there was no increased because we saw young people's perceptions of years begin to flatten or decrease. there are two other things that are an important. off the national year's anti- drug media campaign has been completely revise, and it resonates very well with young people and giving them a message about not using drugs that -- in a way that they clearly understand that our partnership -- understand. our partnership has sponsored two -- and continue to work hard for private funding to give information to young people and to parents about this danger. we are not pleased with the numbers, but it encourages all of us to work harder. >> any other questions? please identify yourself.

you, yes. she is coming. >> i am from mexico. do you have any way to find of which are the ethnic groups that are more vulnerable to use drugs se reached? -- use drugs? also, you have mentioned that the excessive use of marijuana affects the brain. what can a person who has been using for a long time be rehabilitated? >> in terms of what -- accusing repeatedly -- using repeatedly,

the production goes down, so when there is not intoxication, there is a deficit in the brain areas. what are those systems, that involves memory and learning and motor behavior, and is also important in terms of reaction. in animal models, were you expose them repeatedly, the animals become very spread reactive prone. the extent to which an animal can recover production is dependent on several factors. the aged and the combination, and ultimately the differences in the biology and are likely to reflect genetic differences. at this point, we do not know to what extent those changes will

recover or be reversible. with respect to your first question, i will answer it with respect to the research nida has been doing that documents there is not a particular case that is protected from substance abuse disorder. drug abuse does not discriminate. you see patterns of drug abuse -- drug use, that are influenced by ethnic and cultural factors. for example, one thing that is not recognized as among adolescents, for example, african americans have the lowest rate of use. among hispanics, for example, alcohol use is particularly one that is favored, and alcohol has consequences in that group that

are different. it is associated with a much greater rate of dropout in hispanic groups. native american the use of alcohol is quite prevalent. there is no discrimination among the ethnic groups. >> did you want to add something to that? >> we do, in fact, suffer read out three major racial ethnic groups -- african-americans, white americans, and hispanic americans. we do not routinely look the other groups because they are not in and that -- large enough numbers to make accurate estimates, but occasionally we do a piece based on multiple years and look at a larger number of ethnic groups. american indians were mentioned

by dr. volkow, and they tend to have some of the more severe substance abuse problems in general, not just alcohol. hispanics, in our surveys at least, in the earliest grades, eighth grade, we tend to have high rates of use, higher than whites or african americans for a number of drugs. that is not true by 12th grade, and we are not quite sure whether that means because hispanics have a higher dropout rate we are simply losing more of the drug users, where because hispanic culture is rising to a more precocious trying none of behaviors that is generally more associated with being an adult. whites tend to have the highest usage rate by the time you get to 12th grade and thereafter prepared -- thereafter. that is true for quite a number of drugs.

there are differences. if you are interested, look on our website, and you will find all of our publications, including articles that goal and death on the subject. -- in depth on the subject. >> yes, please identify yourself. m media. what responsibility do organizations have to run public service announcements? i regularly hear messages about this on christian radio stations that i know very few young people listen to, yet the popular music stations, which my daughter, and co-workers that are of that age -- i have not really heard these messages on those of whites. i am wondering what is your

knowledge about this, and what responsibility does the media have? >> i think the media has a huge responsibility to not only run those commercials, but we also buy time during the greatest number of young people watching. the other important part of that campaign is using social networks and social media to get the message across, and of course that is oftentimes more popular with young people then perhaps some of the more traditional channels and others that are out there. >> when you are using paid media, are you able to afford some of the prime-time listening? >> no. [laughter]

>> mr. kerlikowske, did think of the campaigns and the billions of dollars spent have failed up until now? are here preparing a new message that might be better delivered and made that the young people could make the decision? >> i wish we could cut the questions off before that. the numbers are particularly disturbing. the media campaign that was existent in the past was not a particularly good. we completely revised that using some of the smartest advertising minds that clearly resonate with young people. we launched it in the bronx, and in milwaukee, and in portland.

we know it resonates well, but has not been out there very long, so i think we need to deliver that message, and there are another group of messengers the need to say the same things. that is the parents, the coaches, the community groups, and the faith-based community. we need to make progress not just for young people, but quite frankly around the world on the drug issue. this is clearly not just a problem in the united states, but in many other places, has and if we do not address it and recognize it with the seriousness and the severity that is warranted, i have great concern about where these numbers are taking us. >> i just wanted to make a point because we know, factually, that perceptions among adolescents

regarding whether drugs are dangerous or not impacts their probability of taking it. look at that poster, which actually plots the relationship between the prevalence rate of marijuana use and the perception of kids proceeding marijuana as dangerous. you can see there's a greater number of kids thinking it is dangerous, have much lower rates of marijuana use. this is a mirror image. to your question about the media, i think it can play an extremely important role, but as mr. kerlikowske said, the media has to be well targeted. it can profoundly influence behavior for example, a tobacco smoking, and the same can be applied with marijuana.

>> while we are on the subject of media campaigns, i wanted to mention something else we have seen related to smoking, and that is the young people are not seem nearly as much anti- smoking ad campaigns as they were two years ago. the settlement with the state attorneys general and the tobacco companies gave rise to a foundation that sponsored the national campaign -- the american legacy foundation, but that had a limited life. the amount of money that has been spent on that -- that is being spent on that campaign has dwindled. the other thing is that many states have their own anti- tobacco campaigns, and this is the pitch to state legislatures and governors. the state's got a great deal of money out of that settlement,

and spent almost none of it on the prevention of tobacco use among kids. it is really quite a shame. i know the stakes are very stretched, but ultimately, the states and the federal government play a big price for smoking in terms of health and work performance. i think it is important that those campaigns somehow be reinvigorated. are we look -- or, we are likely to see an increase, which i believe would be a tragedy. >> i can tell you it is difficult to know if your campaign is working because sometimes it takes years to look of the numbers. lloyd talk about the anti- tobacco campaign, and now that it has slowed down, we are seeing those numbers level off. in the 1990's, when ecstasy use was going up, there was a lot of

campaigns, and we saw the numbers go down. was it a direct result? we have no way of knowing. we have not been talking about ecstasy, so those numbers are now softening. it is very hard to know the direct impact these campaigns have, but i will also cited ad budgets are dwindling, like everything else. we are fighting for the same piece of the pie that everyone else's. certainly, and the private sector groups that want to take on these issues are more than welcome. more questions? >> my name is martin fox. given that our policies have obviously failed with marijuana, what did not make more sense to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to tobacco, and therefore lead -- keep away from children in a much more controlled fashion?

>> no. it was not. we are not very good at keeping pharmaceuticals out of the hands of young people, and they aren't taxed, regulated, and controlled. -- are taxed, regulated, and controlled. we have 38,000 deaths as a result of these tax, regulated, and controlled drugs. we are not successful at that. we have not been successful at of young people. i don't know why anyone could think we could develop a system where seven 11's would be an outlet for marijuana. >> any more questions? yes. >> heidi with pediatric news.

a question for dr. jolson or anyone else who wants to jump in. given the increase in marijuana use among especially the younger kids, what advice do you have four doctors retreat teenagers about things may be to look for or how to talk about this with the teens and parents? >> i think one of the things we clearly know and for which we do not need more research in that respect is those of the greatest resource are those who may have any type of behavior robust upturn, learning disability, attention deficit disorder or mental illness. and the early recognition of a psychiatric disorder or behavioral problem who may put that kid at risk of taking drugs as a way to try to medicate themselves could be a very important prevention effort.

from the perspective of the message to the parents, if they feel that their child might be suffering from excess of anxiety or depression or trouble socializing they should evaluate the possibility that their kid may have psychiatric or psychological problems that may be amenable for treatment. because the proper intervention at that stage could prevent that kid from that use of drugs. the message that we send. with respect to positions, one of the campaigns that neither has been aggressively pushing is the need for positions to take responsibility for evaluating and screening for the use of substance of this order in their patients and that is relevant for children and adolescents. early intervention could actually disrupt the continuous use of that particular drug and prevent it escalating into abuse

and addiction. the physician has two perspective. from psychiatry perspective, proper screening and evaluation of a problem that can be properly treated and in general -- health provider, proper screening may do interventions that prevented from further escalating into abuse and addiction. >> did you want to add anything? >> i really think that pediatricians and other physicians who treat young people are in quite a unique position to open up the subject, first of all, and to give advice that is heard. they are trusted. they are seen as not singing a moral song. and they are talking on the basis of one's health and self protection. i think it is very important for physicians treating adolescents to raise the subject of drugs and alcohol and ask

whether a youngster has experience with those and to talk about it. i think not many of us in a position -- parents, teachers, counselors, or other things -- to open up the subject and expect honest answers. it what -- while i realize physicians have a lot of things to ask kids about that is one of the important months, i think, and i expect their advice would carry weight. >> through our centers for excellent program we are developing curriculum resources on teaching medical students on how to talk to adolescents about this topic. we have existent resources for physicians on how to talk to adults. any more questions? okay, i want to thank everyone so m [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] been her first interview since joining the supreme court, elena kagan spoke about turf impressions with chief justice roberts. >> we were talking about argument in listening to the cases. it is interesting to hear.

i am wondering about your intellectual relationship with chief justice roberts. the answers were very rapid fire. >> i had extraordinary respect for him. he was the great supreme court advocate of his time before he became a judge. i felt as though he could do better. he did it as well as anybody had ever done it. that is a little bit intimidating to know that the person intimidating you hasted in your shoes -- has stood in your shoes.

he is also a great question to prepare. he did not let you get away with anything if there is something you want to hide, he is certain to find it. he had to be at the top of your game. >> here is a little bit of a story. when i walked in for my swearing in that was necessary in order for me to do the work of the court, alice met by the chief justice. -- i was met by the chief justice. ur.gave me a too

he showed me the room. it goes to the chief justice. we walked around the building a little bit. what happened is that he was coming off.

you are part did the community in institution. there is a powerful thing to see. stopped kagan's interview -- first interview after the court. in a few moments about -- in a few moments, wikileaks. after that, an interview with late richard holbrooke. >> on "washington journal" we will talk about the u.s. strategy in afghanistan.

we will take your calls about the tax cut bills. we will be joined by the head of the national institute on drug abuse. is livegton journal' every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. bacthe c-span video library is washington your way. >> this weekend, lewis married .- rose mary greenlee

>> now a discussion of wikileaks' effect on journalism. panelists include -- this is about an hour.

>> i like to acknowledge the dean of the school. but like to also introduce the vice chancellor. the presence of a true americanbefore we get started, i would say a word, and has been a sadambassador holbrooke passed away and we wanted to say here

we are thinking about the family and all his friends. many of you have had the past. we are thinking about ambassador holbrooke. i would like to turn to bob schieffer and go from there. >> thank you. bowl. all season and it has worked. i would like to introduce -- this is the first year to have a semester in washington. our scholars who have been here, and laurence sanders -- lauren sanders who is interning here. [applause] we are happy to have making his first appearance as a palace. you know him as a deputy

secretary of defense. before that, he was one of the professional members of the senate armed services committee and professional staffer. and our next panelist has had a great career at quoting the washington post. he covers national security and was one of those to clegg's -- one of those who was one of the

people who went to the state department. i will ask you about that in a minute. he has been a finalist for the pulitzer prize. he was a reporter for "the baltimore sun." will start with you as a former defense official -- i will start with you as a former defense official. they had access to 250,000 documents, many of them highly classified. how did that happen? >> it was a good idea badly engineered. after 9/11, we had a sense of the nation, we had information that other people needed in the government in order to accomplish the larger task of situational awareness.

we decided to try to provide much broader access. that was a good idea. the bad implementation is to not differentiate who has the need for what kind of information. a corporal in the army may have need for relevant technical information about terrorists who are in the middle east but would have no plausible need to know about a conversation with the president of russia. middle east but would have no plausible need to know about a conversation with the president of russia about arms control. yet we did not in any sense engineer access the right way. we made it broadly available because that was the easiest way to make it available, and it reflects, i think, the failings of our clearance process.

it's a larger issue, it's something that we need to change. we have basically a perimeter security concept. you get into the perimeter, we give you a clearance and then you can see anything you want. so if you drive into washington, d.c., you can go in nany home yu want to go into. it makes no sense. it needs to be engineered a different way. we have a real black eye here. >> it's beyond making no sense. it's absurd that something like this -- >> well, the challenge of government is taking ideas and engineering them practically with the constraints you have. the department has a large network of classified information and the easiest thing is to simply add more to it. without being -- without differentiating on the side of who is reading it and do they need all of that, we just erred on the side of making far too much information available to a broad range of people, most of whom did not need it. now, most of them don't go off

this kind of voyeurism that we saw. that's not the norm. most people behave quite appropriately but we clearly had a problem individual who chose for other reasons to undertake what was little more than voyeurism and it is so easy now to put this material on media and haul it out, then transmit it, but it was a very badly engineered good idea. >> let me talk to you, scott, about so here you are at the "new york times" and this stuff comes to you. what happened after that? how did you make a decision, the editors at "the times" to accept it and what did you do with it after you got it? what happened between that time and when we first began to see it show up in "new york times"? >> well, as you recall, there were three sort of batches of documents that "the times" got from wikileaks, the first two

directly, the third because the founder of wikileaks, julian assange, apparently had taken offense at a profile we published of him, didn't want to give us the third group of documents which were the state department cables, but the guardian which had sort of agreed along with us, agreed to give us the cables so that we would continue this sort of cooperative arrangement. so we had 250,000 cables. you referred to them as highly classified. they're not actually that highly classified by washington standards. about 11,000, if i remember correctly, of the 25,000 were secret. but nothing was classified higher than that. and a lot of it's unclassified, a lot of it's confidential but certainly from the state department's point of view, an awful lot of it, they absolutely did not want out. so as you can imagine, you're sitting there with 250,000

documents that it's an almost impossible amount of stuff to go through, so we created a search engine that you could limit by time, by the embassy from which the cable was sent, by the classification level and certain other criteria, and then we just started doing searches. you tried to think of key words and subject areas that might be newsworthy, and you would sort of plow through everything out of the embassy in kabul, for example, in the last two years. this is time-wise, this collection -- >> how many people did you have? >> oh, probably all told, working on it, in terms of people actually reading cables, there were probably about 15 of us, and there were another two or three people who were the tech people designing the database.

but i should say that the very earliest cable in this collection is 1966. but there's really only a handful from the '60s, '70s and '80s and the majority of it is actually from the last three years. so there's far more recent and it cuts off presumably because of the circumstances by which it came to us in february of 2010. >> so you go through that, then you get it down to how many? >> well, you know, everybody kind of came up with a different way of doing this, but you know, for example, one of the things we wanted to look at was afghan corruption, and so my way of looking at that was to narrow it to the last few years of cables from kabul and then use words like bribes, corruption and you know, gradually you would find a cable and copy it out into a document and create a kind of collection of afghan corruption

cables, then you would sort of use that as the basis of reporting. >> before you published them, what did you do with them? that you thought were of interest? >> well, we had sort of an elaborate arrangement to publish this on a schedule, on a rough schedule by topic with the guardian, in spain, with lamond in france and the magazine in germany. and so we kind of had a rough schedule for about ten days or two weeks of days and subjects, but we also identified about 100 cables that we wanted to publish on the "new york times" website and we gave those to the state department and said, they had them, of course, but we identified those 100 cables -- >> you told them you had them. >> we told them we had them and these are the ones we intend to publish, and do you have, you

know, do you want to participate in sort of advising us on what you think might be particularly damaging or dangerous if it's published. >> what did they do? >> well, their initial stance was this is stolen classified material and you shouldn't have it and we don't want you to publish any of it. and that was understandable and we said well, we still intend to publish it and then they were very helpful in identifying stuff that in many cases, we had already redacted. i had been through a lot of the cables with reporters working on the stories and we had taken out a lot of stuff before we sent them over. >> what did you take out? give me an example. >> the vast majority of what we took out were the names and identities of people who had spoken confidentially to american diplomats in what you would consider to be repressive countries. so they would be human rights activists or journalists or even

government officials or military officials -- >> whose lives might be -- >> whose lives or probably in most cases, perhaps their freedom or their careers or something would be in jeopardy. you know, in russia, in china, in libya, in a number of other places, if you spoke sort of out of school to american diplomats, you could get in deep trouble. >> did you withhold any documents at the request of the state department? >> we withheld a couple of documents that we, you know, that news-wise, we probably -- they were certainly interesting, we would have published. >> why? >> we didn't post them at all. because there was a strong case that they would damage, in the case of one that i'm thinking of, american -- intelligence cooperation program involving another country. >> let me go to karen. "the post" did not get any of

these. let me ask you, why? and what would you have done if you had gotten something similar? >> we like "the times" were told with the early releases, there was the release of afghanistan documents and iraq documents, military documents earlier, and we were told by wikileaks that we hadg, and we were told specifically that they were not going to deal with us. obviously, we knew the documents were coming. we didn't know exactly when. so we were in the position of simply watching for it to drop which it did, on that saturday afternoon when "the times" and "the guardian" published their initial accounts, which ran on several sundays ago, and so each

of them published documents along with the stories that they published, often different documents, and so i think in fact, "the guardian" probably posted a lot more than you did. it was interesting that wikileaks itself had a very strange selection of documents and still does, that they have chosen to publish themselves and often, you will see very obscure things that have come up on their website, wherever you can find it on any given day because obviously it moves all over the place as it gets shut down in various places. so we were left to -- close to our deadline every day to look at the documents and i did most of the stories and what i tried to do was not look at everyone's stories about them but to look at the documents themselves that were released across a wide spectrum of organizations and try to see what we thought was important in terms of stories.

