that makes democracy function. however imperfectly. in retrospect, cia director george tenet concluded we followed a policy built on hope rather than fact. and i think the invasion of iraq, which is the signal failure of the bush administration and its greatest strategic blunder underlines the failure of that administration to pay attention to the historical context of the situation, the cultural underpinnings, the religious overtones of the middle east. simply went in not entirely ignorant, but not paying attention of the aftermath of the invasion. the invasion was undertaken to disrupt thing link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. besides the fact that saddam

hussein, there was no evidence that he was actually going to use wmd to support terrorism. and as well, to plant democratic governance in the heart of the middle east and begin the change of the various governments there. but that invasion unleashed forces that few in washington really understood at the time. and the administration got too narrowly focused on the application of military power at the expense of a deeper understanding of the type of war they were embarking on. and the nuances of the land and people that american forces would conquer, and at least temporarily govern. and in this regard, if you read president bush's memoirs, which i actually think highly of, actually, because he's so honest about it. it's astonishing how few of the decisions surrounding the iraq

war were up for discussion in the national skoum. security council. the debaathification of the iraqi society. nobody of them reached the nsa level for discussion. and teeing up issues for discussion is not enough. you have to have the right people in the room. you have to have a variety of viewpoints, so that you don't end up succumbing to group think. you have to temper the excessive optimism that can come from people who all are of like mind about how great their policy is, or how great the war plan is. strategy is best fashioned when there's a lot of competing arguments and a lot of really stiff discussion over what could go wrong over second and third order effects of whatever the strategy under consideration is

all about. the thorough debate layers bare the assumptions, lays out things that can go wrong with execution. and had the bush administration done this, as the president admits in his own memoirs, it may still have debaath fied iraqi society, and disbanded the iraqi army, but it would have done so with a much clearer vision of what could have gone wrong with those decisions in the second, third order effects that might have come about as they turned sour, which they did, of course. the second lesson is to avoid strategic overstretch. the bush administration attempted to sustain american homogeny around the world on the cheap.

it thought it could do this. primarily with the military instrument of power. and it thought it could do that more or less indefinitely into the future. certainly beyond its administration. it could hand over the unipolar administration that followed it. but homogeny comes at a steep price. the american people, as we have seen, soon tired of paying the bills. economic, moral, human, being the world's policeman. and you could tell that the bush administration was not being realistic about the cost of homogeny and the laughable predictions about how much the iraq war would cost the american taxpayers. initially the figure it put forward was $20 billion. and it's more at -- i think the latest estimate is it's at $1.7

trillion, with a "t." and probably another half a trillion in expenses for iraq war veterans in the future. taken as a whole, the war on terror is the second most expensive war in american history, right after world war ii. which is an astonishing figure. the american people are right to wonder what they got for all of the blood and treasure they poured into it. i think the iraq war might have been avoided altogether had president bush and the nse in the underestimated its costs, risks and uncertainties. and this, again, shows that presidents, including the incoming one, must consider the potential down sides of various courses of action, and not just the benefits should their policies succeed. the bush administration waged the iraq war in a best-case analysis, with little thought

put into alternative outcomes. and there were warnings. former centcom commander tony zinni serving u.s. army staff p shezeky both warned occupying iraq would cost hundreds of thousands of troops and take a lot longer than the administration was planning for. if you remember back to those days, the invasion took place in march. the plan was to be out by september. this is, you know, what lieutenant general jay garner had in the office of humanitarian affairs, who was supposed to take care of iraq in the aftermath of the conflict. he got the team together in kuwait city before heading up to baghdad. and goes up to review the bidding. we make sure the humanitarian -- there's no humanitarian crisis. turn on the lights.

