test test test test test test test

captioning performed by vitac the arab spring turned into the arab winter and you know the history of the growth of isis and i'm concerned this religious wave of terrorism will be much harder -- it eventually will vent itself out. but if you believe god is on your side, the soviet union can collapse. and for the people in this group and these groups, they firmly believe god is on their side. a son of isis and grandson of isis is virtually guaranteed and briefly there are several reasons for that. one is we're in the middle of a

sectarian civil war in the middle east. go back to osama bin laden. he never mentioned the -- it was mostly about israel/palestine and secular dictators in the middle east. now this is the issue and it is powered by deep pockets and consumed yemen and iraq and syria and add that to arab governance, from libya to yemen, failed states. the point about this is these groups are not strong of themselves, they feed on weak hosts. the stronger a muslim country is, the weaker the groups and libya are doing well in yemen and then add in the collapse of arab economies and you saw 27%, now 30%. then add to that the massive wave of muslim immigration into europe, unprecedented. a million refugees and asylum

seekers in germany alone and add to that -- extremely marginal now the second party or the ruling party and european countries and add to that the alienation of muslims in europe. american muslims are as educated as the average american and don't live in get toes and have the same average incomes. everything ich said in europe is not true. in france, 8% of the population is muslim an estimated 60% of the prison population is muslim. you can understand isis -- isis like ideas has great purchase amongst certain elements in this population that it doesn't have in this country. for all of those reasons and then you add social media which speeds up everything i've just described, whatever the group is that succeeds isis, maybe isis -- parts of isis regrouping with al qaeda or some other group whose name we don't know. it will learn from the isis example and may not as

immediately successful and population the size of switzerland as i did in the summer of 2014 but they will continue. and i hate to be a possesscy mist because by nature i'm an optimist but i strongly believe we'll see successor groups and probably certainly in the rest of the lifetime before this particular wave of terrorism burns itself out. >> thanks so much, peter. >> it's hard to come after peter but it's a thrill to be here. thank you very much for having me. come up with the things peter said, afghanistan is the birth place of jihadist terrorism in many ways not just because bin laden was there but because of that clash of cultures that arose in the 1980s invasion of afghanistan by the soviets and this question of god and sort of god's role in forming the state

has been sort of the fundamental issue in not only afghanistan but in large parts of the middle east and even central asia for a very long time. it's difficult to unpack the future of afghanistan in ten minutes because the conflict has been going on for a very long time but i'll do my best to try to hit the highlights. today i think we look at afghanistan and we see kind of a two-three proposition where we have two strategic challenges that will define the future of afghanistan and three tactical challenge challenges that feed into those two strategic pillars. the first strategic pillar centers on whether or not the united states and afghanistan, the governments in kabul and washington can redefine what it means to win in afghanistan. and the second strategic pillar really rests on whether or not in that redefinition of winning,

washington and kabul can convince other stake holders in the region particularly iran, india and russia and pakistan, china and so forth, whether or not that vision of winning is in fact compelling enough that they will actually jump in and buy in to that vision. there's a big challenge obviously. if you look today at afghanistan, i think the story that we've been telling ourselves has been largely defined by the violence over the last 17 years. you -- every day practically now there's a bombing, one way or another in kabul, near kabul and there's clearly evidence that the taliban grabbed a lot of territory or control and can test that territory today, 40% of the country in fact is controlled or contested by the taliban. how did we get here? that's the big question that we often look so much at the violence. we focus so much on the violence

itself, the battlefield and the number of troops and whether we're up or down. but we forget the political piece. and that's where this redefinition of winning needs to come in, right? the political integration of the strategy the electoral process, to look at the institution building and look at the social change that has been wrout over the last 17 years is a really critical part of redefining our definition of winning in afghanistan. so that brings us to the tactical issues that i see and probably redefine the future of afghanistan for the next five years maybe longer possibly. the first question of course is negotiations with the taliban. and lately there's been sort of a lot of discussion about talks of the taliban and on and off,

there have been back channel talks between the members of the leadership body for the taliban and the u.s. government and interlock years. for many, many years going back as far as 2001 with the first initial invasion, where we've seen back channel contacts between the taliban, via pakist pakistan. what's chanched in the last year or so, that there is a greater desperation on the part of the ghani administration to try to kill the violence because it is getting out of control and deteriorating the situation in terms of institutional strength and obviously it has resulted in millions and millions of displaced afghans both within the country and outside where we have millions now traveling across europe through these trafficking channels. so this deterioration of course has led the ghani administration to begin very seriously considering the prospect of negotiations with the taliban