>> you know, people almost immediately began to talk about this as they did about the pentagon papers. of course, your paper paper was one that published the pentagon papers. i noticed now that daniel ellsberg has said he's strongly in favor of this wikileaks undertaking. and he compares it to that. i'm not sure i would. do you? >> no, i don't compare it to that. i think what's amazing about these documents -- at least the ones that i've seen so far -- is that with very few exceptions, they tend to cover issues that we or other media organizations have already written about and provide additional details that are always good to have in stories. and it's always good obviously to have actual words of officials as opposed to anonymous officials, which is what we usually end up quoting on these kinds of stories.

but i think in terms of substance -- now, there were some exceptions. there was some having to do with iran, some having to do with north korea, and some that in the aggregate seemed to show policy going in a certain direction that actually did move the ball in terms of what we knew. but i think by and large, it was -- they were things that we knew and, in fact, that we and others had written about before. >> can i just say the reason the pentagon papers had such impact is because it was a private story that was at variance with the public. we're not seeing that with this. what you're seeing here is fairly good, objective reporting by diplomats written fairly well that's quite consistent with the public message. so it doesn't have anything like the pentagon papers in terms of its -- >> do you think -- as a

reporter, it's always hard for me to argue for government secrecy. but i do believe in some cases that you have to have some things that remain secret. i mean, i just think you do. and i stand second to no one in my defense of the first amendment. i stand second to no one in saying that there's too much government secrecy. but having said that, i find this extremely troubling that something like this could happen. and do you think the government, dr. hamre, acted quickly enough in getting on this and trying to come to some understanding of how this private could somehow get ahold of all this stuff? >> well, i -- the dilemma of how a private could get access to this kind of information is really deeply embedded in a much larger problem. it's how we give clearances to people, the kind of information we give to them, the nature of modern communication tools.

solving this is a huge problem. it's going to take many years to fix it. and, frankly, we need to get on with fixing it. so the government responded with the immediate crisis. it now has to figure out the long-term viable solution. >> do you think, karen, this is journalism, wikileaks? >> i don't know. >> i will go on the record and say i don't think it is. >> i classify it as sort of a release of documents for the sake of releasing them to say that you have them. i mean, wikileaks has described this as an effort to stop -- i think they've said an immoral and illegal set of policies. but they themselves did not analyze what they thought was immoral or illegal or point out what in these documents would support that thesis. i think that it's incumbent on us to try to put things in context and to try to explain

why it's important, what preceded it, what came after it and what was going on around it. that, i think is our responsibility. but i want to go back to something that john said. what surprised me was -- even more than the fact that someone at a relatively low level could apparently have access to these documents in the military, but that there was no trigger for when there was -- there were downloads that had not been authorized. it would seem to me that that would be even easier if you wanted to do some sort of interim -- >> the problem -- our security system, it's a perimeter security system. if you give them a clearance they can see secret material. the only way to constrain that is going through a fairly disciplined efforts by putting additional qualifiers on information. that's a hard job and we chose

not to do that. we should have. >> there are a few things the pentagon said it is doing that it's already done. disabling the cd and dvd write drives on many computers so a guy like this can't put everything on a cd as he did and walk out. that's one thing they've done. and they are supposedly experimenting with the kind of -- you get those calls from your credit card company saying this is an unusual purchase for you, is this you. it's a fraud detection mechanism. so they're beginning to build that stuff in so that if someone suddenly downloads a thousand terabytes of information in some outpost that alarm bells go off. they are working on it. >> there are things we can do but it's a more complex dimension than simply how you use a credit card. >> tell me, scott -- obviously you were very responsible.

"the times" was very responsible in how they went about handling this. tell me about some of the thinking that went into this and how you decided to publish it in the first place and why you thought this was something you needed to do. >> well, it's a -- it is a -- you say it's obvious that we were responsible there. i think there are many people who don't find it obvious. >> i mean, hearing your explanation. >> including the state department. but you're kind to say so. but the -- we still -- we did try to exercise judgment in terms of what we'd publish and what we wouldn't both in terms of newsworthiness and, as i was saying, what the downside would be for the government or for individuals. and i guess the three categories -- there was that first category which i think we tend to agree with the government on of individuals in oppressive countries who could really be in deep trouble, whose

lives might even be at stake. that was probably the easiest category. the second category would be sensitive programs that the u.s. was engaged in. and an example of something that they -- that the government was not happy that we ran but we did end up deciding to run was a cable that went out and it was one of many cables along these lines that went out to embassies and to the u.n. to say to diplomats, here are categories of intelligence information we'd like you to correct -- collect. some was biographical information about foreigners they were dealing with but some went all the way down to credit card numbers and frequent flier numbers of foreign diplomates. and we knew from talking around people that there was controversy within the diplomatic corps about whether they should really be asked to -- god knows how do you it.

i guess at the lunch table kind of peer over and scribble down the credit card number. but whether that was appropriate, whether it was too risky and whether it blurred the line too much between intelligence collection and diplomatic work. that one we decided to run over their objection. then the third category would be where the objection was more, geez, we just really would like you to not run that because tales really going to strain our relations with this guy or just make things more difficult the next time we talk to him. and in general, i have to say we did not usually go along with those requests. but, again, the majority of the -- of their requests and of what we agreed to were pertaining to individuals. >> let me ask all three and start with you, karen. was there anything -- and there were some of these things like that that were fascinating in the same way reading someone else's mail has a fascination. we're human beings.

we can't help but be interested in things we're not supposed to know about. was there anything there -- and i'll ask all three of you -- in these releases that was the surprise, that told us something we really didn't know? because it strikes me that a lot of it we just saw background detail on a lot of things that we already knew about for the most part. >> i think the one that scott just mentioned, the collection asking diplomats to collect information like credit card numbers, bank account numbers, was -- of people at the you have nations was sort of surprising. and you knew if you have worked in foreign policy long enough that this had to be something that would cause a lot of consternation. the same way it does with journalists who are asked sometimes in some places to be a source of information in terms of damaging their credibility. i don't think in substance, you know, if you look at the

corruption in afghanistan, certainly there were new details. there was some new information, more specifics about president karzai's brother in kandahar. so you had a broader and deeper sense of what it was that the americans objected to about him. i think with yemen, you saw what we had already reported, that the government -- their cooperation with the u.s. government in terms of counterterrorism operations was pretty deep. you saw in the case of yemen and in pakistan where governments had denied agreeing to these kinds of programs, but everybody and his brother had reported that they agreed to it. it certainly causes them difficulties at home when you see in their own words their agreement to it. not only their agreement but

their desire to cover it up from their own publics. so you expand your knowledge on those things. i don't think the -- in the first instance, the fact that something has happened or that a policy is in motion, no, i think there was very little of that. >> what about -- >> democracy -- >> did you find out anything you didn't know? >> no. let me just say. i think it's very important. democracies have to -- governments have to do things in secret but democracies have to ultimately sustain a debate about their policies and their goals. what's remarkable here is how consistent this was. we did not see any activity being reported that was not broadly sustained by our public discourse. so, i mean -- but democracies do need to have the capacity to have private conversations. and i know you think it's -- so what if it's about making relations harder. that is an important dimension.

and if there was a broad disconnect between what we were saying as a nation to our citizens publicly and what we were saying to ourselves privately, it would be a more legit matd complaint. but the fact that it was largely consistent, hugely consistent tells me that the government doesn't deserve a vote of confidence in being able to protect the informal discourse of diplomacy. >> do you think there is any serious damage? >> brzezinski is saying like someone once said this is catastrophic but not serious. this is really bad. i mean, ultimately, i don't believe it's going to because it testifies to the integrity of our diplomacy in my view. but it is very difficult for our diplomats to have the next conversation and the next conversation with people. and i think we're going to find

foreign interlocuters less forthcoming. i think it will be a depp detriment. >> any real news? >> i think i would agree there are no huge scoops, which is sort of what you would expect given the secret and low classification level. but i think in a way, in a democracy. it's newsworthy that what the diplomats are saying is not at odds with what we generally understand our foreign policy to be. and while undoubtedly there are some relations that are strained, this is sort of a scatter shot thing. and you could all -- very quickly, you saw secretary of state clinton and others using these revelations to the advant of the united states. there were a number of leaders

in the arab world who were outed as being extremely fearful and outspoken against the notion of iran having nuclear weapons. that is not a huge surprise. but it's something they tend not to say publicly and certainly not to say as king abdullah of saudi arabia said, you must cut off the head of the snake. secretary clinton while deploring the leaks and talking about the damage caused also said it's interesting to see we and israel are not alone in being fearful about this. and one other thing i should say is i think diplomats, many diplomats including some i talked to, were very distressed at this and thought it would make their jobs harder. there was sort of an undercurrent of pride in what i think many people that i have spoke with were impressed with the general quality of their work, the quality of their writing and their reporting.

and one of my favorite cables was something i stumbled across early on. i think it was a hit. npr read it. a report by the diplomat from the embassy in moscow on a wedding in dagestan in the caucuses. an account not momentous in the annals of diplomacy or state craft but certainly doing a service in trying to tell washington here's part of russia, it's a volatile part of russia. the dictator of chechnya came to the wedding with his entourage and supposedly left a five kilogram lump of gold as his wedding present. and just a wild scene. and a wonderful piece of reporting. so i think it did show that a lot of diplomats have a lot to be proud of. >> let me ask all of you and

then those of you in the audience, we certainly want to take your questions. you have some. while we're making this final rounds be, thinking of your question. what do you have make, karen -- and i'll ask all of you this -- of this so-called anonymous group that sprung up to sort of take on the people who took on wikileaks like paypal who closed their account, and amazon and so on. should we be sort of shaking in our boots these people might be going after all of us if you say an ugly word about wikileaks or something? >> i think it's distressing. i think it's kind of sad and it's a reflection of what i think am sof the worst of the internet and social networking that is simply throws things up against the wall like spaghetti to see what will stick. and i don't -- i don't want to say that the mainstream media or lamestream media or whatever you

want to call it has an inside -- should have an inside avenue into all that's good and worth talking about. but i do think that there is -- there's a responsibility to look at what's done with information, and information in and of itself is not worth all that much unless you have a context to put it in, unless you have some understanding of why it's important. and i guess personally, it's sort of my -- to the extent i have a problem with it -- and as a journalist there are many ways in which i don't have a problem with it. but to the extent i do, it is this sort of -- going back to what i said before, we are attacking the immoral and the illegal about what the united states is doing without being able to articulate exactly what that is.

and so to the extent people jump up and say, everything should be public all the time, i think that that both personally for people in this country and in terms of the government is problematic. >> we've got three issues that are frequently conflated. we have not done that here but one is a flawed government employee who acted independently in violation of his pledge and a government that engineered very poorly a security system. that's the first. second are these cyber anarchists that do not have a rationale other than just a capacity to create chaos. and then we have the story of responsible journalists struggling with information bridging across the two. to me, it's why i'm so worried about the collapse of professional journalism. because we've had the discipline of editorial observation that

has given us a sense of what is and is not news. we're contrasting here what cyber anarchists are putting out for the world to see and what responsible journalists are struggling to manage. we may not like it. i frankly don't like anything about this. but i respect the fact that you've wrestled with it and done a very responsible job within the boundaries of how you saw your duties. i really do respect that. we're going to deeply regret losing that as being the foundation of journalism. and that's what's in front of us in the worlds of the cyber anarchis anarchists. >> one of the most interesting things to me in this whole episode and something that sometimes has gotten lost in the reporting -- you often heard on the radio or tv, wikileaks, the organization that released 250,000 secret diplomatic cables. in a limited sense that's true.

they released them actually initially to a number of european publications. as far as we know, they got these -- i don't have inside knowledge but appears they got them in may or june. they could have -- if they were really living up to the cyber anarchist's creed that everything should be published all the time, they could have in an instant dumped 250,000 unredacted cables online and it would have been much more of a tidal wave of information. whether people would have been able to make their way through it, who knows. but either because they felt burned over the afghanistan documents where they took a lot of heat for failing to redact out some names of afghan informants who were presumably put in danger, they retreated. with the iraq document dump they actually ended up redacting with computers and stripping names out of them. and the documents they put up were more severely redacted than

the ones we put up. and with this cache of documents, they basically have been mostly in lock-step with these publications. and i have been part of kind of a bizarre process where when we redacted documents we were sending them back to wikileaks and they were posting them in redacted form and they were actually trying -- they were saying sometimes redacted it this way and you redacted that way. and they were taking some care. these are anonymous people. i have no idea who these people are. i was just going to say they have only released -- this is a little known fact. it's kind of lost. wikileaks has about somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 documents on its website out of the 250,000. so they're not even at 1% yet. what's going to happen from here on out who knows but the cyber an,ists have sort of realized some restrapt is necessary, it

appears. >> do you know who these people are other than assange? does anybody know who they are, where they operate from? do they have an office? maybe this is public but i don't know. >> i know very little about them. it's a bunch of volunteers in a number of countries. assange has been reported to be with some of his associates outside of london in recent times. he's been in sweden at other times. i mean they are sort of a virtual group. i've heard some names and known some names. there have been people -- it's like the pta or something. people drop out, get disgruntled and leave. there's a guy who left and started something called open leaks now. it's not exactly a stable organization like csis with an address. >> has some similarities. >> despite the overwhelming similarities. >> you don't know where they are. >> they're very hard to -- i have one e-mail address for a

guy but it's -- they're very hard to contact. >> i think there's some in iceland. >> yeah. >> i mean, it's the girl with the dragon tattoo. has anybody got a question here? step right up, floyd. >> with your permission, three related questions. one, did any of the publications pay wikileaks for any of the material? secondly -- >> let's just answer -- is that true? do you know? >> to my knowledge, the answer is no. i don't think any of the ones we've been dealing with have paid. "the wall street journal" i believe reported that they were once offered a deal where if they broke an embargo on the documents, they would have to pay wikileaks $100,000 and they refused to enter into it. it wasn't an upfront payment but scheme where they'd pay if they publish the documents before a particular date. but that was never i don't think

part of our deal. so we've never entered into any kind of monetary agreement with wikileaks. >> setting aside the legal niceties. if the gravamen of espionage and treason is a damage to the country is the country damaged any less by someone who steals a classified document and sells it to a foreign government in contrast to someone who acquires known stolen classified documents and makes it available to all foreign governments? and the second question is what is the rationale do you think whereby someone substitute his or her judgment for an official who determines that a document should be classified?

