because i fknow that we are running out of time. kim glass is the executive director of blue green alliance which is an initiative founded 10 years ago by the united steel workers and now fwroen to 13 partner organizations representing millions of people demonstrating how we can both create jobs and green our e k economy. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you so much. i want to be mindful of everyone's time. i want to simply say that i have been inspired with the stories that i have heard today. b.j. was founded under this premise that you don't have to choose between a good job and a clean environment and just so you are aware, my partnership, and on the labor side we represent everybody from the utility workers and coal-fired plant, and those on pipelines and oil refinery workers, teachers, service employees and others and i think that one of the founding reasons for the partnership was that we can't go

it alone and we have to talk with each other and figure out how the create quality jobs in the clean energy e kconomy. we have had as our part perrer inship that we are work manage the midwest and on the west coast -- from the u.s. conference of mayors you can see more at cspan.org, and we will leave this for a series of conversations this afternoon about defense and national security oversight. the house armed services ranking member adam smith leads off and also the private sector for oversight and accountability. live coverage here on c-span3. hassan, we feel secure in the building but as a convener, we have a duty to prepare for the emergencies, so take a look around you and behind me are exits. i will be the official safety officer today. so should a fire alarm or something go off, i will direct you in the correct orientation

out of the building. today culminations a nine-month-long effort conducteded by the cis program. over 60 groups and functional experts and leaders of the ngo and the civil society communities were consulted for the project. we want to thank all of them for their insights and proarespectives. the project was made possible by generous support of the sponsor open society. and the keynote address will be presented by adam smith who is going to give us a perspective of capitol hill and he is the washington state's ninth district representative and serves as ranking member on the house armed services academy. he graduated from fordham university, and got the j.d. from the university of washington school of law. during his last year in law school representative smith ran and won an election for washington's 33rd district becoming the youngest state sen is or the at the time in the

country. representative smith is now the 11th term in congress, and are representative smith has previously chair ed ted the subcommittee on land and air forces and the subcommittee on terrorism unconventional threat s and capabilities. he has previously served on the house foreign affairs committee, and the house select committee on intelligence. after he makes the keynote remarks i will join him on the stage for the back and forth and then we will open it up to the audience and then a break from the first panel. so, without further ado, please join me in welcomes representative smith. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. it is a great honor be here and i ap preesh working with cics, and they have been enormous help to me, and so it is good to have someone around you to ask questions and learn. it is a little bit unsettling, a and this is the first time in a long time that i have been

before a group of people that we have a budget deal. and normally that is what dominates my thoughts is that we don't know how much money we will have and the only caveat is that we will have the money for two year, and usually a debt and deficit so high that you are put in a very, very bad place. that is going to happen. i can't say when exactly, but when that happens, all aspects of government and the military will not be excluded will have to figure out how do we live with a lot less money than we thought that we were going to have, and that is one of the most important conversations that we should be having, and that the pentagon and the government level is how to make the most of the two-year gift that we have been given, and not think that it is simply something to keep happening. it is economically impossible for it to keep happening and distinctly possible to go to other way in a massive way. so we will see how it plays out.

as far as security cooperation goes with other countries r it is something that i have worked on for a long time and started when i was the chair of the terrorism committee and so i got the travel the world for three year years and see where the special operations command was, and not everywhere, but a lot of the places as admiral olson used to say when i met with him, and he would start out every meeting saying that to today we woke up in 87 countries or 75 or owhatever it was, and a good blueprint for where the military presence was throughout the world. understanding where socom was. and what is the are reason for security systems? well, putting that aside of the intense conflict zones that i willt get to in a second, what we are trying to accomplish, and actually socom has a great euphemism for it, preparation for the environment. i liked that, and what they meant is basically that we want

to make friends in different parts of the world whether it is south africa or southeast asia so if things go horribly wrong we are better prepare d to deal with it, and to stop things that are going to go horribly wrong and that is part of the mission of the state department and the entire foreign policy to maintain stability in as many places as we can. that is the tiniest little bit complicated right now, and all of you are knowledgeable and you can look around the globe and certa certainly, you have afghanistan and somalia that are problems burk a dozen other countries as well in some state of instability combined with the presence of terrorist organizati organizations that threaten the west. so we are trying to figure out how can we work in the countrieses and the countries around them to bring a more security environment and the key to all of this is a whole of government approach.

now, what we had and we attempted to reform is the 2014 nda situations is with the result of afghanistan and other things emerging on us, we made it up as we went along. we knew that we had the to spread money around in different places to keep the peace and keep the stability, and that is what this is. you are trying to to make friends and figure out if you are working in the philippine, and what do they immediate in the philippines to cooperate with you. i harken back to a story that a are retired socom officer told me living in libya in 1980s and he said that single best ting that he had was a dentist. everybody wanted a dentist and as long as he could provide the dentists, they would tell him everything that he needed to know and they would help him which is an overstatement, but in essence, it is the way it is.

and so in some of the other zone, you are operating in an insecure environment, and what complicates that is as you are trying to pass out the money, and the securitys a s assistanc not just about training people how the to defend themselves, training other countries. the programs spread across a range of things. you had d.o.d. dollars going to the drill wells and provide health care and do a number of things burk that is all sort of under the umbrella of, well, i suppose that you would call it if you were from new jersey walking around money, and what you need to sort of keep the peace in a neighborhood. it got very, very confusing in terms of who was controlling what. so we attempted in 2017 to say, we will consolidate all of this money, at least at the d.o.d. under one person at the undersecretary of policy. so that we can keep coordination of that money within the dod, but for all of this to work, it

has to be about a lot more than d.o.d., because depend pog and the country, you may need different things, and certainly, you will need security to do anything, but you also need the rule of law. so the justice department could potentially be very involved in figuring out how to put in place a basic system of law that people can rely on. and health care is enormously important as i mentioned, and special operations command runs what they call the med caps and show up in the village to say we will be here all day with a bunch of doctors to help you out so, you know, you have that. a and agriculture and i don't know anything about agriculture because i grew up in the suburbs, but it is very, very important in a lot of these parts of the world and countries in the world, so how do you bring all of that gap together and have a whole government co-op ra aretive approach? i think that getting the d.o.d. money coordinated is important, but what is going to be more important is getting some of the money out of d.o.d. and into the

hands of the people who build schools and drill wells and provide health care and set up the rule of law, and to set it up so that there is a cooperative experience in the country. dade trip through africa in 2009 i believe it was, and in which we visited a number of countries to get an idea, how are we doing? we went to more rocco, rwanda, egypt, and so it varied from country, to country how well the government worked and a lot of it depended on the am bas r do, because if the model is working corre correctly, the ambassador is in charge of the country, and that something that we went to yemen on the trip, and i talk to my trip to africa and then say i went to yemen and yemen is not in africa, and yes, but we jumped across the sea and hopped back. but in yemen, the am bbassador d

a large military pres tlens and he e wanted to be in charge of it, because it is his country and he wasn't so he did not know how to operate with the rest of the people in there, because you had, you know, bifurcated command structures theoretically in charge of the whole. if this is working properly, the ambassador works with whoever the military leader is, socom is frequently a humg part of this, and then the other agencies are underneath it and they a all have an idea or plan for what they are going to provide in kenya or libya or somalia or wherever. and structured and organized spending of the money wisely. and the 2017 plan is the start of the approach, but at the end of the day, we are talking about counter insurgency in the good sense. counter insurg en si is a bad

name, because it is synonymous with nation building, but that is not what it needed to be. we can know that showing up in afghanistan or iraq and in a different part of the world that is completely different from america to say, all right, we are here and we will rebuild the country and show you how to run it. not a good idea. counter insurgency is small bits of help to describe to help the country to maintain stability. it works best through the millennium challenge corporation to work with governments to say, we will give you the foreign aid, but what is the plan? what are you trying to accomplish in the education and the health care and elsewhere and that has to work from the state department through the defense department in my opinion. i will close with that that and take your questions, because that is one of the biggest conflicts out there. d.o.d. has the moneyt a tend of the day when the state department and all of these other people are battling to have influence over a given country, and if the department of defense is there in any sort

of force, they are the ones with the huge pot of money. and it is 55% of the discretionary budget. the other 45% is spread out over everybody else. so there is a tendency to have d.o.d. to do a lot of things that they should not be doing. one example was given to me in ken ka ya and at dinner, a great argument between a woman of the state department and two navy s.e.a.l.s traveling with me about the state department and the military running the k country, and how security is where it all started and if the military was not doing it how would you be able to do that, but the the state department woman had a good story about how, you know, this bran of tch the military of the u.s. went up to drill wells and without talking to the state department they went up to do it, and pretty soon the people actively trying to resist the u.s. or paranoid started to spread rumors that the wells were poisoned so nobody would use

them, because you can't trust the u.s. military and if they are here, they are here to crush you and take over your country. so, that is why you need a more cooperative effort and dip lowt mats vo a s involved and engage. so while you are talk about cutting the state department budget, we are making it more difficult to do this comprehensive approach. this comprehensive approach is vastly preferable than dropping 150,000 u.s. troops into a country and trying to the pacify it. if we can do it for a small amount of cooperation from other countries and agencies, we definitely get more bang for the buck, but ultimately, we are more successful in what we are attempt ing t attempting the do, but that fight is going to play. general mattis said it best trying the defend the state department. he said if you are going to cut the state department, you need to give me five more division, because we will need them, and

regretly, when he said that, that is what happened. the pentagon is getting a lot more money, and the state department is not. and a lot of the places in government are not either, so basically, as you are talking about the security cooperation, don't forget the whole of government approach. yes, we need to train the troops in the trouble spots of the world to keep the peace and the security, but security is about a lot more than the military. so, i will look forward to the questions and i thank csis for hosting this event. >> thank you very much, representative smith. i know that your back is bothering you so if you have to stand and walk, that is totally fine. >> it is fine. and it is actually not my back, but it is something different. >> okay.

