limitless, doesn't it? it is good to hear it can be harnessed for improvements inpatient care. just a quick reminder, join us tomorrow morning 7:30 a.m. for breakfast right back here in this room. there will be several roundtable discussions on topics such as managing transition to risk-based payments and effective outreach after patient discharge. your program lists the very many topics. breakout sessions are 8:45. i know it will be hard to figure out which ones you go to. i suggest you review your programs tonight to figure out a game plan. remember our special keynote luncheon featuring athena health and microsoft. please join all of us up in the lobby for our welcome session. thank you. and i'll see you all there. here is a look at some of our live programming coming up today on c-span networks. join us later for remarks from south carolina governor nikki haley and senators ted cruz.

live coverage begins at 11:15 a.m. eastern on our companion net york c-span. later discussion on senate role in judicial nominations. this event hosted by constitution project and you'll be able to watch it live beginning at noon eastern on c-span2. this week the supreme court heard oral argument in two consolidated cases brought on by the city of miami against bank of america and wells fargo arguing that under the fair housing act, the banks were involved in discriminatory mortgage practices against black and latino home buyers which resulted in loan defaults, four. hear the argument in its entirety this evening on c-span2. we have a special web page

at c-span.org to help you follow the supreme court. go to c-span.org and select supreme court near the right-hand top of the page. once on our supreme court page you'll see the most recent arguments heard by the court at this term. click on view all link to see all oral arguments covered by c-span. in addition you can find recent appearances by many of the supreme court justices, or watch justices in their own words including one-on-one interviews with justices kagan, thomas, ginsburg. there's also a calendar for this term, a list of all justices with links to quickly see all their appearances on c-span as well as many other c-span videos available on demand. follow the supreme court on c-span.org. >> and now a panel of nine experts on the north atlantic treaty organization military alliance talk about the challenges facing nato over the next year, especially russia's

military aggression in georgia, ukraine and syria and ways the alliance can better them. from the potomac series, this is about two hours. >> okay, folks. i guess we're ready to start. given me the high sign. along with state department colleague and all of our distinguished panelists we welcome you to this very timely discussion on north atlantic treaty alliance, post-war saw pact and the like and where do we go 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, to do things proper and consistent with really the western civilization we knew at the time but really the whole word. i had an opportunity to participate in nato meetings. they were more than matters of military, took societal considerations and the like. 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 former soviet union, nato opportunities have started to shift even before former soviet union left us, even nato began to be interested

in out of area considerations and the like in north africa elsewhere around the world. that was a start. of course, since then as you know as well as anyone in this distinguished panel certainly will begin to elaborate here in the future, they have done many more things besides just the sole purpose of defending the countries in the nato alliance. certainly their work with european union and all of that, not only great timing but of great interest today. without further ado i'll kick this off. do you want to introduce our speaker and panelist?

>> thank you very much for your opening remarks, our speakers and distinguished audience. first and foremost our interns and students who are going to be the next generation of scholars professional diplomats and media people. raise your hand. there are some of our bodyguards there. very quickly. okay. you will hear from them later on as far as questions and so forth. obviously we would like to invite first the panel but i'm going to share it with our colleague richard prosen from

office of european security and political affairs at the u.s. state department. incidentally we have for you the bios in great details, so you can look at that later on, so save a little bit of time. but i'm delighted to work 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, observer, i had the opportunity to work with initially 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 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 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, deterrence, defense posture and projecting

stability in the region and all that, really the question arises for us as both professionals, academic and future scholars and diplomats and so on. basically whether the 28 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 richard prosen to share with me 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. frf from here? sounds okay. again, richard prosen from the state department. i work for the guy, the gentleman to my left, in the 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 dignity and our respect for human aspirations. in fact, the washington treaty, which founded nato in 1949, emphatically states our collective defense alliance is also a community of values founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. we are now at a pivotal moment, i would argue, for our alliance. in the nearly 70 years of nato's existence, perhaps never have we faced such a range of challenges all at once, security, humanitarian, and political. yet nato is as important and violation for our security as ever, especially as we face a more dangerous road ahead. terrorism, as we know, affects us all from brussels to san bernardino to orlando, nice, paris and the list goes on. we stand together in the fight against daesh. nato is stepping up by contributing awax aircraft to improve our overall intelligence

