[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 110-168]
A NEW U.S. GRAND STRATEGY
(PART 2 OF 2)
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 31, 2008
[H.A.S.C. 110-159 Part 1]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey JEFF MILLER, Florida
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
JIM COOPER, Tennessee K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania
John Kruse, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Roger Zakheim, Professional Staff Member
Sasha Rogers, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2008
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, July 31, 2008, A New U.S. Grand Strategy (Part 2 of 2). 1
Appendix:
Thursday, July 31, 2008.......................................... 35
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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2008
A NEW U.S. GRAND STRATEGY (PART 2 OF 2)
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 4
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee...................... 1
WITNESSES
Blair, Adm. Dennis C., USN (Ret.), John M. Shalikashvili Chair,
National Bureau of Asian Research.............................. 2
Hunter, Ambassador Robert E., Senior Advisor, RAND Corporation,
U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1993-1998............................. 4
Scales, Maj. Gen. Robert H., Jr., USA (Ret.), President, COLGEN,
LP, Former Commandant, Army War College........................ 6
Zelikow, Dr. Philip D., White Burkett Miller Professor of
History, University of Virginia, Former Counselor, Department
of State....................................................... 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Akin, Hon. W. Todd........................................... 41
Blair, Adm. Dennis C......................................... 42
Hunter, Ambassador Robert E.................................. 57
Scales, Maj. Gen. Robert H., Jr.............................. 80
Snyder, Hon. Vic............................................. 39
Zelikow, Dr. Philip D........................................ 93
Documents Submitted for the Record:
The Coalition of Enlightened States submitted by Maj. Gen.
Robert H. Scales........................................... 107
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
A NEW U.S. GRAND STRATEGY (PART 2 OF 2)
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, July 31, 2008.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. Snyder. We are going to go ahead and get started. Mr.
Akin is on his way, and Dr. Zelikow, I think, is either finding
his parking place, or has found it and is being escorted up.
But he was scheduled to be our fourth testifier. And I suspect
that he has read your written statements.
We welcome you all today to the Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations hearing. This is our second hearing in a
series of hearings we are having on--we call it, I guess, a
Grand Strategy--whether we need a new Grand Strategy.
Chairman Skelton has expressed his support for this
subcommittee's work, and intends to hold a hearing in the fall
on the full-committee level, with former Secretaries of Defense
and State.
At our first subcommittee hearing on July 15th, the
witnesses agreed that our two--perhaps our two most important
national-security challenges were actually ones we need to look
at internally to regain our fiscal health and, as soon as
possible, to have a sound and comprehensive energy policy.
While focusing on these two issues, there also was
agreement amongst our witnesses that there is no clear-cut
existential threat to our Nation. And while these witnesses
emphasized the importance of rebuilding the foundation of this
country's power as the basis for its Grand Strategy, they also
caution that the world is too uncertain a place for the United
States to somehow declare a time-out while we work on things
like energy policy and our fiscal health.
And also, everyone was in agreement we need to pay better
attention to engaging our allies.
I appreciate you all being here today. I have read your
written statements.
What we will do is we will turn on our little light here.
And it will start flashing red at five minutes. But that is
more just to give you a sense of where you are at with time.
And if you need to go on past that to finish your statement, I
would encourage you to do that.
Obviously, some of you have written statements. If we
actually read the whole thing, we would be here until Tuesday,
and I don't intend to be here until next Tuesday, so I would
hope you will give a more condensed version.
But Mr. Akin is not here. When he comes here, we will give
him an opportunity to make any comments he wants to make.
And we will go ahead, Admiral Blair, and begin with you. We
are pleased today to have, as our witnesses, Admiral Dennis
Blair, Ambassador Robert Hunter, Major General Robert Scales--
both at--I will say Admiral Blair and Major General Scales are
retired--and then Dr. Philip Zelikow will be joining us--just
in time.
Oh, Doctor--and Dr. Zelikow is here with us. So, great.
Dr. Zelikow, thank you. Thank you.
So, Admiral Blair, let's begin with you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
STATEMENT OF ADM. DENNIS C. BLAIR, USN (RET.), JOHN M.
SHALIKASHVILI CHAIR, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ASIAN RESEARCH
Admiral Blair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I read over the transcript of your last hearing, and I
agree with the thrust of most of your witnesses that, probably,
a tight, clever, sophisticated strategy is not something that
is possible for the United States--a tight possible Grand
Strategy--for all of the reasons you discussed earlier. But I
do think that we can have a set of strategic priorities, an
approach to the way the United States uses its power in the
world.
I would say that, because we can't really have a tight,
clever, integrated strategy, we probably need a little more
power than what otherwise would be the case. If you look at
North Korea, for example, and our interaction with them over
the last 20 years, they have had an amazing strategy and no
power. We have had an amazing amount of power, very little
strategy. And the result, over 20 years, has been about a tie.
So the United States sort of needs some extra power if it
is going to operate in the somewhat open way that we do. And so
I very much share the views of those at that last hearing--that
we need to work on the internal basics so that we have that
power. And it is not only economic and fiscal power. We need to
regain some of the moral authority that plays so powerfully for
us in the world.
So if we are to have a set of strategic principles, if not
a strategy, what should we start with? And I believe we should
start with the objective that we seek. And I think that is
fairly simple to state: The United States seeks a world in the
future in which there are nation-states which have secure
borders.
These countries can enforce the rule of law within their
borders. The governments of these countries are representative
governments--representative of the will of their people. They
have, basically, market-based economies and they trade with one
another. I think that is the kind of world we are looking for.
So that should be at the heart of our strategic principles.
I think if you look at that end state, that vision, most of
the rest of the world would share it. You notice that it
doesn't mean implanting American-style democracy in other
countries. But if you go a level down, I find that if you
talked with citizens of other countries in terms of these more
basic principles--rule of law, representative government,
secure borders and so on--you find quite general agreement.
So if we phrase it in a way that translates well in other
countries, I think our objective, you will find, is shared with
most of the world that we care about. And that provides a solid
basis for our strategic principles.
So Strategy 101--objective--where you are now, how do you
get there? What are the strategic principles that we should
follow as we try to work toward that world?
Number one: I think we should use the unique power that the
United States has, that we have enjoyed ever since the end of
the Cold War, to build norms of international behavior,
institutions, precedents that favor that sort of world that we
seek, and that I think others seek, if we communicate with them
correctly.
This has two components to it. Number one: When there is
not some crisis going on that absorbs all of our attention, we
should work on capacity. That is capacity within other
countries. That is capacity of international institutions.
This is the sort of--day-to-day work of attending meetings,
building institutions, educating others in the United States,
helping non-governmental organizations to build capacity for
rule-of-law legal systems--democratic, representative
institutions in other countries. And we should put a strong
focus on that when--on a day-to-day basis.
When it comes to handling a crisis, handling a particular
situation, I think we should give a strong preference to
collective action. The United States may lead it. The United
States may not. There may be times when we have to act
unilaterally. But our strong preference should be for
collective action toward these common goals, which I think we
all share.
This is not just pie-in-the-sky. When I was in the Pacific
Command and dealing with Indonesia, when we were both dealing
with the East Timor issue, in which there was an Australian-led
operation, and in the tsunami relief, in which there was a big,
multilateral relief organization--the United States worked
together with other countries.
The result was that we rebuilt very strong relationships
with Indonesia, a very important country in that part of the
world. So I think that these principles can work.
Principle number two--and I know it is also of interest to
this committee--is integrating the forms of national power. And
that means not only across the government, state, defense,
intelligence community, but also with the private sector, both
in non-governmental organizations, and with the for-profit,
commercial sector--international companies and so on.
I think if we follow those two principles, if we keep our
eye on that vision of where we want the world to go, we can
hand on a world to our children and grandchildren in which they
can be free, secure, and lead fulfilling lives. And that, after
all, is the objective of our strategy. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Blair can be found in
the Appendix on page 42.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Admiral Blair.
If--Ambassador Hunter, let me give--we have been joined by
Mr. Akin. Let me give Mr. Akin the time to make any opening
comments he would like to make.
STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Akin. I am just interested in anything that is grand.
And I have appreciated your comments--looking for more.
And welcome, General Scales, too, and good to see you
again.
General Scales. You, too, sir.
Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the
Appendix on page 41.]
Dr. Snyder. Ambassador Hunter, I will recognize you.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR ROBERT E. HUNTER, SENIOR ADVISOR, RAND
CORPORATION, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO, 1993-1998
Ambassador Hunter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First, let me compliment you and the subcommittee for doing
this.
You know, we have gone, now, twice the time that we fought
World War II since 9-11. And we still haven't developed a new
Grand Strategy. And the initiative that you are taking right
now, I think, points us in the right direction.
Remarkably, listening to my colleague here, with--I agree
with every word he said, plus what you summarized from the last
hearing. We are now building this on a bipartisan basis. And I
think that is going to be critical for the next Administration,
and for the next Congress.
In fact, what you are starting today--I encourage you to
continue it--to pair also with the Foreign Affairs Committee.
And I do believe, here in the Congress, while you appropriate
and authorize in a certain mechanism, it would be very useful
if you had some committees that would look at the grand
strategic picture and everything together, to help give
guidance to the Administration, because, quite frankly, the
barriers between the Administration and Congress have to fall
in this area.
We are all in this together, and that is the only way I
think it is going to work.
I--just to summarize very briefly, I think there are a
number of areas. One is in strategic thinking. You are already
initiating that.
Second, as you mentioned, strength at home--a whole series
of areas: It is not just energy and fiscal soundness, but
things like health and education, the strength of our people,
infrastructure and, yes, our reputation, and what the world
wants to look at the United States--even though, sometimes, it
sounds like a hackneyed phrase--as a ``City on the Hill''. I
think we are moving in that way.
You also have to have, as you well know, popular support of
the American people. I have long believed that any President
who has a policy he cannot sell to the Congress and the
American policy doesn't have a foreign policy. That is an
absolute requirement.
In terms of tasks and priorities, I think we know some of
the near-term ones--terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the
places where American fighting men and women are at risk today,
in Iraq and Pakistan--sorry--in Afghanistan--with a major
element of Pakistan involved in that--the Middle East, where we
are going to be preoccupied for the indefinite future.
