But cyber it seems as if in the past eight or 10 years we’ve come to the conclusion now this can be used right alongside everything else. So there is the Sunni-Shia piece. I think what we’ve seen the Russians do—where we kind of got this hybrid war thing—in Ukraine is where they took advantage of the political situation and the ethnic lay-down of people that live there. So I think the only thing like it is Her Majesty’s Ship Victory that Lord Nelson served on. At the same time the CNO had to decommission the Perry class frigates, which were doing the lion’s share of duty. That will always be there. And when you look at the overall amount of money it is, it’s really—it’s nothing. "There were 500 women on a 5,000 man ship," Noble says, describing one of her later opportunities for sea duty. SANGER: Would that do the trick if the South Koreans agreed to take it? You know, they’re not—whatever faith they are, they’re there. We just have to understand that the texture has changed. If you could set aside sequestration for a moment, what is, you know, the top thing you want? Over the past 18 years of “endless war,” the Pentagon has adopted numerous measures to prop up the AVF. So it’s very clever, very insidious, and it’s—you know, as you said, it’s war without war. "Two weeks into our six-and-a-half-month cruise we had our first sexual assault. MILLEY: That’s what we’re trying to achieve. They’re just not all sitting on or riding an airplane. Q: Thank you, gentlemen. And he’s truly an expert on our—on our nuclear submarine force, holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT. Are you normalizing cyberwarfare, even while we’re using it against an enemy like ISIS? Consider the arithmetic. And if that happens, then there is a chance, which is why you see, I believe, our government supporting Prime Minister Abadi and trying to bolster him, because he appears at the present time to have the best potential to create a state that supports all Iraqi people. We’ve got other interceptors. For the first time you could have a North Korean nuclear weapon that can reach American forces. WELSH: The largest period of sustained lack of conflict in Western Europe in history, I think. Now, it doesn’t appear to be a very stable and safe place because there are people doing nefarious things out there, but I would just suggest, if we weren’t there, what else would they be doing if we weren’t out there to monitor their activities and kind of keep an eye on things? NELLER: Well, since I’ve been in service, Korea was always the big fight, or potentially the big fight, because of the politics involved and the aggressive nature of the North Koreans, regardless of who the leader was. I hope we keep this tradition going for many years more. SANGER: So who wants to be the next Internet sensation? As Admiral Richardson said, you know, every day our networks are under attack and our ability to identify those people that are attacking us—I mean, you know, we can pour boiling oil over the wall and scrape them off the wall of the castle, but if I can see them over there in the woods forming up to make their attack, do I have the authority to—, SANGER: And right now you do not, except—. This is different than, you know, attacking networks and water systems and all that. And they’re huge combat multipliers because, as General Milley says, even though if you went—whatever chapel you would go based on your perspective faith, there may not be a lot of people at church, but when people start shooting at you, everybody gets religion. Providing readers with the essential background and building blocks necessary to make sense of this complicated and interconnected world. Why not? I want to start off by asking you on the counterterrorism side: How do you assess, General Milley, the speed with which we reacted to the rise of ISIS two years ago? The Trump administration leaves a legacy of confusion over cybersecurity issues with few positives. First I’d like to just endorse everything that’s been said, particularly—you must have read those books a couple of times. I have no idea who—what strategies they’ll be in the future, but we think that we can execute what’s asked of us today. For example, suicide rates among veterans continue to soar. (Laughter.) RICHARDSON: If I could go back, you know, I think that—to just kind of get back to this gray warfare or whatever it is, and the cyber piece, I mean, we should be very clear that there’s no more capable nation or actor in the world than the United States in terms of cyber warfare. CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera reports on the U.S. defense budget and the top five challenges facing the U.S. military. A long time ago I was in OSD. And so that’s really the question: Will we honor our alliance to NATO or not? SANGER: But you do consider it a normal tool. It’s just to be better at what we’ve always