>> you want a shot at that? >> let me try to strike a balance here without being a partisan. no. i mean, any release of classified is damaging. but so too is it damaging for us to have a debate that tears at the consensus of american society. americans wants their -- everybody that came here wanted to leave where they were. and they were nervous about the government. so every american has a genetic disposition toward wanting to be protected by the government and to be protected from the government. and it's -- this is that delicate balance where we have to strike it all the time. i personally think this was quite damaging and i deeply regret it. i also think that if we were to try to shut down "the new york times" over something like this, it would be far more damaging in american society. this is one of those painful things we go through all the time. and we have to basically rely on

the professionalism of very good journalist sls and responsible companies to work with us at times like this. >> i would just say as a journalist, i think there are times a journalist puts his judgment ahead of someone in the government. just because someone is in the government, wisdom doesn't automatically accrue as a title of a government official. i think there's a question when it comes to it when you have caught the government in an absolute lie and it's a significant lie and you're able to show that it's a lie, then i think a journalist is justified in publishing that. and i think that's kind of what american journalism is all about. >> classified documents? >> well, sometimes documents are classified for no other reason than they mate not be true. anybody who has been in washington knows and understands

that. but i'm just saying you're asking for a justification. that would be one of the justifications that i would cite. and if people didn't make those judgments, the idea of whistle-blower, thinks of that nature -- i think there's a lot of good from whistle-blowers from time to time. but i think there are times -- but when responsible news organizations make a decision to do it they don't say let's just do it, it will be a lot of fun. they give it a lot of thought like "new york times" has done and cbs news has done in times past. it's responsibility. that's the part that a lot of people in mainstream journalism wonder where the responsibility was in wikileaks in making the decision that they did. karen. >> i would ask if you draw a distinction between information that is not passed through a document, information that's

passed in conversations that we have every day of the wooeek th could be considered classified. or does it have to be just something in a document? it's pretty well established law that the first amendment means that if we know something, that we have the option of publishing it. you have the option as a citizen of saying this is garbage and you shouldn't be allowed to do this and then trying to take action to stop it. but i think our responsibility is, whether it's through conversations or looking at documents that we don't publish which we do all the time or somebody actually handing you the document which is actually -- this was kind of a massive handover of documents but the fact is very little of what i do and i would guess r.

guess what scott does too is having someone just hands you a document. that just doesn't -- that's a very rare experience relatively. >> one other thing about classified documents, however, is everyone who has lolled around in declassified documents or filed a freedom of information act request and gotten documents previously classified delivered to them, i mean, there are sort of semi-famous examples, some you can find on the web. and most of us who have been doing this a while has seen them. where a document through oversight or asked for between two different organization agencies redakts it twice. once it's redaktded in 1990 and then 1995 and the first thinks the top half is sensitive and blocks it out and the other blocks out the second half the paper and you get both of them.

it just shows what should be classified and at what level is a very subjective process. and one other small point is -- and this is a fairly extreme example obviously. but i spent a few years living in the soviet union. they used to have an agency which was essentially the official censorship agency. and they had a big, thick book of everything that was banned. and government had sort of the upper hand in that society so that the fisheries ministry put in there that if -- that dumping fish into the ocean waste was a state secret and pretty much everything got to be a state secret after a while. when you ask should the bure catd have the last word on what's classified or should a journalist and many people asked why are journalists appointing themselves a the arbiter of what should be secret. we are imperfect at it but so is

the government. i think it's in this interplay and tension that exists in the way we run our society, that generally we sort of muddle along fairly decently. >> i would add one thing and then we'll go on to something else. much is classified. and because something is embarrassing to the government is not a legitimate reason to classify it. the problem with all of that is once it gets classified, getting it unclassified takes literally years. i was telling dr. hamre before this canal one of my favorite stories i ever did at cbs news years ago during the pentagon papers. i was the pentagon correspondent. one day i went down to the pentagon book store, which is down in the basement of the pentagon and discovered they were selling the pentagon

papers. if you all will remember they were selling them as books and people were lined up to buy them. i took a camera crew down there and took pictures and did the story because what made it a story is because upstairs they were still classified and locked away in safes. i'll never forget. that evening after the news walter cronkite called me and said if you hadn't taken pictures of that i wouldn't have believed it. that's the mess with all of this classification. >> i think just briefly along those same lines there's a controversy going on now where the congressional research service, people who work there who are charged. they are told they cannot access any of these documents which are on every website in the world. to inform them as they write their reports. they cannot refer to any information that's in any of them in their reports to

congress. presumably they can go home and turn on their home computer and have full access to it. but then they can't acknowledge in their reports they've had full access to it. it is a pretty confusing and sometimes ridiculous system. >> anybody else have a question? >> aside from the embarrassment, it seems to me there are going to be two very likely consequences. the first has to do with freedom of speech and the first amendment. the second combining what john calls these anarchists cyber people with something like stux net. julian assange hired a top notch british attorney. that will be an interesting court case. i wonder how you come out with the issues of the first amendment. what has when this is not information leaking but something along the lines of real damage? the gas tonian cyber attacks or stux net attacks into iran where

you have thousands of travelers able to jump on and support that. >> well, i think a very valid irn u but i think it's a different issue. we do not as organized society know how to deal with this powerful communication tool that's grown up to be so hugely ubiquitous and open and that we've made ourselves so dependent on. we have huge vulnerabilities associated with this. and yet we don't know how to shut it off because we depend on it every day. so we're frankly just sum bling our way through this. i personally don't think that there is an ultimate solution to this problem because clever people will always find ways to tear apart computer software. so we use -- we have kind of a

physical model for cyber security which is you kind of have a fence around your yard, gate at the driveway, motion detectors, double locks on the doors. i think that's inappropriate for cyberspace. i think we should think of cyberspace as -- how do doctors stay healthy in hospitals working with sick people because that's what scriber space is going to be. this is going to be a polluted dangerous environment and we have to stay as healthy as we can. it's more about exercise and sleep and the capacity to recover quickly. you're going to get sick and it's about recovering once you get sick because it's just not going to be possible to stay pristine in this environment. it's too u bik with us a problem now. >> on that note, thank you all for coming. chor for low more

than a half-hour. >> i am at abc this week, and what i am trying to do is putting more for perspective from the international wld, trying seat things that richard holbrooke deals with and bring them to a wider american audience. it is great to be with you and ambassador holbrooke. we're going to be chat for the next half an hour. i like to welcome you here and appreciate that to change your schedule to be here.

as we all know, this is being strained online as well. this starts with -- richard, you've known david through several imprisonmen and arrests. >> all of them. [laughter] first, in bosnia which i was covering and i remember being ytone during the da 10 process. how do you remember those days? you're trying to deal with humanitarian crises as well. >> david did manage to get himself captured and was in a very bad position. we had decided to stop the negotiations until he was rest. i remember milosivic saying that are you crazy enough to stop this because of one journalist who was where he should not have been? >> and i said, yes.

after three days, they got him out. my most vivid memorys the last time voskhod david before captivity. it was at the wedding of a friend of ours. he hadn't not been married. they had been engaged. he said he was going back to afghanistan. and i said jokingly, don't kid yourself captured again. he said, oh, no, no, i will never happen. [laughter] and as he recounts in his articles and books,, quite interesting story. he tried to explain to the taliban that he was to be regarded in a different way because he had tried to expose the atrocities of the bosnian serbs against muslims. he thought the one make an impact on those people. on the contrary, they google them and the first thing they showed up was his relationship

to made. in the taliban gold -- >> the taliban googled. >> have you seen mollah zero febook mullah omar's page? he went to an interesting party last night. but they are so brutal and ruthless. you can confirm this, david, if i get this wrong. they are so ruthless that instead of realizing what did was trying to do, they got a harsh because you are the best friend of richard holbrooke and he is barack obama's special representative to this region. it did not help at all. is that a fair representation of what happened? >> yes. they had watched documentary.

>> it leads to a natural next question. david was precisely where he was meant to be in order to expose the atrocities, whether in bosnia, on the other side, or in afghanistan. unfortunately he had to pay the price for a long time. but the fact that the taliban googled might be a laugh line, but that means that they are savvy. they understand what they are dealing with, how to reach the audience that they want to reach, a how to manipulate the public's face and the hearts and minds space. >> and the cliche of that which is accurate. they're not the taliban of the 1990's. they have learned from blowing up the buddhas, a worldwide wakeup call to what they were. they have become more sophisticated but they have not

changed their brew roots, their ideology, and there goes. >> has this media savvy complicate efforts or stop the those who are trying to defeat them? just to take that rome first, the mea space. >> i do not think it has affected perceptions of taliban in the europe and the united states. >> in their region? >> in their region, they are trying t exploit opportunities, the traditional target of anti- americanism that we're fighting on moslems low, christian crusaders. david's point about the taliban think that 60% of american art prostitutes, this is not a small point. it shows that they're playing to a field of enormous ignorance i

which communications are primarily still by radio, but highly literate and susceptible people. >> the question is, who is winning that battle a perception right now? >> in afghanistan, public opinion poll has shown that the afghanremember the black years, especially the women. the public support of the taliban and is always in the same range. they do not want the taliban bad. >> that is important. some americans against the war and will like to see the troops come back sooner rather than letter always say, well, look, the people of afghanistan do not want us there. in my reporting, i have seen the opposite. in millions of arabs -- of afghanistan to put their trust in to us.

if you go there, you see things that are not well reported immediately. i attempted train civil servants. our attempts to rebuild acker and agriculture. it was exporting agriculture until the soviet invasion. the country is so broken by 30 years of continuous war, warlordism, and they always miss the punch line, which leads directly to where we are today. and the consequences. it is a broken society. on the core issue, it is not a popular uprising, but i want to make an important caveat. a leader in the chinese revolution says something when i

was working in vietnam. give me two good men and i can take any village in china. it was pioneered in the 1920's and becomes standard opeting position for guerrillas of the world. you go into a village, you kill the main landowner, if you kill the lol officials. terrorize the village, and the od people have no way of rallying and become neutralized, and the new takeover. -- and then you take cover. >> as david was saying and was being noted by the filing of misfiles are drums across the pakistan border, the taliban still exist. there are still big areas that they control or always thecan disrupt. and pakistan, and tell me whether this is correct aeronaut, you assess that the pakistani government will not go out for certain of their militant groups, such as t hot

tiny -- haqqani group. they seemed be closing down certn routes. where does that stand right now and how spread out and how effective are the taliban along that border? >> let me address those questions in turn. on the first, the overall relationship with pakistan is complicated, more complicated than any strategic relationship i have never been involved in. but at the end of the day, success in afghanistan, however you define success, is not achievable unless pakistan is part of the solution and not part of the problem. we can sit in this room and say all the things that a lot of you may be thinking about that, but in the end, we're going to work with the pakistanis, because i

believe it is the right policy in the administration does too. it does not mean that we're not without frustrations as reflected in the "washington post." the area the size of italy, from the canadian border to florida, we were the first country in. very visible, very popular with the pakistani people, i went to the flood zone and i'm proud of that. but at the same time we have these issues that you have alluded to. as far as the current situation on the border, which is now the story of the day, let me be very -- let me try that phrase it very precisely. first of all, i did a believe it is going to change the fundamental lesson ship between our two could -- i do not believe it is going to change the fundamental relationship between our two countries. it is an area of -- where you

have been and david spent involuntary amounts of time there, it is ill-defined in areas, it is complicated, and very rough to make -- terrain. it was very unfortunate. an investigation is going on on that by nato as it should, and the secretary of general has expressed his regret about that and i would echo that but do not think it would change the fundamental of the relationship. >> right, but has it affected of major military point, to allow the routes to be used forative goods? >> right nowhere was a big attack on one of the convoys. it is not clear who did that. there have been other attacks but that journalist link is attached to these events. >> i believe that the routes are now not quite close but they are moving more slowly.

did and that is germane. a. >> we will work that out. >> you think that you will? >> forster. it is inconceivable to me that the closing of the routes, the alleged of the -- the alleged closing, but not full closing, will continue for any length of time. if you go that route and look at it from a helicopter, do look that that and once these are clothes in that thing, it will have a colossal effect on the region. it is a dangerous area. >> how you determine that the pakistanis despite the if -- the effos of the general, the better relationship on security and cracking down on their homegrown fred, have you determined that. nonetheless not going to go after the haqqani network? to it and i'll let them speak

for their own military fans. this is their business and their country. and they have lited resources and many challenges, and right now they have 67 -- 60,000 troops were 70,000 troops working in the area. we have said that more can be done in this regard. >> it is their issue but it is your issue. if they do not go after them, then you're going back go after the -- the united states. is that what u.s. policy is? >> i am not one to buy into your phraseology. it was a nice drive. >> have you determined that you're going to have to take out the haqqani network? >> i am not. answer. >> that is a direct question. >> and that as a direct answer. [laughter] >> we will get to that. it and i want to tell the story right now because you are harassing me.

i came out into a gaggle and all these journalists yelling, and suddenly there's this table in the back, and she appears on top of the table with her own camera in her hand and starts yelling a question, and everyone backs of. that was the beginning. >> you use to answer questions. >> i still do. >> you said that the taliban are more sophisticated now than when ey blew up bdhas. >> in media terms. they have not change their tactics, the brutality. >> for their goals, but they have the weapons of the moment and they are extremely dangerous and very difficult to counter. for all bus, looking from a far and listening to various

statements that come out of this administration, like the chairman of the joint chiefs saying yesterday, cautiously optimist any mention several areas. but looking from afar, it is difficult to get a real idea of what is happening on the ground. would you say that you're breaking the back of the taliban? is the military effort breaking the back of the taliban? >> i am not going to part boston .ade about -- prognosticate they a in areas where they're really being hurt. there are other areas where the taliban is holding its own. and there may be somereas where they're making limited inroads. but the influx of additional international troops has made a real difference and created more space for an effort to push them

back. >> are you optimistic? >> as a set, this is not a game. you remember that i would never answer that question. we have a job to do and we're going to do it. and i am not a light at the end of the tunnel stop. >> how would you compare where you are today from a year ago when you started? >> the taliban were under much more immense pressure than they were then. >> there has been a lot of talk about what he did not states is going to agree with or back, whether the afghan government will get into any meaningful negotiations with the taliban, because most people say that there is no full military solution to this and there will eventually be a negotiated solution. can you give us a status report of the likelihood that any and

negotiate -- meaningful resolution with any kind of element of the taliban? >> let me start by reminding you all the from the beginning of this administration, david petreaus, mike mullen, the president, hillary, everybody, we have always said that there is no purely military solution to this war. what does that mean? there will be some eventual political solution. president karzai has repeatedly reached out in public, including his inaugural speech last november, his speech in london in january, his speech at the kabul conference in july which hillary and i were at, and many otherpaces. so the terrain of to be very clear to everyone. we on this stand. you're not want to stamp out the taliban by military force.

