Former U.S. Secretaries of Defense Robert GatesaAnd James Mattis

good morning and welcome to this Commonwealth Club online program I'm Gloria Duffy president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club I was honored to serve as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the 1990s there are many issues today surrounding national defense in our military should the military be used to quell domestic unrest such as the recent protests should the u.s. be terminating many of our arms control treaties and even contemplating resuming nuclear testing should the names of Confederate military leaders be removed from u.s. military bases and their statues be removed from our public places to address these questions and many more today we will have a unique conversation between between two recent secretaries of defense dr. Robert Gates and General James Madison as a bipartisan Secretary of Defense Secretary Robert Gates served under presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama he is the author of a new book exercise of power American failure successes and a new path forward in the post-cold war world dr. Gates was an officer in the US Air Force and spent 27 years at the CIA a he served as CIA director and became the first career officer in the CIA's history to move from entry-level employee to head of the agency secretary Gates served as a member of the National Security Council staff in four different administrations and for eight presidents of both political parties for his numerous professional contributions secretary Gates was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom the nation's highest civilian award by President Obama he is also a three-time recipient of the distinguished intelligence medal one of the CIA's most prestigious honors in conversation with him today is General James Madison or mattis served as our 26 Secretary of Defense from 2017 to 2019 and is now the Davies family distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution general mattis served over 50 over 40 years in the Marine Corps starting as an infantry officer he later served as commander of the US Joint Forces Command and as NATO's supreme Allied commander for transformation general mattis also directed the military operations of more than 200,000 soldiers sailors airmen Coast Guardsmen and Marines and Allied forces across the Middle East as commander of the US Central Command he commanded forces in the Persian Gulf War the war in Afghanistan and the Iraq war he's been outspoken recently about the president's use of military troops in domestic unrest in Washington please join me now in welcoming dr. Robert Gates and General James Madison eke conversation well thank you dr. Duffy it is a pleasure to be here with the commonwealth club the club it's been devoted to finding truth and setting it loose for over a hundred years we all recognize that dr. Gates grew into his leadership roles with a wealth of background earned in some very position secretary Gates is my former boss predecessor in office and an inspiring role model he was likened in one recent review as the rare foot soldier who rises a high command tech Terry Gates in reading your book one that I would be reassured were required reading for presidents and cabinet officers and they come into office I was struck by you attributing a large part of America's 25 year decline and status in prestes to the failure of post Cold War presidents in Congress's the recognized resource and effectively used what you call our arsenal of non-military instruments of power can you explain this fundamental failure and this significant for the title that you chose for your book well first of all thanks Jennifer participating in this and thanks to the Commonwealth Club for inviting inviting me the the germ of the book really began with a question in my mind of how the United States had gone from the position of supreme power probably unrivaled since the Roman Empire in every dimension of power in 1993 to a country today beset by challenges everywhere and I thought about how did we how did that happen how did we get here and so I began looking at all of the major foreign policy challenges we'd had since 1993 and thinking about what we had done and what we had not done that contributed to to that decline in in our role in the world and our power in the world and what I came up with was a set of of non-military instruments of power that we had that had played such an important role in our success in the cold war against the Soviet Union and had largely been neglected and withered after the end of the Cold War at a time when we continued to fund our military we basically dismantled all of the non-military instruments of power from diplomacy to economic leverage to strategic communications and and and more we can go into that later and and as I looked at at the situation's at these challenges from Somalia and Haiti in 1993 and and others right up to our relationship with Russia and China today North Korea it occurred to me that that we had failed in many respects to figure out how to compete with these powers outside of the military realm and so I am and the reality is of the 15 challenges that I write about for all practical purposes I I considered 13 to be failures and that's why in the title the word failures comes first there are a couple of successes and they're important successes and there are some lessons to be learned from those as well but but we had a lot of we had a lot of problems during that 20 27 year period and and I would just conclude by saying you know the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both began with very quick military victories and the problem that identified whether it was Iraq and Afghanistan or Somalia or Haiti or others was that once we had achieved military victory we then changed our mission we then decided to move to trying to bring democracy and reform the governments of those countries and that's where we ran into failure secretary gates I'd like to go more deeply into what you just mentioned this symphony of power and I took a few notes from your book but could you give a brief overview of the type of instrument you're referring to and where they might be more applicable perhaps or most likely than using the military form of power and if they're not played why aren't they played but but start please what are these instruments what would you look to bring on into the forefront here so the two primarily coercive