. we've seen a lot of interest. we have women leaving west point branching into combat arms. but we knew it was going to be slow at first. all the numbers, all the data that we had told us it was going to start slowly. but we think it's moving at the pace we had hoped and anticipated it would. >> we're also seeing a lot of
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interest. very frankly, i think that may be the wrong question. the notion was to set standards, make sure the asked had something to do with the job. then things like gender, who you love, color of skin become irrelevant. it's opening up, it's saying if you meet the standards you get the job, period. it's not forcing people out because of simply gender or color or sexual orientation or something like that. and from that point of view, i think that going forward has been a big success. you're going to have those standards. nobody is suggesting lowering the standards. but once you get those, once you know what the job entails, then
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gender, sexual orientation, whatever, shouldn't matter. the final thing i will say we simply haven't done a good enough job of recruiting enough women. we're moving up. we lose too many women. we lose twice as many wyoming from year six to year twelve. >> why is that? >> because too many people -- the main reason is too many people have to make the choice between service and family, and it's always the woman, if it's a dual military couple. it's always the woman that has to get out of the service. we have to do a better job. some of the things we're trying to do, career in the military program, where you can take three years off and come back in
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without hurting your career. triple paid maternity weeks from six weeks to 18 weeks to try to get people to not have to make that choice. we do co-location policies. we have to make the military, i think we're down the road on doing this, but far more family friendly, far more friendly to particularly women that -- to keep them from having to make that choice between service and family, to make it flexible enough you can do both. >> are you seeing women yet try to apply to become part of your special operations forces, to become navy s.e.a.l.s? >> i think we will see that. >> but you're not yet. >> if the cycle is such that we haven't seen it yet, but that's not a surprise, it's a fairly
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long cycle. i will say this about the s.e.a.l.s, they have the same standard for years. 80% of men don't make it. s.e.a.l.s haven't been discombobulated about it at all. their notion is you meet the standards, you go through. we don't care. >> you've all seen secretary carter's efforts on developing this force of the future. how much of that can krael at this point carry over in your views into a new pentagon administration? is it far enough long yet to sort of be institutionalized as part of the system or disblg need to have some more work done to make this -- you know what i'm trying -- an institutionalized part of the beaurocracy, make sure that it
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stays put. i'm looking for your assessment. >> there are a number of aspects of his initiative that we are implementing there in place. i think it's a larger question. we have to -- this is just a starting point, in my view. we've got to think thinking about the force of the future, the future, so that we are bringing into the department of defense, in or out of uniform, the best that we can from the largest pool of people possible. that means accessing people and town in different ways than we have in the past, not just in a career civilian way or uniform military way, we've got to make changes on both of those work forces but we have to think of other more creative ways beyond what we're doing already to keep tapping into other resources, other assets that are out there. the problems we're facing are as complex as they have ever been. the iterative cycle we're talking about, what the adversary is able to do, to
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experience and change and feel is happening faster and faster of the we need all hands on deck. >> whoever the next president is, barbara, whoever the next secretary of defense may be or the next service secretaries, they are all going to be acutely focused, just like we have been acutely focused on continuing to recruit and retain and develop the best people in our armed forces that we can possibly get. as time goes by, as the economy improves, we all foresee much more difficulties in this arena. whether there's a series of initiatives that carries forth, a title force of the future or they call it something else, these issues we've discussed here, issues about flexibility, trying new types of approaches to get different sorts of people into the military. more women, more minorities making the standards neutral to all these other factors, which have held some people back in the past.
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i have to believe all of this will continue because it makes very good sense for future recruitment and retention and of course we have to develop our people rainfall as eric said, a lot of these things already in training, i'm a big fans of the force of the future, partly because the navy has already been doing most of these things for the last couple of years of we're way down the road on a lot of these initiatives. but whenever you change administrations, things like personnel, things like acquisition, not the job of one administration. they can't be the job of one secretary or one four-year period, because if they are, you're going to lose capability in every sense of the word. you have to -- debbie said whatever you call it, you've got to keep changing personnel initiatives because the world
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keeps changing and our expectations keep changing. you have to keep changing on acquisition because as we've talked about here before, the world gets a vote. and the change that's going on in terms of potential threats, in terms of types of threats and types of ideologies that arrives, type of weapons, types of things that can be used against us, types of things we're going to have to respond to, including things like climate change, which the storms are getting bigger, ice-free, our responsibilities are changing all the time. you can't simply say, okay, stop. >> is it legend that the navy worries some of its forward location the sea is rising so much the bases -- >> we're the navy. we tend to have bases on the sea. >> really?
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>> makes sense. >> i know that's a unique concept. >> you do see -- >> no, norfolk is at risk over the next few decades if we don't do something to slow down sea level rise. all our bases are in some way or another at risk. but even today, we're the first responders. we're the ones -- the navy marine corps are the ones sent in. we get a request for humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, an average of once every two weeks. as the storms get bigger, as sea levels rise, as instability follows a lot of times, our responsibilities increase. as the arctic begins to be ice-free, russia has already said the waters to its north are an internal waterway. they are not. part of our responsibilities is keeping sea lanes open, making
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sure that international law is followed. making sure that peaceful trade at sea can go where international law says it can. so climate change, and things like that, it's a risk in the future for things like norfolk and our bases but it's here today in terms of increasing our responsibilities in terms of what we've got to respond to, in terms of how we have to position our selves and how we have to think about our roles. >> i want to go back as we begin to think about wrapping up here shortly to the question of diversity in the force. it does strike me this is something that has a lot to do with civil military relations that you oversee and next generation of leaders coming into the pentagon and also in the force. so let's chat for a minute about the importance that you see of diversity in the force, because
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you've all mentioned this. whether it is gender, faith, who you love, secretary mabus, i want to go back and ask you, i suspect you were probably talking about the past but i don't know. so let me ask you, you mentioned in your words color of skin. where are you seeing that worries you, concerns you want to deal with, lack of opportunity, lack of diversity in the force, potential discrimination in the force that you want to put a lid on. we know of the cases in the marine corps recruiting situation. so washington has all the great words about all this diversity but out there in the ranks, what are you seeing in what concerns you? >> well, it's not diversity for diversity's sake. diversity, experience, background. >> equal opportunity.