turn the government over to the iraqis and we leave by september. and some person in the back of the room raised her hand, probably meghan o'sullivan, said, which september? which was exactly the right question. the bush administration failed to balance strategic ends with the means available. simply put, waging two wars at the same time was one too many for the united states. even for a nation as rich as the united states. and the result was an underresourced war effort in afghanistan, which the results came home to roost in the obama administration. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral michael mullen put it plainly when he stated to the house armed services committee, in the region and in the world right now is rightly and firmly in iraq. it is simply a matter of

resources of capacity. in afghanistan we do what we can. in iraq, we do what we must. had the bush administration limited its efforts to winning the war in afghanistan, and defeating al qaeda, and focusing on that effort for its entire time in office, we would now be discussing the successful application of american power in the post-cold war world. sadly we are not. and the bush administration could have husbanded american power in other ways as well. primarily by not creating more enemies than it had to. by listing iraq, iran, and north korea as enemies in the famous axis of evil speech, the administration basically put those regimes on notice that their time was numbered. and they were in our crosshairs. the problem was, the administration only destroyed one of those regimes.

and the other two, iran and north korea, immediately made a beeline for the nuclear threshold. and north korea crossed the nuclear threshold in 2006. iran was getting there until the nuclear agreement, which i'm sure max will talk more about coming up. and in the case of iran, it also armed, equipped and advised shiite militia groups that could attack troops in iraq. this is part of the reason why iraq turned into a quagmire. and iran is directly responsible for killing upwards of, you know, 800, 900 american service members during the iraq conflict. i think the bush administration would have done better to adhere to president teddy roosevelt's admonition to speak softly and carry a big stick. third lesson is that it should

be a last resort, not the first tool of state craft. war is inherently risky, and should be thought out carefully ahead of time. the most important act of judgment, according to that famous prussian military theorist, all mill tar yans have to throw a quote into every speech, so here's yours. it's to understand the kind of war in which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for nor trying to turn it into something that is alien to its nature. busch thought the wars in iraq and afghanistan would be over quickly. shock and awe, speed of numbers, and the mass. what the administration officials didn't understand is that that may be true for the conventional operations to destroy the enemy's army, but the losing side isn't simply

going to roll over and accept the results of conventional battle. when they have other options. to resort to terrorism and guerrilla warfare and continue the fight with the weapons of the week. these wars were existential conflicts for the taliban and the baathist regime. much more thought needed to be put into what actually happens when kabul and baghdad falls. because military victory alone as we've discovered in germany and japan and south korea does not ensure political success unless conditions are created conducive to long-term stability in the aftermath of conflict. pundits can decry nation building all they want to, but failure to stabilize post-conflict societies is a recipe for disaster. the people on the losing end of

the struggle. and the fourth and final lesson is that -- and perhaps one that needs the most emphasis to the incoming administration. is that allies are critical enablers of american power. america's unipolar moment is over. the united states cannot go it alone and expect to achieve its national security goals in the world today. allies are not just window dressing to provide political cover for unilateral military operations. certainly the united states needs allies for legitimacy. because votes in the united nations do have an impact. they express the voice of the international community, in support of diplomacy. but allies give us far more than just diplomatic support. they provide base es that enable deployment of u.s. forces far from homeland, they provide

troop commitments with real capabilities that support coalition operations, and they provide forces that balance those of regional powers, such as russia and great powers such as china. now, we can encourage our allies in europe and asia and the middle east to do more in their own defense. we should not jettison them. by going it alone in iraq, without real support from america's allies, the bush administration squandered the good will generated after 9/11. if you remember back on those days, they played the star spangled banner and the changing of the guard at buckingham palace. there were flags flown all around the globe. i think two nations didn't support the united states after 9/11. and think about all that goodwill that's been squandered in the succeeding 15 years. we lost a real opportunity to harness the power of the international community against the forces of disorder, chipping

away at global stability and peace. the trump administration, for all of the uncertainty surrounding it, has the opportunity to do better. it remains to be seen whether it will seize it. thank you. >> thanks, pete. max? >> what a depressing panel discussion. there's not a lot of foreign policy successes to brag about. i feel that this is going to be such a downer, that i almost want to switch from obama to the reagan foreign policy. but i'll stick with my original brief and talk about the obama foreign policy, which, spoiler alert, has not been a resounding success. i don't know if i would say obama is worse than carter. i'm not sure i would go that far, if only because i actually like the rest of us, i grew up under carter. so those are still vivid dark