reconnaissance capabilities. nato is moving forward with enhanced information-sharing measures and other capabilities as well. we have to remember nato's biggest military operation in afghanistan was a direct response to 9/11. as president obama and other leaders have noted in warsaw, we did far more than simply reaffirm our article 5 obligations to our common security. allies agreed to the most significant reinforcement of our collective defense at any time 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 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 -- and policies today and provide suggestion 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. i think to put this in a little context, i would like to spend a brief moment on what happened just before warsaw and what happened after warsaw. so before warsaw we had another summit, the wales 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 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 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 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. there was also a package of measures regarding the south. nato would tinnitus activity. 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. 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 -- 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 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. when you have something like consensus rule 20 some allies have to agree before you can do something, it sometimes can seem a bit like herding cats. i must say that i was very, very favorably impressed by the mood. the mood of the allies at the summits. 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 in terms of the need to take action to new challenges -- regarding new challenges in the south. and i was also struck by the empathy allies demonstrated for each other's concerns, where eastern allies realized there were different but real security concerns in the south and southern allies understood they 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. >> 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 a country that abides by the rule of law and seeks the rule of law, one that respects human rights and seeks to have security and 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 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 nernlgs and seeki-- insurgents destabilize the government in kiev, to russia that has invade and occupy and continues to occupy parts of georgia, and just "the new york times" just the other day had a piece how they continuously move the border around in the parts they occupy in georgia. they have violated the cfe treaty, the budapest memorandum which guaranteed ukraine security in return 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 plaguing europe in a generation and one that has destabilized politics in europe substantially giving tries far right parties in many countries, some of them going into power, some of them 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 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. so 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 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 nato founding act and 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. rein vest in its military, invade its neighbors, 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. 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. 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 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 sphere 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 understandings

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 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 at this point before coming back to some of 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 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, press assistant attorney general on national security, united states attorney for district of columbia, general counsel of the fbi and chief of staff to the director robert mueller, incidentally, who contribute add 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 as an academic with distinguished accomplishments, some of the universities we're 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. 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 is 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 i'm an old law enforcement 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., 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 -- 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 quaint 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 returning. hardened, trained fighters coming back to their homeland wherever they are throughout nato and 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 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 this is where i go back to my initial remarks is, you know, a lot of things that need to be done to on -- to try to meet this threat. and you know in particular that

-- we woke up the more than p september 12 with 3,000 odd people dead with recognition we had a counter-terrorism process that wasn't up to the task. it wasn't able to create that attack in the future. so we had to get busy and get to work. but the challenges were myriad. you had law enforcement and intelligence operations and personnel not coordinated. they were prevented by law and regulation coordinating operations even though law enforcement officials are going after terrorists, foreign terrorist terrorists as a threat, going after intelligence objective, they were unable and oftentimes unwilling to share information.

you had federal law enforcement that wasn't coordinated with local law enforcement. officers out on the street really going to detect the cell in the first place. joint terrorism task force mechanisms for coordination between federal and state and local level, really not sufficient at all. general intelligence level, didn't have coordination and sharing of information among all the federal actors, much less federal and state and tribal actors. this was a situation that we confronted as of september 11th, 2001. just to make it clear, this wasn't the fault of any administration, wasn't that anybody was necessarily terribly short sighted but a lack of

appreciation by the whole country of the severity of the thre 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 cole and then the bombing of the embassies. we didn't believe 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 sharing 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 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 and or alliance more broadly, we're facing the exact challenges the u.s. individually faced on day one. the challenges really are to develop coordination necessary

to prevent terrorism before it happened. just to go back and investigate after it happened but prevent it from happening. 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 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, 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 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 what war is, and this is not a 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, we saw a real problem, in this case one could call it an existential problem, called it a war and went after it. just that definitional issue,