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>> and yes. but every time we've opened up the force, and i was talking about when we desegregated the military in the late 40s, when we recruited larger number of women in the 80s. when we repealed don't ask, don't tell. when we opened ground combat units to women, every single time we've become a stronger force. every single time you get a more diverse force, you get diversity of experience and background and thought, you become a stronger, more resilient force. one of the things that had worried me is the divide between the american people, who are being protected, and the military that does the protecting. in a democracy you can't let that divide get very large. a force ought to be reflective of and representative of the
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people it defends. so a couple of examples. i brought naval rotc back to harvard, yale, princeton and columbia after an absence of more than 40 years because we need people from that background. but we also instituted at arizona state and rutgers, the two most diverse campuses in this country. we can't have one geography we tend to recruit from. we've got to do it from all. one of the things, you do have these instances of a terrible act here, terrible act there. one of the things we found is as you open it up, number one, there hasn't been the doomsday scenarios that everybody was saying there was going to be when don't ask, don't tell got repealed, for example. and i went back and looked,
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every single time we've opened up, starting with desegregating the military, exactly the same arguments have been used against it. we're going to lower unit cohesion. it's been physical things. african-americans in world war ii can't fight as well, can't do land navigation, can do this, can't do that. >> all these things, to be crystal clear, completely disproved. >> all of these things are totally bogus. >> ridiculous. >> but those arguments get recycled. at the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, we're going to destroy unit cohesion, you're going to have problems recruiting, problems with retention. none of that has happened. none. then women in ground combat. same arguments. exactly the same. and the concern that i have in a larger scale is that we do get
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this diverse force. we do have the opportunity for all americans to participate in the honor of defending this country, that we don't exclude anybody for reasons that have nothing to do with their competence, reasons that have nothing to do with their patriotism, reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to do the job. >> so in this very, you know, difficult 18 months that the cub has had, do you think there needs to be some military outreach in terms of recruiting to the muslim american community to tell them specifically that they are welcome in the u.s. military, that, in fact, you think they bring value to it. is this something that needs to be done at this point? >> i just echo what ray said.
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i think outlook should be to everybody. it is stronger when it's more diverse. it's better for our country that the military reflects society. it's better for us because we can recruit the best from a broader pool of people. i think everybody should feel they have -- if they want to serve and meet the requirements, have an opportunity and see that opportunity for themselves and see a future for themselves. >> and to this point about the widest pool possible, because we're all in a battle for talent just like every industry, every company across america as well trying to get the best and brightest -- so-called best and brightest of young people. but in addition to that, there's all kinds of data to back this up from the private sector, diverse teams are also the types of teams that bring you the greatest innovation. the old saying if the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, pretty much every problem is going to look like a nail
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applies in this case. so people who are tackling a problem who come from diverse backgrounds, thought processes, disciplines, different types of people, this is where you get your best innovation. we are all best people and innovations for the future. so just wanted to throw that point in as well. that's why it's important to us. >> so, quick les round of questions here for everybody. 7:00 a.m., november 9th -- well, unless you've been watching the returns. we may all be a little late to work that day. november 9th, 10:00 in the morning. what's the first thing -- what's the first thing you do? what happens in your world that morning? >> well, let's see on november 9th, we will still, all of us will still have several months still yet to go on -- >> real work to do. >> and there's still work to be done. so i suspect i'll get up and come to work on november 9th and
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of course we'll all discuss the returns. all americans will be discussing it. we're no different than that. but then we'll get to our appointments. we'll be continuing to work with the congress to try to help push over the finish line our bills because when congress comes back in session, we need both our appropriation and our authorization bills completed. we don't need a long-term continuing resolution. that would be really bad. we'll be continuing to focus on the internal deliberations within the pentagon about next year's budget. and what are the final decisions that have to be made? so i would expect there would be meetings on that as well. so, for me, i don't want to say it's a day like any other day, it'll be a rather special day because we'll know, i hope we'll know who our next president will be. but then it's get back to work and do the very best touk complete the important work while you still have the time. >> exports, metaphors.
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don't take your eye off the ball. and run through the tape. administration doesn't come in for over two months. as debbie said, a whole lot to get done during that time. it's not over then, not over until the day you walk out. and don't ignore -- don't push problems forward. make decisions. don't push problems to the next administration that they'll have to deal with. make decisions and give them the very best foundation, the very best launching pad that they can possibly have. >> i would just say, you know, just in the army alone, 1.4 million people, they deserve our attention for as long as we're
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in the jobs that we're in. you know, the ninth will be probably receiving change and think about that second phase i talked about, but we still have large institutions that we need to run until we're no longer in the position. and based on my own confirmation experiences, we have no way of knowing how long it's going to take for a new team to get in place. and so we need to stay focussed on the job until we're not in it anymore. >> okay. me, i'm just thinking about how much coffee i'm going to have to drink that manning. i think michelle would like to come up and thank people. i think it was a really good round of discussion. and conversation. >> i just to want start by thanking all of you for an incredibly insightful and candid and thoughtful discussion. and also really to thank each of you for your service to the nation. so please join me.
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[ applause ] and thank you all of you for coming for this discussion. we will hope to keep this conversation going as cnsa in the weeks and months ahead. but, we've all learned a lot today. and we all benefitted tremendously from your leadership and your insight. so again, thank you again and thank you, barbara for being such a great conversation. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> one last thing, if you could remain seated while the secretaries depart, that would be great. and then we can get up once they leave. thank you. zblshlgts the house returns for the elections today at 2:00 eastern. off the floor, republicans will hear from can'ts running for leadership positions, including speaker. republicans cast their votes for
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leader on tuesday. democrats hold their elections thursday. on the floor this week, several bills on iran, including reauthorizing sanctions against third party investment in iran's energy sector. the senate return tomorrow at 4:00 and will vote on legislation allowing the library of congress to collect recordings of biographical histories from gold star families. the senate holds it's leadership elections next week. live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span, the senate on c-span 2. and join us later today for a discussion about trade policy with republican congressman kevin brady and u.s. trade rep michael froman. they'll look at trade as an issue and what to expect from the trump administration. the discussion hosted live at 5:00 eastern on c-span 2. and president obama will hold a press briefing today, he's expected to talk with reporters about transition issues and other topics. we'll take you to the white house briefing room for the president's remarks scheduled for 3:15 p.m. eastern also on
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c-span 2. the briefing comes the day before president obama embarks on his last trip, traveling to greece tomorrow, while a meet with the country's president and prime minister. on thursday, president obama makes his sixth visit to germany for meetings with chancellor angela merkel, france, the uk, and italy. and on friday, the president will attend the asia pacific economic cooperation summit in peru before returning to the united states. a panel of nato experts talked about the results of the most recent conference of leaders of nato member states held in july. the discussion focussed on the challenges facing nato over the next year, including russia's military action in georgia, ukraine, and syria. hosted by the potomac institute for policy studies, this runs just over two hours.
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>> we're ready to start. we just got the high sign. so along with our state department colleague and all of our distinguished panelists. we welcome you into this, i think very, very timely discussion on the north lake treaty alliance. the post-warsaw pact agreement and the like and where do we go for from here. for 67 years now as all of you know, we've had the nato alliance and it was always designed really to keep the peace and to do things that are proper and consistent with the really the western civilization that we knew it at the time, but it includes really the whole world. i had the opportunity many years ago to participate in a number of high level nato exercises and certainly nato meetings.