and just two weeks ago, for first time we heard specifics. when hamid karzai was president, there was a lot of talk about welcoming the taliban brothers back into the fold and extending the olive branch. but there wasn't a lot of action. and there wasn't a lot of specifics on offer. this time, we heard ghani two weeks ago during the kabul process, may a prover that was quite interesting. we heard the president of afghanistan talk about a ceasefire, first time we also heard the president of afghanistan talk about extending the travel ban on members of the taliban who participate in negotiations and also the first time we heard talk of changing the constitution to accommodate by former members of the taliban. this is very interesting, of course. the question is how did the taliban react and so far it's a little bit iffy. we heard from a taliban spokesman relatively low ranking

individual with very little authority that the taliban rejects this offer. but we haven't seen an official statement from quetta or where the taliban has an office. that's sigtd for a couple of different reasons. the lack of an initial statement might suggest there are in fact elements within the taliban that want to continue to talk. that are interested in arriving at some sort of settlement. but two, there's a second subtext that's very important. during that same frame when ghani was talking about this offer, saudi arabia was exerting some pressure on kabul to move the office, the taliban office out of qatar into another location, possibly kabul, maybe r rihad and this continuing sectarian cast of conflict in the middle east and also in

south asia is evident everywhere and this is one of those moments. the saudis exerting pressure on the kabul government to move the office and the taliban out of qatar really suggests that they are upping the ante and want to be involved and they are not convinced in fact by our vision of winning. that's very troubling and i think certainly does not bode well for the future. that's negotiations and the second pillar of course is elections. and we really have to talk about this because i think it's sort of off the radar right now. but this summer, elections in afghanistan will be right front and center on the radar and we have the parliamentary elections scheduled for july of 2016, which of course have been postponed for many years now and there's been a lot of sort of fighting over the for mat of the elections and the prospect of course that there would be more fraud and we have some 21 million voter registration cards floating out there which

represents 300% of the eligible vote in afghanistan today. it's quite a remarkable number. and so the question is how do we deal with this? and ghani does not have very many answers and under a great deal of pressure from a large number of political parties to come up with a solution and come up with a solution fast. what's interesting about this moment though is very unique, which again, provides an opportunity to sort of redefine our understanding of winning by engaging with the politics as opposed to just the battlefield realities is that really, you have for first time political parties from different ethnic stripes, you have his bis lambmy, mostly pashtun and uzbech and turkman and there's consensus that this system doesn't work anymore. and the electoral setup in afghanistan needs to be fixed.

that's remarkable and it's this is the only measure of progress that contestation is sort of the defining moment for election politics in afghanistan but it is progress. and it's something to really take note of. whether or not the united states is really engaged on elections issue is yet really very unclear. there's a lot of hesitation obviously given the experience of 2014, but from my perspective and a lot of other close afghanistan watchers, obviously the electoral process is something that the united states needs to be engaged in and needs to monitor and support more fair electoral processes as best he can. because that ultimately will determine the stability of the government in kabul. then there's this last piece. that actually speakses to the first two, stability as a result of the elections and then also this question of negotiations. last piece is actually the focus

of my research and it has to do with the eminent opening of a formal investigation by the international criminal court into war crimes in afghanistan. as many of you know, a lot of injuries and damage and collateral damage in afghanistan over the last 17 years and even the 30 years preceding that. for first time actually, in november of last year, the chief prosecutor in the icc determined to move forward with investigating war crimes on all sides uniquely, unlike situation in bosnia or israel/palestine there's a very distinct cast to this particular -- by the prosecutor in so much as it's looking at potential war crimes not only by the taliban and afghan forces but u.s. forces and then support for war crimes

from some allies including romania and poland and lidge wain i can'ya. it is serious and the peace settlement itself, individuals who are now looking to get elected, i know, in afghanistan, as well as individuals looking to do a deal in doha are all implicated in these potential war crimes. so the outcome of this investigation will really for sure determine ways people come to table when it comes time for negotiation and the way they played out in electoral politics. it's a wait and see game. the other issue for the united states, it's clearly how to position itself in response to allegations that has been responsible for war crimes in afghanistan. that will impact all of the details. i'm sure there's questions about

