FRED KEMPE:  This is terrific.  There are more stars and bars in this room than we usually have.  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Atlantic Council, I’m Fred Kempe, president and CEO.  And welcome to this evening’s commander series with the commander of the United States Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy Keating.

I know many of you have attended our commander series on a regular basis.  Let me just say a couple of words about what this series has been about.  We have created with this – and I must say, it’s been one of the most popular things we’ve introduced – a public platform for senior U.S. and global military leaders to share their views and concerns with a Washington audience.

The program has become an authoritative opportunity for military leaders to shape the security debate in Washington and beyond.  Since the beginning of this series we’ve had the commanders of EUCOM, NORTHCOM, the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Army, and two of the most recent commanders in Afghanistan.  It is a flagship program for the Atlantic Council and I want to think Saab AB and Ambassador Henrik Liljegren, board member of the Atlantic Council, for Saab’s support of this series.

I’m also delighted with the turnout today, which says a lot, as well, about the popularity of the series.  Now, Admiral, I do have to mention one thing.  Some people ask me, why is the Atlantic Council floating its boat in the Pacific?  The answer is pretty simple: it’s a matter of history, it’s a matter of mission and it’s a matter of reality.

There was, before the war, a very famous ambassador by the name of U. Alexis Johnson, quite legendary ambassador to Japan.  After the war, when the Atlantic Council was founded, he was one of the founders.  He and Dean Acheson, another one of the founders, were very clear that the world was round and that the Atlantic Council had to recognize that much earlier than most transatlantic organizations.  So that’s the history.

Number two, there’s the mission.  The mission of the Atlantic council is renewing the Atlantic community for 21st-century global challenges.  It’s why we’ve long had a successful Asia program for many years, directed by Banning Garrett, recently opened up a South Asia center, directed by Shuja Nawaz, and are launching a center for Atlantic-African partnership.  This evening is under the international security program and the director, Damon Wilson.

So, and there’s the reality.  Take a look at the situation now:  NATO reaching out to develop it’s global partnerships with Japan, Australia, South Korea; Asian powers playing a key role in stabilizing Afghanistan; the U.S. and E.U. working together to engage China and India on global climate change; the G-20 bringing together key Asian and European partners to address the global financial crisis; North Korea – I don’t have to say much about that; Security developments in the Pacific, such as the development of long-range ballistic missiles impact the debate on missiles in Europe.

I think this link has been apparent since the U.S. entered World War II in Europe after the attack in the Pacific.  So, Admiral, the Atlantic Council will continue to float its boat, as well, in the Pacific.  I now want to turn the podium over to the Honorable Walt Slocombe, the secretary of board and a vice chair of the Atlantic Council, and former undersecretary of defense for policy.

He’s going to introduce our speaker and will later moderate the Q&A session.  Walt, who’s now with Caplin & Drysdale, is – and this is not an overuse of the word – a pillar of the Atlantic Council.  He provides me and the rest of our leadership strategic advice, as well as sound legal advice.  I am still free, walking around, and have not yet been incarcerated; that’s all because of Walt Slocombe.  Walt, I’m grateful for you service, and we’re delighted to have such a distinguished former Pentagon official moderate this evening’s discussion.

(Applause.)

WALTER B. SLOCOMBE:  Thanks, Fred.  It’s a great honor to be asked to introduce Admiral Keating.  He has that kind of résumé that mere mortals only dream of.  He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1971, shortly thereafter began a distinguished career as a naval aviator.  The most impressive thing is not the stripes on his sleeve, or the stars if he were wearing a slightly different uniform; it’s that he has carried out 1200 arrested landings on aircraft carriers.

He was the deputy commander of an air wing during the First Gulf War and he was the commander of NAVCENT during the Second Gulf War.  In between, like all senior military officers, he’s had to do the occasional penance, working in Washington in a variety of jobs.  I had the honor and pleasure of working with him when he was the deputy J-3 during the ’90s.  He then became – after his service in connection with Operation Iraqi Freedom – he became the director of the joint staff, which is the critical position, as I’m sure most of you know, in making that remarkable organization work as well as it does thanks to his efforts and the efforts of a lot of other people and to the Goldwater-Nichols law.

He was then commander – he’s had two – I still call them CINCs – two CINCs jobs – two combat commanders – one at NORAD and the Northern Command, and as you all know, because you wouldn’t be here otherwise, he’s the commander of the Pacific Command.  It’s a real pleasure to have the opportunity to hear his insights into the military and indeed the larger American and strategic role in that critical part of the world.  Admiral Keating, welcome to the Atlantic Council, and thank you for doing this.

(Applause.)

ADMIRAL TIMOTHY KEATING:  Thank you very much, thanks.  Thank you all for this really great opportunity.  A couple of words by preamble: I had the distinction of working for then-undersecretary of defense for policy Walt Slocombe for a while, as he mentioned.  Few officials, in my experience, have had more consequential impact on what the Department of Defense does, did, and is doing than Walt Slocombe.  He was USDP for a long time and in my humble opinion did a magnificent job.  And it’s my honor and privilege to be standing here in front of you having been introduced by – who’d have thunk that back then we would be standing here today?

To Fred, thank you – oh, in fairness, I have to point out – that was a great introduction, and I’m grateful.  But it’s not the best introduction I’ve ever had.  (Laughter.)  It was good, it was very good – (laughter) – and it was accurate.  The best introduction I’ve ever had was of a much smaller group at I think a rotary club in Opa-locka, Florida, where the master of ceremonies was late and they asked me if I would mind introducing myself.  (Laughter.)  That’s the best.  (Laughter.)

We’ve got some – we’ve got, while it’s the Atlantic Council, we have the appropriate visual aid here and I’d like to start with that if I can, and I’m cutting some of you guys out – to describe the Pacific Command AOR – area of responsibility.  I’ll work hard to keep acronyms down to a minimum, but it’s in our vernacular, as you know.

So we have the North Pole; we have the South Pole; we have Alaska to California; we have the east coast of Africa.  That is the Pacific Command area of responsibility.  It’s a pretty large – it’s 50 percent of the surface of the earth, for what it’s worth – about 51 percent of the world’s population.  We’ve got a number of pretty large armies – China, we have some responsibility for the eastern part of Russia.  So China’s army, Russia’s army, North Korea’s army, India’s army, our Army, our armed forces – pretty consequential.

There’s significant economic initiative underway out here.  About $1 trillion – a trillion bucks – of our trade comes from countries in our area of responsibility.  Twenty of the largest ports in the world – of those 20, 15 are in the AOR, nine of them – nine of the largest ports in the world are now in the People’s Republic of China and the world’s biggest port now, Shanghai, by volume, is in our area of responsibility.

So it is a vibrant, dynamic, living, breathing place in which we have the privilege of working and conducting our business.  About a year ago, we decided to rewrite our strategy.  We’d been in the Pacific Command for decades.  The guns have largely been silent in our area of responsibility; for that we are immensely grateful, and it is no accident.  It is due to the efforts of the several in the room, and that is, again, including Walt Slocombe and General Brent Scowcroft.

But we wanted to take what got us where we are and try and catapult it five, 10, 20 years into the future.  It’s a dynamic AOR; the economic engine is churning and there are opportunities and challenges aplenty out there.  If you think about the countries in our area of responsibility – and we’ll walk around here in just a minute – but if you think about them and realize how much room there is for growth, how much opportunity there is for, in some cases, adventurism – or Korea, in some cases bad behavior – but in many more cases than not, cooperating and collaborating to ensure more peace and more stability in the region, that’s why we chose to undertake the process of writing a new strategy for the United States Pacific Command based a lot on what we saw in the rear-view mirror, but trying, as I say, to look five, 10, 20 years down the road – an ambitious undertaking to be sure.

We ended up coming down to three basic tenets of our new strategy – partnership – I’ll talk about each one of them in a minute – partnership, readiness, and presence.  Pretty simple to explain; not so easy to execute.  Partnership – we’re convinced that building upon the very strong bilateral relationships and alliances we have in our AOR.  We have five treaties – Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan.  A majority of our country’s treaties involve countries in our AOR, so we build on those longstanding – some of them decades old – bilateral relationships to weave a fabric that has included as its threads multilateral engagement and not just mil-to-mil.

Increasingly, we see opportunities for including elements across the DIME, if you will – diplomatic, intelligence, military and energy and environment.  So we’re looking to cobble all this together in an increasingly tightly woven fabric that emphasizes multilateralism – and I’ll try to site some examples for it in just a minute – and the ability we have as the predominate military power in the region to provide some rudder, some guidance – in some cases leadership – to all of these countries in our area of responsibility.

Some examples that you might be interested in: India.  Once upon a time, prior to my work with Walt, I was the flag lieutenant to then – here’s a term again: CINCPAC – Admiral William J. Crowe, in the mid-’80s.  And for about a year-and-a-half, if you will, I carried my bags – so there’s hope for all of us who are a little younger – but I was carrying Admiral Crowe’s bags around and we made a visit to India.  The CINC went with pretty high expectations and they were largely unfulfilled.  The reception we got was a little chilly, the engagements on a policy level were not very forthcoming, the hospitality was cordial but not overflowing, and the old man left less happy than we liked him to be, generally.

We just went to India for the second time a couple weeks ago.  Much different visit; much different country.  We got there on the last day of their elections.  It is an amazing process – some of you may have had the good fortune of watching India’s national elections.  It is – some call it the greatest show on earth.  Folks were flocking to the televisions in manner and in numbers that were somewhat unusual to us – glued to the big-screen TVs.

Their government today is more willing to talk about engagement and partnership with the United States than they were in the mid-’80s.  They are exercising with us on a much more robust basis – we just concluded a trilateral exercise; unthinkable in the ’80s – Japan, United States and India in the Sea of Japan.  And it was a fairly spirited, high-end technical exercise if you will, where we weren’t just doing division tactics; we were exercising weapons and techniques and procedures that are pretty high-end.

Two years ago, India participated in a five-way exercise including U.S., Japan, Singapore and Australia – unthinkable in the mid-’80s and it’s now a matter of course with India.  So we think that this is a great example of partnership and the benefits we can all derive from increased dialogue, increased cooperation, and increased understanding of what we are all about in the AOR.

Readiness – doesn’t do us any good to have all manner of forces that can’t get out there and exercise, that cannot get out there and respond to military operational directives from the secretary of defense or the president of the United States to provide assistance to countries who don’t quite have all these resident capabilities and to get out there and exercise with them as an example.

Cobra Gold – some of you may have participated in Cobra Gold in younger lives.  This is an exercise in Thailand held every year – this year, five countries involved, 10 countries sent observers.  Think about that.  Ten countries – India and PRC included – sent observers to watch ships, soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coastguardsmen operating in a real, live field exercise in a very dynamic and vibrant way and it concluded with shifting from war-fighting, if you will, or exercising the capability – we hope we don’t have to do it, but exercising capability – shifting over to humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and United Nations peacekeeping operations.

So it started out fairly aggressive and ended up not just peace-making, but peacekeeping, all under the umbrella of exercise Cobra Gold.  We are in our 35th year; never has participation been more vigorous and more spirited.  So that’s the readiness piece – it is essential for us to be able to field forces that can move out and exercise across the full spectrum of military operational capabilities that you would expect of us at the United States Pacific Command.

The third element of our strategy is presence.  The JOs, as is their wont – junior officers; it’s an acronym – in our headquarters say it this way:  “Virtual presence equals actual absence.”  We’re all used to the wonders of video teleconferences and multiple secure telephone calls and all that.  You’ve got to get out there.  You’ve got to get real boot dirt, you’ve got to get honest-to-goodness grime underneath you fingernails and work with the folks in this very large area of responsibility so that they can develop an intense understanding of what we, the United States of America, offer.

Thirty-six countries in our area of responsibility.  We’ve been to 28 or 29 of them.  Some of them, like Japan, we’ve been 10 times.  Others – well, interestingly, we’ve talked to Burma, Myanmar – didn’t ever think we’d get there, but we got there in an attempt to offer humanitarian assistance about a year ago and they essentially turned us down, which was a tragedy.

At any rate, 27 countries we visited, an unmistakable, unrelenting theme in discussions not just mil-to-mil but with senior defense officials, senior government officials, and commercial partners and commercial interests everywhere we go – unmistakable theme – you, the United States of America, are the indispensable partner.  We don’t necessarily want you with us every minute of every day in our country, on our soil, in our water or in the air overhead, but we’d like you nearby.

We want you to be able to come when we need you; we want you to exercise, operate; we want our young men and women to go to school with you, preferably in the United States.  And we like our young men and women to go to school there.  Admiral Walt Doran attended the Indian military academy years ago and he still cites that as one of the great reasons for the success he enjoyed in our particular area of responsibility.

So, partnership, absolutely essential.  Readiness – we’ve got to be out there.  Presence – you can’t do it virtually, you’ve got to be able to deploy, fly, steam, sail, get there however you can, and operate with these folks so that they develop the understand of what we, the United States of America offer them.  And through all of this, the new strategy, we hope, builds an easy – I’m sorry, a simple, but not easy way to ensure peace and stability in the region.

We remain the indispensable partner, the reliable partner, the country upon which all of these folks can depend to respond in times good and bad without a whole lot of commotion to ensure economic stability throughout the region.  Thanks for your attention this evening and I’d be delighted through Walt’s good graces to try and answer any questions that you might have.