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and they were more than -- well, they were always more than just matters military. they took into account political considerations, economic considerations, societal considerations and the like. and i never went to one of those meetings without learning an awful lot and coming back and being more prepared to do what i had to do in my particular role. i think as we all know after the ending of the soviet, the former soviet union alike, the nato opportunities began to shift. even before the former soviet union leftists, even before that, nato began to be interested in what they call out of area operations. out of area considerations and alike in north africa and elsewhere and around the world. and that was a start and of course since then as you know, as well as anyone in this panel certainly will begin to elaborate on here in the future. they have done many more things
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besides just just the sole purpose of defending the country's in nato alliance. and certainly their work with the european union in light and all of that sing not only great timing, but of great interest today and so without further adieu, i'll kick this thing off here with -- you want to introduce our first speaker and alike? and our panelists. can you make it? >> one too many chairs up here. >> thank you very much, general, for your opening remarks. our speakers and the distinguished audience that includes first and foremost our wonderful interns and students are going to be the next
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generation of scholars and professional diplomats and media people. there are some of our body guards there. very quickly -- okay. obviously, we would like to invite, first, the panel, but i'm going to share it with our colleague, richard trussin, from the office of european security, political and military affairs at the u.s. state department. incidentally, we have for you the bios in great detail, so you can look at that later on, so we'll save a little bit of time.
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i've worked with richard for quite a number of years. first and foremost, we published that particular book. this is not commercial, but on nato we worked on for a number of years. but actually, the journey begins really over 50 years ago when, as a participant, i had the opportunity to work with -- initially with the u.n. and then with nato during the cold war. i won't go into it, but at least we produced an academic book and we want to follow up with the work on nato. we also produced a report which was based on a similar seminar
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we held right here a number of months ago. but let me first begin that we actually co-sponsored this event, in addition, of course, to the potomac institute and center for terrorism studies with our colleagues with international law institute, law school as well as the center for national security law of the university of virginia school of law. now, the rationale basically, i think, for having this event is the general already mentioned in terms of marking, let's say, the 28th anniversary of nato. nato daily broad range of new challenges including piracy and
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terrorism, original global security conflict, humanitarian crises, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyber, and the list goes on and on. in the face of this strategic and other concerns, in the aftermath of the warsaw summit that focuses on various issues that we're going to detail including the modernization of the alliance, and projecting stability and all that, really the question arises for us as both professionals, academic and future scholars and dips and so on.
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basically, whether the 28th nation members of nato, and some are represented in this audience, will continue to play the central role, political role, the military role in the coming months and years. and we can really go into a very long list of the challenges which are in the front pages of the media every single day. so, with that i would like to invite a person to share the moderation of this event and introduce some of his colleagues and we're going to move on. why don't you come up here first. >> richard prosin from the state department, i work for the guy, the gentleman to my left, in the
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office of european regional security and political military affairs. i've had the pleasure working with him for many years. it's been an excellent collaborative project and i would commend the book to you for your reading in nato from regional to global security provider. i'm very pleased to be with you today to help co-moderate today's event. i want to express my appreciation to our distinguished panelists, members and also to potomac institute for policy studies for hosting today's event. nato as an alliance acquires its potency not only from its military capabilities but also from its democratic ideals. from our belief in human dig and our respect for human aspirations. in fact, the washington treaty, which founded nato in 1949, emphatically states our
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since the cold war. warsaw just this summer. one of the bumper -- well, the bumper sticker headline for warsaw was nato, an aessential alliance protecting our citizens and projecting stability. nato secretary-general stoltenberg recently at a discussion, he had in harvard just a month ago said kind of poignantly put this together in the phrase, standing together as we always have done, stronger together as we always have been. i think that summarizes where we are right now with nato. in short, with renewed strength, resources and capability, nato will continue to uphold our shared values and meet the full
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range of shared threats. together with my colleagues from potomac institute, we have provided documents and few background documents on the -- from the nato's press office. the nato press office put together a summary narrative that was handed out to summarize nato's and alliance's recent accomplishments. the goal of today's event is simple and yet important. we would like to take stock of where we are and nato's capabilities and operations of today and provide suggestions on ways ahead for the near future. we are pleased you could join us here today. we look forward to a stimulating and thought-provoking discussion from our panel of experts. with that, i would like to turn it over to the gentleman to my left, joe manso, director of the office that handles nato policy at u.s. department of state. joe? >> thanks, richard. okay. today's topic is nato's post-warsaw agenda.
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i would like to put a brief spin on what happened just before warsaw and what happened after warsaw. so, before warsaw we had another summit, the whale summit, that actually had significant accomplishments in three areas. the first area was strengthening of nato itself in terms of the tools available to the alliance and the creation of two new programs. one for enhanced opportunity partners, which brought a number of nations much closer to the alliance, finland, sweden, georgia, australia and jordan. each one bringing unique capabilities and regional insights and these nations are now working with nato in a very close way. also led to the creation of something called defense capacity building missions. the thought here being that part of the security structure as we
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look forward is going to be training countries around the world in terms of building their military and security capabilities. so, these two things were created at the warsaw -- at the wales summit. in addition, of course, wales came after soviet intervention or russian intervention -- i date myself -- in ukraine and the immediate reaction of the allies, which was quite firm, was upheld at wales. part of this was the creation of the readiness action plan and the deployment of allied forces on a rotational basis in certain parts of eastern europe and also the suspension of day-to-day activities of the nato/russia council, keeping open, however, the possibility of political level discussions at the level of ambassadors. and the third area of work, which occurred at wales, but was largely on the margins of the summit but occurred there
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physically was the creation of the counter isil coalition. it was a very intense 48-hour period of activity at wales where a lot got done. this sets the stage as these decisions were implemented for the warsaw summit. now, in warsaw, again, i would divide the work of the summit into three baskets. the three baskets would be work that was done in the east as we move from reassurance to deterrence. a large part is the enhanced forward presence, the deployment of four battalions and four eastern european countries, the three balts and poland, the u.s., germany, canada and the uk taking the lead for these battalions but a number of other allies also contributing forces. in addition, we had just before the summit, an exercise that certified the very high readiness joint task force as part of nato's rapid reaction
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capabilities and we also had agreement on a tailored presence in southeastern europe. so, this was part of the package of moving from reassurance to deterrence. also a package regarding those in the south. nato was prepared to offer support to the counter-isil coalition, particularly in the areas of awax flights and defense-capacity building and nato offered support to the eu, in particular to "operation sophia" in the central med. this was a package of issues related to security challenges coming from the south. and the third basket of issues i would look at in terms of both new challenges and an increasing more effective nato/eu cooperation.
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nato in the eu issued a joint declaration. they were going to work on a number of areas more closely together, including high drid and cyber, and this is something we're following very carefully. if we look at the recent defense minister's meeting at the end of october, we see that progress has been made on all these fronts. that indeed, the nations that are the framework nations for enhanced forward presence will in the first half of next year be deploying the battalions as agreed into eastern europe. these are on a rotational basis. "operation sophia" in the eu have requested nato support and nato has agreed to provide both information and sharing in situational awareness as well as logistical support to sophia. they've also agreed to continue the activity and, of course, nato is working on further --
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furthering its cooperation with the eu. and i would expect that at foreign ministers in december, we will see a more detailed report of where we are on implementation of our cooperation with the eu. so this brings us wales and warsaw, i think, together represent very significant development in terms of nato's -- both its actual capabilities and the focus of the alliance. nato has always been a political military alliance. allies can come to discuss with their allies, in fact, any security issue that is of concern to them at nato. nato has also been able to adapt to a new security environment through these two summits. so, finally, as we look forward, the brussels summit has been agreed to for next year. it's difficult for me to go into a lot of detail into the
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brussels summit for a couple of reasons. one is, in fact, allies have not yet agreed formally on an agenda for the brussels summit, but also because some of you may have heard we have an election in the united states in the next week and i can't commit the new administration to any kind of policy. what i would say is, very likely allies will be looking in brussels to take a look at the decisions that were made at warsaw and to take stock of the implementation of those decisions, which do seem to be on track and will be an important part of the brussels summit. i'll conclude, i've worked on and off with nato summit. i must say that i was very, very favorably impressed by the mood. allies at the summit by the prompt action and the firm action that they took by the level of unity and the spirit of unity, both in terms of reassurance and deterrence and in terms of the need to take action to new challenges --
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regarding new challenges in the south. and i was also struck by the empathy allies -- where eastern allies understood that they were different but real security concerns in the south and southern allies understood that there were real but different security concerns in the east. so, i would say that nato, while not a perfect alliance is a healthy alliance and we can look forward to next year with some degree of confidence. thank you. >> our next speaker is kurt volker.
