(This text has been professionally transcribed, However, for timely distribution, it has not been edited or proofread against the tape.)
Mark: Let me introduce our speakers. Dr. Daniel Goure is Vice President with the Lexington Institute, a non-profit, public policy research organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. He was a member of the 2001 Department of Defense transition team, and spent two years as Director of the Office of Strategic Competitiveness in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prior to joining the Lexington Institute, Dr. Goure was the Deputy Director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies where he directed analyses of emerging security issues with a special emphasis on U.S. military capabilities in the next century.
Dr. Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior advisor for the Center for Defense Information. Prior to joining the Center, he was a Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously Dr. Korb served as Director of the Center for Public Policy Education and a Senior Fellow on the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, Dean of the Graduate School of Public International Affairs at the University of Pittsburg, and Vice President of Corporate Operations at the Raytheon Corporation. In addition he was assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower Reserve Affairs and Installations and Logistics from 1981 through 1985. In that position he administered about 70% of the U.S. defense budget. For his service in that position he was awarded the Department of Defense's Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Dr. Korb is a prolific author of books and more than 100 articles on national security studies. And I might add he was once a member of the faculty of the Department of Political Science, from 1969 to 1971. Though I advise him that doesn't necessarily give him a home-court advantage _______________.
Lawrence Korb: ____________________________.
Mark: The debate will be moderated by someone familiar to all of you, Dr. Margaret Karns, a dear friend and esteemed colleague, is President of Dayton Council on World Affairs and as you know is Professor of Political Science at the University of Dayton. Please welcome me, join me in welcoming our panelists.
Margaret P. Karns: Thank you very much Mark for doing the introductions, and I might just say that Dayton is one of 11 councils of world affairs around the country that were selected to present this series of debates and we have taken advantage of that by using multiple audiences. Earlier today we did a program with the __________ Public Dayton downtown, and then two speakers met with the editorial board of the Dayton Daily News, this program here on campus tonight, and then tomorrow they go to two area high schools which will be an opportunity to reach out into other parts of the area around us; so trying to take advantage very much of the generous support of the Stanley Foundation of __________ Freedom ___________, and the coordinating work of the Word Affairs Counsels of America, which is based in Washington.
We don't have any of the fancy equipment that they had last Thursday evening for the Presidential debates; no flashing buttons, but I think we promise you some lively discussion. Our format will be a series of questions, in this case unlike last Thursday night, the two participating speakers have these questions in advance, and we will go through them; each of them will respond. I told them to let me know if either one of them wishes some time to rebut the comments of the other, and we'll go for about 50 minutes, and then open up to your questions from the floor, directed to either or both of them.
In that case, and no I haven't tossed a coin, in terms of who gets to start. We're going to start with a question relating to the war in Iraq; question whether or not that war has made us more or less secure. In this case I'm going to go in alphabetical order, Dr. Goure.
Daniel Goure: Yeah, right, I go first. All right. Thank you very much Dr. Karns and thank you to the Stanley Foundation, the University of Dayton, and it's a pleasure to be here. It seems to me that when we talk about Iraq we're going to have to take it in context; that is to isolate Iraq as an issue it only began in January of 2003, or with the beginning of combat operations or with the alleged end of major combat operations, is a mistake. So let's be clear that Iraq was an enemy of the United States of the civilized world from at least 1991 onward. All right. It had in fact not simply lost one conflict with the international community, was in the process of engaging with a second one for more than 12 years. It had terrorist ties; we can argue about the extent of them. But no less a person, no less a critic of this administration than Richard Clark is quoted in the 911 commission report as believing that Iraq and Al Qaeda had significant ties, including the transfer of weapons of mass destruction knowledge and materials.
We know there were weapons of mass destruction programs that dated back into the 1980's; if anything our intelligence at this time under-estimated where the Iraqi's were, only to discover after the first Gulf War the extent of the problem. And in fact we didn't discover their biological program until 1995. There was in addition, military operations against Iraq by President Clinton in 1998, going after those alleged weapons of mass destruction sites. So I argue to you that it would have been folly of the highest order, for the United States to leave in its rear an enemy with whom we were engaged in daily combat while we turned our attention to other fields and other potentially related threats. So fighting this foe has been a _____________, matter of security rather, through three administrations at least.
I argue to you that in that context, eliminating Sadam Hussein has made us more secure. But let me take it to another level, which is to argue in fact, that that's not the relevant question. It is losing in Iraq that will definitely make us less secure. And the real dominant question now, you saw it in last Thursday's debate, is what does it to mean to win or lose in Iraq, and how do we do that? Both candidates are committed to what they say is "winning" in Iraq, perhaps defined very differently. So we're going to have to figure out what it means to win, and we're going to have to decide whether we're willing to pay the price; whether Prince Alizar, whether the Iraq's are.
In that context let me ask you one more thing about making us more secure. If losing is the problem then winning has to be the goal, then we have to ask another question, which frankly I don't see in any of the current political debate; which is what kind of Iraq do we want to see? What's our main standard? Let's not talk about exit strategies, you know, _________ slip out the back jack; the real question here is what is it that we must leave behind for in fact, us to be secure over the long term? We have to ask the question, "So what are the Iraqi's desires? What does an Iraq look like that is satisfactory to the people of Iraq? What are their standards?" and may vary from group to group. So it seems to me in that context, in the immediate terms, we are more secure, even though it is a difficult and bloody road that we are on. We have no alternative now, whatever you think about how it started; we can have a debate about that, but to proceed down this road; not doing it will certainly make us much less secure.