memories from my little self to my current big self. but i think suffice it to say that president obama has not lived up to the vast expectations that greeted his ascension to office. he talks about the opportunity that the bush administration had after 9/11 with the goodwill and so forth that we had. of course, we all remember also, i assume everybody here is old enough to remember 2009, there was quite a bit of goodwill in the world towards barack obama, who got massive points, and nobel peace prize simply for not being george w. bush. and he came into office on the expectation that he would magically make the oceans, rise, recede, that he would bring happiness and goodwill to the entire world. he would transform america's image. he would end our wars in the middle east. he would make everybody, if not

love us, at least like us. and he would not be caught in all of the problems that so greatly hobbled the bush administration. well, here we are. it's hard for me to see that president obama has achieved any of his objectives. now, i'll get to that in a second, but i will first -- in the interest of fair and balanced analysis here, i will give him a few points of praise. i don't think it's all been entirely horribly negative. i think on the personal front, i think barack obama is a very impressive, thoughtful, dignified person, who i think has, you know, has been an exemplar as president in the way that he was in the office. there's not been a single scandal on his watch. truly amazing to see.

i think the image that he projects i think has been a positive and dignified one, which is something. and he has been very thoughtful in the way he's tried to exercise power. these are all attributes we take for granted. but a few weeks from now, we may be pining for some of these attributes in the oval office. i think he's done some decent things on foreign policy. he's kind of a born-again free trader who was knocking free trade treaties during the 2008 campaign. but got into office and woke up and smelled the espresso and realized free trade is in our benefit, but tried very hard, but not successfully, to push for greater free trade. now what he hoped to be his major achievements, the transpacific partnership, is deader than a doornail unfortunately. but i think he has been -- i think president obama has been a big supporter of alliances.

i think he has been a good friend to nato. and i think some of the things he's done to expand the nato capabilities, particularly the decision he pushed with the allies to expand the nato forces, protecting the baltics i think is a very positive step forward given the russian threat. he has not kowtowed to north korea. i have to give him credit for that. although, it's hard to say his policy toward north korea has been successful. when we've seen a massive expansion of north korea's nuclear and missile capabilities on his watch. but he has -- he did not follow the failed policy of the bush administration with the six-party talks which really didn't get anywhere, and the attempts to appease north korea by lifting sanctions, taking them off the foreign sponsors of terrorism list. he did not do those things. this is a one dictator he did

not kow to. i think in some ways, the biggest -- best thing i can say for president obama is he did not immediately keep his campaign promises. if you believed his campaign rhetoric, you would imagine we would have left iraq very quickly. and that we would have seen a very fast drawdown. which did not in fact occur. and it was kind of a combination of -- while we did not leave iraq quickly, and we did build up in afghanistan to a greater extent than you would have expected based on his campaign rhetoric, i think that really comes from two factors. the first of which is that he was, you know, pretty uncertain of himself, especially in the realm of foreign affairs. this was a guy who was a first-term senator who was not that far from being a state senator and community organizer in chicago. so i think during his first term he tended to accede to a

substantial degree to the team he put into place. which i think was responsible and reasonable. folks like bob gates, hillary clinton, general petraeus at centcom, as well as cia. and then, you know, other appointees like panetta and so forth. i think he listened to them. and i think he moderated some of his initial impulses, and some of the stuff he said on the campaign trail. once they told him it was not going to fly in practice. now, i think the great moment and kind of the great unraveling of the obama administration occurred what president obama would cite as the high point of the administratioadministration. i think it was the greatest moment of the administratioadmi but also the hubris for setting him up for the letdown of the

