Focus 580; The Role of the Military and Intelligence Communities in Battling Terrorism

Good morning and welcome to focus 580. This is our telephone talk program. My name is David Inge. Glad to have you with us this morning in the first hour of our program today our guest is Lieutenant General William Odom. He is a senior fellow and director of national security studies at the Hudson Institute Washington D.C. office he's also an adjunct professor at Yale University. Between one thousand eighty five and one thousand eighty eight he served as director of the National Security Agency from 1981 until 85 he was assistant chief of staff for intelligence that's the Army's senior intelligence officer. Before that he was military assistant to the president's assistant for national security affairs a big new Brzezinski. And as a member of the staff of the National Security Council he worked on a number of issues including strategic planning. So we have fairs and nuclear weapons policy. He's the author of a number of books the most recent in fact one we discussed here on this program was published in 1980 part of 1998 by Yale University Press that book is the collapse of the Soviet military. And he's written articles for many different

publications including foreign affairs foreign policy Washington Quarterly military review and does a lot of interviews as well on these various issues. He's going to be in Champagne Urbana on the campus for a couple of events tomorrow 1:00 tomorrow 1:00 Saturday dealing with issues of nuclear proliferation and U.S. Russia relations a little bit later on in the program. Give us more information on those because they're open to the public and anybody who is interested in attending should feel welcome here this morning there are a number of things we'll be talking about. And of course questions will be welcome here as well. If you're listening here in Champaign-Urbana where we are the number 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that was good anywhere you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 again 3 3 3. W-why AL Well it would get if you match them numbers and letters on the phone and the toll free line is 800 1:58 W while at any point people are welcome to call and ask questions.

General Odom Hello. Yes thank you sir for joining us today we appreciate it. It's a pleasure. I wonder if first I might draw on your your experience in intelligence gathering after the attacks the hijackings and the attacks that took place a month ago perhaps the lead question on everyone's mind was why we didn't have some warning that this plot was underway. We seem to believe that in fact this had the polit been in the planning for some time and it seemed to be a pretty spectacular failure of intelligence that we didn't have some warning that in fact that it was going to take place and I know this is a difficult question but if I asked you why it was we didn't know what went wrong. What sort of answer might you give I would give two primary answers and I wouldn't consider it would be completely gone. But I think both of them will identify problems that have been with us and we ought to

fix. The first is that we fell into the habit a long time ago I don't want to began but I know in the 1980s when I was both chief army intelligence and director of NSA at leaks or hurting our intelligence collection rather seriously. And there is a very solid statute told me cations Intelligence Act. And. But the administration the right administration would never act on it and I don't think anybody's Gration sense and I act on it. And you don't even have to be a member of the government to be prosecuted by this. It says simply that if you disclose information about signals intelligence or any information collected that way you can be convicted of a felony. He. And a felony and. We just saw over that period a lot of key sources in the Middle East dry up. We also

saw a lot of our publications British an American newspaper articles about this or circulated among embassies and other peoples other organizations in the in the terrorism business to warn them. So I think there's been a general degradation because we just need to loose with. Who knows about it and available it is. And you can see in the events leading up to this the administration warned that there would be an operation somewhere and it was supposed to be out in the Middle East a lot of forces were put on alert out there that said the other that what that suggests to me is that. Bin Laden was probably assisted by some state intelligence operation out there as well as Zone but they have learned how the system works and they've learned to deceive it confuse it mislead it. So I think on the foreign

intelligence collection part that would be part of the problem of course. You know I'm sure another part of the problem is we just don't have enough assets and worked on it hard enough. Now there's another side of this that has to do with counterintelligence the FBI and border control. You probably if you follow the news reporting on this realize that there was a fair amount of information available from from the movement of the terrorists but it never got anybody who was sufficiently alert to do anything about it or was in a position to do anything about it. If they did have it and there are two problems let me try to clarify them here. The first problem is even if we've had warning it was hard to get it out the right people. There are at least nine perhaps five or six more federal agencies with strong authorities on the border. They have something to say about the border. The consular service issues visas are