the very foundational level causes problems with coordination. another is an outgrowth of that, 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 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 just sort of the way our culture developed and 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. how to deal with these sort of extremist websites that might not actually be going over the line to affirmatively encouraging violence, and we're trying to figure out what to do with it, in keeping with our 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. because we have a strong first amendment -- they see it differently. neither side is right or wrong. the concern is when you're dealing with a security effort like this that requires law enforcement and dealing with individual liberties, it's a real problem to try to coordinate activities among different countries with 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. we have one sort of classification system by the federal government and we share among people entitled to get that information. every country has its own and it's very difficult to do. in other words, we have a number of different challenges for nato to try to move to the next level in terms of coordination, and 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. it will be interesting to see how that position ends up being 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 comparable to what we've been trying to do in the u.s. the last 15 years. it's been very difficult, made more difficult by peculiar challenges by 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 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 oneel o'neill, by the way, who contributed to our academic work we know very well lost his life 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 affected by this terrible tragedy. somehow we learned from short history what we don't learn. 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 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 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 since 9/11, who would start 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 defined but related to the terrorism as ken had said. so how do you square that circle? i think at warsaw the alliance did some of that. i'll come back to that in a minute. i think the other tension we had building was sort of a tension 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 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 is in our interest and i think the summit 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 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 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 core nato agenda. one is something nato traditionally does and knows what it does. it probably is doing now fairly well, which is defense, deterrents. 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, frags 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. 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.

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. 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 resilience which we should push on is the next tier of countries all around the alliance are 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. 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. 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 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 step 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 issues will test the next administration. i agree with the points that have been developed so far. 1qu 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 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 our common interests with europe in the euro atlantic region and around the world. 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.

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 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 between the uk and the remaining european countries about the terms of that exit. so i think what this means 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 a2ad zone in the eastern mediterranean in syria. russia has significant capabilities in st. petersburg that cover the eastern balance ticks as well as to cover 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. this a brief chart showing come of the capabilities, one of the most geographically invasive parts of russian military capabilities in nato airspace. from kaliningrad, they cover a wide access of lithuania, poland, and with 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 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 in syria at this time. it didn't need to use this capability. it went out of its way to launch missiles from the caspian sea to demonstrate the range and precision of the aircraft. 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 militarily than the soviet union was. but at the same time, it is also true and a fact that russia 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 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. another significant part is the giuk gap. russia has deployed a far greater number of submarines in the north atlantic, and again, with their technology, they're quieter than we've ever faced before. so the admiral richardson has expressed great concern about the united states to move through the contested sea space of the north atlantic. this is one of the reasons why deputy secretary of defense, bob work, visited iceland and the united states is committed to reopening the base in keplich, and antisubmarine helicopters there. but in addition to that we have the threats from the south. we have migrants, unprecedented level of human movement from north africa and the middle east into europe. in addition to that we have terrorism. now, for many nato allies, the

russian threat is the main threat. there are key allies, france and belgium that see terrorism as their number one priority. while the terrorists that attacked paris were about less than a dozen in number, they may be perhaps the most successful pinning force in military history, because those dozen terrorists are holding down 7,000 french troops that are deployed domestically for counterterrorism operations, rather than being available for other french or nato missions. we have a campaign being raised by russia within nato capitols. we've seen the dnc hacked, but this is not an isolated incident. we've seen multiple types of these attacks, again, in nato territory.

british intelligence admitted that in 2015, they foiled a significant cyber attack against the election. german intelligence talks about the increase in russian spies and their attempts to influence public opinion. these are things that the alliance is facing all across, and needs a much stronger response. if you've heard earlier there have been key deliveries from the summit. these are command cells of about 40 personnel. 20 from nato, 20 from the host country. they're good, helpful, but again, limited. they're to help nato war exercises and to facilitate the deployment of some of these

other forces that were agreed upon at wales and warsaw. so the nato response force, which was supposed to be the rapid reaction force, but alliance leaders saw the speed with which russia acted in ukraine was much faster than the abilities the alliance had. it tripled the response force and increased it so nato response force should in theory be deployable within 30 days. even that was not considered to be quick enough. nato created the vgtf. a smaller unit of about 5,000 troops like infantry that should be able to be deployed within two to seven days. the first units of about 1,500 troops in two days and the rest of the 5,000 within seven days. at warsaw, we saw some of the most -- more significant steps taken. the most famous of which have been the efp, the enhanced forward presence, four battalions deployed in the east, which we'll go into deeper, but in addition to that, we must also remember that through the

president obama european reassurance initiative, the united states is also putting a 3rdberry dade combat team in europe on a rotational basis. we're also seeing greater deployments in the black sea region, with the uk, canada, poland, pledging to send some fighters for rotational exercises, which the alliance sometimes calls black sea air policing. but they'll be there a limited time. these are the ones nato is making a huge -- russia is making a big impact about and even nato it's self i feel is exaggerated the extent to which the military capability is deployed. as you can see in each of the baltic countries and poland, there will be a battalion. these battalions will be roughly about 1,000 troops. they will be led by one nation nato refers to as a framework nation.