But I want to raise the question whether we need to find a
way to depreciate the amount of time and effort we have to put
into the Middle East, when there are others who might be able
to do it with us, and things we may be able to build for the
future so that we can get on as well with some of the critical
things that are happening in the world, and particularly in the
Far East--China and the new, emerging issue of Russia. And, of
course, we have to do an awful lot with the global economy.
And then there are three long-term issues--resource
scarcity, particularly oil, the environment, and global
warming--that have a real problem in that these, for every
leadership in every country, are beyond the political horizon
of action. We are going to find a way--and you are leading on
this--to collapse that.
Tools: I agree entirely with what the admiral said. We need
to be looking for force multipliers, power-and-influence
multipliers, and security multipliers, particularly, the
integration of instruments of power and influence.
We have just finished a project at the RAND Corporation
with the American Academy of Diplomacy that will be out a
couple of weeks from now--fully consistent with what Secretary
of Defense Gates has been trying to do. In fact, there is a new
report mentioned in the Washington Post this morning.
It is to deal with this extraordinary phenomenon of
asymmetrical warfare, which is going to preoccupy us for the
foreseeable future. We need to have engagement in the outside
world on a governmentwide basis, not just the military, not
just the State Department.
In Afghanistan, today, there are exactly three employees of
the United States Department of Agriculture. That is nonsense.
We need to have purple-suited civilians like under Goldwater-
Nichols. We need to have culturally sensitive people. We need a
national-security budget, even if it is not actionable, put up
by the Administration and by Government Accountability Office
(GAO), Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Congressional
Research Service (CRS)-Air.
And we are going to need to shift resources. The ratio
between the 050 account and the 150 account, right now, is 17.5
to one. The people who will tell you we need to shift resources
are the military people who had to do things in Bosnia, Kosovo,
Iraq, and in Afghanistan.
Now, allies--the admiral has already mentioned that. We are
going to need allies elsewhere. And, in fact, we are going to
have to put the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
allies on greater notice of their responsibility, along with
us, to do things, like in Afghanistan. They have got to pull
their weight more, not just militarily, but also non-
militarily.
We are also going to have to demonstrate to the Europeans
that we continue to care about their security. And one thing I
worry about is a further reduction of U.S. troops in Europe.
That is going to cost us a lot in influence, and not save much
money. That is one of the things we have to do together.
I think we have to have a new U.S.-European unit and
strategic partnership in health, education--a whole series of
things--and to break down the barriers between the European
Union (E.U.) and NATO.
A final word on the Middle East: We have an awful lot we
have to do, and we have to do it all together--not just
Afghanistan and Pakistan by itself, and Iraq by itself, Iran
and the Arab-Israeli--but altogether.
And three big points: One, as we reduce our position in
Iraq, we have to do it in a way in which the world will know we
are still a critical Middle East power, and our reputation for
power and influence is intact.
Second, we need to work out a relationship with Iran. And I
believe the first thing we should do is finally offer them a
deal: ``You behave; we will give you security guarantees.'' We
ought to do that with North Korea. Maybe they will say, ``No.''
At least we will have tried.
Because we are going to be there and they are going to be
there--we are going to be the big power no matter what happens.
They are going to be a minor power.
Final thing in addition to Arab-Israeli: We need to create
a new security framework for the Middle East that will, in
time, enable us to take a bit of a step back a bit more over
the horizon, while everybody knows the United States, as
elsewhere, will continue to be the security provider of last
resort.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the
Appendix on page 57.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Hunter.
General Scales.
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. ROBERT H. SCALES, JR., USA (RET.),
PRESIDENT, COLGEN, LP, FORMER COMMANDANT, ARMY WAR COLLEGE
General Scales. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am a military
historian, and so my view of a future Grand Strategy will
really reflect more of my academic than my military background.
I would like to just, in the five minutes I have, make a
couple of quick points. And then, what I would like to do at
the end is offer some suggestions from a military perspective
of what the military services need to do, over the next
generation or so, to ensure that we meet the needs of of this
strategy.
I think that one of the conclusions that have come out of
the last seven years is that we, as a Nation, can no longer go
it alone, and carry the burden of global security on our
shoulders. We can't do it.
In Iraq, I think that we are beginning to see, with the
number of soldiers and Marines available to carry that burden
is diminishing in proportion to the size of the mission.
It seems to me that we, in the future--in the distant
future--as a goal, we need to return to a more traditional
supporting role in our partnership to defeat global threats.
And I think I view this as a generational effort. It is not
anything you are going to solve by--in the next years' budget.
But what I suggest in my statement for the record is, over
time, we need to re-look at our coalition and alliance-
building, and build what I call a ``coalition of enlightened
states,'' the ability to pursue a global strategy led by
regional governments, rather than led by the United States.
We still need, I believe, to protect ourselves against
radicalism by protecting the traditional state system. But we
need to move away from this cycle of seemingly perpetual
violence. And I believe, frankly, that if we treat this as a
generational effort--that time is on our side, because all
radical movements contain the seeds of their own destruction.
As they become more radical and they feed on more and more
violence, then the revulsion among enlightened states begins to
increase. You reach a tipping point. And these things tend to
burn out over time.
Clearly, we need a capability for direct confrontation.
This is enemies that happen to arm themselves with nuclear
weapons. But I strongly believe that containment and prevention
are better than direct confrontation.
Still, in this new era of a coalition of enlightened
states, many of the basic Cold War instruments are still
useful: Collective defense, regional alliances, economic
develops and so forth.
So we have to move away from short-term, preemptive action,
to a more patient, nuanced, and longer-term policy of
reinforcing our allies.
An alliance of enlightened states built over time should be
more expansive and more global than the Cold War alliances,
like NATO. One of the things that is important is to cast a
much broader net and build alliances around people who--around
nations that have common interests, nations that are fearful of
radicalism. We need to have a focus to reinforce statism,
rather than policies that take apart statism.
And there are really three purposes. One, obviously, is
education and economic development. Probably the most
important, Mr. Chairman, is a strategy focused around defeating
insurgencies early, pre-insurgencies. A policy--a strategy--
that focuses on pre-insurgency, rather than counter-insurgency
pays far more dividends in the long term. And, of course, we
still have to remain powerful to defeat conventional threats.
A couple of quick words about how tomorrow's military needs
to reshape itself in order to--and to support this coalition of
enlightened states--I believe it has to be built around
embassies and this country-team alliance, rather than simply
reinforcing combatant commands with military power.
Centered around that, of course, it is principally or,
overwhelmingly, an Army and Marine Corps mission to focus on
the advise, train and assist functions. It is also interesting
to note that we do this better than any other country in the
world. We have a long tradition of success in places like
Greece, Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, and now Iraq and
Afghanistan.
I draw your attention to the Lodge Act, 1950, which was an
act that brought in aliens from Eastern Europe. And there was a
point in the 1950's and early 1960's, where the entire 10th
Special Forces group was made up of emigres who were brought in
from Eastern Europe and put into uniform, served five years
honorably. And if they served five years, they and their
families were automatically fast-tracked to full citizenship.
What a huge difference that made in winning the Cold War,
and not many people know about it.
We need to look at something like a universal--foreign-area
officers--do not have a specialty, but build foreign-area
specialties into the entire officer corps, because this can't
be a small part of the military if we are going to build these
alliances.
And the final point I will leave with you is: The challenge
of building a coalition of enlightened states is that it is a
human, rather than a technological or material-type. It is a
policy built around the human element, rather than the
technological element, of war.
You know, war is a thinking-man's game. And if we are going
to build a new generation of officers--and I would argue,
senior non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who are particularly
good at training, assisting, and advising this new alliance--
then we have to start educating them from the very beginning of
their commissioning, all the way through senior service.
We will know we are successful some time many years in the
future, when a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff served a
great deal of his career as a foreign-areas officer, as well as
an operator.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Scales can be found in
the Appendix on page 80.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, General Scales.
Dr. Zelikow.
STATEMENT OF DR. PHILIP D. ZELIKOW, WHITE BURKETT MILLER
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, FORMER COUNSELOR,
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Dr. Zelikow. Mr. Chairman, I am a historian, but I have
also been a trial and appellate lawyer. And I have served in
government in seven different Federal agencies, one state
agency, and as an elected member of a town school board. So my
experience with these kinds of issues of strategy is eclectic,
both in domestic and foreign policy.
We Americans are really at an extraordinary moment in world
history, where we have an opportunity to reflect on what our
purposes are in the world. I am glad the committee is holding
this set of hearings.
Our country, because of its separated and overlapping
powers, generally has problems with concerted action, except
when a common sense of purpose draws us together. Such a sense
of purpose transcends party. It actually sets the framework
within which the parties argue.
There have only been a handful of these sort of Big-P
policies in the history of the United States. One of the
earliest was ``No entangling alliances.'' The latest was,
``Containment plus deterrence.''
We have not had such a large, common sense of purpose since
the end of the Cold War. Since 1991, the United States has
brought to a bewildered, confused, globalizing world, a
bewildering, confusing melange of policy ideas. Politicians and
officials talk about terror, democracy, proliferation, trade,
the environment, growth, and dozens of other topics. They
strike 100 notes, but there is no melody.
There are already many arguments about how the United
States should try to manage the post Cold War world. They tend
to take current issue sets as a given, and focus on how we can
handle them better, smarter, stronger: ``We should use more
military''; ``We should have less military, more diplomacy,
better diplomacy,'' and so on.
I have worked on a number of these proposals, including on
the intelligence establishment, and would be glad to discuss
specific ideas. But I urge the committee to dig more deeply
into the core problem, which is, I think, a lack of clarity
about the problem itself, lack of clarity about, ``What is
special about this moment in world history, and what role does
that, then, create for the United States in defining a broad
sense of purpose?''
My argument is that the greatest challenge today--and it is
one that is not just evident to wonks, it is evident to
ordinary people in the United States and all over the world--is
the tension between globalization and self-determination;
globalization versus self-determination.
Globalization is a familiar concept, and I don't need to
elaborate it to the committee. Self-determination is familiar,
too. What may be less familiar, though, is a point that a
number of world historians have made, is that, actually,
globalization and self-determination are two sides of the same
coin. They are as connected as summer heat and thunderstorms.