Margaret P. Karns: Thank you. _______________
Lawrence Korb: Going into Iraq has made us less secure. Let me explain to you why. The first you have to understand is there's a big difference between pre-emption and preventive war. Pre-emption means that I have good solid intelligence that somebody's about to attack me. Under international law, under any reasonable standard, I have the right to take action. We're not talking about pre-emption in Iraq, though if you looked at the debate, people did confuse it. What we're talking about is preventive war. Preventative war; the President has said that Iraq was not an imminent threat, but it could be so therefore I had to take action. Once you start down and you say, "Well, preventative war is something I can do because I think it could be a problem in the future," you set a new standard of international behavior. If the United States can go after Iraq when it admits it's not an immanent threat, but could be, what is prevent from going after Pakistan, Russia against George, China against Taiwan. So that's the first problem that you have when you go down this.
The second thing to keep in mind is that people have to ask, "Who is the enemy?" We're not at war with terrorism; we're not at war with evil. Terrorism is a tactic; terrorism is a tactic that is used by the weak against the strong. In World War II we did not go to war with blitzkrieg; we went to war with Nazi Germany. They happened to use that tactic. We didn't go to war with kamikaze; we went to war with Imperial Japan. That was a tactic that they used. Who are we at war with? We're at war with a group of radical jihadists who do not like the policies we pursue in the Muslim world and want to use terrorism as a way to prevent us from carrying out those policies. When we went into Iraq we distracted ourself from dealing with the radical jihadists. We had them on the run in Afghanistan; we didn't finish the job, even if we didn't take out troops, which I think we did. But the fact of the matter is we diverted our attention from the situation in Afghanistan, and by going into Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction, when there were no significant ties to Al Qaeda. What we did is we confirmed the view of those people in the Muslim world, that these radical jihadists were correct. That this was not a war to deal with them, but it was a war against the Muslim world, and that has become the best recruiting tool for this group of radical jihadists.
It's also made us less secure because it has over-stretched our Army particularly. If we have problems in Korea, we'll not be able to deal with them as effectively as we could have, because we've taken forces out of Korea. We're at the point where we may be breaking the all volunteer Army, and se we'll be less capable to responding to other, other problems. So if you look at Iraq in total; it was a diversion from the main threat. It basically made this threat more alive and got more recruits; got us over-stretched, our military, and then finally it has so undermined our credibility in the world that when we go to countries and say, "You've got to help us in Iran," or "You've got to help us in North Korea," because we think that they have nuclear weapons, or about to get nuclear weapons, people say, "You told us that in Iraq, and it turned out not to be true."
Daniel Goure: We can argue some of the legalisms and such, perhaps to death. I think there's one point where I would like to if not disagree with my colleague, at least sort of bug-exchange him a little bit. He says we're not at war with terrorism. It's a tactic. Let me suggest to you it's more than that. It is in some cases a way of life; it isn't completely tied to a political philosophy, approach to _________ affair in the sense of purpose, the whole nature in some cases of jihad. One only has to read the _____________, the documents of Al Qaeda. And it seems to me that one of our mistakes all along has not been to be at war on terrorism; that is to make a concerted effort internationally to de-legitimize terrorism as an instrument. Dr. Korb has said it's the weapon of the weak against the strong; implied that it's the only resort that the weak have.
And I would suggest to you that's a false statement. That the weak can in fact, and have in many insurgencies and other campaigns conducted themselves in ways that tried to avoid, and certainly didn't pursue the infliction of casualties on innocent civilians. We have something different here. Right. It is radical jihadists, it is Islamic terrorism, it is a number of different things, but it also has its roots in almost a way of war that people not only adhere to but then go on with for most of their careers. One can look at the IRA, at other groups. And one of our failings, and this is not this administration, it's been almost continuous, is not to make a better effort at the United Nations to de-legitimize terrorism as a means of struggle, while recognizing that therefore we would have to legitimize certain other forms of struggle by insurgency. You can't declare all insurgencies to be acts of banditry or terrorism. But that at least would leave us in a position where you could bring much greater moral authority of the world, against those who practice this black art.
Lawrence Korb: I don't disagree that terrorism should be condemned. That's not the issue. The issue is making the United States secure in dealing with the threat to it. For example, Dan talked about the fact that Sadam Hussein was this threat. Sadam Hussein was contained; he was going weaker every year. When we got in there we found exactly how weak he was. David Kay who was the weapon's inspector went in and said, "Sadam didn't even know what was going on in the country." We talk about the fact that "Gee, it costs us a lot more to rebuild Iraq than we thought," we had no idea how bad a shape it was in. It was in terrible shape because of the fact that Sadam was contained and the sanctions preventing him from increasing his military capabilities were growing. Containment was working against Sadam just as it worked against the Soviet Union during the cold war.
Margaret P. Karns: Let me pick up on a point that you made a little bit earlier Larry, which had to do with your perception that we indeed were facing a greater threat from radical jihadists as a result of the war in Iraq, and ask you Dr. Goure if you would speak more directly to the question of whether you think there's a greater security threat from jihadists and other radical groups as a result of the war in Iraq.
