tonight, we will hear from the chair of the commission on presidential debates, martha raddatz of "abc news" and chris wallace from fox news, live at maryland university college at 8:00 eastern. tonight on "the communicators." >> again, it's a great measure how fast things change that the law is just figuring out those two examples, cell phones and e-mail, it may be figuring that out just about the time they're not as important in our daily lives. there's a built-in delay the law suffers from and hard to keep

up. >> how prosecutors, lawyers and judges lack understanding of technology and worked to help resolve that problem. he's interviewed by dustin volt, surveillance policy at reuters. >> a lot of scientists love the law and policy and probably think they're better at it than they really are. i wonder if that is something we can use to appeal to people and do their duty and spend a few years in d.c. to help the government out. >> watch "the communicators" at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. now, back to the foreign policy initiatives day long conference with remarks from lieutenant general hr mcmaster inty dpraigs center talking about integrating new defense technologies and military history to help create national strate strategies. this is an hour.

>> good afternoon again, ladies and gentlemen. if i could kindly ask you to move towards your seats for what will be the final time this afternoon. it's always a pleasure to reach the culminating discussion of the day at our fpi forum. it will be a wonderful conversation i'm sure between general h.r. mcmaster and our fellow and the director of our center on military and diplomatic history, mr. mark moyer. before we get started, and if you will forgive me taking the moment, i want to use a quick opportunity to say thank you to a few members of the fp iteam before we wrap up, when folks are headed towards the exits, but in particular, elaine

stearn, lindsey markel, our excellent government relations team at fpi. very little of what happens would happen if it were not for them and daniel borrow was our operations director. the three of them in particular have done much of the great work made today happen. very grateful to the three of them and, of course, very grateful to mark for everything he's done standing up cmdh, since july of this year. it's a new effort. mark arrived at fpi in the summer of 2015. after he came to us from joint special operations university. prior to that, he had been an instructor at marine corps university. the frequency with which he is publishing books is quite st stunning, a special forces operations book coming out next year and then a sequel to his very well-known and excellent book, triumph forsaken, the

vietnam war from 1954 to 1965. all of us at fpi are fortunate to have mark on the team and looking forward to the conversation he will be having today with general mcmaster. thank you both. >> thanks, chris, to you, for all your hard work that's gone into this event. i'm dr. mark moyer, the director of our newly formed center for military and diplomatic history. we've heard a bit today about some of the reasons why we actually need a center like this. there's problems on the supply side and demand side. the supply side, military and diplomatic history are out of fashion at civilian units why ywhy -- civilian universities and pd historians not teaching at universities where they would in normal circumstances teaching.

on the demand side a deficit of knowledge about history here in the policy world and also, to some extent, a lack of interest. we're trying to redress both of those problems. social scientists, political scientists will often tell you historians don't know how to do anything except tell stories, which is about as silly as s saying fidel castro doesn't do anything except for provide help to the needy. i am going to start with the story because it is a very effective way of getting people's attention. after a day of being bombarded with speeches and us being the last place i thought it would hopefully help us provide a point of departure. eight years ago in this same town there was a lot of talk about a new idea called "smart power," if you remember that.

one of this key elements of smart power was using non-military means of relieving conflict and there was an overreliance on military instrument of power, it was said, and we will now use the month military instance of power because these problems have root causes that are non-military nature, things like human rights violation, poverty. so we're going to have these government approaches where we have civilian agencies taking on more of the work and the military is going to be doing less. in theory, it sounded pretty appealing in a number of respects. we then saw this put into practice in a number of places. one example, afghanistan. the obama administration decided to increase the development aid in afghanistan from 1.2 to 4$4. billion. they undertook a civilian surge,

went from 500 civilians in afghanistan to 1300 civilians. they set about trying to actually implement this sort of smart power approach in afghanistan. unfortunately, the results did not live up to the billing. some of you here, i think, saw this first hand. for one thing, we saw the state department, u.s. aid could not get their experienced people to go to these countries and they had to bring in contractors and temporary employees and the vast majority never got into the countryside because it was dangerous there and the civilian unions didn't feel they were obliged to go there. we did not have oversight where the huge amounts of cash were going and oftentimes ended up in the hands of the enemy or corrupt officials. you were exacerbating conflict rather than alleviating it. and the problem if you want to

do aid projects, the taliban were there and would kill your workers and governors. we saw there was counter neurologi insurgency gains but it had to do with military power and they went in and brought the military officials with them. i would argue this huge waste of resources could have been avo avoided if we had paid some attention to history, if the obama administration had looked back. they didn't have to look back far, go back to the clinton administration to find these same ideas. you think colombia in the 1990s, we heard a lot of the same id ideas, we were going to use non-military power and western going to give money to colombia's military, give to it civilian agencies and law enforcement and do crop substitution programs. what happened, the same things that happened in afghanistan. too insecure to go into these