instruments of power obviously the military but I would say also cyber in my opinion cyber has actually become the most effective weapon that a nation can have because it can accomplish military political and economic harm to one's adversary it's difficult to identify who perpetrated the attack a cyberattack it takes time to attribute figure out attribution and and the more damage that was done the more important it is to identify exactly where the ones and zeros came from and and so cyber is a is a huge player now in a way that it has never been before it can dismantle or disarm weapons it can redirect weapons it can shut down infrastructure in countries so it's a very versatile weapon and it doesn't take the kind of enormous expenditure of dollars or money that a nuclear enterprise or even a chemical or biological threat would would can would represent so so I think cyber is a very important one in and we've been pretty good about developing it for our military purposes but I think we have not taken advantage of it on in an offensive way with respect to either political or economic targets another important instrument is clearly economic measures and these can be both carrots and sticks and the truth is as I make the point in the book that we've developed the sticks part of the economic instrument pretty well we levy sanctions on any country that looks at as cross-eyed and it's going to become actually very complicated for a lot of companies because we've got so many sanctions against so many countries figuring out how you can do business internationally and stay within US laws become a full-time enterprise for lawyers and accountants in these in these companies so we've got the sticks part of it down pretty well embargoes tariffs sanctions and so on where we have where we've fallen down and where we once had real capability is in how do we use economic assistance or economic ahna me as as an asset as a carrot to encourage to induce other countries to do what we would like for them to do or to follow policies that we would like for them to follow whether it's loans at discounts whether it's economic concessions trade concessions and so on where we're very good as I said it's sanctions we're not so hot at figuring out how we might advantage someone in dealing with us now President Clinton bullish both were pretty good with Africa when they arranged debt relief for a number of African countries back in the 1990s in the early 2000s and and that really helped a lot of African countries but that's a rare example of us using economic measures as an instrument of power strategic communications or as we used to call it the cold war propaganda how do we get our message around the world the Chinese have developed this to an extraordinary degree several years ago who Jintao devoted allocated 7 billion dollars for the Chinese to build a strategic communications network around the world we on the other hand in 1998 dismantled the United States Information Agency and tucked strategic what we call public diplomacy into a corner of the State Department various elements of our government do strategic communications but there's no coherent strategy each kind of goes its own way and and we also lack the capabilities and reach that that the Chinese have there are a variety of other instruments Jim that that I've just briefly mentioned things like intelligence and how we use it with other countries science and technology our higher education our culture the use of nationalism I mean as we watch Russia and China interfere in the internal affairs of other countries we have failed to use their own nationalistic feelings to help build their resistance to what the Chinese and the Russians and others are doing religion is an important instrument we we haven't thought about it in that way but religion has played a big part in international affairs particularly since the end of the Cold War and all you have to do is look at the role of religion in in motivating terrorists to see that it has it has real power so there are there are a dozen or more of these instruments and the problem is we have neither resourced them nor have we figured out a cohesive strategy a coherent strategy on how to bring them together as I call it in the book in a symphony where they play together and each strengthens the other and overall strengthens the hand of the United States and dealing with the rest of the world why haven't we enlisted these other instruments and the symphony of power if America has the power of intimidation if we're threatened obviously in an imperfect world we need the military we need the CIA but why haven't we summon the the instruments of inspiration that are so strong in America I mean what is the reluctance for us to use non-military instruments you know it's really a it's a tough question to answer I think part of it is that the Congress has been reluctant to fund these non-military instruments really going back to the to the end of the Cold War it was Congress that disestablished USIA it was Congress that wanted to disestablish the USA Agency for International Development President Clinton stopped that but still brought diminished USAID by bringing it under the State Department rather than as an independent agency the Congress has not funded the State Department properly the State Department has been starved of resources except for a couple of brief periods during the George W Bush administration when there was an increase in the number of foreign service officers so there's been a reluctance on the part of the Congress to fund these things the Congress hates Development Assistance they've considered a waste of time if we're going to spend money why aren't we spending it here at home rather than in other countries and they they don't see how that can benefit the United States so I think that partly that it's been a big part of the reason is the reluctance of the Congress to fund it in in all honesty the reluctance for the most part on the part of all four administration's to push for such funding the irony for me is that at a time when the Congress has become more and more resistant to the use of military force overseas in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time they've refused to fund or make more robust than non-military instruments that could take the place of some of that military activity well in that regard dr. gates you brought up the war in Iraq you mentioned earlier the change of mission or what we