but the issue of how the war comes to an end, all wars come to an end but this one has a unique dynamic, because it has continued for over 30 years with shifting groups and the enemy is not a single enemy like the north vietnamese or the viet cong or like the bosnian serbs like most wars. it is all these different groups, the afghan taliban, al qaeda, with whom we cannot e.t., they the l overlap but they have different goals. it is a uniquely complicated problem. having said that, of course, their discussions on what the basis for an outcome that does not involve a military solution continues. but there is no current, clear pa of sort you're talking

about that is readily apparent. i want to stress to everyone here at this wonderful conference, because it is and ideas conference, andhis is a very big idea that we're very mindful of. all of us here discuss this seriously, and we understand its importance, and we have been talking to the afghans and the pakistanis and other important participants in the region about as. >> then negotiated resolution including elements of the taliban, is that what you're specifically talking about? >> i am going to avoid the word negotiated. it carries the implications of dayton or camp david. >> why avoid it? even if it is not all the formal process like dayton, either you have some kind of deliberations by the afghan govnment or u.s. sen that they are going to

buckle and cry uncle and surrender. didn't dare many other variants. >> tell us some. please. >> there is the situation -- there are many different elements. >> we are confused because many of the military commanders say, yes, this is a good idea, to bring the elements of the taliban who are reconcilable into an end of the conflict. but in order to do that, you must first deliver them the knockout blo put them on their heels, so that they understand they are coming at this from a position of weakness. >> and you just answered your run question. you laid out a scenario. >> is it possible? >> it is absolutely possible. that is why i emphasize that there is different enemies out there.

each one -- there are so many other groups, i only mention the big five. >> this is a very important idea and you have been here very many times fore it. in this case, the original partner of the united states when they win nt afghanistan was the no. alliance. ullah was his deputy and he led the no. alliance. he said to me recently, do you really believe that the taliban that is committed to a worldwide islamic caliphate, to obliterating the rights of women, is going to negotiate with a government that it ?elieves is infel the mind set, i want you ask and you say that there's no

meaningful talks going on right now, is the radio -- in their place for this idea to germinate? >> there is space for this idea to germinate. secondly, your question impli a partial solution. and i want to go back. general petreaus and i talked about this a lot. he went through something similar in iraq. there are groups out there which switch allegiances. they will fight against foreigners, the allied themselves with the foreigners. that also happened in iraq. the circumstances are very different. some of these bds are simply defending the ballet they have lived in four centuries against the latest -- some of these groups are simply defending the valley they have lived in for

ceuries. alaeda, it is not possible to talk to them. then you go on to the other groups and you say, some of those are in constant contact with a field commander lovell. some local taliban calls on the cellphone to a person who is a relative of a friend's in the local area and says, we are tired of this war. we would like to come in from the cold. this is the reintegration program that president karzai unveiled in london on january in which we and the british and the japanese and others are funding, and it is a very of foreign programs. >> how many have you brought in? >> is not yet operational. don't give me that low. >> why not? why is not operational? >> because the government of afghanistan has not yet gotten up and running to the level it

should be. >> we have an important issue. how much time you have? the president s put a fixed deadline on it. each time you talked about condition-based, and july 2011. mri? >> does not mistake july 2011 -- do not mistake july 2011. he has said very clearly that withdrawal will begin on a careful, conditions-based -- not a deadline. it is not a deadline. it is the beginning of a drawdown process. there is no and that stated. is conditions- related to the issue were talking about. back to the reintegration program, because i want to clarify this. this is a very important program. nobody can be satisfied with this current operational level

, because the afghan government does not have in place yet the people who were born to implement this program. the project is like everything in afghanistan, constrained by the circumstances of this tragic, tormented country. this country like -- this program is not going to be where it should be. i fully agree with you to its importance. general petreaus, congress -- we have a very important member of the congress here, and jane harman, who was involved with this, congress has authorized that petreaus can use some of his emergency funds to support this program. all the afghan government is still trying to organize it, and agree with you that it is too slow, general petreaus -- you're just there and you must of

talked to david about this. general petreaus and his team are putting into place this program at the local level. and it is proceeding. >> one of the reasons -- for unknown reasons, there have been on the ground in many of these spaces, nation-building in this country, the term is a dirty word. and yet every single general, colonel, capt., right down to the ground level, in places like bosnia, iran, afghanistan, wherever, almost unanimously would say -- maybe they do not use that term -- but the only way to do this is to do long- term -- what is the right term without nation-building? not just reconstruction, but an

alternative economic future, education, all the st power things that have to happen in order to win any of these wars. how much are your hands tied by the real distance the success of administrations in the united states have put? >> the previous administration made this a dirty word, specifically the secretary of defense. there was an institute for nation-building and runs felt shut it down. you did not mention the thousands of american civilians, government employees, ngos, try and tractors and much greater danger because they have no security and they are on the front line. i want to pay tribute to them because that is the part of a program that i am supposed to be overseeing. but to get back your core point, nation building became a dirty word because it was spun out in the wrong way.

all of what everyone, but we're not building the nation of afghanistan. we're tryg to help them rebuild. agriculture is the perfect example. they were in agricultural export country. they worry breadbasket. they dominated the world markets. they exported to their neighbors week and grapes. they even supported good ones. that is not going to happen again. many of them are still there. that was all destroyed. we can help them to it. they may be the poorest non- african country in the world, but the highest literacy rate, of massive job but it is not nation-building. they know who they are. bear in mind that afghanistan has never had the separatist movements that you are so miliar with in yugoslavia,

that exist right now and sudan, and even neighboring pakistan and india. >> some of the leaders of said to me, you have this huge country strategically located, were by and large of population wants international forces there, aligning itself with progress. they want girls educated, they ll security, economic development, stand up on their own 2 feet and they're not looking for charity or hands out its record handouts. that is a totally different narrative. hot -- of friendly, mostly moslem country rather than when the taliban was there. is it not five times more important to really go after the bi you are involved in, the economic development -- call us what you want, but give them an alternative to terrorism and

drugroduction and all of that? >> the short answer to your question is yes. the more complicated answer is, in order to make that work, you have to be integrated with other aspects of policy and it must include a similar program in pakistan. the congss signs the checks. they have legitimate concerns about accountability, transparency, the issue of corruption, and selling on -- and so on. i want to go back touly 2011 and the statement of the america long-term presence. we have all said repeatedly that there has to be a presence in afghanistan after the combat troops leave. because they will eventually leave, this is not an open-ended commitment. the president has said repeatedly and that goes to your point, we can repeat the

mistakes of 1989, when the soviets crossed the bridge back into the soviet union and the united states immediately turned its back on afghanistan and a country we had been so involved just imploded. they move this started the various issues that we stop about earlier. it will require economic development and aid, including the issues you raised and i have raised -- agriculture, women's empowerment, and so on. we cannot turn our backs on women. we cannot have the dramatic cover photo on "time" magazine become an actual reality. the nose cut off. the headline said, what will happen if we lose afghanistan. the photograph of was something happening there today.

it is a key pulled -- part of the culture and we cannot change the culture. and it is a part of the culture? that is a criminal act by the taliban. that is that criminal and political @. >> i do not want to get into that. >> and have acid thrown at them for the rest of time. >> do not represent what i said. there's a strong culture in afghanistan which you know very well, gurkhas -- burkas, and let me finish because you made a very serious misrepresentation of what i said. there is a strong culture there. >> aequally strong culture of women fighting back. jetting you cut me off.

>> i am not saying you're trying to let that happen. >> i am not condoning them. i've given my entire life to fighting them and so has helleri. i am making a point that we do not want it to happen again. but it happens even now, it is not just the taliban to do it, it is part of an ancient culture which is an extraordinary stress. it does not just happen i afghanistan, as you certainly know. >> we have one more minute. >> but i have to finish the core point. after the troops leave, we must remain with economic and social development to prevent this kind of thing from happening. and we must continue to train the afghan police and army. that is not going to be cheap. it will be an international effort and that goes to your question about nation-building. >> we do have one last question.

it goes right to th culture thing. at the binni you said depending on how people define success. i want to ask you about that. a lot of people say you promised to bring democracy, will you promise this, you promised that, and we cnot because of thr lture or they are not disposed to this. you think people in do you think that people in the west think the idea of democracy should be western-style or nothing at all? >> success i would define it success as a country that is at peace and that in which its government, and by government i do not just mean kabul. afghanistan has not been run historical a because of the ethnic groups and lack of communication by kabul. but a country which is stable

enough to work on his economic development and build its institutions and give people literacy which is critically important. literacy is the greatest gift. and rebuild its institutions. and that has an understanding with islamabad so these two neighbors with strategic interests can live together in some degree of harmony. we will never have a day where it is violence free. like many other countries we are familiar with, there will be residual movements, subplots, special tribes that will keep fighting, but to get it out of the world arena and yet continue to have the world support. it is not an easy task. i do not want anyone in the room to be misled. it will not be easy to do. but that is part of the process.

but our core goal remains to defend our national security on the ground, in the region, because there are people in that region that will attack the united states. the times square bomber went back to the border area to get trained. enemies of the united states are still out there, and we have to take action. >> holbrooke, thank you very much indeed. thank

seat.he is the newest member of foreign relations committee. this is about 50 minutes. >> i want to welcome all of you to this event. we are very happy. my name is bruce king, i'm the executive director here at the university of california washington center and a professor of political sciences, uc berkeley where we were very pleased to host this event and to give the space to the progressive policy institute. we feel that they do good work, of course, and that this is a wonderful program. for those of you who don't know, the university of california washington center is a mini campus of the university of california.

we have 280 students that come here every quarter and they take courses here and take intern ships with groups like the progressive policy institute. we also have many, many students and many, many professors interested in the affairs in as asia, so this is a program that they're proud to sponsor. it's a distinguished program and we hope that you have a good day. thank you. >> thank you very much, bruce. we want to start this program today by expressing our deep gratitude to the university of california washington center for making this marvelous facility available for us. my name is will marshall and i want to welcome you to today's forum which is entitled china's choice, regional bully and global stake holder. now i know that that is going to have a provocative ring to lots of people including our chinese friends, but i don't think that

the use of the "b" word, bully is wrong, given what we've seen lately. there was just this last week the arm twisting campaign to prevent countries from sending representatives to the nobel prize ceremony of liu xiaobo and that raised a considerable amount of eyebrows around the country, if not alarmed and also within the region. there's also beijing's assertion of sovereignty, virtual complete sovereignty of the south china sea and the confrontations there over disputed islands with japan which led to a good deal of unpleasantness and the rationing of rare earth met alex tracts from china. there was a program of aggressive naval expansion which the pbi in a wonderful series of three report by michael chasen that you will hear from later

from the national war college has documented this naval building program in a three-part series now and we understand that china like any great power, wants to ensure supply lines for the natural resources that power and it's remarkable, economic growth, but there is also the feeling in this country that the -- that the buildup of naval forces is intended to deny the united states access to the waters in this part of the world. recently we've seen yet another unprovoked attack on north korea by south korea and china's are you fusal to condemn north korea for this aggression and in fact, preventing the u.n. security council from taking up this matter and taking up a motion of censure which has led many people to argue that in effect, china is enabling belligerent and dangerous behavior by the north korean regime and while

many countries in the region feel as though their powerful neighbor and beijing has been throwing its weight around militarily, there is the suggestion that china is not pulling its weight in terms of the global economy. obviously, we're looking at huge trade and investment imbalances here as a result of a policy that's export oriented rather than oriented around increasing domestic consumption. the currency peg, the yuan has become an issue of tension with the united states. the ex-appropriation of technology of u.s. firms doing business in china and intellectual property have all become contentious issues. so while china expects to play a global role commensurate with enormous power and its status as the world's second largest economy, its seat on the world

steering committee comes, it seems to us, with certain understanding and requirements to respect the interest of other countries and to accept the responsibilities to the international community. the council on foreign relations has argued again provehicle tivoli that china may not be interested in being a simple stake holder in the global system. as she puts it and china has become a revolutionary power. now this falls in the category of important, if true since it bears hugely on china's behavior and the u.s. relationship with china. we at ppi are not alarmists. we're huge admirers of the stup endous economic achievement over the last few years. we don't think that antagonism between the two countries are ordained by history and we think that china's growth can readily be accommodated in the international system that has

been in large part shaped by american foreign policy over the last several decades and we do need a clear assessment with the u.s. relationship with china and one that's realistic and reciprocal and consistent with our core national interest because this will shape global politics over the better part of the next century, and our purpose today to highlight some of the critical issues and we think should be on the agenda when president hu jintao comes to meet with president obama in january. without further ado, we have an embarrassment of riches today. i'm going to introduce two before turning the program over? let me get on with that? our first speaker of the day will be senator chris cooms who is a good friend of mine and a great addition to the united states senate and he's filling the seat to vice president joe biden by ted coughman and his election from my point of view

is one of the bright spots in the midterm election and one of the few, and, you know, many people know senator cooms is the one that kept witchcraft out of the united states' senate, but chris has been a great friend of ours and we first met when he was new castle county delaware and was elected in 200 and in two terms there produced a remarkable record of pragmatic and effective lee progressive leadership guiding it through terrible economic downturn and budget surpluses with raising taxes, skills that may soon be useful in washington with any luck. in the senate he sits on the foreign affairs committee and the homeland security, the trifecta of national security. it was obviously in a pivotal position to play a key role in the foreign policy debates in this country. without further ado, let me

welcome senator cooms to our forum today and look forward to hearing from you. >> thank you, will, for that kind introduction, and thank you for your more than two decades of service as the president of the progressive policy institute. since 1989 ppi has served as a hub of intellectual innovation for the progressive movement and i want to thank you and your staff for your leadership and your commitment. even when i was county executive i found useful and constructive ideas for ppi and look forward to working with you more closely in my new role. i want to briefly acknowledge the untimely passage of the one of the nation's leading diplomats as everyone in the room knows ambassador richard holbrooke for more than 50 years, a committed public servant dedicated his life to resolving some of the world's most difficult and intractable conflicts with his invaluable contributions to american foreign policy will be truly

missed. my thoughts and prayers go out to his family as well as those who served with him in the administration and overseas and who will sorely miss his special voice in american foreign policy. i am honored to begin today's important policy about our relations with china and a prediction about its future role and how we might affect it and i'm humbled to speak between this truly distinguished panel of experts. though i wish i could stay for what i know will be a fascinating conversation, i do need to return to the senate, but i look forward to reading the comments of those on the panel today. assy prepared my remarks i look forward to what i can contribute to the conversation with just a month of service under my belt. what occurred to me is as a newly-elected senator from my home state of delaware. i have seen and heard the growing frustration. the deep concern of the average american and their perception or misperceptions about the

consequences about the rise of china. as i heard over and over my little state that we have the face of an economically ascendant china and they believe that washington has taken the eye off the ball when it comes to understanding, responding to or containing the dangers by china. i was involved with the homeland security committee and our relationship with china as i got to thinking about it is the work of every committee of the senate, whether it's agriculture, commerce, judiciary or education. the range and scope of issues pertaining to china are so wide that i believe will require the diligence of every committee of congress. as we consider the many facets of the u.s.-china relationship it is worth asking what can and

should the senate do to protect american interest? i will tackle these with two sental, and then moving to what we should do. with regard to national security issues, even to one that was here a month, we need only look to the lame duck session to see some of the serious political constraints. it enjoys very strong bipartisan support past and present and regardless, and the intransigence continues even after the senate has held 18 hearings on the issue and the administration has granted multiple policy and funding concession. the persistent actions of a determined few and the acquiescence of nearly an entire caucus has needlessly and in my view, had the treaty and, national security imperative such as new start should override partisan consideration. the senate paralysis on stark

forces me to wonder just at the outset how constrained we will be driven by politic in the case of china then. my opening question is will the senate be constructive, destructive or simply an irrelevant player in the ongoing relationship. these days we hear ominous predictions of america being weakened. something i heard across my state and i'm comfort adby what i view as a long tradition of misjudging the so-called threats posed by ascendant nations. we're talking first about the predictions made in the 1950s of us being eclipsed by russia, following the launch of sputnik and being overshadowed by japan as america's auto manufacturing dominance was in decline. there are key differences in regard to china. i believe the future of our relationship, like our relationship with both russia and japan does not necessarily exist in one extreme or the other. it is, at least for now,

hyperbole to speak of china overtaking america. in our increasingly multipolar world the super power has, in fact, changed. at the same time, i don't view it as a zero sum gain. china's rise does not need to mean the decline of america. it is insecurity opportunities through which it's possible to pursue shared interest in a manner that will be down to our mutual benefit. true, there are very troubling trends. china has increased its defense spending and a recent survey by the oecd found that students in shanghai have topped those not just in new york in the educational system. china's ownership lasted $900 billion of u.s. treasurys present a growing and very real challenge to our financial and strategic independence. what matters is whether we measure china not in terms that

are relative, but in absolute because in reality our total defense budget is still more than four and a half times china and we invest six times as much in rnd and the per-capita income remains a dozen times more than china. the higher education remains the envy of the world and we still manufacture more than china despite a persistent trade imbalance and the perception of the average american. this growing debt is? my view, a critical challenge for us and we have neither quick nor painless solutions to either. that's the story in numbers, but i wanted to share with you and reinforce with you the perception from the campaign trail. as i was going from the camden, wyoming parade in delaware, something you have been to a half dozen times or more. my daughter maggie was joining me as she so often did for campaign events up and down the state. and that morning there had been an article saying that the chinese economy was the world's largest.