administration. he could run as the guy who killed bin laden and kept general motors alive. but i think as soon as he killed bin laden, it was basically that president obama no longer felt shy or bashville about doing what he wanted and what his cadre of aides, like rhodes and susan rice, what they wanted to do. he felt he had no more to learn from the wise men and women of the establishment, aka the swamp we're sitting in today. he basically said, okay, i'm the guy who killed bin laden. so i'm going to go out and do what i think is best, because essentially no can accuse me of being weak on defense. i'm the guy who killed bin laden, right? in the second term in particular, he's veered off into -- even before the first term, really immediately after the bin laden raid, he really

veered off in the wrong direction. because it was later that year that he pulled u.s. troops out of iraq over the objections of his military commanders as well as many of his senior civilian appointees. the intelligence community certainly anticipated from everything that i know, the intelligence community certainly anticipated what a disaster this would be. it was not forced upon him. we don't have time to go into the ins and outs of it. but having studied that issue pretty closely, i'm pretty confident if president obama had really wanted to keep u.s. troops in iraq, they would have stayed in iraq. and this whole issue was the red herring. today we have over 5,000 troops in iraq. and guess what, none of the troops are being prosecuted in iraqi courts because there's no iraqi court that's going to be prosecuting u.s. troops whether we have it or not.

but that was the excuse that basically allowed president obama by christmas of 2011 to pull u.s. troops out of iraq saying, peace is done, democracy is done, we no longer have to stay in iraq. then we saw what happened. civil was breaking out in syria, so all of a sudden the united states pulls out of iraq and president obama refuses to get more involved in doing anything to end the syrian civil war. he disregards the advice he's getting from having a large assistance program for the syrian rebels. he stands back. he doesn't want to get caught in the quagmire, because he thinks that's the mistake that his predecessor george w. bush made. he's not going to make that mistake. he makes a fresh mistake. i think this basically happened in the obama administration as we veered from a fairly high degree of interventionism under bush to a fairly high degree of noninterventionism under obama. i think we've seen in both cases

the costs associated with those policies. in the case of iraq, obviously the costs are more immediate, and horrific for american citizens, because in afghanistan and iraq we've lost thousands of troop. we've got many more maimed and wounded. we spent a ton of money, as pete was alluding to, in the wars in iraq and afghanistan. and so those costs are real. those are the things that pooba was desperate to avoid. he didn't want toen an interventionist. what happened instead? he has presided over the worst strategic and human rights disaster in the world in the 21st century, a war that has killed perhaps as many as 500,000 people, displaced over 10 million people, created 5 million refugees who fled syria. destabilized neighboring states in europe. among the indirect consequences of the syrian civil war, i would

argue britain's exit from the european union. and syria has become and remains what general petraeus called a political chernobyl. it continues to spew its toxins across the entire region. it's become a breeding ground of groups like isis, and it's become a place where iran and -- it's become a nightmare. this is what has happened on president obama's watch. there's no way he can avoid responsibility for this disaster. especially, remember, when he came into office saying that atrocities were -- stopping atrocities was going to be the strategic goal of the united states. he created a board to stop exactly the kind of stuff that's going on in syria as we speak. the killing continues unabated.

i don't think it will slow downatime soon. i think this could possibly have been prevented, at least ameliorated with more effective action early on. but president obama was not willing to do that. you know, that, i think, is going to be the biggest legacy of the obama administration, the greatest failure that he will carry away from office just as bill clinton was haunted by the failure to stop the genocide in rwanda. but i think this is much worse, because this is not just a human rights catastrophe, but it's also a strategic catastrophe. looking elsewhere, i'm not sure the picture is that much brighter. if you look at the fact that all of our principal adversaries, here i think of north korea, iran, russia and china, all of them have gotten stronger under the obama administration.