MR. SLOCOMBE:  Admiral, I think that’s a terrific overview of what you’re trying to do, and I’m sure it’s stimulated lots of questions and lots of interest.  So let’s start, Admiral.

Q:  Eric McVadon, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.  Would you comment on China and PSI and then maybe the other end of the spectrum, humanitarian assistance operations with China?

ADM. KEATING:  A couple of examples – thanks for the question – a couple of examples to maybe take it in reverse order.  China had a cold snap in, what, January of 2008.  Guangzhou – you may remember the pictures in the paper when there were 400,000 people stranded at the Guangzhou rail yard – a staggering number of people.  We got on the phone, called our Chinese counterparts, if you will, and said, we’d be happy to help.  And they said we are grateful for the offer.

We were loading up two C-17s – and now, this isn’t a ton of – well, it is several tons of stuff actually – (laughter) – out of Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.  Now this is a response to cold-weather disaster, cold-weather challenge.  A C-17 out of Hickam and a C-17 out of Elmendorf – they launched, inside of 48 hours were unloading their gear with a Chinese two-star to say thank you very much for the assistance.  Now, at the same time, China mobilized their army in a manner that is a little unusual for them I think, but very helpful to the people of Guangzhou.

The second example was the earthquake several months thereafter.  Same phone call; same guy on China’s end.  He’d say, well, we’re grateful for the offer, we’re thankful for the help.  Two more C-17s go in and unless you’ve dealt with earthquakes, you don’t necessarily think of what do you need in the case of an earthquake.  Chain saws, water, food, and plastic sheeting.  Plastic sheeting was in short supply and the – plastic sheeting – I need to be careful – plastic sheeting shortage – (laughter) – get in trouble there.

But again, the Chinese were grateful for the assistance.  We landed; we offloaded; we took off.  So in those two cases, offers of humanitarian assistance were readily and warmly received.  The same time we – this is right now – Michèle Flournoy, a successor to Walt, has just returned from a visit to the People’s Republic of China, where we have every indication she has been able to get military-to-military talks back on track.

They were suspended by China in the wake of our Taiwan arms sales announcement in October 2008.  We think they’re back on track.  There’s a schedule for mil-to-mil dialogue that she has arranged with her Chinese colleague and we hope that it will lead to an increase in the dialogue and an improvement in the relationship between Pacific Command and our counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army, navy and air force, writ somewhat narrowly, and increased understanding and cooperation on a much larger scale.  So that’s all I’m going to answer for your short question, and I hope I got to it.  We’ve provided humanitarian assistance as disaster relief, and we’re hoping for more fruitful relations with Chinese military in the near future.

Proliferation Security Initiative.  We are prepared, when directed, to respond to guidance from the secretary and the president in enforcing United Nations Security Council resolutions, and this is a subset of PSI, if I’m understanding your question.  So as you are aware, PSI is a policy signed to by 90-plus some countries in the world.  We don’t have direct dialogue with the People’s Liberation Army on this topic.  There are some conversations ongoing at the State Department level, including China with respect to North Korea, and beyond that, I’m better off not going into operational detail.  Thanks for the question.  Yes ma’am.  I’m sorry –

MR. SLOCOMBE:  You can handle, this, I think, honestly.

(Laughter.)

Q:  Admiral, Nadia Tsao with the Liberty Time Taiwan.  During you tenure I think you have been trying to help Taiwan and China to dialogue or build confidence – military, you know, confidence-building measure. I don’t know, have you been able to accomplish anything?  Do you see the recent reduction of tension being permanent or, you know, there’s still factors that both sides have to consider about things?

ADM. KEATING:  We certainly hope that the reduction intention is permanent.  It is our profound hope, as I suspect so, too, for PRC and for Taiwan.  We have contributed some instructors for Taiwan’s annual exercise.  As you may know, we send some well-qualified military instructors.  The fact that tension has been defused, if not eliminated across the straight, is very encouraging.

The steps taken by PRC and Taiwan, while some of them are a little kind of pedestrian in a way – sending exotic animals, pandas, to zoos; increased commercial traffic, making it easier to send mail back and forth across the straight – each of these taken in and of itself not a watershed decision, but all contributing to a sense of cooperation and collaboration that we find very encouraging across the straight.  Yes, ma’am?

Q:  Admiral, Betty Lin of the World Journal.

ADM. KEATING:  Hi, Betty.

Q:  Hi.  Not too long ago, a U.S.S. McCain’s towed array was hit by a Chinese sub and can you tell us about what kind of sub it was, and also, can you comment on the PACOM’s ASW capabilities against conventional subs especially with AIB capabilities?  Thank you.

ADM. KEATING:  Is that all you want to know?  (Laughter.)  Um, let me take the McCain piece first.  John McCain, operating in international water the way we operate, our Navy operates around the world all the time – it had a towed array out, and it was damaged.  The investigation’s ongoing; I don’t know precisely why the towed array was damaged.  So we’ll find out perhaps in time.

As for the United States Pacific Command’s ASW policy, we would – I’ve got to keep remembering that the tapes are rolling – (laughter) – we would like to have more than less submarines in the Pacific Command area of responsibility.  Now the United States Navy and Department of Defense, they’ve got to make decisions as to how they apportion those assets.

We’ve got – I think it’s a 60/40 split, Pacific Command and everybody else right now – the Admiral is shaking his head; an intel Admiral shaking his head is encouraging.  (Laughter.)  We regard freedom of access to the maritime domain is absolutely essential to everything we want to get done, all of us want to get done in the Pacific Command AOR.

So guaranteeing right of free passage to anybody that wants to – in accordance with international law – put containers on ships and move them, we would support.  Those who would develop submarine technologies and capabilities that might be used against, to deny maritime access, we would view with disfavor.

So we want to be sure that we can provide adequate defense if we need to in the terms of our nuclear submarine force, the exercises we do with out friends and allies in the AOR.  There are 250-some submarines in our area of responsibility.  That’s a pretty good number of subs – of course not all of them ours, not very many of them ours, but a good number.

So we continued to pursue ASW technology, we want to make sure that countries understand what, the United States of America in the form of the United States Pacific Command can offer them in terms of defense and right of access to the maritime domain.  And countries who develop technologies that would run counter to that policy, we’re going to work to overcome those developments.  Thanks.  Yes, ma’am?

Q:  My name is Sunjin Choi, Institute for Defense Analyses.  Admiral, thank you so much for your succinct remark.  My questions regard your remark on partnership and readiness.  You mentioned PACOM conduct bilateral, multilateral exercise per year with the regional partners.  You have 36 AOR member state that covers 3.9 billion populations.  My question is A, do you have effective measures or the metrics to measure effectively bilateral, multilateral programs, and B, do we have any joint lessons learned process to measure those programs in past?  Thank you.

ADM. KEATING:  That’s a great question.  Two great questions.  The first one, very tough.  Metrics – in a way you end up trying to argue the negative.  If we’re not there, if we don’t exercise on bilateral basis, or more importantly a multilateral basis – if we don’t, how do you know what might happen and might not happen?

I don’t mean to be cute with semantics here, but we work hard to make sure that we are an invited guest everywhere we go in the area of responsibility.  It is not just my luxury, pleasure, but we haven’t been turned down yet – except in Myanmar, Burma.  We flew there to offer humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.  We had 36-some helicopters in Thailand and four ships – a part of a coalition effort in the Bay of Bengal.  We were able to fly 180 C-130 hops into and out of Rangoon, but we could have done so much more.  So that’s the one example I can think of where we were told no thanks.

In every other – I’ll think – in every other situation, countries – go back to where I was a little while ago – we remain the indispensable partner.  Now, we don’t want to say this with a lot of chutzpah, we want to be humble about this; we want to be invited.  To the best of my knowledge, we recall we have always – an invitation tendered is an invitation received – and that works both ways.  The second part of your question was –

Q:  (Off microphone.)

ADM. KEATING:  Oh, yeah.  Thank you.  Joint lessons learned, you bet.

Well, here’s an interesting – again, semantics.  Lessons observed – (laughter) – aren’t necessarily lessons learned.  So when we do have these exercises and we have cultural and language opportunities, shall we say, we want to try to skinny down to a couple of real big hitting items that countries and young men and young women and old men and old women can understand, can embrace, and can fix if necessary or pursuer if desirable.

So lessons learned is a great big-ticket item in the Pacific Command.  Lessons observed: volumes and volumes – all of us have seen them on the shelves.  Well, we’re interested – we’re not persuaded by those.  We’re interested and persuaded by lessons learned.  And we’re working very hard with all the nations with whom we engage to make them concrete, to make them simple, and make them fixable in the out-years. Yes, sir?

Q:  Thank you sir, I am John from the Radio Free Asia.  I would like to ask a question on North Korea.  Now, U.S. government is keeping watch on several North Korean vessels right now, which are possibly carrying the weapon.  So are you keeping watch on the North Korean vessel continuously until when, and then do you have any sense of it?  And then secondly, North Korea’s ICBM, so do we have any expectation of when the North Korea launch the ICBM and to      what you’re ready for about it?  Thank you.

ADM. KEATING:  Sure.  (Laughter.)  Aren’t we supposed to finish at six?  (Laughter.)  Please – this is a very serious situation.  North Korea’s activities are very disturbing and unsettling to all of us.  Witness the United Nations Security Council resolution.  As far as a shipment of proscribed cargo, I can’t comment on operational matters like that or intelligence matters.  Our president has said he is satisfied that the Pacific Command, the military of the United States is well prepared to execute whatever direction he gives us, and you can read whatever or not you choose into that, but that’s where I have to leave it.

As far as Taepodongs launched from North Korea, the recent launch following, by a couple of years, the July of 2006 launch – the secretary of defense just said a couple of weeks ago – I think he said it very well – we’re prepared to protect Americans and American property and American citizens and American territories.  We don’t want to tip our hand too much and indicate specific areas of readiness, or operational patterns, but we’re prepared to execute in whatever direction the president or secretary give us with regard to Taepodong-2s as well.  Yes, sir.  Thomas, how are you?  Good.

THOM SHANKER:  Thom Shanker from the New York Times.  Thank you for your time today and for sharing your wisdom with us.  I wanted to get your assessment of the Joint Special Operations Taskforce operating in the Philippines.  What have been the positive takeaways, and, given the stress on soft forces by the surge that dare not call its name in Afghanistan, do you think those forces should be sustained in the Philippines – even grow – or is it time for them to go home and let the Filipinos take over?  Thank you.

ADM. KEATING:  Yeah.  Thanks, Thom, for the question.  JSOTF-P – great military acronym – Joint Special Operations Task Force – Philippines.  We were directed – we, Pacific Command – to provide forces in conjunction with the United States Special Operations Command to help the armed forces in the Philippines in their struggle against violent extremism, principally in the southern reaches of the Philippine country – Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemaah Islamiya in particular.

We’ve been there for about six years now, in some number.  We’ve got, I’ll just say, several hundred operators there right now, Thom, as you probably know.  They’ve been there for a while.  A critical mission; helping significantly the armed forces of the Philippines, in our view, go back to the metrics question – incidents of violence.  While there are still kidnappings, we’re not entirely sure that there are terrorists.  A little bit of a blurry line in some areas of the Philippines between criminal activity and terrorist activity.

I was able to go with Ambassador Kristie Kenney, who is a real dynamo and a great, great ambassador for our country, on a trip to visit our JSOTF-P personnel about a year ago. We flew down, helicoptered down, drove over.  It wasn’t Interstate 95 – for better or for worse, it wasn’t any Interstate 95.  A little bit bumpy in about a four or five-car convoy – escorted and followed by armed forces of the Philippine marines and soldiers.

So we take this trip into true Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” Philippine jungle.  And as we leave visible elements of civilization – electrical power wires, TV antennas – and get into a little bit less opulent villages and isolated developments.  Young kids – two, three, four, five years old are running out, waving and applauding and jumping up and down and hollering in their in their native tongue what I’m told is, it’s good to see you.  This kind of support – with their mommas and dads back nodding approvingly – I saw this with my own eyes.  And I thought, this is wonderful; this is terrific.

Ambassador Kenney said, two years ago, mom and dad would have pulled the kids back, and they would have stayed well away from the street.  And if there had been any demonstration, it would have been unfavorable.  So I saw, with my own eyes, enthusiastic support from the citizens who had been previously terrorized by violent extremists.  I believe we have made significant progress.  It’s a tough metric – back to her question.  We’ve got the guys that we have there now, Thom.  We’re going to keep them there for the foreseeable future.

It’s a situation we analyze constantly with the Department of Defense, Department of State and the National Security Council.  We’re there for the foreseeable future and I think that the benefits we gain in spite of significant tension on Special Operations forces, are important enough that we maintain our posture and presence in the Southern Philippines.  Sir?

MIKE HARWOOD:  Air Vice-Marshal Mike Harwood from the U.K.  Glenn Talpey (sp) sends you his love, by the way, just so you know.  I want to know, sir, how you personally learn?  Do you read a lot?  If so, what do you read?  Do you have smart guys who brief you all the time?  Or do you just go and do presence yourself, and see if with your own eyes?  How do you learn?

ADM. KEATING:  I have the great luxury and privilege of being surrounded by smart, brilliant guys and girls, Mike.  I mean, I’ve got – this is going to be syrupy – I’ve got the best job in the world.  Think about it.  I get to live in Hawaii with my wife, fabulous house, I got a – I got.  Whew, Mrs. Jazwinski would be very disappointed in me; third-grade English.  I enjoy – (laughter) – a nice airplane out here that rarely takes off without me being on it – (laughter) – and generally goes where we’d like it to go.  So we have astounding support – personnel, administrative, logistics, equipment – and pretty good funding; we could use a little more, but we’ve got pretty good funding.  (Laughter.)