call oftentimes in the Department of Defense mission creep mm-hm so we go into Iraq and you you write in the book that has happened so often after the Cold War there was a lack of imagination in the White House and at State Department on how to access non-government civilian expertise in order to strengthen non-military capabilities they seemingly had no appreciation you go on to say of the importance of the private sector apart from contractors as an instrument of power and it just begs the question how can we leverage the private sector obviously with it we we keep the government out of some market things I mean we don't want a government-run economy but how do we enlist the private sector in enhancing our ability to basically exercise power to again go to the non-military edge how do we do that well the first thing is to recognize that it actually has has something to contribute and then you can figure out how to make it work one of the things that frustrated all of us in the Department of Defense I think through all of the Iraq and Afghan war experience was the the relatively few number of civilian experts here we were engaged in nation-building and yet we had very few relatively speaking very few civilian experts who were in country and helping make that happen one of the instruments that had some effectiveness in both Iraq and Afghanistan was something called Provincial Reconstruction teams PRTs and but at a time when we had hundred at the peak of our presence in Iraq we had a hundred and seventy thousand troops in the country and we had 360 civilians in all of those PRTs in the entire country of Iraq so one of the things that that I proposed as Secretary of Defense that got no traction was to go to particularly one of the things that we really could provide help with was was helping both the Afghans and the Iraqis in terms of improving their farming techniques improving how they took care of their herds and that kind of thing and because they're both basically rural countries and in so I suggested to the State Department why don't you go to our country's land-grant universities I'd been the president of Texas A&M so I knew what these universities were doing around the world in terms of really their Faculty's working in very inhospitable and insecure situations why don't you go to these universities and and and ask them to help to partner with us and augment what we're trying to do in these countries many of the faculty members were already in those countries so how could we help them and how could we help provide some funding and so on we also had the advantage that the head of the the National Association of land-grant universities was a man named Peter McPherson who'd been the president of Michigan State University but also the head of USAID under President Reagan so here was a guy who could who knew what we needed to do and who could have galvanized these universities to really be a powerful partner for us nothing ever happened similarly I think that where we can use the private sector or where we can partner with the private sector is in figuring out how we are going to counter China's belt and Road initiative this trillion dollar program of infrastructure building ports and airports and highways and sports arenas and so on in throughout in many in most places around the world and you know a lot of these things are white elephant projects they involve a lot of debt for the receiving country the Chinese make you make these countries sign contracts with Chinese construction companies to do these things they they don't pay much attention to doing things honestly or in ways that actually benefit the the people of the of the countries that are receiving these if we could somehow we can't compete with that the Chinese through their state-owned enterprises and banks and so on can find that the cash to to fund these projects we can't do that well our economy and our government just doesn't have that kind of we're not structured that way but what we have is a private sector that invests all over the world and how can the United States partner with private companies in the United States and incentivize them to invest in some of these developing countries and bring jobs bring environmental concern bring sustainability and in a way that doesn't saddle these countries with projects that end up being useless or saddle the countries with huge amounts of debt we we don't have any we don't really do much in the way of trying to incentivize the companies to to move down that path and it's a resource that I think we we could make better use of and then finally I would say we have all these enormous numbers of churches and charities and others that do projects around the world whether it's in terms of of health and and get alleviating or getting rid of diseases the the work of the Gates Foundation and a number of others you know they often don't want much to do with the government but is there a way we can augment their activities and we work in partnership with them how can we work together and frankly there just isn't much there isn't much done to try and move down that road so these are just three examples of where I think we just haven't been very imaginative in terms of how we can leverage our great strengths and translate that into efforts to what what I would call is shaping the international environment in a way that serves our national interests we don't we don't need to be altogether altruistic in these efforts after all that's the responsibility of the president and the government to advance American interests and protect American interests around the world but if that means you have to shape the international environment and these are the tools that you can use to shape the international environment well we have tried on many occasions to shape the environment as you point out not very imaginably and not very frankly successfully we have tried to help multiple countries get gain peace and stability one of the successes though was the Colombia plan that wouldn't work why did that one stand out why did that one work when it's in amongst such a number over a dozen what I think could objectively be called failures yeah Colombia was was a success and and it was a success under multiple presidents so by the nineteen by the late 1990s Colombia was on the verge of becoming a narco-state a a criminal state the the leftist insurgency the FARC was on the verge of being able to take control of the country and the government