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>> if you can see me, i'll do it from here, is that okay? great, thank you. thanks very much. i'm going to pick up right where joe left off, which is even though the topic here is nato after the warsaw summit, i'm going to start off with nato after november 8th. my thought there to start off with is that it is important we remember first who we are. the united states is a democracy, a market economy, a country that cherishes freedom and abide by the rule of law, seeks the rule of law, seeks human rights and seeks to build security in the world. we are best off in a world in which those things are respected and those things are growing in the world. and we are best off when we are working with allies who share those same values and same goals and we are building security together. and that's why nato continues to
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be a vital interest for the united states today, during the cold war, currently and also after november 8th and looking forward, the united states needs a healthy, strong, vibrant nato for its own well-being, for its own u.s. national security interest. we need a strong and effective nato. we are facing around nato, nato countries, the most security challenges we have seen in a generation. let's tick them off. we have russia has has invaded ukraine, has annexed crimea, that continues to support insurance and destabilize the government in kiev, to russia that has invaded and occupy and continues to occupy two parts of georgia, and just "the new york times" just the other day had a piece how they continuously move
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the border around in the parts they occupy in georgia. they have violated the cfe treaty, the confidence building measures, they violated the inf treaty violated the budapest memorandum which guaranteed ukraine security for giving up nuclear weapons. of all the agreements done after 1989, they all contained the language respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all european states and refraining from the threat or use of force and refraining from changing borderers by force. russia has thrown all of that out of the window. in addition to all those russia-centric things with the military buildup, threatening nuclear use, violating country's air space and sea space, we also have the largest refugee crisis
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plaguing europe in a generation and one that has destabilized politics in europe substantially, some going into power, some not in power but challenging the politics there. we have the -- that refugee crisis is part of the largest humanitarian crisis we've seen in our lifetimes as well since world war ii at least where the syrian civil war has had the assad regime kill somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 of its own people and has produced over 12 million displaced persons. more than half the country is displaced as a result of this. we most recently saw russia's intervention in syria on behalf of the assad government, together with iran and hezbollah. they're laying siege to aleppo in some of the most barbaric direct attacks on civilians we have seen, again, since world war ii. we face an ungoverned state in libya and that is a particular
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concern for nato because it was nato's military operation that took out the gadhafi government. unlike bosnia, kosovo or afghanistan, nato did not do a follow-on operation in libya to try to gather weapons, create a monopoly of security and a single security sector and build the mechanisms of a state. that is still something that needs to be done while nato is vital for the united states looking forward, it is facing an environment that is more dangerous and more challenging than anything we have seen since the cold war. and nato's adaptation after 1989, i think, was all in the right direction. it was all moving and doing many of the right things. this is continued emphasis on collective defense, a new focus on crisis management such as in bosnia or kosovo or afghanistan. focus on building partnerships, so nato doesn't view the world as a theater of operations but
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also a theater where we work with partners to try to deal with security challenges together. nato enlarged, it went from 16 members during the cold war to 28 and soon to be 29 today. it built -- it sought to built a constructive relationship with russia through the permanent joint council and it transformed its military capabilities from massive heavy armed forces in europe to lighter, more mobile ones. while doing this, nato lost a tremendous deal of public support, particularly after the war in iraq, which caused a lot of european publics to want to distance from the united states. countries wanted to cash in on a peace dividend. we saw a massive decline in nato defense spending. we saw a disappointment and dispiritedness with the intervention in afghanistan that left allies less and less willing to engage in crisis management. at that same time nato was in that kind of decline, that's where we saw russia turn itself around. we saw it invade its neighbors,
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violate agreements, all these things i've said. what i've seen most recently with nato is, perhaps, hitting bottom and beginning to pull back up again. we've seen some countries, particularly those in the east increase defense spending. we've seen the deployment of forces in the baltic states, poland, bulgaria, we've seen an effort to put nato further east. and i think in this respect we should be very grateful to retired phil breedlove who led this effort within nato. he essentially took over where there was a lack of will, lack of political decision-making and allied capitals and he kept nato's core article x defense commitment alive. but, unfortunately, in these other areas of crisis management and partnership and enlargement and so forth, nato has really lost some steam. so, the next thing i would say is that as a new administration takes office, one thing we can be certain of is adversaries or opponents around the world will seek to challenge that new u.s. government. to see how they will react.
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i think we will see efforts to test a new administration from russia, from china, from isis, from north korea, perhaps from cuba. and we hope a new u.s. administration is up to the challenge. and i think it needs to look at these proactively. it needs to define clear goals, clear lines, clear strategies and have them upheld from the beginning days of the administration in order to create stability. on that i'll close on this. the question was posed in the written material, what should be on the 100-day agenda for the new administration in dealing with nato? i would say that four things are critical for that new administration. one, reaffirm the centrality and u.s. commitment to article v of the nato treaty.