remember when, in the case of russia, remember that president obama began his term in office wanting to reset relations with russia. well, how is that going? you know, it turns out, like the old joke, to twist the old joke, russia really does want peace, and what they want is a piece of georgia, a piece of ukraine, they want a piece of the baltics -- >> crimea -- >> and they want a piece of syria. they're getting those pieces under the obama administration with very little pushback. obama has imposed sanctions with the european partners on russia, but i don't think they're sufficient to create enough pain for the russians to make them back down. he was caught completely flat footed by the russian intervention in syria, which has been pretty effective in achieving putin's goals after obama spent years saying there's no way he can intervene. putin achieves something right away, which is to reverse the erosion of power that bashar al

assad and his re veem were facing. now with putin's ability to commit war a crimes in aleppo, he's helping assad and his backers to regain lost ground. no matter what happens in syria, it's hard to see where there's going to be a happy ending to this story. at the same time you have china getting much more powerful. and much more aggressive in claiming much of the south china sea and east china sea as its own perm domain. we've not been in a good position to push back because of the sequestration our budget has taken. we have something like 272 combat capable ships in the u.s. navy. whereas most estimates suggest we need at least 350. president obama has not interested in increasing the size of the navy or armed forces. he's willing to preside over the erosion of our military

capability. it put us at a disadvantage vis-a-vis rising powers like china and russia. and, oh, by the way, iran has been immensely strengthened by the iranian nuclear deal. you can argue whether that cost is worth paying or not to delaying the iranian nuclear program, but certainly this is not like the agreement we reached with libya in 2004 that eliminates their nuclear program. at most, it delays it for a decade or so. the cost is pretty high. because iran is able to fill its coffers with oil money now and spend that money to expand the new persian empire across the middle east from yemen to iraq to syria to lebanon and elsewhere, where it has been an incredibly destabilizing force, which is a leading reaction from the sunni side, like isis and others that have various degrees of support from powers like

saudi arabia and qatar. so, you know, by allowing iran to grow as strong as it is on the back of the iranian nuclear deal, we're basically de facto of the shiite and sunni side of the house. those two groups of extremists are united by only one thing, which is their mutual conviction that the united states is the great satan. and the antipathy for america and our allies and interests. it's hard to say that the story in the middle east is moving in a positive direction. you know, it's hard to say that events anywhere around the world are moving in a positive direction. it does feel a little bit like a 1980 type moment where we found jimmy carter, and we're still waiting for ronald reagan. very quickly, the lessons that i would draw from the obama

administration principally five, just running down very fast here. first, don't overestimate the power of personality. i think president obama has had a tendency to vastly overestimate the power of his personality because he is a smart guy, he is a charming guy. he certainly wins a lot of popularity contests in places like europe. but it has not been enough to defeat our intractable foes. people like putin. and xi jinping and others, who are not going to be won over by the power of goodness, light and reason. second lesson is, watch what you say. president obama has been incredibly soaring in his rhetoric, and his rhetoric has not matched his actions. the classic example, of course, being the red line in syria, which i think was a catastrophe for america. there was no reason why obama needed to say there was going to be a red line-the use of chemical weapons in syria.

i'm not sure why it's okay for the assad regime to kill people with conventional weapons but not other weapons. in both cases, obama has not backed it up. and he's lost credibility in ways that i think have been very painful for the united states, not just in the middle east, but elsewhere, where from moscow to beijing, to pyongyang, people don't take our word seriously. when obama says something. the third lesson that i would take away is, don't reflexively do things just because it's different from what the previous administration did. i think this is something where the obama administration has been obsessed, saying it's not bush. i was just at an event last night in manhattan over the obama foreign policy, where the two debaters who were debating -- defending obama who were very eloquent and very

reasonable, but basically about 60% of their argument boiled down to, boy, bush was worse. we did the best with ecould with the horrible things that bush did. i think that's -- there's been a tendency in the obama administration to think just because bush did something, we want to do something different. that hasn't been entirely the case. there has been continuity in the war on terrorism. but especially in trying to move out of a more active role in the middle east, i think the obama administration has gotten themselves into trouble. this is not just unique to the obama administration. the bush administration also came in saying we want to be totally different from the clinton administration. i think that also led them astray. i think that's a pretty common feeling for various presidents. fourth lesson i would draw from the obama administration is, it's dangerous to walk too far back from the global leadership role that the united states has

