i dropped those letters. brian: how long have you been in the united states? vanda: about the years. i came in high school. i started high school in the czech republic. scholarship to a private, american high school. extraordinary. i loved every moment. i was very grateful. i never went back. i did all of my undergraduate work and graduate work in the u.s. brian: describe the kinds of things you are expert in. morning, when you asked me that question, i tell that i work on nontraditional security threats which covers everything from organized crime, .nstant -- counterinsurgency

in the evening when i am depressed, after working on the subjects, i say that i work on -- how things fall apart. both of them are misnomers. the nontraditional security threat -- rebellion, they predate conventional warfare. in the evening, when i work -- when i say that i work on how things fall apart, it is a key component in what animates my governedrecognizing domains. that is why we have organized crime.

even in the absence of governance, some form of governance is favored by nongovernment actors. and malevolent ones. france, -- maybe that is why they do not want to devote state resources to govern. when i looki work at organized crime and insurgency i think about what .ind of governance has emerged to theafter you are phillips academy for high school, where did you go next? dies andwent to them then i transferred to have -- to

harvard. in government. harvard calls it a lyrical science. -- political science. i focused on international relations. this was in the 1990's. i was looking at low intensity conflict which later became known as insurgencies. i started looking at the intersection at the time of criminality, and insurgency and that is what carried through my graduate studies and the work that i do today. brian: you got a phd from m.i.t. in what? vanda: political science. let's go to a video clip

and then have you tell us what this is all about. [video clip] gunshotsund of ricochet across kabul. this was outside the star hotel come close to major embassies and government ministries. this was supposed to be one of the most secure parts of the city. there were also attacks on the parliament building and nato headquarters and another base on the outskirts. brian: where were you? vanda: this is a video from kabul. able to do a lot of fieldwork in my life. as part of my work. insightsbrought unique come including empathy with people. trips, withf the

other colleagues as guests of streetsd we were on the . were trapped inside the ministry of mines. there are stories about the drama -- it captures many aspects of war. we often focus on war in the moments of suffering when a bomb goes off. but there are long periods in between. the number of bomb attacks has gone up significantly. video -- video to

20-0002 video. we will be going back and i will see how much more difficult it is to travel around the city. as a female. it is very risky. if you get stopped on the road and the taliban checks who is under the burqa. there is a risk of being kidnapped. the ability to move around has never been easy but it has become significantly more difficult even since that video. brian: how many times have you been to afghanistan? vanda: at least 10 or 11 times. go, how closeu have you come to this kind of episode? vanda: it berries. s. it varie

you can be just a few streets away and you don't necessarily know that something is happening. i have never been indirect crossfire. brian: let me show you some video from 2013 about a man that we came to know -- karzai. [video clip] >> i am very happy to hear from that in the spring this year, the afghan forces will be fully responsible for providing security to the afghan people. forcese international will be no longer present in the afghan villages. the task will be to the afghan

forces to provide for the people in security and protection. brian: what happened near the end of his term? what happened in his relationship with the united states? think this is a broader question of what happened to his term overall. there was a restive deterioration of the relationships from 2008. it covers the deterioration of the afghanistan government. many afghans would call towards the end, his government a mafia rule. eventually, the combination in washington of the abuses taking progressively colder relationship from

washington, especially with president obama. becament karzai convinced that the united states was trying to undermine him or get rid of him. they were submitting rival candidates in the 2009 election. probably so. then washington was of really demanding much more accountability over how many was over corruption that pervaded every aspect of afghan life. people.rances of very brutal mafia. i tried to describe that in my book. washington was trying to put pressure on karzai to moderate his behavior and the behavior of the ruling people around him. he was uninterested in doing so and came to view it is very threatening.

