Defense & Aerospace Podcast [Washington Roundtable Jun 04, 2020]

welcome to the defense and aerospace report podcast i'm your host vaga miradian our podcast is brought to you by bell since 1935 bell has been redefining flight learn more about its pioneering spirit at bellflight.com joining us now to discuss what has been a very busy week in washington are dr gordon adams of the quincy institute think tank byron callan of the independent washington research firm capital alpha partners michael hersen the ceo of american defense international one of washington's top defense lobbying firms and former pentagon comptroller dr dov zackheim who is also a board member of the center for strategic and international studies everybody welcome to the program thank you thank you thank you as america's coronavirus death toll continues to rise to nearly 110 000 mostly peaceful protests have erupted nationwide to condemn the police killing of george floyd in minneapolis some early protests turned violent prompting president trump to order the pentagon to deploy additional national guard as well as active duty forces to washington d.c on monday the white house ordered those forces to assault peaceful protesters to allow trump to visit the historic st john's church for a photo opportunity that move sparked condemnation of the administration for spoiling civil military relations and straining democratic conventions those charges came from senior retired military leaders including former defense secretary jim mattis and two former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral mike mullen and general marty dempsey defense secretary mark esper has gotten into hot water with the white house for making it clear that he doesn't support deploying active duty forces to american cities in the wake of peaceful protests guaranteed by the constitution this civil military lift comes up rift comes on the heels of changing public perceptions of military spending as many question the value of 750 billion dollars for defense when it can't keep citizens safe from the deadly coronavirus michael start us off um you know this was already kind of a fraught and challenging environment now the national defense authorization act is being marked up uh by the house and senate as as this goes on we've got legislation uh other legislation ongoing as well right we've got an appropriations process that's underway that was supposed to resolve itself in june and july and then we've also got the 1033 program ongoing which was to provide military equipment for local police forces where do we stand on all of this okay well things are getting a little more complicated than we talked last week but right now the senate armed services committee is on track to begin their subcommittee markups next week on june 8th and 9th and then go to full committee on the 10th the house armed services committee is ready to go to subcommittee mark on june 22nd 23rd and then full committee mark on july uh first and second uh but you know i think mackenzie eaglin who's a frequent guest on the show had a great uh tweet this morning where she tweeted a headline for defense news calling it astonishing and headline says lawmakers want must pass defense bill to protect protesters from the military and now we see democrats coming out with amendments that they plan to offer in both the house and the senate to the national defense authorization act which really could imperil the passage of the bill for example senator kaine said that he will introduce an amendment to the ndaa to prevent the use of military force against american citizens exercising their first amendment rights under the constitution is that we can provide that no funding can be used by the dod to marshal force against against protesters or american citizens we essentially can defund activities like that uh if you do and then they don't happen which i think is a little too simplistic and then we have the issue with the 1033 program which is a program that allows for the transfer of excess defense articles to state and local police forces members want to offer amendments to eliminate that program now it's being built in the press as a bipartisan push and the only republican i've seen that supports that effort the senate is rand paul so i wouldn't consider that a bipartisan push uh and in the house congressman ruben gallego who's on the house armed services committee has announced that he plans to offer an amendment uh eliminating the 1033 program as well but you know i think that what republicans um depending on what stance it seems to take i was on the phone with several republican leaders actually just before this call both in leadership and on armed services you know their take is like law and order will be on the ballot in november uh and i think we see the president also doubling down on his on his tough stance as well but i think there's democrats have a hard time with these pushes because they're gonna need to differentiate two between the role the national guard plays as well at it as opposed to active duty forces we've seen the national guard play a role uh supplementing civilian police forces for decades i mean john f kennedy federalized the national guard to implement integration in alabama against the wishes of the alabama governor so i think this is a little more complicated than they're letting on to letting it to be uh but uh the republicans have uh had meetings where they've discussed they're sending around statements from adam smith that said if these things end up in the nda they will not vote for it and smith does not have the votes among his own party to pass the bill because 29 of his members have said they want to see a reduction in defense spending for fight 21. um and where do we stand uh on the next uh coronavirus uh stimulus to relief uh package because every week uh you know we've been trying to get incremental updates on that yes so uh you know