apolo apologies for that, and so, let's get to where you ended up which is this government and whole comprehensive approach, and challenging to say the least right now as you said the state department is going through at best described as a restructuring, but, heavy pruning or the siege force approach on them. what do you think sort of is the next stage or the era ara of th congressional viewpoint of where we go with the comprehensive approach. do you know that if we are going to get to the point where the d.o.d. is well resourced and takes on a lot of these missions is because the money is will there, and what then becomes the next stage of where we can go to the make sure that we have the kind of security that looks more like the whole of government that you hope for. >> well, i, you know, i am not known for the optimism. i think ta that is up fair by the way. i am not being pessimistic, but

it is what it is, okay. i simply try to assess the situation where it is at, but i will start with something positive which is that i am working with congressman ted yoho and senator coons and inhofe to put more power in the hands of usaid, and improves that particular leg of the stool if you believe in the defense development, diplomacy approach to foreign policy. it is promising, because it is ironic that this is something that was central to my approach prior to 2008 and i worked with s susan rice and gayle payne at the time to reform the way we do foreign aid. because foreign aid is spread out over 40 agencies and in little boxes and pots of money that you can't, and it is very,

very difficult to implement. raj shah, and not the one in the white house, but the usaid guy for a while is as brilliant a h human being that i have ever encountered and he did a beautiful job at us a aid and so was gail. we never did the reform because the state department would not let go of it, and they wanted to control it, and i always thought that it was a mistake, and we should have a separate department of development like they do in great britain, but it is a turf thing, and the state department wanted it so under the obama administration in eightt years we did nothing congressionally, and raj did what he could within the conf e confines of the law, but now we have the possibility of reforming that, and that would be a p big step towards getting us at a better place of a whole government approach if the usaid had more power and authority. >> it seems that will there is a debate in washington over the true structural reform is

possible, and whether one should think big to make some of the bigger structural changes or one sort of is absent a major crisis, and one is forced back if you will back into what you will have, and do you fall on the spectrum, because it sounds like on that example there is a view for a chance of a fundamental structural change that can hem us on the security assistance. >> there is a chance. and, you know, it is always worth working on as ledge sgisl that is what we do, legislate. so i would never say that we should walk away from it, and the challenges to getting there are daunting. because of the can current structure and because of the money problem that i alluded to in the opening remark, is it going to bite us? everybody is short of money, and we are living way crazy beyond our means and so then you tend to get locked into the patterns, and you don't have the freedom to innovate as you should. but there is a possibility to

get to a better whole of government approach. >> speaking of spending, we hear in washington how difficult it is, and many of us experience it to try to explain anything like security cooperation or the preventative defense or whatever the comprehensive approach or whatever the term is, and so to the people who are thinking of where they want the tax dollars going, and the value to try to explain the value of that when folks are looking at, you know, whether they want the taxes raised or they want the benefits decreased or whatever the issue may be. >> they don't want either one of those things by the way. >> what is the compelling case if any that you have found works if you will in terms of the talking about your travels, your experiences, and in this sector, and the value that it can provide to americans. is there a way to sell this successfull successfully? >> there is. there is a sizable problem that

i will get to after i explain how t to do it. i have been giving the speech for a long time, and constituents are straight forward on what is happening with this house if we are spending money, and across the world, how is this helping? so there are four ways that it h helps. three practical and one that is a more, i don't know idyllic argument, but to begin with the united states of america is still the largest economy in world by a comfortable margin and it is funny that china is catching us, and freaking out about china and we had the conversation in the armed services committee that they will be past us, and soy looked up the number, and i am rounding a little bit here, but last year we had 19 trillion dollars in the gdp and they had 11 are. if you look at 19 to 11 are, it is a comfortable lead, and we are still responsible for 27% of

global consumption and that means that we have more invested in the the global stability than anybody. so, number one is economics if we want to continue to grow, and we need access to markets. would you ra the ther have access to the market like h kenya or somalia? there has the to be something there are. so we have an interest in maintaining the stability to maintain the growth of the economy to sell stuff to them bottom line. so there is the economic argument, and then the health care argument, and basically disease spreads like that. good article about the fact that the cdc and the health and human services were not being run by anybody at the moment is a problem, and maybe part of the reason that we have had more people die from the flu this year than at any point in recent memory, but it is if we have stability in these other countries then, you know, pick

your favorite disease, and the bird flu was going to kill us and then twitz swine flu and not the swine flu, but something else. and so this is going to spread, and e bow a la of course. -- ebola of course, so making sure that we have stability systems to protect us as well and that stability leads to terrorists groups who want to the kill all of us. so if you can stop the instability, you will stop the likelihood of somebody who is trying to kill you here or while you are traveling abroad. so those are three practical arguments of why the u.s. is in global stability. this is a pathway of global stability, and in the last a argument, it depends on the audience if you can try it out is that america ought to stand for something, and whatever problems you have here, there has never been a society in the history of the world that has been as wealthy and prosperous

as we have been since world war ii. and we were a country built on values and principles, and if we can spread it across the world, we ought to. if you want the to make it a christian principle, it is love thy neighbor and help who you can help, the good samaritan storybasically, and you should help whoever you can help. and there is a lot of suffering in the world, and so we are more successful than people realize. we are are actively engaged and i forget the number, but the poverty level globally has gone down a heck of a lot. >> yes, know that. >> and somebody in csis knows this, and poverty is cut by a third and it is going down a lot, and we need to be proud of that, and loosely speak iing th

democracy and capitalism and freedom work and make people a better place, but the part that g gets in the way of all of this is what do people want the to spend their money on. and i will start with the good news. pew research starts with this fascinating poll, and i have not looked recently, but i have not looked in a few years, because it is rather depressing. they ask american people, these are the 18 areas that the american government spends money rough roughly speaking, and in the areas what would you like to see cut, increased or kept the same. in the question of what the american people would like to cut is nothing. literal areally nothing. -- literally nothing. most of the categories social security, medicaid, social securit security, and you add it up and keep it the same and increase it, and that number has to be less than the decrease it number

or they don't want to see anything cut. it is like 2/3 or 70% see it increased or kept the same on all of those things. and i have even seen that even on foreign aid ass and t tangen it is ekes out a narrow victory in terms of the number of people who want to spend more money on it or keep it the same as opposed to those who want to cut it. so there is the support of it. the problem is that what the american people want, and i'm not fond of the pollsters unless i'm in a very are very close race, and if they are doing the poll, but it is shocking how accurate it is. i mean, all of the polls that are published and if you don't do a poll right, ask the first 300 people who walk out of the burger king somewhere, but if you do it right, statistics are just blows my brain away that in every race i do, and i hire good

pollsters, they are right, and just spot-on the numbers, but the problem with pollsters is not when they are polling to see who is going to win the election and do you have something to worry about and ahead or behind, butt is when they try to figure out, what is the message to work to persuade people to work for you. that is the part i just as soon not pay them for, because basically what they do is to figure out that if you are telling people that you are going to give them something for nothing. they like it. really? i learned that when i was 6 years old. so when it comes to the government, and this is the three basic things. 80% of the people support a balanced budget and by the way, today, not ten years from now, or 15 years from now or whatever you economists would think about, we have to balance the budget today, and the fiscal responsibility is good, so what to you want the to cut? i have the told you that story, and nothing. in fact, we want to increase a number of things.

all right. how high do you want the taxes to go? no, no, we don't support any tax increases. now, as i jokingly say, you can do a poll so that you can get a ma j majority of the people to support a tax increase if you can convince them that it is not going to impact them directly. fou, the problem with that quickly is that the group of people who rim pacted by it will spend a lot of the money they have to convince everybody that it could impact them, and then your lead e vvaporates. so see the estate tax as a great example of that. so the position of the american public right now when they are looking at congress is that we want you to balance the budget, and we want you to do it without cut cutting anything and raising the taxes and by the way, we are 21 going on $22 trillion in debt in the projected deficit this year is over $1 trillion, so can any of you do that?

so nobody gave ple a magic wand when i got this job, and so we have to make the case for foreign aid and i have to make the case for foreign aid, but you have to have a budget in which it fits and given people's position on the revenue and spending and balanced budgets, that is impossible. so, what i am trying to do about this other than tell funny jokes about it is to tell people this. it is like are, hello. let's talk and have an honest conversation about the numbers here, and talk about do we want a defense budget this large, and is it okay not to balance it right away, but not okay to send it over $30 trillion, so let's talk about the numbers and revenue to raise and cut this or that, and so have a honest conversation, and what the pollsters say, you talk about

the things that you want to spend money on and the taxes that you are going to cut, and how fiscally responsible you are, and as the ads are run, people start to believe it. that is why i jokingly will said that the state of the union speech should be banned, because irony does not come across in print very well. but, you know, well, congress mman smith, it is in the constitution. and that is not technically true as george ar wwill pointed out. i walk out there and say, do we really have that much money? really? and it is great to get up there to promise you things, and it is a point to stand up to promise you everything that the pollsters say that people want you to promise them. so we need to make every a area of the government function >> that is going to bring us back to the point that you were raising before that the department of defense has the money, and so some of the money.

>> a lot of the money. >> and you wanted to along with your colleagues in the 2017 national defense authorization act better a align the resources with the kinds of the authorities that you think appropriate for this sector. as you look ahead and now that the legislation has passed the d.o.d. has begun the implementation and albeit not terribly far in, but what are you going to be looking at in the security sector reform for signs of success? sign signs that d.o.d. is not meeting the intent of the authorizers? >> i mean, basically to make sure that this is where the ig comes in that the money is being spent the way that we said it should be spent and that it is not drifting over into the program that is not being run by the person who we said is supposed to be in charge of all of the money, and there are not little programs over here that are being called something different and falling under the heading of security assistance which happens a lot.

and one tof the funny stories when i was in africa, we went out to visit a village they were making hats. interesting looking hats, but the culture, and selling them. it was a missed program. i -- it was a m.i.s.t. program, and so i forget what it stands for, and so the department of defense is making hats in this are area, and why? because of the security system and the ecomonic and to the extent that we can rein in, and not a bad idea to help the people there to have something to sell and get markets going forward, but it is just something that we need a better idea that this is part of what d.o.d. is doing, and it ought to be better coordinated and so the way to be able to tell whether it is working or not is the money really being controlled in this one area where we told them to control it, and we can see it and evaluate it and figure out whether or not this is a correct

use of those funds. >> and do you think or are you looking ahead to new rounds if you will much in the acquisition sector where we tend to be in the state of continual reform, an an area where you are looking ahead to further the reforms or listening for in the hearings to listen to whether the time is right? >> i don't think so. other than, you know, to pass another law that says no, no, we really meant it. e don't think that -- i don't t to do that because every six months we pass something new and the pentagon doesn't know what the hell it is, and so to give them time to implement it, and i will compliment the predecessors of the d.o.d., ash carter, and frank kindle did as good of a job as anybody to try to change some of the fundamentals of the acquisition process and i think

that mat tis, and shanahan and lord are doing a great job, and so are the secretaries, and i'm very impressed with the service secretaries and these are the people that are like, we won't keep spending money in a ludicrous way, and let's buy more commercial off of the shelf te technology and not to be trapped into the programs of record that wind up costing a ton of money and producing nothing. so they are doing it, because at the end of the day, in all of the legislation that we pass in the world, it isn't the most important thing. it is the culture. the culture at the pentagon. does the culture reward behavior that is in line with the reforms that we have proposed or doesn't it? if it does, it will happen. if it doesn't, i won't, no matter how many times we pass a law saying that it should. >> what is your sense on afghanistan in particular and how the united states is doing in that whole of government approach to both training tough afghan security resource, and

also the comprehensive approach no the country? >> -- approach to the country? >> well, we are doing a decent job in afghanistan and you can't talk about afghanistan that we are talking about. well sh well, it is the winter olympics and not the summer olympics, but in the degree of diving, you have a score and in afghanistan it is not a well structured society. they have a lot of guns, and they like to fight. that makes it very, very difficult. so, we are i think making progress in terms of training the afghan forces to protect themselves, but it is never going to be a country that is secure in the sense that we would like it to be. there was an article can i think in the "new york times" and i get things online now, and i can never be sure, but we can't get the outcome we want, so what are, the best of the worst

options? they listed six, but essentially they were all the same which was, you know, you will have a central government that can basically hold on, and then you will negotiate with a whole bunch of warlords and chieftain s and power brokers in different provinces to try to stop the insurgency from taking over to give safe haven to transnational terrorists is the best we can hope for. that is not bad. i mean, it is certainly better than having it descend into libya or somalia or the prehpre1 afghan situation. we have learned a ton of lessons from the afghanistan experience. they are hard, hard learned lessons from there and iraq, but they are implement aring the policies as best ta can right

no now. >> syria? and sticking strictly to the issue of the u.s. support the forces on the ground. >> you don't want to ask me about norway? >> i am happy to ask you about norway. >> i think that things are good. >> even norway has been in the news. >> they have a little cross border dispute, but it is relatively small. >> just in the security sek to, and the united states has been providing aid,t a temtd over time and struggled with providing aid effectively most people would say, and struggled with it, and particularly with this non-state actors and what is your sense of the degree to which we can hope for the united states to be, you know, capable over time to be learning how the work effectively in the state. >> it is not a matter of learning, but it is a matter of, it is funny that i mentioned afghanistan and you came up with a place that is even tougher.