done. And then, also a little bit about what the risks of that are. 69% of military family respondents indicated the current operational tempo exerts an unacceptable level of stress for a healthy work-life balance. Twice he’s been a member of Times reporting teams that won the Pulitzer Prize. You responded to David’s question about saying, against ISIS, that you were going to have an indigenous force. MILLEY: Well, I became chief in August. You’re seeing renewed submarine patrols as well, Admiral Richardson. December 30, 2020. And if you think—you know, there a lot of analogies that are made between nuclear and cyber, for example. And for the regular Army that takes us from 479(,000) or 480(,000) or so today down to about 450(,000) or so by ’18. But we’ve been in this movie before. I mean, that’s the—you know, Sun Tzu, the ability to defeat your enemy without having to fight them. Answer. And so we’re watching that very closely. (Applause.). And so this is an area where the fight is on. Yes, we still need NATO. I’d just like to go back to what the CNO and Mark Welsh said about numbers and quantity. (Laughter.). And it’s correct that there’s going to have to be some Sunni ground force. January 7, 2021. And they don’t extend beyond that. It’s calving. They are the same across the services and are all related: Declining budgets require significant force structure cuts. Let’s turn the question a little bit to resources, something that all five of you have to think about regularly. We can use them to observe movement. But I’m very confident that the strategic plan that we have is working. But I believe we need NATO. (Laughter.). Enemy combatants, both at the lower level but more importantly at the leadership level, have been significantly attrited. The 7 Most Alarming Challenges Facing Today’s Marine Corps, According To Its Own Officers. SANGER: Meaning if you had—defend if you had—, SANGER: —an attack of just one or two or a handful of—. RICHARDSON: Yeah. Transition 2021: What Will Biden’s Trade Policy Look Like? So in my interactions with China, the China Coast Guard, they used to call themselves the Five Dragons. Tell us a little bit about how we’re thinking differently today, if at all, about the contingency of being once again the conflict on the Korean Peninsula. I’m not going to speak for my fellows up here, but I think we generally agree with that. It’s always one of the most interesting and invigorating evenings at the Council, and it reminds you that you really have multiple jobs here. We’ve got to build in an inherent agility and adaptability. For Admiral Zukunft, don’t you think that the Coast Guard shortfall in ships, et cetera, is much more compelling than the Navy’s need for more carriers? The Air Force is 40 percent smaller than it was in 1991 and the appetite to use the military as an instrument of national power has not diminished at the same rate. You know, we are—we cannot just sit there. We think that’s sufficient capabilities to execute the strategies as they exist today. WELSH: OK, one last comment on that just real quickly. And from a grand-strategy perspective, instead of worrying about what China might be, Russia might be, where cyber might go, it’s helpful if the United States of America decides clearly what we are going to be 50 years from now. And previous to that he was commander of the Coast Guard Pacific area. President Obama talked about a move basically to reduce our focus on the Middle East a bit. And if General Thomas or General Votel were here they could wax much more eloquently about it. You know, I’ve fought a fair amount of time over there. You’ve got jobs thinking about the current threats. And, rumor has it, there’s a prospect of a new commander in chief and administration in a little more than eight months. ), WELSH: Probably not—(laughter)—although you’d all look really good sitting in it, just like we do. ), SANGER: General Welsh said that he’s got something on the wish list, so maybe he’ll talk to us about the F-35. That’s their job. And he said to us at that time he believed the intent of the Chinese was to push both the Navy, Coast Guard, all of American forces out to the Second Island Chain, keep them out of their territory in the Pacific. This is an issue that impacts not only national security, but also the social fabric of our democracy. Fear the promise of transformative, leap-ahead, game-changing, and revolutionary technological solutions. They deserve the sacraments. They came on the scene in the spring of ’14. For us as Marines, we have been historically a Pacific force. ), SANGER: Oh, well, sorry about that. And they’re saying the sea level is rising. NELLER: If that doesn’t happen, like it didn’t happen after 2011—. And we came up with a campaign plan. MILLEY: Again, short range—you know, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, independent of each other don’t win