Indeed, the term ``self-determination'' doesn't exist
before about the middle of the 19th century, when you see a lot
of phenomena in which people, basically, are buffeted by global
forces, ideas, culture, new ways of doing business, that are
affecting the way they are used to organizing their societies.
And then they react to that with defiant assertions of
self-determination, often with extreme violence, which
convulsed much of the world during the middle of the 19th
century, and then led to repeated convulsions in the 20th
century.
In this era of unprecedented levels of globalization, we
are going through this phase again. Actually, I think it is
most reminiscent of the period about 100 years ago. It even
includes the element of nihilistic transnational terrorists who
frighten all civilized people. Back then, they were anarchists
and they would throw bombs in opera houses, instead of subway
stations.
Globalization versus self-determination is the combustion
engine that is now driving debates not only in our country, but
in China, Pakistan, Iran, India, Brazil. The issue is: Will
countries trust that interdependence will work; that the global
forces can be mastered to their benefit? Or will they start
fortifying themselves in 100 ways, listening avidly to the
ideologues who will tell them why they have no other choice?
In other words, Mr. Chairman, we have now unleashed global
forces in a variety of ways--energy, ideas, commerce--that are
without precedent in the history of mankind. The forces are
unprecedented. But men and women are still being made in about
the same size they have been made in for a long time.
And the fundamental issue that people are having is: ``Can
our communities grapple with these forces? Can we manage this
in some constructive way?'' Or, because we can't manage them,
we need to fort-up in fear, with a variety of ways in which we
defiantly assert how our communities will protect themselves
against all these different things--incoming people, incoming
ideas, incoming capital--in a variety of forms.
The agenda that, then, flows from that, which I elaborate
further in my prepared statement, is an agenda that calls for
an open, civilized world. A frank discussion of the principles
that animate an open, civilized world--and I offer a suggestive
outline--and an agenda in which you are basically saying to
people, ``We can develop global frameworks for about five or
six of these forces that look like they are credibly capable of
starting to manage them,'' and reassure you.
And these frameworks need to be loose enough to allow
communities to still feel, ``We can determine our own
identities our own way.'' But these enormous forces--the
diffusion of ultra-hazardous technologies, the consumption of
energy, arable land, clean water, at unprecedented rates--are
more or less being managed so that we have a safe framework in
which our communities can define our identities the way we
want, and the healthy way.
Or else, what we will see is self-determination will take
on the kind of toxic forms that, then, characterize most of the
20th century. That is the kind of danger that I think we need
to avert. And that is the focus of the Grand Strategy I propose
to the committee.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zelikow can be found in the
Appendix on page 93.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all for your written and your oral
statement. Your written statements will be made a part of the
record.
I also want to let our committee members know, this is our
second hearing. Our first hearing, we had folks who, through
most of their career, had been affiliated with the kind of the
think-tank aspects of things. Our panel today are four folks
who, either, through their career in the military or in
government service, have been practitioners of the art of
looking at strategies and the implementation of strategies.
I also want to acknowledge that we have some guests here
today--some legislators both from Kenya and from Macedonia--
that I have met with here, briefly, this morning.
We welcome you. I understand you will have to be leaving
some time during our hearing. We appreciate your attendance
today.
You can go ahead and start the clock here.
I wanted to just ask some specific questions from several
of you.
Admiral Blair, you make one very specific--that--of course,
we are talking about a strategy. I am going to ask some very
specific questions about comments you make.
You mentioned language skills as being important.
General Scales, you mentioned it, too.
And, in fact, I think General Scales is going to quote a
couple of your comments. You, specifically, in your written
statement say, talking about military officers--``No officer
should be allowed beyond the grade of lieutenant colonel
without demonstrating a working knowledge of the language
spoken in a region potentially threatening to the interests of
the United States.''
And, then, on page 12, you say, ``Cultural awareness and
the ability to build ties of trust will offer protection to our
troops more effectively than body armor.'' And that is your
statement, General Scales.
That is one of those issues that this subcommittee is
working on. The obvious statement is that the military and the
diplomatic corps inherits the language-skill deficit that we,
as a Nation, have. And, in fact, then, we expect the military
and the diplomatic corps to solve this problem for us; to
somehow fill in your ranks, even though we don't have very deep
language skills within our country. At least, we are not
accessing those, perhaps, that we do.
Do either of you, or any of the four of you, have any
further comments to amplify on this issue of language skills
and cultural appreciation?
Let's start with you, Admiral Blair.
Admiral Blair. Mr. Chairman, I think there are two aspects
to it. I would--more than language skills, I would say regional
studies or cultural studies.
I find that if an officer, particularly a senior officer,
has studied one different country culture in-depth, he knows
that--he or she--knows that one pretty well. But more
important, he knows that you need that sort of awareness.
So if I found, when I was dealing with a country that I
didn't, perhaps, know a great deal about, I knew enough to get
somebody who did. And then--so whenever there was a difficult
issue with one of the 41 countries in my area of
responsibility, I would get the right people to do it.
And you could find them in many sources. Some of them had
uniforms on. Some of them didn't. They were out there.
So I would agree that we need this for--I think diplomats
get it naturally. Intelligence officers should have it. They
shouldn't just be technical experts. Military officers--I agree
with General Scales--should--it should be a required part of
their education. And--so that they know who the right people
are to pull on when it is time to deal with another country,
another culture, in a sophisticated way.
General Scales. Mr. Chairman, I guess the phrase I have
used in some of the stuff I have written before--I call it sort
of ``the cultural right stuff.''
You know, it is hard to put a finger on it. It is--it could
be language. But there are other things. And I agree with
Admiral Blair on this. There are certain personal attributes
that make people really good at this--sublimation of ego is one
thing; the ability to be collegial and convivial when dealing
with alien cultures.
I think the poster child that we all refer to in this
business is Karl Eikenberry. I mean, here is a guy that speaks
fluent Mandarin. He is married to a--his wife is Chinese. He
was the defense attache in Beijing. And where was he sent to be
most effective? Afghanistan. And my point is that he was
effective there--he was so effective there, not because he--
there were a lot of Afghans who spoke Mandarin, but because he
just had this certain nature about him that allowed people to
trust him.
And I am not saying we should have a military occupational
specialty called ``trust,'' but we ought to at least be able to
go through the officer--and I would argue, senior NCO corps--
and find those who have this--these unique abilities, this
cultural awareness, this right stuff, if you will, to--and then
build on it over time.
I believe that there are actually ways now--talking to some
of my social-science friends--when you can actually give folks
instruments that will allow you to determine whether or not
they have this--think of it as sort of a cultural Myers-
Briggs--that will allow you to determine whether or not people
are built for this sort of thing.
And I think that is--as we look to the future, if we are
going to build these new coalitions from scratch, many of them,
we have to find the right people to do the job.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Zelikow.
Dr. Zelikow. If I could, Mr. Chairman--I have a little
personal experience with this. You see, the Air Force tried to
teach my son Arabic as a crypto-linguist. And he is now,
actually, majoring in Japanese, and will be taking off for
Japan in a couple of months. My daughter is spending her whole
summer reinforcing her classics training by studying Latin,
which, I am afraid, is not of very much use to the national-
security establishment.
What comes out of my experience, though, just with my own
family, is just two suggestions--two prescriptive suggestions.
First is, because the overarching common is you actually have a
lot of Americans who understand that we are in a globalized
world. And I think you will see general trends of interest in
foreign-language education, broadly speaking, on the upswing.
But I think the two suggestions are--you will need to
incentivize people studying the languages you want. I think
the--you don't need to incentivize people to take an interest
in the world. I think, by a lot of measurements--junior year
abroad, things like that--those are on the upswing. But you
will need to incentivize studies, say of Dari or Pashto--things
like that.
The second is you will then--in the best case, you will
have a larger quotient of people in the general population who
have language skills you may need in a crisis, but you won't
know which languages you will need. That triple-underscores the
value of investment in a civilian-reserve-corps idea, so that
you, essentially, create basic training for cadres whom you
need to call upon when you wish to surge certain skills; in
this case, language skills.
It is a precedent the military understands very well, for a
variety of kinds of skill sets, including language skills. And
I think we just need to carry that over into the civilian
sector in a way that allows us to tap what I think will be a
larger and larger residual quotient of people whom, properly
incentivized, can meet our needs.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
One comment, and then we will go to Mr. Akin--consistent
with you, General Scales. We had someone testify here a couple
of weeks ago that, just because you might find somebody--an
American, and, perhaps, a naturalized American--perhaps,
somebody raised in, say, a Farsi-speaking home--don't assume,
then, that that means they automatically have the cultural
sensitivity----
General Scales. Exactly.
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. The kind of--just because they
have it.
General Scales. Exactly. That is right.
Dr. Snyder. Let me go to Mr. Akin, Ambassador Hunter, if
you don't mind, since I have already overstepped my time.
Mr. Akin.
And then we will--I will give you time, Mister--Ambassador
Hunter, when--on the next go-round.
Mr. Akin. Well, first of all, to our panel of witnesses. I
think you guys have about hit the ball out of the park. Maybe
that is just because I agree with all four of you--and I didn't
as much in the previous panel of witnesses. But it seems to
that you have raised some of the questions, and defined things
very clearly in terms of--and it is a common sense kind of
thing.
I mean, I think if you took your testimony combined and ran
it past Americans, you would get an 80-plus percent buyoff by
most people--just common sense.
I have got one sort of a technical, how-do-you-handle-this
question. And then I have got one sort of halfway-answer
question.
The first is: When you have got, potentially, very unstable
nation-states that have a supply of oil or something else
valuable, where they can develop weapons that are extremely
dangerous and toxic to civilization in general, what do you
think of this expanded Monroe Doctrine? And do we have to work
on a preemptive basis?
Certainly, all of the things you have said are good to be
doing--the containment and the kind of sowing the seeds that
are going to produce stable civilizations. But how do you
respond to that idea of the preemptive strike in situations
like North Korea or--but just in general. First, that is
theoretic. So let's do that question first.
Anybody who wants to take a shot at it? It doesn't surprise
me you all have your hands up.
Ambassador Hunter. Your call.