ar areas, people getting killed and ultima ultimately, it wasn't until the governments in both countries decided to put a heavy emphasis on the security side that you actually made progress. this is just one example where there's pretty clear indications from history that a different policy should be reviewed. history is oftentimes not so straightforward. when we often see, a situation where there are multiple precedents to look for, a classic case is iraq in 2003, after we took down saddam hussein, we looked for ideas for rebuilding the country. we focused very heavily on nazi, germany. debaa debaathfication was borrowed from denazification. i would argue in hindsight we should have look at other cases, why not look at japan in 1945, or reconstruction, the american

south after the civil war, we could have learned a lot from there. history is not going to necessarily fall into your lap. it requires a lot of serious thought. i would add we can't just ignore it even though it's difficult. times we i tried to do foreign policy without history at all has led to disaster because it's based on unfounded assumptions. we need to be aware history is going to be used. the question is how do we use it effectively? history is also important because it gives us familiarization, context, so if you're confronting a narcotics situation, it would be useful if you spent time studying five or 10 actual historical cases. when you go to the next one you will at least know what questions you will ask and have an idea what solutions might actually work. our center is doing events, a

variety of events to try to bring historians from around the country here to interact with the policy community. we're doing a number of venue, some public events, this being the largest one we've done so far. some that are specifically targeted private government audien audiences, so we're going to the pentagon, capitol hill, foggy bottom, places like that. we don't expect that we're going to fundamentally change u.s. policy doing this. we do think there is a lot of value to getting the best historians to talk to people making decisions today. we think also that by beating the drum on history, we will get people in the national security community to spend more time looking at history, to think historic historically. you don't have to have a ph.d. in history to think historic historically. we are fortunate today to have somebody i think is perhaps the

best possible person to convey this message, sitting next to me general mcfadden who has a ph.d. in history and at the same time, incredibly distinguished practitioner. he first came to public attention in the gulf war in 1991 when he commanded an army cavalry at the battle of 73 e t eastling he routed a much larger iraqi tank force and became a textbook study in new forms of armored warfare. in 1997, he published a book based on his dissertation, "dereliction of duty" immedia immediately became required r d reading across the armed services. 2004, commander at talifar in

iraq, able to achieve where few were able to. and in 2010 took charge of the coalition anti-corruption task force and now at the army capabilities integration center where he is in charge of pl planning army capabilities for future conflict, as we go forward. he's done a lot of other great things. in the interest of time, i'll turn it over to general mcmaster. >> thank you. how many history majors? still some people to convert maybe. i thought maybe it was an audience of fellow historians all of whom are talking about how underappreciated we are.

this is such a great idea, center for diplomatic history for all the reasons mark identified. what i thought i might do, talk about how i think the center can really help make us better. better defending our nation in particular and anticipating the national security strategy to address threats we see are gr growing. threats growing to our nation and all civilized peoples today. i'll be brief and i want to hear your discussion and hear your ideas and thoughts as well. this is important, right? this is an important center. from our perspective in the army in the joint force and military thinking clearly about national security is fundamental not just about our fundamental interests and conflict but making sure our military is prepared to respond

to threats to national and intersecti international security to resolve crieses at the lowest possible cost in lives and blood and treasure. thinking about future wars often neglected, or done superfici superficially. remember the orr doxyin the 1990s, a lot of you are probably too young for that. it became conventionalwisdom, right? the future of war would be great. fast, chieap, efficient, from standoff differences, like the george stan toes approach to r wars, doing really cool military stuff. it didn't acknowledge the end e enduring political nature, the fact people fight for the same reasons 2500 years ago, fear, honor and interest and didn't acknowledge war's interactive nature and inherent uncertainty of war.

remember the hubristic language, you can find it on the internet, has its own wikipedia page. if you type in "shock and awe," a 1996 paper and read the four conditions we can achieve in future war. one was total control of everything. it didn't acknowledge any control of the agency or control by one's adversaries and didn't acknowledge war as a contest of wills and our ability to prevail in peace in particular, as you just heard, knowing who we are and our values. some particularly in academia don't want to study war because they confuse the study of war with the advocacy of it. what we ought to do is thinking about war and conflict in the

way raymond bradberry thought about it, his purpose of writing "fahrenheit 451," when he fin h finished, he was interviewed and the interviewer said, are you trying to predict the future? he said, hell, no, i'm trying to prevent it. unless we can think clearly about future war we'll be unable to deter conflict. others neglect continuity of nature of war and focus almost exclusively on social or te technological changes. parad paradoxically the neglect of diplomatic military history that perpetuates deficiencies and understanding and can make war more likely. what is lacking sorely today, sorely lacking today i believe is depth of understanding we achieve new heights of super ficiality in terms of what's going on in the world and what we might do about it.

in recent years, many of the difficulties encountered in strategic decision making, operational planning and forced development have stemmed from shallow or flawed thinking, enabled in large measure by the neglect, the abject neglect of history. i think this center will help policymakers and civilian and military leaders overcome both the tierney of the daily crisis, thinking and reading about history, you're actually freeing your mind from the day-to-day chores and engaging a subject more deeply but i also think it will help serve as correction tendency in thinking to make the future appear much different than the past. what the center for diplomatic history will help us do is go beyond what we should think about particular issues but i think with a huge contribution is going to be helping us understand better how to think.