i think the sense of urgency seems to be passing because the media is covering more the protests in the streets across america than the regular coverage of coronavirus so the senate has said now at the earliest the next package would be right before the august recess so if they're saying that i i wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see a coronavirus package now until september there's not that many days that this house is going to be here too for votes while the senate is here the house has not been uh and appropriations is going to take up a lot of that time i mean nina loewy who's the chair of house appropriations sent out a letter to her colleagues today saying that uh all subcommittee and full committee markups will be the week of july 6 and july 13th right and that's the month that they plan to be here the most because in june the house is only here for one day for votes in july they're here for 12 and august is not here at all so september is the only other month they're here for a bunch of days it's only here for 14. uh october they're in for two in november they're in for five so there's really not a lot of time on the calendar so i i think that the next relief package theoretically really could be pushed until september um let me uh i know that uh your time with us is going to be uh brief so before we move on to the rest of the conversation because i want to bring everybody else into this i do want to get your take on elliot engel he's the chairman of the house uh foreign relations committee obviously a key member of the discussion for arms exports he's got a very very tight primary race and he made a statement uh that is being regarded as somehow he doesn't care about his district i mean the way that i uh read it and if i can uh call up um you know it was reuben diaz was asking all the speakers i think all the speakers at this event didn't recognize that uh it was a hot mic uh moment and engel has been criticized for not going back to his district as much as he should i mean that's something that happens to a lot of long time lawmakers ocasio alexandria ocasio-cortez beat crowley impact because crowley was not spending a lot of time in his district uh but i think engel's point was there's coronavirus going on and there was work to do uh in dc but the point is um you know if i didn't have a primary i wouldn't care um i perceived that as when dia is asking everybody hey i can't have all the elected's talk because we'll never get out of here and you know engels uh you know pressed to hey he wants to have his his turn i don't think that's abnormal than a member of congress who's running for reelection would want to have a mic moment to talk about vandalism do we does this matter significantly what happens to elliott angle at the end of the day uh actually it does uh you know the chairman of the house foreign affairs committee does have a say on foreign weapons sales which are critical uh to our industry uh especially you know as we see our uh as a reduction in procurement of legacy systems i mean in order to keep these lines open we rely very heavily on on foreign weapon sales and eliot has been reasonable and a friend of the defense industry so if he were no longer the chairman of house foreign affairs um that could create a problem depending on who took his place uh and the fact that elliott is having an issue with his primary um you know okay you mentioned uh alexandria ocasio-cortez has come out in favor of his opponent so she's working hard against him uh the media is being unfairly tough on him i think you're right that he should get the benefit of doubt for those comments but right now it looks like either gregory meeks from new york or ted deutsch would be the next uh chair and they're both very different and both would have different implications for the defense community i want to bring everybody else in the conversation at this point uh and dove uh let's start with you because you wrote a thoughtful essay for the national interest where you're also uh vice chairman about what this episode all means for civil military uh relations and and the correlation between public confidence in the military and the amount of money that the nation makes available for the military well but before i do that i would just like to point one thing out uh relating to what mike just said and that is dick lugar uh was in a very similar position uh he was uh involved in foreign affairs and he didn't come home enough and i think that it's almost an occupational hazard for those who are traveling all the time who are dealing with foreign affairs and the more senior they are the more they travel the more they deal with it that they wind up not being at home as much and very very vulnerable to the kind of attacks that engel was now suffering from uh as to your your question uh it it appears that what mr trump has essentially done is uh really seriously hurt the morale or at least threatened the morale and the uh uh cohesion of our troops overseas uh during the vietnam era and of course we're talking about a draft not professional volunteers but still during the vietnam era when martin luther king was shot uh the following few years were witness to race riots on on the aircraft carrier kitty hawk at cameron bay um our leaders today are very very sensitive to race relations uh we've in fact got an african-american who is up for nomination as chief of staff of the air force uh general brown and so uh what mr trump has been doing uh is literally scaring the bejesus out of civilian and military leaders and uh it it might affect the defense budget that's not clear we've talked in the past about the fact that that budget is likely not to go up and may well go down but more seriously is the impact on the sociology of the military uh and of course uh camp uh uh legerne was another place where uh there were uh riots and uh you know during during the vietnam era