it but i will simply say in the past the united states has a very a.m. bif lent relationship with the icc. sometimes hostile. and i think there will be a great temptation by this administration or possibly even others to be very resistant and aggressive in in response to the icc's investigation which we believe is eminent, with 1.7 afghan s launching complaints, e ask expect this will go forward. the question is how should the u.s. respond? many of them caution that an aggressive response could undercut the human rights, could undercut the united states in terms of its positioning even at the negotiating table with the taliban. there's also the risk obviously that a failure to respond the right way could mean it could unravel a lot of the bilateral agreements that the united states has put in place to

protect its military members from prosecutions of this kind. so big questions there. all of this to say that the future of afghanistan is sort of cloudy with a few bombs and we can expect that the complications will continue but if the united states can take itself out of this battlefield focus and reinsert more focus on the politics, there's a good chance that things could stabilize. >> thanks a lot. >> i'm here to talk about the fu future of fake news -- one thing you hear from all of the dirvet folks speaking is concern for language and the idea we're at a moment when coming up with the rye ways to describe the world around us is one of the core challenges related to war or

security. it's a time of a certain uncertainty in that regard. peter and i -- we ask our students in the class to write about what it means for them to be members of a war generation. they are 18 to 22 roughly. their entire lives, certainly the entire lives we've been paying attention before they were paying attention in the world, the country has been formerly at war, deploying troops as the military says and one of the most interesting takeaways and maybe not surprising is how complex students respond to the idea they very rarely if they are not from military families, have ever thought of themselves as a war generation. and when asked to conception you'llize that, they respond with some level of either they slough it off or embarrassed or they -- the take away is what

war generation -- what are you talking about? yet, the country is kind of at war, it matches the classic understanding of war and in a way does not. this is one of the challenges of making sense what war is and to some degree what the future of war it. we've been hearing about the new terms for public discourse, fake news, echo chambers, alternative facts and all of these ideas that now become sort of -- open a newspaper or not reference to all of this. what it is and how this plays into understanding war and conflict and even what we're talking about are pretty serious questions. there's a -- a lot of reporting out of m.i.t., most consistent review of twitter feeds to try to make sense of how twitter feeds get shared based on

whether what they are presenting is truthful or not truthful. and the takeaway was that falsehood consistently dominates truth. this is to say those tweets that are present being things that are not true turn out to proliferation six times the speed get greater interest and turn out to dominate the kind of twitter universe, which is one sub set of a universe but not nothing and the question becomes why is this and what's going on? the researchers came up with several preliminary expectations, these sort of stories are more novel, sort of more interesting, the fake news is compelling and draws you in. the other is that which is related, these are emotion al e vok tif claims, you're outraged and read this thing and pass it on through your network. i want to offer another idea, something that we've been

working on. i've been working on at the center, there's often a misunderstanding and failure in raiding this universe that has to deal with being over invested in a divide between what is true and what is false. that one of the ways to better understand this eco system 23ife want to call it that, think of narratives for a place holder, as a mechanism for what we're talking about in terms of the communication of information. so the narratives that are dominant -- let's take an example. one of the classic moments that i think define recent u.s. politics was the birther movement. the point of the birther movement is extraordinarily simple. basically the idea is something that could not be more factually concrete, whether or not a president obama was a u.s. citizen born in the u.s. something for which all of us are submitting paperwork to show

some version of our status and it comes from somewhere and you present it and it works. you get your driver's license and get your passport, et cetera. so the claim was strange claim to build a to build a set of political concerns because it's so evidently disprovable and that was the point. the point of that story is not whether or not there's a factual basis because the presentation of the state of hawaii presented the birth certificate in various different modes, that god endless coverage and none of it matters. there's arguably still a posse trying to get to the bottom of the story, whether or not then president obama was actually a u.s. citizen. what's really going on. >> it's a window into something which is it's not about the factual status whether or not obama was born in the u.s. or not, it's about a story and

something evoked by bring gs that up as problematic. one thing from the discourse, the presentation of counterveiling facts as official and formal and sure as they could be, that is to say the same piece of paper all of us use to show who we are, didn't work, didn't count. what this is really about, what i call a narrative of mistrust. the real story is a fundamental evokation and narrative presentation of profound mistrust in a system. some talk about the racial elements and that's exactly right but there's something deep in the story. if in fact, you can't trust that piece of paper and if in fact you can't trust that purveyor of information, things are -- things are un -- this is a profound issue because we really rely on social institutions for producing basic relationships of order and society. if we want to rely on the concept of war and conflict, one