I learn by listening.  Go back to him, go back to him, Oliver, Magnus, Olman, many in the room.  Some names I don’t recognize, but faces I do.  I try and keep my mouth closed and my ears open.  My wife would not necessarily agree that that’s what I do all the time.  (Laughter.)  It’s the best job in the world.  The staff is brilliant.  We do such important work, and I think, consequential work, with our embassies.  I don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging around with guys in uniform when we visit these 28, 29 – I talk to Angus Houston, I talk to John.  I talk to your guys and our guys.

But we spend more time in our embassies.  We’re spending more time as we can with commercial partners – commercial interests.  We spent a full day in India not in the ministry of defense or ministry of foreign affairs, but at lunches and gatherings arranged by folks in the commercial sector.  So there’s a pretty good exchange of ideas on those terms, on those issues.  So I try and listen more, talk less.  And with the staff, generally, what the staff recommends is almost always spot-on.  And on those rare occasions when I just need to give it little tiny rudder orders because of the experience I got studying at the feet of masters, it’s been my great privilege.  Thanks for the question.  Yes sir.

CHRIS CASTELLI:  Chris Castelli with Inside the Pentagon.  As the Defense Department does its Quadrennial Defense Review, what priorities are you advocating for?

ADM. KEATING:  Our Quadrennial Defense Review – we were just in town two weeks ago talking about this.  It is a singularly important effort, as many of you know.  I’m pleased to report that combatant commanders have a larger say-so than my experience in the past in the formulation of this Quadrennial Defense Review.  It’s a huge challenge for the department, as you would anticipate, with a space review, a nuclear posture review ongoing and several others – not to mention annual budget challenges – opportunities, if you want.

So we’re more active in the formulation of the review.  We submit an integrated priority list – I mean this will be mind-numbing for a lot of you, but an IPL – and we have ten items on our integrated priority list.  These are issues where we would prefer a little more funding, a little more emphasis, a little more output from the Department of Defense on those priority issues of ours.  And we submit them.  Of our 10 – I can’t go into them; they’re classified – all of them – 10 for 10 – are being addressed in the Quadrennial Defense Review.  We think that is beneficial for us.

Now you might say, well, what are those 10 issues?  Again, I can’t go into them.  But if you were to think of areas where we might like – because of the size of the AOR, because of the various countries with whom we’re exercising – that we might like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for example – everybody wants more of those – it’s being addressed in the Quadrennial Defense Review.

So we’re very happy with the role the combatant commanders have, we have an active voice in the formulation of the QDR.  It is a singularly important document for us and we’re cautiously optimistic that it will be not just a heavy tome that goes across the street to Congress, but it’ll actually have an impact with Congress and that the American people will be persuaded by the analysis that goes into the QDR.  I’m optimistic.  Robert?

Q:  Admiral, great pleasure to see you again.  Question – I’ll just use the framework of our strategic relationship with Japan and Japan looking into the future – two parts of this.  First off, an initiative – the defense policy realignment initiative – and another acronym – TAR DPRI – a series of 19 different plans that basically restructured and somewhat dispersed our forces further in the Pacific, although it did move some Army command to the big islands.

Number one, how do you see that change in our lay-down posture and how that affects our relationship with Japan?  There’s A.  And the B is, as a subset of that, Guam.  Guam is a little bit further east and a lot further south, and it’s going to be a challenging place not only to train Marines, but also to move them around.  So could you talk about both of those?

ADM. KEATING:  Sure.  It’s a great question, and one in which we’re spending a not-insignificant amount of time and effort.  The Defense Policy Review Initiative, and a subset of that, the AIP – Agreed Implementation Plan.  As you very accurately state, Bob, the DPRI isn’t just Guam.  There are a number – 18 other subsets of DPRI – all of which are in some process of execution now.  We’re going to take a Navy Air Wing out of Atsugi, move them down to Iwakuni – the Japanese have built an entirely new runway down there at Iwakuni; you may have seen it before.

We’re shuffling around some Army flags and some billets – and again, I don’t mean to sound trivial, it’s very important to us and to the Japanese.  We’re combining with the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force and our Air Force in Japan to have a combined operation center, which will be very important for us, and so on and so on all through those 18 other parts of the DPRI.  On track, generally well-funded and very beneficial to us across the board – us at Pacific Command, and, we believe, to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.

The area, it’s moth-like to the flame.  They go, yeah, well what about Guam?  The previous administration, President Bush, the current administration, President Obama, the secretaries of state and secretary of defense from both administrations have reaffirmed our national commitment to get AIP done.  Got it; loud and clear.  It’s going to take some money.  It’s going to take some time.

There is an understanding that just working inside the fence line at Guam won’t get a defense line inside.  The Department of Defense properties won’t just get it done; there have to be improvements in the infrastructure of Guam.  Those of us who’ve had the pleasure of going to Guam understand.  It’s a country of, I think, 175,000 people.  Well we’re going to move another 15,000 to 18,000 Marines and independents down there.  That’s a 10 percent growth almost overnight.

You can’t do that anywhere in America without some infrastructure considerations and improvement.  That means money and that takes time and there are labor costs.  You have to go back to the Marine Corps who will move 8,000 of their guys and girls down there.  There are training issues attendant to the transfer.  The Marines in Okinawa – I’m preaching to the choir – don’t get all the training they need to get done right now.  We have to move some of them around.  So AIP is not without challenges.

The previous and current administration have expressed their clear commitment to get it done.  There is a new group working inside the Pentagon that is at a little more senior-level to those who were working very hard to get this done in the years past.  We at Pacific Command are doing all that we can to support the Department of Defense and, increasingly, an interagency look at the opportunities intended to moving Marines out of Okinawa to Guam.

Now, you raise a point where Guam’s a little bit off the beaten path.  Yes and no.  It’s kind of wide open spaces down there.  And once we get through some of the environmental impact assessments, I think we’ll find that – I’ve deployed a bunch, as Walt said, have been on a carrier once or twice; I’ve even flown a whole lot in that part of the southern Pacific.  Perhaps you’ve been down there as well.  Great training opportunities.

It’s going to take a little while to get there.  We have the flag of the United States of America flying over Guam.  We can come in and out of Anderson Air Force base, out of Agana, and as we develop it, when we have more forces down there, it’ll be a training center for us.  And we can move folks.  Granted, they’re going to have to get on a ship or an airplane to get where they’re going.  We’ve got a few of those – ships and airplanes – and we can do it without having to ask the host-country permission because it’s our country.

I think it’s a strategic imperative for us to execute AIP, and I believe, in time, we will find the money and get the infrastructure upgraded, improved, to the point where we’ll be happy once we’re down there.  And our Marine Corps has said, we’re going to want every Marine who goes there to say, when I’m done with my tour, I don’t want to leave.  And guys who are outside Guam go, I want to go to Guam because the quality of life, the housing, the infrastructure is the best in the world.  We’re hopeful.  Yes, sir.

MILES POMPER:  Hi, Miles Pomper from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.  Thanks for coming, Admiral.  I have a question – you mentioned the nuclear posture review a little bit earlier.  And I was curious about how you see that playing out in your area of responsibility, particularly given the president’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons.  And, particularly the question of dealing with Japan and the question of seat-launch cruise missiles and how you see that playing out over the coming years and carrying out this vision.

ADM. KEATING:  This is my personal opinion – and you might say, well, what’s the difference between your personal and professional?  There really isn’t any.  (Laughter.)  This is a great big deal for us, the United States, to review our nuclear posture.  As I move around the AOR – I mentioned we’ve been to 27 or 28 countries out there – sooner or later, many of the folks with whom we have discussions will get around to asking, is your nuclear deterrent umbrella going to continue to extend over fill-in-the-blank country?

So our capabilities in this area are not taken for granted all throughout our air responsibility.  Everywhere I go, sooner or later, not just in mil-to-mil, the conversation comes up and I say, it’s not mine to determine policy, but it is my hope that our nuclear deterrent umbrella will continue to be effective.  And that probably means it will continue to extend wherever in the world I happen to be.

The nuclear posture review will be aggressive.  Our president has made clear certain aspects that he hopes to be addressed in the nuclear posture review, and I’m sure the guys doing it understand the president’s guidance.  As far as the second part about Japan, what was the second part?

Q:  (Off microphone.)

ADM. KEATING:  I’m not aware of specific Japanese interest in that particular system that you describe.  I am aware, as I say of Japanese interest in the nuclear umbrella continuing to extend over to Japan.  Yes, ma’am.

REBEKAH GORDON:  Hi, sir.  Rebekah Gordon with Inside the Navy.  Just as a follow-on to the question earlier about submarine as being critical to maintaining freedom of the seas, what about surface vessels?  And would you like to see more of them –

ADM. KEATING:  Yes.

MS. GORDON:  (Chuckles) – in PACOM?  Okay.  But, also, as part of that, not just more, but I’m curious to know what types or what capabilities in particular would you be looking for?

ADM. KEATING:  It wasn’t going to be a simple yes or no answer was it?  Well let me go back to one of the elements of our strategy – presence.  Actually, all of them.  I can make a case – we have made the case with CNO Gary Roughead, a good and great friend.

Quantity has a quality all its own.  And for us, in the broad reaches of the Pacific, it is very helpful to have a larger number of service assets that we can deploy.  And remember what our partners say, we like you to hang around for a while but it doesn’t bother us if you leave.  Sometimes they don’t know if we’re two miles, twenty miles or two hundred miles over the horizon.  They just trust that we’re not within eyesight nearby.  There are advantages to that with several countries in particular.

So it is to the Pacific Command’s benefit to have more than less ships.  The more capable they are, the better, because we will ask much of the crews on those ships as we hope to engage, demonstrate readiness and enhance partnership.  the higher end technical capabilities those ships have, the easier it is for us to assure the secretary of defense we’re able to execute whatever operations he tells us to execute – whether it’s United Nations Security Council resolution, whether it’s exercises like Malabar, or whether it’s a no-kidding, high-end – God forbid – but like an Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom type of kinetic military operation.

Lots of ships are better than less ships.  Higher end capabilities are better than lower end capabilities.  There is, of course, the issue of affordability. The DDG-51 is a wonderful platform, and if that’s how the Navy chooses to go, we would be happy with that.  Their decision to make, we just want our fair share of them when the decision’s done.  A little more than our fair share.  (Laughter.)  Thanks, Rebekah.

MR. SLOCOMBE:  Before you take this question, Admiral Keating has been very generous with his time.  I think we should take just this question and just one more to finish up one time.  One of the things one learns in the Pentagon is meetings are supposed to start and stop on time.

Q:  Sir, I hope this question doesn’t disappoint you.  Guy Haywood from the British Embassy also.

ADM. KEATING:  Hello, Guy.

Q:  Sir, thank you.  We traditionally think of warm places when we think of your AOR.  You’ve outlined at the beginning of your strategy and the last lady just made it on presence – as you’re looking out 20 years, to the north of your AOR is the Bering Strait, Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea.  I’m thinking presence, and I’m not talking submarines.  As you’ve looked out 20 years and the prospect of ice-free summers, defending U.S. endeavors off the coastline and you provide forces to the U.S. Arctic coastline, how much does the Arctic feature into your thinking in your formulation strategy?

ADM. KEATING:  You know, Guy, it’s a terrific question.  The shortest answer is the Arctic didn’t figure much, but we didn’t ignore it.  There are all manner of interesting aspects to the global warming if that’s what’s really happening – oh man – as there is unmistakable evidence of increased access to the Northwest Passage and the North Passage.

So if you come up here what military command is responsible?  Is it Northern Command?  I could have made a pretty compelling case two-and-a-half, three years ago.  Is it Pacific Command?  You bet.  Is it European Command?  Or is it – and what about Canada?  Is it their water?  How do we work through the policy challenges attendant to military operations up here as is certain will be more than less involved in the out years in operations or at least guaranteeing freedom of access in the maritime domain.

So it is an issue that we are studying more closely – you know the classic staff response, well, we’ll take that for action.  Well, we have it for action.  We’re working on it with Northern Command, with European Command, through the joint staff and the office of the secretary of defense for policy.  It’s complicated, it’s challenging, it’s important.  We talked about the trade – the $1 trillion of trade that our countries do with the United States.  The decrease in transit time is startling between the far Eastern countries and the U.K. and our NATO allies in Europe.

Well, everybody in Europe can cut four or five steaming days off if the Northwest Passage is open.  So an issue of significant strategic and economic importance, we’re working it in concert with, not in contrast to Northern Command, European Command, our friends and allies in the Department of State.

MR. SLOCOMBE:  And on that note, complicated, challenging and important, it is 18:30; you are dismissed.

ADM. KEATING:  Thank you, sir.  Thanks, Walt.

Transcript by Federal News Service, Washington, D.C.

Back to Admiral Timothy Keating Event Page

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, published an op-ed entitled “Pakistan’s Summer of Chaos” in Foreign Policy.  As Pakistan’s leaders prepare for a major campaign in the FATA, Nawaz warns that a failure to take into account the lessons from Swat could be disastrous.

The full text of his essay is available at the New Atlanticist.