played since 1945. i think president obama has tried to recalibrate and draw down especially in the middle east. he's also drawn down in europe. there wasn't really a con mens ur at buildup in the pacific region. but president obama i think kind of came into office with the assumption that the united states was more part of the problem, rather than part of the solution in a lot of the areas of the world. i think now we've seen that's not really the case. when we step back, others don't step forward, that the leading from behind doctrine doesn't really work. because if we don't lead, nobody does. the result is catastrophe. the final lesson i would take away from the obama administration is, you have to be willing to change course if you see that what you're doing is not working. on this front, i would actually give proper props to jimmy carter, who after the soviet invasion of afghanistan actually became a born-again hawk, started increasing the defense budget, became tougher on the

soviet union. i'm not sure president obama has had that born-again moment. he has done some minor back-and-forth in the case of afghanistan. i applaud the fact he's willing to keep 8,500 troops there instead of pulling them out as he initially hoped. he has had to send back over 5,000 troops to iraq. but i don't think there's been a large-scale recalibration of his world view, or how he deals with foreign policy challenges. i think he's basically tried to stick to his course of trying to draw down u.s. commitments. i don't think it's been successful. those are the lessons i would draw. and i would be greatly cheered if i thought that president trump would avoid making these same mistakes. but when you look at the lessons i just outlined which is don't overestimate the value of personality, watch what you say. don't use loose language. don't swing too far away from the previous administration just for the sake of doing something different.

don't walk back from the u.s. global leadership role and be willing to change course if what you're doing is not working. out of all those five the only one i would have confidence he would take to heart is number five. because he does change course all the time. [ laughter ] >> but he'll be huge. i apologize. but we're pushing up against our time limit. so i'm going to make time for one question. and if the panel wants very quickly to sort of respond to anything, we'll give them a second to do that. i feel a little bit like, you know, not everybody here, but a lot of folks here do probably remember the show "the hulk" where all of a sudden the skin would change and his muscles would pop out. i feel a little bit of that coming on now with resurrecting political science side of me.

i beg your pardon for the political science comment i'm going to make now, but one of the most striking things about all three presentations is the degree to which each of the presidents in different ways, underlyingly overpromise. there's a kind of theme that i think goes through all three administrations of presidents who came into office and think they can radically change things in ways that they've run up against hard realities whether it be the real world or washington establishment. the political science side of me wants to suggest that, particularly beginning with carter, that's the first president who was selected under the reforms that were put in place to change out the party selected for the office. one has to wonder whether or not there's a connection between the

kind of selection system we have and the resulting -- the result of a president who has a tendency to overpromise. now we have a president-elect who is very good about not overpromising, but, you know, sort of, again, making suggestions that somehow he's going to transform things in ways that probably are not going to happen. and could result in a discombobulated administration for sure. i apologize again, but we can take one question. so make it a really good question. and if not, that's even better, i suppose. any last comments, guys? about anything you've heard from each other? >> i was remiss in thanking mark moyar for the invitation of being here today. i want to shout-out to the

alexander hamilton students in the audience. thank you for coming. as well as a couple of my former buckeyes there in the audience. we're all buckeye strong today after the recent events. >> well, if nobody has any further comments, please join me in thanking mark, pete, max. [ applause ] thank you. tuesday house speaker paul ryan joins other congressional members to the u.s. capitol christmas tree lighting. this year's tree comes from idaho. see the tree lighting at 5:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. right after that, the cato institute with a discussion on the future of free speech in the new trump administration. we'll hear about policies being

put in practice that aim to safeguard first amendment rights. that event starts live at 6:00 p.m. eastern, here on c-span3. and president-elect donald trump holds another victory rally tuesday evening, this time in fayetteville, north carolina. he speaks with supporters in the tar heel state which he won by almost 200,000 votes. see mr. trump's remarks live on c-span2. abigail fillmore was the first first lady to work outside the home. teaching in a private school. mamie eisenhower's hairstyle and love of pink created fashion sensations. mamie pink was marketed as a color and stores sold clip-on bangs eager to replicate her style. jackly lynn kennedy. and mrs. reagan. she appealed to screen actors