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this is the heart of nato. we can't be casting any doubt about it. the u.s. needs to be clear and committed to collective defense. second, we need to call on nato to re-engage in crisis management. all these crises that i mentioned, ukraine, georgia, syrian refugee, syrian civil war, isis, libya, these are things that nato is largely not dealing with -- or not dealing with effectively at the moment. and i think a new administration needs to call on nato to do that. finally -- thirdly, i'm sorry, thirdly, we need to reiterate
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our commitment and belief to a europe whole free and at peace. a europe where all the people of europe have the same rights as everybody else to chart their own destiny as democracies, market economies in a secure environment. there shouldn't be a dividing line that says some countries that happen to make it in in 2002 are covered and those that were left out, well, too bad and now you're part of russia's fear of influence. we should not accept that. finally, we should reach out to russia but we should do so on the basis of making clear that russia has the choice to make. nato is there as a collective defense organization. one, based on these core values. it does not threaten anyone or seek to threaten anyone, but it will be strong in defending its members. and in that context, we would like to have a very constructive and positive relationship with russia, building security. we mean no harm or threat to russia. but russia, which has violated all of these understandsings since 1989, needs to come to terms with that kind of west, with that kind of nato. and if it chooses to do so, i
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think we'll have a very constructive relationship with russia. those would be the four things i would hope a new administration would put out very firmly and very quickly. thank you. >> thank you very much, ambassador volker, for your overview and insights. and clearly, it triggers a lot of comments and questions. but i will suggest in the interest of our dialogue and discussion, to wait before coming back to your issues. and i would like to introduce our other speaker now, honorable ken wainstein, who will provide a broader context in terms of some of the challenges, not only related to nato, but beyond. since we do have the bio, as i mentioned before, so you can
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look at some of the details, let me mention just a few highlights about his many extraordinary contribution to the national security concerns. as you can see from the bio, he's a former homeland security adviser to president bush, assistant attorney general on national security of the united states, attorney for the district of colombia, general counsel of the fbi and chief of staff to the director of robert mueller, incidentally, who contributed a great deal to our academic work. and we're privileged that he's a member -- distinguished member of the blue ribbon study panel on biodefense with senator joe lieberman and some of the other colleagues. i would like also to mention his academic, distinguished accomplishments. some of the universities we're
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working with, georgetown university law school, also g.w. for many, many years and the university of virginia and berkeley. so, it's not too bad. and we're delighted to continue the relationships. i would like to also mention that he received many awards for his many contributions as i mentioned before. so, he will provide a broader context to our discussion. and then we're going to continue with the other panelists, and then invite the audience to participate in our dialogue. ken, would you like to come here or sit down there? whatever is -- >> i'm fine right here, if that's okay. >> if you're comfortable, sure. >> i'm comfortable. thank you. good to see everybody. let me just start off by sort of framing a term that he used twice when he said i'm going to discuss the broader context. that is sort of code for i'm going to discuss something beyond what we're talking about here today.
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so he asked me about a month ago if i'd join this panel. he said, i've got this great panel of nato experts. i'd love to you join them. i said, that's great. i'd love to join. only problem s i'm not a nato expert. he said, that's fine. you'll be -- you'll provide the broader context. which you can tell from my biography is i'm a law enforce. intel guy. that's my background. in the course of those jobs i spent a good deal of time working with our foreign partners in europe and nato auspices and otherwise. what i thought i would do in terms of the broader context is discuss nato and counterterrorism. the challenge, the threat we're dealing with right now. and nato, the extent to which it is or is not suited to address the current threat. so, that's the angle i'm going to take. i'm going to do that sort of by drawing on my experiences since 9/11 as part of the law enforcement, intelligence community here in the u.s.,
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trying to take the apparatus we had as of 9/11, the culture, the process -- the counterterrorism process we had at 9/11 and bring it up to speed so that we can prevent terrorism on our shores. and then draw analogies for what nato has to do to do the same more broadly throughout the alliance. so, if you take a look back at the history of nato, as has been said here by the panel, it's a political and military alliance. yet the one time the article v was provoked was in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. i think since that date we've seen increasing focus on counterterrorism as part of the alliance's mandate. culminating in the counterterrorism guidelines i think were issued back in 2012 and then continuing interest and attention being paid to terrorism threats since then. and that's attention and time well spent because i think it doesn't take much to realize --
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much thinking to realize how the terrorism threat that nato across the board is facing is increasing. increasing in seriousness, increasing in volume of threats, and increasing in terms of the complexity of the organizations and operations we're facing. i mean, you just go through some of the factors that have come up in the last few years. the rise of isis or isil, which has obviously been a game-changer. they almost make al qaeda look quantity in terms of their barbarity, their success, frankly, and -- and the level of infrastructure and operational complexity they're capable of. you've got the flow of immigrants, obviously, since the syria crisis into -- throughout europe. you've got fighters flowing down to the isis -- you know, join isis and fight the wars in syria. and those same fighters
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returning. hardened, trained fighters coming back to their homeland wanting to carry the fight back to the homeland. you've got the homegrown terrorism phenomenon and has that has been actually accelerated and exacerbated by the isis narrative and the fact that, you know, isis now -- it has a caliphate in its eyes. people feel like they can -- that's something that they can grab onto. they want to fight for. and i think we're seeing the impact it's having in terms of really energizing people to become homegrown terrorists throughout the west, including here in the united states. and you've got the fact that with -- with al qaeda core, in other words, the traditional al qaeda that was established and headquartered in afghanistan and pakistan, with the diminution of its authority and the greater sort of franchising of al qaeda
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and then isis, which is now growth of al qaeda in iraq, you see more and more of these threats being franchised around the world. in many ways that's a more difficult challenge to deal with, for all of us, including nato, than the sort of more traditional al qaeda threat we had on 9/11. so the long and short of it is, for all of these various reasons the threat is real and it's only getting more and more serious. so, what should nato do about it in this is where i go back to my initial remarks is, you know, a lot of things that need to be done to try to beat this threat. and you know in particular that an educational institution, particularly for our young people of color, is preparing them to move into a world that will change every day, but a world in which they must thrive and lead.
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and personnel not coordinated, they were prevented by law and coordination, even though law enforcement officials are going after foreign terrorists a as criminal threat. you in agents focussed on criminal investigations and often they were not, they did not share information sometimes were prevented for sharing information. federal law enforcement that wasn't coordinated with local law enforcement. the eyes and the ears, the
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700,000 odd officers out on the street who really are the ones who are going to detect a cell in the first place. why there were mechanisms for coordination between the federal state and local level. really not sufficient at all, and then you also had a general intelligence level. you didn't have coordination and sharing of information among all the federal actors much less the state and local actors. so this was a situation that we confronted as of september 11, 2001, and to make it clear, this wasn't the fault of any one administration, it wasn't that anybody necessarily was terribly short-sided, but it was a lack of appreciation by the whole country of the severity of the threat. i think we were sort of living off the peace dividend, didn't want to, didn't want it to acknowledge the threat that we were seeing with the bombing of the coal and then the bombing of the em baa sis.
