joining us is aforementioned michele flournoy. dersecretary, which ever you prefer -- >> michelle, please. >> i thought your piece was terrific. sequester or not, defense department is going to lose 10% of its budget and you think there are good ways to do it. walk us through some of the key points. >> i do think the defense budget will come under pressure, even if we do get a deal. there are ways to reduce costs go after the defense enterprise rather than balance the budget on the back of the force. first cutting unnecessary overhead. the pentagon and d.o.d. has grown by more than 100,000 civilians in the last decade. we can pare those back now that we're coming out of a period of war. >> i thought your civilian argument was great. we've been through these wars and you're saying you can take it right back down without losing any national security. >> i think if you're careful in how do you it, you can reshape the force and come out in a leaner and more agile organization. >> what about another civilian, maybe it's not civilian, yo

everybody fumbles on a, but the key point is that for the last six years the center was founded by michele flournoy and kurt campbell has provided a centrist pragmatic, strong security posture that is had a lot of impact i think on and policies, and hopefully we will continue in the future. my comments today are personal and very much nothing more than a humble contribution to identify what are challenges. i've been asked to focus on north korea's nuclear missile programs and the proliferation problem, but let me suggest to you right away that there's always a larger framework for thinking about issues. united states has an inherent interest in ensuring that it plays not just the continuing role as a major security guarantor of peace in the asia-pacific, but also the region recognizes that we bring much more to the table than that. as economic trade and investment, the rule of law, local dialogue and diplomacy, technology and vision for -- people to people, human rights and many other issues that are subsumed under the larger will that america place in this important dynamic region. now, on this to

nominated and somebody well qualified and less controversial had been put in place, someone like michele flournoy or ash carter, then, of course, we would all be paying attention to mr. brennan who is the nominee to be director of central intelligence and who has himself a history of some controversy on both the heft and the right ironically. so if we could just talk about what the implications of this are, and i'm going to try and put these two questions together, actually, and to digress and explain this question a little better, many of us who work in foreign policy studied history because that's what draws you in. and in the old days polysci and ir were fields that weren't exactly embraced as they are now, and for those of us who did study history, a hot remember that all these inconsequential and rather interesting countries whether it was the czechoslovakias or malis of the time were the precursors to larger battles that could have been dealt with had they been dealt with early. i wonder if just sort of thinking through that prism where we see things going, but maybe take the nominees, and

michele flournoy, i commented she would be one. don't agree with her philosophically on a lot of things, but i think she would be one that would not be controversial. ash carter. we have a lot of them out there that could be confirmed in a matter of minutes, and i would be right there with them in order to try to help that to take place. i do want to say something about advice and consent because sometimes people don't understand it. i had someone go back and research this, and it's something that's done me a lot of good because i didn't really have the background on it. this started way back in 1787, the constitutional convention they talked about it. back then they used the term, they used the term "approbation or rejection of the senate." means the same thing. so this has been going on for a long period of time. certainly in the "federalist papers," hamilton talked about it. as long as he talked about any other subject. and so this is the rejection language that was used at that time that is advice and consent today. where are w

michele flournoy, senior advisor at the boston consulting group and former undersecretary ofa policyundersecretarynd sam nunn, the co-chair the it -- former undersecretary of policy. and sam nunn, the co-chair of the armed services committee. this will be monitored by alan greenspan, a senior fellow at the brookings institution and director of the hamilton project. on tuesday next week, we will turn to the domestic side of the agenda and our discussion will focus on 13 very brief papers. the program will begin with a discussion by three former cbo directors including alice rivlin. the final product will be a hamilton project book that contains all 15 of the proposals and it is aimed at the idea of making it more effective use of the resources that we have. let me close my remarks by thanking our offers and are -- our participants. michael greenstone, the director of the hamilton project, karen, the managing director, and adam, the policy director of the hamilton project. let me also thank our enormously talented staff without heroes work and nothing we accomplish would be done. -- without whose work

michele flournoy, i commented she would be one. i don't agree with her philosophically on a lot of things, but i think she would be one that would not be controversial. ash carter. we have a lot of them out there that could be confirmed in a matter of minutes, and i would be right there with them in order to try to help that to take place. i do want to say something about advice and consent because sometimes people don't understand it. i had someone go back and research this, and it's something that's done me a lot of good because i didn't really have the background on it. this starteday back in 1787, the constitutional convention they talked about it. back then they used the term, they used the term "approbation orejection of the senate." means the same thing. so this has been going on for a long period of time. certainly in the "federalist papers," hamilton talked about it. as long ahe talked about any other subject. and so this i the rejection language that was used at that time that is advice and consent today. where are we tod