Daniel Goure: I honestly don't think so. In fact I would argue that's not the case. We certainly have a rise of terrorist in Iraq. We've had even some increase of terrorist's acts outside; we've also had enormous success in rolling up various terrorists cells, including very recently an offshoot or subordinate level of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Overall, I think what is interesting is the extent to which all the predictions of the Muslim street rising, or the Arab street rising in anger of waves of terrorism, has not been borne out. I'm almost to suggest, this is not the purpose of war with Iraq, that in fact what we have managed to do quite successfully, accidentally but successfully, is to consecrate most of the people we need to deal with, Chechnya's, people from Somalia, and others, in Iraq; where in fact they can and will be dealt with. One of the real difficulties in a war on terrorism is locating the people you need to get at. If they come to you it's a lot easier.
Margaret P. Karns: So on the one hand what I'm hearing you say is that the situation in Iraq is worse as a result, but that the problem elsewhere has in fact improved; there are fewer threats in other parts of the world.
Daniel Goure: I would argue that there are fewer threats we can could numbers, and there is none of the evidence that we were told to expect after Iraq, particularly if we're not going to be successful rapidly, which is in fact this massive --- just do the numbers, if one tenth of the one percent of the right cohort, age cohort of Muslim or Arab met, _______ of Arab met, were in fact of the mind to be jihadists, there aught to be a dead American on every major street of every major Arab city every day. We're not seeing the kind of reaction we were told. We're not seeing the influx of numbers that would associate with something like that. Right? We're not seeing what we should have seen if Iraq was this massive recruiting campaign ground or this banner for Al Qaeda; it's not happening.
Lawrence Korb: Well, it's interesting. The State Department put out the report on terrorism this year and they come out and said what Dan has just said, "Gee, terrorists incidents are going down." And people checked the numbers and they had to retract it.
Daniel Goure: You're right.
Lawrence Korb: Actually it's going up, and when you take a look at what's happening in Iraq you're getting people come from other countries who ordinarily would not be involved in these terrorists' activities. It's very similar to what happened when the Soviets went into Afghanistan; people came from all over the Muslim world to fight the Soviet Union. And the British Ambassador to Italy gave what he thought was an off-the-record talk last week; remember they are our big allies there, and he basically said that, you know, going into Iraq was the biggest recruiting bonanza that Osama Bin Laden had. Of course he didn't intend for that to leak, but the fact of the matter is I think that that's basically what's happened because it's confirmed in the minds of many people in the Muslim world that we want to do, we came for their oil, we came to occupy the country, particularly when we were talking about setting up permanent bases there.
Margaret P. Karns: Let me change our approach a little bit on this and ask you to address the question of how important do you think it is for us to coordinate our efforts to confront the jihadists, radical Muslim elements, with other countries in a multi-lateral approach? Larry, do you want to lead us off on this one?
Lawrence Korb: All right. In dealing with this threat from this group of radical jihadists we can't do it by ourself. We are powerful, we're preponderant, but we're not omnipotent. One of the things that you need to do in dealing with this group is dry up their finances. We can't do that by ourselves; we've got to work with the rest of the international community. We've got to share intelligence; we've got to work with law enforcement. President Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2002, I'm sorry, in January 2003, mentioned the fact that in working with other countries around the word, we have basically stopped 3,000 terrorists who were up to no good. The President also mentioned, and he said, "Another number have met a different fate." I'll leave it to your imagination to see what that is, what the fact of the matter is we have been working with these other countries to do that. I think in the situation with Iraq, had we waited until Blinks had done his inspections and got an indication of the situation in Iraq, we would have been able to have more help in going in there.
If you take a look at the way to deal with the threat, you've got two models that we've used previously and one we have in Iraq. One was George Bush's father. In Kuwait we assembled a coalition, we went to the United Nations; we even got countries like Syria, Egypt and the French to join us. We went in and we accomplished the objective. And not only did the United States not have to bear much of the cost of life, we actually made a profit on the war because we collected money based upon what would be a three month war, that ended up only to be something like 37 days. We, and we were supposed to provide 20% of the cost; we collect the other 80 and we didn't spend it. If you take a look at what happened in Afghanistan we went into Afghanistan, NATO invoked Article 5, which said the attacks of September 11th were an attack on all, we had a United Nations resolution, we were able to have the Bond Conference after we got involved in there, where countries made donations to rebuilding Iraq; and peace-keeping now there is provided by the NATO Nations. That's the way to do it and I think if you felt that Iraq was that serious, that's the way you should have done it. And working with other nations; that's the only way in which you're going to prevail in the end.
Now let me basically sum up what I just said. The motto has got to be multi-lateral if you can, unilateral only if you must, not vice versa.