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we don't believe to it was coming away and as serious as it was as it became manifest on september 11th. and you know, we needed the political will to make those changes. and we got them. it took the call of 9/11 to do it and we got them and a lot of changes have been made since then. you have the cia and the intelligence community generally working with the fbi in a much more regular basis. and joint briefings, information shafring happening almost on day one after 9/11 in a way they've never happened before. you've got the national counterterrorism center which is designed to assimilate, draw together terrorism information from all around the country and the federal government. you have the fbi becoming much more of an intelligence-driven agency, not just the law enforcement entity. and then you've got, you know, federal agencies and the state and local agencies working very closely together with fusion centers, joint terrorism task forces, dhs, department homeland security working closely with
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state and locals. even sort of mundane things like more police officers receiving clearances so they can actually get access to terrorism information, the intelligence they need to keep the communities safe. so you've got all those changes that have been going on since 9/11 here in the united states. and the process -- the result is a lot of improvement, but it's still a work in progress. and i say that because as i look at nato, we're facing the same challenging that the u.s. individually faced on day one. whether that's under the auspices of nato via cooperation and coordination among all the member states so. all those same challenges are there, but actually even more. i think this is the sobering
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part of my remarks, which is that, you know, when we were trying to develop more coordination here in the u.s., we were dealing with one country. one country, same sort of general set of rules. but when we're dealing with 28 different countries, it's a different ball game. i saw it in my interactions with foreign partners. completely fundamental level, even definitional level, different countries see terrorism as a different type of problem. i remember in like 2006, 2007, a meeting with a number of our foreign partners, we were working very closely together, making a lot of operational headway against various terrorism threats. but we were talking about military commissions act, which had just been passed, which set up military commissions by law or by statute. and it was fascinating, because our foreign partners were very
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upset about that, actually, because their point was these are western european partners. the point was, this is not a war. this is a law enforcement action. this is not a war. we've seen war on our shores. we've seen what war is, and this is not war. to them they saw what we're dealing with after 9/11 more akin to like red brigades, the gang of the 1970s and less a war, whereas united states often done what we do here, existential problem, called it a war and went after it. mobilized our country and went after it. just that definitional issue, very foundational level causes problems of coordination. another is very different legal systems we're dealing with among the different countries. you know, another anecdote, i remember talking to a number of our partners about our effort, the united states effort to try to get passenger name record
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information. the names of people on airplanes, manifest information. for obvious reasons. we were attacked by airplanes in 9/11. in the american legal culture, third party records -- in other words, records held by third party like this kind of information doesn't get that much protection, legal protection. that's the way it developed and that's the constitutional doctrine. in europe they are very protective of that kind of information. here we are asking for something we thought relatively a gimme, they were saying, no, that's something we can't give. in the same meeting, after having that confrontation, we started talking about jihadist websites and how we're dealing with that problem. keeling with extremist websites, not going over the line to encourage violence and trying to
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figure out what to do with it, keeping with strong principles of first amendment rights. a couple of the folks we're dealing with said we take them down. to us that was unbelievable. they see it differently. neither side is right or wrong. the concern is when you're dealing with a security effort like this, that deals with law enforcement and individual liberties it's a real problem to court nature activities with different countries, different legal expectations. those different expectations extend to different expectations about classified information, how to share classified information among different countries. here in the u.s. one system by the federal government and could share among people entitled to get that information. every country has its own and it's difficult to do. in other words, we have a number
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of different challenges for nato to try to move to the next level in terms of coordination, coordination is the touch stone of prevention. you can't prevent an attack, terrorist incident, unless you coordinate intelligence collection, intelligence targeting, collection, intelligence dissemination and the operation is based on that intelligence. and i just to sort of wind this up, get past the more sobering part of it, i applaud the fact there's a new assistant secretary-general for intelligence. i think that's a step forward. interesting to see how that's defined in practice. i understand it was initially established with the idea it would focus on russian military capabilities. obviously a big part of that person's mandate is going to be dealing with terrorist threat, particularly isis threat. that person's job is going to be to try to do something roughly
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comparable to what we've been trying to do in the u.s. the last 15 years. either been made more difficult by peculiar challenges trying to do this across an alliance like he or she is going to have to do and try to get different players to work together despite all these various logistical, practical, and legal obstacles. it's my hope the member states alliance and public will demonstrate and have the will to do that. there is a lot of tough decisions to be made. given the threat we have right now, it's a job that's got to be done. >> thank you very much. thank you for your overview covering so much territory in a short period of time. obviously we come back to many issues after we ask our colleagues to make their brief presentation. just a quick footnote since you
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mentioned 9/11 meeting, anniversary we had this month right here with john gray and our colleagues. a discussion on the lessons of 9/11 and we remember particularly the victims. john o'neill who contributed to academic work we know very well lost his live, trying to save lives of others people. we knew personally a number of people and students who happened to be in the building. i think what's critical since we have representatives of diplomatic embassies that over
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90 different nations were affected by this terrible tragedy. somehow we learned short history. anyway, let me move onto our next speaker. it is, indeed, a privilege for me to introduce dr. -- professor daniel emerson. as i said, you have the bio. i just mentioned some highlights former u.s. secretary of state of foreign affairs and special coordinator in southeast european civilization and associate director of policy planning for two u.s. secretary of states. currently executive director of the senator of transatlantic relations johns hopkins university and personal
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professional level, i'm delighted that daniel published many books. one of them on terrorism and international relations. i was privileged to be part of the theme -- team in a conference like this one. i would like to mention the particular book. what we're looking forward to is insights again because presently dealing with this issue of the warsaw summit and the follow-up to what's happening, particularly eastern question, russia, the west, and europe, call the gray zone and publish on these issues. professor. >> thank you. appreciate being here with everyone. let me pick up the thread what they are saying and wrap what
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ken had said as well. so i think we're back to this tale of three summits. actually we have a paper coming out tomorrow on our website, nato's future tale of three summits. the trajectory mentioned on intel side. nato tends to move ahead because it gets pushed at the summits to make basic decisions. that's how when you have 28 countries you lurch forward or not. so the wales and warsaw summits were important. it's important to step back as my colleagues do just for a moment. i think going into warsaw and even wales, we were facing over the last number of years sort of two tensions within the alliance. one you could call out or intention, which was a couple decades, nato's mantra out of area or out of business following the end of the cold war. time to project stability, trying to do things because all the real challenges were outside. there were others, especially
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since 9/11, who would tart to make the case, especially since russia's activities, the new mantra has to be in area or in trouble. i think what at warsaw happened, both those themes came back together. it wasn't posed as an either-or choice anymore. we realized as an alliance we have to do both. make the credibility article 5 sacrosanct, make sure everybody believes it, and you act to enforce it. then you also say we have to deal with real challenges at home, which are not just traditional ones. the frontline today used to be gap, worry about traditional armies. today the front line could be ground bazaar in istanbul, frankfurt airport, metro. those are real security challenges not one traditionally, so how do you square that circle? i think at warsaw the alliance
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did some of that. come back to that in a minute. i think the other tinge we had building was sort of a attention between what's the security challenge in the east or south and refer to that, where we had a lot of countries in the south saying the middle east is on fire, all this is coming to hurt us. this is really, really, really the main security challenge. then our eastern allies were saying what about russia? look what they are doing. we're really threatened by this, you've got pay attention. this has to be the most important decision. i think the alliance did a good job bringing that back together to say unfortunate not only challenges in the east and south but they are beginning to merge. you could argue that the russian -- intrusion of russian state power in the middle east has started to blend some of the traditional issues, terrorism
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and instability with an activity state agent intent on disruption and power projection. if you go east you see instabilities in the middle east starting to go that way as well. the question is do you want a stable area in the east that abuts the instability unstable area in europe abutting the unstable area in the middle east. none of that in our area. some had tried to bridge that gap. in the meantime, however, i think what we're finding, there's another problem and that's inside the west. there has been a lot of verbiage in this campaign about the value or lack of value of nato. i think many european allies are wondering where the united states stands. there have been over the years sort of a distancing from nato as we thought europe was fixed, yankee jargon, time to move on to other challenges. i think we realized that's not the case. there are really a lot of questions in europe still about
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where the u.s. is, what it's committed to in terms of the alliance and its commitment to europe. frankly we have the same concerns about europe. we're sort of having the same conversation about each other these days. if you look at europe, not just given the issues he said, but brexit, economic crisis, in addition to migration crisis russian activities, you're facing europe -- i'm saddened to say this, europe is going to be much more fluid, much more uncertain, much less capable, much less credible. only the u.s. presence and continued activity engagement in europe, as a european power, will maintain that affirmation of our assurance to our european allies about what this is all about. i think we're dealing with
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fundamentally important new issue, which eats away at our ability to do what the other wants unless we get ahold of that. if you come to the next first 100 days or come to the next agenda, the most important -- and i agree with curt on that, simply a political affirmation, we are in this together. we agree on the broad nature of the threat facing us and we will stand and face them together. the credibility of article 5 and article 4 and all the other articles, in fact, are still with us and we affirm that to each other. that means the next president really has to take the lead immediately, not projecting to summit and bureaucratic schedule but make a political summit perhaps right away to make and affirm that underlying political message. then i think you can get back to the summit agenda as it's unfolding. i would highlight three points on the cor nato agenda. juan is something nato traditionally does and knows what it does. it probably is doing now fairly well, which is defense, deterrents.