what made our effort in working with the Colombian successful in in controlling and then defeating the the FARC was first of all we had a very strong partner in Colombia the President of Colombia President Uribe was a very strong person he was an honest person and he was determined to to defeat the FARC so so we started with a president who was committed to democratic principles and the rule of law and and who was determined to lead this fight at considerable risk to himself he survived a number of assassination attempts the second thing that helped us was that there were already some basic institutions in Colombia they were weak but they were they had been established and and we could help strengthen those institutions inside Colombia to help carry the fight that included both the police and the military but also the judicial system over the course of the Colombian partnership the Plan Colombia effort the Justice Department trained some 40,000 judges in Colombia a third area that a third reason for success I actually give credit to the Congress the Congress limited the number of Americans who could be in Colombia at any given time to help the Colombian government so when the plan started they limited us to 400 military people and 400 contractors that eventually rose to 800 military and 800 contractors but that was it so that meant that the Colombians had to fight the fight themselves and our role had to be limited to supporting them training them and helping them become better at carrying the fight to the FARC so we couldn't take over this enterprise because of the limits that Congress put on us so we were there in support of the Colombian government and I think that was another reason for for success was that it was up to the Colombians to solve the problem we could help them but we weren't going to run the show and do it for them I think another factor was that this plan really had us support bipartisan support in Congress and and was funded over a period of about 10 years or more by three successive presidents so we had the time to make things work and and had two bipartisan support to get the funding so for the cost for about ten billion dollars over a 10 to 12 year period we helped the Colombians put down the FARC and and regain control of their own country now the program originally was sold as being counter-narcotics of trying to limit the amount of cocaine coming into the United States back in the back in the 80s and 90s we tried to bring cultural and political change to the country to make the country more like us to bring democratic principles honest government and so on and and without realizing that we were trying to change in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan as an example thousands of years of history and the fact that our own democracy evolved over time where we're we're still facing problems created at the at the beginning of the United States with the race issues that we're dealing with in the United States today so we still have an imperfect democracy and we've been working at it for over two centuries and and so thinking that we can kind of bring this to force this at the point of a bayonet to other countries I think is one reason why first of all we've been involved in in these long lasting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan after the initial military victories but it's also why we felt one of my favorite quotes is from Winston Churchill and in late 1944 he was approached about overthrowing the dictatorship that was running Greece at the time a dictatorship by the way that was a very supportive of what the Allies were trying to accomplish and beating and beating the Germans beating the Nazis and they wanted him to install a democratic government and Churchill's response was democracy is not a harlot that could be picked up on the street at the point of a tommy gun and I think the principle still exists you can't you can't force a country to build a democracy now Iraq has a very very rudimentary democracy today there are actually probably the only democratic arab government in the entire Middle East but the cost has been extraordinarily high and in a lot of the Iraqis as you know better than I do still do not believe that the Shia dominated government serves their interest particularly the Kurds and the and the Sunnis so there's a long very tough road ahead for Iraq but I think a big a big part of the failures in these countries was trying to bring social cultural and political change basically using the United States military I think our I think our role should be to encourage democracy should be to provide people the tools as we did the Colombians in the and the training and encourage them to move toward democracy but the notion that we can force it and bring it about overnight I think contributed to a several of the failures during this period and the other failures in many instances were a lack of an imagination in terms of using these non-military instruments and and and and frankly just being too ambitious there was there I argued against our intervention in Libya because I didn't see where we had any national interests that were at stake you have two quotes that kind of highlight this this challenge about American rule in the world one should America's mission be to make the world safe for democracy this is of course brought from President Woodrow Wilson's approach or in the words of John Quincy Adams should America be the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all but the Vindicator x' and champion only of her own democracy so how do you parse this when you're confronting events in the world that may not be vital interests but what is america's role as we watch the young people on the streets of Hong Kong or we watch other places where people some are trying to bring about democracy and of course there's autocrats around the world who say not on my watch not going to happen so where does America forward and and when do we go forward using the symphony of powers and how do we do this I mean what does it look like in your in your vision John Quincy Adams had another quote that came out of the same document he said we ought not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy in other words we ought not go looking for trouble I think I as I write in the book I think Wilson and John Quincy Adams have to coexist I think that it is from the beginning of our republic we have seen ourselves as the city on the hill as an example