Daniel Goure: Well I would suggest using many of Dr. Korb's own examples; in fact the United States is very much engaged in multi-lateral security efforts in the war on terrorism to stabilize some of the bad lands where terrorists may go to deal with proliferation and other security issues. We have a difference on one very important issue which is Iraq, but it is interesting that that is to a large extent the whole doubt issue. We have disputes with our allies and some of them get fairly contentious over any number of things, and differences in views. And it's the difference in views which ultimately is the most important question because while one aught to deal in a multi-lateral context, what if in fact you see the world differently than your friends and allies? What if they have a different security agenda, what if they don't see the problem the way you do, what if they want to take a different approach because they're not as likely to be the target, as is the United States? At that point you do have to make a fundamental choice. And no amount of waiting for inspections, for legalisms, for resolution, get you past that fundamental question; which is "What do you when in fact there is a split between your conception of security and that of, at least in the case of Iraq, some of your allies?" And the answer has got to be in the final analysis; you do what is necessary in your own conception to in fact defend your country. There can be no other choice.
Margaret P. Karns: Let me push this question just a little bit because some would certainly suggest that the worsening relations with some of our key Europeans allies imperil our security interests, and makes it more difficult perhaps to protect them. And I'd like to ask each of you to address that more directly if you would.
Lawrence Korb: I think if you take a look at the situation with many of our allies and the problems that you have, means that you and I, the brave young me and young women who are volunteers in our military, we the tax payers, have to bear more of the cost for what was basically a war of choice, not a war of necessity. And again since using the President's own words, "It was not an imminent threat. We had the time to make sure we could get more support." I have never argued, nor does anybody I know argue that you give other countries, and veto over something that you feel is an immanent threat. But when it's not an immanent threat then I think it's the time to work with your allies because you want the allies to work with you in the other areas that I've mentioned, in terms of sharing intelligence, drying up the financial assets. You want them to help in law enforcement, and you also again want to insure that we don't bear too much of the burden. What we have done basically to fight this war in Iraq is borrow money from abroad and from you, and for your children, and grandchildren.
Daniel Goure: I think the questions obscures the generally high level support, mutual support in many cases that we get with allies; including the allies we are most at-odds with in Iraq. Let me talk about some of that; Afghanistan where French, German, Canadian, Australian, British, Special Forces, were in there as early as American Forces were; currently NATO is involved in Afghanistan. Currently NATO has a training mission actually in Iraq. We have the same multi-lateral connection with North Korea or about North Korea with the group of countries around there. We've had similar behavior with respect to Libya and Iran, and the Balkans; and the Balkans is sort of an interesting example because here's a case where indeed the question of imminence or extremism, the nature of the threat, has to be sort of looked at very carefully. We had no U.N. resolution; in fact we didn't even have the full support of the contact group. Russia was opposed to any military intervention and yet NATO and the United States went ahead anyway. So at some point the notion of having to get multilaterally has to take a back seat.
Let me get to sort of the core issue, or core point here which is there's a future in which the military and security capabilities of most U.S. traditional allies will decline. It will do so for demographic reasons, for budgetary reasons, because of entitlements and because of the way they choose to spend their money. There will be no choice ultimately for NATO countries, countries of Europe, our allies in the Pacific, other countries, but in fact to continue to work at relations with the United States; much as it will be our job to work at relations with them. When the British decided in 1972 to pull out of everything east of Suez because they were getting out of the global security business, United States was there to take its place. The world knows, democratic countries know, that without the United States there will be no one there to manage, to support the security affairs of democratic and free countries. That's a reality. They know who we are; they have no choice anymore than we do.
Lawrence Korb: Well, I agree that the United States is the preponderant power; the rest of the world depends on us, but what I fear is that the American people get so turned off by what's happening in Iraq, they'll act the way they did in Viet Nam. Viet Nam was peripheral to fighting Soviet Communist expansionism, yet it was sold to the American people as vital to containing Communism. After the tremendous expenditure of blood, treasure, and money the people in this country not only turned on that war, but they turned on providing the resources necessary to support national security as well as providing young me to serve in a draft Army. And that's the reaction you can have if you over-extend yourself. And then we not only have problems, but the world has problems.
When I was young, like a lot of you people, and I went to Viet Nam, I'll never forget the sign I saw there, and it said, "Today you're fighting in Saigon so you won't have to fight in San Francisco." When I went to Iraq last November Ambassador Bremer, Jerry Bremer had a sign, "Today you're fighting in Baghdad so you won't have to fight in Brooklyn." I guess he must have known I was coming that day. I thought, "There's no connection between the two. Okay? There is no connection. But if you make a connection and you continue to expend blood and treasure on something that's peripheral then you run the risks of Americans say, "To heck with it."
If the Soviet Union ever wanted to take advantage of the United States in the cold war, it was during the decade of the 70's, 'cause when we ended the draft in January of '73 and went to the volunteer military, we didn't know what we were doing. We, it was the toughest time to recruit people because we had this reaction against national security; the defense budget was cut well beyond where it should have been given the fact that during the war in Viet Nam, in order to hold down that cost, we didn't buy new equipment like we should have. We were not in good shape. And that's the problem that you risk when you over-extend yourself; then you won't be able to play the role that Dan says, and I agree that we need to.
Daniel Goure: We disagree about whether Iraq was a diversion or not, at the time the war began. It is clear it no longer is. So whatever we want to talk about in terms about how we got here, we have a different situation today. And there is no course but going forward. The alternative will certainly mean the end of fighting elsewhere, whether it's in Rihad, in Ankara, in Jerusalem, or in Brooklyn. But clearly we're now in a different position. It may not have been relevant once, we all don't disagree about that; but it certainly is relevant now.