the reason that syria is tougher and most of the people know here is that assad is not going anywhere. not with russia and iran backing him. he is a brutal and unpopular leader. our allies in the area want to kill each other as much as they want to fight against assad, and the kurds are great, but turkey has a tiny little problem with the kurds, and that crosses over. and then you have got -- it is a mess in terms of figuring out who are the allies and coordinating them. we don't have in at least in afghanistan a clear set of people that we are working w. it is a constantly h sort of spinning situation. in seyria. so, until we can resolve, you know, two broad situation, and syria spills over into iraq, and both of the situations are going

to be important, and number one until we can get the turkey and the kurds to get along and i don't know, it is so much rivalry and the kurds are split in five factions so they have their problems there, and if i were advising the kurds u i would say take what you have got and for heaven sakes leave turkey a alone. carve out an area in iraq and in syr syria, take it and try to make peace with turkey, but it is a problem, because there have been and i don't agree with the way that erdogan is running turkey by any stretch of the imagination, but you can't deny that the kurds have attacked places in turkey, and if you are the leader of turkey, what are you going to the do? so we need to resolve that situation, because i want to support the kurds. the kurd s as are worthy of the support, and i think worthy of the independent state.

i think that the countries around them would be wise to say that we will give you an independent state, you know, because if they were to have, that they would have less reason to be battling with the u.s. and so not just with turkey, but crucially with iraq are as well, because the baghdad government, and i think that he is doing his best, but i don't know, but he is doing better than al maliki did in terms of being just the shia leader and trying to work with the sunnis and the kurds and once the fighting stopped, they turned on the kurds. so we have to resolve the difference of the kurds and the turks and the turks and baghdad and then we can talk about how

our securitys assistance going, because you can't really do it in a situation that is that fluid and where you don't have a clear set of allies on the same page. >> it is back to the diplomacy path. >> yes, doi want to be the diplomat in charge of that, but diplomacy has to be a central approach, and we have to resolve these disputes and the only way to do it is diplomatically. >> and one more question and then i turn it over to the audience which is on the leahy vetting, and so you have heard both sides of the value it bring, and the tension it brings in limiting the operator's sense of ability to train he or she believes that he needs to be. and do you belief that we have it right today, and what do you see as the sort of the future trajectory of the human rights issues, and normally with the

human rights issues in regards to security assistance training. >> i think that we have it right today and i'm very worried about the future. and yeah, i went through the vetting which is most problematic in -- let me get the directions correct, west africa where you had, you know, the l mali government u falling apart and i'm forgetting the name of the country, but there is another ally in there who had a coup, and you know, so we pulled the support, and trying to assemble the folks who can work together while not training people to overthrow their own government. it is a tough balance to strike. the people who say we should get out of there and not train the people, and i disagree, because it is too dangerous of a neighborhood and too many people who want to harm the united states and our allies a. and even if we are working with the country that we can't support

the human rights record, we need to get out. the future i am really worried about, because you have heard a lot lately about the return of the great power rivalries and mo mostly on the armed services committee wuk about the that in terms of how much more military equipment we need to build. that is missing the point a little bit. russia and china, russia more than china, but each in their own way are promoting i mentioned it earlier that one of the things that we as americans should promote is our values and our, the right values. values being freedom, capitalism, and my name is adam smith and how can i not be in favor of capitalism, and i understand the downsides of capitalism, but it is better than cuptocracy, and so

promoting that is what is going to lead to a more stable world. so when you choke off their freedom and political world is when they will rise up in some violent revolt. so spreading it is important. russia has decided that they actually have an ideology now, and it is authoritarians and it is strong man and i mean man. putin is actively trying to undermine democracy as a way to promote authoritarianism. i think that it started to protect himself in rush sharks because he did not want the people to notice that the economy was in the toilet and that he was not providing for them, and so he set up this rivalry gaiagainst the wet, butw i think that he believes it. he believes that the opposite of strong man authoritarian is mob rule. so he is, you know, certainly, we are have seen some of the stuff that is going noneastern europe, and we have seen the efforts to influence elections here. and so then, also, western

euro europe, and he is trying to prop up a dictator in libya, and propped up assad, and there is a kcon conserted effort to undermine human rights. china is not as invested in that, because they don't care. if you are a democracy and you is is a good human record, fine, we will do business with you. if you don't, fine, we will do business with you. as they grow economically and i know that i pointed out that they are a few additions below us, but $12 trillion is nothing to sneeze at i and they are not in the debt that we are in, and they are out there, and they are everywhere. i remember being in the democratic republic of the congo in the hotel bar and a whole group of chinese businessmen there. and in jerusalem, we go there and there are like 75 chinese flags all over the place, and i

was like, what the hell is this, and so they were in town and they want ed a warm welcome for them, and they have a lot of knee, and to spread the influence out there, and potentially, it is good, because if we have another partner who is invested in the global stability and prosperity, and that is a good thing, but if they are invested in a way that undermine s ts the human rights freedom and democracy and capitalism, then we are sowing the seeds of war and discord. so we have the contend with russia and china in that efforts to spread authoritarianism, and we have to do itt all with a president who seems to lack the enthusiasm for the task, let's just put it that way. >> okay. we are going to go to the audience questions, and when i call on you, stand and say your name and after fill fillation if you have one and it is a question only, and just one. wait for the microphone, e please. >> thank you very much.

i'm mike from pacs advisory and thursday i am speaking to the adviser's course about collection, and so i would like the to know about that as ak if or the of return on investment. you have emphasized stabilization, and in almost all of the cases that the u.s. has intervened, haiti, kosovo, iran, and iraq and our efforts have been obstructed by the criminalized power corrupted regime, and so the solution that you point out is a whole government approach, and a allow for transmission of voting governments and so the -- >> the question. >> how do we do that? would you support legislation that would mandate for security assistance above whatever threshold that the pentagon do an assessment of the corruption risk, develop a whole of

government accountability of strategy and provide support for advisers who are out in the field of how to deal with the corruption issues. >> that is idea. yes. in fact, that, you know, i just said i don't want to add more reforms on legislatively, but i think that would be a smarter way to do. it would sort of be like the mill lennium challenge corporatn for the pentagon. you know, and say, look, you know, if you want to go into ethiopia or kenya or the philippines s or wherever, you know, give us a coordinated plan or we'll fence off some of the money. i think that's a good idea. >> okay. i had one way in the back here. >> thank you very much. asia today, i think. you covered everything. i don't think you have left any to ask any question, but, anyway, my question will be going back to afghanistan, the

region. chinese, expanding militarily in the area, and as as far as afghanistan is concerned, people are still asking when time will come for them to see a light in the end of the dark tunnel. and finally, what do you think presidential running to pakistan, if pakistan is still doing, helping the u.s. combatting terrorism or they are still going back, what they have been doing -- >> just so i'm tracking, i couldn't quite hear you, one was china militaristic stuff, is there any hope for afghanistan, and is pakistan getting any better? >> yes, sir, that's -- peace and stability in the region. >> okay. >> is concerned. >> in h that region, china is spr problematic. on the one hand, i have this

core of optimism about the idea if there is another power in the world as i said that is invested in stability and prosperity that has a lot of money, that's potentially good. but china continues to insist upon doing it in a, the word i'm thinking of i keechcan't really her, unfriendly fashion, okay? stepping on everybody's toes. even when they don't have to. and we have to be a counterpoint to that. i think the increased relationship between the u.s. and india is a very positive thing. i really -- ash carter, this was something he was really focused on. and i think the new administration has picked up on that as well. with south korea, with vietnam, with all the countries in that region, you know, we have to be a counterbalance so that china, and china would be so much better off if they wouldn't take a military -- militaristic approach to this. if they would work cooperatively with their neighbors. they're the biggest kid on the block.

and that ain't changing. they're going to have an influence in power. they should try to bring everyone else along with them so they feel good about the experience, but until that time, we're going to have to be a counter -- well, we are going to want a presence in there no matter what. right now counterbalancing ch a china's baser instincts is important. light at the end of the tunnel in afghanistan, i sort of answered that. it's not a particularly bright light, but there is the possibility of the kind of stability that i described. i can't imagine a time in my lifetime when they stop fighting in afghanistan. you know, i hope that's -- i hope i'm wrong. i'm wrong a lot. so i hope this is one of those times. as far as pakistan is concerned, i don't think things are getting a whole lot better. you know, they have too much

extremism deep within the bowels of their government, their military and their intelligence services that are part of the reason that afghanistan is so unstable. and it goes back and forth across the board, pakistan continues to play, i believe, this double game with the extremists. on the one hand, they're fighting them, on the other hand, they use them. when they think it's useful to them. and i haven't seen much change. nor do i think it's going to change, the president got in some hot -- well, this president doesn't get in hot water in that sense because you have to perceive something like that in order to think that you're in it. but he was very critical of pakistan, and there was some blow-back from pakistan. and i, you know, i wish talking strongly, well, we're going to cut off some of your money, but there's two problems with that. "a," at the end of the day, that's not going to change the fundamental problem of extremism in pakistan and their need to reform in the way that, frankly, the muslim world needs to reform their governments.

saudi arabia is kind of trying to do. pakistan needs to reform. second, we still work with pakistan on a ton of things. lot of which i can't talk about here, but we still work with them. we still need them. and if we cut them off and they go looking to china to fill that gap, that's not good. so i think, you know, where pakistan and afghanistan are concerned, i don't have a ton of optimism for things getting better in the short term. >> okay. great. we have probably time for two more questions. i'm going to group them and let you answer them together. so we have one right here. >> and this gentleman's had his hand up for a while. >> hi there, thank you for such an articulate discussion of the need for forward engagement. my name is max kelly. i'm a defense consultant. i spent the last seven years at national defense university actually looking at lessons from interagency stabilization, and our work came to two succinct conclusions for the sake that are relevant to this conversation.

the first is that building schools or training forces in and of themselves do not contribute to stability or preventing fragility, right? they only work when they are serving a truly politically informed politics-first strategy. and our second conclusion was that no agency or institution in the u.s. government really has that as its mission. no institution even special forces don't have as their core logic, their core training, their core selection process -- >> got it. >> -- building the internal politics of other countries from the ground up. and all the way up. not stopping at that level. so the question is the institutions that were stillborn during the last 15 years to try to actually create that capacity, they were stillborn, they never went anywhere. >> right. >> is there any interest in congress in trying to revive or

reinvigorate that capacity? >> if you don't mind, representative, please hold on that. i know we're going to run out of time otherwise. let's go to the second question here then you can -- maybe you'll be lucky and they'll be roughly the same question. >> i might. >> otherwise, we'll have a lightning round. >> thanks so much. my question, i'll be short, thanks so much, congressman. and your opinion about perspectives to the assistance -- specifically ukraine, georgia, and south countries. it seems there are different type of challenges, external and internal. they all struggle with the -- >> i'm sorry, i didn't understand that. >> he's asking about any special considerations or conversation you want to give to the issue of security assistance to ukraine. >> ukraine and -- >> i'll hit that in a second. the answer to your question is, that is my dream. all right? from, you know, a legislative standpoint, i would love to revive that process. i would love to have that organization in charge of it.