part of war and conflict has something to do with our lived experience of legitimacy of the order we live in. we know that actual kinetic wars are won and lost not just by weapons but understandings of the legitimacy of where people sit and a social system that's supposedly empowered to address their interests and needs. i don't think the right way to look at the fake news debate is to say there's all of this terrible fake news and what we need is to provide the real news, there's all of these false things being said, ho here are true things. we know folks drawn to things that are not factually verifiable or drawn by lots of reasons. i would suggest they are drawn to them because the narrative power of how they are presented is the real draw, not the data in -- that is discussed. that you can't fight fake news with real news, that the do main

of contest is actually won that involves trust. that trusted sources and where there are trusted sources and always trusted sources are -- lie at the key to addressing the problem at hand. and that even if this issue itself may not seem like something that plays off the future of war or war at all, it does. it's at the heart of what the contestations are now and will be in the future andener elements of the present, the way technologies are evolving that are specific to this moment and present new challenges. i would suggest the challenges new as they are are not necessarily challenges that are so distinct and different and unheard of in our time period. i'll leave you with one thought. there's a longstanding concern about rumor in social science and u.s. policy during the second world war. the u.s. was enormously concerned as rumor as seen as only one thing, dangerous. there were programs created to track rumors and counteract rumors the point being that

rumors would undermine the war effort. as the literature got more mature in making sense of what rumors are, it moved to a different state and more interesting reflections to be a little bit oversimplifying, rumors are some sort of improvised news or means through which people seek coherence when there's a dominant situation of uncertainty. they create ideas and come up with stories to explain their circumstance and they pass that on from place to place and the greater the uncertainty, the more the rumors pass through the population. we need that same sort of attitude, not one of outrage and hysteria towards fake news but one that seeks to understand what's really going on. thanks so much. >> thank you. >> i want to start by the center and why it's so important. the pentagon department of defense is constantly adapting

to changes in the external environment but also a conservative institution it is a place where there's a very strong pull of conventional wisdom. to have a center like this, that's bringing together a diverse mix of scholars and prags tigsers and shake things up and coming at the issues from different vehicle toctors is o t and valuable. thank you both. i find it as a nameless bureaucrat a really important endeavor. we get people like doug, our colleague who's here who's a former army officer and lots of great scholars in this space. it's a really important mix and it's more important because of the times we are in, which is there's so much change going on in what the threat environment is and what our internal environment is, what the weapons

are war are, tactics but also what the nature of war is. there's a lot of people inside the community who are saying those things are crossing in a way that's somewhat unprecedented. what i'm going to do today. when you're a pentagon official, you have to speak from prepared text. absolutely everything you say goes through a fish ladder of approval. and now that i'm not an official i really enjoy saying what's on my mind without all of those approvals but today i'll speak from a prepared text if you'll forgive me. i want to talk about a new initiative. i haven't had a chance to talk about it in public yet. i took the opportunity to gather my thoughts. i'm an adviser to the global security initiative and global institute of sustainability, an interesting mix and i really value my role in both of those places and the xmank i have with

them. thank you for your support and the benefit it provides in my own institution. i thought it would be great to start with a quote from a floil loss fehr. one called air and earth and water, arenas of destruction in the natural state of perpetual agree. i don't know i agree we're in perpetual war. i think it's prudent to be prepared. i'm a practical optimist. but i do agree that air, earth and water are the natural world is the arena for war. it is the battlefield but it's also the fuel and fodder of conflict, the tangled roots of war with history and politics and many other factors, air earth and water are also the elements of peace and prosperity and no nation can ever recover from war without the restoration

of resources of economic activity. and i think you see all over the world today and certainly throughout history that war has a pernicious legacy and you tend to be caught in cycles of poverty when you can't -- and environmental degradation in the aftermath of war. ultimately that's the whole point of war, it's not about the fight, but it's about the aftermath. it's about getting to a better peace. with almost two decades of a career in the pentagon and also the daughter and daughter-in-law of veterans, i would have never met anyone in uniform who doesn't know that, that war is about peace and aftermath, not about the fight itself. so as our country country and united states marks a sharp depart tour from the past and looks at changing future of war at new means of organized violence and revisionist adds verse sarryes, what role does