in addition to that, other countries will contribute smaller size units to that. what this means basically is that except for the united nations, which will be mostly close to 1,000 troops, most of the other battalions deployed, even the framework nation won't be deploying close to 1,000 but probably half or a little more, 5 to 700 of the troops. the rest of the battalion will be provided by some of the other nations. nato, i think, is very confident and claiming credit for participation of 20 countries in the enhanced forward presence. i think it's good to have that type of political solidarity. militarily as a strategist i'm concerned it takes 20 countries for nato to scrape together 4,000 troops. and the reason why i'm concerned about the size of it is this. this a response to russian

aggression in crimea and ukraine. after wales nato created, expanded size of nrf and created bgtf, about 5,000. after warsaw nato deploying east 4,000 troops in these battalions. before nato announced this decision at the warsaw summit in july, as far back as january, the russians announced they were going to add 3,000 -- i'm sorry, three divisions to their western military district. since then, they have changed those numbers. they are adding two divisions or 20,000 troops to western military district and one of these has been reassigned to southern military district, which is the one closest to ukrainian border. so this is currently the balance of power in the northeast. you see on the left the size of the nato defense border, the

fourth bar shows nato enhanced forward presence. the fifth bar shows if we added on top of that the vjtf. the sixth bar shows greater size of 30,000 of nato's rapid response force. and then the last before the red one, this is if we added all these nato capabilities together what they would look inside. this is compared to what russia has just in the western military district, the district that borders nato territory. i think i'm having a little trouble. there we go. to put it very briefly, i see

that nato has some key challenges, some key vulnerabilities. these are size, which you saw in the previous charts. speed, which requires two different types of speed, and readiness. in terms of speed, nato needs to improve its political decision making speed because none of these troops are going to move until nato provides political approval for them. also even once that very difficult hurdle that nato has been wrestling with for over two years now, we still have military speed. the actual deployability of these troops, which leads to what i consider nato's main achilles heel, which is there is a very serious readiness problem all across the alliance. nato does not have sufficient military capabilities to face the threat it is seeing from russia. even if it had it, the problem is more severe, not only does it have capabilities nato thinks it has on paper, it has far fewer. more significantly we see this in germany where they have far fewer combat planes than they

had before. even the ones that are remaining, about half of them are not combat ready. but this is not isolated just to germany. the readiness problem is all across the alliance. for example, great britain, royal navy with lustrous career has more admirals than it has combat ships. the french as we talked about are overstretched, not just with counter-terrorism movement operation sentinel but also with their consider terrorism efforts their counterterrorism efforts in the southern sahel region in africa and in mali, central african republic. so in the united states, because of sequester, the commander of ucom had to ground 25% of our fighter aircraft because there wasn't enough funding for them.

so my last chart, just a basic comparison of where we are now. the current approach, i see a stronger version among too many political nato leaders to take political risk or spend a lot of money to actually deal with the threat we're facing. as a result of that, every time russia acts and creates a provocation to the west, we have a very muted response. too often this means a bilateral response. there is a lack of political deterrence within the alliance. when russia pushes one of our allies or partners in europe, i think there needs to be a multinational diplomatic response. this will reinforce our military deterrence.

likewise i think nato is taking too long to resolve the decision making problem. i think it needs to remember it has already delegated in the past authority during the cold war and secretary-general during balkans conflict. nato needs to return to these things and not think it's reinventing the wheel. also i think we need to see a change from basic defense budget planning among alliances. there's too many free riders in europe, but at the same time i feel washington is enabling this because we're doing too many unilateral actions. i feel already two rounds of e.r.i., the united states has put money on the table. according to the nato secretary-general's report, nato defense spending grew in the past year by over $3 billion, over european and canadian allies. e.r.i. itself is 3.4 billion,

which is a significantly large number. so they are spending more on their national defense but not committing more to nato missions. i feel that before a third e.r.i. is approved or recommended by the next u.s. administration, it needs to be a multi-lateral e.r.i., one in which both the united states and our allies both put capabilities on the field. thank you very much. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, very much, for your assessments. the imbalance as you mentioned and vulnerabilities and particularly your maps, and we'll come back to it. i would like to develop a discussion first among the panelists and then with the audience. i have one general question. i think it was already referred about the next administration, let's say the first 100 years -- i'm sorry days. first 100 years would deal with the challenge.