it's part of what made me sort of fall in love with the special operations command. is they're the closest thing to a group that can do what we're talking about here. because it's what they do, and, i mean, that's what -- well, let me amend that a little bit. moment people think of the special operations command as the guys who killed bin laden. they kick in doors and shoot people and they're really good at it. during my time with them, i learned that, you know, by in large, they wish people didn't think that was all they did. that what they really follow in love with is the idea of going into a country of a village or a town that's fallen to pieces and help peopkeep it together. and they, a ton of thinkers at all levels, special operations command. when i visited the philippines, when i visited in kenya, they're all thinking about all these questions that we've said in a way that nobody else is.

comprehensively. as security is their first instinct, but since they're the guys who have to try to keep the peace in some very, very tough parts of the world, they are the most qualified in terms of thinking wholistically about this. yes, the state department should be in charge but the state department doesn't have the security focus and it's absolutely true what my navy s.e.a.l. escorts were saying during the dinner in kenya, you can do all you want, but if people show and shoot you, you're dead. we're the ones who can stop that from happening. personally, there was a time back in the days where breaiefl in some document in the pentagon the special operations command is typically a supporting command. in other words, they're not really in charge of anything. they do what the air force or the army, whoever, tells them to do. but they were the supported agency in the jiwad, the global war on terrorism. they were supposed to be the

ones coordinating exactly what we're talki ining about. that slowly went away. so i would love to see that happen. i would love to see us get back to a place where we had a central organization that was in charge. now, personally, if i could just sort of move the u.s. government around like, you know, hotels on a monopoly board, i would take socom and usaid, i would make them a hybrid and put them in charge of this. i don't know, take 12 people from socom, 12 people from usaid, say here, you got a new agency, do this. i think those are the two groups that are in the best position to do it. the state department would, of course, freak out in a heartbeat, if there's anyone here from the state department, i'm sure i'm going to be getting a nasty phone call very soon for suggesting such a thing. those are the two groups that are really most on the ground dealing with it and they're diplomats as well as all the other things that they do. and the problem the state department being in charge of

all this stuff is they got so much to worry about that they don't get down into the weeds on the level that socom and usaid does. the 12 smartest people from socom, 12 smartest people from usaid, i say here you go, here's $50 billion, go save the world. i think they're in the best position to actually coordinate that. say i'm not taking orders from these people, what are you talking about? but if i were god and could make these things happen, that's what i would do. i think they would be in the best position to coordinate it. you krukraine and georgia bring the russia question. i could give a long-winded answer but i explained what russia is doing and why it's so bad. in the case of ukraine, inning particular, i actually -- i agree with what the trump administration has done because while rush that is a profound

threat for all the reasons that we know, the end of the day they're playing a weak hand. the demographics are terrible. their economy is terrible. they, you know, they're not all together that strong. they'll push. if nobody pushes back, they'll keep pushing. so in crukraine and georgia, we have to raise the cost of what they're doing which is why i supported the decision to sending -- start sending -- i think we're actually sending them offensive arms or better defensive arms, but whatever. we decided we were going to arm them a little bit better to raise the government of what russia is doing. and then we got to wait out putin. and, you know, because there's no solving this problem as long as putin is in charge/alive, which i think is pretty much the same thing. because he has made his decision. he has decided that his role in history is to bring down the

west and all that it stands for. and like i said, this is somewhat heartfelt. this is not, as far as i can tell, just some, you know, maniacal madman trying to rule the world in like some stupid james bond thriller. he honestly believes that if his way doesn't work, mob rule will take over. you've seen the story about he was in berlin when the wall fell, which is really unfortunate, because it had a real negative impact on the way he views democracy. essentially he was surrounded by a mob and they were going to kill everyone inside but he bluffed his way out of it. that's what he fears. he fears mob rule. he thinks the only way to get around it is through an authoritarian regime. that's what he's going to prop up. the west is for the opposite. we're for, you know, representative democracies, and he's going to play a zero-sum game as long as he's around. and that's not going to change. whether it's obama or trump or bush, you know, you can look

into his soul, you can do a reset, you can do whatever you want to do, it ain't going to change. so what do we do? we got to wait him out. it's a complicated waiting out game because on the one hand, you do want to keep the pressure up so he doesn't go rolling into estonia or anything like that. you know, on the other hand, as someone has -- many people have said, including i think you guys, you know, a strong russia is a problem, a weak russia is a problem because if russia looks like it's failing, lord knows what putin would do externally in order to try to prop up support. so, like said, we gi said, we g him out. i don't know what comes after putin. it's a complicated society in that, well, there's people here who know a lot more about russia than i do, but i was in russia with john kelly, of all people.

should i quote him? i will. we were just walking around, this was in 1998, so it's not long after all this changed and he just sort of said, like, i still have a hard time understanding this, you know, we spent 70-some odd years fighting these people as basically the worst people on the planet. now all of a sudden, it's all good and we're supposed to get along. you know, how does that work? and he's right in the sense that russia, some of the basic things that we take for granted about a free society, they have no rift history of it. like, ever. all right? before communism, it was the czars. they have no history of self-government. when i was over there, one of the things -- they didn't have mortgages. okay? you couldn't borrow money from a bank to buy something. so who'd you borrow money from? you know, so at some point russia could play a positive role.

i'll close with this thought because i think it's ultimately what could bring us a more peaceful world for my children and their grandchildren. a u nipower american-dominated world isn't going to work. post-world war ii, a moment in history that's unlikely to be paralleled. we need a multipolar world. a whole lot of reasonably big powerful countries that the have a vested interest in peace and stability. to get there, we obviously have to be part of it. china has to be part of it. i think india has to be part of it. i also think russia has to be part of it. it's not going to be part of it under putin which is why i say we have to wait him out and figure out how to maintain ties there. so eventually we can sort of, i don't know, get a reset back to 1994 and go, how can we do this differently this time so that russia integrates into the world instead of deciding to become its opposite? >> representative adam smith, i do think you managed to cover

everything but norway today. >> yeah. >> impressive, impressive array of issues we threw at you and i want to thank you for your service as the ranking member on the house armed services committee and if everyone can please join me in a round of applause, thank you for your time today. >> thank you.

>> news conference on international security taking a short break. the next discussion coming up about priorities for security assistance. later they'll be looking at oversight and accountability. to update you on the schedule on capitol hill, the u.s. senate has just gaveled in, they'll be taking up the immigration legislation this week opening with a vote to proceed forward

scheduled for 5:30 eastern this afternoon. if that's approved, they're expected to continue debating amendments throughout the week. those amendments to be approved need at least 60 votes. so follow immigration rebate this week over on c-span2. the house is back tomorrow and their week, a short week ahead of the president's daybreak. this evening i want to let you know ruth bader ginsburg joins the national constitution center president and ceo jeffrey rosen marking the 25th year, the anniversary of her appointment to the supreme court, our live coverage of that is at 6:00 p.m. eastern. that will be over on c-span. this conference here at the center for strategic and international studies resuming shortly. live coverage here on c-span3.

>> take your seats. we're about to get started. everyone, take your seats. we're about to get started.

>> good afternoon, everyone. i'm melissa dalton. i'm a senior fellow and the deputy director of the international security program here at csis. thank you so much for joining us today for the second portion of our rollout event for the oversight and accountability and security secretary assistance seeking return on investment report. following the terrific remarks from representative smith this morning, we have gathered an interagency panel, several important notes from the vast community to enlighten us on some of the great work they are doing behind the scenes on this enterprise. i did want to spend a few minutes at the outset noting the

co-authors and great work and contributions of csis staff that worked on this project over the last nine months. my co-authors shaw, rebecca hughes and shannon green all contributed mightily to the successful outcome of this project, and none of this would have been possible without the tremendous engagement and support of key stakeholders throughout the ssa community, several which are in the audience today. so, thank you so much for all of your contributions and insights as we brought this together. our goal in the study was to take stock of this moment in time in u.s. national security and defense strategy where clearly in the 21st century, the united states cannot meet really any security challenge comprehensively without working by, with, and through allies and partners and with the overlay of the recent national security

strategy and defense strategy, i think that it's clear despite some of the potential tensions with an america-first policy agenda that the united states still is relying quite heavily on allies and partners to meet common security goals, but at the same time, there are political realities, budgetary reali realities, many of which representative smith spoke to in the first part of this event, that puts some constraints around the ability of the united states to leverage its ssa relationships and given the budgetary realities under which we're operating so in the course of our study, we wanted to evaluate some of the key mechanisms that the united states uses to provide oversight and accountability for its ssa programming to include the leahy law, monitoring and evaluation, and some of the conditionality experiments that the united states has brought to bear on some of its relationships but also to look at defense

institution building as a way that the united states seeks to inculcate good oversight and accountability practices in security partner relationships around the globe. so we evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each of these mechanisms then also tried to take a step back and look a bit more wholistically to examine if the executive and legislative branch wanted to take a wholistic approach. what might such a framework look like and what are some of the key recommendations that both the executive and legislative branches need to undertake in order to implement such a wholistic report, approach? we hope that some of those findings and recommendations are useful to practitioners and policymakers throughout the community. you'll find them in the report available outside on the table today. as well as online on the website. without further adieu, i want to

turn to some of our key colleagues here who have joined us from the state department, the department of defense. starting with mr. rafael carland who's the managing director for policy in the office of u.s. foreign assistance resources. rafael, the united states state department is undertaking a review of its role and some of the efficiencies that might be gained in terms of its resourcing and in the context of that, i understand has been undertaking reviews, particularly of ssa tools as well as stabilization tools, and in that process, i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on what sort of innovations and best practices the state department has identified for ssa in that context. >> sure. thank you very much. thank you so much for organizing this. appreciate the report as well. and that, of course, just by way of introduction, the office of foreign assistance that we do

oversees and coordinates the $30 billion or so in foreign assistance that the state department and usa manage every year. we look across all of these a accounts, $30 billion a year, quart toreer to a third in any year is security sector assistance. plays a really important role in how the state department looks at all its other assistance and the foreign policy it's trying to get done. i think that is the most exciting thing that we're having an opportunity to do is looking back over the last 20 years or so, we've had a lot of experience using tools that were props and design for a different generation and now getting a chance to really think and look across the tools. it used to be we'd go to partners and it was a very steady state, peacetime driven, peace, now we're working oftentimes in conflict and fragile states. i think that really drives some interesting conversations and there was a good question, i think discussion, which i think for the the state department is particularly important is the primacy of the political in a lot of these dynamics. that we have is to sometimes the

security sector assistance and with the dynamics of accountability we need to follow here in washington for very good reasons they can run up against what are the dynamics in the country. ma partners have agencies, dynamics going on. can't allow them to -- the provision of resources or the provision of how many people you train, how many pieces of equipment you pass out. i think all three of our agenc agencies have experienced that. keenly, a couple of countries, but globally as well over the last decade or so. i think that's finally bubbling up from people's field experience to where greg and i are working on 333 north 3 auth. there are a lot of exciting opportunity going on there. it's linked by, congress has given us this authority and linked it to formal concurrence processes between the department of defense and department of state. rather than focusing on this sort of signoff veto process, our two organizations have engaged in a longer process of