Margaret P. Karns: Dan, could I push you to speak a little bit about the issue that Larry has now referred to twice, which is the question of the adequacy of our forces, to handle the current situation and the future. And what's your own view about that?
Daniel Goure: I think it's quite clear the forces are not adequate. All right? And this is sort of a general consensus I think. Now, there are two choices again; depending on what you think of the situation now. You either create the adequate forces to deal with this, or you withdraw from some of these commitments in order to husband those forces for something else; what that is is not necessarily clear; if you would draw from Iraq; if Iraq is lost, if it is a Civil War; whatever scenario you want to paint. Of course, next question is, "And where are you going to exactly make your stand, and which allies are exactly going to support you? And what happens to those people who have already paid; not in Iraq alone, but elsewhere, have already paid dearly in domestic insecurity, and political unrest; Pakistan is one country I'm thinking of; in fact to remain an alai when it looks like the U.S. will, in the final analysis cut and run?" So the choice of withdrawing forces to protect them for some alternative use, may or may never come; I don't think is acceptable. It's not logical. What we're going to have to do is spend what it takes, build what is necessary for a military that can fight and win a global war on terrorism, which may be forces for Iraq for a contracted period of time. It may mean forces to go elsewhere, probably does in fact. Whether it's the two divisions and Special Forces that Senator Kerry wants, or it's more than that, or its other things, yeah, that depends on your viewpoint. I'll subscribe to more, because I think there isn't an alternative.
Margaret P. Karns: Do you want to add to that?
Lawrence Korb: The problem you have, and I agree with Dan, we're there and so we can't undo it; but the fact of the matter is that if you're gonna do this you shouldn't try and do it on the cheap, and that's essentially what happened. The Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki, a man who had lost his foot in Viet Nam, man who had run peacekeeping in Bosnia, told the Congress publicly, "We need several hundred thousand people." My understanding is the number he was talking about was 400,000. That was not to defeat the Iraqi military, which because of containment was a shadow of what it was back in 1991, it was to provide security in Iraq. The Pentagon planned to have 30,000, to be down to 30,000 troops by the end of 2003 because they thought we'd be greeted as liberators.
The fact of the matter is that you did need those several hundred thousand, and because of that you've never got the security situation under control.
The question really is now, "Are you willing to put in the more forces that you need to get the situation under control to accomplish your objective, or are you willing to settle for something else?" When I talk about breaking the force, what I mean is this. If you keep sending people back to Iraq, after they've been back in the states for a year, you keep calling up people in the "garden" reserve; you're going to lose the experienced people. Even if you don't experience recruiting problems, you're going to lose your non-commissioned offices that are the back-bone of the Army. And once you do that you've broken the force. You may still have the same people, you know, in uniform; or not the same people, you'd have people in uniform. You may have the numbers, but it's not going to nearly be as good. If this administration wanted to go to war in Iraq, which we now know they were hell-bent, you know, from September 11th on, they should have increased the size of the Army as many people called for; many people in the Congress, even members in their own party. But they refused to do that, and that's why I think you're in the situation where you could break the force.
Margaret P. Karns: Let me shift the focus here for a few minutes and ask you to talk a little bit about your views on the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea at the present time, and how much of a threat each of you think they pose to the United States. We'll start with you Dan.
Daniel Goure: I think in fact, despite the public eye on it, that North Korea is in fact the lesser threat, even though it may possess some number of nuclear weapons. Iran, partly because of the neighborhood it's in, partly because of the attitude of segments of its military, is in fact the more pressing problem. And fortunately in some respects, one that is at an earlier stage of development, where in fact there may be the possibility of short-circuiting this deployment; or the development of the weapons, much less they're deployment.
Overall we're going to have to consider not simply non-proliferation as the only goal is to keep people from having the weapons; it's an awfully difficult task, but also what we're going to do about rogue states, member of the axis of evil, others, when if fact they do acquire. It is one thing, and a very difficult thing at that, to think about how we now have to deal with an India, and with Pakistan. We had one approach to dealing with them over the nuclear matter, and it didn't work very well. We've not sort of beginning to move to a different state. We're going to have to consider whether how we deal then with others; rogue states in particular, as they acquire. Can they, should they be prevented form acquiring, at all costs; which basically means at some point you go to war if they don't give them up? Or are we going to have to think of other forms of dissuasion, containment, deterrents, defeat, that in fact may be better able to neutralize this threat?
And finally there's sort of this interesting question; and I don't think either administration's done that well; this administration or the opposition, have done a good job of walking this path, which is, "What does it mean for U.S. nuclear forces and nuclear deterrents?" On the one hand you don't want to build more nuclear weapons, or new nuclear weapons; the argument goes because this is going to kind of challenge the other side, or the people you are worried about in fact to keep on building; you're building, they're building. On the other hand it is not clear, since they're building these weapons, to counter your conventional threat, that in fact conventional forces alone would be an adequate deterrent to their threatened use, or use of weapons of mass destruction. We may have to go back reluctantly but necessarily, to be much more explicit about the role of nuclear weapons against those kind of rogue states as a way in fact, of deterring the use of such weapons.
Lawrence Korb: Well, one thing that the candidates agreed on in the debate last week; there was the last question about what is the greatest danger to the United States? And it is a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a terrorist group with global reach that wants to inflict harm on us for whatever the reason might be. And the question you have to ask yourself is how do you prevent that from happening?