the entire relationship with the united states was viewed as a conspiracy. -- he thought that washington was seeking his removal. brian: back in may of this year, the special investigator for the united states government, talked about the deteriorating security situation in afghanistan. just a short time ago. let us watch this. [video clip] >> i remember when i started coming three years ago, i could travel around most of the country. i could go to the big city off to the west. i could go to kandahar. my people, my agents actually traveled around in cars without having military as courts. in those have anyone now.s

jalalabad is a very dangerous place. .e use afghans as sources they help us do monitoring of sites for us. we try to come up with other means to do it. this is not your normal i.t. operation. jacketsors where flak and helmets. my agents are carrying machine guns when they go out there. this is not your ordinary situation. brian: what do you think? afghanistan is not an ordinary situation. the level of corruption that pervades every day life. security has deteriorated very significantly. since 2002. it is very difficult to get around. it requires bravery or foolishness or a combination. spent part of the spring

this year in somalia. their andg at changes you have a situation which in some ways are even more difficult than in ghanistan. a lot of insecurity. in gettingulties around. a tremendous amount of corruption. brian: you say in your book that afghanistan is one of the three most corrupt countries in the world. you name north korea and somalia. how do you see corruption? rankingsrely for the -- it is a very important question of what is corruption? it is an a question because corruption is at the core of policies failing across a range of domains.

whether it involves poaching in wildlife trafficking. or state building efforts in afghanistan and in somalia. other parts of the world are also correct like india. but that country is not collapsing. are trying --tes is trying to develop anticorruption strategies. me, this is the key priority -- corruption to focus on. they alienate people to the point of highlighting a group like taliban. is totally -- an effect on resources and lamb. -- if the rival

product -- party charges a bigger bride. it is rapacious and unpredictable and ever escalating bribes without services that dictate society to the putting of fighting with a militant group. most. you know more than we have been there since the early part of 2001. depending on where you look, it is a trillion dollar expanse and more before it is over. if you combine that with iraq it is somewhere between four -- four to the and and $6 trillion. what would you say to someone overad lost their son

there. what if we accomplished over there? vanda: it is a tough question and it is increasingly difficult to answer particularly if you combine it with how much longer we should stay. lives ofthe particularly urban afghans have him significantly. rurale ways, the lives of afghans have improved. ,he access to primary education access to health care for women and families is significantly better than most areas. from the u.s. national security perspective, i think that we are certainly much better off without al qaeda having a platform for operations in afghanistan. until 2001, during the taliban era. increasingly, we need to ask ourselves what are we

trying to achieve and how much of our resources will we commit to that. i have been a proponent of not quitting. persevering in the efforts. many of my sympathies are to the people. my translators, my drivers, ordinary afghans. is increasingly tough to justify those expenses, we do not seef significant improvements in afghan governance. -- this is ament moment of opportunity. karzai is no longer president. on paper, the new government is committed to combating terrorism. it is also committed to and i thinkvernance that we should not quit as yet. we definitely need to demand

accountability from our partners. then: has it been worth price? the 700 americans killed. -- 2700 americans killed. think that the u.s. did achieve improvements in security guard it depends on how it ends. i increasingly question myself -- we do not know how it will end. if we withdraw now, corruption will take over. road, wes down the could be back in a civil war in afghanistan.

the taliban is deeply entrenched. down the up five years road in a new civil war in and safe havens for taliban and isis, then i would say it is not worth the price. brian: asking about karzai. was he honest? vanda: i think he was honest but the timeframe that he was working in, i am not sure that it translates to how we translate honesty. brian: billions of dollars have been lost over there. did he take any of it? don't have any personal information but there have been newspaper articles. perspective, this was not personal bribes. money given toe -- from his

perspective, this was just every day doing business. certainly know that people close to him including his vice president, people in his family like his brother, had their hands in any money coming in, taking bribes, and correct money as well as participating in many illegal activities like smuggling. know thew well did you new president before he was elected? vanda: i had many exchanges with him. brian: you surprised when he was elected? vanda: i must say, yes. inas with his first campaign 2009 against president karzai them. -- then. he was learning how to become an afghan politician. he had a change in persona. brian: how much time did he