natural resources have in securing the peace. so let me suggest that it's going to be more than just a passive arena for lethality. here are a few numbers to think about. at the turn of the 19th century, the world population hit the 1 billion mark for the first time at the turn of the 21st century, it was 6 billion. by the middle of this century, it would be almost 10 billion. of that first billion, more than 90% lived in extreme poverty. today less than 10% of the global population in extreme poverty. 140 million people are joining the global middle class every day. every year. that's a good thing, of course. that means more people are getting to enjoy a quality of life and dignity of life and it also means there are more people who need more and more people who expect more, more food, more water, more land and homes and cars and smartphones, everything

from more natural gas and solar panels to more copper and rare earth elements. can the earth meet all of these needs? i would say that the jury is out on that mission. humans are remarkably genius and find ways to use things better and more efficiently to use new things and get what we need. and i think there's no guarantee of that. there's also no free ride. you have to make tradeoffs, everything involves tradeoff, this is not a question of absolute -- although that may happen especially when it comes to water but resources are not always well managed and there's room to improve. nor are they evenly distributed. the united states is now the world's largest energy producer which no one would have guessed 15 years ago, no one would have guessed no matter what they say now. while china in the largest net importer, on the other hand,

china produces almost all of the world's rare earth elements and many other critical materials that are absolutely indispensable to the modern age. a consequence of our resource consumption and rising standard of living globally will make tradeoffs more stark and pressures on resources more severe or at least more unpredictable. so does that mean that climate change which a lot of people in my community, the climate security community would say will become a primary cause for war in the future? i'd say no, it doesn't. but, climate change is going to interact with natural resources and demographics and with poor governance and corrupt governance and with poverty and historical -- and other root causes of war that are really hard to foresee and that's why we started the new project, in

collaboration with asu, to see if we can anticipate better what the tradeoffs might look like and where the united states might be able to adopt strategies to make investments that will promote is resilience jens, a rising tide of natural disasters or how climate change may affect china's resources, energy, water food and people and the investments it makes around the world in those things. so the project is cause phase zero. it is a reference to something that the pentagon phases of conflicts. you see a conflict shaping and you deter it. phase two, you start to move troops in and phase three is active combat where you want to defeat your enemy. phase four is conflict restoration and restoration of civil order. about a decade ago the pentagon added phase zoero, the time before a war starts when there's time to shape the strategic landscape and avoid conflict all

together. so to some extent today i think this phases of war concept is a on absolute, because war is clearly not sequential at this point, not even clear what constitutes combat sometimes. is the russian attack on our form of government an act of war. is syria a civil war or proxy war for great powers? how about the south china sea or ukraine or yemen, what are the wars and all being fought in phases at all times, maybe phases of war was a concept better oriented at the more black and white time but phase zero is perfect for today's shades of gray. and indeed i would argue that the united states needs to be far better equipped for this gray zone where conflicts are not clear what they are. so that means we need a lethal military, sure, which is for anybody who's not picking it up, the natural defense strategy that secretary mattis just

released and that's important. but we also need the means to build security, whether that's deterrence or diplomacy, special operations, trade or development and natural resources given all of the pressures in the 21st century, will be a important part of shaping that strategic landscape. i was listening to you and it was interesting that you referred to japan. so i was just there a few weeks ago and i spent most of my career in the pentagon and i think it's hard not to become what people would describe as a hard core realist. you become -- your trade space of what's going to work becomes limited. when i was in japan, i thought it would be good tore me to challenge my own conventional wisdom and see hiroshima. because like you said, nuclear weapons are just another weapon and other weapons can be equally

destructive. going there, it's a little different. seeing firsthand and especially as an american and few americans there in a bank holiday, it was very crowded, to see what a nuclear weapon does to a city is really something else and sobering. the numbers that they have there that 90% of the city was destroyed. 140,000 people died and lucky ones are the ones that died right away, not the ones that died within first ten days of the two waves of radiation that hit when you drop a weapon like this. it made me think too about -- that bomb was a 15 kiloton weapon. which in the new nuclear posture review, as a whole class of weapons we're going to rehabilitation. we need to think carefully about that. one of the things that really struck me is that's -- that kind of destruction and seeing the photographs and hearing the

eyewitnesses talk about it is overwhelming but at the same time hiroshima is pretty much a normal city now. it's got trees and farms and people are driving around in their cars and looking at their smartphones and it's a reminder that the natural world that arena of destruction, even ultimate destruction like that is pretty resilient and that people are pretty resilient. ut i would i say that's not something we cannot afford to take for granted for the 21st century. >> so we have time for questions. >> this question is for the afghan expert, re-dow?