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it has projected forward defense into its own allies in the east. everything that was said, i don't need to duplicate that. the challenge, we're deploying these forces. but given where europe is and the state of european conventional forces, you can't get there from here unless you beef up the size, scale, operational, the ability with all the rules and regulations mentioned across europe to allow forces to get to threaten parts of the alliance which they can't do today. what we call follow on forces, seems to me a core issue now within the summit agendas going forward building on what was done at warsaw and wales. i think there are two others, though, that are important. this takes us into what was said about the broader context. it's not just -- a summit is about what nato should do.
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you only know what nato should do if you know where nato fits. because nato is not the lead on every issue we face. it is important in some areas. it's useless in other areas depending what we decide are our priorities. we have to understand where nato plays a role, where it takes the lead, where it can be a supportive actor and where it can sort of be the ensemble of issue that deal with challenges. that's the toughest issue, to sort out where nato should take the lead and where it should do something else. curt's point about crisis management sort of fits in that second basket.
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here i think we're facing some challenges for nato. one is it's not accustomed to doing these kinds of roles very well. we're also entering into some new security realms that's not accustomed to do on its own. so i think we have to tease that out. so my sect priority beside follow-on forces is one area. i've been pushing this for a long time, which some know, has to do with resilience. the warsaw summit outlined a number of baseline requirements that every ally should be able to meet under article 3 of north atlantic treaty, which is sort of the self-help part. every alliance -- should protect it's self first, then if you can guarantee that, of course we're working together. i think they have tried to define resilience agenda in a very solid way. it's very practical.
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it gives every nation some homework to do. i'm encouraged by it. as someone working, just push it a little bit. for me article 3, defining resilience as article 3 agenda is a static notion of what resilience really is. it's really linked the way it's been defined into infrastructures, continuity, government, so on. how do you define the networks that keep society going, vital functions of society if you want to phrase it that way. unfortunately none of those are national anymore. they are all interdependent. you cannot have a plan in one country for protecting electrical grid if the plan next door is different. so resilience going forward has to be shared. there has to be a project about shared resilience, not just country by country boxes. i think the next piece of resistance we should push on, weak, fragile, susceptible by disruption, either by intentional state actors or groups or individuals. how do you make sure those countries are resilient? if they aren't resilient, doesn't matter how resilient you are because everything will bounce back into territory.
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my two watch words would be shared, has to be shared, and we have to project it forward. we have to think about projecting resilience, forward resilience as a new type of project for the alliance. but not only alliance but come back to where nato fits. much of this is civilian. much is where the eu plays a role or individual countries. look at my friend yohan, sweden and finland have huge predictions because of the their particular status, they had to defend their selves. they have a whole notion of societal security and techniques that the rest of us could profit from. it provides a new link for us with those countries as well in this area that nato is probably not going to do the lead. it's going to be part of what we do. the last one has to do with the same sort of set of issues, which is the issue of the basket of issues in the south.
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some would say nato needs southern strategy, but there's no sort of one southern issue. it's just a conglomeration of issues. again, i think my guiding question is where does nato fit into that basket. not does nato do it all. i don't think it can. you see this with the point of coalition. yes it was formed as part but nato not part of the counter-isil coalition. many southern allies are very reluctant to get into new commitments in nato and their neighborhood. many arab states reluctant to see nato quad nato engaged. and if we're honest, the u.s. government doesn't know if it should be engaged because we're having a fight among our own commands with sent com saying, i'm not so sure about that. ucom saying, well, we have things to offer. internal battle, u.s. not been clear on its own stake in this and that only feeds into
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uncertainty about nature's role, ken's point about counter-terrorism. we need to think harder about where nato fits in the south, there are a number of things to do, warsaw did a number of things, but could accept it up more, maritime strategy, particularly hard power hearts of the southern agenda. so let me stop there. i think those are three points i would say going forward besides broad political point, which is most important. thank you. >> thank you, dan. excellent remarks. just going to turn it over to jeff radke. jeff used to work in the same office i currently work with joe. he's now the deputy director and senior fellow -- deputy director of strategic international studies, senior fellow as well. we heard about military adaptation since russian aggression in ukraine and some of the military and security
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issues will test the next administration. i agree with the points that have been developed so far. personally on that score, my view is that after a lot of very necessary and effective work by nato, primarily in dealing with the conventional military posture on the land in central and eastern europe, the most pressing need from military perspective is for nato to address its air and maritime posture and capabilities in the baltic sea region, black sea and eastern mediterranean. but if i can take a step back and look from slightly different angle. if we're thinking about top one
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or two priorities for an incoming administration, that is the things that the united states government has to get right in order to advance our interests in europe and to advance and european region around the world. and i think the top priority is a political one. and that is to address the u.s. interests that are affected by a fragmenting europe. europe that is increasingly divided among competing visions. of sometimes of individual member states and sometimes within member states.
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it is not only our biggest economic and trade relationship, our most interconnected defense relationship through nato, our intelligence sharing, our political cooperation. if you take almost any area of government activity, we work closely and often most closely with our european friends and allies. but now we're in a situation where european unity is under pressure from several different directions. unless you're an advocate of american unilateralism, which generally doesn't work out particularly well for the united states, we need to find a way to recognize and to address the way that affects our interests. now, the european reaction to the somewhat centrifugal tendencies has also not been monolithic. you have on the one hand brexit, and at the same time you have the european union producing a global strategy which is a good
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document that outlines a number of areas where the european union plays and important role and can play an even more important role in the future. so you have both tendencies. which of these will win out and what europe is going to look like in several years after these various tendencies have resolved themselves is anybody's guess, but it certainly affects the u.s. ability to relate to europe, to cooperate with europe, not just militarily but politically and economically as well. we need to be actively engaged especially if you think about the possible consequences of a so-called hard brexit, an abrupt severing of the relationship with the european union and/or an acrimonious negotiation
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between the uk and the remaining european countries about the terms of that exit. so i think what this mean is there needs to be an intensified u.s. investment not just in our partnership with european union and partnership with the uk, but also an engagement in certain instances of the specific issues that will develop, that will arise between the uk and eu so we minimize the risks to our shared prosperity as well as our ability to act in a coordinated fashion, effective fashion around the world. so that's a bit about the internal challenges. the external challenges, the euro atlantic region, europe and united states face the problem of external malign influence. i would point to anyone who hasn't read it to at least be open in the warsaw communique. the thing is pretty long.