looking in the rear-view mirrored to my daughter, maggie, honey, what's the most powerful country in the world. without looking up she said daddy, that's got to be china? >> i said why? because every single thing i play with in my room is made there. the rest of the campaign was struck at the strength of the response from average delawarean, from seniors to high school kids, from veterans to teachers, democrats and republicans and i think it reflects a very broadly-shared concern that we are losing out to china, that we're losing manufacturing jobs today and as a consequence global leadership tomorrow and that it will impact not just our security, but ultimately our prosperity and while these challenges are real, measuring them by the rate of china's ascendancy is mes leading and diverts the pressing tasks that are ours to do and making the products ultimately

more competitive. i think we need to consider how our own behavior is contributing to the economic independence of china to tackle the issues at home. in my view the most important actions the senate can and should take is to take ascendant china through domestic decisions and rather than things that are fundamentally foreign in nature. the best way for us to drive forward is by looking through the wind she would rather than the rear-view mirror. so to the question of what we should do? we need to reduce our dependency on chinese lending. we need to improve our educational system to maintain our competitive edge. we need to address critical issues and trade and intellectual property rights to strengthen and sustain our capacity to innovate ask we need to reinvigorate american manufacturing to renew our economic leadership and address our trade imbalance.

if we cannot do these things, stimulate the right kind of economic growth we will forfeit critical opportunities for building a more stable and mutually beneficial economic relationship with china and ultimately our leadership in the world. the senate can and should play an intelg ral role in which direction we take and it is my hope that we can overcome the common divide and forming a common -- two things that are increasingly difficult to come by and the headwinds dominate the short-term forecasts. it will continue to constrain our diplomatic leverage on other critical issues with korea, iran and human rights. as marshall mentioned at the outset, last week's decision to bar liu xiaobo demonstrates how far beijing is willing to go to make sure they silence the voices of dissent. it is also not surprising given the nation's reflective posture

with regard to perceived challenges to the sen rality of the communist regime. the decision to boycott the ceremony in oslo, demonstrates china's increased use of diplomatic pressure. china's growing power, both regionally and globally stems from the economic a sendance which does have wide-ranging implications and one needs to only look at issue of iran to understand security and economics. china has been at times, both an be on tackle and a partner to thwart iran's nuclear developments. they have the first round of u.n. sanctions in june and on the other, side they've taken precedence when it comes to beijing's populations. china is the second largest import and it is willing to risk that critical relationship and recently enacted. it's important to consider

china's ability to leave iran. it's important the extent to which iran will proceed any policy 25. we're reminded of the grave, critical responsibilities associated with global power. looking forward. the u.s. relationship for china races more questions than answers and to remember the concern of the average american who elect and send members of congress here to be a part of the deliberative process and it is important for us to keep in mind the view of the average person who takes seriously the warning of our rear-view mirrors that objects may be closer than they appear. that at least is what i plan to do. i take seriously the challenges on the nation internally and on the national stage and i look forward to working with my

colleagues on both sides of the aisle to bear down and focus these two challenges. i am grateful to be with you this morning and i hope i contributed something as a member of the newly elected senate whether the senate can and will create a role in the relationship. thank you. >> the senator has time for one or two questions from the press. please fire away. identify yourself first. [ inaudible question ]

>> i obviously don't speak for the senate, but my hope is that we will continue to weave a positive path forward that allows us to recognize that the success of both nations is interwoven and that we need to be dealing with currency issues with int recht all prospeelect in a common context and it is a commitment to making progress on these issues that we can succeed in a way that is harmonious for both nations. thank you. >> my question is in the next two weeks do you think the senate has time to pick up the currency reform issue? i know two senators proposed a bill yesterday on the currency. >> the time remaining for our lame duck session is very short and there are many, many issues that are clamoring for what's called floor tomb or four legislative attention. my strong hunch is that that is not an issue that will see floor

time between now and the end of the lame duck session. although it is important and will be a critical issue that will be considered again in the next congress, my hunch is that it is not on the list of things that will be acted on in the next ten days. i'm happy to take one more and then -- please? >> you said the best way to address foreign policy and defense concerns is for china to deal with domestic issues, but are there some things that the united states can and should do specifically in the defense realm as china becomes more assertive particularly in areas of the western pacific with the economic zone and all of the various things they're doing and saying that the u.s. aircraft carrier shouldn't go into the yellow sea and we've had to

accept the arm sales to taiwan, but we don't have to accept them anymore and we're not going to. how should the u.s. respond to that? >> i think, ney think we need to continue to sustain the relationships. >> we need to continue to grow the strategic relationships in the region. so things that would, for example, impair ongoing relationships with japan, south korea and taiwan, we shouldn't embrace, and my larger point essentially was this, that if we don't get our economic house in order, if we don't address our balance of payment, if we don't address our manufacturing and all the rest of it in the long run is commentary and so short term, strategic concerns and interests of the united states, absolutely, we need to continue to advance responsibly in a multilateral framework, but if we don't keep an eye on the long-term interest of china and

the short-term strategic -- and the way to drive the hard is not by looking down over the board and in my -- these short-term challenges which are significant and real and deserve our engagement and attention. we need to maybe sure that will prevent us from forging a strategic, long-term relationship. thank you. >> thinks. thank you very much senator cooms, thank you for emphasizing america's responsibility of econom economic. now it's my pleasure to introduce a guest of the united states government and we are honored to have chip dixon here, assistant secretary of the defense for security affairs and

also retired lieutenant general of the united states marine corps. he was formerly the commanding general of the marine corps forces in the pacific and central command. he served and lived in japan. he's also a combat veteran of vietnam where he earned the bronze star and the purple heart. he's a grad watt of the u.s. naval academy and i would note in concluding that the service to this country is a family affair for the gregsons as their son is serving as a marine corps officer. secretary, i'm very proud to have you here. please take a look. >> thank you. pardon me while i re-arrange a prop here so that i get my notes at the right height between the regular lenses and the bifocals and you'll be there some day.

thank you, will, for the introduction and for the progressive policy institute for having this forum. thanks to the university of california washington center for providing the wonderful and warm venue. i join you this morning on behalf of undersecretary of defense for policy, michelle florio. michelle was looking forward to being here, but she was called over to the white house for various meetings on short notice. there's a lot of these short-notice meetings going on lately. she sends her regrets and best wishes for a successful forum and i would like to join senator cooms in joining a great hero of american government and diplomacy in the past. we have lost a giant figure on the american scene. for over two decades will and his colleagues have been among the leading progress of forces.

and the military strength has proud lineage established in world war ii and during the post-war decades as franklin roosevelt and harry truman and john f. kennedy. it is a model that is quite relevant as america faces the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. among the greatest challenges and opportunities that we face in the century as a continued growth and development of the asia pacific region. i think it's useful when discussing topics this varied and complex to remind ourselves of some basic facts and perspectives. one of the important things is the asia-pacific region has experienced 60 years of general peace, stability and prosperity. yes, there have been significant exceptions such as our wars in korea and vietnam as well as clashes among asian powers such

as those between china and vietnam, china and india and between india and pakistan, but even with these exceptions in mind, it is impossible to look at the last six decades in the asia pacific region without marveling at the overall stability and prosperity of this period. this record is even more remarkable when one considers the poverty and strive that had prevailed over this part of the world for so long. another basic fact to keep in mind is that this long-term stability, security and prosp prosperity are the direct result of u.s. leadership and engagement. ahh as this audience is keenly aware, we are a pacific nation. our presence in the region has been vital to the progress and growth that we have seen there. that progress and that growth have proceeded to the where the asia pacific region is a true economic catalyst. consider just a foo statistics.

china has sustained economic growth rates that top 8.5% per year even at a time of great financial uncertainty elsewhere in the world. 15 of the 20 largest ports in the world are in the asia-pacific region and nine lor kated in china alone. china is the largest trading partner of japan, india, taiwan, australia and south korea, all of which are partners or allies of the united states. the extraordinary growth of the asia-pacific region constitutes one of the most important g geostrategic development of our time. dwlat growth is increasingly based on a paradox. on the one hand, it relies upon the security and openness of the global economies and on the broad acceptance of international norms that make it possible for nations to trade peacefully and profitably with one another and with the economies of the middle east,

europe and the americas, but on the other hand the immense growth of the asia pacific region has created shifting power dynamic, even as the region's vitality creates opportunities to cooperate it creates a more complex security environment that if not properly managed could potentially generate conflict. for a stark illustration for the potential of the trouble in the region, consider one more fact. five of the largest standing armies are in the asia pacific region. kinda, india, pakistan, north korea and south korea in no particular order. in many ways, china sits at the fulcrum, and it determines whether at the nation's future has stability and growth and deeper discord and uncertainty. the u.s. welcomes a strong, responsible and prosperous china that is on the world stage. we see opportunities to cooperate with some of the world's toughest problems such

as countering terrorism and developing new, cleaner energy sources addressing man made climate change and halting the spread of pandemic disease, as president obama said to the u.s.-china relationship our ability to partner is a pre-requisite for progress on many of the most pressing global challenges. china has indeed shown on a number of occasions its willingness to cooperate on regional and global issues. for example, china has increased the deployment of peacekeepers contributing to u.s. missions and is getting actively involved in disaster relief efforts. it has shown a willingness to cooperate in multilateral institutions voting at the u.n., for example, to improve a set of robust sanctions against both iran and north korea. it is an active participant in the emerging, and the east asia

summit and a.p.e.c. and china has deployed five rotations of naval vessels in the gulf of aden to work in concert with the international community in combatting piracy around the horn of africa. this administration policy has been clear and consistent. we seek to engage china and to encourage its development as a constructive participant in regional and international affairs. both countries have a great deal to gain from deeper cooperation and a great deal to lose from estrangement. our policy toward china stands on three pillars. the first is a sustained effort to strengthen and expand bilateral cooperation between the united states and china. for example, we have created the u.s.-china strategic and economic dialogue which brings together the senior leadership of our two countries for in-depth discussion on the entire range of issues on our bilateral agenda. in addition, we aim to improve

people to people ties including through our 100,000 strong program designed to send 100,000 americans to study in china over the next four years. the pill is ar with the partners. china is part of a broader asia policy and bee want to shape the regional context in which china's emergence unfolds. the third pillar is our insistence that china abiding by global norms and international laws that have enabled its own rise to greater prosperity and power. in short, we seek to expand the areas of u.s.-chinese cooperation while improving america's ability to uphold our economic and national security interests. unfortunately, such cooperation is not always easy to attain. while there has been great progress in relations between our two countries, china's priorities and intentions too

often remain opaque and uncertain. its willingness to act as a responsible major power is not yet fully evident. some of the recent actions including with regard to north korea have increased anxiety in the region and beyond. let me take a moment to focus in detail on the situation in the korean peninsula. here you can see how china's role as regional actor can determine whether the reg an can maintain its stability or drifts closer to conflict. after all, china is uniquely positioned to influence north korea's actions due to the historically close relationship between the two governments. seen in this context, china's failure to join the swift and strong international condemnation of recent north korean prof kayings ms. left many in the region including the people of south korea is not doing enough to contain the deeply irresponsible behavior.

this is especially troublesome in light of north korea's determination to constitute the ballistic missile programs which have the potential to profoundly unsettle the security situation in east asia. with these realities firmly in mind, we seek to work with china to reduce tensions on the peninsula and to send north korea a clear signal that it must cease its provocations. in addition, we have concerns about the lack of transparency with which china has pursued its rapid military modernization. in the department of defense, we have a special responsibility to monitor china's military development. it has become increasingly evident that china is pursuing a long-term, comprehensive military buildup that could up in the regional security balance. the focus of china's military development appears to remain focused on potential contingencies in the taiwan strait. our one-china policy based on

the three communiques and the taiwan relations act is well-established. we believe the cross-strait issues should be resolved peacefully for people on both sides of the strait and we oppose unilateral action by either side to alter the status quo. we have welcomed the increasing dialogue and growing interaction between taiwan and china. many of china's newly acquired capabilities agree to go well beyond what might be needed in nearby waters. these are weapons that are anti-access or simply in the acronym-rich pentagon a2 ad. these are to deny access to the western pacific region or to deny the ability to operate -- pardon me, within the vital area. they threaten the primary means of projecting power, our bases, our sea and air assets and the networks that support them.

the a 2ad challenge is not limited to a single weapons system or tactic and it is a series of overlapping capabilities against multiple domains. the most which has been getting the most attention is the china's ballistic missile technology and this is a capability that we have been watching for some years, but there are other examples of destabilizing weaponry, such as advanced submarines and surface-to-air missile, antisatellite weapons and computer network warfare techniques. we acknowledge that increased capabilities are not necessarily cause for alarm. military modernization is, after all, a natural aspect of any country's development. however, the u.s. shares the concern that this type of military buildup far exceeds china's defensive needs. in addition, these kind of weapons threaten to undermine

the basic norm for peace and prosperity such as open access to sea lanes. for commerce and security assistance. we call about upon china for the military capabilities and expenditures and intentions. we are not asking for an unreasonable degree of disclosure, simply enough to allow all parties to avoid miscalculation. a crucial element in building this mutual understanding is the development of better military-to-military relations between the u.s. and the people's republic. during our defense consultative talks which undersecretary hosted in washington last week, both the u.s. and china expressed their views of the dangers that exist whenever the military-to-military relationship is suspended that fails to be implemented to its full potential. accordingly, both sides stress the importance of moving the relationship between the on again/off again cycle.

we need to sustain the comprehensive dialogue including troop periods of disagreement. after all, we must develop procedures for reducing the risk between american and chinese forces as they come into more frequent contact in the western pacific and in other reamingness on of the world. we seek a relationship based on both mutual relationship and mutual interest. a relationship that acknowledges differences but provides a continuous process for seeking common ground. we must actively seek points of convergence while candidly discussing those areas where our interests diverge. the united states and china are not inevitably destined for conflict. even as we manage our differences we can deepen our cooperation across the full range of our shared interest. we're at a krubl moment in the process, following the consultative talks we now move

to two major events next month. secretary gates' trip to beijing and president huh's meeting with president obama here in the united states. these high-level visits will give our two nations an opportunity to set a tone of a broader, more sustained 18 gaugement. the stakes here are very high. after all, interdependence across states have grown. global challenges have grown. the need for greater cooperation and greater shared responsibility has grown and no bilateral relationship in the world can shape outcomes in the 21st century more profoundly than that between the united states and the people's republic of china. between us, we have an extraordinary opportunity. we can help foster an era of continued relative harmony and prosperity in the asia-pacific region and we can work to extend that harmony and prosperity to other parts of the world as well.

we can extend and deepen the international laws and norms that have fostered the progress with china and other asian societies over the last half century. together the united states and china can help build a new century of global stability, broaden prosperity and sustainable growth, but this will require a greater measure of earned trust and mutual openness and the time to begin is now. thank you very much. i would be happy to take any questions. [ inaudible question ] >> was there a new understanding reached with taiwan? is the military dialogue on firmer ground now or are they still a taiwan arm sales away from being suspended? thank you.