what can the center do in particular in terms of how to think about problems. i think, first of all, to -- it will help us understand better how to do as suggested we do, to take what seems fused, big problems and break them down into their constituent elements, to engage problems we're dealing with now, isis or translation nati nation -- transnational terrorist organizations and engage it on its own terms and recognize the complexity of these problem sets. also, how to ask the right questions, asking first order questions sometimes we skip that stage, go right into, what should we do about this? do a little bombing or this or that? we confuse activity with progress because we don't pro r

properly phrase the problem. what is driving the conflict? who are our enemies and adversa adversaries? what are their goals and what is their strategy? sometimes we skip right in, how do we go after them? >> how to determine circumstances on their own terms and how to trace events back to their causes. how to apply an int interdisciplinary approach to problems of diplomacy and war that includes anthropology, literature and philosophy and history is inherently int interdisciplinary. how to think in time, consistent with historian carl becker's observation, memory of the past and anticipation of the future should go hand-in-hand either way without disputing leadership. when somebody talks to you about

the deep future or leap ahead capabilities, run for the exits, something crazy is coming. what we need are grounded projections into the near future. focus on solving real problems, addressing real threats, real adversaries and real geographic ar areas. we learn the militaries, count y countries prepared to eats prevent or respond to crisis are those who think clearly about the problem of future war in that grounded way. think about the future as the ancient greeks said, think of ourselves walking backward into it, paying attention to what's going on today and in the past as a way to think about the future. without the depth of understanding the history provides this center will provide, what was warned against, the tendency to regard war as something autonomous

rather than an instrument of policy. misunderstanding the kind of war in which we are embarking and trying to turn it into something alien toward war's very nature. in short, this center and the history the center promotes is important. it could provide a strong antidote to future folly. this is why historians have to make a special effort and be a unabashed about connecting historical knowledge and understanding to temporary strategic and operational problems. we have to be humble about that and dull ldull -- duly qualify historical analogies, officials use history to talk about concrete or emerging problems. applying history to understanding the problems of today and tomorrow is just as important for citizens as it is

for diplomats and defense officials. i'm glad this is more of a public forum here. i think the center, reaching out to our citizens is going to be particularly important because citizens have to possess a fundamental understanding of war and of warriors. if they're to remain connected to those who fight in their name and if they're to hold our governments accountable for decisions involving killing and the prospect of death. if society is disconnected from an understanding of war or is disconnected from that society's warriors, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the fundamental requirements of military effectiveness or recruit young men and women into military service. and it's something you might focus on as well necessary to preserve the war of ethos that

permits servicemen and women to a sacred trust and covenant that binds them to one another and the society they serve. absent a fundamental understanding of war and what it takes to fight it, popular culture cheapens and coarsens the war ethos and further separates warriors, often portrayed as flawed, frayed, traumatized human beings. while the military of historians and human beings are important to preserve, historians must engage on contemporary issues, this conference, the work of this center is important. unless we access history in a purposeful way, its lessons will, as the great historians, carl becker warned, lay in nert in unread books. i'm really looking forward to

where you would like to take the conversation, what a privilege it is to be with you, thanks. >> thank you for those terrific remarks. you brought a few more points to my mind, talking about taking the time to free your mind. just get in with a senior person, sort of role model for our project is eric aidleman, one of our board members, i first met him in 2007, he was working on iraq and they had an idea they were thinking of and it bore some relationship to what was going on in vietnam. they brought me into the pentagon for an hour to talk to him and other senior officials. it had some value to them and i couldn't give them all the answers, having that historical perspective was valuable. very easy to get caught up in the crisis of the day, valuable that way. you talk about complexity, i

think that's one of the advantages of history and histori historians, the social sciences in many respects, not all of them, but many of them oversimplify things especially when they try to quantify things or come up with grand theories. history makes you understand how complex things are that things are not linear, that you actually need to spend a lot of time studying something before you can really understand it. you also raise the point about int interdisciplinary work. we do actually support things that are beyond pure history. i've actually written a couple of books in the political science realm. we do encourage historians to use comparative history, where you're taking a subject, hal brand's book, a good example, you take five different administrati administrations, look at their history for trends in certain areas. another thing that came to mind,

i recently read a book called "super forecasting," anybody here read that book? it's a pretty interesting book. the book looks at forecasting and -- it grew out of an earlier work found basically the experts you see on tv don't really predict things any better than any else, they just say things better. then they did this study to try to figure out if there's any who can predict these things and found this group of super foreca forecasters, in general better if you give them a question, is ukraine going to lose another 100 kilometers of territory in the next six months. the answers like this over a long period of time. one of the interesting things they found was after about five years the super forecasters were no better than any else. it raises questions, how can we think about the future, in history it indicates how often