but anyway, i would like the panelists first to respond to that or respond to some of the other perspectives in regard to the agenda of the next administration. secondly, the agenda of the many summit in brussels in early 2017. we have at least two dozen challenges or issues that ken weinstein and ambassador voelker and other speakers mentioned. can you cite, for example, some five top concerns that the administration should consider and then, of course, the nato mini summit in brussels in early 2017 should consider. we'll start with you, maybe. >> why don't i defer to my colleagues that are not in the government.

>> thanks. you and i did include that in my opening remarks. just to recap, for the 100 days i think it's important -- dan hamilton stressed this point, too, can't wait for a summit. the new u.s. administration needs to come out strongly on collective defense in article 5. i'm calling on nato to join with u.s. in doing crisis management with these major crisis surrounding nato territory, to renew a call for building europe whole, free and at peace that's inclusive for all europe's democracies and to offer to work together with russia. the post-1989 security order. when you come to the nato summit then, i think it should be an affirmation of all allies on those things. and i would add to that as what i said and as others said, we need to have a greater emphasis on capability development for

the future. nato's behind. >> well, i think i think i try to outline some of that. i think the main point about the political statement, political affirmation is the most important. i think there's an agenda as was underscored here about developing capabilities to move forces to forward defense. i do think the resilience agenda is quite important and it's new, it's different for nato. it's not only for nato, but it's important piece now within that framework. and the south needs huge amount of attention. at which nato will fit somewhere. it won't be the answer. it's not going to be the answer. but there are many things that nato can do. but i think overall, especially first 100 day type of thing, it is this political statement of affirmation. europe free, that's been our focus, but today, europe is fractured and anxious.

and unless we sort of get that discussion going again about how we work on these things together, not just how governments do it, but how populations think we're working on it together, that's probably the more important job, as public diplomacy part of this, getting government i think is going to be very hard. >> i agree with what dan and kurt said. having a strong political declaration at the outset of the next u.s. administration is extremely important. not least because of what dan noted about the burden sharing debate and the extreme criticism of nato at some points in this presidential campaign. so i think, you know, addressing the way forward with our nato allies is extremely important. and keeping up the momentum on resources which has been built

up so effectively over the last couple of years. and is, you know, bearing fruit perhaps slower than some would like, but is moving in the right direction. keeping that moving, it would be important as well. >> i agree with the good ideas that have been proposed already. i'll just reinforce too that i've made and one i didn't get to a chance to include in the presentation. i think it's important right off the bat that we change to these unilateral and align these bilateral responses to russia by having multi-national political and diplomatic responses to russian provocations. if russia threatens any one of our nato members ever again, there needs to be a unified nato response from all 28 perhaps we should all dispel some of the members from their embassies in the national capitals at a sufficient level, but i think there needs to be that kind of a message, that where ever russia

pokes any of our nato members, they will face political will he, diplomatically, military, and even economically, they will face unified nato response. i also feel in the same way that the next level of e.r.i. that the president, administration should say, start off working with the new summit by saying that we expect there to be a multinational e.r.i. with a proportional and tangible european contribution to it as well. and then lastly, i'll also say that part of these things that are consistent with these two things is there is a lot of talk about the a2 threats in europe and the u.s. military are particularly moving and having to deal with it. but, i am concerned that there is very little attention and very little activity being seen publicly about a european contribution that nato is facing, and that should be one of our friers going into the of our priorities going into the next summit. >> before i turn this over to

richard, i would like to ask the questions of the panel, obviously we focussed on nato, nato membership, do you see any role for the partnership for these countries, all the way from finland to sweden and the ukraine and so north and the istanbul cooperation initiative on the gulf states, for example, and the mediterranean dialogue, some of the countries like egypt and israel and morocco, tunisia and so forth. in other words, non-nato members who can also participate in the strategy whether it is in europe and elsewhere. >> i will start off on this one. i think you've touched on something that's very important. and i think nato partnerships have greatly extended the reach of the alliance.