am i pronouncing that correctly? what are the odds with negotiation with the taliban going forward given thus far the u.s. refused to engage in the taliban and the taliban says unless u.s. engages they won't speak to ghani's government? >> it's interesting since 2012 the u.s. has been more active in its engagement with the taliban and the example of course is the release of bowe bergdahl and the deal that was made for -- it's has been going on for some time. the challenge now is that there's no home for negotiations in the state department or or in the place you would expect to see it. there used to be a special representative for afghanistan

and pakistan which started under richard holbrook's perimeter and since his death has tailed off and been reconsolidated into bureaus -- regional bureaus in the state department. there's no home for negotiations. i think there's been an attempt by the white house and hr mcmaster is a veteran of afghanistan who knows that territory quite well. he and lisa curtis, also on the national security council have done what they can i think to try and create a home within the national security council but there still isn't a team. a lot depends on whether or not the united states is willing to accept this opportunity that's opened up and to really see it as an opportunity. you know, clearly ashraf ghani is not saying i'm going to offer a ceasefire without having talked to somebody back in washington.

whether or not there's there's a full on approval is another story but i highly doubt that the offer of a ceasefire is coming out of the flu. he's not hamid karzai and not as erratic as his predecessor, the question now, can we stands up a team for -- can a national security council offer up the mix of expertise needed to focus not on fixing afghanistan, which unfortunately was one of the mistakes, it was so focused on everything from whether or not pomegranates would be shipped out to pakistan, it was just very scattered, the prosch. we need the united states to focus on what it needs to make a deal. there are a couple of things we might need for that team. one thing you would need not just an understanding of the regional process because there is an ongoing regional heart of

asia process going on for a much time. this needs to be challenges that they raised, a, accountability for war crimes they feel they have been victims of. this includes members current and former of the afghan government who have been i am plimted in war crimes and needs to be prepared to have an answer for that. the other question is the role of religion in the state of afghanistan which is something that's not going to go away. we can't wish it away. it's embedded in the culture. and we really need to have it -- somebody on that team who has an understanding of the different debates around the role of islam in ordering the state. if we don't have that, if we continue to focus on these very technical and very sort of stogy

approaches to the negotiation process, we risk allowing this to go on and on and on. there's a lot of investment there and last thing i'll say, i think that the u.n. now probably needs to make some investment in standing up a team that has a similar array of expertise. the taliban now continue to make this to the u.s., the reality is there are too many players in this game. there needs to be a neutral interlocker that can sort of define the shape of the table, set the table and make sure that the dishes are taken away at the right time so we can -- >> can i add something to that? >> the united states government i think has misconceived what the issue is in afghanistan. negotiations with the taliban are very important but they are not the most important thing. the taliban after all is 30,000 people in a country of 30

million people. this is not an enormous group of people. that goes back to the question of basically you've got a weak government and relatively small forces doing rather well against a raej weak state. how do you create a strong state? well, you know, there's a great deal of literature on that and it's not something that happens overnight. one thing we can guarantee, if the 2019 presidential election doesn't go well, isn't regarded as sort of somewhat free and fair, the whole experiment goes down the tubes, forget about dealing with the taliban. it took 50 years to get to the negotiation table. there's a great deal of literature how much civil wars and insurgencies go on. this could go on for decades. what do they want? they never really said. it's not really clear. who are they? there are multiple parts of the taliban. it's not a unified group. we've also run a controlled

experiment what negotiations would the taliban look like. the taliban have done multiple deals with the pakistani government. each one of which they've any gl reneged on. and remember islamabad after these negotiations. the u.s. government should negotiate with the taliban. we talked through the soviet union throughout the cold war. the expectation should be very low and what we have coming is something a date certain for this presidential election. badly as the one in 2009 -- it will be very hard -- for any political leader to say we're really going to keep sending people here to prop up this system but keeps producing these very bad outcomes. i'm a great skeptic we're going to get it right but the u.s. government should be thinking harder about this election and how to support it the necessary taliban negotiations which have

a very certain outcome and don't have a -- >> i want to break in and say that's an important point. you sparked a good conversation obviously. you know, this election really risks two things, not just sort of the failure of negotiations and continued violence and but we could be looking at the beginning of a pathway to the country and actually -- i'm known for controversial things about afghanistan and it's got me into hot water before but i really believe this time is very different. we see now in the north the governor of a prosperous province who has been basically in power for 17 years, resisting his firing over corruption allegations and interestingly in afghan hand circles in washington, there's a big debate what to do with ashraf and the problem and this rebel on.