we get the future wrong. how do we think about that. i was going to ask you a question. you talked a little bit about the future. maybe if you can talk a little bit more about your historical future. because you obviously in your position can't say, we don't know anything. how do you think through that? >> thank you. so i think the first way that we think through it is we acknowledge the continuities in the nature of war. and these are continuities that make war -- sir michael howard observed. wars resemble each other more than they resemble any other human activity. so if you acknowledge what makes war different, which is its -- you know, it's ways for political outcomes and nature, the human drivers of conflict, the interactive nature of war. war's a contest of wills for example, it helps you resist

simplistic analogies. like some of those in the 1990s. some had to with moore's law and computing power equals fundamental changes in law, for example. it helps you to understand continuities. then of course the character of war is always evolving and changing. so what we do is we really look at four key elements. we look through this -- you know, through this four key considerations as we look to future armed conflict. the first is, as i mentioned already, threat, enemies and adversaries and this is to make a grounded projection to see emerging threats to national security and you know we don't have to be super imaginative, so we are concerned obviously with the two revisionist power, russia and china, who are i think engaged in -- you might say a form of limited war for collapsing the post world war ii order and to replace that order

with one that's more sympathetic to their interests. they are pursuing a very sophisticated strategy that combines the use of unconventional force, under the cover of conventional forces. but also involves a very sophisticated propaganda disinformation campaign and economic actions and political subversion, so forth. so that this is -- this is one threat set to look at. and both of those militaries are modernizing their militaries and russia in particular has been aggressive in the use of the militaries in syria and so forth. so we are watching that very carefully. we are looking at emerging capabilities to do a vulnerability analysis on us and to understand better what our strengths are relative to them so we can preserve and accentuate the threats. so i think we have -- we obviously look very closely at north korea. iran who i think you can argue

has been waging a proxy war against us since 1979. and then this terrorist -- is representative of terrorist organizations that are striving to get control of the population and resources. as we look at these, okay, look at each of the problems. on their own terms but recognizing the problems aren't completely disconnected from each other. right? our adversaries and enemies will sort of calculate their actions and pay attention to where they might see opportunities, associated with the effect that others are having on us and our interinterests. what is common across the potential conflicts that we see, they're about the population and resources. what we see common across these is that our potential enemies take four kind of -- they do four things. they're in common. first thing they do is try to evade our strengths. we have to understand our

enemies are not going to be the passive recipients of our military prowess. they'll engage in counteractions, traditional simple ones, disburse and concealment. they'll come after the network strike capability with sophisticated cyber and electronic warfare capabilities as russia's built up. there's concerned about the air power. so they have established air supremacy over ukraine from the ground. so you -- you know, these are the kind of things that are common across different adversaries and enemies and the third is that those enemies are emulate our capabilities. china has engaged in the greatest theft of intellectual theft in property. and then finally, our adversaries will expand on the other battlegrounds. battle grounds of propaganda,

disinformation. so threats -- second what kind of missions we think we have to conduct in the future to secure our interests that comes a lot from strategic guidance. this third is changes in technology, but understanding from the historical perspective there's countermeasures, right? so there's the submarine, bomber, radar. machine gun, antitank missile. understanding that interaction within technology, enemy technologies are to gain an advantage. then finally, history and les n lessons learned. we can learn so much from today. conflicts that we are involved in. wow, what is it like to be in the post-war period. man, what are you talking about? so we're learning a lot from the conflicts we're in. but also other conflicts. french operations in mali during serval or in lebanon in 2006. so learning from what's going on we see around the world today is

important. ukraine obviously is -- and russian operations, and syria. that's the framework we think through. we look at a strong conceptual for the army modernization. based on the understanding of the future armed conflict, then we describe how army forces in the future will have to be prepared to fight or fight, how they would fight to secure our nation and our vital interests as part of the joint force with multinational partners, with civilian agencies and others. so that's a description of how we have to fight in the future. that's in the high readable army concept. it's enough for you in to take to the ski slopes with you. the latest is in draft form called multidomain battle. and based on that foundation that conceptual foundation we

have to identify what are the required capabilities of the future force and then we learn, we learn through seminars, experimentation, war gaming. and we learn through a framework called the war fighting challenges. these are 21st order questions, the answers to which will inform future force development. so it's an effort to learn in a focus focused, sustained and collaborative manner, not to learn repetitively or episodically. in the army we get enthusiastic about things. everybody goes after robots. if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing in the army. but the problem is we'll forget about that. we'll go on to something else. kids soccer, right? counter uas. the key we have to learn under the framework in a sustained manner and then we have to analyze what we're learning effectively. then bridge and implementation. i think there's a role for history in each of these phases.