for the rest of the world to follow and and as part of our foreign policy to do all we could to advance the interests of democracy and reform abroad and and human and political rights where I draw the line is in using the military to make that happen I think that as we've been discussing you can't force a country into democracy these institutions have to be developed you know one of the one of the lines that we all use was having won election is is not synonymous with bringing democracy to a country democracy is based on the rule of law it's based on institutions and the role we can play is helping countries develop those institutions this is where the civilian part of these instruments of power that I talked about is so important because it's it's our people helping them develop their own institutions and encouraging the development of those institutions you know the USAID and and a number of private foundations in the United States funded a huge number of non-governmental organizations in Russia for example in the 1990s to try and encourage the development of democratic institutions and the rule of law and so on and it's and it is a evidence that those were working that in the earth in the 2000s Vladimir Putin essentially eliminated the ability of all of those NGOs to work in the in Russia at some points there were thousands and thousands of these and and now they're they're just a handful same thing in China so so I think we can use a variety of tools then including I would say our intelligence capabilities and and covert action CIA's covert action played a big role in the success of solidarity in Poland and taking on the communist regime there there were kind of three institutions that that supported solidarity all working independently the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul the second CIA and the American labor unions and through the afl-cio so we have these instruments that we can use to encourage those trying to bring democracy to their own country and to straight help them strengthen those institutions but it's us helping them not us trying to force it on them dr. Gates when you look at China's advantages you noted some with their state-run economy and what they can do with money going into certain places perhaps just loading up debt on countries that'll never be able to repay it and and developing some degree of control over some sovereign otherwise sovereign decisions do you think the u.s. adherence to strict or moral standards actually weakens us in this competition that's going on between the China model clearly an authoritarian model it's hard to believe they would practice a kinder gentler model externally from the country than they practice on their own people are we actually weakened by taking a more moral stance as we look at our role in the world up against a Chinese model which is basically by by your allies shoulder your way in dismiss other nations sovereignty whether it beings diplom or economic or or even moral sovereignty I mean where do we stand in this competition well I think we all we all know that America as much as we love it and and as much as we admire it and as much as we believe it is unique in the history of the world and an a unique force for good is still flawed and and we're seeing the results of that in the streets of most of our cities in the last few weeks but we do stand for some things and it's not it's not you know it's not by accident that on Tiananmen Square in in the spring of 1989 that the Chinese students erected a statue that they called the goddess of Liberty that looked an awful lot like the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor it's not an accident that the Hong Kong protesters are waving American flags it's not an accident that during the push back on the Iranian regime just a few months ago after they shot down the airliner that that they had painted an American flag the students had painted an American flag on the steps of one of their schools and people were walking around that flag so as not to step on it so I think the rest of the world knows that we're flawed but they also know we're about the only country in the world that consistently tries to get better we consistently we know what we believe in and we work every day at trying to make our actions coincide with our beliefs and with what we profess to admire the most in in democratic countries so I think I mean we have to address our problems here at home we do need to be a model and frankly we're not a very good model right now our politics are paralyzed we can't tackle any of the big problems that our country faces whether it's immigration or education or infrastructure or other other things we still have to battle racial injustice but but we are trying to fix these things and I think other countries recognize that and as long as we continue to profess our ideals as long as we try to help them create democracies I think our our ideology if you will is is still to be admired around the world now the truth is I think that it is tarnished now as a result of several things over the last dozen years or so the the 2008-2009 economic crisis in this country undermine sentiment around the world that the American economic model was one they wanted to emulate I think that economic inequality in this country is a problem that other countries see and makes them wonder whether the American economic model is one they want to follow our paralysis are polar polarization has been with us since the very beginning of the Republic the names that Jefferson and Adams called each other would fit right into today's political campaigns but what's new since the end of the Cold War really is a paralysis and our inability to get really big things done in the country because the two political parties are just frozen at the federal level in their in their war on each other for all practical purposes everybody seeming to forget that the only thing that makes the American system work is compromised so I think I think right now Xi Jinping in China is pointing to all of these problems that we have here at home economic and political in particular and and he is arguing to the rest of the world look at the Chinese model we brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty we're able to have this incredible 21st century infrastructure we're willing to help you build a modern infrastructure in your country our MA and we get things done so our model is is the one that you should look to and