gordon i want to bring you in um these actions are all taking place on the 21st anniversary of china's crackdown in tiananmen square the place uh where these uh these the crackdown was always commemorated was in hong kong uh china has now banned uh those uh demonstrations there are enormous number of parallels between now and the 1960s in part because of the midst of civil rights demonstrations we had a successful spacex launch and and to many that sort of struck uh that chord how does the world see the united states in the wake of these actions and what are what are the parallels and what's the right way for everybody to be addressing them at this point it's very hard just to know what the international implications are but before i come to that let me just say one thing to key off of where dove went uh with this there's an internal issue in the military that he points to which i think is critically important there is also an external issue we are dealing in an election year with a narrative issue here uh i had uh the patience i must say to listen to the entire hour of the president's conversation with the governors on monday not while they were having it but the tape has now been sort of issued as it were and what struck me about that is the clear effort on the part of the administration to make this an issue about a war narrative a domination narrative uh outside agitators narrative about a law and order there is of course a parallel narrative which is about social and economic justice so we see democratic senators today doing a kneel in uh you know in front of frederick douglass uh in in washington um we're going to see this going right through the campaign it is going to be a narrative battle here between uh how the nation deals with the deepest wound that america has which is the the legacy of slavery uh and the law and order message that the administration clearly wants to try to run on uh in in november and we've been brought back to that first issue interestingly by uh admiral mullen and general mattis who in the pieces that they and general dempsey as well they brought brought forth in the last couple of days in the atlantic basically saying look the issue here is the national scar they're very attentive to the issue that dove raises in saying that but they're also announcing that this is a different type of narrative so we're not just going to have a law and order campaign we're also going to have a social equity and justice campaign and it will be real interesting and i will continue to follow that very closely internationally uh to come to your question vago uh you know there's nothing but a downside here for the administration and for the united states of america there is nothing but a downside in fact even the dictators that the president professes to admire so much like erdogan and turkey uh have been saying uh you see you see told you so uh you know cheering on authoritarianism but pointing out the the disorder as they see it in america's streets uh that is not going to help the united states there's a lot of finger-pointing internationally about the lectures that the white house has given to the chinese and others about the suppression of domestic protest as some of which in hong kong turned violent there's no question about it and a lot of finger pointing that the united states is is poorly served in an attempt to point out to anybody else the failings of their political system this is a political crisis in america make no mistake about it it is a serious political crisis and as you pointed out in asking that question it has major international implications they're not coming from nowhere because for the last two and a half years the trump administration has in my judgment accelerated the general stepping away from the united states as an international leader that has been going on around the globe this just continues the acceleration of the process um byron i want to uh bring you in and michael unfortunately uh had to to leave us to get to another meeting but how do you sense this right i mean as a historian as somebody who looks at these sorts of trends do you see this as manifesting itself because i have to say that in conversations we had an earlier in the week we talked to uh dr corey shockey uh chris cervelo our producer joined us for what was a thoughtful conversation and the concern is the erosion of an institution that is seen as um one of the best institutions in america at the end of the day and if it's you know no bucks no buck rogers yeah and i would agree vogue i mean look gallup has data that goes back to 1976 they didn't do this poll every year but you know to dove's earlier point um i wish there was data back in the 1960s but the military the us military has been the most trusted institution in the united states now it tends to vary around wartime you saw spikes in around the time of the gulf war and then again in 2003 you know but it's still been elevated and still far higher than than other institutions i i think what's fascinating about this time and why i agree it really is a crisis um look this is not a rerun of the 1968 unrest in the united states to me i mean if you look at a lot of these demonstrations they really are multi-racial in nature there there's by broad support i think for just uh you know justice for all and a legal system that's responsive to that um so as much as there may be efforts to militarize this i think it's it's really far off base to think that um there's gonna be a lot of traction for law and order uh that the the way there was the 1968 election so i i think you're talking about something that's very brittle here um you know there are over 200 000 of african americans that serve in the department of defense um they're they're another i think 30 000 or so that that are uh multi-multi-ethnic so it really you know if these fissures widen and i think that's kind of what what mattis was getting at what