so what do we read? well, we're reading history to understand better contemporary conflicts and the threats. you know, we're reading the history of technology. interactions between technology and organizations and doctrines, so forth. so williams and murray's work is seminal in this area. what he did with mcgregor knox in 2001 is still helpful to us still and in the interwar period, a lot of technology information. a lot of literature on militaries that did innovate and learn effectively and those that didn't. joe bob dodi's work on comparing the french and the germans and keezling's work. even the history of how we got the weapons systems, the king of the killing fields. m-1 tank. so everything we do, we have wayne lee from the university of north carolina coming to our

organization tomorrow. to talk about history and history of waging war and how to think about changes in the character of warfare. so just a kick -- not very quick synopsis. >> i'll ask one more question and then open up to the audience. one of the first historians we had about two months ago was brian lynn, he's got a new book out called "elvis' army." he looks at the army in the '50s and makes the point that a lot of the transformation that we hear now, all these things, are very similar to what was being said in the 1950s and that they ran into the problem ultimately that technology they wanted to introduce surpassed the capabilities of the military because you did not have sufficiently educated workforce

within the military. and there are certainly lots of talk these days about personnel, especially trying to find innovative personnel. where would you say the army is right now in terms of the human resources and what further steps would you advise the army to make? >> okay. so this is a big area of focus for us. and, you know, we say in the army operating concept and in appendix "c," it's awesome. wait till you get to that. what's going to happen -- what's going to happen next? there are differential -- our differential advantage comes from the combinations of resilie resilient, well trained soldiers with adaptive technology. that's our differential advantage. we are at pains every day to say hey, we don't man equipment. we equipment the man or woman. you know? so that the -- the key thing for us i think is from the very beginning to ensure that we are

cognizant of how that technology applies to the problem of war and warfare. i think war fighting challenges help us do that. then we also understand how to integrate that capability into an organization that's going to apply it. and so we have a very rigorous experimentation program where we get capabilities in the hands of soldiers very early. and this is -- like for example the army expeditionary war fighting experiment at ft. benning and at ft. sill. a cyber equivalent we do in new jersey. so i think -- i think that getting that equipment in then allows soldiers to see how they would apply it. then it gives feedback to industry and it informs our requirements. so for example we're about to buy and field a -- an unmanned aerosystem this big. it fits in the soldier's pocket.

it has a significant amount of range so that you know before you cross the street in the urban area where an enemy machine gun might be covering, you know, you can send this soldier born sensor out. you have a realtime down link from the sensor. now the tactics for employing that, where it could be distributed and then also some of the design changes came from early experimentation. for example, it wasn't very good in the wind. it went up and it kind of blew right back against the wall. you know? that's fixed now. and so i think that getting the technology in and seeing how it applies helps. the second thing is to try to simplify things. and you know, there's a great book called men, machines and modern times. written by morrison in the 1960s. he said in the book, man has succeeded in creating these machines to help tame his

natural environment, but in doing so has created an artificial environment that is far more complex than the natural environment ever was. right? so i think -- can we get -- we stress getting to the point where we're integrating technology to actually simplify things for soldiers. everybody uses the iphone as the example of that. it's intuitive and easy to use. so we're trying to evolve a lot of our systems in that direction as well. then of course it's training and education and bringing in the best soldiers we can. the best men and women in our society. i think that there is an untapped desire to serve in our country. and some what i would like to see is more young men and women volunteering to serve and increasing the pool of candidates so we can become even more selective and we are pretty selective already in terms of who comes in to our army and our armed forces. and then i think we have to do a better job attracting them by

communicating the rewards of service which are less tangible and less visible than the sacrifices and the difficulties of services. long separations, hardships. obviously the physical risk, the loss of comrades. so forth. so those rewards are you know being part of something bigger than yourself. being part of a team in which the man or woman next to you is willing to give everything, including their own life for you. where else do you have that rewarding experience in the organization that takes on the quality of the family? you know, then i think that we have to stress more that our soldiers are warriors but they're also humanities. they're humanitarians because we're confronting the civilizations of all people with the groups like daesh or al qaeda. but the -- they're humanitarians because they're actually taking action to protect innocence from

this kind of brutality. so, you know, i think that we could do a better job of attracting more in. there's a -- and it's cited in the book. 1958 look magazine article, i think it's 1958, and the great historian jonathan shy is featured as an army captain who is leaving, so you're bleeding talent. you can change the name and the date and think you're writing about today. the equipment is more complex. not a new challenge, but certainly a challenge and i think we are -- we're emphasizing this across really all of our activities. >> all right. we have about 15 minutes for questions. so we'll start with the gentleman right here. >> thank you. thank you. henry knewsome, i'm a tar heel

native. well, the first offsets seems to be a reaction to stalemated vietnam -- excuse me, in korea. the second defeat in vietnam and the third seems to be in part -- or whether reaction or not, they come in the wake of these conflicts and the third to purgatory in iraq and in afghanistan. to what extent are these bureaucratic responses that provide a refuge and often a technological refuge that isn't to our recent failures? >> a great question and that's a real danger. so i think that -- i think that many of us are cog nizent of this -- cognizant of that danger. well, let's go on the really cool war, a lot more fun. right? or something that -- a problem that can be solved quickly and so forth. so i think that we're very cognizant of that.