spend in the united states? doing what? vanda: he got his phd at , andbia in anthropology then he was at the world bank for many years. i think about three decades. brian: let's watch a little bit the 15march -- march time here. [video clip] to the brave veterans and to the families who tragically lost their loved ones to the enemy's cowardly acts of terror. go a profound debt to the many americans who have come to build schools, brits stairwells, -- repair wells. day, it is thehe ordinary american whose hard-earned taxes over the years

has built the partnership that we have. brian: when you look at that and you hear him say that about the soldiers, you still go back to the fact that we have spent all of this money and lost all of and one at a six americans go to bed every day hungry. and you wonder again -- what did we gain by being over there? = -- : brian: why is afghanistan a mistake if iraq was a mistake? vanda: in afghanistan there were real terrorists. iraq was a problematic country, no doubt about it. they were a major thorn in the side of u.s. security arrangements in the middle east.

terrorism was not there. it turns out that saddam hussein -- afghanistanve qaeda, major operation. it was the place from which the 9/11 attacks were organized. it depends on how it ends. we arears down the road, back in a civil war and the country collapses, a combination of taliban, isis, and other militant groups control large parts of the country, and they thene bases for terrorism, it probably will not have been worth the effort. can you explain our

relationship with pakistan. i preface this by saying that we have listened for months and months at about iran and the nuclear bomb. when pakistan had -- has it and india has it. you talk about it in your book about the relationship doing the -- and theythey are are being harbored in pakistan. can you help us on this one? relationship with relationshipt be a with a defined friend and antner but it is extraordinarily poor one. a marriage of abuse from which there may be a divorce. pakistanis and the pakistani military and police, the united states uses them and abandons them when it suits them. they are an unreliable partner.

the united states has focused on that pakistan in the the decade and a half, from 1990's, it has supported and protected the taliban. betrayal find that as of the worst kind including itause obviously otherwise is our soldiers at risk. the taliban is killing as many u.s., nato, afghan soldiers as a cam. -- as its cam. the state building project. they do not believe it will be a stable government. especially not one that is allied or susceptible. they want to calculate proxies.

they believe the taliban is such a proxy. perspective,terest what they are doing is not inconsistent with their state interest. i am diametrically opposed. there is another dimension of the u.s.-pakistan relationship. a lot of the pakistani work thinking down on the taliban that we have been demanding for a decade and a half. it stems not from duplicity and but simply stems from weakness. pakistan for decades has sponsored many militant groups. the afghan taliban. persecutingthem for

interests against india. sponsoring terror attacks. they cannot control it. the industrial military heart of pakistan. they cannot control them. they are increasingly many militant groups in the business half of the country including karachi. part of the reason pakistan does -- iske a strong stand that they do not have the capacity and they are afraid that it will backfire and many of these militants will now start attacking the pakistani state with much greater violence and energy than what has been happening. brian: you think the pakistanis

knew that osama bin laden was there? vanda: i do not believe so. i do not have any personal would make meat believe one way or another. from my conversations with u.s. officials with death in whom i have faith, i believe the pakistanis -- surprised by the attack and did not know about it. there are questions about why they did not know. how could they be so oblivious? what does that say about their internal security. the fact that they are ignoring a very unusual situation. brian: let's go back for a moment -- you graduated from

harvard and m.i.t. with a phd. did you become an american citizen and why? vanda: yes. professional and personal life was here in the united states. i love the united states. with all of the difficulties and challenges the country faces home -- at home and abroad. i identify with the people and the country. brian: when did you first learn english? vanda: my last year of elementary school. about two years before i came to the united states. i grew up in communist czechoslovakia. most of my childhood. was 13.m ended when i this was 1989. village inn a small

the borderlands of czechoslovakia. about an hour away from germany and austria. in the mountains. very beautiful and isolated place. my village had about 1200 people. it was very difficult to study english. no opportunities. one would have to travel 20 kilometers to a bigger town also english was prohibited. one had to have a special dispensation to study english from the communist regime. i started studying in a town about me kilometers away. i would take a bus. i was in my last euro elementary school. brian: is your mom still alive? dad die and what of? vanda: he died of cancer when i was 13.