The first thing you need to do is prevent the fissile materials from falling into the hands of these radical jihadists. It's easy to make a bomb; anybody here can make a bomb. The problem is you need to get the materials. So the first thing you have to do is say, "How do you prevent those materials?" As well I would say chemical and biological weapons. And here we go back to the point we spoke about before. Why do you need allies, because you need people to work with you to insure that that does not happen. The President mentioned last week the successful case of Syria, I mean of Lebanon ---
Margaret P. Karns: Libya.
Lawrence Korb: Okay, it's been a long day here. The successful case of Libya; one of the reasons that Libya in my view, came to access this is because the whole world was united in keeping sanctions on them until they did, and they were paying a heavy price. What you want to insure is that you have the appropriate international arrangements. The President's Proliferations Security Initiative, P-S-I, which he mentioned, I think is a step in the right direction, where you intercept this stuff as it goes around the world; and again, you need allies. But you need to move beyond it.
There was a treaty that's before the world, called a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. During the Democratic Convention when nobody was paying attention to very many things, the State Department announced the United States would not allow inspections as part of this arrangement. Even the British were aghast. If you don't allow inspections of the United States, you won't get them any place else; you've lost the moral high ground. And so what you need to say to yourself is "Is that type of arrangement, even if it causes us some temporary discomfort or some of our industries get upset, worth preventing this material from getting into the hands of people?"
When you take a look at the situation of Iran and North Korea you have to ask yourself is, "Were those forces in those countries who wanted to develop those weapons pushed to accelerate it when they saw themselves in the Axis of Evil, or when you went into Iraq, because if you look, that they might be next?"
The next question you have to ask yourself is, "How do you want to deal with them?" And I, in the debate last week it got all fuzzy; multi-lateral, you know, bi-lateral, and all of this type of thing. The fact of the matter is that you have to work both. The United States has to be willing to talk to Iran as well as North Korea; doesn't have, --- talking to it doesn't legitimize, it doesn't say we approve of things that they're doing, anymore than when we talked to the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. But you've got to be able to talk to them, and you've got to work with your allies as well. So it's a multi-pronged thing. If they get them, and you've made the best-faith efforts, then I think you would get support in the international community to treat them like Libya.
Daniel Goure: The fact is that neither Iran nor North Korea began their nuclear programs, or their ballistic missile programs, on 911, or the year before when they were listed as Axis of Evil countries. In fact North Korea went down a uranium route, an elicit uranium route, after having signed an agreement with the United States that was supposed to prevent exactly their proliferation; signed the agreement; next day walked out the door and bought a uranium re-processing capability, and were merrily on their way to re-processing fissile material of a different form.
That's one of the problems you have with counting on signing on the dotted line as being sufficient security. Iran has been working in its own way on nuclear weapons, or on nuclear capabilities, let's say, and on research for well before this administration took office; probably all the way back through, into the 80's. It has been working on ballistic missiles, which it got in part form North Korea, and technology from elsewhere; well before this administration took office. That's one of the problems. You have countries that are very committed to gaining these weapons. In the case of North Korea, that's it; that's the whole show for North Korea. It doesn't have the weapons; nobody pays any attention, except the South Koreans for their own purposes. And therefore, of course it makes it all the more difficult to think that there's going to be a deal struck that matters one wit.
Lawrence Korb: There's no doubt about the fact that they didn't begin, the world didn't begin on 911, but the fact of the matter is that particularly in the case of Iran, there are people in that country who use that as a reason to accelerate the program. And there's a debate in Iran now about whether they be more or less, or more or less secure, if getting, --- getting nuclear weapons; 'cause I think Dan put it very well, "You get a nuclear weapon and then what?" Okay? If you pay a heavy price for it that's the "what" that you have. And the United States' ability to lead the world in stopping this is undermined when the United States, as this administration has done, had decided that it wants to get new nuclear weapons. The United States is asked to drop the ban that prevented us to doing research on smaller nuclear weapons; mini-nukes and bunker busters. When you do that you undermine your ability to get the rest of the world to deal with this situation of nuclear proliferation. We should be taking the lead in getting rid of these weapons, getting rid of our own, and cutting down the number that we have; not developing new ones, if in fact we want to get the rest of the world to see the problem as we see it.
Margaret P. Karns: Dan?
Daniel Goure: Not a new problem; it's not that if the U.S takes an action the world sits up and goes, "Didn't realize, nukes are a problem and we aught to do something about it. Damn, why didn't you just reduce these weapons earlier and we'd all gotten the clue?" That the United States has reduced its nuclear arsenal substantially, remarkable from its highs, and it's helped encourage the former Soviet Union, Russia in particular, to do the same. But I want to come back to the essential question; I, I can either debate this but it's a larger question, which is, it may be that in fact that if we build weapons, it is harder to get, if not the world, certain countries at least, to go along with out non-proliferation agenda, assuming they would otherwise. On the other hand, if those weapons, and it's an if, it's to be debated, in fact add to our deterrent of those same countries, or others, how do I make that trade-up? All right. In the end I will argue that the United States with nuclear weapons, and with some number of credibly useable nuclear weapons, is essential for deterrents. It's an old principle that's still valid. And frankly, virtually all of today weapons are not useful for much; are not credible in the end for much. The promise to turn North Korea into a parking lot is not very credible in the last analysis. And therefore, we may have to think about seriously, and debate these two propositions; the downside risk of pursuing new weapons, and the advantages that it confers.