on the one hand, you have i think a camp that says have trouble before the elections and this is an inopportune time to press for greater accountability around the corruption issue. on the other hand you have a camp that says corruption is the fundamental problem that washington needs to deal with and pressure ghani to move forward on and so on and so forth. again, you find this leader of this country sort of between two separate camps inside washington itself, but i think what the situation says to us, atta is prepared to become a challenger to ashraf ghani and represents large forces in the north that would be tempted -- some agree -- it also says that he feels comfortable doing that. and that there is a sense that kabul is weak enough that it can

be challenged and that's dangerous for a lot of different reasons. i don't think we're risking a situation where we'll go back to soviet times, i think genuinely, if these presidential elections are not handled in a way that people are satisfied, if we don't figure out whether or not postponement plus reform is the best answer or you know, reform immediately and then elections immediately is the best answer, we're really going to see a situation in which it no longer becomes possible for the north to actually meet the south in afghanistan. so we could be looking almost at the south sudan situation in the coming years. >> congratulations on center. first of all, regarding the issue of fake news, i agree with the way to stop a bad guy with

wrong facts is not a good-b guy with right facts, not about the content and the process and emotional meaning. i think what we need to do is sort of teach people how to know when they are being manipulated. and sort of like demystic fiction and my kids learn that in fifth grade and how to be aware, don't be a sucker kind of thing. the second thing, i really like the concept of phase zero and from being from the school for conflict analysis and resolution. i'm wondering that your center is also dealing with conflict, you know, the way we approach it, what's the underlying conflict about? what do the parties want? how do reduce tension? what are legitimate goals including identity and dignity and sovereignty and security --

safety. and i like teddy roosevelt's idea about talk softly and carry a big stick. i wonder if the future of war is to have that -- i think that needs to be in the background and talk -- the other things more in the foreground. so i'd like to know what you think about those. >> for you? i think you're right, i do think that that's a normal part how the united states works its defense is that we have to be able to do it all and to build security and not just fight wars and i think secretary mat us would be the -- he has said it explicitly we need diplomats and need development and knethese things if we're going to have security. it's not how americans tick, unfortunately, we are as a

populist much more comfortable putting money into defense than we are into civilian organizations. i think it is incumbent on the defense department to think that way and to think -- i don't -- i'm not saying we've got to mild of engagement we have with the world, but the department of defense needs to think about a more sophisticated way to build security. because if all we're doing is the means to fight a war, we're going to be fighting a lot of wars. i think that's understood by this administration like by any other, but their rhetoric is trending towards more traditional platform centric. our project, one of the things we're looking at is this explosion of technology, where you have big data, machine assisted satellite imagery, all these cools we can utility to understand conflict and fight wars, we can use also them for peace and to prevent wars. we're look at the new an lit cal

tools to see what kinds of investments are likely to create peace. that's what the project is looking at. we're looking at an entire landscape survey of every decision support tool out tlin ts universe, understanding the trends and early warning indicators and other research tools available to this case. >> go ahead. >> yes. u.s. national security plan talks about the three ds. we focused on one of the ds, i wonder about diplomacy and development. to throw in a fact about afghanistan, i heard p mrs. rule a ghani say the most effective

thing she's seen in afghanistan was the project artimus project. just to tweak your interest. >> and the person is a former high ranking usaid official. how important the investments are. i would say we're at an interesting time where it is not so sequential. it is hard to pull apart, you can't have security without economic activity, but you can't have economic activity without security. so how do you do all these things at the same time, particularly when facing the kinds of adversaries that we are in syria and iraq and in afghanistan. soy think that again we need to develop a sophisticated way to answer that question and make those investments. we are headed in the opposite direction, which i find as former career civilian official and political appointee really

alarming. i agree with your question. >> i think from perspective of somebody that needs to work at the institute of peace, the two ds are central to the mission. one of the challenges beyond sort of the pull back we now see in this administration, we have seen that before. we've seen the pendulum swing for and away from development and diplomacy as part of our soft power projection. i think it may provide opportunity for the aid community and diplomatic community to think now hard, when budgets are big, innovation is less likely. and the real question we have in a place like afghanistan or pakistan, yemen, syria, iraq, is the absorption capacity of the countries, right.