As the summer solstice draws near, it seems as if all the evil spirits are coming out to haunt the body politic of Pakistan. The country faces an escalation in hostilities on many fronts. And unlike in the past, when sweet deals and concessions could woo militants and protesters into silence, this time no amount of amulets will drive them away.

 

On the battlefield, the portents exist for a major new clash between the Army and the country’s homegrown militants. There are reports of forthcoming military action against fighters in South Waziristan, on top of the Army’s ongoing assault against the Taliban in Swat and Malakand. The fighting in Swat has displaced nearly 3 million people in just over a month — a number likely to swell as the Army moves into Waziristan. One might expect protests against the government and even perhaps the military to erupt if these internally displaced persons (IDPs) cannot swiftly and safely return home.

Pakistan indeed finds itself in quite a mess, and cleaning it up requires some review of how exactly the country became so disheveled. Before the assault on Swat began last month, the Army had been confined to its bases, apparently having rousted (but not routed) the Taliban. With the local and federal governments absent from the region in name and in services, the militants crept back and established a bloody regime. Violence escalated, and the Army was reticent to step in absent a long-term plan for controlling the area. So, the government agreed to a peace deal with Taliban-sympathizers. The truce was intended to subdue the militants, but instead, it gave them more time to organize.

Rather than melting away, the Taliban began snatching up territory closer and closer to the Pakistani heartland, and outrage among locals and the larger Pakistani population pushed the administration and the Army to react. Their tactic of choice was a full-fledged assault. The Army now has close to 150,000 troops in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Swat, and Malakand. In Swat alone, there are at least two full divisions from the eastern frontier and an additional four brigades cobbled together from divisions usually stationed near the Indian border. In addition, there is a full brigade of commandos in the Peochar Valley, and nine wings of the Frontier Corps. The total troop commitment in Swat is about 52,000. The military is taking losses daily. The militants, meanwhile, have taken the battle to the center of Pakistan, attacking offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Lahore in May and other softer targets, such as the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar last week.

Pakistan needs to regain territory and reestablish the writ of the provincial and federal governments in Swat and Malakand. The bad news is that taking territory, as the military is doing now, is not enough. There is no effective civil or judicial system in place to speedily see to the needs of the population, nor is there an effective local police force to protect civilians from Taliban reprisals. We are still waiting to see any semblance of a government plan for dealing with the IDPs’ return home. The Army is neither trained nor equipped for that task and cannot be expected to hold the areas that it clears. Locals told U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Pakistan, that the civilian leadership was still missing in action when he arrived to assess the situation in IDP camps. Little has really changed.

Now, the Army may be preparing for action in the Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan areas into South Waziristan, with the goal of flushing out or even eliminating Baitullah Mehsud and his fellow leaders of the Pakistani Taliban. In its effort, the Army may well resort to its old tactic of leveraging tribal rivalries. The target of their affections this time might be Mullah Nazir of the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe — traditional enemies of the Mehsuds. If so, it’s a dangerous strategy. If the situation devolves into tribal war, Pakistan risks losing the support of those Mehsuds that may not yet be fully aligned with Baitullah. And the Taliban leadership might simply melt into the countryside as the Army battles in populated areas.

Which brings us back to Pakistan’s 3 million displaced, only 200,000 of whom have been accommodated in official camps. The rest are fending for themselves and are anxious to return to their homes and orchards. Before they can do so, however, those areas must be safe and secure — and there remains only a narrow window for the government to prepare for rehabilitation and reconstruction before winter. With the exception of the United States, very few countries have come forward to assist in this effort. The Muslim world has been notably silent, as have the Europeans. A number of potential donors had already pledged more than $5 billion to help Pakistan’s economy at the Tokyo meeting this spring, but donor fatigue might be setting in now.

Aside from foreshadowing future turmoil, the Swat operation and the flood of IDPs indicate a lack of strategic planning on the part of Pakistan. A coherent strategy was nowhere to be found in both cases, nor was there any meeting of the minds between civilian and military thinkers and between federal and local officials on how to tackle the militants.

Another seemingly obvious but important lesson is that military attacks address only the symptoms of discontent, while doing little to tackle the root causes of militancy. No steps have been taken by the government as yet to integrate FATA into Pakistan’s economy and polity, to regularize the region’s legal system, or to allow Pakistan’s political parties to operate inside FATA’s boundaries. Nor have any plans been made to employ FATA’s bulging youth population, an estimated 300,000 potential Taliban recruits. The government could rapidly create employment by launching heavy infrastructure projects such as east-west roads linking FATA to Pakistan, construction of embankments, small dams, and tube wells.

Washington is doing its best to provide Pakistan the wherewithal to tackle these issues. Now it’s time for Pakistan to step up and formulate its implementation plans, before it loses the trust of its people and the summer boils over into political chaos.

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council. This essay was previously published at ForeignPolicy.com.

As President Barack Obama prepares to address the Muslim World from Cairo on Thursday this week, he would do well not to dwell on the past but to look to the future. His speech should be the first salvo in a battle to meet the expectations of a world dominated by youth. He should not revive memories of past conflicts.

He needs to keep certain facts in mind, many of them intuitively clear to him no doubt from his own exposure to parts of the Muslim World and to his early personal friendships with young Muslims.

First, Muslims, who comprise between one-fifth and one-quarter of the world’s population, are a diverse lot. Speaking politically or socially of the “Muslim World” as a bloc would be a mistake, as much as speaking of left-handed persons in the world as a bloc. Second, their population is rising rapidly, close to 2 per cent a year worldwide. In the last century the world’s Muslim population rose from 150 million to over 1.2 billion.

Most important, President Obama will be addressing a population with a huge “youth bulge”: In the Middle East, for example, 60 per cent of the population is below 25 years. Research indicates that some 60 of the 67 countries with a youth bulge are embroiled in internal conflicts today. In 62 countries of the world, two-thirds of the population is below 30. Countries like Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are included in this group. Over half of the population of Iran is below 30 years.

Muslim youth were excited by Obama’s election and it is this group that he should address when he speaks from Cairo on June 4, for they, not the aging autocrats or obscurantist clerics, will control the future of the Muslim World. And they are increasingly connected with the world at large through the internet, radio, and television.

What is the message they wish to hear?

• The US will match its deeds to its words. It will no longer talk of democracy while supporting and propping up autocrats in the Muslim World;
• It will help open up societies, using moral suasion, new technologies, and by aligning itself with the forces of moderation and progress;
• It will help create jobs by investing in the infrastructure of the Muslim World, while laying the foundation for the future with aid for education rather than military hardware; and
• It understands the angst and the anger of the youth of the Muslim World and supports them in their quest to stay true to their Muslim roots while reaching for the fruits of democracy and progress that youth around the globe seek.

If President Obama connects with Muslim youth this week he will be investing in the future by drawing them away from the blandishments of the radical Mullahs. If he bends his message to maintaining ties with the antiquated feudal and dynastic leaders of the Muslim World, the opportunity will be lost to build a better world for all of us.

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council.  This essay originally appeared in the Huffington Post as “Obama Needs to Look to the Future.” 

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, commented on North Korea’s recent nuclear tests as part of a discussion for PRI‘s The World.

Related Highlight:

• Nuclear Crisis Points: Iran, North Korea, Syria and Pakistan

FREDERICK KEMPE:  Welcome.  Welcome to all.  Welcome to the Atlantic Council and to this Commanders Series event with U.S. Army Chief of Staff George W. Casey.  I’m Fred Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council.  We’re delighted to have you all here with us today.  Frank Kramer, vice chair of the Atlantic Council, who I’ll introduce in a minute, will introduce General Casey, so I won’t do that.  However, I will say one thing, and that is many of the people in the audience may not know that you were a senior fellow – you served as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.  And what pleases me the most about that is it’s proof positive that this is not an impediment to a military career.

As many of you know, the Commanders Series is one of the council’s flagship public speakers series, providing a platform for U.S. and European senior military leaders to share the security debate with us here in Washington, very often bringing to us information from the field that just needs to be brought into America’s capital.  We’ve had people from the EU commander dealing with the Congo to the U.S. commander dealing with the Arctic.

One of our previous speakers in this series, General Jones, spoke as Supreme Allied Commander Europe when he was here.  He kicked it off.  He then became chairman of the Atlantic Council.  Last night, he outlined at one of our events in fascinating detail how different the national security challenges are today than they were during the Cold War.  And, of course, that also means the challenges are vastly different for military commanders.  They have to be prepared for a wide range of contingencies, counterinsurgency, stabilization, reconstruction, from the high end of nuclear threats to the low end of improvised explosive devices.  The knowledge, capability and skills that it takes to hold high command these days is enormous, and it’s part of the reason why, General, this series has been such a compelling one and a popular one in Washington.

I want to thank Saab AB for its generous support of this series.  And I want to acknowledge the presence – the presence of Atlantic Council board director, Ambassador Henrik Liljegren.  He’s the former Swedish ambassador to the United States and also Swedish ambassador to Turkey twice; diplomatic – senior political and diplomatic adviser to the president and CEO of Saab.  Henrik, it’s wonderful to have you with us tonight.

General Casey, the man who will introduce you tonight – and we have a history at the Atlantic Council of having introductions of the introducer – is Frank Kramer.  Frank’s career has overlapped with that of General Casey’s, both during the time serving in Bosnia as well as on the Joint Staff.  Both are genuine strategic thinkers tested with real-world experience.  Frank served as assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs from 1996 to 2001, deputy assistant secretary for European and NATO Affairs prior to that.  He also served in senior positions in the Pentagon from 1977 to 1981.

But it would be remiss of me not to say here that what really, truly impresses me about Frank is all the work he does for the Atlantic Council.  And he has given us a great deal of help with the breadth of his strategic radar.  He’s played a critical work on our work – in our work on issues as diverse as Afghanistan, NATO Strategic Concept, Pakistan and cyber-defense.  There is no security issue – or virtually no security issue I know of where Frank has not written about it or studied it or given me some advice on it.  So, Frank, the podium’s yours.

FRANK KRAMER:  Thanks very much.  And let me welcome all of you here again.  I wish my children had been here to hear this.  That is not how I’m recognized in the house.  I’m the guy who takes out the garbage.

But I am delighted to be here to introduce George Casey.  George and I are long-time friends.  As Fred said, we served together in the Pentagon.  He was a senior person to whom I turned frequently and often for good advice, the right steer, how civilians ought to do things working with the military.  And George always knew that.  He is a true soldier-statesman.

He, of course, is the chief of staff of the Army now.  He was previously the commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq.  But he started his career being commissioned out of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.  And as he told me earlier today, in his current office at the Pentagon, he can look out the window and see the spires of Georgetown.  And that’s something that I think no one can hope for when they start out as a second lieutenant, but be delighted by the fact of when they’re the chief of staff of the Army.

He served in Germany, in Italy, in Egypt, in Southwest Asia, obviously in the U.S.  He has a master’s degree in international relations; as Fred mentioned, culminating educational experience being here as a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council.  But he’s also served at every level, commanded at every level – platoon, battalion, brigade, assistant division commander, and, of course, in Iraq.  So he puts together, I think, the finest qualities of our military.  He knows about counterinsurgency.  He knows about stability operations.  The experience in Bosnia was highly successful, but it wasn’t clear at the beginning that it was going to be successful, as he will perhaps tell you.  We went in heavy and we went in nervous.  It worked out really quite well, and that was, in part, very much due to George’s leadership.

He now has to deal with all the issues of the chief of staff of the Army.  The chiefs of staff have to organize, train and equip the so-called Title X requirements.  They have to get the force ready.  They have to figure out how to sustain force rotations in an environment, as Fred mentioned and as General Jones said, that’s much more demanding.  The force deployments go on and on and on and on.  And our military starts, first and foremost, not with technology, not actually with maneuvers or anything else.  It starts with people.  And how to keep those people, quality people together, how to keep the families together and yet at the same time bring them to the fore, forward deployed for operations of all kind, from defense diplomacy to counterinsurgency to major combat operations is a huge challenge.

George knows all this extremely well.  We couldn’t have a better person here to talk today.  I’m really glad to welcome you to the podium, my friend and the chief of staff of the Army, George Casey.

(Applause.)

GENERAL GEORGE CASEY: Thanks, Frank.  That was – that was great.  And I can tell you, not only was it never in my wildest dreams that I would sit in an office and look at the spires of my alma mater in Washington, I never thought I’d be – people coming here to listen to me speak when I was a fellow here.  We used to have brown bag lunches downstairs at the Grange building over there by the new Executive Office Building.  But it’s wonderful to be back here.  And Fred, thanks for – thanks for inviting me back.

What I’d like to do is talk just for probably about 20 minutes here about how we are designing an Army to operate in the environments, frankly, that both Fred and Frank talked about, because as we look to the future, it is a hugely challenging and different environment than the environment I grew up to – preparing to operate in.

And as we look to this environment, we’ve thought quite a bit about it.  We believe that the Army that the country needs for the 21st century is a versatile mix of tailorable organizations organized on a rotational cycle that provide ready forces for operations across the spectrum of conflict and that provide forces that can hedge against unexpected contingencies, and done on a way that allows us to sustain the all-volunteer force.  Now, that sounds – it is a mouthful.

And let me talk a little bit about how we got there and about the pieces of it.   First of all, we had to start with the environment.   And as we look out at the strategic environment, things hit you right in the face.   First, we’ve been at war for over seven years.   We’re almost in our – finishing eight years of war.   I believe that war is a long-term, ideological struggle.   It’s certainly not one that’s going to be won by military means alone.   But it will be a long-term, ideological struggle.