mullen was getting back i think general neller uh the former marine corps commandant had something to do on linkedin as well you know you're talking about something an institution in the united states that really has worked it has its faults um i think it's actually healthy that you've seen some of the dialogue particularly from the uh chief master sergeant in the air force the the conversation that he started that was followed by uh general goldfein and you know others i think unfortunately belatedly got on to this but you have to address this because i think otherwise you're really heading down a path that just fundamentally takes this country back to a place that i don't think we want to go to um well and you were talking about chief uh khalith uh wright um who uh put a tweet out that said i know i am george floyd uh because i think that there is a sense among uh many african-americans in uniform that as long as they're wearing the uniform they're okay but once they're off base and they're no longer wearing the uniform uh that that they may be more vulnerable um and back to the percentages right i mean the the united states military is an extremely accurate reflection of the rest of society africans americans make up twelve point seven percent of the population i think that's roughly matched in the military just like latino americans are eighteen uh something 18 plus 18.3 percent uh and and that has about 40 percent of the us uh military at the end of the day where what i'm curious about is whether or not you guys also think that there are that is this a blip or is this something that creates a resentment or a feeling that then reflects itself much more profoundly in recruiting retention uh you know and then all the way on up to immigration impacts even though uh that's something that i think we've already seen under this uh administration and we had daryl brooker who's with ipsos public affairs join us and talk about how the united states you know sort of the view of the united states during the trump administration has been less positive than it's been uh historically but do do you guys see this as a blip or is this something that could manifest itself as a much more significant shift because i'm not sure anything that we're seeing today sort of rivals kent state which which interestingly enough was also 50 years ago uh just last month and by the it i mean the deployment of forces onto america's streets and particularly the move to sort of uh nationalize the army and deploy it to cities which have actually by and large been having peaceful protests for for most of this time my sense is that we're at the edge of damaging the civil military understanding severely in the service i think largely of a political campaign not not driven by the requirements of restoring order because the reality is if you look at what's happened over the last week since george floyd was killed uh in fact most of these states have stepped out on a state level with respect to restoring civil orders side of these things while permitting peaceful demonstrations to continue so every day the the violent end of these things tends to go down uh which means that by and large and even in the conversation i listened to with the president several of the governors were clearly while not trying to displease the president they were making the point that through their mobilization of the national guard through their institutionalization of norms and the police force they were getting things under control in the states that they were dealing with and that was true whether you were brian kemp the governor of the state of georgia and a conservative republican or you're the liberal governor of illinois or you're the governor for that matter of the state of minnesota where things in the streets of minnesota have calmed down significantly we don't have in my judgment here an ever expanding crisis of violence we do not have an externally stimulated disorder that is undermining american politics or the order in the streets we have a situation of enormous tension based on a 400 year old legacy of slavery that has suddenly surged because of the behavior of the police force and the forces that are responsible for maintaining some street discipline on a state by state and town by town basis are doing for the most part what they need to do so this is being politicized at the federal level not because there's a disorder requirement for it we've had more disorder in prior episodes historically it's it's a politicization of the issue and what really i think damaged those relations was the uses of both active duty and national guard forces and helicopters and equipment and cars and trucks in washington dc because that's high visibility so for a photo opportunity the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff whether out of ignorance or stupidity allowed themselves to be walked into a photo op and used as props and military capabilities without them being lethal were used against crowds to make room for that photo up that was an optic they didn't expect to go as bad as it went but it's really all about the politics here which is why we'll have a debate between the law and order theme and the social and economic justice theme and fortunately there seems to be enough support for that latter theme that we're really going to have a debate about it as opposed to be overwhelmed but the implications for the civil military relationship i think are extremely negative and they have been negative right through this administration including deployments at the wall there are a variety of uses that the administration has made of the military which people in the military feel a little uncomfortable about and this really pushes the edge of the envelope and i'm willing to bet that's what brought dempsey and mattis mullen and other people up on the up on the net to say something about it i agree with gordon most of the