he suffered with it for about three years. brian: what did he do for a living? vanda: he was an interesting man. one who shaped my life deeply. born, he was was working in the textile firm. born, andas afterwards, he was engaged in a variety of communist activities. part of the czech resistance against the nazis. people often ask me about how i came to work on smuggling, crime, and i say that part of my childhood was very much about that and not disclosing what my father was doing. i knew what he was doing. it was very risky.

he was preparing me that one day he would not come home. what wasom early on happening and that i could not speak about it. at one thing, he was helping to smuggle dissidents out of the country. i lived a childhood of a disjunction between what is legal and what is illegal. brian: what about your mom, where is she? vanda: she still lives in the village. she is retired now. brian: what was her attitude about communism? itda: she strongly disliked and disapproved of it. unity in the family about that. she was very afraid for what would happen to my father

because of his activities. brian: how old was he when he died? vanda: 68. he was older than my mother. an older man when i was born. this: where did you get fearless approach to going all over the world to problem situations/. how many different places have you done your studies? vanda: i couldn't count. probably i have been to every single continent except for all still you. i have been to all of them. 100 or something countries. i have researched about 30 of them. brian: where other than somalia and afghanistan have you spent a

lot of time? vanda: columbia, and mexico. i am completing a book on mexico , just now.ime it should be out the next year. brian: going back to afghanistan, i want to show you another video clip. this is down the alley that you have been studying. this was in january of this year when he was here talking about this. [video clip] >> some of the examples we go through in your report that came out last month, some of the waste and fraud. money that could have been better spent. looking at the seventh $6 billion to combat opium production. talk about that effort. >> unfortunately, there is nothing positive about that. any metrics that we normally use for fighting drugs, the amount of crop being produced, we fail.

there is a 30% increase in the amount of fields underproduction. actuallyt of opium produced. we fail. that has increased. the amount of interdictions decrease. the amount of people using drugs and afghanistan has increased. phenomenally. using every indication it has been an abject failure. we have wasted $7 billion. brian: do you agree? that there is one and oneortant aspect that is positive. we could have done much worse. that is not a satisfactory answer. we need to be realistic about what interventions can accomplish. we could have much better would -- d we

for example, if we decided to start heavily eradicating the fields and spring them in the same way that coca is sprayed in columbia, the war in the country would already have been lost and the government would have collapsed. afghanistan, unfortunately after decades of civil war and thatgency, it is a country revolves around opium and poppy. perhaps china in the 1920's may have had something comparable. decided that we would destroy one third of the economy without anything to replace it.

we have just eliminated political order in that country. the taliban is very skilled at mobilizing poppy farmers. that they would protect them from eradication teams. a government that is trying to kill people with hunger. that is what insurgents learn around the world. the islamic ones or be they leftist revolutionary like the eln in columbia. way to win political --ital is to win the economy is depend the economy on those it is dependent. we need to do a deeper examination about the metrics and if they are right.

it cannot be viewed in isolation. it has to be viewed within the larger picture of state building and priority efforts. haveroblem is that we unrealistic expectations about how long it takes to waive the magic wand and get a legal economy going in the country that is still are in by violence and destroyed economically. is there to-- poppy stay in afghanistan. smarter about be how interdiction is done. we can be smarter about how the livelihoods are helped. -- eed to pay attention even if you do all of these

things cometh you would still have huge amounts of opium and poppy. from anet's look at it american perspective. we have lost $7 billion and that is not the only place. we have blown billions of dollars. how much of that poppy -- a lot goes to europe, but how much of the drugs that are created from the poppy in afghanistan and upcoming somehow or another into this country? not only do we lose $7 billion but we feed the drug habit of the people in the united states and in the end, it seems like a circle that we end up paying for it by borrowing money. we do not know exactly but under 10% of u.s. opiates come from afghanistan. the vast majority of u.s.