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joe manson if you had a hand in any of the language that appeared in it, i would give you great credit for it. for those of you who deal with those kinds of consensus documents, they often wind up reading like consensus documents. if you look at the opening perhaps of warsaw communique which looks at russia's actions and role, it is quite stark and well put. it says russia has breached the values, broken the trust, and challenged fundamental principles of global and euro atlantic security architecture. nice words are one things but this is backed up by actions, some we've already heard discussed have changed deterrence equation in conventional terms in europe. but that's not the only challenge we face. russia for many years has tried to exert influence on the political direction and developments in nato partner and in some nato member states.
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we are recognizing this more fully in the united states now. if we look to the future, we should expect russia to attempt to influence other election processes and state actions regardless whether there is an election in a particular country or not. if we look at that clear warsaw statement about how russia's aggressive actions have changed the security environment and the measures that deal with it, i think a priority should be a shared transatlantic recognition of the attempts by russia to exert russia on our politics. that means a recognition that this is happening and that we can't see it separately from russia's military pressure on the transatlantic community and
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aggression in the ukraine. it means a clear statement that there will be consequences if that behavior continues. and from that recognition, then would flow elements of a transatlantic agenda that includes the european union as well as nato, because dan was absolutely right. there are certain things nato does well and certain things nato does less well. we shouldn't ask it to do the things it is not well set up to do. i think this will involve several things. it will involve cyber security, economic state craft, which includes cooperation and harmonization on things such as economic sanctions. it will involve transparency, media freedom issues and a whole host of steps that will help reinforce integrity of our democracies which are the fundamental thing we are
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protecting. as curt laid out. i'll stop there and hand the microphone over but that's where the focus needs to be. >> thank you so much, jeff, for many of the issues you raised. it brought back memories decades ago, some of the colleagues at csi. ambassador in brussels dealing with some of these issues. again, we were trying to see what worked and what didn't work, and we'll come back to some of your issues. finally, we do a brief presentation by george benetz, who is apparently is director and senior fellow at the center for international security
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atlantic council. he dealt with these issues for many, many years and looking forward to his views and then we're going to develop some discussion. >> thank you. thank you for inviting me to be part of this panel and discussing one of the top security issues for the united states, which is how nato is responding to the new security environment in europe. what is this new security environment? after decades of peace in europe, we see russia has invaded two of its neighbors and brought interstate war to the continent. as you've heard already, nato responded to this in 2014 at wales summit and this summer at the warsaw summit by taking some very important decisions. while i agree that these steps nato has taken so far are helpful and good, i also see these steps have been insufficient and have not
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restored deterrence to europe. i think i see a strategic gap in europe between the limited steps that nato has taken so far and the more robust measures that need to be taken to restore security in europe. the source of this strategic app -- gap fortunate tow is that too many nato leaders are failing to understand three key changes that have taken place in european security environment. to put it simply, nato's response so far has been too slow. nato leaders, quite a few of them, want the alliance to act as if this is 1997, and they are very unwilling to act as if to face the real threats it is facing in 2016. these new threats come in three
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different shapes and changes. these are changes in nato's geography, changes in technology >> i believe if we invest a little time and understanding, we will see why nato needs aggressive response and this is the map that most leaders are used to. we used to call the layered cake. you saw large deployment of nato troops from the united states and other nations in west germany. what you saw here is sort of the geographic temperament and view that nato leaders are trying to avoid.
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they don't want to have large troop deployments, but at the same time, they fail to understand that as nato's borders have moved east there are certain key changes that have happened apart from the troop deployments. during the cold war, the zone of friction between nato and its main threat was based on one of the four largest nato members, west germany. this nato member was backed up by other nato members with significant military capabilities, france, belgium and netherlands and four deployments of significant allies, canada, united states. the new security environment we see now is very different. as nato's borders have moved east, now the new zone of friction we see, this is a map of the new geography of nato. this displays most of the provocations that we've seen from russians military aircraft flying without transponders on,
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sea space of some of the nonaligned countries in the region. we see that there is greater friction and interaction between hostile external forces and nato forces in the northeast. but in addition to that, the nato members that are most vulnerable are not only the most geographically farthest away, but they're also some of the smallest in the alliance. it is a very different dynamic than we had in the cold war. the cold war, west germany did lack strategic depth, it is even greater now with the location of the baltic republics. when we're dealing with a change in technology, this map displays some of the, what are called anti-access denial sites in the west. most of you have seen maps focusing on crimea, perhaps the new zone in the eastern mediterranean in syria.
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russia has significant capabilities in st. petersburg as well as near the arctic circle. with these, you can see, it is quite a bit of range. with this new technology and these weapons, nato is facing, as you talk to leaders, they describe nato airspace as contested. as well as nato sea space. this means that even now, in the preconflict state, the amount of nato military and naval air craft that go in can easily be pressured, as we have seen by some of the fly-bys. this changes the dynamic and greater emphasis for forward deployed forces.
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this a brief chart showing come of the capabilities, one of the most geographically invasive parts of russian military capabilities in nato airspace. from kalingrad, a wide access of poland and the new news of s 400 missiles deployed, the range possible even to range far west as berlin. those were just the capabilities, some of the land capabilities of the new russian technology. these are some of the maritime capabilities. these are some of the caliber missiles that have been
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disclosed. two in new ships having these caliber missiles have been deployed to the fleet. these were the same type of missiles that were launched from the capsin sea. russia had aircraft. it didn't need to use this capability. in addition to this, russia has deployed russian bombers from that base we saw in vernate, all across western europe, just to launch cruise missiles into syria. again, it had capabilities in syria already. it did not need to do that. moscow chose to use those capabilities to show what it could demonstrate going around and the range of its military options. then very briefly to discuss the change in the nature of the threat that nato is facing. russia is a much weaker power military than the soviet union was. but at the same time, it is also true and a fact that russia
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remains -- has a quantifiable military superiority over all of its neighbors. through the west and south. the great red bar see there, those are russia's capabilities. all of the bars to the left, those are the military capabilities of russia's neighbors. russia wants its neighbors weak and unstable, so it can coerce them and influence them and shape their patterns. if we also look at the charts to the right of the russian military capability, these are some of the largest military powers in europe, including germany, france, united k. they don't match up to russia. this helps us to understand why putin's strategies and tactics are consistently to lean on european countries, on even nato members, by laterally, one-on-one to separate them from the rest of the continent, the
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rest of their alliances, and threats. this has not happened to just russian threats, sweden and finland, military leaders, not to join nato or there will be repercussions. the danish ambassador from russia threatened denmark, a nato member, that their ships would be face nuclear targets from russian vessels if denmark contributed to nato defense system. now, russia is not the only threat that nato is facing. and the only threats that are nate know are facing are not just conventional.
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