way but the issue isn't federal the issue is the white house and the reason i say that and it has and the white house obviously has politicized this thing the reason i say that is because the day after uh the incident at lafayette square that was lafayette lafayette park was june 1st the next day millie already the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff mark milley already sends out a note um goldfein had sent out a note uh he had been even proceeded as you mentioned uh by the chief master sergeant of the air force um notes have been sent out not just by military leaders but by service secretaries mccarthy of the army for example so i'm not sure that the civilian military uh tensions are actually so much within the department because look esper walked back too he made a mia culpa enough probably to get himself fired if he doesn't watch it uh and so the issue is really between the military and national security establishment and a president who's abusing it and that's where the tensions have arisen and uh beyond that i i think again as gordon said the system our federal system uh of uh division of of powers it seems to be holding up the governors are not playing into the president's hands and now it's pretty clear that the national security establishment at least in the pentagon state department's been notoriously quiet um but the pentagon has made it pretty damn clear and i was over there just yesterday that what they want to do is get on with the business of defending the country against enemies that are foreign not domestic demonstrators let me just say to say that i don't disagree with dove at all on that point i think every instance where the military has been uncomfortable about the way they're being used and i point to the wall and deployments around the wall it has made people in uniform and in the national security establishment a little bit uncomfortable it's unusual and it reflects an attitude from the white house that the military is just a kind of a toy that they can throw at problems or throw around willy-nilly rather than respecting the norms and i think that's the bottom line on all of this is in term institutionally the question it the question has now become in dispute is what are the norms for that relationship what are the norms for the relationship between the white house and the federal government and the state government when it comes to civil disorder uh and riots in the streets uh what are what are the norms that we usually behave and we have a long history of those norms it's been pointed out earlier in the civil rights era troops were brought in despite governors protests under the insurrection act because the federal law could not be implemented and that's the terms to the law you have to be able to execute the law right and and not executing the law has been a reason for the deployment of federal troops and the federalizing of the national guard in historical instances it it's extremely you know los angeles is the only other potentially comparable case 1992 and in los angeles in 1992 you had disorder disruption going on at a scale level so much more significant than what we have seen in the last week in this country that it's almost a different quality of case well and and that was billions of dollars in damage i believe 68 people killed which is why george h.w bush uh invoked that 1807. yeah absolutely and i was in los angeles a week after that a lot of that was racially targeted too totally absolutely well i want to bring i want to bri and uh there is another point fargo that's right the rodney king was the rodney king uh episode yeah yeah one other very important point the images of uh soldiers and police pushing back against demonstrators are almost identical to the images of police and soldiers pushing back against chinese demonstrators hong kong particularly hong kong demonstrators right and uh and frankly iranian demonstrators i mean this has done such serious damage to an already damaged image that we have in the world uh it's going to take a while to repair and there was something i would just add you look at the size of the demonstrations in places like london and amsterdam i mean the flip of this is just you know the rest of the world is watching this and these things are very hard to quantify i go back fog i don't know i think we're just at a crossroads and that's my fear as we do take the worst road here this isn't going to go away overnight i mean you think about there's going to be a trial here um if that doesn't go well as far as public expectations are concerned that'll be another flash point there are any number of incidents that could make this a very long hot summer and you've got a president i think who has shown a willingness to use military force um even though a lot of the military don't agree with that so that's my concern going here and that's where i think you really have to start thinking about the longer term damage to cohesion recruitment you know the other factor that we've seen in the past is how many companies you know you've had this outreach effort um to try and bring more commercial companies to do work with the department of defense you know google had pushed back on it but i think now microsoft is on board amazon is board you're starting to see this happen does that get reversed and i just want to point out really quickly uh that uh news major news outlets are reporting that the 82nd airborne outside of washington dc was ordered a home this afternoon gordon good well there's one there's one element of this that i think is going to be a touchstone of debate for some people and it's the bridge between what's happened with local police forces and the military the 1033 program has been a disaster for america's police forces and their own credibility in their own town it has it has extended an already pre-existing gap between forces of order in the police force and the communities that