Let me just say one word about it. Any nation--let's talk
about our Nation--if it is about to be attacked or has an
imminent sense of attack, is going to do what it has to do to
preempt. The problem is talking about it in advance. It is the
kind of thing you keep your mouth shut about.
I have--when the President, to be blunt about it, gave his
speech at West Point a few years ago, I have said, ``I wish he
hadn't given that speech,'' because we know we are going to
have to do it. But, unfortunately, it displeases your friends
and it doesn't confound your enemies.
So keeping the capacity to do things--trying alternatives,
building allies and that sort of thing--can put the bad guys on
notice that we will be there to do what we have to do. And
there are a lot of examples--in Korea, and, then, Saddam
Hussein in 1990--of people miscalculating what the United
States will do. Final analysis will do it.
Dr. Zelikow. I have a kind of a different view. Actually,
in those cases of miscalculation, they miscalculated, thinking
we wouldn't do anything, precisely because we weren't clear
enough about what we would do, or, actually, we had decided to
do something different.
In the case of South Korea, we had actually decided we
would not defend South Korea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had
made a considered decision to that effect, and then decided to
pull our troops out of South Korea. And the enemy read that.
If--frankly, I don't think there is as huge a difference
between Democrats and Republicans on this issue of prevention,
as you might sometimes hear. If you read Barack Obama's essay
on foreign affairs last year, he talks about the issue of
preemption in terms almost identical to the Bush
Administration. And he is clearly saying it publicly because he
wants to reverse the burden of proof a little bit and put
people on notice, because it does complicate their planning.
What they would say is the big difference from the Bush
Administration is--they use the term ``imminent.''
Mr. Akin. Right.
Dr. Zelikow. And they stress that term.
But I urge you to think about that for a little bit. Here
is an easy question: In August 2001--August 2001, before the 9-
11 attack--was the threat from al Qaeda sanctuaries in
Afghanistan imminent to the United States? My answer to that
question is: Yes, even though we had no tactical warning about
the particular attack they were about to launch at that stage.
We had been on notice that they were getting ready to
attack us, because they had already attacked us twice. And at
that point, in my view, that is an imminent threat.
Now, if someone else would say, ``No, that is not an
imminent threat,'' then you are in the mode of waiting to be
hit hard enough to react. But my standard of imminence is: Once
you see the threat is amassed, and it is clearly poised and
aimed at you, I believe that that would satisfy this very
subjective criterion of imminence. Because, that word aside, I
think we are dealing with a doctrine, now, in which, actually,
the parties have converged more than one might think.
Mr. Akin. Thank you. I don't know that I am going to have
time, doctor, to go to this sort of question-answer, but it
seemed to me that when we talk about a Grand Strategy, to a
degree, it assumes that we have some overarching definition of
who we are as a Nation and what we believe. And it seems to me
that that was defined when we got in our first war as a Nation,
in a sense, and our Declaration of Independence.
And it was stated, maybe too eloquently, ``We hold these
truths to be self-evident,'' et cetera. But the formula is
pretty straightforward. Well, first of all, we believe that
there is a God. Second of all, that God gives every human being
certain basic, fundamental rights. And, third, the job of the
government is to protect those rights.
I was amused a year ago, when the King of Jordan, who is
Muslim, came here and said to the members' prayer breakfast,
``This is what we got in common: I believe there is a God that
gives basic rights to people, and the government should protect
those rights.'' That was followed a week later by Senator
Lieberman giving a 15-minute eloquent talk at the National
Prayer Breakfast, saying, ``I believe that there is a God, and
that he gives basic rights to people. And government should
protect those rights.''
I am not sure that that is a hard thing to sell--as much as
Europeans hate the word ``God,'' perhaps--but I am not sure
that is not a bad formula that our founders came up with to
package a Grand Strategy. It seems like everything you have
said fits under that umbrella pretty easily.
Admiral Blair. Mr. Chairman, I think you have to be a
little bit careful about the terms in which you translate those
basic contexts. There are over one billion Chinese. And I doubt
if many of them would agree that God is the source of the
government's responsibilities to its people.
I think that, if you scratched most Chinese down below any
sort of ideological surface, you would find that the goals are
the same. But I think that we would rather talk in--I think we
are more effective if we talk in terms of the goal that we
seek, rather than the source of the power or the--it gets you
into tangles, which get you away from working on practical
things together that are in your common interest.
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis, for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to all of you for being here. We certainly
appreciate it.
You know, on our last panel, I think there was actually
refocusing in some ways, suggesting that ``restraint and
renewal,'' I think, was one of the ways it was phrased--that we
have so many domestic issues today, that, perhaps, we need to
refocus a little bit on that.
I am not necessarily sure that is where the American people
are right now. I think they want us to not necessarily
retrench. I think they want us to be smarter in what we do and,
certainly, more strategic, which is what this is all about.
What I am looking for is: How do you believe that we mesh
what is a concern of people--certainly, the economy, homeland
security, is a great reminder. Every time people go to the
airport, they are reminded they have to take off their shoes.
There is a threat out there. They need to, you know, think
about their own security all the time.
What is it that--how do you see--I mean, you have tried
to--I know you have spoken about this in your papers, to a
certain extent. I guess I am looking for, maybe, a simple way
of talking about that. But it seems that we--you know, we need
to work on how we engage people in the military, as well as in
the civilian sector, to look at these issues in a more of a
multi-prong way.
And, yet, on the other hand, we are not very patient
people. And what we need to do in many of the countries--and I
am thinking of Afghanistan right now--is to be slower, to be
more measured. And, yet, we have a threat out there, and we
want to jump on the threat.
Can you help me out with this a little bit in terms of how
this discussion can engage the American people better, in a way
that----
General Scales. Yes.
Mrs. Davis of California [continuing]. That they they can
feel comfortable about it?
General Scales. I will try that?
Yes, ma'am. A couple of quick points. Great powers, at
least in the Industrial Age, tended to get themselves into
trouble, and to march more quickly off to war, when this sort
of societal frenzy kicked in. And we haven't always done well
at this--Spanish-American War comes to mind. It just seems to
me that a couple of things are involved.
Number one is: A measured pace, a strategic formulation is
very important. One of the interesting things about militaries
at the end of wars: Militaries at the end of--at--as wars wind
down, whether they are winners or losers, tend to develop a
more sanguine national strategy when they sit back, step back,
and think about the future as the conflict wears down, before
everybody gets too busy trying to charge off the prepare for
the next set of threats, most of which are invented.
And it just seems to me that as we move into this--I don't
know if ``twilight'' is the right word--but as we move into
stepping down our commitment to Iraq, where just the frenzy of
the moment is going to begin to dissipate and fade, and before
we march off to the next great scare--the next two years, in
particular, I think, are important to take a measured
circumspect--within the military--to take a measured and
circumspect look about what we are going to do next.
Professional education systems are the way to do that. The
war colleges and staff colleges are a place to do that. I
think--officers don't like to spend time reflecting. They are
action-oriented, can-do, go-to guys. And they want to go to
their next assignment, where they can operate very large
machines.
But I think there comes a time, particularly as wars begin
to wear down, when the military establishment and, I would
argue, the--you know, the diplomatic establishment--need to
step back and be reflective about what they are going to do,
before someone marches off to a brand-new military strategy for
the future.
Dr. Zelikow. Congresswoman, if I might, I want to start
where you began your question, which is: ``If you are concerned
about domestic issues, you are going to be worried about
retrenchment.'' And you want to urge people to be more
interested in the need to project our presence overseas.
The point I would make if I was talking to a rotary club in
your district is that domestic issues are foreign-policy
issues. They are the issues of the world economy and global-
capital movements are affecting people in your district in a
big way. The issues of energy and the environment are hugely
important in your district as domestic issues, but the
solutions to those issues lie in international policies. There
is no way the United States solves those issues unilaterally.
And the traditional way we have thought about these kinds
of problems, where we kind of separate the economic issues to
the side. You have to have a Grand Strategy that integrates
management of the global economy and management of these energy
and environmental issues at the center. But, then, you are not
going to, I think, have any trouble going to your constituents
and saying that issues like that matter to them, because I
think they totally get it.
George Marshall, when he was selling the Marshall Plan,
fanned people out all over America to talk to women's clubs,
because Marshall and his colleagues thought the women were
actually going to determine the stands of families on these
issues. Marshall himself went to speak to Cub Scouts in
Maryland about the need for reconstruction in Europe. That is
the kind of way that they bridged the domestic-foreign divide.
Ambassador Hunter. I think there----
Mrs. Davis of California. Ambassador Hunter, can----
Ambassador Hunter. A couple of other points, though, as I
indicated earlier--if we are going to be strong abroad, we have
to be strong at home. You can't just say, ``We are now going to
go do something over there,'' without paying attention to our
health system, so we have Americans who are able to do things.
Education--we have already talked about the role of languages,
which is only one part of it; infrastructure; a whole series of
things.
And it is for two things: So the American people will say,
``We have the capacity to do what we have to do,'' but also,
``We are attending to things here at home.'' That is why
homeland security is so important, why having control of our
borders is so important, why trade is so important.
It is also important, I think, for the leaders to be
totally honest with the American people; not to take some
foreign event and try to mislead, because we are a smart
people.
I worked in the White House under President Lyndon Johnson.
And I know how we got in trouble on that. So it is not a
partisan issue.
In addition, I have discovered--and you folks will be much
better than any of us here, because you deal with the public
business every day--the American people are prepared to risk
blood and treasure if we fulfill three obligations in regard
to, let's say, Afghanistan and somewhere else: That it is in
the American interest to do it; It comports with American
values to do it; and there is some sense that there will be
success.
If you did the three of those, I think the American people
will be willing to be engaged as long as is necessary. You get
one of those three wrong, like we did in Somalia, where it was
about values, but not interest, people are going to say, ``What
are we doing there?''
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Conaway, for five minutes.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Setting aside my own discomfort with the phrase ``Grand
Strategy,'' which I mentioned previously--that it is a bit
imperialistic--and also acknowledging that I am far better off
listening than talking--I think better--listening to you,
rather than you listen to me. I will pose some broad questions,
in a second.
But it seems inherent in everything that each of you have
said, is that there is some grand, controlling entity or
element, or one conductor.
You mentioned ``100 notes.'' Without a conductor, that you
just get an orchestra warming up.