frankly there are a lot of countries that look at the Chinese and they say well maybe maybe their their approach the Chinese approaches is better than the American approach so if we want to have our our ideology our belief in liberal democracy and capitalism be a model for the rest of the world we got a lot of repair work to do here at home but I still believe that most of the people in the world believe that America stands for freedom and and for human and political rights and and that's art that's our ace in the hole if you will we just have to work at making it even more credible that the problem is this right now we have a competition in the world that's going to go on for quite a while that's as old as as as democracy itself and that is the conflict the competition between democracy and authoritarianism my view is communism is dead as a doornail the only malice left in the world are probably a handful somewhere in China and maybe a few in American universities of France or someplace but but I think communism is dead authoritarianism though has incredibly deep historical roots and that's the real danger we defeated authoritarianism twice in the in the 20th century if we don't get our prop get our address our problems and figure out how to move forward as a country our ability to defeat authoritarianism in the 21st century I think will be at risk but I that's a very long answer to your question but I believe that our ideology of freedom and our propounding that ideology is an asset for us in the world not a liability yes sir I'll often learn most about our country and what freedom means to others and what we represent to others through foreign eyes I've had villagers in dirt poor villages and I've had prime ministers and kings question me on how does America do it I see after no matter how bad something gets we learn something from it we acknowledge that we've got to improve and we roll up our sleeves and we do it and the political paralysis right now is preventing that last part rolling up the sleeves and fixing things at this point we've got some young people on and we're going to switch to audience questions here shortly but no one we've got some young people watching Mitt secretary as they watch what's going on in Washington DC some have approached me and my colleague classes I'm sure you've heard it you know why should they go into government and yet you went in not for one tour in the airforce not for one tour in CIA you stuck with it through good times and bad if what can you say to the young people watching today about government service not what I consider to be the very hard work but also the noble work of building a country because it's not built yet we're still building it but what do you say to young people who say why should I follow dr. Gates and put my life's work into the country or even five years work or even two years or again how do you respond to that quick well first of all I would say that at the end of your life you don't want to look back and realize that you only lived for yourself George HW Bush the first President Bush once said that the only way to have a full life is that any full life must have some measure of public service in it you know public service has never been easy you know we we get focused on our own time and believe me I joined CIA in 1966 we were just heading into the heart of the Vietnam War I lived through Watergate I joined the National Security Council staff for the first time a few months before Nixon resigned I used to I used to tell people that I joining the National Security Council at that time was like signing up as a deckhand on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg but I went through Watergate I went through Vietnam we went through all the challenges of the 70s and and more I I think you have to believe in what we stand for as a country and and and know that you can play a part in trying to make us better i I've written about public service that no matter how jaded or tough someone may see on the seam on the outside that it route most public servants are in their heart of hearts idealists and romantics and and an optimist that we actually believe we can make the country in the world a better place to live and and I think it's a mistake to think the only place that you can serve is at the federal level I think what we've seen during the coronavirus is an extraordinary emergence of and recognition of local leadership and state leadership so you don't have to go to work for CIA or you don't have to put on the country's uniform although I hope you do but but you can work in your local community you can work at the state level there are many ways in which you can provide public service and help your fellow citizens you know you know Jim I hear all the time people talking about their rights as citizens what you never hear anybody talk about our people's obligations as citizens you know everybody who puts on that uniform puts his or her life at risk for this country it seems to me not too much to ask of others regardless of age to find a way that they can help serve the country at some level and and so I hope that young people and and one of the things that I've seen and I'm sure you see it there's an extraordinary degree of volunteerism at in even in our high schools but especially in our colleges today you know I feel like I have a better insight into young people today then than most people my age I've led a university in fact but is now the largest university in the country I've led the military with millions of young people who've been willing to put on the uniform of the country I've been national president of the Boy Scouts and the one thing I see is the idealism of these young people and their willingness to step up and serve the challenge is how many of them once they get out of college stop their volunteerism stop being engaged as they have been as students and get on with their lives you don't have to be full-time in public service in order to make a contribution I've noticed in my home town I'm on the food bank board here and when our most of our food banks are run by volunteers who are retired because they have the time and with Kovan keeping many of them home because they're vulnerable we have high school kids you have now because they were out of school volunteering to come in so we see that in the young people and I think to a comment by a World War two marine about a country doesn't have to be perfect to be worth fighting for