Against that backdrop, we look out at the trends that we see around the globe.  And the trends that we see, I believe, are more likely to exacerbate the conditions that we see now than they are to ameliorate them.  What am I talking about?

Globalization – up until some months ago, the globalization was generating prosperity around the world, but it was generating it unevenly and creating have and have-not conditions, and the have-not conditions largely being in the southern hemisphere.  And the have-not conditions contain people that are much more susceptible to recruiting by the terrorist and extremist organizations.

Technology’s another double-edged sword.  The same technology that is being used to bring knowledge to anyone with a computer and a hook-up is being used by terrorists to export terror around the globe.

Demographics – demographics also going in the wrong direction.  I’ve seen estimates that say that the populations of some developing countries like Pakistan are expected to double in the next decade.  You imagine the attendant problems that that presents already strapped governments.  Populations are increasingly moving to cities.  I’ve seen estimates that by 2030, 60 percent of the population of the world will live in cities.  That says a lot about where we’ll fight; and I’ve seen what it’s like to fight in the sprawling slums of Sadr City.

The other thing about demographics is that – I think it’s – some of the trends are going to lead to increased competition for resources.  The middle classes in China and in India are already larger than the population of the United States.  That’s a lot of two-car families.

And the two trends that worry me most are weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorist organizations and safe havens, countries or parts of countries where the local governments can’t or won’t deny their countries as safe havens for terrorists to plan operations.

And so as I look against that – those trends against the backdrop of the fact we’re already at war with a global extremist organization, I believe that leads us to the notion that we will operate in an era of what I call persistent conflict, protracted confrontation among state, non-state and individual actors who are increasingly willing to use violence to accomplish their political and ideological objectives.  And I think – I think we’ve got a decade or so of that ahead of us.  And that really drives us as an Army to say that, okay, that’s got to – we have to take that into consideration.  And I believe we will have 10 brigades of Army and Marine Corps forces committed for the next decade in places around the world.  Now, for us, that causes us to think differently about how we organize our forces.

The other element we have to take into consideration is not just the broad strategic environment, but we have to ask ourselves, what does war look like in the 21st century?  What’s the character of conflict?  And I got in a big discussion with my staff about – is it the nature of war that changes or is it the character of conflict that changes?   Well, they argue that the nature of war is immutable, it never changes, but the character of conflict has and does change, and it’s changed over time.

And as we look at it, the types of operations and wars that I believe we will – our Army will have to fight in the next 10 to 20 years are much, much different than the types of operations that I grew up learning to fight, on tank – major tank battles on the plains of Europe.  And I’ve served in Iraq, so I’ve got a good sense of that conflict, spent some time in Afghanistan.

But the conflict that I think – that intrigues me most, and I think speaks more toward what we can expect in the decades ahead, is the one that happened in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, where you had about 3,000 Hezbollah operatives embedding themselves in the population centers just north of the Israeli border.  They used improvised explosive devices to channelize well-equipped attacking Israeli forces into ambushes where they fired at them with state-of- the-art anti-tank guided missiles.  Forty percent of the Israeli casualties were from those anti-tank guided missiles.  Now, they used unmanned aerial vehicles to target the Israelis.  They started the war with over 13,000 rockets and missiles – not just the small ones they shot at our bases, but the large, 220 millimeter ones they shot at Israeli population centers.  They shot down an Israeli helicopter with a surface-to-air missile.  They shot an Israeli corvette in the Mediterranean Sea with a cruise missile.  They used secure cell phones and computers for command and control.  And they got their message out on local television.

That’s a fundamentally more complex and difficult challenge than the challenges of fighting large tank armies on the plains of Europe.  And I believe what we’re going to see is more of that and less of the other.  And so that is – that is what we’re shaping the Army to be able to do.

So as I look at the environment and the character of the conflict, I come down to, what should the Army do?  What should the land forces of the United States be able to do?

The first thing we have to do is we have to prevail in counterinsurgency campaigns.  We have to win the wars we’re in, as the secretary of defense has said.

Second, we have to prepare ourselves to continue to engage with other countries’ security forces when we’re asked to help them build the capabilities they need to deny their countries to terrorists.

Third, we need to provide support to civil authorities both at home and abroad.  And we work primarily through the National Guard here to provide support to civil authorities in the United States, augmenting them with our active forces as necessary.  And we are continuing to provide support to other agencies of the government in Iraq and Afghanistan and helping them plan, integrate and execute the political and the economic and the information elements of the strategy.  And you have all heard people say time and again that we will not win this conflict by military means alone.  And if we are going to be successful, all of the elements of power have to be integrated effectively.  And I suggest to you that it is the planning and organizational skills and, frankly, the integrating skills of the military forces that ought to be considered a national asset.  We don’t have to be in charge all the time, but we have those skills and we can assist other elements of the government in integrating their efforts.

And then lastly, we have to be able to deter and defeat hybrid threats and hostile state actors.  And frankly, I think we have to be able to do them in that order of priority, because those – that is the conflicts that we are going to be mostly fighting.

So after looking through all that, then I come back to what type of Army are we building, a versatile mix of tailorable organizations.  The one thing we know about the future is that we never get it quite right, and that we can only aspire not to be too wrong.

So for 60 years, the central organizing principle of the Department of Defense has been major conventional operations, conventional war.  I’m suggesting to you now that – I’m looking at it from an Army perspective – I think the central organizing principle has to be versatility, because we have to be able to do different things.  Nothing ever happens exactly how you plan.  And so you have to be able to tailor your forces to deal with the situation that you’re confronted with, deal with the reality you’re confronted with, not with the force as you’ve designed it.

And so we believe you have to have a mix of heavy forces, medium forces – strikers – and light forces.  And the light forces will probably be more and more riding in up-armored Humvees and MRAPs because they must – they need to be protected as they move around.

And the tailorable organizations – the Cold War Army I grew up in, we were a division-based Army.  And we had about – we had 18 divisions.  And all of the enabling forces were parts of those divisions.  So if you needed to send something less than a division, you had to start breaking the division apart.  And it wasn’t good to – any good to you to do other things.  Over the last five years, we have been moving to create modular organizations centered on brigades.  And we’re 85 percent of the way through converting the Army to modular organizations.  And that’s in a five-year period, while we’ve been deploying 150,000 soldiers over and back to Iraq  and Afghanistan.

The other element of our reorganization to improve versatility is we’ve been moving away from Cold War skills to skills more relevant in the 21st century.  By way of example, we’ve converted over 200 tank companies, artillery batteries and air defense batteries and changed those soldiers into Special Forces, civil affairs, psychological operations, military police and engineers, the kinds of skills that you hear that we need every day in Iraq  and Afghanistan.

So a versatile mix of tailorable organizations – and we’re well on our way to achieving that – organized on a rotational cycle.  We are moving to put the Army on a rotational cycle much like the Navy and the Marine Corps have been on for years.  Why?  One, again, I believe that we will – we’ll have a sustained commitment of forces over the next decade.

Two, when you have forces organized on a rotational cycle, you have some forces at a level of readiness that could be committed when you have unexpected contingencies.  And third, we have to do it because we have an all-volunteer force and because they need to be put on a sustainable deployment tempo.  And we’ve been deploying for four years or so, one year out, one year back.  That’s not sustainable for us over the long haul.

We are – with the changes that we’re making in the Army and with the president’s announced drawdown plan in Iraq, I expect we will achieve our goal of getting to a one year out, two years back by 2011.  And that would be a very, very good thing for us.  To sustain this over the long haul, though, I believe we get – need to get to a one year out, three years back tempo, which is what the Navy and the Marine Corps have been on for quite a while.  I believe that’s sustainable indefinitely.

And so what we’re doing is organizing the Army, really, into four bins.  And the first bin is always available.  It’s fully manned, trained and equipped.  And in that bin you have an operational headquarters, you have four tactical headquarters, 14 or 15 brigades and then about 70,000 what we call “enablers,” military police, engineers, civil affairs, psychological operations, other things that enable the force.  That’s a very significant force.  About 120(,000), 130,000 total folks could almost meet the demands in Iraq  and Afghanistan today – not quite.

Same force in the second bin; same force in third bin; same force in the fourth bin.  But as you go to the left, there are different levels of readiness.  The second bin, the forces could be pulled forward for unexpected contingencies.  The third bin could come, but they’re more of a strategic reserve, as is the fourth bin.  It would take them longer – 90 to 180 days to prepare.

So what you see is you have committed forces, you have an operational reserve and then you have a strategic reserve to use in an emergency.  And that’s how we’re working to array our forces.  And we think that allows us to generate the sustained flow to hedge against contingencies and to do it in a way that sustains the all-volunteer force.  That then gives you the versatile mix of tailorable organizations on a rotational cycle to allow you to meet your requirements, hedge against uncertainty and sustain the force.  So that’s the direction that we’re headed.  We believe that is the right force and the right organization for the challenges that I described to you that we see coming in the 21st century.

Let me just close here with a brief story, because you get a lot of questions about the quality of the force and how the – how the men and women of the Army are doing.  I did – I did two commissionings in the last couple of weeks, one at Georgetown, one at George Mason.  And then I went to West Point last Friday night, and I spoke to all the graduates and their families the night before commissioning.  And I can tell you, when you look in the eyes of these young men and women, you can feel pretty good about the future of the country.  They’re committed, they’re focused and they’re ready to go out and make a difference in the world.

And at West Point, I told them the story about one of them who had been in that audience two years ago, in 2007.  And his name was Lieutenant Nick Eslinger.  Nick was a platoon leader in Samarra, Iraq.  And he was leading his patrol – his platoon on a patrol of downtown Samarra in the middle of the night.  In some of the Iraqi cities, you have large courtyards that are surrounded by high walls, and it makes the street look like a tunnel, because you have all the high walls butting up on the street.

As the patrol was walking down the street, a grenade comes over the wall, lands in the center of the patrol.  Lieutenant Eslinger, seeing it, realizing it would harm his platoon, he dove on it.  The grenade didn’t go off.  He had the presence of mine to reach down, grab the grenade and throw it over the wall.  When he threw it over the wall, it went off.

I said, Nick, what the heck did you think when the grenade didn’t go off?  He said, I don’t know, sir.  I just reacted.

I said, Nick, what did you think when the grenade did go off?  He said, I don’t know, sir.  I just reacted.

But that’s the type of men and women that you have not only in the Army, but in the armed forces of the United States, and you can feel pretty good about it.

And so with that, I’ll close and I’ll be happy to take any questions that you have.  Thanks.

(Applause.)

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you for that wonderful presentation, and thank you for that wonderful close as well.

I’m going to start.  Since you talked a great deal about what sort of Army one should have and also, very interestingly, about one year out, two years back, one year out, three years back, maybe talk a little bit more about what happens if they don’t get that.  In other words, you’re in your eighth year in Afghanistan, sixth year in Iraq  – what are you seeing in terms of stress?  What are you seeing in terms of what this does to the Army, both in a personal sense and a structural sense?  In other words, what are you fixing by doing this?

GEN. CASEY:  Yeah.  A great question.  You know, people ask me what do I worry about the most.  What I worry about the most are two things.

One, I worry about the repeated – the impact of repeated combat deployments on the long-term health of the force.  Last year, 2008, we had about 13,000 newly identified cases of post-traumatic stress.  Now, that’s a good-news/bad-news story.  I mean, it – bad news, it’s a lot.  It’s about double what it was two years before.  Good news is because of the work we’ve done to reduce the stigma, more and more people are willing to come forward and get the treatment that they need, because all of our studies tell us, the sooner you come forward, the sooner you get treatment, the better off you are.  So that’s my first worry.

Second worry is that there will be some unexpected requirement for forces in the next two years that won’t allow us to get this drawdown in Iraq  and to stabilize the force.  If we’re not able to do that, it will get very difficult.

Now, on the – back to the first part.  We have been looking very hard at ways to develop coping skills and resilience in soldiers.  And we will be coming out in July with a new program called “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.” And what we will attempt to do is raise mental fitness to the same level that we now give to physical fitness, because it’s scientifically proven you can build resilience.  And I was up at University of Pennsylvania last week where we had our first group of sergeants being trained as master resilience trainers by the University of Pennsylvania staff, Dr. Marty Seligman and his folks.  And the whole idea here is to give soldiers the skills they need to increase their resilience and enhance their performance.

A lot of people think that everybody that goes to combat gets post-traumatic stress.  It’s not true.  Everybody that goes to combat gets stressed.  There’s no doubt about it.  But the vast majority of people that go to combat have a growth experience, because they’re exposed to something very, very difficult and they prevail.  So the issue for us is, how do we give more people the skills so that more people have a growth experience?  We felt it’s important to get started on this, because everything else is you’re – you know, you’re treating the problem.  And so we needed to be more proactive about it.  And so that’s the direction that we’re headed.

MR. KEMPE:  That’s interesting.  So you’re working more on the psychological training as well as the physical training.

GEN. CASEY:  Absolutely.

MR. KEMPE:  You made headlines yesterday, stating that you think –

GEN. CASEY:  It was not intentional.

MR. KEMPE:  Well, if you’d like to do it again, we’re all for it.  You said that you think – and you said that elliptically in your comments here, too, that you think U.S. ground forces will be in Iraq and Afghanistan for at least another decade.

GEN. CASEY:  I didn’t say that tonight, did I?  (Laughter.)  I don’t think I did.  I actually didn’t say it – I didn’t – actually didn’t say it last night, either.