they are supposed to serve and protect that image over decades several periods of time now has has repeatedly been shown of police who now look like military who are using military equipment and even to some extent practicing and behaving like military forces behave and these are forces of public order that serve and protect they're not the military i think we will regret the day that we created a program which is so over militarized not only the training but the expectations of how we use local police forces um let me um i want to bring uh byron back into this for uh a second and then get uh your uh takes on this as well um the president is furious uh at dr esper who i think actually did an admirable job of stressing the importance of having an apolitical military and making it clear that while there is a role for the active duty force domestically it has to be only in the most extreme and extraordinary conditions and that this was not one of them uh he drew trump's ire uh tom cotton uh who's always coveted the job wrote a piece in the new york times uh urging for a crackdown and and supporting the move um you know even though i think tom cotton wants that in a second trump term i i'm not sure at this point that he would want it but there's this sense that esper of the department has been doing a very good job in focusing the pentagon on major great power competitions and the kind of major trade-offs that are going to be needed but there's also a recognition that he's got five months in the job either joe biden gets elected and he leaves or donald trump gets elected and he leaves and it looks like the white house actually prefers dealing with mark milley more than it does uh you know when you when you uh talk to folks who know uh what's happening over over in the white house not to sound awful about it but ultimately does it much matter whether there's a change in the department at this point in the administration byron maybe yeah you can start us off and then dove and then gordon give us your sense no because i mean look if if you know what you're going to get back into an acting position um if if asper were were fired or resigned um you know you'd still have to have i think to to michael's earlier point well this is more of the senate calendar but you know how quickly could the senate have someone confirmed uh to fill esper's place would that person take the job knowing that they could be there for two or three months i mean i think it's they wouldn't really have much traction other than maybe to fulfill whatever uh the president wanted done but um you know you are kind of getting late in the day and i think looking i know we've talked about this before um it's probably still really too early to call the 2020 election but as much as um some of the recent polls show uh the president's not doing well in some of these key battleground states and it's going to be more interesting in the next week or two to see what incremental polling data comes out so anything that kind of perpetuates the notion that uh this guy's only going to be here for another couple of months i mean i think you know the track the traction on the tires goes from little to bald very quickly look uh a couple of things first um you know even if this idea that somehow milly will be the white house poodle um i've got a piece coming out tomorrow mark milly sent out a note before esper's talk and had a handwritten bit which basically said we've got to defend the constitution i doubt that won him a lot of uh praise in the white house so he's not going to be a pushover and uh i don't i don't think the president would dare fire him the president's probably afraid of him quite frankly um if he fires uh esper um he has dave norquist uh who used to be my deputy by the way right uh as the acting secretary norquist is as straight as shooter as anybody has seen that is the universal view in the pentagon and outside it uh plus he happens to be grover's brother so the president is not going to mess with him because frankly if there's somebody who can give congress the heebie-jeebies other than the president it's grover norquist at least on the republican side so my guess is that if esper goes norquist stays through the election and then we see who the next president is and i would still be surprised if tom cotton took the job everybody thinks he's salivating for it but he's the lifetime senator from arkansas and would he really want to work for a president who might chuck him out after giving him a nickname like he did with jim mattis uh it could be a two-year job versus a lifetime job so let's not assume that cotton's jumping at it just yet well let me just make uh one uh distinction uh though uh and i would agree i don't think mark milley is is anybody's poodle and that's definitely not an adjective i would use and and yes he is a formidable guy uh in part because he's also got a formidable uh manner but also a formidable intellect um i i would say that the big difference is that mark esper went on tv and he didn't just write a memo right mark esper did the thing that a defense secretary does which is stand up and take hard questions from reporters and and do it the way that he's always done them which is you know without telling you that anything's off the table right which which uh is is i think yeah but lily's got a different job milly's got to put the word out to the troops esper has to deal with the press milly of course as a chairman would deal with the press as well colin powell was the archetype of dealing with the press when he was chairman but but given what's going on and given the undercurrent of racial concerns inside the military when as you pointed out from from general officer all the way down to buck private we've got african americans we've got jewish americans we've got mormons we've got muslims we this is a mix this is the melting pot of america the chairman's primary responsibility is