Lawrence Korb: I think in terms of, I won't go over the points I just made; I think Dan is right. You do need this debate, has kind of went under the radar this year, both literally and figuratively, but what I do think in terms of deterrents, our conventional weapons are so powerful and so accurate, that you have a whole host of military leaders say, "We can inflict unacceptable damage on anybody, just with our conventional weapons. We don't need a nuclear weapon." You could turn North Korea into a pretty devastating place just with the conventional weapons that we have, given their lethality and their accuracy.
Lawrence Korb: I'm going to change our focus again here; get us moving in a different direction. And I'd like to pick up with one of the major conclusions of the 911 Commission Report, which had to do with the failure of imagination, as it was put in the days, and months, and years, prior to 911. And ask you to give us a little bit of your reaction to that conclusion and your respective thoughts on our ability to get the security and intelligence establishments to think more outside the box, and presumably in the mode of making us more secure in the future.
Daniel Goure: Well if you site the 911 Commission, let me suggest you take a look at another document, which is actually up on the web, and that is the report of the Senate Committee that ___________, that looked at weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and goes through in great detail; a lot of its blacked out, but it's still fun to kind of look around; try to put the jig-saw puzzle together; of why we ended up with such wrong intelligence across the board? And let me tell you what you get from those two reports; 911 Commission says, "failure to imagination;" Senate Commission says, "_______ too much imagination," all right? That bounds the problem. That is the inherent problem of intelligence. It is imperfect. You get perfect intelligence after the event, not before; in almost every instance historically. It always is a matter of context. It is a matter of prior experience, behavior. It is a matter that also includes assumptions. I'm on either side, all right? Now, I'm not saying that to excuse this administration, or the intelligence community; it is a real difficult, difficult situation.
The second problem that you have is when action should be taken, whether it's countering terrorism, or dealing with proliferation, or military threats, you want to do it as early as possible, like get as far down the proliferation stream that you can, stop somebody before they go so far that they're committed to a course of action which will lead to hostilities, etc., etc. That's of course almost always where the intelligence is the weakest; 'cause you're dealing with intentions. You're not sure about capabilities, etc., etc., etc. And so a more difficult time to get any decision-maker to take action is earlier in the process, when if fact the intelligence is usually unclear, least-clear in some respects. That's on e of the problems.
Second point to make on this is we have to go to the solution set, okay? I fully believe that while the description of the problem was pretty good on the 911 Commission, the solution was totally off the wall. The idea of the Intelligence Czar is precisely wrong; it's a Washington solution. It's a _____________. It's sort of, --- there is no photonic idea of the philosopher key for intelligence, who's simply going to sit up there on high, overseeing the streams of information coming from everywhere, pull the threads and go to Eureka; on September 32, 2011, the following is going to happen in the following location. That's the difficulty. The problem with intelligence, and you can see _________, is way down in the bowels. It is the difficulty of analysis; it is the lack of cross-fertilization, it is people working stove-pipes, more than anything else. And therefore centralizing this process doesn't produce imagination, but precisely the opposite; it bottle-necks the whole system.
Having competing intelligence agencies, one with sharing data, different view points, is in fact the only recourse we have to the kind of rootenized mind-set that Senate Report talks about; where everybody kind of went in lock-step, you know, given a particular kind of assumption; sort of assumed that there was more there in Iraq, and that spite of fancy just kept on going, all right. So the only way you're going to be able to do that is to have other players, including outsiders by the way, involved in at least the analysis process, if not the gathering of intelligence.
Margaret P. Karns: Your comment reminds me of a friend a former colleague at another institution who did a doctoral dissertation of Pearl Harbor and the lessons from it, and found 72 lessons; everybody wondering which ones were valid.
Daniel Goure: Yeah, right.
Margaret P. Karns: Larry?
Lawrence Korb: I think that the problem that you have is what I would call the politicization of intelligence, where it becomes clear the answer that the people at the top want and this works its way up, through the system. And that's something that has to be guarded. I think what you need, --- I happen to think, I'd like to see somebody in charge of the Intelligence Community to make sure that we coordinate it, that one group knows what the other is doing. I don't think that the person running the CIA can also be in charge of the Intelligence Community. I think you've got to separate the two, but I think what you need to have is a respect for the professionalism of those men and women doing the analysis, and shelter them from what the politicians want.
If you go back and you take a look at what happened to the Intelligence Community, I'd say you have to go back to 1975 when George Herbert Walker Bush, as we call him Bush 41, was running the CIA. And the CIA was doing an estimate of Soviet capabilities from '75 to '85. Now a lot of people did not like that answer that they came up with, 'cause it did not justify people who wanted basically to re-arm America and to increase our military capacity substantially. So they brought in a group of outsiders; that wasn't the problem. They brought in a group of outsiders; all who had the same world-view about how bad the Soviets were. And of course they called in Team B and they came back basically and said, "Oh, the CIA is way off the mark. They're underestimating the situation."