>> there -- there are about three questions in there. during the consultative talks and there was a sharing of viewpoints on the arms sales to taiwan. the second question was whether the u.s.-china relationship is on a more stable ground. the more interaction on all levels with the people's republic of china, the more there is a shared understanding, the more we can reinforce those, our joint activities and even our independent activities an area where we agree and thereby minimize the difficulties we have in areas that we disagree and the third point whether we're one taiwan arls sales away and that was up for others to

decide. [ inaudible question ] ♪ >> to the first part of the question, we're aware that after a long period of discussion covering years that the japanese have -- are about to come out with new national defense program guidelines that move

away from a posture that was inherited from the cold war days to one that's different from that. to the question whether the united states is somehow leading japan into a posture that is altering their military with regard to china know we are not and you'd have to refer questions on more detail on why the japanese see the need to do this to japanese spokesmen. >> in the back there. >> this is always good. i'm looking right into a spotlight. i know there's someone back there, but i can't see them. >> identify yourself. >> general shaughnessy from cnn. my question is the president's

visit to beiging next month. is it returning relations between the military of china and the u.s. to to where they were a year ago and do you foresee they have gates and chinese counter part can advance the relationship to a better place than it was about a year ago? the shortest answer to the question is we have a return to a far better place than it was over a year ago. both presidents h s hu and obam have asked to seek a positive relationship and that's a military-to-military relationships. there are areas where we disagree, certainly and there are areas where we can operate together in the gulf offed aen and we seek to enforce those areas where we can work together and continue to work on those

areas where we disagree while minimizing their ability to make the relationship more difficult. i'm richard daly with professor of economics in johns hopkins. the previous speaker, senator cooms asserted that we compromise the indebtedness, now amounting to 900 billion. i think this might be arguable. there is a saying that if you invest $1 million in a company, you own the company, but if you invest $1 billion in a company, the company owns you. so exactly what -- in what way

is our position with regard to expanding areas of cooperation as you said your objective was. how is that exactly compromised by our indebtedness to china? thank you. >> things like this are amusing and by definition i don't know how to finance, but let me offer a point that goes perhaps to senator cooms' broader theme and that is the general lack of confidence in america that's being exhibited in various quarters. i highly endorse his comments on the positive side and our university system and other things like that. the manufacturing that we do that is in areas that are very much in our interest.

the -- i than my colleagues with treasury and with commerce and others work very diligently with their chinese colleagues on the matters that you spoke of, but we are only limited by our imagination here and by what we want to do by accelerating the positive relationship. i would be happy to take the substance of your details and they'd be much better equipped to -- [ inaudible question ] >> during the affair consultation this week, the united states proposed that the hu side should have a framework to avoid on and off

military-to-military relationship in the future. i'm sure that if the united states has arms sales to taiwan in the future, the relationship will be interrupted again. so would you please elaborate what kind of mechanism or framework it would be. thank you. >> i hope you're wrong on the centery of the relationship being the united states side, feel that the military-to-military relationship is of mutual advantage to each side, and it is part of the cooperative comprehensive and constructive relationship that both president hu and president obama have stated is the goal of our two countries. we seek further participation of chinese defense and security personnel in a wide range of talks with the united states, not just a defense-defense ?ñ???ñ?ñ?ñ?ñ?ñ?ñ?ñ=ñ=ñ?÷÷÷l

discuss the regional power and how the chinese might assert themselves op. the global stage. >> -- direcd to moderate the panels so i'm not going to deviate from the norm in that regard. we have three of the best thinkers on u.s./china relations for my money and the country, and we hope that each of them provide fascinating perspectives as i'm sure they will. what we're going to do is just, their biographies are in front of new packets or you may have picked up on the way in. i'm not going to waste our

valuable time by lawedi ilaudins they richly deserve. i'll turn it over to them for a series of remks and hopefully we can move quickly into a discussion and because they are so distinguished, as the distinguished panelists line goes, i ve only provided them with very broad sort of instructions and quotes as to the direction of their remarks. joe ny has a book coming out on china so i anticipate he' preview that. jim fallows lived in china for several years so i'm hoping he'll provide a rich perspective on his experiences and sort of hearing u.s. policymakers talk about these kind of things and then sort of assert maybe a little bit of a contrarian point of view, how are weber received in china, what does all of this talk mean to either a chinese government official or man on the street and mike chase give more of a military perspective. hopefully as you come in, you've all managed to pick up a series of three policy memos that mike

has written for the ppi, talking about a2ad, china's military priorities and budget and one that we're happy to have released today on china's growing naval power and look at this, joe nye is already endorsing them. but with that i'll turn it over to joe. >> thank you very much, jim. i was told to explain the whole u.s./china relationship in my new book in seven minutes, i'll dit in five. having just come back from beijing, shanghai, taipei and tokyo so it's fresh in my mind but let me mention the book which is behind my thinking on this, because i want to -- we can aner immediate questions in q&a but i want to take a longer term perspective in my opening remarks. the book is called "future power." i'm interested how information technology is producing two great power shifts in the 21st century.

one is a power transition from largely west to east, which includes the rise of china. the other is power defusion away from all stes to non-state actors. and that affects both east and west. let me tie the two together at the end but star with what's called the rise of china whi more properly should be called the rise of asia in which china is a part. it's having a more assertive foreign policy as it grows. in the recent year or so, this greater assertiveness in its foreign policy has been noticeable both in the region and in washington, and people speculate about the reasons why. one is that there's a belief in u.s. decline that the financial crisis was a turning point and the other is that there's an increase in nationalism

domestically in china, exacerbated by the transition of in our 2012. nobody wants to be less nationalistic than their competitor at a time like this. now, that has led some observers, for example, my friend, john mirsheime stinguished political scientist, to say in a speech in australia last summer, "the rise of china can't be peaceful." so there is an important question here which is can it be? it matters tremendously because if you go back to power transitions in history, the, thucydides gives the reason the greek city states tore itself apart in the pell poe niecian war as the rise and power of athepz and the fear it spraeted in sparta, many people say world war i, in which the european system tore itself is part was the rise and power of germany and the feart created in

britain and there is a view by some that the 21st century narrative will be the same, the rise and the power of china and the fear it creates in the u.s. will lead to great conflict. well certainly there's a rise in chinese power but it's a mtake to overestimate. goldman sachs has given the precise year, 2027, when the chinese economy equals the american economy. first beware of anything that precise about the future. but secondly, it's plausible that the size of the chinese somewhere around 2030 will be equal to the size of the american economy, given the growth rates. equality and size is not eqlity in composition n per capita, which gives you a better measure of the nature of an economy, even when it equals the u.s., let's say around 2030, it will be one-third in per capita income that of the u.s. the second point is that in

military power, yes, there are increases in chinese military power, particularly in the area in the near seas, which i would wait to let michael chase describe this in his pamphlet, but in terms of global military power, china is not about to catch up for a decade, two decades probably with the united states in global military power. as for soft power, a lot of people talk about the great ri of chinese soft power and reputation. they're spending billions of dollars on not only confucius institutes but having broadcast now, having their own cable tv and so forth. i was asked at one meeting in china where i was giving a speech, how can we increase our soft power, and i said, let lliu sarah palin xiabou out of jail and that was met with resounding silence. it is worth noticing that china

with one action basically undercut these billions of dollars of investment in their own soft power and they don't know how to get away from that, given the political system the way it is now. that's a real problem for them. and then fourth, and finally, in terms of chinese power and not overestimating it, we talk about the rise of asia. it's true. it's real. asia isn't one thing. let me tell you that asia includes japan, india, vietnam, the other asean countries and they have quite different views about the role of china. in fact, most of them are very much in favor of an american presence to balance an increase in chinese power. so that means that the history that people use when they say the narrative of the 21st century is going to be like the 20th century is wrong. germany had passed britain in industrial production by 1900, 14 years before world war i. if what i said is correct, and i

make the argument in great detail in the book, china is not going to be equal to the united states in power for decades, and perhaps even longer. if that's true, then we don't have to have the second hal of thucydides' equation. remember, in the fear it created in. americans can be more relaxed about how we deal with a rising china. it's going to be a long-term relationship of competition and cooperation, and we're going to have to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, both halves of that are going to be important. or another way of putting it is that if we fear too much, it becomes a self-fulfilling prhecy. second point is that in this issue of power defusion of dealing with non-state actors and transnational processes, we're going to need to cooperate with china, whether ite climate or whether it be financial stability terrorism

or cyber security. we in china are going to need to cooperate. so letting too much fear generate and destroy this balance between competition and cooperation relationship is going to hurt us and it's going to hurt china, so i've argued that to paraphrase franklin roosevelt that in terms of thinking of a long-term china policy, the greatest fear we should fear is fear itself. >> thank you. >> thank you. so i'm james from "atlantic monthly." i've been a friend of joe nye's for a long time since he was a professor when i was a student in college long ago and my presentation which i'll also keep to seven minutes will be complimentary, reflecting mainly the difference in our professional backgrounds. i've been living in china for most of the three and a half of the last four years. i was there back in d.c. now. i've published my book about two years ago and another one i'm trying to finish now on this general contours of how to think about china's rise.

let me suggest three ways to think about it, which match sort of match what joe was saying with some differences and emphasis. the first involves america's sense of its own problems, its own internal tensions, whether it is "in decline" or not which is always an issue in american politics, has been for centuries. i think the central thing here is that the issues that matter most to america's viability, to its success economically and socially and politically have almost nothing to do with china. they would be almost identical issue if china did not exist or china were still in some pre-manufacturing era. seems to me as you look at america's vitality now in the historic sweep, the issues of greatest concern are for example the functionality of the political system, whether the u.s. is able to address the big problems of its time through its political vehicles, whether the senate, you know, is the appropriate nd of structure for this era, et cetera, that is one great question, political

nctionality. another is the polarization of american society on many axis, income distrution, wealth distribution, political views, whatever. each of these has some relationship to china's rise, especially the structure of the economy, but you could say if chinhad not gone through its last 30 years of revolution these would still be great issues for the united states, and so it's striking to me that compared say with the japan concentration of 25 years passed, web i was living in japan at that time, i think there was more reason to think that japan's industrial structure was involved in erica's economic problems of those times, than there is to think that china's rise is really connected to what is happening in the u.s. now. so point number one is, americans should think of their own successes and weaknesses as being intellectually separate from whatever china is achieving or not and that avoids one of the fear factors. excuse me that joe is talking about. i'll let the sound engineers do

whatever and i'll keep on talking. a second point that i think is very important, and connects to wh joe was saying related to john meirsheim quote is i think th relationship between the u.s. and china in all dimensions should be thought of as maleable and determined by human beings rather than something that's subject to the iron grip of history's laws. here's what i mean. looking backward, you n say it was almost inevitable that germany's rise 100 plus years ago was going to be disruptive to the european order, british centric order of the imperial time, that there was something in the nature of germany's expansion, the structure of its ecomic growth, t historical burden that was in germany at that time, which made it very unlikely that that wouldn't be disruptive. i would argue, too, that something similar was the case with japan's rise in the post-meiji era. there was something almost

inevitably disruptive to the order from japan's very sudden rise. you know, nothing is truly inevitable but it strikes me how it is shocking or it is remarkable, given the nature and the scale, the historic shift under way, with china's emergence from centuries of relative, relative decline in the world, it's remarkable how few built-in points of conflict there are with the existing power of the united states or even with the other regional powers in the rest of asia. we certainly can imagine areas of terrible conflict between china and japan, china and the united states, china and korea, and whatever configuration. we can imagine these things, and all of cuss come up with scenarios that would lead to terrible tragic outcomes, but we also can imagine scenarios in which that does not occur, in which, for reasons of economic complementarity, historical ties, images of one country in

the other's mind. it's not necessary there's going to be a collision between these two powers and just to mention one or two elements here, an area where i agree most strongly with joe nye over the years is that the dimensions of american "soft" power, to use the term that joe has coined, these are things where the u.s. is likely to be able to -- could arguably keep itswn university system, its magnet for immigration, all the rest, no matter what happens on china's count. i can go long down this in some detail but second point i make is, it's remarkable how little built-in source of conflict there is, and with skilled judgment by leaders on both countries, it should be possible to keep this going for another 30 years, as dick holbrook ae a others did in the past. this brings me to the third main point to raise which is the question i have in mind especially in the last year and a half of mounting episodic u.s./chinese tensions. the question is, has the

fundamental agreement of the past 30-plus years been broken or not? what i mean here in a nutshell is, from the initial openings under richard nixon and chairman nao to the codification of the agreements dun dum ciao ping and jimmy carter, there's been a sense american/chinese relationships rested on a three-legged stool. one leg, it was better for the countries to work together that be to view each other as certain enemies. there was ground for partnership between the two. the second leg of the stool was the idea that china's prosperity need notbe at the direct expense of the rest of the world, including thenited states and leg number three was nonetheless, there would be serious disagreements between the countries still over matters of international policy, over domestic politics in both u.s. and china, et cetera, et cetera, and seems to me over the past 3 years, you can say the ups and downs of the relationship have been within that band. there have been some times of real days agreement. there have been some times of relative lack of disagreement

but it's been within that arc. the question is whether the last year has taken us outside that band of 30 years understanding whether a sense of real change in economic relationshs perceived change in economic relationships, occurrences of nationalism on both countries ifts in the military balance et cetera, whether they actually have changed the fundamental agreement. my hypothesis is no. my hypothesis is we're still within the bounds of the relationship of the past 30 years. i won't give you the 16 different reasons i think that. i'll just say that's my hypothesis. so to sum this up, first main point, americas thinks of the problems as america only and not related to china. second this is a relationship within human ability to shape and it's been shaped more less well for 30 years, that's the challenge and third my hypothesis is we're still within the historic range but that's what's to be tested against the evidence, month by month.