MR. KEMPE:  You didn’t say – well, why don’t you say what you would like to say about that?

GEN. CASEY:  Well –

MR. KEMPE:  But on top of that, let me go beyond that question to how you think those missions are going to evolve over time, and irrespective of how many years you think that will go on is how do – how do the force levels change as those missions evolve?

GEN. CASEY:  First of all, I’ve been around long enough to understand I don’t do policy.  As Frank said, organize, train and equip.  And in my job of organizing, training, equipping, as much as I talked to you tonight, I have to look out and say, okay, what are the – what are the demands that are going to be put on the Army and how do I best organize to meet those demands?  And so I said basically the same thing that I said to you tonight, that I believe we’re going to have demands of about 10 Army and Marine Corps – Army brigades, Marine Corps regiments deployed for a decade or so.  I mean, I believe that.  And that is why we’re organizing the Army in the way that I described to you today.  As I – every time I make that statement, I say, this is not a policy statement; this is an organizational statement for me of the Army.  That didn’t quite get reported.

As I said several times in my congressional testimony, we are fully planning on executing the drawdown in Iraq.  In fact, as I said tonight, it’s very important for us to execute that drawdown.  And so any long-term security relations remain to be developed between the Iraqi government and the United States government.  So I had no intent of trying to change the policy.

Now, how’s the – how are the missions going?  I was just in Afghanistan probably I think two weeks ago now.  What I saw there is we are already seeing the impact of the additional forces, especially in the Regional Command-East.  I visited the brigade that was diverted from Iraq  to Afghanistan.  It was already there.  It was already on the ground.  They had done a wonderful job of preparing the bases, of having the equipment organized and lined up.  They told me they got off the plane; they got on their vehicles and they went right into their area and they were already having an impact.

I went down south to Kandahar.  The forces there were beginning to flow in.  And there was huge construction and everything going on there in the base.  But there’s going to be a big fight down south.  And that’s why we’re putting the forces in there.  And I think everybody’s been very clear that there is going to be a big fight.

But the – my assessment as I left is the forces are there, are in route there that will allow the commanders to support a successful election in August.  And I think that will be a very positive event for Afghanistan.  So I think we’ve taken the right steps and it just is going to take a while for them to play out.

With respect to Iraq, as I said, I have no reason to believe that the drawdown won’t get executed as planned.  You know, we’re at war; things can change.  But it seems to be moving positively in the right direction.

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you, General.  Let me ask you one more question, and then I’ll go to the audience.  And as you ask your question, please identify yourself as well.

Over the next 10 years, in some ways it’s easy to say as much is going to be deployed as you say is going to be deployed.  What’s harder is, is it going to be counterinsurgency; is it going to be conventional?  You hear a call in NATO for more Article V protection again.  You see what’s going on in North Korea.  How do you plan for that?  And where do you think that’s going in terms of the balance?

GEN. CASEY:  Yeah.  You know, that’s a great question.  And I talked about a doctrine of full-spectrum operations, offense, defense and stability operations, all done simultaneously, no matter where you are in the spectrum.  And as we’ve worked our way through this, to me it’s become less useful to think about warfare in the 21st century as either/or, as either conventional or unconventional.  And I’ve come to think of it more as the hybrid warfare that I described in my presentation, hybrid warfare being diverse combinations of irregular, conventional, terrorist, criminal elements all working together to come at us asymmetrically.  And I believe that’s what we’re going to face.

And I – and when you look out and think – again, I mentioned the tank battles in Europe that I grew up learning to fight.  I don’t see warfare in the 21st century being like those big battles.  It’ll be different.  It’ll be more hybrid, I think, than it will be conventional.

So we’ve really gone away from saying either/or.  You have to be able to operate across the spectrum.  And with the experience that the young leaders are getting in Iraq  and Afghanistan, we have folks that are capable of operating like that.  It’s much more complex than conventional warfare.

But, you know, as we worked our way through this, if you’d had asked me in – when I was a division commander in Germany, in ’99 to 2001, you said, General Casey, where should you best focus your training so that your division is most versatile to move across the spectrum of conflict?  I would have told you if I could do conventional war, I could do anything.  And after 32 months in Iraq, I don’t believe that anymore.  And there’s not a lot of people left in the army that believe that.

Now, there’s this debate that’s supposedly raging within the Army that all us old dogs, that we’re genetically ingrained with the Fulda Gap, and we will never be whole unless we can go back and do that again.  And then the young folks are all irregular warriors.  It’s almost the opposite.  You know, we – most of us have been there.  We understand it.  Young folks have been there.  But interestingly, from the young folks, what you get is they got the irregular, but they’re uncomfortable because they’re professionals, and they know that they haven’t maneuvered their tank company; they haven’t fired their artillery battery.  And they’re nervous, because they haven’t done the things they know they need to do.  But those skills are very, very recoverable, quickly.  And so we’re moving away from trying to talk in either/or.

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you, General.  Please.

Q:  General, Air Vice Marshal Mike Howard, U.K. defense attaché.  One of the things – organize, train, equip the interagency – I think you’ve had some initiatives which are really important, some lessons on that.  And you mentioned West Point, a terrific product.  But where’s that product for the other departments, and some of the things where you’ve offered other departments places on courses that are run by the U.S. Army?  I know the other services do it, but specifically that.

And then I think you’ve also provided soldiers to backfill those gapped positions elsewhere.  There may be lessons from there.  What can you tell us all about that?  It’s so important.

GEN. CASEY:  Well, first of all, I would never accept the responsibility of organizing, training, equipping the interagency.  (Laughter.)  But to your point, Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell out of Fort Leavenworth has, in fact, started some exchanges in the interagency to bring folks from the State Department and the CIA out to our major-level courses that we run out there at Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth.  And because of the need to backfill those folks so they can come – they can take the time off and come to the course, we’re actually sending Army officers back to those – to the State Department to fill in the gap.  And so we’re getting a much earlier start on the interagency.  And I think that’s hugely important.

I go out once a month and I talk to all our lieutenant colonel and colonel-level commanders, people getting ready to go into command.  And I was out there one day and I was talking to the group, and I noticed that there were these four muscular-looking guys with short haircuts in the back row.  And they’re all sitting there with their arms crossed.  So I went up afterwards, and I said, what happened?  Your plane lose your bags?  And they said, no, we’re the CIA.  So here they were, sitting in our command course.  And so I think that’s – it’s a great thing.

You know, from my time working with Bob Gelbard, I learned – I learned the power of the interagency.  And from my time in Iraq  with John Negroponte and Zal Khalilzad, you know, we tried to make that work.  But we’re not going to make it work until we start it at much lower level than we have been in the past.

Q:  Thank you, General.

MR. KEMPE:  Please.

Q:  Harlan Ullman here at the Atlantic Council.  General, thanks for your comments and your impeccable logic.

I wanted really to expand on the last question.  To the degree that you could argue that U.S. national capacity has a Maginot Line complex to it, in that, as you know, the Maginot Line was never penetrated, but the Ardennes and the northern flank was, and the problem is that the military is the best at the game in the world, but we are lacking a lot of capacity elsewhere.  And even though the secretary of defense has made that argument and the president has made that argument, it seems to me that that is really a gap which we’re not moving to fill.  There is no real, as you know, civilian surge, it appears, in Afghanistan.  In Pakistan, it’s going to be the civil side, where we seem not to be able to fill the void.

So if I could ask you to step outside your pay grade, not above it, what sort of advice would you have to fill in this capacity that goes beyond the military and even the intelligence but gets into the civil sector capacities that are really critical to win the larger war?  And I agree with you, it’s going to be a long-term struggle, but the military is not going to be the one that ultimately wins it.  It can lose it, but it can’t win it, as you rightly point out.

MR. KEMPE:  And is that really outside pay grade any longer, in the days of stabilization, reconstruction, et cetera?

GEN. CASEY:  Well, it’s certainly outside of my purview, but you want to – I’m asked this question a lot.  I mean, as I said, I lived it in Bosnia, lived it in Kosovo, lived it in Iraq.  And we need to get started.  And, you know, I hear a lot of talk around town about a Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency.  I don’t know if that’s the right thing or not.  But what I do know is Goldwater-Nichols passed in 1986, and it took us a decade to embrace it.  And so we need to get started now.

In the interim, you know, I think we have to figure out how to get the civil side of the government to leverage the capabilities that the military can deliver.

You know, what I saw and continue to see is, you know, having the one person that knows how to run that border station, that knows – really knows how to run a border station or really knows how to run a city council or really knows how to run a power station makes all the difference in the world.  You know, we got a lot of energy; we got a lot of people; we’re fairly organized.  We can do all that.  But if you don’t have the expertise, what you get is a lot of energy and arm- waving and not necessarily the result you want.

So in the interim, I think we’ve got to meld those two things, the expertise that comes from the civil side with the organizational planning skills of the military.  I think that’s what we have to do to bridge this.  But I think we need to get on with it.

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you, General.  Bob Gelbard, I think you’ve been called upon by the general.  The – could you wait for the mike?  Thank you.

Q:  You began your fascinating speech by outlining an intricate, very well-crafted description of how you see the Army for the 21st century, and then you went back and parsed it.  You didn’t describe, however, one key part at the end, which was the all- volunteer force.  What gives you confidence that you’re going to be able, in an extremely dangerous world, in this post-Cold War environment, to find all the people you need with the economy recovering eventually to fulfill all the requirements that you will need with this very versatile force?

GEN. CASEY:  Yeah.  Great question.  Bob is an old mentor, and I was hanging on his every word, because I knew there was a trick in there someplace.  (Chuckles.)  That is – that is a great question.

I mean, the first thing we have to do is get ourselves on this rotational model so we sustain the folks that are with us.  And as I went around in the first four months that I was the chief two years ago, with my wife, it was clear to me that the families were the most stretched and stressed part of the force.  In a force that’s almost 60 percent married, it makes a huge difference if – whether or not the families feel like they’re being cared for and properly taken care of.  But, you know, what they – what the spouses tell you is every deployment’s harder than the one before.  And it just – it doesn’t get any easier, and especially when you’re going for 12 months or 15 months and you’re coming back for 12 or 13.

And I just was back from about five weeks’ worth of visits to bases in the United States, and I tried to get them 90 days after they’d been back, because what you see is they come back; they have about 30 days off; they get back with their families; they’re feeling pretty good.  But at about 90 days, they’re faced with the stark reality, they’re going back in nine months.  And that’s where you really see the stresses and strains.

So we have to get ourselves on this rotational model at a better deployment tempo.  That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that – I called Shy Meyer, who was one of my predecessors.  He was the one who went to Congress in 1980 and said, the Army’s hollow.  I said, Shy, what happened?  What was it?  He said, George, it’s all about the people.  And what – he says, there’s a thin red line out there that you’ll – as hard as you’ll try to know if you’ve crossed it, you’ll stumble across it, and you’ll look back from the other side.  And what happens is it’s the mid-level officers and non-commissioned officers start leaving in droves.  And those are the people that it takes you a decade to grow.  And I lived through that decade in the ‘70s, and it wasn’t pretty.  And so, again, we have to get ourselves on a more sustainable cycle so that we keep those folks with us.

The last thing, and I think the gist of your question is, can we continue to recruit?  I think we can.  Last year, 2008, 290,000 men and women enlisted or reenlisted in the Army, the Army guard and reserve.  That – I mean, to me that’s a staggering number.  And they did – every one of them did it knowing that we were at war and that they would go to war.  Now, I think that’s out there.  You know, we’ve – we have – we’ve made our retention objectives for the year already.  And the quality of the recruits that we’re bringing in now is back up where it was four years ago, in terms of high-school graduates.  And we’ve stopped some of the waivers that we were giving.  We don’t give any drug and alcohol waivers anymore and we don’t give any major crime waivers anymore.  So the quality of the force will continue.

It’s not really knowable how long we can continue to do that.  I think that the – we can continue to do this if we sustain the quality of the force and we give the families the benefits that they’ve been accustomed to.  But, you know, how long, I couldn’t tell you.  But I think it is sustainable.

MR. KEMPE:  Very interesting, General.

Paul?

Q:  (Off mike.)

MR. KEMPE:  Could you wait one second?  Sorry.

Q:  Paul Gebhardt from the Cohen Group group, sir.  You identified very early in your presentation that you saw a distinction between operations, as you’ve said, for eight years in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Israeli operations in 2006 in Lebanon.  What makes you focus on that in particular versus the eight years that we’ve had so far?  And in terms of your role of organize, train and equip, how do you see the significant difference between how the Army has had to evolve for Iraq and Afghanistan and what you’re seeing out of Lebanon?

GEN. CASEY:  The reason I look at Lebanon is there are a lot of – a lot more elements at play.  I mean, you have Hezbollah, non-state actor, operating inside a state, Lebanon, supported by two other states, Iran and Syria, and fighting a fourth state, Israel.  And they employed all of those different elements.  You have the instruments – instruments of state power are no longer necessarily the exclusive purview of states.  I mean, what other terrorist group has 13,000 missiles and rockets and cruise missiles?  I mean, that is the – was the staggering thing to me.

You know, we didn’t face anything like that in Iraq.  You know, you had some support for the Shia insurgent groups coming out of Iran and you had the Syrians, you know, not securing their borders, letting folks coming across there.  But as I looked at it, I said to myself, Iraq  was hard, no doubt about it.  But I’m not sure it was as complex as what they had – what they were trying to do there in southern Lebanon.