something we have been grappling with a long time. usaid has grappled with that, how to solve the problem of dumping billions of dollars into a place that doesn't have a central bank system. what does that mean for corruption. what does it mean for organized crime? it is something that we really need to address. in some ways while i think hollowing out of the diplomatic core is a tragedy in many ways and even our aid corp is a tragedy, may come to regret that the same way we did under cuts in the 1980s. there may be an opportunity for those that agree to stay in, fight the good fight, to think hard about this issue of how to get aid delivery so it is more efficient and effective and less wasteful. >> i have a question about level

of trust and i would like any panelist to comment on that. in particular, i wonder what is the importance of trust when it comes to war and national security and you mention that you see the situation today worse than in the past, but when i think about the past during the communist scare and japanese americans and so on, the level of society seems to be much worse in the past, and what we can learn from those times. >> so i happen to think trust is one of the most important aspects of anything that functions in a society, especially a democratic society, sort of the social glue. in the absence of trust, it is difficult for the simplest things to happen. the initial response, where there's lack of trust, the initial feeling about anything presented information or anything else is one of

resistance, defensiveness. unwillingness to be party to that relationship. i don't necessarily think mistrust is worse now than it has been in the past. there's certain focuses of mistrust that we can show quantitatively are worse. polling shows lack of trust in say members of congress at an historic low. that appears to be true as one metric of trust, but i don't know that people trust neighbors less less or trust others less. in its absence, it is enormously difficult to do things, yet where trust exists, it is substantially easier to manage tensions. you talk about issues like resilience, one of the most key hot terms for understanding the sorts of challenges larger society faces, there's resilience of a system, interconnected computer system, but it has to be true that the most resilient, the key element

of social resistance of anything that happens, whether devastating hurricane or any other kind of big social stressful event has got to have levels of trust and social order. how we engage is complex. just like in personal relationships, how you establish trust with friends and family, doesn't have a tick box, but similarly it is not something that wee have no idea how to do either. >> one of the things for people in my community that rattled us about this election, talking about both parties, is that the american public didn't seem to invest in our place in the world, and things we took as matter of faith. but you have allies, partners, you trade. these things are good and protecting your position in the world means peace and prosperity at home. we took these as givens. it is clear that's not necessarily the case across the

country. people feel that way. i would say that translates to lack of trust and that we as community, i think there's been a lot of soul searching, ferment about our world and that we should have been as focused at home as abroad because our security starts here, not just over there. i think that's been a wake up call for us. and it is an interesting, there's an interesting dilemma too. as daniel said, at the same time the military remains the most trusted institution in the country and that's a strange tension that americans have a lot of faith in their armed forces but not a lot of faith in our place in the world and our investment in the rest of the world. so i think that's something that i find very troubling and that certainly focus of the work we're doing. >> so we've come to the end of our event. thank you all so much for joining us here and we look forward to seeing you again.

thank you. more on the future of war and national security live at 6:00 p.m. eastern on cspan.

journalists from cnn, "the washington post," and 538 talk budget covering the trump administration. tomorrow, commanders of centr central command and africa command testify on the president's 2019 budget request. live coverage starts 9:30 a.m. eastern on cspan 3, available online at cspan.org and on the radio. on capitol hill. the u.s. house back for legislative work starting 2:00 p.m. eastern. wednesday, house lawmakers will consider a bill to prevent gun violence in schools. later in the week, expected to take up a measure to fund the government pass a march 23rd deadline. the senate meets at 4:00 p.m. eastern, resume debate on legislation to ease certain banking regulations, final passage vote expected by end of the week. at some point the senate plans to consider the nomination for

border protection commissioner. tonight on landmark cases, we explore the 1886 case, a san francisco city ordinance discriminated against a chinese laund laundromat owner. he established that equal protection under the 14th amendment applies to immigrants and citizens. explore it with professor of agency american studies at columbia university, author of "the lucky ones." one family and the extraordinary invention of chinese america. and josh blan