to get a message out real fast and the message of course went to all the senior leaders and basically was an order we're defending the constitution and don't mess with that um and i also have to put out i think it was a total red herring to focus on mark milley uh wearing uh cammy's mark milly likes wearing camis of course he's comfortable wearing camis and he was going to uh you know i got to say the soldiers so tough it was bad judgment he wasn't going to talk to the soldiers he was going on a photo op it was very important yeah well but i mean i'm willing to i'm i'm willing to agree i don't think i think you forgive him way too much i i don't think he knew he was going on a photo op i think that esper's take on this was pretty accurate they knew they were going to go out there they knew they were going to go for a walk and mark millie uh and mark esper spent all night going all over dc talking to national guardsmen all over the city so and that and that's fine and that's fine but they they are dealing with a white house for whom loyalty is the only test and for whom winning this november is the only thing that matters and they know that they're not naive they are at very senior levels in a government and they have worked in and out of the white house repeatedly as long as they've been in their jobs and before so they're not innocent so broad who naively walked across lafayette park it was an embarrassingly bad decision on their part but it would be well to step back from it that's great i think that's fine but i don't think we should excuse the enormously bad judgment they made in walking out to begin with that uh i'm i'm not uh there there is something clearly to be said for that uh uh i'm not there either vago i'm with you i think these two guys really had no idea that they were being set up the one who kind of did know he was being set up was the vice president and he held back and because the vice president held back i think esper and millie if they had realized what was cooking they would have they had a good excuse to hold back with him i don't i don't think either of us any of us know for in fact what was going through either esper as millie's head but my reading is they're smart enough and savvy enough and successful enough politically in washington to have used better judgment let me ask you a question because you're you've spent your career as a journalist and it's been very unnerving to see some of the the actual attacks on journalists during some of these demonstrations so how do you see those relationships moving forward um i look i mean i think uh it's um very dangerous right i mean at the end of the day we go uh to cover these demonstrations just like the reporters go to war zones and cover them uh just like reporters go to conferences right i mean if you're lucky you're on the canopy circuit uh and some people like that and then some people like to be in the dirt uh and the mud and the cold and the dust with with soldiers to try to tell everybody what's really going on what's happening behind the scenes was the protest peaceful was it not pro was was it not priest was it largely peaceful was it not and to see more often than not those troops know they're hitting journalists right i mean it's it's it's hard to tell right you can have an iphone camera and still work for cnn and be doing a live feed but in some of these cases especially you know for the australian journalists i mean you're you're there with a camera you're there and somebody's got a microphone and i think that in in general a lot of the news organizations have something on them that indicates they're you know you've got you've got your id around your neck and a couple of other things that indicate that you're a reporter and i find that to be uh not just reprehensible but i think that that's where you tie into the president's rhetoric of sort of turning the crowd against uh the fake news just because you may not like what they're uh reporting uh as as a as a as a general rule so you know i i i'm part of this the sunlight crowd right sunlight will set you free and is the best disinfectant at the end of the end of the day and if you're open and honest and straightforward you get an open honest straightforward shot dove you know you deserve uh tremendously high marks uh when you were comptroller and i'm not just saying it because i consider you a friend and a mentor but you were always open there was no um uh you know you were always open and open with reporters and there was no question too tough to ask you and you would always do your best to answer them honestly gordon i know that you went behind a a steel wall because anybody who's at omb is not allowed to talk to anybody uh but um you know you you played that with enormous dignity and grace as well because there were reporters who who were annoyed that you wouldn't talk to them uh except for some of us reporters who were like look he can't talk to you just don't take it personally oh you know i used to talk to gordon adams at the defense budget project all the time we're doing a project on defense alternatives all the time where is he why isn't he talking to us yeah and here's the thing i had a job to do and the job involved retaining enormous credibility in terms of the the ability to work with the departments that i was responsible for working with and i will tell you if it had become known that i was a back briefer a secret leak a voice to the press while i was trying to do that job i had never been able to do the job it's that simple in addition to which the the press secretary at omb said you want to talk to anybody you clear it with me that's an order well i mean look and that was also an extraordinary time it was right at the end of the cold war there was a lot going on and you were the guy who was in the hot seat of that i want to have that conversation with you separately we've got very very briefly i want to kind of