We now have empirical evidence because in 1985 you can take a look at what both said. The CIA, if anything over-estimated Soviet capabilities; and Team B was way over. I don't think, --- and then of course, in 1998 when the National Intelligence Community, not just the CIA, basically said there would be no ballistic missile thereat to the United States for 15 years, people didn't like that answer. So they brought in another group of outsiders basically to tell them that that answer was wrong.
That to me is the problem. If you don't like the analysis, tell them why; if you want to use outsiders fine, but you got to balance it with people from all different perspectives, and if you coordinate the activities, and you have control over the budgets. I mean, the Director of Central Intelligence right now, John McLaughlin, the job that George Tenent had, did not control what the Pentagon did in the intelligence area. And the fact of the matter is they couldn't control what the satellites were doing, in the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance off ---, lots of stuff like that. And until you do that you're not going to minimize the chances of making a mistake. It'll never be perfect; this is not a science, it's an art, but I think there are things you can do to make sure it becomes more perfect.
Margaret P. Karns: Dan, you want to?
Daniel Goure: Yeah, let me sort of contest Larry's sort of description of this. In fact, I think the CIA was patently wrong on the Soviet estimates, and Team B among others, was more correct. Up to including the fact that the former Soviet Union, it's now recognized, they were spending nearly 50% of their state budget on defense. This is after Gorbachov said "it's coming down," the CIA said also. In 1998, this is when the Rumsfeld Report came out, on ___________, interesting about that is that that year was the year, that without CIA warning, North Korea tested the Typogon-1, Iran tested I think it was the Shihab-3, Pakistan and India both conducted nuclear tests; all a great surprise to the Intelligence Community. So it is one thing to want to shelter the analysts from gross politicization; it is another thing --- we have an enormous track record, to rely on them solely or completely, because in fact there are going to be built-in institutional, personal, intellectual, collection biases, that is always going to happen. In addition and this is one of those dirty facts of life, intelligence will always have a political component. The President asks for an NIA or report on this topic, not that topic. That's the way the intelligence requirements get shaped. The policy-maker shapes the requirements, delivers them to the intelligence people, the intelligence people don't get to set their own requirements. Again, there can be a discussion back and forth, "Are you sure you like this one and not that one, 'cause that second area's gotta be a threat comin up?" But it is a political or strategic judgment made by policy-makers, not analysts.
Now let me go back to the Team B. In 1985 I looked at what they said the Soviets would have militarily. The CIA over-estimated it; Team B was way off. I'm not talking about the former Soviet Union; I'm talking about what they were capable of producing. And the point I want to make, and no organization is perfect, but if I'm in a situation where I have to every time, give you my best professional judgment, and if I know what you want to hear and I don't say it, and you're going to bring in some outsiders, I don't think it's going to work. You have to assume that all of these people we hire in these agencies; don't forgot you got 15 intelligence agencies, not just the CIA, you got the Defense Intelligence Agency, but all of them are somehow or another completely incompetent. I don't believe that, nor do I believe it's all group-think because of the fact of all these various agencies. Sure, they make mistakes; there's no doubt about it. You go back and you find out why there was a mistake, but I don't think the answer is, particularly when you bring a group that has a particular point of view, where you know that they're going to come up with a different conclusion. If you want to bring in an outside group, make sure it represents all parts of the political spectrum.
Margaret P. Karns: Either of you want to make any closing remark on this question of America more or less secure?
Daniel Goure: Well, I'll start out by saying when you take a look at things in their totality, create the Department of Homeland Security, reform has taken place in intelligence, change in laws to allow intelligence-sharing, creation of North Kob, invasion of Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, operations globally against Al Kaida and their minions, a coalition, an anti-terrorist coalition that numbers some 90 nations, 30 of more in one way or other involved in Afghanistan, I would argue to you overall, quote the words of 911 Commission, "Because of offensive actions against the, offensive and defensive actions against Al Kaida since 911, we believe we are safer today, but we are not safe." I think that's sort of judgment where we stand at this point.
Lawrence Korb: I think if you take a look at the question, "Are we as safe as we should be?" And I think the answer to that is no, not only for the reasons that I've talked about, but the idea that somehow in order to prevail in this global war, what they call the global war against terrorism, we have to make the Arab world particularly democratic. You know, Woodrow Wilson wanted to make the world safer for democracy; this administration feels it has to make it democratic in order to achieve its objectives. And that's a goal that's very, very difficult to achieve, and I don't think that's something the American people support. The President talks about making a free democracy in Iraq, and how we have to stay there. But remember what Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense said, "We'll tell the American people it's weapons of mass destruction 'cause that's the only thing that will sell." I don't think democracy would have sold; weapons of mass destruction sold. And that's why I think that we, for example are not expecting not as many containers as we should coming into the United States. A lot of police and fire departments, you know, can't communicate. The Department of Homeland Security is a God awful mess in terms of the way it's run, 'cause the administration first resisted it, and then coupled it together very, very quickly. So I think that's the real issue.
But before I finish I want to say how happy I am to be back here at Dayton and pay tribute to my former colleague Jerry Kirns, who had an awful lot to do with launching me on my career in this Political Science think-tank government world. And I think if Jerry was the chairman of the department, rather than just a colleague, I probably would have stayed here, so ---
Margaret P. Karns: And on that note let me thank all of you for being here this evening; would ask you to join me in thanking our two speakers.