guild head ronald reagan for help. she later became his wife. these stories, and more, are featured in c-span's book first ladies, presidential historians on the lives of 45 iconic american women. the book makes a great gift for the holidays. give readers a look into the personal lives of every first lady in american history. first ladies, in paperback, is now available at your favorite book seller and also as an ebook. now back to the foreign policy initiative's day-long conference with comments from lieutenant general h.r. mcmaster. he talked about the importance of properly integrating new defense technologies, and using military history to help with

military strategies. this is an hour. good afternoon again, ladies and gentlemen. and if i could kindly ask you to move toward 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 lieutenant general h.r. mcmaster, and our fellow and the director of our military and diplomatic history, mark moyar. before we get started, and better taking a moment, i want to take a quick opportunity to say thank you to members of the

fti team before we wrap up. and when folks are toward the exits. but in particular, elaine stern, lindsey markel, our excellent government relations team, and fpi, very little of what happens would happen if it were not for them. and danielle borrow, operations director. the three of them in particular have done much of the great work that's made today happen. very grateful to the three of them. and very grateful for mark for everything he's done. it's a new effort. mark arrived at fpi the summer of 2015. after he came to us from joint special operations university, prior to that he had been an instructor in the marine corps university. the frequency with hi he's publishing books is really quite stunning. he has a forthcoming history of operations forces coming out next year. and in 2018 he'll have a sequel

to his very well-known and truly excellent book triumph forsaken, the vietnam war from 1954 to 1965. all of us at fpi are fortunate to have mark on the team. we look forward to the conversation that he'll be having today with general mcmaster. thank you both. [ applause ] >> thank you. and thanks, chris, for all your hard work that's gone into this event. i'm mark moyar for the center for military and diplomatic history. and we heard a bit today about some of the reasons why we actually need a center like this. there's problems on both the supply side and the demand side. on the supply side, military and diplomatic history are really out of fashion at civilian universities. which is why you have someone like a ben sass, actually a lot of other ph.d. historians here who are not teaching at

universities where they would under normal circumstances be teaching. and then on the demand side, there is, i think, a deficit of knowledge about history here in the policy world. and also to some extent, a lack of interest. so we're trying to address both those problems. now, social scientists, political scientists, will often tell you that historians don't know how to do anything except tell stories, which is about as silly as a thing that castro doesn't do anything except for provide help to the needy. but i want to start with the story, because it is a very effective way of getting people's attention. and 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. and one of the key elements of mart smart power was using nonmilitary means to alleviate conflict. and it was said that under the bush administration there had been this overrely answer on the military power. so we are now going to use the nonmilitary reliance of power because they have root causes that are nonmilitary in nature, things like human rights violations, poverty. and so we're going to have this whole of government approaches where we have the civilian agencies taking on more of the work, and the military's going to be doing less. and in theory, it sounded pretty appealing in a number of respects. we then saw this put into practice in a number of places. i'll talk about one example -- afghanistan. so the obama administration decided to increase the development aid in afghanistan from 1.2 to $4.1 billion.

they undertook a civilian surge, which went about 500 civilians in afghanistan to 1,300 civilians. and 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 firsthand. but for one thing, we saw the state department, u.s. aid could not get their experienced people to go to these countries so they had to bring in contractors and temporary employees. and the vast majority of the people never actually got out into the countryside because it was dangerous there. and the civilian unions didn't feel they were obliged to go there. we didn't have oversight where the huge -- these huge amounts of cash were going. they oftentimes ended up in the hands of the enemies or corrupt officials. so you were actually exacerbating conflict rather