the great thing about the partnerships is they are demand-driven. no one is required to be a nato partner. nations decide to become nato partners because they think it's in their own interest and in turn the allies also see the interest in having a partnership. so in different ways because the partnership activities are tailored to each nation many countries have drawn closer to nato. we have very close relationships with finland and sweden. also a close relationship with jordan. we have increasingly an increasing tempo of activities in kuwait and in tunisia, so there are a lot of countries that see it in their own interest and security terms to draw closer to nato, and this is a real resource going forward. >> just to make the obvious point that those partnerships,

the last few that you cited down in the middle east are tremendously helpful going forward as to my area of interest, the counterterrorism area and the more we can foster that and translate that partnership into actual operational coordination and cooperation with others. >> i would say that the partnership of peace efforts offer a tremendous opportunity to blend them into the overall strategic thought process. discussions like this don't get anywhere, unless you have a master tragedy. it has to be a global kind of strategy and all. you can't tell the nato countries to do this or that if you don't have a nato strategy, for example. i think some thought ought to be given to that. >> exactly. and again, the bridges the communities try to develop one

is the partnerships for peace review that turkey was mandated by nato to combat terrorism and beyond that, and i would say they tried to reach out, of course, now the situation is uncertain how things will develop in the region. but at any rate, we did produce journals in this particular area, partnerships for peace review as well as terrorism. anyone else? >> just briefly. i think, i mean, i think partnership for peace sort of needs a re-think. it has worked well for 25 years. but in a different, very different context, why it was created. for all the reasons jorge said, we're facing new kinds of issues, and many of the partnerships have now become nato members, and others have sort of graduated. but it is not really coming

together in any way that i think is as attune to the challenges as it could be. for instance, the enhanced opportunities partner, now we have the five countries that joe mentioned, it is kind of a grab bag, and you know, it is good to do that, but you know, let's take that further. finland and sweden are frankly in a class by themselves in terms of the value added they could provide, and we could take that even further. i have argued for a whole nother tier of partnership that would basically get them as close to being a member as they can. i think the strategy frankly given the swedish and finnish debates is to get as close as you can, so by the time the question is really asked in sweden or finland, everybody knows what the answer will be. instead of trying to push it too hard, have it backfire. but also, that means incremental partnership, get them to be value added contributors. i mentioned resilience.

that's a whole nother area. why wouldn't we do partnerships a in the resilience, forward resilience. we need to know how resilient ukraine is. all sorts of ways it could be disrupted. otherwise, a lot of our efforts won't be that useful. we have proposed resilient support teams, nato-eu teams, go in, experts, work with a country on where they need help, with their problems. that's applied at the moment only to nato space or eu space, but i don't know why we wouldn't do advisory support teams like ukraine. it gives us a new plank. japan and south korea wanted to be partners, they have been rebuffed. we have an article 5 commitment to those countries as well. in we really want to harness combined assets, we should see how we should develop that so they could also provide activities.

australia's an enhanced opportunity partners. why weren't they given the opportunity? i think there is a rich area for new thinking in the partnership project. beyond where it is. >> anyone else? okay, richard, do you want to -- >> do you want to open it up to the audience to have questions? i think we have colleagues with -- >> please identify yourself and make your questions brief. we'll go a little over the -- >> yeah daphne, potomac institute. in view of the upcoming elections and the changes in europe, where do you see the u.s. support for nato going at this point? i know it's everybody's guess, but in any case, where would the pendulum swing in terms of u.s. support for nato? >> could we take a couple of questions, sir?