so we're engaging for example in a study on russian new generation warfare. that's doing what you expect the army to do. pay attention to what you're learning. we're not saying hey, that's what all warfare is going to be. we're looking at other threat capabilities and obviously our ongoing operations and efforts in afghanistan and in iraq. you know, comrade crane has said it really well. he said there are two ways to fight the u.s. military. asymmetrically and stupid. you hope that the enemy picks stupid, but they're unlikely to do so. we have to be prepared to fight across a range of contingency operations. we have never been able to predict what the next conflict is going to be and we have to do what sir michael howard says, we can't be so far off the mark that we can't adjust once the real demands reveal themselves to you. we're emphasizing the

adaptability, to adapt quickly to the circumstances, develop situational understanding in complex with the problem sets. i think one of the things we have to do is recognize that hey, there are no short term solutions to long term problems. and if we try to take a short term approach to a long term problem, we're just guaranteeing that we're going to extend the duration of our effort and probably just increase the scale of it. so we are really emphasizing the army the consolidation of military gains is an integral part of war and warfare. not an optional part, you know? and so i don't think we're trying to simplify things into some sort of effort to get beyond, you know, iraq or afghanistan into a much -- a better kind of war. by that is definitely -- but that is definitely a danger and i think across the joint force and some of the defense intellectual community there was a tendency toward that. you go back to the early work on

air sea battle it's multidomain battle. i mean, i think we're on the right path now. but there was really a tendency to say, well, you know, those wars in iraq and afghanistan, they were aberrational. let's get back to what we do best and i would recommend hallbrands and peter fever's response to the mere shimer offshore and it's something that we have to probably -- you know, to try to get out there, to get that argument out there as an -- to inoculate us against that simplistic thinking. >> in the black leather jacket here. >> thank you. i'm keith hill, i'm with bloomberg, but i'm here as a private citizen. i want to approach your answer not to the last question, but the one before that in a different direction. i heard the army chief of staff mention the fact that the army

is the only branch of the as much as where more than 50% of its man power comes from the guard and reserves. in addition to the -- well, actually that was done because well general abrams when he was army chief of staff he wanted a situation when the army went to war it was going to be america going to war rather than just the army going to war. now, in addition to a lack of knowledge about history, wouldn't you say -- would you say that more fundamental problem is the fact that there's this disconnect between the average american and the military? >> well, i think there's a big problem. i think the problem is getting worse probably just because of the size of the army, you know, army getting smaller. so those touch points being fewer and then fewer and fewer families having a direct stake in it. because they have sons or daughters, brothers or sisters in the service. the guard and reserve is a critical bridge between i think our military and our citizens.

and i think that the more we can identify -- we can create opportunities, identify opportunities to a broader population to serve the better. you know? and i think there are a number of initiatives we could undertake to do that. i think one is, you know, an idea. is that we could have multicomponent contracts for recruiters. so for example, i think we should do more of those. so if you're coming out of high school and you don't want to defer college or a job for -- civilian job that you want, for maybe two years come in for the enlistment and then have a three-year or four-year national guard, you know, commitment on the back end. then you serve back in your home state. there's some great incentives, you don't associate it in terms of tuition relief and that sort of thing. the other thing is i think engaging more broadly in the communities. i think that military leaders or

sergeants and our officers in particular ought to get out in their communities as much as they can and make the post as accessible as possible. i had the privilege of commanding ft. benning and there's not a better event than a basic training graduation. unbelievable, man. i mean, you know? you laugh, you'll cry. way better than "cats." almost as good as "hamilton." i don't know. it's amazing. so i think making it more accessible. but any idea you have, sir? you know, i'm easy to track down through these guys. any suggestions on how to connect better we are all for it. >> the man in front. >> hi. i'm courtney mcbride with inside the army. a two part question for you.

you have spoken and others have spoken about this is the first time that perhaps since world war i that the army hasn't had a new combat vehicle under development. >> right. >> and you've spoken about the personnel issues. can you frame for us the broader situation the army finds itself in in historical context? then also how does recent army history impact your efforts to develop future capabilities for the army? is there a concern that budget drives development as opposed to strategy? >> well, okay, great questions. you know, the army -- remember the old book called "massive command?" it was about different cultures and different services. it's dated now, because it was before the all volunteer force and everything. i think it got the army really right. the culture is a servant of the nation. we tend to be, you know, we tend to have like a street of asedvism in us. well, we can make do with what we've got. so sometimes that prevents us from making a very clear

argument for i think the capabilities need for the future. so i think in terms of army modernization, combat vehicles is an example of really a bow -- the deferred army modernization. so there's -- i think there are a number of good reports on this, but i think the csi report for about -- from about six months ago is particularly good. in which the author talks about the triple whammy of army modernization capability and capacity. the triple whammy is that the army -- the size of the army has been severely reduced from 570,000 active to 4.1 active. and 1.1 million total force. that is a huge reduction. way below the 482,000 that we had in the active army prior to the wars at afghanistan and iraq. if you remember, the wars in

afghanistan and iraq were breaking an active army of 400,000. so we grew the army and at the peak of the bars in i -- wars in iraq and afghanistan, 53,000 of the soldiers deployed were reserve component. national guard and army reserve. a deployed army of 570 and the secretary of the defense said we're breaking the army. so now you go down to 450 think of what forces you have to surge forward. the historical pattern after wars, your commitments go up to consolidate the gains. what are we seeing? well, the wars are still going on first of all. in afghanistan and pakistan area. in the middle east where you have a rotational brigade now in kuwait in addition to the forces that are committed in support of iraqi armed forces, kurdish armed forces, turkish -- you know? in iraq. and then you have a rotational -- to korea. one to europe now.