And so we – you know, we gravitate toward the more difficult situation.  So I thought there was a lot more at play in Lebanon than necessarily was at play in Iraq  and Afghanistan, as hard as they are.

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you.  Jim?

Q:  Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post.  General, thank you for your comments.

I just wanted to follow up on Paul’s question a little bit and ask you to talk a little bit more about the implications of what you witnessed in Lebanon for the kind of training and equipping that you now feel we need in the U.S. Army, and also to extend the question a little bit into whether or not you see similarities, great similarities between what happened in Lebanon in 2006 and what happened in Gaza in January.  Many of the elements seemed to be present.  Were they different?  If they were different, which one of them is the anomaly and which one of them – either Hezbollah or Hamas – is the trend?

GEN. CASEY:  Interesting.  I’ll come at the second one first, and then you’ll have to remind what the first one was.  But the – if you asked this of the Israelis, I think they would tell you they went to school on what happened in Lebanon, and they looked hard at it.  And the feedback I’ve heard is that they felt that they got into counterinsurgency-like operations at the expense of their combined arms training, the ability to take air and artillery and ground forces and integrate them all.  And they felt not well-prepared for that.

I think what you saw in Gaza was the Israeli military going to school on themselves and they were much better prepared to employ all of the elements of military power more effectively.  And I think that’s why the Gaza operation was, in fact, more effective.

And I talked about having a versatile mix of forces, that you need some heavy forces, some light forces, and some middleweight striker forces.  And you need to do that because you never know what you’re going to get.  And I will tell you, in Najaf and in Fallujah, I saw the value of tanks and Bradleys in those cities.  I mean, we got through Fallujah in 10 days.  It would have taken a month if we were doing it infantry house to house.  And I think the Israelis saw the same thing.

Now, what’s the implications for the Army in Lebanon?  And this kind of goes back to what Paul said.  One of the reasons I like it is because, as I said, it was more complex.  And it really gets into how do you train leaders to operate in that level of complexity.  And frankly, that’s what we do.  It’s not about machines.  You know, it’s not about networks and technology.  It’s about people and, most importantly, about leaders.

And so what we say is we want leaders who are very competent at their core proficiency, but then broad enough to do a range of things.  I mean, if I expect my leaders to operate from peacetime engagement to counterinsurgency to conventional war, I can’t expect them to be good at every little task in each of those areas.

But I can expect them to be very good at their core competency and then broad enough to do a range of things.

And that gets at, okay, how do you develop – how do you grow officers that are broad?  And our culture now and the culture I grew up in is, hey, you want to get promoted, you stay in a unit, you stay in that operational force and you’ll bubble up.  Well, we’re trying to say, wait a minute, that gets you so far.  That gets you to maybe lieutenant colonel level.  We want you to get out of that operational force periodically.  We want you to go to graduate school at a civilian university.  We want you to operate with another agency of the government.  We want you to train with industry.  We want you to do something that’s out of your comfort zone and then get back in the operational force.  But we’re trying to grow folks that are broad enough to not be cowed by the complexity of a range of different missions.  So that’s the primary take-away for me out of that operation.

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you, General.  Please?

Q:  Thank you, General.  My name is Paulo von Schirach, Schirach Report.  I guess that your Lebanon paradigm or new paradigm or example is catchy.  Still on the same subject, you have described quite well, you know, the example of Lebanon and the other elements that you brought to our attention, that is, the phenomenon of urbanization, the collapse of globalization, the change in demographics, et cetera, that if all this converges into an example like Lebanon, it’s essentially an unwinnable fight.  If a force is motivated and supplied like Hezbollah in Lebanon, it’s essentially a conflict that is unwinnable according to our own standards, unless we do what the Sinhalese have done, you know, defeating the Tamil Tigers just a few weeks ago, to the world outrage, in bombing hospitals and causing massive population dislocation, et cetera, which I don’t think we are in the business of doing.

So my question to you is if a situation like Lebanon should be replicated in different scenarios, it seems to me on the – in the field unwinnable.  And therefore, are there other means that the armed forces are thinking about in terms of depriving the enemy of the motivation to continue to fight as opposed to trying to defeat it in the field, in consideration of the asymmetric advantages that such a force like Hezbollah has enjoyed and managed to deprive the Israelis, who – that are, you know, sufficiently sophisticated, of victory?  How would we engage in a situation like that, and can we win in the field or do we have to find other ways to demotivate the enemy?

GEN. CASEY:  I mean, in those type of operations, the prize really is the people.  It’s not necessarily the enemy force.  And I think that’s a fundamental difference that we’re – you know, we have to come to grips with.  Was it – Rupert Smith wrote a book where he talked about war among the people.  I think that’s a key element of hybrid warfare.  When we operate, we’re going to be – you’re operating in Lebanon, you’re operating among the people.  In those types of wars, you have to split the people from the – from the terrorists or from the insurgents.  And to do that, there has to be enough military force that you take away the options of the other guys with guns.  And then there has to be a representative government that the people feel takes their interests into effect.

And so political, economic, information and military, and not necessarily military predominance, so – and finding the right way to blend each of those to generate the – to accomplish our long-term strategic objectives, that’s the art of this whole thing.  That’s what’s going on in Iraq; that’s what’s going on in Afghanistan; and to some extent that’s what’s going on in Lebanon.  But that’s the art of warfare in the 21st century.

MR. KEMPE:  We’re running a little short of time, but I’m going to take two questions here from Atlantic Council colleagues who had their hands up.  One, the director of our South Asia program, which we stood up in January for pretty obvious reasons – this has got to be a great focus of the Atlantic Council – and then from the director of our International Security Program.

Q:  Thank you, Fred.  General, I’m Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center.  I was intrigued by your description of the change in the doctrine from conventional to hybrid.  And I was interested in finding out what the dynamic was.  Where did the impetus come from?  Was it top down?  Was it in the middle, in the battalion commanders, the regimental commanders?  Where did this start percolating and who provided the impetus for the change?

MR. KEMPE:  And how do we make it percolate in the Pakistani military?  I’ll add that additional question.  Let me take from Damon, too, before we come back to you, General.

GEN. CASEY:  Okay.

Q:  Thank you, sir.  Damon Wilson, here at the Atlantic Council.  Thanks for your remarks this evening.  I had a question.  We hosted General Craddock here a couple of weeks ago, who raised the issue of the status of the forces of – in Europe and his concern about the continued withdrawal – in particular, two more brigade combat teams from Europe – in terms of constraining the ability, perhaps, in a NATO context, to sustain training and mentoring and partnership with NATO allies and NATO partners.  I wondered if you could give us your sense of where we are on the global posture and global defense posture realignment, how you see that going forward, and if you might, a bit more broadly, how you see our NATO allies and our partners drawing some of the lessons that our Army has drawn from recent operational experiences and whether or not you see them moving in a comparable direction or whether you have concerns there with their transformation.

MR. KEMPE:  And I’ll pile on there saying, quite specifically, are you –

GEN. CASEY:  It’s getting late in the day, you know?  (Laughter.)  I can barely –

MR. KEMPE:  I know.  I know.  No, this is – this is –

GEN. CASEY:  I can barely remember one question.  (Chuckles.)

MR. KEMPE:  But this actually complements that, which is within answering Damon, can you be a little bit specific of whether you’re reconsidering the Army’s footprint in Europe?

GEN. CASEY:  Okay.

To your question, little bit of each.  What I found in my own time in Iraq  is innovation has got to come from the field first.  And, for example, in mid-2005, I started getting the feel that we weren’t really executing counterinsurgency doctrine right, so I sent a team out and went all over the – all over and they came back and said, you know, it is kind of haphazard.  So we set up our own academy, the Counterinsurgency Academy in Iraq.  And we – everybody that – all the leaders that came into Iraq  went through that.  And we brought the folks from the States over and they looked at us and then they went back and they wrote the doctrine and then they did the things they needed to do.

This shift from conventional to hybrid was a little bit the same.  I mean, that’s what we’re doing in Iraq  and Afghanistan.  What we had to do was change the – our institutions and our bureaucracy to move away from conventional war.  And so I’d say that part had to be top- down.

And frankly, it started just how I said.  I took a – I took a chart that had the spectrum of conflict on it, and I drew a circle.  And I said what I just said.  If you asked me in ‘99 or 2001 where I should focus, I’d focus on major combat operations, because if I can do that I can do anything.  And I said I don’t believe that anymore.  And then I said I don’t believe that anymore, and then I drew another circle more toward the center.  And I said we need to shift our aim and we need to start focusing there.  Well, that created a lot of consternation.  And people went around scratching their heads, and they were drawing circles in different places.  But it got the dialogue going.

And then I realized that we had to adapt our institutions if we were going to make that change.  And I think I mentioned the organizing principle for the Department of Defense has been major conventional operations for 60 years.  So it’s insidious how that is so ingrained into the processes; you can’t ferret it out.  For example, readiness reporting: I send units off to Iraq  and Afghanistan that are trained, that are equipped, that are combat- ready.  Yet I report their readiness as not ready for their conventional missions.  You know, my view, I ought to be reporting the readiness of my units to go to war, not making up another ad hoc way of saying that – whether they’re ready or not.  But that’s what – that’s – all through the department, you have those things.  And so it’s a big institutional change, not just for the Army but for the whole department to make that move.  So that part had to come from the top down.

It was a – it’s a hard push inside the Beltway.  It’s a much easier sell outside the Beltway.  To the footprint in Europe, the decisions on the two brigades will be made, I think, as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review.  I understand John’s concerns.  More for him is better.  Candidly, I – the question I’ve asked John is what’s the – are we getting the value out of those extra – those two brigades over there?  Could they get – could I get more value of them back in the States?  And that’s something we’re just going to have to work our way through.

I watched the NATO forces coming through Iraq.  All of the NATO countries that deployed their forces to Iraq benefited from it.  I used to meet with the Estonian CHOD.  They had a platoon – Estonian platoon with one of our brigades in the Baghdad area.  That platoon is helping the whole Estonian – you know, the people that rotate through there helping the whole Estonian army move forward.  Same with the Poles; I mean, they’ve put a lot of – so I think that’s having a positive impact on the NATO forces.  The mission in Afghanistan is the same.  I’m just not as familiar with it.

So as I said, we’ll figure that out in the QDR and see where it goes.

MR. KEMPE:  Quadrennial Defense Review.

GEN. CASEY:  Yeah.

MR. KEMPE:  Thank you, General.  I’m going to just say something briefly in closing and I’m going to embarrass one of our senior fellows.  We’ve got a great successor to you here at the Atlantic Council, Colonel Bill Butcher.  And it’s been great having you with us.  And I must tell you, in terms of focus and execution, our military fellows, there’s nothing that beats them.  So thank you, Colonel.

And I want – this is going –

GEN. CASEY:  I hope you get more out of him than they got out of me.  (Chuckles.)

MR. KEMPE:  This is – this is – (chuckles) – we work them hard, and they deliver.

GEN. CASEY:  I look at this as payback, here.  (Chuckles.)

MR. KEMPE:  Now, the person I’m going to quote right now is not Colonel Butcher.  But we do – we have had another senior fellow who spent a few months here.  And he came to us after having a couple of tours in Iraq.  And after seeing what we did for a few months, he said to me, in a moment of candor, they really pay you for this?

And I think that reflects the fact that he made a considerable sacrifice for his country, as do the men and women who serve under you.  We respect the sacrifice you’ve made in your life, the service you’ve given the country in your life, and that of the men and the women who serve under you.  Thank you so much for tonight and thank you so much for your service to the country.

GEN. CASEY:  Thanks, Fred.  Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

Transcript by Federal News Service, Washington, D.C.

Back to General George Casey Event Page

Pakistan needs help.  President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who were publicly urged last month by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to “recognize the real threats to their country,” have sent a considerable military force to staunch the spreading extremist threat in the Swat region near Afghanistan.

But now they are struggling to cope with a reported exodus of over one million Pakistanis – perhaps the largest in the troubled nation’s history after the flood of refugees at the time of independence – who want to escape the fighting.  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees recently warned:  “This is a huge and rapidly unfolding emergency which is going to require considerable resources beyond those that currently exist in the region.”

Pakistan has begun to put together an official relief effort, but it is hampered by a lack of financing and equipment.  If Pakistan’s leadership fails to provide timely relief to the internally displaced population, it almost certainly will suffer a serious backlash of public resentment.  Ironically, this might accomplish the very destabilization of central authority that the Islamist militants and their Al Qaeda associates hope for – and that the United States and its NATO Allies want to prevent.

But what can NATO do?  History suggests that it can do a lot and rapidly.  Moreover, a broad-based NATO support may be politically more palatable than any single-country relief effort in Pakistan.

In October 2005, when Pakistan requested NATO assistance to deal with a devastating earthquake, the Alliance needed only three days to activate its NATO Response Force (NRF) and begin a major airlift of relief supplies.  NATO engineering and medical units and heavy lift helicopters soon followed.  By February 2006, NATO’s “air bridge” of 168 flights had delivered nearly 3,500 tons of aid, its engineers had repaired essential roads and shelters and its doctors had treated over 8,000 patients, often in remote villages.

The 17-week operation, which involved about 1,200 Allied military personnel, opened the door to political dialogue as well: over the next year, high-level NATO and Pakistani officials exchanged their first-ever visits, Pakistani military officers and civilians attended a NATO school in Germany and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Pakistan and Afghanistan opened a joint intelligence operations center in Kabul.  Last year, General Kayani visited NATO headquarters and spoke about the regional dimensions of Pakistan’s security concerns.