You know, where is the leverage? Where is the ability to
force, collectively, that all the things that you want to talk
about? I mean, we are clearly, given this, the option of
getting a coalition of the willing to go do something. If they
don't go do it, then we just simply sit back and say, ``Well,
then, never mind,'' since we--and that doesn't make any sense
either.
You know, Mister, I mean, General Scales, you mentioned
``pre-insurgency attacks.'' How do you pull that trigger, and
where has that ever worked?
And then, you know, Dr. Zelikow, your five strategies that
a globalized self-determining world could co-exist with--and,
you know, who sets those boundaries and enforces those
boundaries and all those rules?
I mean, I mentioned it is a 19th and 20th century
phenomenon. I think Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great might
have had a difference of globalization and self-determination--
tension there as well.
So--and then, explain this incredible phenomenon in Dubai
and Bahrain and Qatar, where there is just--and Kuwait--
staggering economic development, without the ability to defend
that economic development, and how that is not done with the
implicit confidence that the United States is not going to let
anything stupid happen in that part of the world.
So how do you manage all of that? I am a certified public
accountant (CPA), and I am typically a little more, let's, you
know, think, a chance, as opposed to kind of a fuzzy Grand
Strategy stuff. So I don't know if I have asked a question or
plodded the water, but I will shut up, because, again, I am
clear that I am better off listening to you four than you
listening to me.
Admiral Blair. No, Mr. Conaway, I think you are absolutely
right in characterizing the way that we actually do things
overseas as being an incredibly complicated process, with a lot
of different actors, that doesn't go to one conductor.
And that is why I think the way that we--the only way we
succeed in that sense is if we have a general idea in the back
of the minds of those people who act independently, of where it
is we are going, so that, as they act in their own interests,
with their own responsibilities and their own incentives, they
are sort of moving down the field in roughly the same
direction, rather than canceling each other out.
So that is what I try to suggest--that if we get that idea
that where we are headed is a world in which we are making
progress on those security, economic development, and the idea
of representative governments and protection of minority
rights, rule of law--the kind of world we would like to live
in--then I think that, in each of those little sectors in which
you operate as you are doing your small plan, you can sort of
check yourself and say, ``Is this in the right general
direction? Who can help me on it? How do I link it together?''
I found that when I was out as a Pacific commander, I could
get allies who were American businessmen operating in Asia.
They were ambassadors at embassies. They were heads of
international organizations. They were non-governmental
organizations. But you could pretty quickly find out who your
allies were to move toward the direction that you wanted to go.
And you could cut actual deals with them of doing real things.
Some of them were big, some of them were little.
So I think it is that general, those general, force of
magnetism, based on your common vision, that will align the
particles to go the right direction, in the sort of messy world
that we have.
Ambassador Hunter. I don't want to give you the mis-
impression that we are arguing that there can be one conductor
and one overall plan.
The Cold War, in which there were two superpowers, and was
relative clarity, that was an historic collaboration. The world
is usually a messy place.
Now, historically, the United States has done
extraordinarily well because we have been prudent stewards of
power, and we have stood for things that have, I won't say
``universal'' application, but--and which an awful lot of
people aspire to.
We have never gone out to try to grab territory for our own
self-aggrandizement. People in Europe and Asia, after the end
of the Second World War, we came, but then we went home. We
didn't try, like Germany and the Soviet Union and the--to try
to grab this for ourselves.
Some people were surprised that happened. But it set a
standard out there that people expect us to do the right thing.
And that gives us a tremendous capacity for leadership and for
influence.
Now, in terms of whether others are going to be with us, I
have a very simple rule of thumb. We should try to do things
together with others when we can, but do things on our own when
we must. I think that gives us a pretty good rule of thumb. We
will very often--got other--be with us. But if it is our
national self-interest, particularly to protect the country,
well, we will do what we have to do.
If people understand that, then they are more likely to
follow us in things that are going to help us and help them,
because we are building to a better definition of what humanity
is going to be like in the future.
General Scales. If I could just add to that. I was in
China, not too long ago, talking to my counterpart at the war
college. And we got into a discussion one night. And I said,
``Well, what is it about? What is it that is American that you
read?''
And he laughed and he said, ``Well, we read everything you
write. We listen to what you say. But most importantly, we
watch what you do. You know, ``The thing about the Americans
that we are most sensitive to are your actions, rather than
your words.''
And I thought that was significant, because one of the
turning points in the Cold War, I believe, sir, was when
Eisenhower, in the military, we have a thing we call a
``commander's intent.'' And a commander's intent is when the
commander--in this case, the President--personalizes what is to
be done. You know, ``What are the tasks that you need to do in
order to preserve peace in the world?''
And Eisenhower gave the commander's intent--I think it was
1954, after he took office, in his famous Solarium Speech. It
wasn't a Solarium Speech. It was a commander's intent. It was
the commander of the Nation, telling his principal staff,
``Here is what is to be done.''
And it just seems to me that one of the ways you add
clarity in this confusing world, and the next Administration,
whoever is in charge, is--what we need is a commander's intent.
And there are three elements to the commander's intent. And
since I used to teach it, I won't bore you with it.
But it is a wonderful way to put clarity into strategy; to
translate it not only into tasks, but into a personalized
version of what--from the commander-in-chief--of what those
tasks need to be. Strip away all the hyperbole and all the
grand statements, and all the stuff that confuses not only our
own population, but the people who we deal with in the world.
And, perhaps, someday in the future we will be able to
formulate a commander's intent. Call it whatever you want--
Grand Strategy--but some formulation of an intent would be a
great way to get started.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Gingrey, for five minutes.
Dr. Gingrey. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, I wonder, if you asked the American people--
average American--what our Grand Strategy is as a Nation, and
who sets it--very, very few would have any idea what our Grand
Strategy is. I think they may guess that it is set by the
President and the Administration.
And my question, one of my questions is: How much, if, we
do, indeed, have a Grand Strategy--and I would like to ask all
four of you if you think we have a Grand Strategy today, and
what it is.
Is it important that the American people know what that
Grand Strategy is; that our high-school students understand
exactly what our Grand Strategy is? And how often does that
change? Does it change every four years, when you have a new
Administration?
It seems that would be a little impractical. And who,
indeed, sets it, and what role do we, as Members of Congress,
have, in regard to stating a Grand Strategy? And if our Grand
Strategy is in conflict with other countries, such as China and
Russia and other would-be powers, how do we mesh that?
Do we change, based on what others are doing or what we
perceive their grand strategies to be, or do we stay the
course? I think, maybe, Ambassador Hunter touched on that just
a minute ago in his remarks--that we should have a strategy
that we don't bury because of what other people are doing--
other countries are doing.
So maybe that is enough commentary that you can spend some
time answering those questions or thoughts.
Thank you.
Dr. Zelikow. Congressman, if I could start at this end of
the table. I do not think we have such a Grand Strategy today.
If you have a Grand Strategy that is like the handful of
large policies that have succeeded in the past that survived
the oscillations of elections and parties, that is precisely
the point--is to provide concerted action that, then--so that
the President and the Congress both understand it, and sharing
overlapping powers, are moving in a common direction.
We don't have that today. If it shifts every four years, it
is not a durable Grand Strategy. If it is not with the
Congress, it is not a Grand Strategy at all, because you won't
get concerted action.
The elements, then, though, are--it has to be something
that people can understand very clearly, because it is about a
subject they get. And it is about a subject that a lot of
foreign governments and foreign countries get, too.
So when I suggested, for example, a rally point of calling
for an open, civilized world, and then laying out what that
meant, the agenda that I outlined is an agenda that a lot of
other people in the world care about and want. So since they
want that, they want those forces to be mustered, they are
going to have to, then, look to who is going to provide
leadership in mustering those forces.
And whatever the problems the United States has, there is
no country that is--can step forward right now to supplant that
role. So they want action, and they know we are central to
getting that action. And if we can provide a framework in which
we explain why the dozen things we are doing are actually
moving toward a kind of world Americans want for their
children, I think you can rally people across party lines.
We will, then, still have lots of arguments about how best
to achieve those goals, and that is natural. But we might be
able to reestablish a degree of consensus that I think, right
now, is lacking.
Ambassador Hunter. You know, not to repeat, but I think we
should not believe that, suddenly, the world is going to be a
much better place without an awful lot of effort.
There will still be conflict. There will still be
competitions for power. There still will be societies out there
that do not wish us well. We see it today; we would like to see
it in the past.
Our basic requirements as a Nation are to provide the
security, the prosperity, the independence, and the well-being
of the country, and of the American people.
Now, with American leadership and American ideals, and the
kinds of ways that we express our interests, we are likely to
find a lot of receptivity in a lot of parts of the world. We
are not going to find it with everybody. We see a number of
states today, and non-state actors, who wish us ill both
because they want power for themselves, and some of them just
don't like our way of life. So--but the vast majority are going
to be responsive to the leadership of the United States.
Now, what you are touching on--I think it has two special
qualities. One is education. One of the things I most worry
about in the American state, American Nation, today, is the
collapse of civic education in our schools.
You would be surprised--maybe you wouldn't be surprised--at
how few people understand, younger people, and even some of the
basic history of this country. We just don't teach it to the
degree we used to. And I think we have to get on to that in a
very big way.
As to who will create, organize, this Grand Strategy: This
hearing is part of it. As I said before, if the Congress is not
involved, the people are not involved, you don't have one. You
don't have a basic sense of where the American people are
prepared to go, either at home and abroad. And that is why I
think that for the Congress not to be involved would be a gross
loss to the Nation.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Jones, for five minutes.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
And like Mr. Conaway said, I probably could listen to you
and have no questions, just try to think about what you have
been sharing with us. But I do want to go in a little
direction, because I am sitting here listening. I missed most
of your presentations. I did look through some of your written
report.
But your answer to Mrs. Davis and some of my colleagues--
are we, as a Nation, getting to the point that if we do not, as
some of you have said, start taking care of things within this
Nation, such as health care, infrastructure--are we getting to
a point that we are not going to be able to have the
international influence?
Because I think about the Chinese, which many of you have
mentioned, they have to know that we owe China $448 billion.
They--those leadership--military and non-military--they know
that America is borrowing money from China to pay its bills. So
are we losing what influence we could have with other nations
because they know that we can't even take care of our own
situation?