>> well, thanks for inviting me. i'm mike chase from the naval war college, at first i'm obliged to say the views i'm about to express are my observe and don't necessarily reflect those of the naval war college, the navy or department of defense. so that's out of the way. i'll have a narrower focus on than the other two panelistin that i'm going to talk about chinese military modernization and what that means for the united states. we've certainly seen much greater defense spending especially over the past 15 years as secretary gregson mentioned. double-digit real increases in defense spending in most yrs since the mid 1990s. we've seen the introduction of a lot of new hardware, both hardware that china imported from abroad and increasingly that they're deloping dostically. we've seen some organizational form, some changes in the way that the chinese military organizes and trains and equip it is self, and i think that most observers agree that this is leading to a more professional and a mor

operationally capable chinese military, but that still leaves a rather large question and that question is one in which there's a lot of room for debate. is this a threat and if so, how big of a threat is it to the united states. that in tu leads to some questions of what should we do about it? and the challenge here is that when you're trying to assess how capable the chinese military is, you're looking at a military that hasn't been involved in major combat operations for more an 30 years. the last time the chinese military went to war was against vietnam in 1979, and as an outside analyst trying to assess how capable a foreign military is, when you're dealing with one that hasn't been involved in combat operations for an extended period of time, you're left to look at doctrinal statements, trends in acquisition, how the defense budget is shaping up, you're left to look at exercises in training, how well they've performed in other types of operations, non-war military operations, as the chinese call

them, and that leaves a lot of room for debate about how good they really are, so you'll find on one end of the spectrum some analysts who aesshe chinese military as extremely threatening to u.s. interests and those of our friends and allies. onhe other end of the spectrum people say they're still really not that good. they still have a lot of problems so one of the questions that wreally need to think about is how do we try to evaluate how good they are, given that they haven't been involved in combat operations for so long? well, you can look at the defense budget and that certainly tells you something about the leadership's priorities. it tells you something or could increasingly in the future tell you something about the trade-offs that they would have to make, if economic growth slowed or if their domestic problems became even more pressing than they are today, but just looking at how much money you're spending doesn't really tell you very much necessarily about how good your military is becoming. you could try to compare the chinese military today with the chinese military five or ten or 150 15 or 20 years ago, and

that's worthwhile in many respects but can also be misleading because especially if you go back 15 or 20 years ago or earlier in tt time period, you're looking at a change from a very low baseline, right, so some of the changes that you've seen perhaps look more dramatic because they were beginning from such a low starting point. another metric that's often used is to compare the chinese military with the u.s. military, and say well they're still quite far behind the u.s. in a number of respects. that's also misleading because they don't necessarily need to be as good as the u.s. military in any particular area to be able to execute t missions that their leadership has assigned to them so you could take the example of china's aircra carrier program. looks as though they're finally getting ready to have an aircraft carrier in the not too distant future. of course it's going to take them a long time to learn how to operate it safely and effectively because aircraft carrier operations a extraordinarily complex and it's going to be a long time before they're able to do that as proficiently as the united states does but does that really matter? if you're not looking at a

battle at midway scenario, perhaps that's not very imrtant. it may be important more to some of china's neighbors and more immediately and directly than it is to the united states directly, so these are all ways that you can try to measure the chinese military's progress but none of them are perfect. what you really need to do, and this isn't perfect either but i think it's at least an improvement is to look at their capabilities and look at their operational concepts and the context of the missions that the chinese communist party has assigned or is likely to assign to them and then ask how well can they execute the missions with the concepts they're developing and the capabilities they're developing and if you look at something like for example their ability to blockade taiwan, if th were ordered to do so, well, in terms of a tradional naval blockade, you know, you might say that there is still a long way to go in certain respects but on the other hand, if they could use their missile force to enforce that blockade, then perhaps they' they're farther along so you have to look at how they would

do things, not necsarily how we would do them if given the same mission. similarly when you look at the anti-access and aerial denial pabilities these pose a serious threat to our traditional tools of presence and power projection in east asia, thbases, the aircraf carriers and the networks that support them, right, that we've come to rely on to underscore some of the points that we try to make with our diplomacy and foreign policy in east asia. well, the question then is, how big of a threat is this or ist something that we should look at exclusively as a threat, and obviously the answer is we need to look at this as something that presents some challenges to the united states but also creates some new opportunities and the challenge is how do we deal with those? one way is strengthening our relationships with our existing security partners and our allies in east asia. another way is by developing some of our own new operational concepts and perhaps some new capabilities to contend with the ones that china is developing, especially its anti-access and

aerial denial capabilities. we need to be careful about how we go about doing this. if it was fear that was the problem during the peloponnyssian war it could be fear intelligence. it's not just fear on the u.s. side. it's fear on the chinese side as well. if we think about their threat perceptions and there's a perception that's, i think quite widely held in national security policy advisory circles in china that the united states is already trying to encircle and contain china. we want to be careful about doing things that feed that misperception. we don't want to do things that e only going to further convince china that we're dermined to prevent their emergence as a great power because of our

we may see the u.s. military and the chinese military working side by side in a disaster relief operations in east asia, for example, and i think that's what we shoulds aspire to while at the same time trying to prepare ourselves for some of the challenges that their military modernization nessarily entails for us. >>thanks, as the moderate yoir i'll take my privilege and sort of pose hopefully a good overarching question of topics everyone's talked about. it's the notion of fear, joe and i talked about how we risk having it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. jas fallows talked about this being intellectually separate

within the united states and having a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of risks unjustifiably driving things like defense budget, defense spending which potentially feed narratives within china that looks look like the united states is trying tone circle it. if we tie all this stuff together, president ama's going to neat with president hu here in six weeks or so. what is a good message from president obama directed at a domestic audience about what we should expect from china? >> domestic u.s.? >> yeah, domestic u.s. audience. we talked about cooperation, sort of containment, properly assessing what threat, if any, there is, how we work to cooperate and things like that, but how does president obama help prepare the domestic sort of the domestic political debate so that these tensions don't get exacerbated? and i throw it open. >> i will have a flanking response to that question of how i think, because i don't know,

prident obama, for all the other reasons in his political situation now, is maybe not in the best position to give the reassuring message that i think needs to be given. i think anybody who has access to means of communication could, i think, give americans the contradictory sounding but both parts of it true in my view message that on the one hand, take china seriously. on the other hand, don't be panicked or afraid of it, and the recent polls showing that 44% or 55% of americans think that china is alady the world's leading economy are just crazy. china is what one-third the size of the u.s. economy something of that sort in passing japan to become the number two economy in the world its per capita income is one-tenth of japan, ten times as many people. making clear americans recognize the importance of engaging china in all ways on all fronts, economically, strategically, environmentally and all the rest without thinking this is some

challenge before which america should quake and i think obama should say what he's done in his previous state of the union message say that china is an example of what can be done. you know, not a sputnik-like fear example but saying if they can have these clean energy plants, we should be able to do that, o. if they can build better rail lines we should be able to do that so a standard setting illustration. >> i agree with what jim said and i think that he should avoid, we should avoid looking for clever phrases, whether it's engagement or strategic partnership and so forth. these things always get in the way because they're misinterpreted. we talk about we want a normal, cooperative relationship, normal, we have lots of friction when we have normal relationships with france, great britain, with japan. cooperation, we cooperate with all countries, so a normal coerative relationship with china, and then stress some of the areas where we, the american public, have something to gain from that cooperation.

>> it's difficult to do when political candidates run ads talking about offshoring jobs and painting the chinese dragon as the looming enemy and things like that. >> but that's the importance of what jim just said. if people in the american public realize how far ahead of china we are, they don't have to be quite that afraid. >> and one other, i think that secretary gregson i think mentioned the plan to get, what, 100,0 americans to overseas or to china. i'm in favor of every american of every age spending a lot of time in china, just to understand what's appealing about it, what's bad about it, you know, and its strengths and its weaknesses just to have a fully featured appreciation of why it matters and what to be afraid of and what not. >> i agree and also to stress we need to have realistic expectations because i think sometimes we're disappointed because our expectations were too high in the first place. there are going to be a lot of opportunities for cooperation. there are going to be ways in which we can work together with china but there are also going

to be disagreements of the type that we've seen over the past year and of the type we've seen histically and you know, again, as long as those disagreements are not taking us outside the general thrust of where the relationship has gone over the past four decades now, those are, you know, things that we have to work to manage, not necessarily things that are going to derail the relationship. >> i wonder if i could ask a question, i've been curious about from the military point of view. you mentioned it's difficult really to understand china's military, because they haven't been at war in 30 years and the u.s. by contrast is basically always at war so we can see how our doctne, our weapons do. isn't that also an argument for thinking that it's an argument for their military basically being weaker on the weaker range of the assessments, because by being always in action the u.s. military is always refining what it does? >> that's something that chinese military officers, when they're writing about their military's shortcomings, acknowledge themselves. they say that because they haven't been involved in major combat operations for so long,

it's difficult for them to have a full appreciation of all of the things that can go wrong and all of the problems that you can encounter when you are involved in those types of operations. now, they've also had the opportunity to watch and learn from everything we've been doing during that period of time so i wouldn't oversell that as a constraint on their capability but it is something to keep an eye on. >> andith that i'm happy to throw it open to the floor for any questions. please raise your hand and identify yourself. sir? and hold on for the microphone. >> thank you. ahmed gerwin with "third way" and i have a question following up on the discussion we've had of fear this morning. there's also fear in china which drives their push toward export-driven growth. you read that the chinese are very concerned that if they don't grow at rates approaching

10% that they risk domestic social unrest. that, of course, creates and helps to drive some of the economic problems that we have in china. how can we help cna overcome that fear and convincehem that they need to move to a more domestically driven consumption oriented model that will benefit both them and the world tradi system? >> there are, in china, many bright economists educat overseas who are working on this next five-year plan who realize that they have to move away from export-led growth, which led to the imlances that contributed to the crisis of 2007 and '08, and their next plan is, indeed, to increase consumption, be less dependent upon the export-oriented industries along thcoast, to gradually allow a

revaluation of stem the renminbi and push thewestern part of the country to get investments to the western part of the countries to get a better imbalance, the inequalityn chinis quite extraordinary, their gene index is over .5, so there are young, bright economists who are well trained working on their next five-year plan who wt to go ahead in that direction. ironically the more we shout at them the more we undercut those chinese who say we ought to do it for our interest, our chines interest. >> i agree with that. i was saying initially america's problems are mainly american in solution. that's also true of the chinese situation. it is widely recognized in china they need to move up the economic value chain and to have more domestic consumption and it's a matter of just doing it, and i don't think there's a lot we can do and may even weaken as

joe is saying, too, to encourage it from outside. >> next guest in the back. >> al pessen from "voice of america." question for mr. chase and anyone else who wants to chime in. if you look at u.s. defense doctrine for asia and chinese defense doctrine for asia, they are very much the same, both countries want to be the preeminent or predominant military power in the region. isn't that an inevitable clash, and i don't necessarily mean a war but didn't -- don't those two goals and desires clash? are they resolvable in some way and if it is a competition, even if chinese economic and military parity is decade as way that's not very long and don't they win that competition in the long-term? >> i'll start out by saying that

military parity isn't really the issue because without coming anywhere close to parity they can create a lot of problems for the united states and east asia. now as to whether -- i think that some tension, some friction is probably unavoidable but the question is, can both sides find creative ways to manage that tension and friction diplomatically so that it doesn't, for the most part, at least, get in the way of the other aspects of the relationship that we've highlighted as very important, and there time' cautiously optimistic that we can. now, are there areas in which we're going to have some tension, again, definitely there arand even if taiwan becomes less of a potential flashpoint because of the way that the cross-strait relationship is evolving, we still have maritime territorial disputes in the east china sea between china and japan and the south china sea between china and a number of its neighbors that i think we need to keep a close eye on and

those are potentially emerging as more likely focal points for a crisis even than taiwan, i'm afraid, but you know, again, with that said i think if we can try to keep the military-to-military relationship on trk, a lot of that rests on the chinese side, because i think it's a safe bet that at some point in the future, the united states will, again, have a visit with the dalai lama or sell arms to taiwan or do something that frustrates and upsets. the chinese and it's going to be up to them at that point to decide if they believe there's enough value in maintaining that security cooperation and military-to-milita relationship to try to see it through the next rough spot in the relationship. and we can't really do very much but encourage them to see some mutual benefit in that and hope that they will. >> i would say that when we were designing the east asian strategyn the pentagon 15 years ago, when i was in that office, we took account of this. there was a view that chinau gr

the u.s. from east asia. that wouldn't make much sense. first of all they can't do it by themselves and secondly the stronger china gets with its hard power the more it stimulates india, vietnam, ajanuary and others to want an american presence and if you don't believe that, just look at what's happened in the last year with the senkakus and the issues about the south china sea. go to new delhi and talk to indians one inch below the surface of polite talk let me tell you they're scaredery much about china. it's as though mexico and canada were asking china to have bases in mexico and canada because of their fear of the u.s., and obviously, that shows you the difference between the geopolitical relationships in the two areas. so this idea that eventually there's going to be a clash between the united states a china because both militaries

are getting stronger, i just don't see it. >> yes, mam. >> as professor nye talked about -- >> could you idea? >> u.s./my dmooi medianet. what is your system of u.s. proposal of three nation military exercise in asia and what kind of resistance do you anticipate from china and other countries? >> one of the things i try to say to my chinese interlocutores in beijing and shanghai last week is you ought to welcome the american exercise with korea and japan, because it's giving a signal to north korea not to do

more crazy things as they try to assure the succession of what is the world's first assured communist monarchy. if the chinese don't do what they need to do, which is tell kim jong-il look out, the chinese are going to get pulled into deeper water than the chinese want to be. i can understand that the chinese want to keep a buffer state and don't want to see the collapse of the north korean regime, buneither do they want to see a situation whe kim jong-il tries again because he thinks there's no response after the sinking of the "cheonan" or the shelling of the islands, he tries again and this time a hue niliated south korea responds and all of the sudden, you have a chaotic situation. if china isn't going to do what it should do to send a message to north korea, then at least be glad that the u.s., south korea and japan are working together to try to send thatmessage.

even better would be for china to join in. >> bruce? >> bruce kaine, i'm executive director here. i read somewhere recently that china controls 95% of the production of rare earth elements that are used in our modern technology, and that they're restricting i guess the export of it. so the question i have is, how do we get in to a situation because rare earth elements are apparently all over the world and yet 95% are being produced or, by china. how did we get into such a situation of dependence and what is it, what, given the kind of cooperative ideas that you're putting forth, how does the united states respond if we're getting into a situation of dependence like that, with something that potentially

affects t only our civilian life but our military capabilities. >> this is not a matter of -- you know, as you say, these resources are distributed around the world notably in the u.s. and probably eight or ten years ago the u.s. was a leading producer of these, and producing rare earths is a messy business. it's very polluting. it has many, many traits which make it easier in a way to do in china than in a lot of other places. in the world, and as the chinese ramped up their production and the world price went down, a lot of u.s. companies just left the business, but they could easily get back into business, if this became a strategic issue so i think there's been some sense on the chinese side this is a lever maybe that's been pulled too hard and if they pull it too hard they will break the lever because the u.s. can begin its production again. >> in fact there's a company in california which is resuming production which it had cease for the reasons jim gave and guess who's investing in it, sumitomo. >> evidently because of the

environmental issues that are involved in this area, i think that you may see some constraints in china in the future as well as people becoming more conscious of the environmental degradation that's accompanied economic growth. it's not necessarily the case that everyone in china will want to continue to produce at that level when they, you know, i think start to think more about the environmental impact, so there are factors on tat end that could change things as well. >> we're getting down to time. do you all have time stay for a few more questions? >> um-hum. >> okay, great. before i go to my friend, craig barton there, i want to open it up because we are in the university of california center i want to make sure that any university of california students here have the opportunity to ask a question. okay, craig. fair enough. craig there in the middle. >> thank you. craig martin, university of baltimore school of law.

