scowcroft and dr. brzezinski brzezinski, welcome. i read last year a piece by thomas friedman that i found very interesting where he described the islamic state and the situation in the middle east today by saying that there are really three civil wars raging in the arab world today. one, the civil war between sunni islam -- within sunni islam between radical jihadists and the moderate mainstream. sunni muslims and regimes. two, the civil war across the region between sunnis funded by saudi arabia and shiites funded by iran. and three, the civil war between sunni jihadists and all other minorities in the region. the yazidis, turkmen, christians, jews. he wrote that when you have a region beset by that many civil wars at once, it means that there's no center. only sides. and when you intervene in the middle of a region where there's no center, you very quickly become a side. i'm curious if either of you would agree with that assessment, and that if you would also return to what you spoke about a little bit earlier regarding how import

scowcroft, i will end with -- do you also see that as that's the the end end of nato?the best way to tell him is to do something to make him think about it. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, gentlemen, for being here today. i appreciate your service very much. today, we have talked a lot about isis in the middle east and the fact that we do need partners in that region we do need those arab allies to come forward and you have mentioned it. both of you as more of an aside comment but i would really like to understand how we can more effectively engage turkey, which is an ally which is a friend in that region, how can we engage them more to combat isis and those other threats that exist within the middle east? >> well, the -- the turks are playing a role. it is partly very helpful. the turks have a large minority in their country who are kurd. and so they have multiple concerns about what goes on. they also have very emotional feelings about -- about syria. but i think we can help the countries of the middle east turkey is one, with great military capability. as i s

i think that's the meaning of the trip wire concept that general scowcroft was speaking of. >> if we don't stand behind our word on that article, then our word really does mean nothing. let me ask you this in con conclusion, how was cap weinberger to work for? >> i enjoyed working for him. i wasn't at a very senior level but what i did for him was advise him on space missile defense, nuclear command and control and the early days, in those days of what are called the continuity of government efforts, which still -- still continue. we were just beginning to put them together at that time. >> what do you think he would say about our defense posture at this point? >> secretary weinberger was an enormous backer of defense spending and of the defense budget. he was tireless in explaining the need for an adequate defense. in that respect he was a lot of fun to work for. >> he wouldn't be overly delighted with sequestration and with the current funding level and proposed funding level going forward. >> not at all. >> thank you very much. good luck to you, sir. >> thank you, sir. >> senator

i think that's the meaning of the trip wire concept that general scowcroft was speaking of. >> if we don't stand behind our word on that article, then our word really does mean nothing. let me ask you this in con conclusion, how was cap weinberger to work for? >> i enjoyed working for him. i wasn't at a very senior level but what i did for him was advise him on space missile defense, nuclear command and control and the early days, in those days of what are called the continuity of government efforts, which still -- still continue. we were just beginning to put them together at that time. >> what do you think he would say about our defense posture at this point? >> secretary weinberger was an enormous backer of defense spending and of the defense budget. he was tireless in explaining the need for an adequate defense. in that respect he was a lot of fun to work for. >> he wouldn't be overly delighted with sequestration and with the current funding level and proposed funding level going forward. >> not at all. >> thank you very much. good luck to you, sir. >> thank you, sir. >> senator

bush tried to separate himself from his father by pushing away scowcroft and baker and everybody elsetead of embracing them. and we see jeb, 19 of 21 foreign policy advisers worked either for his brother or his father. >> first of all, first of all, jim baker was not pushed away. baker was a private adviser to george w. bush. but, look, here's the deal. you could make the argument. george schultz one of reagan's top adviser, adviser to george bush and adviser to jeb, there's a limited number of people in the republican foreign policy world and all of these people had a relationship with the -- and most of them have had a relationship with the last three republican presidents or last two republican presidents. so this is not unusual and not to be -- not a surprise, and you could probably pick out, you could make the argument he's going back to the reagan era, he has baker and schultz and hadley. lou: you are answering questions i'm not asking tonight, karl. the truth is i find it interesting he's taken a different tack than his brother, don't you? >> of course that's what everybody doe

i'm barry pavel, the director of the brent scowcroft said on international security here at the atlantic council, and in the brent scowcroft center is our brilliant director of the cyber statecraft initiative jason healey. so you wonder more about later. welcome to this event on breaking the cyber information sharing logjam. you see the publication out of their four your reference this afternoon's event will be a moderated discussion on the challenges that limit cyber information sharing, ma the administration's recent proposals to address those gaps and the exemplary sure and that was evident in the identification and remediation of the recently disclosed before building. this event is part of our cyber risk wednesday series which is our monthly speakers series designed to bring cyber experts from government, from industry, together with policymakers to examine topics at the core of the cyber statecraft initiative here. in particular its core mission of building a sustainable cyberspace. today's event is quite time as i am sure most of you know. just last friday president obama visited