than alleviating it. and you also had the problem that if you wanted to do aid projects, the taliban were there and they were actually going to kill your aid workers, they were going to kill your governors. there was counterinsurgency gains, but it didn't have anything to do with smart power and had everything to do with military power, because it's where the u.s. military went in. and i would argue that this was a huge waste of resources, could have been avoided if we had paid some attention to history. if the obama administration had looked back. they didn't have to look back far. you could go back to the clinton administration to actually see that. if you think colombia in the 1990s, we heard of a lot of the same ideas. we were going to use nonmilitary power. we weren't going to give money to colombia's military. we were going to give it to civilian agencies, to lawsuit,

do substitution programs. but what happened? same things that happened in afghanistan. too insecure to go into these areas. people getting killed. 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. so i think this is just one example where there's some pretty clear indications from history that a different policy should be reviewed. now, history is oftentimes not so straightforward. what we often see is a situation where there are multiple presidents. chasic case would be iraq in 2003. after we took down saddam hussein, we looked to ideas for rebuilding the country. so we focused very heavily on germany. not to germany, the debaathification from denaziification. and i would argue in hindsight, we probably should have looked at some other cases.

why not look at japan in 1945, or, say, the reconstruction in the american south after the civil war. we actually could have learned a lot from there. so history does not -- is not necessarily going to fall into your lap. it requires a lot of serious thought. i would add that we can't just ignore it, even though it's difficult, because the times we've actually tried to do foreign policy without any history at all, has led to disasters, because it's based on unfounded assumptions. but we have to be aware history is going to be used, so the question is how do we use it effectively. history i think is also important because it gives us familiarization. it gives us context. so if you're confronting a counternarcotics situation, for example, it would be useful if you had actually spent time studying five or ten historical cases. when you go to the next one, you'll at least know what questions you're going to ask. you can have an idea of what solutions might actually work.

now, 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 venues. we're doing some public events, this being the largest one we've done so far. some that are specifically targeted to private government audiences. we're going to the pentagon, capitol hill, foggy bottom, places like that. we don't expect we're going to fundamentally change u.s. foreign policy doing this, but we do think there is a lot of value to giving historians, and the best historians to talk to people who are making decisions today. and we think also that by sort of beating the drum on history, that we will get people in the national security community to spend more time looking at history, to think historically. and you don't have to have a

ph.d. in history to think historically. we're fortunate today to have somebody who i think is perhaps the best possible person to convey this message. sitting next to me, lieutenant general hflt r. mcmaster, who has a ph.d. in history, and is an incredible practitioner. he first came to public attention during the gulf war in 1991, when he commanded an armored cavalry company at the battle of 73 easting, in which he had a much larger iraqi tank force. this is a textbook study in any forms of armored warfare. he had a dissertation called the dereliction of duty, which became mandatory reading across the armed services. 2004, he was the commander of the u.s. forces at talafar in

iraq, where he was able to achieve success against insurgents at a time when very few americans were actually succeeding in that regard. he spent time in afghanistan, 2010, took charge of the international coalition anti-corruption task force, and now is at the army capabilities and integrations department, in charge of planning army capabilities for future conflict as we go forward. he's done a lot of other great things. but in the interest of time, i'll leave it at that. i'd like to turn it over to lieutenant general h.r. mcmaster. >> thank you so much, mark. what a privilege to be with all of you. how many history majors are here? so there's still some people to convert maybe. i thought maybe it was just -- it was going to be an audience of fellow historians, all of whom are talking about how underappreciated we are, you

know. but i think it's -- this is such a great idea. i mean, the idea of the center for military diplomatic history. for all the reasons that mark identified. so what i thought i might do is talk about how i think the center can really help us make us better. better at defending our nation in particular, better at anticipating the demands of national security, and then crafting a national security strategy to address, really, threats that we see are growing. threats are growing to our nation, and i think all civilized peoples today. so i'll try to be super brief here. what i would really like to see is where you want to take the discussion and hear your thoughts and ideas as well. but this is important, right? this is an important center. and from our perspective in the army, in the joint force in our military, thinking clearly about diplomacy and national security is fundamental. it's fundamental not only to protecting our vital interests

and preventing conflict, but ensuring that our military is prepared to respond to national security. and as mark alluded to, to resolve crises at the lowest possible cost. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008