opiates, heroin and other opiates, comes from mexico and colombia. because what we are seeing in the united states is once again a change in addiction. for decades, cocaine was the dominant drug abuse. opiate use.me this increased demand and it is possible that we could get more from afghanistan. of afghan opium has been going to europe or the middle east. pakistan, and iran have huge addiction problems. the major demand markets for afghan opium. brian: stick -- looking at your

experience in mexico. they are talking about el chapo. [video clip] chapo or surety is officially the world most powerful drug trafficker. a short man with big plans. >> he controls these distribution sell throughout the united states. from rags to riches, in less than a decade, he turned a startup operation into a multinational criminal empire. like the osama bin laden of drug trafficking. >> he has proven to be more elusive than bin laden. he was captured in the 1990's and managed to escape eight years later. he bribed his way out of what was supposed to be a high security penitentiary. brian: how could he possibly have done this twice? vanda: the corruption and

incompetence of the is and officials in mexico. brian: they bribed the whole crowd? vanda: they certainly had to have a lot of support in the prison. idea that there would be no noise coming from the tunnel is difficult to imagine including areuse the tunnels something that he is known for to smuggle drugs into the united states. he previously used them as escape methods. the fact that this went undetected is unbelievable. user isow big a drug united states? vanda: huge. brian: in comparison to other countries?

vanda: one of the largest. one of the interesting things that is changing about the global drug trade is that the u.s. is no longer the largest, per capita. it used to be the largest in cocaine use. these days, please is like brazil and argentina probably have per capita use as large as the united states. heroin. of opiates and iran, russia, and pakistan have a lot of users. ,ne of the biggest countries but not the sole user. brian: in one of your books, you had a book called -- shooting up. what was the basis of that book? vanda: the subtitle of the book is -- counterinsurgency and the war on drugs. it looks at the intersection of the drug trade and the economies.

the main focus was on the drug trade. challengedmentally --what became the dominant the narrative would go that the taliban takes the opium poppy, the shining path takes coca. way you win wars is by destroying the coca. after several years after i wrote the book, i challenged this narrative and said -- yes, illicit economies like drugs moneyinsurgents a lot of but they also bring a lot of political capital. to win conflict, you cannot antagonize rural populations that are dependent

on this illicit economy. or you make the life very much harder. this narrative that you win by destroying the illicit economy is incorrect. by the way, it is not even guaranteed that the insurgents will make less money because they can also adopt and their economies are very resilient. worse comes to worse, they can always switch to other illicit economies. funding stream became available. and it was worse for the public goods perspective. they would not be defeated. succeed, one does not in even the pure narcotic subjective unless one has control. one needs to win the world -- the war before the protection

can be tackled through brutal means, eradication. now in the 1960's was probably the most successful government in destroying the illicit economy. or through providing illegal economic alternatives. should i assume then that we have wasted billions of dollars in the world drugs. vanda: yes. it is not wasted. has createdey counterproductive effects of the united states. the assumption is that it is about $40 billion including money spent domestically including on incarceration of

bad frompolicy that is every aspect. unfortunately, the obama administration has started moving towards changing that. users are increasingly being released from prison both at the federal and state level. that is how we need to move forward. treatment as well as external policies, eradication and interdiction. has brownr last name in it. who is brown? .anda: sam brownbac a scholar of international relations. we met in boston when i was at harvard. he was a professor. we got to know each other. undergrad between my

in my graduate years, i spent a year in washington and he was at the time a visiting scholar at the brookings institution. we met there. brian: where are you now? vanda: i am also at the brookings institution. brian: does it pay for all of your travel and the work you are doing now? raise all of to the money for my work. becausechallenge fundraising is challenging in general. i have to raise all of the money for the fieldwork. brian: what kind of people support you? vanda: a combination of foundations. brian: the one thing that i've read that i have to ask you gave credit toou

norway. supports brookings in general. some funding goes to me as a scholar. it does not necessarily fund my fieldwork but it funds my salary at brookings. brian: why does norway fund brookings? vanda: norway is one of the that supports brookings because brookings is a hallmark of quality, independent research. indeed, i feel very privileged to be at brookings and one of the reasons i am there is because it is a place that is truly committed to intellectual freedom based on sound scholarship. myle i may disagree with colleagues on policies like in afghanistan, on policies in other countries, and my on columbia doing a