>> thank you so much for your panel and insights. mr. weinstein, i guess how you can fit in this panel, you mentioned, mr. weinstein, i gue can fit into this panel, you mentioned that there is nato -- being from the russian embassy would definitely support the main threat in the world is scourge of terrorism which our countries, united states, russia, are in better position to eliminate in this world if they work together. that is an idea and speaking of events in 2001, september 11, you might remember president putin was the first one to call president george w. bush and offer assistance and also felt simply for people killed in new

york. also russia supported the isaf mission, nato isaf mission in afghanistan by the security council in new york or providing logistics. now we don't have it in nato. nato suspended all the military corporation intel cooperation it doesn't contribute to the security. that's the situation we have now. i understand the preelectoral mode here within the beltway and definitely russia is kind of supports here, too, put russia in front of this campaign, if you call it, but also the warmongering people here, it was

an opportunity to draw circles and say what will russia do next, they'll be threatening the united states. i understand it. i hope that it's a fading political campaign, electoral campaign that's going to -- >> sorry. is there a question. >> yes, to be short, i don't approve of the messages that my country broke the trust and did everything wrong and it's -- you know, the hardships for the united states and the other world let me remind you that nato was the first one to break trust by blowing up military equipment and personnel around our borders and provoking basically an arms race. what kind of resilience does the alliance project forward like in ukraine by supplying arm there is and many here call for more

robust measures. is that the kind you call protecting stability, being a peaceful alliance that doesn't threaten anyone? >> that was the question. >> question, do you see any -- what what exactly can nato do to resolve the crisis in ukraine and to stop building up military buildup on its eastern flank which doesn't contribute to security of europeans, russians or americans, thank you. >> thank you for the question. so the two questions are one on u.s. administration what's the view of the panel vis-a-vis the overall emphasis and support for nato and the second question is nato's role in ukraine. we have probably time for one more question, sir, right here and while -- we'll take the

third question, right here in the front, sorry. >> just two very quick -- just building on the administration. >> identify yourself. >> sorry, i'm from the embassy of canada. just building on the question from the potomac institute, the new administration, especially perhaps if we have a trump administration who has already talked about japan and south korea needing to better support themselves, how does that translate potentially to allies, especially those who don't necessarily live up to the 2% defense spending commitment and then just about resiliency and just late last week we saw moldova all but elect a very pro-russian president. nato has done a lot of work with moldova. how do we go forward not just with moldova but other countries in that area who may be leaning away from europe? thank you. >> we'll take one more question. >> thank you, i'm with the

lithuanian defense attache. thank you very much, there will be a lot of questions but probably due to time limit there is will be a short time so i'll be very short. one of the nato vulnerabilities is the time which is used to decision making process and some of the aspects have already been improved and eventually one of the aspects would be an appointment of the new assistant secretary general for intelligence due to the fact that intelligence is one of the most important issues with a lot of planning will depend on and do you see any other possibilities to increase the speed of decision-making process in nato? even in the present situation. >> thank you, we'll turn it over to the panelists if they want to

tackle any of the questions, please. >> i'd be happy to touch on these quickly and then unfortunately i'm going to have to run as well, too. first of all, on u.s. support, i think the american public has a great reservoir of support for nato and the countries that make it up. at the same time there's a degree of frustration that we don't want to feel that we're doing things for european security the europeans don't want to do themselves and i think the situation gives a u.s. president to exercise leadership. we need to lead a path forward that affirms the commitment and tack that will sense of frustration. so there's a lot of running room for a u.s. president given the state of the public. it's important to remember the reason there's a crisis in ukraine is because russia invaded and continued to support straitists there, has troop

there is, has annexed part of the territory of the country and as long as russia feels that it can continue in that path there's not going to be stability in ukraine so what's important is that nato provide additional support, political, economic, financial, military to the government of ukraine so that it is able to resist this more effectively and create stability. as far as moldova goes, unfortunately there's not a whole lot that we can do in the short term about reversing this. one of the things we do cling to is the ability of countries to have their own political systems and make their own decisions, what we see is through surreptitious means countries like russia influencing that and producing an outcome such as we had but i think what we can best do is to continue to support our own values and do that in a very visible and public way which i think will resonate with publics

over time and to make sure we are communicating that effectively and finally on speeding up decision making, it's an excellent question and jorge was right to put that into a slide. the -- to me the logical thing always would have been to make a clear distinction between political decisions and implementation of political decisions. and it is possible, i believe, to preserve for consensus at the north atlantic council at a political level decision making on political issues. but once decisions at a political level are taken, even if it's well, well in advance it ought to then be implemented through the nato authorities both civilian and military without having to go back for additional political decision making. and that is the part that always slows things down. firm the kosovo campaign it was