wars. The ‘56 Hungarian invasion was—they weren’t a sovereign country at the time. And as their economies are very codependent, it’s very easy for the ASEAN countries to be splintered off and to get everyone, you know, from a regional approach. I didn’t realize you were doing to do it while you were here. (Laughter. I mean, I think the only people that are questioning NATO are Americans. HAASS: Well, good evening and welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations. Because some of the most violent crime, believe it or not, is in our backyard. SANGER: OK, do we still need NATO, a question I think I’ve heard in the campaign here or there. Losing an edge in irregular warfare, leaps in missile defense - Defense News Weekly, 01.10.21, Is the U.S. military losing an edge in irregular warfare? In fact, ours came out the day after. SANGER: I wanted to talk a little bit about another considerable adversary, one that you’re facing in the Pacific. Whereas China, Russia are more our traditional kinds of threats. “As the Navy … So if not NATO, then what? How are we doing on making the pivot a reality at this point? SANGER: Is cyber the little green men of the future in that the attribution issue is still so difficult for the U.S. government that frequently you don’t know whether the adversary at the other end is a state, a non-state actor, a bunch of teenagers sitting in a basement? I think the issue is if Russia decided to cross another border, could you stop them? How do we define ourselves? SANGER: So that includes the Reserve and the Guard. ZUKUNFT: Well, first and foremost, I have an open and frank dialogue with my counterpart in China. So in my role, meeting with all of the presidents of Central America, the problem they’re dealing with is that bulk shipments of cocaine land in those countries, are broken down to retail for consumption in the United States. Q: Father Andrew from St. Paul’s Foundation on Mount Athos. Q: Hi. And what’s happened is the sea ice up there has receded to record levels. We’ve got a project going on this summer to do that. And there’s a saying in New York—I mean in Washington, D.C.: You know, there’s enough strategies where if you swing a dead cat you can’t help but hit a strategy. (Laughter. We just quit paying attention. I mean, that’s just sort of at the macro scale—you know, your father went up—his job off of Okinawa was the fighter director who was the person who vectored fighters in to go against the kamikaze threat, which was the only thing in World War II that Admiral Nimitz said he did not anticipate by virtue of his participation in the war games in Newport, right, that resulted in War Plan Orange. Now, there’s numerous areas where the work of the Council on Foreign Relations and the military overlap, from Laurie Garrett’s analysis of the military’s response to Ebola to the contribution of our Stanton nuclear fellows, and from the works, say, by Senior Fellow Max Boot on wars big and small, to all that we’re doing on cybersecurity. Wiki User Answered . Soldiers routinely complain that they are living in damp houses without proper heating or insulation. And so as you’ve seen the dynamic really change there, you’re seeing partnerships emerging with nations in that region that have, you know, really grown, particularly recently. They’re in Anbar. As you look at what the Russians are doing, is this a temporary show of force at a moment of economic decline or do you think we have a permanent resumption of activities we thought had gone away with the Cold War? That would be a major undertaking. You know, I would say, David, one of the things that—the reason that we are more involved in cyber is the adversary has gone to this domain and we are not going to cede that to them. Is it possible? And I should also say that all five have been read their Miranda rights. Even if you ran the numbers, did the threat analysis five years ago or so, you know, we probably wouldn’t have included Russia in that calculus. So at least in that regard, we have that capability. They’ve been active in there. This is a fundamentally different situation. Conscription using a lottery based system would be a fair, efficient, sustainable, legal and proven alternative to fixing the military's recruiting problem, says the author of this commentary. Now, the first vaccines are being distributed, spurring hope that the pandemic’s end is in sight. Would lowering the age of recruitment fix the military’s recruiting worries? Elements within it, sure—Shia militias, the Sadrists, those kind of organizations—but the Iraqi security forces themselves I think are largely loyal to their government and they want to defeat ISIS as well. RICHARDSON: I think we’re getting closer to those types of solutions, yeah. The Robert B. McKeon Endowed Series on Military Strategy and Leadership features prominent individuals from the military and