And this does impact on our military. Our military is as
stressed as it has ever been. The equipment--we had testimony
from Secretary Wynne, who is not there any longer, saying that,
``We are putting projects behind--putting them on the
backburner because we don't have the money to fund everything
at this particular time.''
So I guess my question to you, do we need to take a period
of time under the leadership of a new President, or maybe two
new Presidents, over the next seven or eight years, and start
trying to say to certain parts of the country--or the world--
excuse me, the world--that, ``We are there to help save you. We
are there to help make you better,'' when we can't even fix our
own problems?
Do the nations that are more sophisticated, from a
governmental standpoint, do they see us as one of those parts
of history--that we are at a point that we--there might not be
a return as a great Nation, if we don't get serious about what
is happening within this country?
General Scales. If I could just make a I think you hit on
something very important, sir.
We live in an era where global communications flies around
the world a an unprecedented rate, and that someone with a
transistor radio or small television in some, you know, native
hut in Southwest Asia is almost as up as much on current events
as those of us sitting in this room.
So perception is important here. How people perceive us is
important. It is not just $448 billion worth of debt. But it is
the subjective opinion that people have of the American people
that has enormous power. I mean true, it can be translated into
power.
So if you--eventually, the day comes when you want to say,
for instance, ``Build a coalition, or bring in partners for a
particular threatened region of the world.'' The easiest way to
do that is to do the condition-setting, if you will, among
folks in different parts of the world, such that when we show
up, the perception of who we are is, perhaps, different than it
is today.
And I think--and that is something that you can't do
overnight, and you can't do with a television ad. It is going
to take a generation, in some ways, to change those
perceptions. And I don't believe it is necessarily related to,
you know, to debt. I think it is related to moral debt, not
fiscal debt.
And if we can't turn that around very quickly--and, oh, by
the way, it is not just with the ruling elites of the world. It
is with, you know, the common, the Arab street or the common
man in Beijing. It is what he thinks about, he or she thinks
about, the United States. It is so important.
If we can't occupy the moral high ground, we can't own it
in some way--the rest of the world is pushing on an open door.
When we try to impose our will on other parts of the world, we
are going to find ourselves in great trouble.
Ambassador Hunter. I think people are less worried about
whether we are getting our economic house in order, provided we
have the capacity to do things, plus what the generals have
said--the moral high ground for the United States.
You know, we have thousands and thousands of ambassadors--
some of them are in the military--to go out and do things in
individual villages and communities and the like, all over the
place. In fact, the U.S. military, in terms of integrating
instruments of power and influence, took the lead, and are now
looking for other parts of the government to do things, because
this isn't what the military should have to do, even though
they are also good at it.
We have thousands and thousands of people in non-
governmental organizations who are the face of America. The
private sector--to a great extent, more people in the world
will see somebody from the private sector, rather than somebody
from the government--civilian military. And this is a fantastic
asset.
Meanwhile, one of the great strengths of this country--and
people talk about, ``Are we in decline?'' Et cetera. I don't
think that is true.
The American ship of state has an amazing keel, and we can
tip over an awful long way, but we tip back again. And right
now, this Nation is tipping back again, in a new era, i
believe, of strength and purpose, across the country, across
the political parties. And I think, to use that old acting
discussion, some of our best days are still ahead of us.
Admiral Blair. No foreign group that I talked to--
leadership--think our influential--thinks that the United
States is in some sort of inexorable decline, and is looking
beyond us to do something else. I think we are more worried
about our problems than foreigners are. And I think that is
absolutely right, because we know them better. We are the ones
who are going to have to fix them.
Mr. Jones. Just real quick, but if you move into that realm
of a perception of decline, I think of conditions after 1972-
1973, or actually, after the fall of Saigon, that creates
periods of strategic vulnerability, and heightens the
probability of miscalculation on the part of those--I mean, I
am not saying al Qaeda is not trying to do mischief right now.
But al Qaeda's ability to garner assets and to garner his
own coalition together, to take us on, increases when we go
through periods of our own sense of vulnerability. That led to
the Mayagis incident.
And I could go on and on. You see what I am so--it is
perception--management is important, I think, as we move
through this war, and into the future.
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask--General Scales, if you would,
take a minute and amplify a little bet on your comment about
orienting around embassies.
General Scales. Yes, I--thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think, with apologies to Admiral Blair, I think----
Admiral Blair. Give me a chance to rebut, and I will----
General Scales. Oh, absolutely. I----
Ambassador Hunter. I am the referee between the military?
General Scales. I think there is a tendency always to view
power or the distribution of power in the world as going
through a military chain of command. So our instinct or--again,
back to perceptions--oftentimes, from the other end, the
perception is, ``Oh, boy. Here it comes.''
There is a perception of a military solution to a regional
problem. And to, I forget who, the member asked me about pre-
insurgencies.
The way you keep the Nation safe in the early phases of
budding trouble in the world, I believe, is through the country
team--through the ambassador, through the defense attache, and
through this sort of proto-alliance, if that is the right
word--this early emerging alliance, where the ambassador and
the defense attache is in charge.
A pre-insurgency would be the ability in some threatened
state that either has a poor military or has no military, to,
through a very deliberate process--to begin training up to
begin acculturating, and to begin very, very carefully, sort of
passing on our own national and cultural values to an emerging
state, such that when the insurgency does somehow begin to get
more serious--then, the process of reacting to it is done at a
more deliberate, cautious, collegial way, rather than having,
you know, the airborne or the Marines suddenly show up on
someone's doorstep, ready to do something that, perhaps, may
not agree with the world's perception of what should be done.
Dr. Snyder. Admiral Blair, do you have any comments on----
Admiral Blair. No, I just--I mean, I recognize the
underlying problem that General Scales is talking about. But
just to throw a small organizational solution like ``Organize
around an ambassador'' is just, it doesn't do justice to the
complexity of the problem.
Ambassadors have country responsibilities, not a regional
point of view. Many of the sorts of human skills, and also
resources and technical skills--require decisions that go
across individual countries, into regional approaches. And we
have to come up with a matrix--collaborative--approach that
bring to bear both military and, as I said, non-military
governmental and non-governmental tools to bear on the sorts of
both problems and opportunities that we have in the world.
And I just think it is a much more complicated problem than
simply assigning troops in a country to an ambassador.
Dr. Snyder. Ambassador Hunter.
Ambassador Hunter. Well, in conflict situations like Iraq
and Afghanistan, or even Bosnia and Kosovo before that, we have
done best when there has been a strong country team in which
everybody is pulling the same direction.
It is less a matter of who is going to be in charge, even
though, ultimately, an ambassador is--works directly for the
President--than the fact that they know how to work together,
and they have the will to do that.
And we have done much better in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We
have had that kind of team, as elsewhere.
Let me tell you about four programs that are very cheap,
that buy us an awful lot. The International Military Education
and Training (IMET) program has been one of the most cost-
effective things this country has done, creating relationships
with militaries, which are the gold standard, when we want to
get involved. Fulbrights, leader grants--I would want to see
the United States Information Agency, again, created as a
separate organization. It really works.
One of the things we are learning about transformation is
it is very important to have people abroad, creating
relationships; not trying to parachute them in just when there
is a crisis. Maybe that is more expensive in the short term. It
pays off in the long term.
And one other things which applies, I think, directly to
Iraq and Afghanistan, which the military gentlemen, here, can
have a particular view on. We tend to bring folks in for 6
months, 12 months, 15 months, and then they leave. The
relationships they have built with the locals then disappear,
and you have to start over again.
Now, you have to rotate people. You have to, for a whole
variety of reasons. But there are a lot of cadres and other
ancillary folks and non-military--who really need to be there
for long tours, to build on these relationships so they don't
just disappear when the 101st, let's say, is replaced by the
Marines in the northwest part of Iraq, and they have to start
over again.
We need to find a way so these relationships will be
evergreen over time. And given the way Americans behave in
country, these are fantastic resources.
General Scales. Let me just--I need one--for the admiral.
I didn't mean for the ambassador to be commanding troops.
But what I meant was that the pre-insurgency phase of a
relationship with a Nation under stress is something that needs
to be managed by the company team. It is just better to do it
earlier, rather than wait for the insurgency to suddenly
inflame a country, and then suddenly have to react to it,
rather than setting conditions before that happens.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Zelikow, you have been trying to get a word
in.
Dr. Zelikow. I should say, General Scales' suggestion is
going--his heart is in the right place. But, actually, we are
trying to regionalize the country team right now, not fragment
it down to the country level.
Take, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. We need to actually
regionalize the State Department's projection of civilian power
on a regional basis. You can't handle the problems of the Great
Lakes Region of Africa purely on a country-team-by-country-team
basis.
Or if I was to switch over to counterterrorism in Southeast
Asia--pre-insurgency--if I carve that up by Thailand, Southern
Philippines, Indonesia--the way we have tried to do is create
regional field teams in which we actually pool our resources--
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), military, a lot of other
resources--to work what is, in essence, a regional problem in
Southeast Asia, for countering terrorism.
If you took the example of Afghanistan, you can't handle
the problem of Afghanistan without some way of extending
outward to Pakistan. Same goes for Iraq, when you think about
the surrounding region--Turkey, Iran, other things.
My point is that I think the country-team model is the
right model of civil-military-intel cooperation, and I praise
that. But we actually need to try to regionalize that model
where we need to, in order to tackle the issues.
Dr. Snyder. Ambassador Hunter, I have to share with you--
years ago, I worked at a Catholic Mission Hospital in West
Africa. And one day, one of the nuns said to me, she said,
``The priests aren't really very helpful. They only last out
here 35 or 40 years, and then''----
Ambassador Hunter. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you need to
do something about that, and have them stay a whole career.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Akin.
Mr. Akin. A different, little, less-philosophical question.
I was actually amazed that there were, apparently, a fair
number of Europeans, probably 20 percent of America, that
believed that we went into Iraq to steal their oil. I mean, I
think there are still probably a few people that believe that.
But the fact that we have been there, now, at least, knock
on wood, successfully, and if we close out and leave a self-
governing state behind, does that buy us a lot of capital in a
world sense, at least to give us some immunization from--I
mean, I gather, for a number of years, there, in Europe,
everybody was convinced those ``bad Americans, you are just
stealing those guys' oil.''