generals, admirals, national security officials, famous diplomats, including jim baker and brent scowcroft and marine general zinni and the head of the former national security agency, bill odom, spoke out and wrote against invading iraq before it happened in march 2003. a majority of the people in this country think that there's something inflated about our military budget. [scattered laughter] all right. well, they've read the pentagon audits and the gao reports and the "60 minute" exposes and so on. it's horrendously inflated. waste, fraud, abuse is only part of it. we're still building cost-overrun military weapons systems designed for the soviet union era of hostility. like, the f-22 should never be built. you could put it on this stage. that's how much $200 million of electronics cost, profit in overruns. why are we building more submarines, nuclear submarines? one trident submarine--nuclear warheads can destroy 200 cities. that's before it reloads. why are we building more aircraft carriers, $15 billion a carrier? we got 13. the next country to challenge us is italy, has two. [laugh

does not end up as brent scowcroft and dr.rasinski indicated before the committee owning some of these complex and syria and elsewhere. in afghanistan the hard-won gains of the past decade are significant but remained fragile fragile. afghan security forces continue taking over small delay for securing afghanistan and the united states and coalition forces have transitioned to a more limited mission of training and assisting the afghan forces against counterterrorism operations. yet it remains to be seen whether to the divisions on the ground in afghanistan will improve sufficiently by the end of 2016 to want the pace of further reductions under the current plan. dr. carter's participation in evaluating that plan will be absolutely critical. russia's aggression against ukraine has raised tensions in europe to a level unseen in decades. .. case the united states must be determined to determine the best way to support the ukrainian people and their forces in defending their country. political instability in yemen has caused the

does not end up, as brent scowcroft and dr. burzynski indicated to us in hearings before the committee owning some of these conflicts in syria and elsewhere. in afghanistan the hard-won gains of the past decade are significant but remain fragile as afghan security forces continue taking over responsibility for securing afghanistan the united states and coalition forces have transitioned to a more limited mission of training and assisting the afghan forces in conducting counterterrorism operations. yet it remains to be seen whether conditions on the ground in afghanistan will improve sufficiently by the end of 2016 to warrant the pace of further reductions under the current plan. dr. carter's participation in evaluating that plan will be absolutely critical. russia's aggression against ukraine has raised tensions in europe to a level not seen in decades. recently separatists in eastern ukraine with substantial russian equipment, training and leadership have abandoned any pretext of following the previous cease-fire, although the

there's a general consensus at the aspen institute and the aspen strategy group, it is run by brent scowcroftbush the elder's national security adviser and joe nye who is a professor at harvard, democratic administration. foreign relations the various sorts of established view of the world which believes in free minds free-market liberal democracy, it believes in balancing the realist view of foreign policy meaning national interest and if we talk about ukraine and russia is this the best place to assert it? is there a balance we can do with russia? with an idealistic approach to foreign policy which is we want democracy we want to fight against people who are tyrannical so that wrestling for the balance between idealism and realism and with interventionism versus a more humble foreign policy, you can see that happening in the establishment. the good thing about the united states is the establishment is always being challenged. whether it is ted cruz or rand paul or the republican party or the democratic party, and some of them were misguided in the past 15 years, including in my opinion the

bush jim baker and brent scowcroft running the show were as bad if not worse than these.e? >> well he has. i mean you know they bring over a lot of members of congress. did you ever make this trip joe? >> i never made the trip. >> put him in a helicopter. show him israel is smaller than new jersey, and then bb tells them that iran is going to launch a nuclear weapon as soon as they get it which is completely ridiculous and he's got a lot of friends. >> why is that ridiculous? >> why is that ridiculous? because sirn a country of 70 million people, and they know that if they ever launched on israel tehran with 25 million people would be evaporated 20 minutes later. >> i'll ask you this question that i've asked the past three years, and nobody has a good answer. i'm going to see if your non-answer is better than every other's, because nobody can know. who is in charge of iran? because -- because at times it seems like it's the ayatollah's. at times seems it's the revolutionary guard. at times reformers. who's in charge? >> i think the revolutionary guard is in charge. the su