trying to back this up month, even years, to start planning ahead of time, thinking what we're going to do in these countries as outlined in your report. it's an exciting place to be. we'll see where we can take it. >> great. turning next to mr. greg pollack, acting deputy assistant secretary for security cooperation and has a storied career as a civil servant, both in the department of defense and also some time in the department of the treasury. greg, as raphael mentioned, dod and fy '17, the gift that keeps on giving of security collaboration reform and would love to hear from you in terms of how implementation is going on section 333, the joint planning that raphael mentioned between state and dod and that first year of execution, and looking ahead, what are some of the key areas of focus for fy '19? >> sure. thank you very much, melissa,

for having me here today and for including me and my team in your research process that culminates in the report today. so thanks for all of csi's work on that. thanks to my colleagues up here for the day-to-day teamwork i think is achieving some real results pursuant to the fy '17 ndaa reforms. i often joke can colleagues and security cooperation enterprise that we're like the dog that caught the car. we all knew there was a need for reform. there were over 120 different authorities related to security cooperation going into '17. those have been largely consolidated down on the defense department side, it's only a handful of authorities now preempr preeminent among them the section 333 global train and equip authority raphael mention mentioned. this is a pot of money, consistent with the national defense strategy. in terms of ways we're changing, we're having a adopt our culture in the department of defense and

that's woo idide-reaching effor combat and command, all the services. maintaining that network and creating a partnership across those echelons is really central to my day-to-day work. i think we've had some real success in setting up those mechanisms, transparency, some real trust across the entire enterprise, but we have to be honest that there are winners and losers here, and this is a real global competition now for priorities priorities. the national defense strategy ascribes specific priorities that will inform the way we invest in security cooperation partnerships. i should say that you mentioned that i previously worked at the treasury department. i also did a brief stint once upon time at the state department so i deeply value what they bring to the conversation, the role they play out on the front lines. i was just in southeast asia last week and spending a lot of time with our country teams there getting their perspectives to inform our investments in security cooperation in that region specifically, so we have

a few different mechanisms, both kind of informal conversations between raphael and i. we also have now an assistant secretary level, security sector assistance steering board. we also have an emerging effort related to the quadrennial security sector assistance review that was legislatively mandated. these forces are driving state and dod closer and closer collaboration. we still have a little bit of a ways to go, i think. the state department is still operating off foreign assistance act of 1961. there's probably some room to modern size soize some of their authorities to create greater comp l complementary. as raphael said, in a very exciting moment here, we can be sure to situate security cooperation into the wider framework of our foreign policy and defense strategy and that's a fun place to be. >> great. general fletcher, i want to

bring you into the conversation. the director of j5 strategy policy and plans at u.s. southern command and has a storied 30-year career in the u.s. army. general fletcher, from a combat and command perspective, you know, from an operational perspective, please speak about the value of ssa activities and also how you see that evolving as the combat and commanders provide recommendations to the section 333 process. >> well, first, csis, the entire team, thanks for the opportunity to come and speak with you guys today and answer any questions you may have. secondly, i was promised there would be no hard questions, so hopefully they're all very easy and something that i'm able to respond coherently back to your question. on the question from the perspective, how we see this, i think there's three pillars that our strategy tries to build itself around. i think with the understanding that, first, it is a long-term investment that we're making.

i think too often where there's risk, we make some short-term decisions that may not be in the best interest long term, to what we're trying to do in is take a long-term look at our engagements. secondly, we built our theater engagement strategy, plan, around something we think resonates with the entire aor that we operate in. it's built around national threat networks, that resonates with every country that we engage with primarily because it's not around a list of commodity, whether it's drugs, whether it's gangs, whether it's any elicit pathway, they're all connected and that resonates with the countries we work with day in and day out. additionally, we're working toward making it more resilient when it comes to rapidly responding to humanitarian assistance. that resonates with every country we work with. lastly, because of shared values, shared culture in the western hemisphere, we think continuing to be the partner of

choice is something that resonates and we build upon based on our long history we've had. so we build our strategy around those core kind of fundamentals going forward. and we take a look at the successes and the failures that we've had and try to, you know, obviously work to improve going forward. the best vignette that i personally have have been a part of within our aor is when it comes to our dealings and relationship with the country of colombia. i initially started out as a young captain, i was assigned or tasked to run our selection course for special forces for about two years. coming off that assignment, i was given the opportunity to work with the colombian military and through the group working through the country team, the ambassador and group commander there, they wanted to give them a special operations capability when it came to counter and counternarcotics in the country. we started the program in 2002. i was happy to say, it had a

rough start, but really trained some phenomenal operators within the area, within colombia. less than five years later, that same unit was fundamental to actually addressing many of the concerns they had, reducing several members of its key leadership and additionally was part of the effort that repatriated three americans that had been held captive for five years. come forward to where i'm at now, i made a trip two weeks ago, two of the general officers that are a part of the colombian military were actually, one was a student, the other was with a company that i had a chance to work with. so, once again, a long-term approach, things that resonate, a shared culture, shared value systems when it comes to building a professional force, and every engagement that we have down there, we use those four fundamentals to teach them about what a professional military looks like. we build it around obviously human rights and it's a shared value, shared culture with everybody in aor.

we're slowly developing an nco corps. at the end of the day if you look at the american military and dod, the nco corps sets us apart from most of the militaries around the country. we also going forward, those two between the human rights and nco, obviously gender integration is a topic my boss stresses with every engagement and all our component commanders do in their engagement with their counterparts understand if you want to leverage and maximize the full breadth of the talent that's at there, you have to have that as a key component of how you address and how you go forward as a military. and lastly, after we get through talking human rights, nco development, gender integration, we know if you mirror what the u.s. army does well, it's we're joint in our approach to everything, air force, marines, navy, coast guard, everything, working with interagency partners, takes the whole of government, takes a complete team to be effective.

we built our strategy around that. and we think it will pay dividends going forward. thank you. >> that's great. lot of innovations and best practices exemplified by the southcom example. to tease out this longer-term perspective you take to your ssa relationships, you know, back to the policy level, and looking globally, you know, in other aors where there's that short-term/long-term tension that plays out operationally and how you conceive of a longer-term ssa approach when there are those imperatives particularly from a counterterrorism perspective but now with the overlay also of competitiveness with china and russia and how ssa is going to be a tool in those types of settings. greg and raphael, could you speak to how state and dod are planning to approach navigating those short-term/long-term tradeoffs in the joint planning

process that you're developing? >> sure. yeah. i'll take a first crack at it. raphael will correct the record as appropriate. that's really the beauty of these new repoauthorities. it allows us to have flexibility to fund priorities both short term and long term across geography and domain, so we're out there looking at the big picture and trying to make investments that meet all of our respective national security interests and i think that's an important point to emphasize is the security environment will evolve but our interests won't evolve and we hope that we can defend upon the partnership of current allies and more and more sort of partners that we're investing in out there, whether it's in eastern europe on the margins of russia oar or in southeast asia, in east asia, these are our allies and partners we've been there with, we want to have there with us

should there be a contingency and ensure we're interoperable and have an understanding of how our respective military cultures intersect. at the same time, we've got some near-term threats as you mentioned, as much as maybe the parade, phrase, jiwad, is a thing of the past now. the concerns around terrorism are still very real. thankfully less so in the southcom aor for the most part. we need to continue working closely with our counterparts at sentcom, africom, even at paycom, to ensure they have the resources they need to work by, with and through partners to deal with local sources of instability and potentially terrorism as well. so this really is the challenge year in, year out, is how do we ensure that we're thoughtful about our investments both low in resources that are in the fight today but also investing in partners we want to count on for the long haul, particularly with respect to some of the

competitors out there. >> i would just add on to the group, i think one fundamental difference that the policy change is driven in the way we approach security sector assistance, it has increased our time horizons for planning. i think a lot of our guys used to get hyperfocused on year-to-year engagements. the changes now have forced us to take a multiyear approach to engagements and activities we want to do with the sbeintent o building that capability. hoping to get a degree of influence out of it, but growing toward a capability you now tie bo back into an effort that builds upon the strategy you're trying to accomplish in aor. the changes, we embrace them, we understand it. it's forced to us reorganize our mechanisms that build into security assistance, security corporations, rooeformat, chang the timelines to meet the needs. it forced us to think for

broadly about how we approach it and i think for the better. >> yeah, i would echo all the comments that i've heard. i mean, the one thing we always have to do is be realistic about the tension between the long term and the short term, and i know we weill continue dto do reports like this, oscillate through discussions from secretary to secretary. different times call for a different balance. i think the idea we will find a perfect balance at some idolized future -- in the meantime we can work, there's openness, so we understand what we're trying to do. that's one of the interesting things. to echo what greg is talking about, a broader view of assistance. what the state department is particularly interested in is looking across when you talk about stabilization, fragility, all these other things, these really matter in security sector assistance. what you're giving weapons and training to, how it impacts the rest of society. the political dynamics, the longer-term things we hope will

go on in these countries. because ideally, our relationship with all of these partners will not always be primarily security sector assistance. hopefully even now it isn't. this is just a function of our broader relationship. and we have to have that balance. i think that's one of the things as you look across, if we're doing this with this account, if we're working with this group of people, who -- what are the other driving forces in that society? i thought particularly interesting is you talk about -- fletcher was taulking about building nco corps, officer corps, building capabilities and discussing who traditionally fulfill those roles in a society and why other groups don't fulfill roles in that society. that takes a lot of analysis and a lot of understanding of the places you're working. it requires relationships. i think colombia, we hold up colombia as this great example and it is, it's a huge interagency whole of government bilateral partnership success. but it was built on decades of hard work and a lot of trial and error and some cases a lot of error. but in the end, it was held together by a lot of deep

political military personal relationships between our two governments that i think is really important and a significant part of security sector assistance. but it goes always back to the balance of these relationships are in the service of what? they are not a thing in and of themselves. >> just a quick additional point, if you don't mind, i think it's really important, too, that we're honest about what security cooperation can and cannot do. the flash to bang on security cooperation assessments is long and we still have other tools in the tool kit on the defense side and elsewhere to deal with some of those shorter-term types of threats. but, you know, moving equipment, matriel, training, through the pipeline, doesn't happen overnight. we don't transform other countries' defense institutions in weeks or even months or years in many cases. it's like investing in blue chip stocks. we have to be in that market for the long haul. just want to also note that, you

know, frankly, if we're providing differing guidance year in and year out to the combat and commands about what's important to us, we're doing it wrong. and that's why at the policy level, we're trying to ensure that we move toward multiyear all security cooperation guidance to the combat and command so they have a sense of what's important today and what's going to be important on an enduring basis moving forward. they can play against that across a five-year defense plan. >> great. >> is just li >> just like to add one thing, a couple point. first, at least in southcom, everything we do is in support of a different agency and in support of the country team. our most forward assets are our security cooperation officers who are trained, foreign naval officers who work with an embassy who are working trying to niche together all the different agencies to provide the best dod advice to the ambassador.

the end of the day we're doing everything through and with the approval of the ambassador of that country. secondly, as resources get tight, there's a global competition given the threats that are out there. within southcom, we know we may not get more troops, more planes, more votes but security assistance, security cooperation has been the means which we've been able to engage, so to use a sports analogy, you have to be on the field to compete. and so security cooperation, security assistance, gives us the means by which we can be on the field and compete. and that's why, you know, this is hugely important and hugely important we get it right going forward. >> great. at this point, i'd like to turn to the audience for some q&a. i'm going to bundle those questions in the interest of time. if you could please wait for a microphone and then stand and state your name and affiliation and state your question, actually, in the form of a question. we'll start with the lady with the scarf then max. we can probably take one more.