this question i guess for both joe nye and james fallows who were japan people before they were china people and as one of the questioners earlier referred to japan as coming up with a new military posture this week, something which i imagine the united states has encouraged and will embrace, but it has the potential to create significant instability bo within japan for its constitutional reasons, but also regionally and i'd be curious to hear what both of you think both in terms of how you think it's going to play out, how to what extent it will become more robust militarily and what you see is the possible ramifications of that region. thanks. >> i was in tokyo on the weekend, and had discussions of that, among other things. the national defense program outline as chip gregson said earlier has been in the works for some time. it is odd for japan to have

tanks lined up in hokkaido against a soviet invasion. it's about time to ask what are the problems that we face and what's the structure we face. not only are there issues of coast guard in the areas around the seas of japan, there's a question of piracy, japan's access to sea routes. japan wants to increase its role in u.n. peacekeeping operations. my own view is, there's not a danger of a remilitarization of japan. my -- what worries me about japan is they're turning inward. they're sending half as my students overseas, japanese compans are doing much less in terms of supporting overseas charities and things that they used to do. they're comfortable, and they're relaxing. the great danger is that japan is not going to contribute to globalublic goods what it could. uichi funubashi coined the the

phrase japan becoming a global civilian power that, includes using the resources of the self-defense forces for such things as peacekeeping and piracy, anti-piracy measures and so forth, so i think the ndpo which is an acronym for this new defense program is a healthy thing. it's aimed in the right direction. i don't think need create fear. >> briefly on this point, too, one of the things, i first went to china when i was living in japan in the mid 19 0s and one of the big surprises to me on living there starting four years ago was how much higher was the degree of anti-japanese relentless sort of propaganda out of the media, and youo to universities in place and somebody was 20 years old whose grandparents perhaps had been there during the time of the japanese invasion were volunteering how much they hated the japanese, how the japanese always gave us a bad time. there's a long discussion about that. i think it emphasizes for the japanese the need to sort of manage perceptions in china, because there's a really ramped

up, compared to even 20 years ago, ramped up level of thin skinnedness about japan and china. i against the other, i agree wi joe about saying that a surprise of going to china, when you hear about this great successes, is how poor it still is. a surprise of going to japan when you hear about its failures is how rich it is. this burnished society, where everybody has everything, and i think there is this inward lookingness of japan so the challenge for the japanese and their partners for the u.s. and china is to put that to the best advantage. >> you want to jump in, mike? >> il say, i mean, i think here it makes a lot of sense for japan to reorient itself and the threat of a soviet invasion is clearly non-existent at this point. from china's perspective i think their military modernization and their more assertive regial foreign policy does run the risk of provoking some reactions from other countries in the region that are going to be contrary to their own interests and if we were to see further development in japan, it could very well be

as a result of china's posture toward japan or at least the way that japan perceives that. >> next. >> lars feiber, embassy of sweden. building on bruce's question on rare earth metals, where do you see -- because it's striking that africa wasn't mentioned by word of china's very aggressive policy there, securing access to different resources, oil, venezuela, and so on, two questions. one is, do you think china will trust the continued free trade system where they'll be able to trade things on the open market. second, to what extent do you think china will start trying to use its economic power as political means excessively also

coming to selling off "t" bills and so on. >> so one answer to that is my magazine "the atlantic monthly" had a great arcle about six months ago by howard french on this very point of china and africa and it was a great piece. howard had been in china for a long time and traveled across africa. i would recommend that to you. also i have a long sry in the current issue about china/u.s. collaborations on environmental matters and where that's likely to succeed or fail. the chinese perspective on this, i have a lot of sympathy for. they say essentially we're recreating the history of european colonialism without the weapons, without the gunboats, we're trying to have preferential resource arrangements around the world as everybody else did, too, and i have a lot of sympathy for that argument. it's not proving tremendously successful in soft power terms, of a lot of reaction both in africa and south erica about the terms of interaction with the chinese. i don't think they're doing anything different from what other large economic powers have

done. on the selling off of "t" bills note/view, i think that is something which is, there's a kind of mutually assured destruction in the financial relationship between the two parties that each could hurt the other badly but only by really hurting it self, too, so i think that's not really a plausible threat on either side. >> i agree with you. >> gary? >> gary show field from global consent. do you see it as an opportunity of cooperation how these countries deal with climate change and the environmental sues that we face and do we have an east asia strategy for that in ways that we can have china accept more emissions reduction obligations?

. >>ly answer this one, too. i have a long article in our current issue on this topic of how the u.s. and china are working together and sometimes at odds. one point tomphasize is the longer the u.s. goes without having any climate legislation itself, the less leverage it has with china in particular. they say look, you're so rich and you're notoing these things. how can we do it when we're still so poor. a second point is that china is probably less successful than advertised in the u.s. and a lot of clean energy technogies becaus a lot of this is money spt with no result but still there's a place where a lot of new energy technology is being built and therefore a lot of the advances are there. third i'd say either there is a collaborative strategy between the u.s. and china or there's no hope for anybody because basically this is where so much of the emissions themselves, so much of the investments, so much of the technology is going to be so i'm all in favor of the u.s. and china having this as a main part of their interaction. >> this is the one area where china is a superpower. they've passed the u.s. in

greenhouse gas emissions, and it's very much in our interest to have them do better in this area. they're not going to accept a cap, but they are very concerned about reducing carbon intensity of their per unit of gdp growth, and everything we can do to cooperate and to help them with that is all very good. one of the interesting questions over the long-term is to see what happe if china were to develop shale gas. most important thing is to get rid of their excessiv use of coal of which they have a lot. if they do have impressive shale grass reserves, which is now being explored, it's worth noticing that the carbon intensity is much lower when you burn gas. >> i would just highlight also as a potential area of cooperation or at least discussion between the u.s. military and the chinese military, climate change and environmental stewardship i think is an area where, for example, the u.s. navy has some interest and some concerns that

we might be able to discuss with the chinese navy and that strikes me as an area along with things like counter piracy and humanitarian distance and disaster relief we might have common interests hopefully not hard to work together to advance >> right in front of you, claire. >> hi, i'm laura mcgahy and i thought since you mentioned funabashi-san i should ask a question. could you flesh out a little bit more your comments on china's stance on north korea, on kind of piggybacking on the trilateral meetings we had last week here, and then the trips to china this week by the delegation from the state department. are we going in therit direction? >> china has two goals on the korean peninsula. one is a non-nuclear peninsula and the other is to prevent the collapse of the north korean regime because they fear both a flood of refugees and also fear

a flood of south korean troops into north korea. so of these two goals they care much more about the second, and south -- north korea has the power of the weak in this new book i mentioned "the future of power" one dimension of power, something mentioned earlier, if i owe the bank $100, kooenz pointed this out in the '30s. if i owe the bank $1 bilon i have power over the bank. north korea has extraordinary power over china through the threat of collapse. the net effect of this is the chinese have not exercised the influence that theyould to put limits or red lines on what the north koreans do. they've done this once, when they found technical reasons why it was difficult to deliver fuel until the north koreans joined the six-party talks. i was saying to my chinese

interlocutors last week you'd better do it again because the situation in north korea and the korean peninsula n is fraught with danger, because the north koreans may press their luck with another what they think is a low-level escalation, which the south koreans are not going to take again, and in that case, the chinese are going to get into much deeper water than they expect, and so i kept trying to press the chinese to say you've got to -- it will all be smiles when the officials meet but behind the scenes you better find some technical reasons why it's difficult to supply fuel as quickly as they'd like, because if the north koreans don't get that message from china as well as from our trilateral cooperation, we may get into something this year which we will all regre >> any other thoughts? >> i'd like to add that. china fears using its leverage

could precipitate greater instability in north korea but they'll need to balance that against i think a more realistic fear that failing to use their leverage in that way could result in deeper crisis or another provocation, as you suggested, that south korea needs to respond to for domestic political reasons, and then so for china this is an ordinarily complex issue but one where i think the risks for them of using their leverage are lower than the risks of failing to use it at this point. >> with that i don't want to overstay our welcome and certainly don't want to detain these gentlemen any further. thank you very much for coming. i will point out you can read about this and everything else the ppi does on our web side, [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

fembot in the u.s. strategy in that afghanistan. the tax cut bill in congress and drug use among teenagers the house ... and it is back in session. this includes the fiscal year to god so loved and -- the fiscal year 2011. we will take your calls about a

tax cut bills working its way through congress. we will be joined by the national institute on drug abuse for the. "washington journal" is live every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. a couple of live events to tell you about. the house judiciary committee holds a hearing on foreclosures of will focus on documentation practices by workers. that is in o'clock eastern. then they hosted a discussion of the relationship between technology media. we will talk about the future of open source intelligence prad

home elena kagan on the confirmation progress. an unprecedented on the record conversation sunday at 639 m.v.p. and -- 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on c- span. this is being offered at a very special price. it is a discount of more than 75%. 10 original interviews including chief justice john roberts predicted the supreme court gives readers a compelling view of the modern court.

there are 16 pages of photographs purda. to order copies, go to c- span.org/books. place your order by december 15 to receive yours in time for the holiday gift-giving. >> panelists include the former commander of the u.s. and coalition troops in afghanistan. this is a little more than an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, good

afternoon. i'm the president for the center of a new american security. it is my pleasure to welcome me here to discuss the report securing u.s. interest in afghanistan beyond 2011. i like to think them for this support today. alibi to ask for a moment of silence to remember richard holbrooke. passed away last night. he lived a life of service to the united states including duty in vietnam and afghanistan and pakistan. they served with him in this important work. thank you.

a year in two weeks ago, president obama made an important speech. he committed an additional 30,000 troops to the fight against al qaeda and its allies any promise in the year he would review the progress that had been made and the work there remains to be done. the national security council is now completing a presidential review, and the president is scheduled to address the nation this thursday in order to announce what he has found. while we wait for that announcement, we're fortunate to have with us today three people who have been intimately associated with the national security policy of the u.s. in afghanistan and pakistan over the past decade. retired lieutenant general david barnom, a former army ranger andrew exum, and investigative journalist and editor bob

woodward. david barno graduated in united states military academy's class of 1976. he served in combat in grenada and panama. in 2003, he was elected to establish a new three-star operational headquarters to take command of u.s. and coalition forces in operation in during freedom, leading admission until 2005. after retiring from the army the next year, he became the director of the national defense university's near east and south asia studies center. he did that for four years before joining the center for new american securities earlier this year is a senior adviser and senior fellow. with andrew exum, dave wrote " responsible transition, securing u.s. interests in afghanistan beyond 2011." andrew exum is a fellow and a former army ranger who served in combat in iraq and afghanistan.

andrew exum later served as an adviser to the scent, assessment team -- the centcomm assessment team. he is just off a plane this morning from afghanistan where he spent the last few weeks in battlefield circulation and discussions with commanders on the ground. welcome home. we are honored to have with us to moderate the discussion a man who truly needs no introduction. bob woodward has been one of america's most famous investigative reporters since he and carl bernstein broke the watergate story for the washington post in 1972 some years before andrew exum was born. [laughter] bob has since august 16 national best sellers, including "obama's wars." and during the writing of

that book, bob visited afghanistan. bob will draw observations from dave and ex before opening the floor for 30 minutes of questions. if you have further questions, you are invited to remain for a press availability immediately following the event. i'd like to welcome these three experts to the state. gentleman? [applause] >> are microphones on? i would like to say couple of words about holbrooke who i knew for almost four years. one of the most in case people i have ever met, not just in government but out of government. he is somebody who literally threw himself at and into with the

determination, in a sense like teddy roosevelt, somebody who was always in the arena. he was a member this year -- this year at one point, he told me a classic statement. people were picking on him about the united states in decline, and his rejoinder to them was, we may be in decline but we are still number one. he is -- i like to think of him as the persistent patriot, because he was a patriot, somebody who often disagreed spoke his mind freely, but in the interests of the united states. now to turn to the report. andrew, let's start with you. you still have afghanistan on your shoes. you got back.

tell us what you told the general petraeus. >> i met with the general before i left. i left just yesterday. before i left on friday, i was there for 10 days at the invitation of the headquarters, traveling around afghanistan and making general observations. i stayed in kabul for an extra few days meeting with journalists and civilian researchers. i will go through three good things and three bad things that i noticed in afghanistan. in full transparency, this is exactly what i told the general petraeus. unless our political intelligence have gotten a lot better, some of you remember a paper written for the center for new american security unfixing intelligence in afghanistan. we have gotten a lot better. 18 months ago, when i traveled around asking folks about the area of operations, they talked about the enemy. this time around, they talked

about their area of operations, the human geography, the tribes. and only then, started talking about the enemy. a lot of what is driving the conflict is not necessarily the presence -- >> it is how much of an improvement? >> it is a tactical improvement. i will get to that. war is in political, strategic, operational, and tactical. your tactics could be right, but if your strategy is of, you will lose. two more technical improvements i noted -- we are doing counterinsurgency better than i have ever seen it. our special operations forces and general purposes forces are sync up better than i have ever seen them. the three improves would be almost entirely succeeded. general petraeus told us when we first came to afghanistan that he has to strategic achilles heels. one being sanctuaries, enemy

sanctuaries in pakistan. the second being governance. everywhere i went in afghanistan, everyone i spoke with, afghan officials, afghans on the street, and company commanders on the ground, hit back with those same two strategic achilles heels. i do not think we have a good strategy for dealing with them. secondly, with regard to governance, first off, if you plop me down in the middle of afghanistan and you ask me, what is it that the isaf forces value? based on the type of metrics been breached, overwhelmingly, we value killing the enemy. that is a good thing. we need to kill the enemy in afghanistan, but its governance is one of our achilles' heels, we have to wade our resources there as well. as we begin the transition in afghanistan, this is the subject of the paper, our interest

between the united states and our allied governments and the afghan government will diverge. it is one of the planning assumptions that our interests are broadly aligned with the government and of afghanistan -- of afghanistan. that is the case right now, but that will not be the case. we will be focused 80% on security and 20% on a developer. the afghans will want to focus on the opposite way. >> ok, general, summarize the report in two sentences. [laughter] summarize. >> i would say, it is worth reading, so i encourage you to read it. there are a lot of interesting things in there. most importantly, it argues that the u.s., despite the fact we are in an era of different strategic context where deficit and debt will have a tremendous impact on our future role in the

world, the u.s. still has a vital interest in the afghan- pakistan border area. to protect those interests, we have to develop a sustainable strategy that allows us to maintain a military presence not only beyond july , 2011. that presence takes a different form than it does today. because unconventional warfare, special operations forces, focusing on attacking and keeping relentless pressure on al qaeda, because that is one of the vital interest -- to prevent another attack on the u.s. the same forces hoping to -- helping to enable the afghan military to pick up the counterinsurgency fight. >> you say in the report that we would have a residual force of 25,000-30,000, right? where does that number come from? >> we actually crunched out what we thought those numbers should look like. i have a very detailed to the list with me.

as i ran through the numbers, not knowing what they would come out to be, this is u.s.-oonly, was 28000. . it comprised a special operations capability that was special mission units, the regular isaf -- >> you've done traditional troop to task analysis. joe biden raised this report and he will say, this is exactly where i was last year -- counter-terrorism plus. you scale back. >> i am not sure we knew exactly what the joe biden ct plus was. i think we have the det