quickly go around the horn and give you guys an opportunity to talk about china i think that this administration has been remarkably piecemeal about its approach we had the airlines issue china cut off uh u.s airlines from china our response is we've got to cut cut you off from uh our market if you look at the the president's statement uh a week ago uh you know we responded to uh beijing by withdrawing from the world health organization and then two you know one proclamation on students another thing about a white house panel going to look at chinese business practices and then the prospect of sanctioning chinese leaders which might move a needle but then uh and about the hong kong crackdown and then with withdrawing uh the special privileges that hong kong has and and by the way beijing is still cracking down on chinese protesters and then took the airline action anywhere so anyways so it's not particularly clear we have beijing's attention does this administration have the right bead in order to be able to stand up to china at a time which is becoming increasingly dangerous because there is this sense that either you stop china in hong kong or you may have to fight them or worse in taiwan and and elsewhere and let's quickly go around the horn uh dove why don't you start us off gordon and then uh byron yeah the fundamental problem is that the president really likes xi jinping and he likes him the reason for the same reason that he likes erdogan that he likes putin that he likes uh kim and north korea his instincts are authoritarian and so when xi jinping beats the hell out of hong kong demonstrators the president has no problem doing the same thing in lafayette park so he's torn between on the one hand seeing that he could be bullied and he's terrified of being bullied because he's a bully himself and he lashes out at china but he doesn't want to break all ties with xi jinping and i think that explains this highly inconsistent approach to china which leaves our allies completely confused which leaves the chinese completely confused and leaves the taiwanese and others in southeast asia totally vulnerable as well as confused that's not going to be resolved as long as this man is in the white house because he's literally schizophrenic on china gordon uh yeah i you know attempted to say what he said but uh you know the bottom line here is if we expect a coherently thought through strategic policy towards china from this white house then we've been fooling ourselves for three years as dub dub used the word instincts and that's really the way donald trump operates by his instincts i don't think they're very good instincts but they're his instincts and and the instinct to bully is there uh and the the instinct to admire dictators is there and as a result we're going to get day by day changes in policy it must even frustrate people like peter navarro and others who probably think a little bit more strategically than he does but it's going to upset the apple cart on a regular basis look i you know i'd like to take a longer term view on this i think you know the administration policies have largely been a strategy and denial uh through trade through export restrictions through investment um in u.s technology uh i think you know what i'll be interested to see is if we kind of lean forward a little bit more and try and build a better foundation of u.s competitiveness and that would include you know stepped-up investment in research development addressing education addressing some of the issues that came out in the pandemic and then and then the in the um really deep fissures and race relations in the united states um so i'm hopeful you know that that that's kind of something that will start to morph and build some momentum in 2020 and beyond uh we'll have to wait and see obviously but i'm not convinced that this strategy denial is is necessarily going to put us in a stronger place in the long term and i point everybody there was a paper that was written by eric tuning and michael brown i think under brookings who talked about the u.s china competition being a marathon and you really have to think about it in that basis uh yeah absolutely uh that was a a great uh way of looking at it and obviously michael pillsbury wrote that great book a couple of years ago about a hundred year marathon and how china has been looking at this and the frustrating thing for somebody like me you know having been writing about this for 20 years and you know the need to change the way and change the approach and change how we look at these things is that it's um you know we we've known china is developing these capabilities we understand that it's been a long-term program whether it's to acquire technology or intellectual property so uh you know and and the only and the key is try to figure out okay what are the things that bother china and do the things that bother china instead and cause a change in behavior potentially as opposed to doing everything that's better you know sort of storm and drone and and doesn't change anything everybody thanks so much for joining us really appreciate it byron gordon dove uh and michael i'm sorry he had to leave us thanks so much great conversation look forward to having you guys back on next week thanks for coming stay safe yes thanks for joining us please follow our daily interviews and subscribe to our weekly newsletter follow us on twitter on facebook and linkedin and check out our weekly cyber report sponsored by northrop grumman for more than 80 years bell has pushed past the boundaries of what's possible to drive aviation forward going above and beyond flight bellflight.com thanks again to bell for their generous sponsorship and we'll see you again tomorrow

Channel: Defense & Aerospace Report

Views: 563

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: -WNI_dJtSds

Length: 48min 48sec (2928 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020