>> hi. i'm with state department asia bureau. i think we've done a really good job with 333 because we have the concurrence authority. working closely with dod. i think we can take it a step further. there's always the step further of looking at joint program development. there's transfer authority, things like the global security contingency fund that alieus us to co-fund. so as you think about the future of 333, what are your thoughts about moving it more in that direction? realizing that state always has the bandwidth issues with how much we can actually do the joint development. thanks. >> we'll take one from max. gentleman at the front also. >> thank you for another articulate discussion of this issue. i had a question about how dod, in particular, balances or should balance priorities. you know, you talked about the, obviously, the prominence of global competition as a theme and a guiding theme for the department and its investments. there is evident tension between holding forces in if readiness for a big war against a global

competitor, versus providing the very -- the same forces or forces from the same pool, to do the preventative work that may ensure we never have to fight that war. so i'm just curious about how you see that balance of demands playing out. >> i think there was a question down here. >> thank you. building on my question to you, general fletcher, at the break, in 2004 when the 101st airborne division landed in mosul, iraq, then-general petraeus and the ambassador agreed on a program that platoon leaders and company-grade officers could in effect become quasi soldier diplomats by -- through funding and through the assistance of foreign area officer who were not only middle eastern specialists, lylin linguists an the experience.

and i saw firsthand through my daughter who was a platoon leader there, a couple years ago general petraeus recounting the effect of that approach strategy by working together with the foreign area officers trained in diplomacy and the soldiers on the ground rebuilding schools, running health care programs, so on. so the question is, with that precedent, foreign area officer school, and others that the state department may have, if those successful models are expended, wouldn't most, if not all, of the challenges that congressman smith presented be met? new authorities, yes, but building on the strengths of the institution that already exist adding new authorities and not reinventing the wheel. >> great. lightning round. whoever would like to go first.

>> we'll start down there. >> all right. on the joint planning from my colleague, i think there's a lot of interest in that. i think what we're trying to do is find better process ways to be able to take advantage of what's going on. i think one of the things that all of us, you'll see in all these, is a better management of data. there's a lot going on out there. we have not always -- a lot of very good things have been going on in the field. we have not always kept good track of them. and i think we need to get into a better space across the interagency, i think greg would agree with this, too, it's easier to access what oare good programs, what are good templates, where has this been successful? it sounds very simple, but colleague, i think you'll agree i.t. is difficult when it's got resourced. if we can get to some of those spaces, we'll be able to do a lot. in terms of the soldier

diplomat, as a former army officer, i like to hear that, but i think the state department just recently did a stabilization assistance review looking across this and one of the initial observations from one of our colleagues at usaid is the frustrating piece of a lot of this work is it's a pickup game every time and it's great when we have young officers who understand diplomacy, when we have development officers who understand. we have state department people who understand security and understand some of these, you know, project management dynamics but that's not why we were originally hired and not why we were trained. and given the amount of time and space you have to train people to do their primary function, it gets difficult to have everyone be able to do everything. so i think we're always going to be in a dynamic where certain agencies are good at certain things and this is the way we have to work. but i think one of the things that stabilization assistance review that we're working on i think came to a conclusion we can better define some of the rules and then tailor our

training and our workforce management and higher recruiting. that would work better. i think is one of the dynamics. we really have to decide what do we want our junior field people to be doing in every case? i don't thinkt they can do ever job. we'll have to keep working an b that. >> greg. >> thank you. going through the questions in turn here, so i would wholeheartedly embrace the idea of moving toward more joint program development with the department of state. i think part of the challenges is states' internal organization. there are bits and pieces of the security assistance mission still scattered across different bureaus. i work most closely, i would say, with pm and f, but for example, my section 333 authority is also -- there's some overlap with what inl does. i think we need to build a little bit bigger tent in terms of who we're having this conversation with on an interagency basis. on its base, i wholeheartedly agree the idea of more point interagency planning.

there are a few little practical concerns related to where we are in terms of fiscal planning, how we do that differently, but i think those are surmountable, particularly so long as the will is there and i think for the most part, it is, so we're trying to work through that, you know, week in and week out. on the question about the use of forces, absolutely. that's a very real tradeoff and one that we're focused on. particularly as we think about the prospect of having to respond to a contingency involving a major competitor. that said, for the most part, security cooperation is not a force-intensive kind of undertaking particularly in places where we're doing more like train the trainer sorts of engagements. i think the return on investment per soldier deployed is extremely high. and that's where we haven't had a chance to talk as much about assessment monitoring and evaluation. we need to get to the point where we can really show our senior leaders in the department, across the interagency, what that return on investment is. finally, to the question about the use of foreign area officers

and how our evolving force kind of relates to the security cooperation mission, i totally agree with your point, and i think, frankly, since the global war on terrorism, we've seen more of that special force s kid of mindset flow into the general purpose forces and the general here will be well positioned to speak to that, but, you know, that idea of being more culturally attuned, having language skills, thinking in terms of whole of government, the host nation context, i think we're seeing more and more of that amongst our broad security cooperation workforce inside the department of defense. frankly, when it comes to foreign-area officers, i would like to have more of them because they are key enabler of this mission. but finally, i mean, we've got to look hard in the mirror at the department of defense about the degree to which we are equipped to do this mission properly. the fy '17 ndaa calls upon us to look inside and do some

evaluation of our security cooperation workforce. so my colleagues at the defense security cooperation agency have been in the thick of that. we're working closely with them. this is a massive undertaking, but it's extremely central, you know, when you think about some of our security cooperation officers out there, they get a few weeks of training in this stuff and they're the face of our department. many times our government to the host nation. we need to get serious. we wouldn't approach any other mission area with that sort of limited training. so we need to up our game in that space. >> it great. general fletcher? >> real quickly, to try to respond to the three different questions, the first one on working more closely with some of our partners, we fully embrace that. i think if you talk to anyone in southcom, we've reached out, placed lnos, changed lnos not only with our partners in the region but also in the different agencies. we would welcome that. there are some success stories we can lean upon, though. if you look at how we implement

himat, the international military education training that we do around -- any one time, we have 600 or so from the western hemisphere that are part of that program. they go on and be ministers and presidents of these different countries, allow us to not only share our american values and the way we do business but give them insight and hopefully build friendships and partnerships going forward. our gpoy, a lot of those are 22 programs kind of executed by dod so that coordination already exists. we have to build upon that. on the second question of prioritization and the force structure, where we apply those limited resources, i'm just glad i don't have to make those decisions, but if you look at how the national security strategy, national defense strategy, national military strategy, all lays it out. we know that in southcom, we got to make a pretty tough argument to rise above some of those existing extremes that are out there so what we've done in the interim, it's made us more creative. and so our partners that are in the region, we have an expectation that we're going to

come train you, but you're going to export security to help within the aor. you're going to be part of the burden sharing we put on, if we want the hemisphere to stay stable and secure, you're going to help us in that effort. the leader right now is colombia. they ex poport to six or seven different countries in central america, exporting security. so they've received training from us over the last 20 years own now they're providing the like training to partners in the region. so once again if we get them all buying into we're going to help you but there's an expectation, the return on investment is not just back to the u.s. the return on investment is back to your community, back to the entire region that you're working in. so that's what we're trying to leverage. as we export something from the u.s., we have an expectation that that country is going to in turn turn and help its partners in the region to respond to disaster, respond against some of these counter -- counter some of these threat networks that exist that are out there. last question, sir, i think the -- continue to learn, continue to development when it co comes to how to build the soldi

soldier diplomat. we've tried the afghan hands. we're trying, you know, to soften this regional approach. we can never tell when the next crisis is we have a little bit after challenge, having the team when the next crisis happens. i'm just fortunate at south com that, you know, i have officers that not only work for, in 23 different countries, but a whole cell list within my plan shop that give advice and help commanders in engagement. it still needs tweaking but we are on the right path. we have a whole team looking into how to make it better. >> great. i want it thank you all for your thoughtful remarks and the contributions you make at each of your post. and moving this enterprise forward. please join me in thanking our panel. >>.

[ applause ] >> we will take a short break. reconvene our next panel and be back in about five minutes. thank you very much.

one more panel here at the sent are for strategic and international studies. their conference on international security will focus on oversight and accountability next. meanwhile, in washington today, the u.s. senate beginning work on an immigration bill focussing on border security, daca recipients. the actual debate getting under way later. if they approve so by vote, 5:30 eastern, that vote is scheduled for. can you follow that off on c-span 2. the house is back in session tomorrow. boning bodies, a shorter session certainly for the house this week but both bodies will be out next week for the president's day break. coming up this evening, coverage to tell you about, justice ruth bader vader ginsburg marks the

25th anniversary of her appointment. getting under way at 6:00 eastern on c-span. back to the senate for a second. chuck schumer was speaking at university of louisville, created by republican mitch mcconnell. senator schumer spoke about the senate and bipartisanship. we will show that you speech tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. again, one more panel discussion left here this afternoon at center for strategic and international studies. it should resume shortly.

if you could take your seats, we're about to get started. thank you.

all right, ladies and gentlemen. we are ready to get started with our third and final installment of today's event on oversight and accountability and security sector assistance. again, i'm melissa dalton, senior deputy detector of the national security program here at cis. i'm so delighted to welcome to this panel a selection of colleagues and fellow travellers on the road of ssa reform, who either currently serve in government or have very recently departed government service at

various nodes of the community. starting on my far left is mr. adam barker, professional staff member on the senate committee on armed services. where he provides budget and policy oversight for the department of defense programs and activity that include security cooperation. to his right is dr. rand, vice president for policy and research at mercy corps. previously serving as deputy assistant secretary in the bureau of democracy of human rights and labor. and also served in other positions at the department of state and national security council. to her right is mr. tommy ross, who is currently senior associate with our program here at csis. and was the inaugural deputy assistant for security cooperation and previously spent 12 years as a congressional staffer. and to my left is my dear friend dr. mara carland, associate

professor of practice and associate director at johns hopkins sites. previously serving as secretary of defense for strategy and force development as well as a number of other important positions at the department of defense and has recently published a book, building militaries and fragile states, challenges for the united states. so i'm looking forward to having colleagues here dig into some of the vexing questions of security secretary assistance reform as they have thought deeply about this issue from their various posts. and would really like to engage all of them in a conversation along those lines. starting with i think some clear signals from this administration in terms of their national security defense priorities, the return of pure competition while at the same time needing to be cognizant of counterterrorism

parties going forward. what does that pretend for security secretary assistance and some of the major challenges and opportunities faced by the enterprise? if anyone wants to jump in on that. adam? >> i guess i'll go first. i think the first answer is tbd. vienna has kept the long tradition of emphasizing partnerships, strength in alliances and buy through with the approach of a lot of these vexing challenges. i think what is less clear is how the department will decide it bounce that allegation of resource and attention between this new shift towards great power competition, china's and russia. and also make sure that investments in counterterrorism and regular warfare activities are the last 16 years don't atrophy. i think challenges they will run