just all we've got to be improving so we need people to come in and fight for it and fighting for it maybe working with the the local school district or the city council like you say doesn't have to be on a higher level but we're getting some questions in and one of them has to do with the with the US military and it's not a surprising questioned updates are we in danger of the military being used as a tool of intimidation against the American people by the executive branch and of course this goes back to some of the recent events in Lafayette Square what are your thoughts on on this concern that is not unique to this one question or at all I I don't think we are at risk of of that and and part of the reason that I say that with some confidence was the strength of the reaction particularly among retired senior military including yourself and the in the lead to the events on Lafayette Square and the appearance of the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense there at Lafayette Square you know I've worked for eight presidents and every single one of them loves to use the military as a prop it's about the only institution in America that still has broad bipartisan respect and support and so presidents want want the military to to sort of be the backdrop and and I warned a couple of the presidents that I work for about that and I think what well that what happened at Lafayette Square actually will have a long-term benefit because it led first of all in the general Milly's apology for being in the wrong place at the wrong time but also an acknowledgement that it was not the right thing to do and and in all I mean in all fairness I think he and asked for the Secretary of Defense didn't know what they were what they were getting into and and were kind of used by the White House and and Millie the chairman was smart enough to at least evade the photo-op in front of the church but but I think that the push back against the politicization of the military and and the reassertion of the importance of the military remaining apolitical has been very important and it's been a reminder to everyone in uniform about that bright red line of not getting involved in in partisan politics I would say another thing and one of the reasons that I opposed the president's use of the insurrection Act which allows the President to use regular military troops domestically is that I think you have to people have to recognize there's a difference between the Regular Army and the National Guard the Regular Army is taught basically to do one thing and that's to kill our enemies the National Guard has many perp you're as likely to see the National Guard handing out food at a food bank or sandbagging a flooding River or providing other help in a natural disaster they can fight we've seen that in both Iraq and Afghanistan but they also are trained in crowd control they have good relationships with law enforcement they're from the the town or city where they're deployed they have to take off that uniform and go back to work the next day dealing with the people that they may have been facing in a demonstration so they have a different approach they're really citizen soldiers and and I didn't see anything in Lafayette Square or in any of the other things that have taken place that I didn't think could be handled effectively by local law enforcement local or federal law enforcement augmented by the National Guard there was no need for the regular troops and people need to understand that distinction between the guard and the Regular Army sir I think it's heartening because once in awhile you get into a situation like this and it reminds you of some first principles and everyone kind of takes a deep breath and steps back and and maybe cooler heads prevail that's sort of they've got another question coming in your serratus going back to some of the themes in your book but how can or how should the u.s. re-establish itself visa via our allies I always used to think that as much as I was proud of my Marines and sailors soldiers airmen Coast Guardsmen even and I knew that we were a threat to authoritarians any objective review and say the bigger threat was America's network of allies that scared the more name that was votes in the United Nations that was nations willing to put troops in the field alongside how do we really with our ally it's a degree of reliability as someone they can count on because this when you talk about things being punished it's pretty clear that right now a lot of allies or additional allies partners they don't have that same degree of confidence what do we do here and we look toward the future you know it's kind of amusing seems like Winston Churchill has a quote for every single possible situation but one of his one of his lines was the only thing worse than having allies is not having allies and our allies and and this is one thing that disturbs me about our current foreign policy our allies are a unique American instrument of power our a unique American asset and it's one that I discuss in the book Russia and China have no allies they have clients but they have no allies people with shared values and people who have a history of working together no one pushed our allies harder than I did to increase their defense spending and we need to keep that pressure on they aren't doing as much as they should but that doesn't mean we walk away from them if they're unsuccessful at doing that they are critically important asset for the United States and just let me give you an example on the economic arena just take it out of the military so we think that the Chinese really happen to be for the playing field to be level the Chinese have to make some structural changes in the way they operate their economy and in the way they operate they work with foreign businesses and investors and so on just think how much more powerful our bargaining position would be if on our side of the table right now we had the Europeans and the Japanese and the Australians and the Indians all of them saying together to the Chinese you must make these changes in the way you do business to level the playing field or you will pay an economic price for it the Chinese love dealing bilaterally with countries because in most cases they can intimidate them what we and as you suggest that they hate us a multilateral situation where they face 8 or 10 countries all arguing with them about their policies I attended a defense ministers meeting in Asia and we had