What do you think about that?
Dr. Zelikow. Well, I since I have worked on Iraq some, over
the last few years, the Iraqis are doing very well off their
oil.
Mr. Akin. Sure.
Dr. Zelikow. And we are not going to end up stealing their
oil. The question is actually whether or not we help them gain
the benefit of their own resources, as we did in the case of
Saudi Arabia.
No one says that America now owns Saudi Arabia's oil. But
Texans, basically, helped the Saudis find the way to develop
their own resources to its full potential. And the Saudis know
this perfectly well.
There is a little bit of a backlash that I am worried
about, in which people are so paranoid about the accusation
that we are stealing their oil, that we think it is actually in
America's interest for the gas problem to have all those
rights.
Ambassador Hunter. We have a good test that you can point
to.
1991, we were in Kuwait. We could have seized the Saudi
fields and the Kuwaiti fields and kept them forever. A lot of
people thought we were going to do that. And we left. That
brought us an awful lot of money in the bank of influence.
I remember once, when we had a military exercise in Egypt,
and the Air Force wanted to stay, because there was another one
coming. And I made them leave. This is back under Carter. And
then, when President Sadat came to see the President of the
United States, he said, ``The fact that you left was more
important than the fact that you came. You can come anytime.''
People understand the United States will help out, create
victory, give people opportunities, and then go home.
General Scales. I think regardless of what the conditions
are, Mr. Akin--there is no question that the radical insurgents
are going to view us leaving as their victory. Imagine them--
that is just the way wars are and the way conflicts are.
But the rest of the world--the Europeans and regional
states, in particular--will breathe, as Ambassador Hunter said,
``an enormous sigh of relief,'' that we are adhering to our
pattern of behavior, as Bob said, ``a pattern of behavior that
we have established, going all the way back to Greece in 1948-
1949.
That is just the way we act. That is how the American
military, as advisor groups, have acted in the past. El
Salvador is another example. We left Panama.
So we do have a track record, which is pretty good. We also
left Saudi Arabia. We have a track record, which is pretty
good, of when things get to the point where stability is
reasonable, then we pull out.
And I think, and as Bob said, exactly right, ``pulling out
sometimes is just as important as going in.''
Admiral Blair. Let's not break our arms, patting ourselves
on the back here. The reason that we are--one of the
fundamental reasons that we are involved as heavily as we are
in the Middle East is that is where the oil is.
That doesn't mean that we have U.S. troops around oil
fields, and are shipping it directly into American cars. But a
major reason--one of two--in which we are there, is that that
is where the world's oil supply is. And we depend on that to
the tune of 70 percent--60 percent--77 percent--60 percent or
70 percent of the imports--to run our cars and vehicles around.
So I think that it is an issue. As to whether that is a
good thing or a bad thing, and what do we do about it. I
personally think that is a bad thing. We have militarized our
policy in that region. It is based on making sure that there is
access to oil at a fair price. And that has all sorts of toxic
side effects, which we are dealing with, in terms of the anti-
American insurgency that is running there.
So I think that our approach to that region, number one,
needs to be to cut down the oil-intensity of our economy by a
great deal. We can't become oil-independent, but we can
certainly spend a heck of a lot--import a heck of a lot--less
oil for every dollar of GDP that we generate, as we did in the
1970's, after the first oil crisis.
I think we can be a lot more deft in combining non-
military, as well as military things that we do in that region,
so that we get the benefits of being able to have a favorable
relationship there, and don't get all the toxic side-effects of
setting up targets who can be portrayed as crusaders and be
accused of stealing the oil, and get the Arab street working
against us.
So I think that there is work to be done on that score, and
not to simply congratulate ourselves that we leave after
exercises in Egypt.
Mr. Akin. I--yes, I----
Admiral Blair. Yes.
Mr. Akin. Just--if I could finish that thought. It does
seem to me that there is a difference. One of the things we
said about, ``Why do we go to war?'' Well, one, that there is a
national interest. Two, that the cause is a worthy cause and a
chance to win. That is a pretty good three to start with.
Certainly, we had a national interest in keeping the Middle
East from melting down, and also from all sorts of nukes going
off there; but, that said, we are not there to steal their oil.
We are there to stabilize the region. And they can reap the
benefits of their own oil.
It seems like--I understand what you are saying, and,
certainly, I agree, and been voting for eight years to get us
off of our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But, thus said, we
still did not steal their oil, and never had the intent of
stealing their oil, and will not steal their oil. And it seems
to me that that is a fairly big point in that, apparently, a
whole lot of the world thought that is what we were going to
do.
General Scales. Mr. Akin, if I could get tactical on you
for a moment. When I was in Iraq in November, one of the things
that impressed me most is the quality of strategic perception
management that has gone into the U.S. command in doing exactly
what you suggest.
One thing that struck me was I went into a very large
headquarters, to the information-operations cell. And two-
thirds of the people in that cell, not only were they Iraqis,
but they were Iraqis from the Iraqi media. That is a huge seat
change from two or three years ago.
Now, some of the things that they report locally in their
own media are not terribly complimentary to us. But the grand
scheme of it--the perception, generally, of the population--has
shifted enormously because of what Dave Petraeus and others
have done over there to try to open up. ``Open up'' is not the
right word--to try to give the Iraqis an opportunity to dig
into our own motives to the degree that they can, without
sacrificing security.
And so the lesson to take into the Grand Strategy of the
future, I think, is to put that in a bottle in some way; define
instruments that will allow us to be open to the global media
in a way that we have never done before, again, without
violating some of the tenants of national security.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Conaway, for five minutes.
Mr. Conaway. Well, I won't use the five minutes, other than
to--Dr. Zelikow, are you on record somewhere in 1999 and 2000,
of wanting to intervene militarily in Afghanistan?
You mentioned that you perceived them as an imminent threat
well in advance of the direct attack. Is that something you
developed now, in hindsight, or were you ahead of the curve or
record in that timeframe, of actually wanting military
intervention?
Dr. Zelikow. Well, what I did do is I joined a group that
published an article at the end of 1998, in Foreign Affairs,
called ``Catastrophic Terrorism,'' in which I argued that that
should now come into the foreground as the most dangerous
threat to the United States. It used the World Trade scenario
just to show how America would be divided into a ``Before'' and
``After'' if we suffered such attack.
But I did not publicly call for the United States to use
military action in Afghanistan in that article. I was trying to
put that threat front-and-center, because I thought that was an
end very severe.
I actually think the evident failure of our reactions to
the 1998 attacks, as evidenced after the Cole attack in October
2000, I think made it clear at that point that it was just a
matter of time before they were just going to keep hitting
until they got a really big strike, because--and nothing we
were doing was interfering with their operational
effectiveness. But I didn't really have a chance to really
exhume the archives of how our government had thought about
that problem, until I directed the 9-11 Commission.
I would say that the observation I made about the fact that
there was an imminent threat before 9-11, and that we needed to
be ahead-of-the-curve in responding to it--and it is a
bipartisan remark that I think would be shared by all the
commissioners who looked at that material, in both parties on
the commission.
Mr. Conaway. I guess the problem is, knowing today--what is
today's imminent threat? And that is what everybody struggles
with. And as historians, it is a lot easier looking backwards
than forwards. And, you know, the decision-makers today, and
the guys who have to make those hard decisions are, obviously,
keenly interested in doing it right. But it isn't any easier
today than it was in August of 2001 to figure out who is going
to throw the next punch.
Dr. Zelikow. Well, the paradox that the commission
described in its report, is that once you have been hit
catastrophically, you have no trouble rallying a popular
consensus to deal with it. But, of course, at that point,
thousands of Americans are dead and hundreds of billions of
dollars have been lost.
If you want to get ahead of that curve, you are going to do
things in which you are going to have to go on judgments, and
you are not going to have the same kind of unity behind you.
That is the paradox, is once the threat is manifest to all, it
is manifest to all.
And so, then, the issue is--so, for example, do you bother
about Hitler when he marches into the Rhineland in 1936? Do you
bother about Czechoslovakia in 1938, when, ``Gee, Czech's
Sudetenland''--is that really worth--do you bother about
Manchuria in 1931 and 1932, when the Japanese start moving
south of the Great Wall, and out of sight of Manchuria?
The point is, if you want to head these things off before
they become catastrophic, then you have to make tough calls
that will seem disproportionate to a lot of people.
Now, in the case of 9-11, you are actually talking about an
enemy that had already attacked us twice in a long-range
international operation. So this was not a threat that was
purely speculative. And it seemed to me the case was pretty
strong, certainly after the Cole attack, if not before.
Ambassador Hunter. Congressman, let me add something,
because this gets directly to the problem of trying to
anticipate catastrophic events, or, to use a kind of term the
military often uses, ``the black swan,'' that is something that
is just not supposed to happen.
As I indicated earlier, one of the things we really face
today is asymmetrical warfare; people who say, ``We cannot
attack the Americans in a major way in the homeland, or even
troops abroad. But what we can do is try to increase the number
of casualties there are, so that it can weaken the American
will, or we can try to use a relatively inexpensive weapon
against an expensive weapon,'' to use an improvised explosive
device (IED) against an armored personnel carrier, that sort of
thing, so that the economics work on that.
The problem we face is that the leverage effect of a
relatively minor terrorist attack in this country can be
immense on the American people. It is one reason we spent so
much time and effort on homeland security, on airport security
and the like. It is also why we have tried to, as a Nation, to
create a hierarchy of concerns.
As the President said, ``It is the marriage of terrorism
with high technology, is what we most have to worry about.'' So
the number-one requirement is to keep nuclear weapons out of
the hands of terrorists, weaponizable biologicals, then
radiological, and then chemical; or something that they can do
which will either have a huge chunk effect in this country, or
that could disrupt some kind of important economic node.
To eliminate all terrorism is going to be impossible. We
could clamp down totally in this country. We could prevent
anybody from coming here. We could end civil liberties and all
of that, and still somebody is going to be able to do something
to us.
So we have to create this hierarchy of protective measures
and active measures to try to get at as much potential
terrorism as possible, to keep the weapons that they could most
use against us out of their hands, and to help the American
people and others understand we are going to get much of it,
but we cannot promise a risk-free environment.