NATO’s stake in Pakistan has steadily increased since its earthquake relief operation.  Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan’s western territories have fueled the growing insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan, producing a virtual stalemate there with ISAF and Afghan army forces, and NATO supply routes through Pakistan are under attack.  Allied leaders first acknowledged the need for a regional approach during their April 2008 Bucharest Summit, but faced with mounting violence, they were more explicit at last month’s Strasbourg-Kehl Summit, warning: “[E]xtremists in Pakistan especially in western areas and insurgency in Afghanistan undermine security and stability in both countries and … the problems are deeply intertwined.”

A NATO combat role inside Pakistan is simply inconceivable, but many of the capabilities employed by the Alliance in the earthquake’s aftermath would be relevant today.  The NRF has a readily available air component, now under UK command, that could recreate the 2005-6 air bridge to deliver the tents, field hospitals and medical and other supplies donated by Allies, Partners, international aid agencies and non-government organizations.  A prominent British role in the NATO mission would be quite acceptable to the Pakistani leadership and public, given long ties between Pakistan and the United Kingdom.  Theater air assets, both fixed wing and helicopters, could help with distribution within Pakistan.  The NRF land component, now under French command, could deploy engineer units and medical personnel to work directly with the displaced persons.

As was the case after the earthquake, NATO would work in support of Pakistan’s military and civilian authorities and in coordination with the UN, European Commission and other international donors.  Thus, the Alliance would operationalize the “comprehensive approach” (NATO-speak for the effective combination of civilian and military capabilities in a “whole of government” effort) agreed in its Declaration on Alliance Security at Strasbourg-Kehl.

To be sure, even a limited operation of two to three months would be costly.  Some of the Allies involved in the post-earthquake effort complained bitterly at the time about the lack of NATO common funding for their NRF role.  NATO needs to take urgent action to alleviate that problem – for now, common funding covers only the fuel of NRF air assets – but costs cannot be a show-stopper.  Providing security for the NATO personnel would be another important consideration, but with careful planning and reasonable cooperation from the Pakistani military, this need not be an insuperable obstacle.  (NATO personnel were generally well-received by the population in 2005-6.)

On the other hand, beyond the inherent moral value of humanitarian relief, the strategic impact of demonstrating NATO’s willingness to once again extend a hand to a Muslim population that is voting with its feet against extremist domination should not be underestimated.  Think about winning “hearts and minds.”

NATO’s top decision-making body, the North Atlantic Council, would have to agree by consensus on any Alliance involvement.   As a first step, the Council presumably would need an expeditious assessment by its military and civilian staffs of the risks, costs and benefits of such involvement.  But the Council will not ask for such an assessment absent an official request for assistance by Pakistan.

Will someone in Islamabad pick up the phone?

Leo Michel is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies.  These are his personal views.  Shuja Nawaz is Director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. 

Last week’s tripartite summit in Washington, D.C. during which President Barack Obama hosted President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan was a lot like a Chinese meal.

After a substantial repast of meetings and media events, one is left with a gnawing hunger for real progress in the battle against insurgents in both countries.

Zardari came to convince Washington that he needed much more aid than the current $1.5 billion annually for five years promised by bills pending before the U.S. Congress and substantial military aid. He left with the promise of five additional helicopters and little in the way of additional financial aid. Indeed, the U.S. had already pledged $1 billion at the Tokyo meeting of the Friends of Pakistan as a down payment towards the promised Kerry-Lugar $1.5 billion aid package.

Karzai appeared to have gone home with a sense that the earlier coolness of the U.S. administration had been replaced with a grudging acceptance of the inevitability of his re-election as President in the August election against a divided field. To borrow a phrase from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “you fight alongside the ally that you can get.”

The U.S. clearly wished for greater action by Pakistan against the militants inside Pakistan and along the Afghan border. It also wanted better collaboration between the Afghans and Pakistanis. It  may not have got much progress on the first but made some progress on the latter objective. Yet, given the waning popularity of both leaders at home, Obama may be left wondering how strong his allies are going to be in the battle against terrorism and militancy, and how long the U.S. public and European allies will want to stay the course in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

What’s missing from the picture in Pakistan?

A fledgling civil government has been unable to assert its control over the country’s polity and its military. Lacking a clear vision of what kind of country it wants Pakistan to be, the government has made alliances with all types of parties, many of them opportunistic members of the preceding Musharraf regime. Despite his own promises and a written commitment of his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Zardari has yet to shed the extraordinary presidential powers of his predecessor, thus diminishing the powers of the prime minister and parliament. And, despite a raging insurgency that has swept from the Afghan borderlands into the Pakistani hinterland, the government has not yet shown itself operating on a war footing.

The Swat deal with the Pakistani Taliban collapsed, as widely expected. In the absence of effective civil administration and a community-based police force that could have kept the militants at bay, yet again the military has been sent in to roust the Taliban. But it faces a daunting task, as an energized insurgency, with well equipped fighters, promises to battle the army street-by-street for the towns of Swat.

Meanwhile, Pakistan faces the prospect of a million plus refugees.  The government seemed unprepared for such a massive exodus and it seems to be falling back on the old system of proposing an international aid conference to garner relief assistance. Yet again civil society seems to be bearing the brunt of the relief efforts.

If there had been an institutional mechanism for national security analysis and decision making with a clear central command authority(a Pakistani Richard Holbrooke who could team up with the Army Chief)  to break down the stove pipes in the Pakistani government, the exodus would have been anticipated and arrangements put in place to look after the displaced people. Most of them now are seeking shelter outside the paltry camps set up to handle them. The National Security Council has been abolished. The Defence Committee of the cabinet does not appear to have met to discuss the crisis. And in the absence of a National Security Adviser, sacked by the prime minister in a moment of pique following the Mumbai attack, there is no formal mechanism for studying such issues nor a central point in government to ensure that all parts of the administration work together to anticipate problems and resolve issues.

A highly personalized decision making process remains in place, informed in some cases more by anecdote than by analysis. Most exchanges on military issues take place directly between the President and the Army Chief. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is often by-passed. Coordination of the fight against the militants between Interior Ministry and the military is desultory at best. That relationship has not yet recovered by the abortive ham-handed attempt of the current Interior Minister to wrest control of the Inter Services Intelligence in the summer of 2008 away from the military.

The only silver lining from the collapse of the Swat deal has been the rising anger of civil society against the excesses of the Taliban and revulsion for their obscurantist views on religion and social behavior. But chances are that this anger may soon turn against the government itself, if it fails to control the situation.

The army, still unequipped and untrained for counterinsurgency, may yet be able to clear the Swat valley of the militants. But, as a senior military officer confided to me, the army will be unable to hold the territory indefinitely. Providing governance and justice is the civilians’ job. And there is no evidence of civilian institutions or a police force to do the needful. So the Taliban may return to fill the vacuum, as they did before. Moreover, the fear is that even in the Bajaur agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Area, where a huge military operation created almost 300,000 refugees and devastated the territory, the Taliban may stage a comeback.

The military says it opposed the latest Swat deal, as it was to earlier deals. The provincial government of the Awami National Party states that the military sought the deal as a respite because its soldiers were unwilling to fight. The federal government threw the hot potato of the deal into the lap of parliament that hurriedly approved the deal. As yet, there does not seem to be any strong evidence of discontent in the ranks of the army. But the growing frustration of the soldiers is understandable in a battle that seems unending.

The government of Pakistan needs to take several steps to remedy the situation:

• Mobilize public opinion against the radical and convoluted view of Islam being propagated by the insurgents,
• Provide employment opportunities for the unemployed youth of the country, starting with massive infrastructure investments (roads, bridges, tube wells) in  the borderlands, and
• Show through its actions and public (not closed-door) deliberations that it is urgently and actively engaged with the issue.

Zardari’s prolonged absence from Pakistan during this time of crisis has raised eyebrows. He needed to be back in Islamabad, working with his prime minister and the Army Chief to come up with solutions to the rising crisis rather than continuing his two-week overseas tour. He left Pakistan for Libya on April 30, then went on London and the United States, stopping in London again and Paris on his way back. While it is important to meet key world leaders, the signaling effect of his actions is important in Pakistan and for allies that have promised to help.

Much more important is the need for actions that will restore confidence in his government’s ability to meet this huge challenge.

If Pakistan is indeed at war, as it seems to be, then Zardari could begin the reform process by disbanding his 67 plus cabinet of featherbedders and replace it with a small and effective War Cabinet of the best and brightest from all parties and segments of Pakistani society. He could ask the government and the military to produce their plans for post-kinetic actions in Swat. And he needs to have in place a robust and comprehensive communications strategy to counter the Taliban’s propaganda and to share with civil society information on what is being done and why. He has an economic plan that worked at the Tokyo meeting. He must make it work now.

The Tokyo pledges and Washington parleys should have convinced Zardari that Pakistan’s friends in the United States and elsewhere are willing to help. But they need proof that Pakistan is willing to help itself first. Zardari needs to grasp this opportunity to turn things around rapidly before civil society, or the military, decides to take matters into its own hands yet again.

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council.  He is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within and FATA: A Most Dangerous Place. 

Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, testified before the House Armed Service Committee about the future of the U.S.-Pakistan military partnership.

His prepared comments are reproduced below.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee, I am honored to be asked to speak about this important issue before your committee today. We at the Atlantic Council recently produced a report on Pakistan that offers detailed suggestions on aid for that country.

The United States and Pakistan have had a roller-coaster relationship, marked with highs of deep friendship followed by estrangement. The two countries now are partners again in an attempt to roll back the tide of obscurantism and militancy that grips Afghanistan and Pakistan today. Yet, a deep distrust marks this relationship arising out of the pattern of engagement. This distrust is rooted in both perceptions and reality.

The United States befriended Pakistan most often when it had autocratic rulers and provided the most aid to Pakistan during periods of autocratic rule when Pakistan was seen as an ally of US strategic interests in the region.  The intervening periods of civilian rule often were marked by distance and coolness. And a strong perception was created over time in Pakistani minds that the United States did not understand or care for Pakistan’s domestic needs or security concerns.

Mr. Chairman, Pakistan lives in a tough neighborhood. It is in the shadow of India, a major nuclear power to the east, and powerful neighbors such as China, Iran, and an unstable Afghanistan. Internally it is wracked by a rising militancy that is attempting to force its convoluted view of Islam on a largely moderate population. Pakistan has suffered repeated military rule and corrupt civilian governments that often were in the hands of a feudalistic elite or family-run political parties. Over shadowing all this is a powerful and well organized Pakistan army that repeatedly used its coercive power to take charge of the country.

Today, the United States and Pakistan are at a new crossroads: there is an opportunity to forge a new relationship between the people of the two countries and to overturn the historical patterns. Civil society in Pakistan is on the rise and deserves support. The Chief of army staff of the Pakistan army is publicly committed to withdrawing the army from politics, and the new Administration in Washington is committed to a strategy to help build Pakistan via a long-term assistance program that will strengthen its defence while improving the economy. If Washington succeeds in these efforts, it will help break the yo-yo pattern of the US-Pakistan relationship.

But there are challenges to overcome:

• The US must ensure that its aid is not seen solely in support of its battle in  Afghanistan and directed largely toward the border region of Pakistan
• This aid must not be seen by the people of Pakistan as short-term and aimed at propping up any single person, party, or group.
• The US and its allies must attempt to reduce the causes of regional hostility between India and Pakistan.
• Pakistan needs to ensure that its government prepares viable and practicable plans for using economic aid effectively and efficiently and controls corruption so aid reaches the poorest segments of society.
• The government of Pakistan also needs to craft a broad consensus in support of a strategy to fight the militants, and strengthen the hands of the silent and moderate majority.
• Pakistan also needs to accelerate the doctrinal shift from conventional military thinking to counterinsurgency and build its capacity to reclaim the areas of militancy. The civilians can then hold and re-build those areas.

Certain key elements of US aid will be needed in this regard:

• First, there must a focus on building up police and para-military capacity to isolate militants from within the communities.
• Second, community-based assistance and a heavy investment in infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, are needed to help aid reach target communities directly. The current system of aid flows must change so aid money is not soaked up by expensive overheads in Washington, Islamabad, or provincial capitals.
• Third, the ability of the Pakistan army to fight a mobile militancy should be enhanced by proving it more heli-lift capability, helicopter gunships, transport, and night vision goggles.
• Fourth, the IMET training program for Pakistan’s military needs to rise dramatically and additional training needs to be organized in the country and in the region to expose larger numbers officers at all ranks to new thinking on counterinsurgency.
• Finally, I suggest strongly that the current Coalition Support Fund model of reimbursement for Pakistani operations in the border region should be ended. This is a cause of deep resentment in the army and civil society since it makes the Pakistani army a “hired force” and makes this America’s War not Pakistan’s own war. Let both sides agree to the objectives, benchmarks, and indicators of success and let the US provide aid for those broad objectives without detailed accounting.  We need to rebuild trust between these two allies. Questioning reimbursement claims has the opposite effect.

Mr. Chairman, I do not believe in blank checks. Mutually agreed conditions of aid, rather that unilaterally imposed conditions are the best way of engendering trust. We have to make sure that we set targets that help Pakistan achieve its potential, while ensuring its security and integrity. Creating a safe neighborhood in South Asia will help toward that end.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee. I am prepared to answer your questions.