eight countries telling the Chinese Minister of Defense how offensive their aggressive actions in the South China Sea were this is a big asset for the United States and and I don't understand the unwillingness in Washington right now to to to understand that and and make use of it how do we fix it I think I think actually a change in rhetoric I think being willing to reach out and consult with our allies before we make decisions and and presenting a strategic case listening to them maybe adjusting our position somewhat to take into account their concerns you know there's just to take one example there's nothing sacrosanct about 25,000 or 35,000 troops in Germany and maybe there's a reason to move some of those troops to Poland or someplace else but that's a discussion that ought to flow from that that ought to flow from a discussion with our allies and a discussion of the strategy and what's behind it and not leave the impression with them that we've made the decision to take 9,500 troops out of Germany because the president's annoyed with Angela Merkel for not being willing to come to a g7 meeting sir I still recall one of your one of your colleagues Condoleezza Rice telling a bunch of young generals and admirals as she waved her finger at us I didn't realize it was 18 inches long when she wanted to make a point and she said remember gentlemen we will do things with our allies not to our allies I just very echoing your point exactly I've got to ask you one question it came in sir and forgive my smile if I ask you but secretary gates this person wants to thank you for your leadership your service I think both of us can respond to that part by telling everyone listening we don't care if you're male or female Republican or Democrat we don't care who you voted for we're not interested in who you went to bed with you were worth every bit of the service that we gave it was a privilege to serve but this person goes on to say is there anything you miss about working in Washington DC I I the the one thing that I miss is the opportunity to interact with the young people in in uniform I was joking with you before we went on the air that I was probably the only person in Washington that went to Iraq and Afghanistan for rest and recreation get out of the political battles of Washington and go out and on those front lines see those 20 and 21 year olds 22 year olds 25 year olds men and women who are out there doing their part for the country with courage and honor and I'm and their service and and the desire to help them I it would react and fight the political fights in Washington you know I spent a long time in Washington and and and I and I kind of went through everything I went through for confirmation processes not all of them were a lot of fun and and you know there's nothing like walking out to pick up the Washington Post on your driveway in the morning and wondering what disaster is going to face you that day what what somebody in your organization has done that was really stupid or wrong or illegal that you're gonna have to deal with and of course testifying in in front of Congress was always a really special treat but I I miss the interaction with the with the troops but I'd have to say and and I would say with the colleagues that I had at senior levels that they're really amazing men and women and dedicated and I do miss that interaction but that's believe me that's the only thing I miss about Washington DC sir well dr. gates this has been a pleasure I think it's a reminder to that in the worst of times and our country goes through raucous periods it's in our history so if we study our history we would say that there's at least one enduring lesson and we have time for one last question sir what would be the enduring lesson looking at our history in the midst of a pretty pretty raucous period in our democracies life what's a lesson that you would leave with us here as we pick up your book hopefully we're all going to be reading it again but what would you leave us with I think it would be that our actually to two things that I would like to say first of all those who wish us ill would be making a historically bad decision to underestimate American resilience and our ability to solve our problems to to fix what is wrong or to at least make progress in toward the more perfect union that we have the other the other lesson is that goes back to the Constitution and that is to remember that the Constitution itself is a bundle of very significant compromises the American government only works if an American society only works with compromise with understanding that everybody has to come out ahead and that we're all in this together and if you can't sit down I mean nobody gets their way all the time in every way so figuring out how to compromise and move the ball forward Ronald Reagan who was one of my favorite presidents Ronald Reagan was considered to be on some by a lot of people to be an ideal of but Ronald Reagan was actually pretty pragmatic and and Ronald Reagan's attitude in dealing with the Congress was if he could get 60% of what he wanted from the Congress he would take and pocket it and then go back again to try to get the other 40% so he was always trying to get everything he wanted he also understood that he couldn't and he was willing to settle for half a loaf because half a loaf was better than nothing and and I wish our leaders across the political spectrum would remember that lesson from American history right it's a lesson that will stand the test of time sir because it already always has for a couple hundred years and if we don't keep it in mind we're not going to turn over a country in better shape to our children so it's critical we do so our thanks to you mr. secretary it's good to see you again even at a social distance author of exercise of power America's failures successes and a new path forward in the post-cold war world we encourage all of you to buy a copy and please send it to your elected leaders tell them to read and heed it also express our appreciation to all the viewers joining us online the club has a wide range of virtual programs coming up so please visit our website for more information I'm General Jim mattis and this virtual program of the Commonwealth Club is adjourned thank you thank you you

Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

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Length: 64min 37sec (3877 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020