And I think people understand that and are prepared to go
with the things we most have to do to protect our Nation.
Mr. Conaway. That might fall under a Grand Strategy.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Gingrey, for five minutes.
Dr. Gingrey. The commentary in regard to pre-emptive
strategy, rather than a containment strategy is something I
would like for you to touch on, because, particularly, in
regard to Iran and their desire to have a, they say, nuclear
power, but we say nuclear weapon. And, of course, if we allow
them to do that, then containing--we add another country--a
somewhat unfriendly country, with a nuclear weapon, I think, is
a bad thing. So pre-emptive strategy, I think, probably, is a
good thing in certain instances.
I do want to ask about the idea of our energy policy, and
what we are pushing for in regard to--I think Admiral Blair
mentioned a little bit about, you know, not patting ourselves
on the back too much in regard to the Middle East, and what we
have done, and why we did it.
But do you see--any of you see--our energy policy, as we go
forward in the future, as being part of, if not a--maybe a
backdrop--but a significant part of a Grand Strategy as we go
forward in the future?
Dr. Zelikow. I said so explicitly in my testimony,
Congressman.
I described--I agree, by the way, with what Admiral Blair
said about this a few moments ago. I would add, by the way,
that the importation of oil is--accounts for half of our net
current account deficit--and is the single most-important
reason for the continuing indebtedness of the United States,
even while we have a low dollar, and our export conditions are
fundamentally good.
We are not getting the benefit of that because of the scale
of our oil imports. It is the single biggest drain on the
American economy right now. So I think that a five-part agenda
for, ``What global forces do you have to manage to be able to
offer some hope that we can manage these forces cooperatively
in the world?'' One of those five agenda items is energy and
the environment, and reducing the dependence on oil and dirty
coal.
Ambassador Hunter. I think we have to be candid about this.
Even if we could get our own dependence down, the
industrialized world is going to depend on Middle East energy.
That includes countries that we relate to very dearly,
including the Europeans. It can't be done in sort of 100 years
or something like that.
So we have no choice but to try, with others, to ensure
that energy resources in the Middle East will continue to flow.
And, now, some--there are a lot of ways of looking at that--
lots of threats, et cetera, one has to work on.
At the same time, we will be in a much better position if
we do, as a fundamental commitment--this is not telling anybody
anything new--to try to reduce American dependence on the
outside world. Part of that is finding other sources of
hydrocarbons. And a lot of it is finding alternative energy.
And a lot of it is conservation.
Now, you are in the bad position that it is very difficult
for you to go to your constituents and say, ``We have to do
this kind of thing, and you have to sacrifice today,'' when
people say, ``I can understand a $4 gallon of gasoline. Get
that down. I am not going to worry anymore.''
One of the fundamental things we have to do as a Nation--
and you folks are, not to cause trouble--is to collapse the
political horizon of what people will support to meet the
strategic requirement. So I would say energy has to be one of
the three or four critical items of any Grand Strategy.
Admiral Blair. I think, Congressman Gingrey, that the way
oil deposits were put in the world, and the effect they have
now, it had to have been done by somebody with a sense of
humor. I mean, they are in the worst places, with the most
unstable governments--violent social forces at work. And, yet,
that is where they are.
And what really worries me in the future is that a Western
Africa and a Central Asia, which are the areas of most
hydrocarbon deposits, behind the Middle East, in which we are
in the same sort of situation that we are now in the Middle
East--lots of troops deployed, unstable governments, having to
cut deals with governments that we don't really much like,
being targets when we are out there, paying a lot of money to
people who can jam it up our nose in other ways.
And so I think that we need to work very much on the demand
side in this country. We have to actively do things that will
ensure that we get the energy that we do need from places that
put us in a less-difficult position from using our Armed Forces
and other tools of power, everything from importing Brazilian,
sugar-based ethanol, which could be a partial solution, where
we are going to--it is just fine if we send money to Brazil, as
opposed to other places that we get on with a proper clean-
based, clean-coal project so that we can electrify the
transportation sector and not completely depend upon oil.
It is a multi-part process that we have got to pursue with
an underlying national-security rationale of not sending our
troops over as the last resort, in places that we haven't
solved by, number one, curbing our activities at home and,
number two, being more clever about the way we use our power
overseas.
Dr. Snyder. I have one final question I wanted to ask, and
then we will let Mr. Akin and Dr. Gingrey, any final comments
they want to make.
Dr. Zelikow, I wanted you to amplify, if you would, on your
comment about--how did you phrase it?--``I urge the committee
to dig more deeply into the core problem, which is a lack of
clarity about the problem itself, a lack of clarity about the
character of this moment in world history.''
Would you just amplify on that for me, please?
Dr. Zelikow. Yes.
Dr. Snyder. And then anybody else that wants to comment on,
anybody who wants to critique what Dr. Zelikow says.
Dr. Zelikow. The whole notion of a Grand Strategy is we are
trying to talk about our purpose in the world in a way that we
think will resonate with a lot of people in the rest of the
world.
So if we are going to have a sense of purpose, that has to
be oriented to some observation and diagnosis of, ``What is the
overarching condition that a lot of Americans and a lot of
other people in the world care about?'' What--you have to have
some observation about the character of the moment in world
history.
In the years immediately after World War II, for example,
there was actually a big argument in the United States about
what we should care about. For example, Eleanor Roosevelt and
Sumner Welles and others said, ``We ought to be concerned with
the remnants or fascism, Franco-Spain, remnants of fascism in
Latin America.''
A number of Republicans argued that, ``We ought to turn
aside from Europe and really concentrate on the future of East
Asia, but--that is where, really, the future of the world is
going to be determined. And we ought to cut back our
commitments in Europe and redouble our commitments in Asia, and
actually intervene in the Chinese civil war.''
So--then there was a third school which said that the
dominant problem at this moment in world history is the
encroachment of international communism as led by the Soviet
Union, and the symbolic effect on that on people's hopes for
whether we will live in a free world or not, and that the key
theater for engaging that threat is in Europe and, therefore,
the key focus of your Grand Strategy of containment in the
first instance is going to have to be on European recovery.
And so there was an argument that went on about that. It
went on for a couple of years, and then it was definitively
resolved in 1947. And then they took it to the American people.
Oh, well, really, the axioms of containment versus, say,
rollback, after the outbreak of the Korean War, was not settled
until the Eisenhower Administration--and really settled that in
as a firm Grand Strategy in 1953.
Now, the moment in history that I think we are at right now
is one in which, for the first time, we now have full
globalization. It is reminiscent of what we had at the
beginning of the 20th century. But, then, we didn't have the
engagement of China and India in the world economy in the scale
we have it now, and the velocity of movement of energy and
money and ideas and people; although, there was enormous
movements of people back then, in the tens of millions--and a
lot of immigration issues, too.
So if--that era of full globalization is so important--by
the way, every--people in India get that. People in China get
that. It is not a mystery. The reaction to that, though, is a
huge push for self-determination. It is, ``I am going to react
against the global forces that are trying to reshape my
community, and that I think threaten me, whether it is the
immigrants coming into my community or the goods you are trying
to sell that undercut my goods.'' It manifests itself in 100
different ways, a lot of them cultural.
And so that is the tension you have to manage. And, then,
to manage that tension, you have got to convince people that
nations in the world can get together and constructively manage
these colossal global forces on an unprecedented scale, because
if they think that you can't manage them cooperatively, they
will fort-up.
I--fortification almost is a metaphor for lots of different
ways in which people will fort-up. And so there is an agenda
then of, ``How do we reassure people that we are getting a
handle on these enormous global forces?'' And I talked about
them in, especially, five items on an agenda.
I mean, just to give you an example--the diffusion of
ultra-hazardous technologies--not just nuclear energy, which I
think is essential--but, say, new technologies for genetic
manipulation or nanotechnologies, which, I think, we will hear
more about in the coming years, and the dangers that they could
pose.
If people think that the world is not going to manage these
forces, they are going to react to that in ways that, I think,
will be toxic and extremely dangerous, and which brought
civilian to the very precipice of destruction during the 20th
century. We could find ourselves in a pattern like that again.
So I start with the observation that the clarity about the
problem is important, because if you agree that the core
problem is the tension between globalization and self-
determination, the agenda that flows from that is an agenda
which I call ``an agenda for an open, civilized world,'' in my
essay with Ernie May.
And then the policy agenda that goes with that is one in
which you convince ordinary people that these unprecedented
manmade forces are being managed through cooperation; because,
if you don't convince them of that, they are going to try to
manage them in other ways.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
General Scales. If I could, just real quick. The thing that
struck me from what my colleague just said, going back 100
years ago, if you were to read the press at the time, and look
at the middle and upper-middle classes, there was a sense,
through industrialization--this sense of well-being that the
world was never in a better state than it was in 1908.
And well, there were war-clouds, obviously, in South Africa
and Manchuria, but those were worlds away. And Europeans and
Americans felt really good about themselves in 1908. And no one
would have thought that Mons and Lake Hato and a execution of--
assassination of Franz Ferdinand would ever happen.
And so I guess, if I could leave with something, it is
always a caution. And I am a perennial pessimist, because I am
a solder. But there is always this idea that any type of global
clockwork mechanism is always fragile. And all it takes is
misperception. All it, amplified by a global media, small
minorities--your point about the anarchists--small minorities
who inflame and accelerate and expand global fear--that could
lead to something that, over the long term, could be
catastrophic.
That is why I talk so much about pre-insurgency and about
setting conditions for regional stability--is the best way to
offset something catastrophic from happening.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Akin, any final comments?
Mr. Akin. I could probably stay all day. I just wanted to
compliment the witnesses.
I think that there is a real synergism, in a way, because
all of your perspectives, together, really create a
tremendously helpful perspective for those of us that have had
the treat to be able to be here today. So, thank you.
Thank you for the many ways that you have served our
country. And I really appreciate you.
General Scales. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Zelikow. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all for being here. Let me give you
all an invitation, as a formal question for the record. If you
have anything you would like to add, clarify, augment--if you
will get it to the staff in a timely way, we will make it part
of this record.
Thank you all very, very much for being here. Thank you for
your service.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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