into is the way the nds lays out emphasis and prioritization of china and russia and decline of resource and for the traditional enduring presences, both in middle east and africa in particular. the question bums, do they use this finite pool of money to buy down risk well we will deemphasize u.s. presence particularly in the middle east and africa. or are they going to reemphasize using that to bolster capabilities in eastern europe, southeast asia and those sorts of things. we will see how those proposals to congress come across. >> other opportunities. >> exactly. >> anyone else? >> i'll jump in. the traditional answer to what i've seen to adam's well-posed question about whether the investments will come and you know places like the middle east where we are trying to buy down risk, versus, you know, eastern

europe and asia is we will apply resources to both. we won't make those hard choices. i think that, you know, it is not just a question of where we focus resources, it is a question of how we spend them in alignment with strategy. if we are applying resources in places where we have less of a stea steady presence or posture to buy down risk, that in alignment with strategy is great. if we're applying those resources simply to, you know, try to maintain relationships with ambiguous purposes or ambiguous objectives, then that's not so good. but i do think that the emphasis on preparing to confront near peer competitors and adversaries does present the opportunity for

the more strategic thinking and security cooperation. there is a tendency when you're faced with counterterrorism objectives to focus on very discrete capabilities that allow, you know, a country to go after a particular bad guys without a lot of consideration for long-term, you know, extra territorial regional consequences. and when we are confronting near peer competitors, there is no choice but to think about how specific actions can be calibrated to achieve desired regional affects and long-term affects. you know, there is no choice but to do it that way. and that's very much what the security cooperation enterprise needs. >> i would just add, first of all, thank you. and my fellow colleagues with whom i've worked the past few years on this specific issue. i would add on this point that there is time on this community to analyze this question of how well it works and whether or not it is working.

i would step back a little bit to the primary question, to which, what is the purpose of security cooperation in the first place. it's been around since dod entered the zone and there's a lot of learning that's gone on. particularly to people in the room, dod. and really the benefits of that learning is that people are beginning to ask questions. how much is that capacity or that investment that capacity worked over time? how much have we bought or purchased or influenced in that country. that is enabling more reflection and strategic thinking and more resources will also help. and just bottom line here, for every new investment, it is critical, critical, critical that the first question asked is what is the capacity goal. what is the influence goal, wlaen is the access goal. that has been a huge challenge for state dod and often there is disagreement later down the road. so importance is to have that

discussion up front and ak knoll edge to disagree or agree and what are the difference purposes? it doesn't have to be all three of the goals but often not one or two. and being very sort of knowingly deciding what the goals are is critical. >> sure, absolutely. the challenge with the late afternoon panel is everyone can be half asleep. so i will try to be provocative to wake you all up. i hope dafna is right. i don't see a ton of evidence that that's the case though. we have been doing something like security cooperation since 1945. dealing with militaries around the world. on the whole, the u.s. record for it isn't terribly good. not least because we in washington don't get ourselves on the same page. and we're often very focused on the tangible metrics. what's the training we've given them. what's the equipment we've given them and this inclination to acknowledge these are political exercises, not technical ones. >> any responses? >> sure. i think from the state department perspective, it is okay if there are influence or

access goals. but it would have to be acknowledged as such. and i would argue that deeply cynical that whether the goals are achieved in most cases. but problems come at the very end of the investment when people claim that maybe they haven't built capacity. maybe it didn't pan out. but least we have a good relationship, right? so that's often the final defense for huge amount of investment that over time didn't work out. i would say of the three, it is access that purchased the most credibly and consistently and from state and dod perspective. it opens doors. and from a state department diplomatic perspective even as it purchases access. so i'm equally cynical about outcomes. but the going end to really analyze and be honest about what we are trying to do.

>> pulling back on the competition and comment that representative smith made earlier on terms of forecasting out and the law in this environment, that when our competitors are not playing by the same rules, it raises the imperative for the united states that we still place our values as central to our foreign policy to build some resilience around mechanisms likely in order to hold true to those principles. can you talk about as we look ahead to the overlay of competition, what are the ways that you think we should be tightening mechanisms likely or other potential mechanisms that might be out there that seek to implement and manifest the value based proposition of reform policy, if you agree with the premise to begin with. >> i'm happy to take a stab.

when we were working together in the administration, we need to do a bet are job of being able to invest in human rights training. not just punitive or scolding measures, but as ways of helping partner militaries actually achieve their goals more effectively. in many cases, what relates to the lachey law or draining partner militaries or engaging personnel and activity that make it more difficult for them to achieve their objectives, and so i think one of the things that we need to do internally is to do a bet are job of identifying where there are opportunities to make interventions that are relevant for human rights, for corruption, and for similar concerns but that are also in the shares interests of the partners we're working with. there are still cases when our partners are or our potential partners are engaged in human

rights abuses or other kinds of activities that they don't want to move away from and i don't think we should view every partnership and ef aspect relating to our human rights relations with those partners through that lens. because i don't think that's generally the case. >> i think tommy makes a good point. i think it is clear that human rights and drc human rights an basic laws about conflict is going to be a nonnegotiable component of providing security systems but i think that what we have not done well so far is made human rights and institutional and how many times

do we have a tactical capability based onener term threat at the expense of more long-term more difficult and stronger institutions helping to mitigate casualties in the comment of operations or you know even just basic adherence to human rights as a planning construct. with a series of operations and planning construct. and i that i i'm hoping that with the addition of certain new requirement answers also authorities that leverage the department of defense in particular but more broadly this should be a core component of the way you guys plan the programs. not just a, you got to check the box to do the program. this should be a component of the program. >> you want it weigh in? >> sure. there is often interagency discussions which is if you go

overboard and kind of conditionsing human rights or push human rights too much our partners will go to china and russia. is that the question sort of? >> i wanted to tease that. >> i heard that. i heard it in your question. i think it is worth elevating that. because that comes up everyday when you're in the state department, dod, and you're in these debates about interest versus values and i think it is a very valid counter argument to some questions. i think adam is exactly right. if you normalize the human rights and governance and civilian casualties infrastructure into how the u.s. does business, that's one solution. it doesn't get you all wait to the solution set but makes it less of an awkward diplomatic conversation for our military who has to carry a lot of diplomacy. our officers in the field, military officers, carry a lot of these conversations. it is a little bit unfair. if you normalize it that everyone is talking about human rights and civilian institution building or military institution

building or whatever the topic, corruption, that's part of what we can do. that's one point is that the british and french should also be doing it. that's point number one. and i think that is fair question about whether that will scare away some of our strongest allies and they will begin purchasing from our allies. more often there is threat of that. and our partners are good what i called reverse leverage. they will say, oh, stop bothering me about that human rights stuff or i will go to -- and then they scare you into thinking that. but there is still not sufficient evidence that time and time again that the leahy law is turning and to another -- and i wouldn't say fms is different here. if you are giving assistance, that's a very different

incentive system. and i think often in the debate about whether our beneficiary answers allies will turn to other big superpowers and are con flighted in this debate. >> what i find interesting here is we have unfortunate lay couple of case studies from the last decade and half where the u.s. military hasn't necessarily operated in ways that might be in line with the leahy law. >> these are direct examples as to why you always should not follow them. then i would just build on i think dafna has a good point. no one works with the u.s. military because it is the fastest. it never will be. that's not how our system is designed. iranians will beat us. chinese will beat us. russians will promise and never actual deliver. but such that it is. there are broader more strategic reasons to work with the u.s.

military. i don't think at the end of the day it'll be hey we pushed you to treat your people right or not. that's actually the final decision. >> yeah. and i think that one of the metathemes coming out of this is that the policy trade space and tradeoffs in thinking about oversight and accountability in a way that can you be adaptable and responsive to the harm is if the united states has but also to remain in this space. so based on your practical experience, policy experience, what is that, that right balance between striking good oversight and accountability mechanisms and in the sweet spot that also allowed for innovation and adaptation. and if you have specific examples to draw upon. >> i'll go first on this one. i think if you look at fy '17 reforms, i think what congress intended to get across was they are comfortable with providing increased flexibility.

much broader set of authorities. multiyear money. and those sorts of things. with the understanding that there would be greater transparency. greater account bit. whether through the first ever consolidated annual budget request for security cooperation to kind of give the congress an idea of how the department allocates resources is a big problem. beyond that, i think the folks under evaluation, i don't think there is sufficient focus to date on, a, developing quality assessments from the front end, deciding where capability gaps exist. and through the life of that program, monitoring implementation. evaluating effect. do we achieve the objection we laid out. even on the front, just developing clear concise objectives of what you want to achieve. that is something that my colleagues have touched on and already is i'm not so sure we've

done that to date. so there are other things, and quarterly and expenditures and i think that if the department can utilize these tools, they have been given in a way that makes sense and can articulate why they do what they do with clear requirements, they have reasonable assumptions and what is achievable, i think that is something that we can also use more work on is what, what our baseline assumptions of what we can achieve in a realistic time line. i think it is more alluded to our track record is mixed at best over, we will say we are in the creative a brand-new and very capable security force and country with a shared security interest in the united states. and overpromise and generally underdeliver. and find ways to align that in a much more realistic way would be good. but you know, we all know there is processes in place. it takes a long time from

proposal to deliver capability. i'm not sure i know the right answer to make that more agile. but you know, i think that's why there is a lot of smart folks that can look for ways and frankly, i think the fy provided broad guidance but not a lot of specific direction and very tactical details because in theory you want the department to purr innovation. if we today recreate this organization we have taken on organically over 17 years, what would right look like? how do we sparpen tharpen the f bang and i think there is a lot more work to be done. >> i think he is spot on. to your point, if i could change just one thing along these lines, it would be helping the executive branch. congress would be great. but helping the executive branch is a first step, get on the same page internally. why are we working with this military? who is doing it on the ground

and under what circumstances is the united states willing to become a co-combatant in that conflict. we have example after example throughout history. if we send someone who as we saw in the case of lebanon a couple decades ago, someone who ends up with the head of the military to conduct a coup or the head of the military slush fund, we shouldn't be surprised when things don't work. a lot of it comes down to people. a lot of it comes down to the mission. as i noted under what circumstances does the u.s. role change from chain equipment to becoming combatant. how do we not dilute ourselves when this is happening. there is a great thing in reagan's diary from when he

authorized uss new jersey to fire. he said this falls under the heading of self-defense. right? clearly in retrospect, that's not accurate. i would say fast forward to today in syria, and i think you could see a very similar comment made under pretty radio active circumstances. >> i don't want too much praise on adam, but he is spot on. some additional praise -- general fletcher made me the happiest person in the room on the last panel when he talked about how stop com's experience has been the reforms in the ndaa have forced them to think on a longer time horizon to think jond just sort of one-year planning cycles and think about multiple years. if you're on the one-year planning cycle such as dod, you don't have the ability of

sustainable, however your one-year plan aligns with strategy. that's very much to the detrimental of the security cooperation to the programs themselves and to the outcomes as mara has said. i think more than anything else, i think that lack of connection to a bigger picture of understanding what you are trying to achieve and what the necessary inputs, not just with one particular unit but in terms of how that particular unit in its capabilities are woven in to a broader set of institutions in the society, that's the down fall of so many security cooperation programs over the last, what did you say, 50 years? 45? >> since 1945 pap good chu. a good chunk of time. >> i think the ballad am is talking about captures it. ad a talking about captures it.al ad talking about captures it.nl ad talking about captures it.cl ad talking about captures it.el ads talking about captures it. ad a