intelligence communities. I can assure you from personal witness that chaplains are out there. There are five maritime non-PLA services. I’m just curious. Would you object strenuously if the decision was made to shift part of the Navy budget to the Coast Guard? SANGER: Admiral Richardson, we ran a story last winter, my colleague Eric Schmitt and I, about Russian submarine patrols that appeared to be looking at, among other things, the undersea cables that still snake across the Atlantic and Pacific. It goes back to the capabilities, et cetera. Why did we have over 60,000 unaccompanied minors show up via human traffickers at our Southwest border? (Applause.) I want to thank the audience for coming here and for such terrific questions. And then add onto it all these aggressive incident-type behaviors, and barrel rolls over aircraft, and challenging ships, and submarine activity, and cyber activity. Admiral John Richardson, our newest arrival here. So they are performing. MILLEY: There’s a very robust, very sophisticated, integrated air, naval, and ground—integrated air missile defense system scattered all around the country and overseas. If conscription were implemented, many would still volunteer but it is reasonable to assume that a higher quality force could be generated from a pool of 1,020,000 than from a pool of 180,000. And the current leader has taken that to the next level. It’s still an effective alliance and I absolutely think it’s needed. It involves not only naval forces, by also the rest of the military and our whole of government and a regional solution. And I’ve served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Laughter.) In 1973, the soon-to-be most disgraced president of the United States implemented the all-volunteer force (AVF) and did away with conscription — a political and social act to atone for the sins of the most unpopular war in our country’s history and an unfair military draft. Thank you, Richard. And there are climatologists today that say the fuse has already been lit. And I think whatever they’re doing now, they are still a very capable military and they clearly have shown an intent to be disruptive, at least in the region. MILLEY: That’s Reserve, the Guard, and the regular Army. So it’s not—. It’s kept the peace in Europe since the end of World War II. Will we ever have everything we need in our kit? And I think we would be a little better—we’d be much better off if we were a little more supportive—and those countries have capability and we need to be a less dismissive of them and figure out how to use them in a more effective, better way. I think that that came through in the discussion tonight, so thank you all. We’re not doing as much stuff elsewhere. But it’s also—I think it would be a mistake to characterize the Iraqi government or the Iraqi security forces as a surrogate of Iran. I mean, we could fix it short term, in my opinion, but it’s got to be—there’s never been a successful counterinsurgency or a counter-fight against an adversary when there wasn’t a government that was legitimate, stood up and took care of all the people within the boundaries of that state. ), RICHARDSON: Just watch the movie. They may get smaller. I have a question about what has been called hybrid warfare or gray conflict. Today I’ve got probably in the neighborhood of 15 tons of pure, uncut cocaine on ships deploying in this area today—whole of government, intel-driving operations—but two years ago we had four ships down there. In late 2017, the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training began a study to look into improving the quality of recruits, both in discipline and physical fitness. Our acquisition portfolio has grown less than 2 percent over the last two years. So we can use them to develop targets. And that’s what’s significant. This is a whole-of-government approach. But study, you know, our vulnerabilities. ), NELLER: You should all be so lucky. (Laughter, applause. Panelists discuss the latest developments in Brexit negotiations, including the main points of contention among the parties, prospect of a deal before December 31, and implications for the private sector. There’s also new domains from cyberspace, to outer space, to the Arctic. You know, one of the discussions is that being forward deployed, having forward presence deters aggression and assures our allies and allows us to respond to crisis and to keep a crisis from growing into a conflict. And now, you know, the China coast guard is building 10,000-ton cruisers. The issues are less military than political. And you can have the coolest ship on the planet but it can only be in one place at a time, and it can’t be in the Gulf and in the South China Sea. WELSH: We’re all facing a problem, David, with this quantity-versus-quality issue—. They give us very broad authorities. 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