because of russian aggression. so one is capacity in the army. the second is -- the second thing is that in previous period of draw downs that the army -- the army had recently been modernized. well, we did a lot of really important things to strengthen our forces for iraq and afghanistan. but those were really niche capabilities for those particular fights that are not not the modernization priorities need to deter conflict and respond to crises in the future. especially against capable nation states. so that -- there's that bow wave of deferred modernization and compounded by the significant reduction in the modernization budget. so what do you do? well, hey, in a democracy you get the army that the american people are willing to pay for. it's our job to the best we can we what we've got, so you have the means -- the money you have

to determine what you do instead of having the objectives to drive it. so the tendency has been okay as the budget gets cut cut cut, you spread less and less money over more and more programs, you get less and less for your defense dollars as a result. we are trying to make the investment in army capabilities. can you imagine if you went to the navy, are you working on any new ships, no, we like the ships we have. to not be working on a combat vehicle when we see our friends and our potential enemies fielding more advanced capabilities. now we're upgrading as you know the bradley and the tanks. their not the same as from the 1980s, but you know, they're from the 1980s. that's only so much you can do when you look at putting network protection, other network related demands in the vehicles, layering other protective capabilities, additional armor, new infrared radar, you just

overburden the vehicle. i think we have -- again, a significant and growing bow wave of deferred army modernization. >> sir, over here. >> thank you for your time. my name is drake long, i'm a student at miami university of ohio. i'm here with the alexander hamilton society. i want to ask you about military history. so to the average person, they might have to have their strong points. from military history, maybe the civil war and in your opinion when it comes to military history what's a conflict, diplomatic moment or a war that you think not enough is written on and definitely needs to be paid more attention to especially with regard to conflicts right now. thank you. >> well, i think i would say that the -- just going to recent history i would say the iraq war, you know?

and joel rayburn is here. raise your hand. distinguished gentleman there. colonel joel rayburn. he has just drafted a history of the iraq war and i think what that's going to be is a tremendous jumping off point for historians to dig into aspects of that operational history in greater depth. i think in large measure we have been distracted about iraq by not the wrong question. but, you know, a question that we have asked and probably answered which is should we have done it? right? i think the great question to the is who the hell thought it would be easy, you know? and why? i mean, so -- then how did the war -- how did the war progress from that point on? so i think the iraq war and then obviously connecting it to what's going on today, i think michael gordon is working on probably another volume and he's very good. been very good. i think that's the contemporary

history -- histories that are going to stand the test of time. his cobra and end game books. in the next volume. what other -- what other conflicts need to be written more about? gosh, you know, i think there's always -- you know, as my adviser at the university of north carolina dick cohen said, he said, don't think that there's -- too much writing on a particular topic, right? because there's always another good book or a different -- different approach you can take or access to new materials. i mean, heck, look at what rick atkinson did in world war ii. he's written a lot about it. and he took the story's approach of doing multiarchival research and uncovering through his investigative journalism background papers that were in people's attics. all kinds of new materials.

look at wic murray's book on the civil war. man, that book is brilliant. and in terms of not new materials but a different analytical framework to understand the course of the war and the war's outcome. so i would say, just do what you're drawn to. what you're interested in and you'll find -- you know, you'll find more than enough material for a good book. >> we have time for one last question. sir, in the back. >> rick atkinson has written a trilogy on the war now. >> steve rodriguez. venture capitalist and writing on venture capital type of things, at least as they relate to, you know, the kind of stuff we're talking about here. this kind of piggybacks on the reporter's question up front an around the army platforms. i remember the big five. black hawk, apache, abrams and

now mls. yeah, i don't think it's a coincidence we haven't had a big five, you know, candidly the army's biggest acquisitions is buying a truck. so, you know, congrats. >> come on now. >> but having been a -- i was part of the army transformation and i remember watching how the war games went down. i'm sure you -- you know, you're at least familiar with those. and -- >> i wrote a very -- you know, entertaining monograph on that. not really entertaining, it was pretty dry. the underlying assumption of the dominant knowledge of future war. >> one of the scenarios i wrote. well, the challenge i have noticed is that whether we have 450 or 570 or, you know, pick your number, we don't really have a unifying threat like we did when we had the -- when we -- you know, when came up with the big five.