talking about captures it.am is talking about captures it. this is spinning towards more flexible authorities and that kind of thing. but the expectation clearly stated in that legislation was that every capacity building program undertaken with the broader flexible authorities should have institutional components to it. should have human rights elements to it. and should be held accountable through more, setting higher bar for transparency and an assessment monitoring and evaluate program at the end. i think that's important. the one thing i would had that we could do better is that i think that you know, security cooperation programs are often not inatentative to some things we are talking about because of incompetence tense or you know, bad intent. it is often because there is not the information available to make smart decisions. we don't get a lot of support from the intelligence community for example in looking at reinforced capability analysis. or you know, who is a corrupt actor. who should we stay away from in

a particular country? that needs to change for this to get significantly better. we don't keep a lot of data, certainly not in a consolidated way, tracking you know, our success across the lifetime of engagement with individual military personnel from foreign partners. i think there is so much we can do to improve putting the right information in the hands of planners and decision makers that would make a big difference. >> that is a good point. but to answer the original -- go back to the question of when it works. and to be positive for a second, maybe. there's conditionality big c and conditionality little c. and conditionality little c is the way the government does business or day-to-day. and conditionality big c are the moments when as a tool of state craft, the white house,

essentially and various leaderships of state and dod decided that withholding security assistant or providing securi security assistance, and we have recent examples from recent months and from the eight years in which i served in the obama administration high profile type debates and fights that have to do with the bilateral relationship but across all that what is consistent and unifying across little c and big c conditionality and leahy law with little c conditionality, when the chief u.s. diplomat in the room saw and understood thousand was offered as tool as some of the negative or positive conditions, and then could weave this tool into his or her strategy, then it works. plan columbia and paterson deserve a lot of credit for using the leahy law and security assistance in the fmf that year that worked with the government and they admit it was leahy law

and measures that helped them clean up their act. in the leahy management, in fiscal year 16 and 17, department of state went through 800 to 900,000 names vetted. and the vetting traditionally and typically works on training. because the appointment is so difficult. i would tell the skeptics in the room that they are only satisfied with one part of the congressional requirement. that's one point. when people think that vetters are too tapped, they are undervetting because we haven't figured out a way to do equipment vet fting in a systematic way. 1 to 2% were held negative, rejected. a tiny percentage of the names that flunk leahy. so i want to make sure everyone understandes what a tiny percent of case causes so much controversy. on the cases on the small seat conditionality, and communicated

by the chief diplomat typically chief admission but reasons why the assistance would not go through, there was we have cases where the local partners changed practices and there are many cases, around five cases in the past two years. and are the reform of leahy was implemented. to me, the lesson is when the diplomat can effectively combine this and use it and take under their belt and deploy it, then securi security assistance can be used in an effective with a i it move the ball an i worry about the migration of the authorities to dod. because i don't know how that will affect chief admissions authority to take security assistance accountability and use it as part of its strategy to move buy hilaterally that sof influence objective. i noted capacity, assets are the

goals. and the goals of changing policy and practice of the host government, right? i will worry about that and just flag that. >> thank you so much. in the report we do address both big c and little c conditionality. thank you for making that distinction. at this point i want to turn to the audience. i will bundle in the interest of time. gentleman in the back in the purple tie. gentleman here in the blown jacket. and here in the front. >> thank you. jack from cna. i wonder if can you drill down, this is part of the report maybe you want it talk about it now, but the role of am & e in showing return on investment and showing how various programs fit an actual strategy. thank you. >> great. >> gentleman over here. >> i'm paul and conflict analyst with the world bank. seems like we spent an afternoon discussing about the security

sector assistance. but with very little facts and put a lot of emphasis on norms. so i'm curious actually, do we know how much money the u.s. spent in past decade on this or even more? how much of that is train and equip and to the point most of you made in nexus with politics. and secondly, if you have time, curious none of you address work done by the u.n. and security sector forum which seems to be very compatible. i'm wondering your thoughts on that. thanks. >> laura? in the front. >> thank four a terrific panel. mary, back to the point you just raised to understand why we are doing what we are doing and under what circumstances we are willing to become co-combatants. i want to lift up the

recommendation of section 1208 will assistance moved into the 333. that's what we saw in niger. train, advise and assist mission. so since i have to ask a question rather than comment, the question is, where do you guys all come down on that? >> great. t tommy, you want to start in or adam? either one of you? >> sure. monetary valuation. there is a number of different purposes there. one of the important things about the work we did at dod was, it is not all that much about assessment monitoring or evaluation, it is about planning and about identifying up front the objectives that a program is intending to take on and integrating various authorities and funding streams and activities towards a common objective. that has not really been the

case with a lot of dod planning. at least as it comes to the pentagon and comes to the congress for approval. so you know, there may be very smart people at combatant commen commands that have a smart objective laid out in their heads, but it doesn't reach the people who are responsible for making resource allocation decisions that kind of thing. and more than that, it doesn't give you any basis for coming back and looking at whether the programs achieved what they set out to achieve later on because you don't have a good record of what they set out to achieve. i think that that planning piece has been important. and that's, you know, the focus on multiyear design is starting to have an impact. i would say real quickly to paul, you know, my answer, least

in part to mara's critique about why security cooperation and security assistance failed, as i was alluding to a little bit, is there has not been adequate attention to institutional components to long-term alignment with long-term strategic thinking. but also more broadly, i think security assistance particularly when it comes to capacity building really isn't all that different in some ways from development assistance and other forms of foreign assistance which has benefitted the last 20 or 30 years from a lot of vibrant discussion around best practices that have reshaped how the development community in particular takes on development assistance and dod was not maybe awake or present for those discussions. and so, it is only now that they are starting to integrate a lot of these lessons learned. i think that that is really important and i hope it is going to change. i hope when mara writes her next book, maybe not her next book.

she will have several in between but hopefully she will be able to report progress for that very reason. quickly on 1208, laura, i will say i've had conversations about this in the wake of the niger press. i don't think that you can tell me that you know that what happened in niger was going on under 1208 authorities. i don't think that anybody, including many people that worked at dod can tell me. because the truth is, dod often use esz a -- they have a number of authorities ranging from security cooperation to you know, joint training and exercises to the 1208 kind of authority that all occupy this kind of space with fuzzy lines. and often those authorities are used in conjunction, and you don't know what is being done under authority. that's not good for transparency. we have to figure that out. we have to figure out how to be

clear with both the partner nation with which we're working and with the american taxpayer. what moneys we're spending on what activities and how they relate. i don't know if putting 1208 into 333 is the exact answer. but i think that that general discussion needs to be had. >>. [ inaudible ] >> absolutely. i can't agree more with my former colleague, tommy. except for the notion of writing another book. otherwise aagree with him on everything. on your last point, laura, i that i is spot on. you know, best case scenario is not only that washington gets on the same page with itself but also with the partner. that would be fantastic. i have all kinds of thoughts if you want to walk through them on another forum. tommy and i highlight how we don't see that a lot. paul, jumping your point, if you haven't played down assistance security monitor website, it is

fantastic. i strongly recommend it. i would also say crs does a magnificent job, a magnificent job. and i will be very frank, for any of white house have been country desk officers, the easiest way for us to figure out everything that was going through to our country was to go to the crs report. and do that. they have a o holistic view that i don't know anyone else that really does. holistic view that i don't know anyone else that really does.holistic view that i don't know anyone else that really does. >> i will jump on the amne component. the department both develops and oversees implementation of programs. i think there is two important components. first one is the people actually doing it, right? so i think what we've seen over the years is that by virtue of dod kind of organically taking this mission on, by necessity, not out of the conscious decision by dod to say look into this game, i think the way that

the department and military service developed security cooperation professionals is something that needs work. and i think that one of the things that riksy, when he was still there and the department is on board as well, is to try to find a way to develop a more capable competent work force. i don't mean to say that those doing it today aren't competent and giving it their all. but twhat the professional development works is they will do a short term generally voluntary educational program, teaching them how this process works. a lot of that is how you develop is packet for a proposal for a program. i think what is missing is an enduring career try for these security professionals where they can work through that and learn whether it is through episodic professional education, through cap stone events or any number of ways to build that core competency and capability and expertise within the

services. when you send out majors and combat and commands to work the programs and develop it. amne frame works. and look critically about what we are doing, why we do it, and are we getting the effects out of it that we want. an to invest in the capability. i think more broadly, the department hasn't been forced to think about it this way. i think to date. the holistic life after program, why we are doing it, what we are doing, how it affects, and the short coming in a lot of the way positions are filled to date is these are military officers dealing with two and three-year tours. so often times, a program that they come in, whether they are in a country team or combat and command, very likely they won't see the program they worked on through fruition. so there will be somebody that will fall in after them that will come in and say, okay, what are we doing? why are we doing it? there wasn't that kind of

continuity of program oversight and management. but hopefully the more you build the professional work force, and you have the really developed mature framework guiding this, you will have a much more evoluti evolutie evolution airy experience or here or there and based on what i have seen in guidance and doctrine, i have a baseline framework to build off of rather than this discovery learning every two to three years someone comes in. >> i agree. and so much so that there should be incentives for those on the ground training. a great idea that at the front end of the security assistance. that person training and interacting won't see a dividend on institutional building in the one to two-year tour but could

see potentially operational effectiveness improve. right now the programs are entierly about, did you train that guy to fly the airplane in the right way. but on the point about the u.n., that gets back to the question of how do we define's security assistance. this panel is talking about what is happening within washington, migration of authorities, from state to dod, cot if ication of dod authorities. there used to be 120. thanks to these guys there is much more streamlined efficiency. 117, sorry. 120 is hyperbole. but the point is that it is a new trend in the u.s. government to have so many dod authority with so much money. that's what's new in the past 15 years. the reason that's of concern to some, including people who have worked at the state department and other civilians is there is so much other types of assistance provided. including the bill with over $1

billion of u.s. tax dollars, for courts, judges and police. and in many of the countries that matters for fragile states, police and dod equities do not much. so interior minister does border, et cetera. that matters, coordination between assistance prerogatives and theories and strategies that are with expertise resides in the state department and dod and u.n. for example for peacekeeping, a lot of effort and good ones at dod and other puros to improve peacekeeping and what we know about peacekeeping and they are tested a because they are deployed, which is valuable information to connect dots to what training the african armies need, for example. when they are deployed out, you can see where the glitches are for human rights and et cetera and. so connecting the dots for example that the u.n. transmits to state pm to state, you know, io, on the capacity's back into

the training is part of the bureaucratic connect the dots. sounds horribly boring outside of these meetings, but it is critical. that's an important part of securing cooperation, making sure someone can piece this together. the unit with what you get from the u.n. back on peacekeeping unit's deployment to the leahy information, and that currently doesn't exist. that's to the detrimental of the strategic nature of the enterprise. >> great. i want to thank you all for your insights on this terrific panel today. to dafna's last point, that's the main deliverable we hope to put in our report is approaching oversight. together the various notes of the community. thank you so much for eliminating many of these opportunities and challenges before the community today. and thank you to you all for your brilliant questions. thank you for joining me. [ applause ]

in the state of the state address, dougburgum talked about drug addiction, tribal communities and partnershipes with canada. this was at minot state university. it is an hour and a half. [ applause ]