success -- that is what is wonderful about brookings. you can have a panel of scholars that can directly disagree with one another on the stage. there is not in ideology doctrine. there is not a uniformity of use. it is a place that i can thrive in. brian: there is one story i want you to tell about your car in the antes. -- andes. vanda: i spent the areas time doing research in the andes on the coca economy and the drug trade. inave been quite a few times real -- peru. this one trip, i decided to take a shortcut across the mountains to get to a coca area.

this time, i was doing it in the summer season. the rains were pouring down. the roads that would normally be possible, were a disaster. quite close to the coca era -- i had to push the card. i ended up in the canyon. i was stuck close to a coca area on the road where no reasonable person would be. the police could ask interesting questions about what i was doing there. was that i spent a few days they're trying to get local help.

i did get local help. i got the car out with the villagers. up doing fascinating research into the community. they put the car back together with scotch tape, chewing gum, and prayers. i managed to drive the car back. the car was barely moving. it was risky. seconds away from death. not end up in the coca area that i was planning to do research in. resulted in it fantastic, interesting research. doan: you have a theory -- you have a theory about why people take drugs? or about whether it is worth fighting the drug development

out there were why people use so much of the drugs? is it worth spending all of this time trying to eradicate them in the first place? policies andof the the current design are problematic and counterproductive. the answer is we should do nothing. many people who are users would 80%, but some people will become addicts and their lives will be ruined and the lives of the community around them will be ruined. we should not be indifferent to that. my view is that we should not say -- anything goes and anyone can use drugs however they want. it will have bad effects on people who cannot make the judgment. they will not be able to comprehend it. we should certainly move away

from encouraging users. we should move much of smarter eradication. i am one that believes that we should prioritize eradication of drugs. -- there are areas where we do not want to have drugs. believe that we need to do interdiction but often we need to focus not on the amount of flow in the case of drugs, as being the predominant metric of success but focus on how we change the behavior of criminals so that they have the least propensity towards violence in the least capacity to corrupt.

so that society is not dependent on them. mean take -- thinking differently about who we target and how. in the case of drugs, the objective should be to shape towards theavior least threat towards state and society. i would not make the same argument about another illicit economy that i work on and a passionate about. that is wildlife. if you simply say -- that we focus on the behavior of organize crime groups, then we and we may nots have any rhinoceros is. we are seeing a huge depletion of other animals like turtles, amphibians.

with a strong impact on the echo system. this is a depletable resource. volume to focus on the -- reducing the volume of flows. making law enforcement smarter and weeding out corruption. if folks want to read more about what you write, where do they find it? vanda: you can go to the brookings website. the vast majority of my articles will be posted but there will also be information about my books. brian: when is the bucket about mexico coming -- when is the book about mexico coming? brian: in the spring. our guest has been dr. vanda felbab-brown from the brookings institution. book writer. thank you so much for joining us. vanda: it has been a great

pleasure to be here. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] than a roundtable discussion with the cato institute and the roosevelt institute on wall

street regulations and the recent volatility in the stock market. washington journal every morning on c-span at 7:00 a.m. eastern. monday night on "the communicators," this summer marks the 20th anniversary of digital television. mark taher discusses how modern television has changed. >> what many of us are watching on a multi screen world, that has been one of the more exciting outcomes of this whole digital revolution. it used to be that there was a stationary screen, and with hdtv, that was a big screen in the living room. with the internet and wireless world extending things, now you have tablets and smartphones and wi-fi all over the place. such that tv is not just the

stationary lean back experience of the living room, but very much a mobile experience. it is not just tv. it is also video. >> monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. >> senator marco rubio on friday called for a tougher military stance on china. he said if elected president, he would ask china to release political prisoners. the speech came at a event in south carolina. [applause] >> good morning. it is my pleasure to welcome you here this morning. thank you for being here and