we knew what we were fighting and that made it really easy to say, hey, we need a main battle tank with 120 millimeter gun and so on and so forth. going forward, you know, whether you want to talk about how many folks you need or how many platforms you need, you know, the big challenge i have seen is what we used to call future operating environment. maybe there's a new term of art for it. but who the hell are we fighting? and given your role at army capabilities, i mean, how do you orient around that? how do you approach building an army, you know, when you're fighting the blob, right? or fighting a vapor in this case? thanks. >> i think we have really concrete problem sets now so i think it's not a problem at all. i think we have an opportunity to really mature our defense planning scenarios based on concrete problems in -- you know, in asia broadly with the revisionist power there in northeast asia with, you know,

an unpredictable and armed to the teeth with some old conventional equipment. nuclear armed north korea with russia and with russia's demonstrated already with its capabilities and i could go through those if you want. if we had more time we could. you know, other scenarios as well. so i think we have well developed scenarios as a basis for our war gaming and experimentation. with the war games and experimentation is allowing us to do is establish a clean, logic trail between the future operating environment, the problem of future armed conflict basically. scenarios associated with that and how the army has to fight as part of the joint multinational team to protect the nation. against those threats and enemies and adversaries in the operating environment. the capabilities required of that force. then through our learning, identification of the capability gaps and opportunities to maintain overmesh.

integrated solutions which are doctrine, all integrated and then requirements. what is the equivalent of the big five today? well, these are capability areas that we think are immensely important for the future -- for the future fight. i mentioned combat vehicles. all the trends that we see in future war are making combat less likely. in fact long range capabilities are in jeopardy. satellite based communications. precision navigation and timing. you know, the whole network strike capability is -- we're going to work out countermeasures but the enemy has ways to counter that now. potential enemies do. they have focused on it. so what are the trends and -- that we see are -- that we have to cope with? all domains will be contested. in the '90s everything was dominance. this and that. it was ridiculous.

and it was never go to be happen anyway. but i think now everybody is convinced all domains will be contested. we won't have air or maritime, electromagnetic supremacy. we have to fight for superiority and that's across the domains. the second thing is that the battlefield is increasingly lethal in terms of range of weapon systems but also energetics and sort of the demockeritization of destruction. and the third is complex battlefields. the need to fight in and among populations and likely in urban areas. as well. the fourth is that all operations will be degraded. so we can't develop like exquisite systems that fail catastrophically. what does that mean for us in terms of capabilities? i mentioned combat vehicles.

combat vehicles is tied to the larger problem set of advanced protection. that means area protection and protection on aircraft. and you know, so called russian snow dome capability. russia has established air supremacy over the ukraine from the ground. so we need tiered air defense capabilities, electronic warfare that allows us to protect our forces and so forth. a third area of emphasis for us is robotic autonomy enabled systems. if you google the robotic and autonomous systems strategy, we have a strategy out on that and i think we have a pretty good way ahead on that. the fourth area is cross domain fires and the ability for army forces to be able to project power outward from land into the maritime, aerospace and cyber electromagnetic domains. so we are developing

capabilities now that have tremendous promise using existing systems that will give us the ability to sink ships, to be able to -- if you have a fire's unit it can do -- it can do surface to surface, surface to air or shore to ship. other critical capabilities involve future vertical lift. which i think a very good program going now that will give us -- give us a lot more speed, payload and legs so we can self-deploy. you can bypass the bubbles and employ forces into areas that they can maneuver from from offset objective areas. then all of this is underpinned by soldier and team performance and overmatch. as i mentioned close combat is getting more and more effective. kind of a traumatic op-ed by general scales yesterday in the wall street general where he said we need to invest more.

and i agree. we have a flying munition, extremely effective. we're developing counter -- shoulder fired capability. we have developed the first shoulder fired weapon that has a ballistic solution and it has an integrated thermal site. laser range finder. if anybody has read the outpost by jake tapper i recommend it. you think we don't want to put our soldiers this that kind of situation, where taliban platoon with a sack of rpgs can pin down, you know, u.s. infantry units. we are developing the overmatched capabilities and getting them into the field pretty quickly. so i don't think there's a lack of clarity at all. and we are drafting now a future force development strategy that would help us community this outside the army better. but if you go to the army capabilities website, our website, you see this -- we have

pronounced the big six plus one capabilities that are tied in that logic trail all the way back to how we have to fight in the future and the future operating environment. >> hr, it has been a tremendous pleasure, thank you so much for coming and spending some of your very busy day with us. if everyone could join me in a round of applause for hr. >> thank you. >> on that happy note, thank you mark, and general mcmaster. i wish you the best for the rest of the year and a happy 2017. thank you for coming to the forum.

often when you look at a project, you look afterwards to see if you have achieved your objectives and what costs. i wanted to see through the last half century of military interventions partisan politics side, morality aside, what happens after the party is over?

what are the aftereffects of war? what are the human and financial costs on both sides? >> sunday night on q&a, media entrepreneur and travel writer brian gruber discusses his latest book "war, the after party, a global walk weak through u.s. military interventions" which chronicles his travels through the u.s. involved conflicts. >> of course, we come with some form of bias. but went to all of the places with an open mind. again, trying not so much to understand what a partisan point of view might be or be validated. but to look at was the mission accomplished and what were the costs on both ends of the gun barrel? >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. a former russian political prisoner talked about russian president vladimir putin, the future of the u.s