getting on Immigration and Nationalization is a key border control Raese the Customs Service is a key border control agency the Coast Guard and on and on. They are spread over five Cabinet departments. The idea that they would coordinate and talk to each other is too fanciful to even take seriously that we are in desperate need of a cabinet level consolidated Border Control department takes all those little things and puts them together. Only then could we ever get any information technologies system that would allow them to communicate effectively in this regard. So that's a first have to be on the second half the problem is that the FBI has notoriously for ever been poor at counterintelligence. The NKVD the that was the predecessor to the KGB during World War 2 and after ran over J Edgar Hoover's organization like an NFL football team would run over a division 3

college football team and we were seeing that and praising me from the documents that are being released from Russia in the Soviet period. A couple of books from Yale press in particular the show on this one the secret world of American communism. Another one the Soviet rule of American communism that the Communist Party was clearly a major front for these tele does operations and the the the who Hoovers organizations was not up to it so when you see the Hanssen case he sees other cases this is not some big strange change this is sort of business as usual. Now I think the reasons for that are that when you mix law enforcement with counter-intelligence you don't get good counterintelligence. And I think that that's one problem another problem is the way that the FBI has responsibility for it in the US. The military services have each for their own services. The CIA has it for itself abroad. There is no comprehensive single counter intelligence picture and the and the

parochial advocacy of these agencies won't allow it to happen. And particular the FBI has been bad in that regard. So I think the FBI needs to be taken out of counterintelligence and left in law enforcement and under the director of central intelligence a new organization which would take that piece of the FBI should be created and national counterintelligence service and give it operational control so it can look into the Army Navy Air Force CIA and any other counterintelligence activity so we get a comprehensive picture and then we get people whose business is not crime and law enforcement but whose primary concern is counterintelligence. And it's much it takes a different mindset it takes different approaches it takes different intellectual capabilities to go after the spies in the penetrators or foreign government or foreign counterintelligence or other terrorist terrorist at organizations then it does to catch criminals and it do we do that. I don't think we'll have the information that's necessary that would be useful or proper to alert

a border control department. So it's kind of complicated but you ask questions and I hope that Tom Ridge the new homeland defense chief takes into account and that in the stirrings that are going on here we see some positive action out there I think you point at what is probably his greatest challenge that is that there are so many different branches of government with different responsibilities that all fit together as various pieces of this big puzzle and that somehow they've got to learn to work together a little bit better or there's got to be some someone who is in a position of coordinating their efforts coord bringing together what they know. It seems that that it's an almost impossible task. I agree with that. You know I've often jokingly said but it isn't entirely a joke when people say we really have to put somebody in control we need a mechanism of that that makes sure that one person is charged in charge of counterterrorism

and my point has always been well you can do that it just requires that we revoke the Constitution. We're a federal stiff state and that the authorities for crime and law enforcement which terrorism in the United States it is a crime. And so every police service in the whole U.S. has that responsibility and that we can't put a single person in charge of the Founding Fathers designed it so we can't do it that way. We can greatly improve how we operate them. And the reason I focused on the border that is an area where fragmentation could be overcome by cent by centralization of federal department. And you don't interfere with the Constitutional or federal ranges at all in that regard. You just overcome this legacy of fragmented institutions from 19th century U.S. federal developments. I think something there's something else that has been pointed out as a as a problem

and actually I think that you touched on it and that is particularly since the it seems that since the end of the Cold War we have put fewer and fewer resources into human intelligence gathering. That is I guess what in plain language would would be spies agents human beings on the ground in places where we're trying to learn about what's going on there. We put a lot of emphasis on spy satellites and computers and electronic intelligence gathering and not so much on the legwork on the ground that in a situation like this where we're trying to get information about small organized groups of people semi independent groups that are difficult to penetrate here we don't really have the assets that we really need to get the information on them. There's truth to that. I would I grieve fully that we haven't put enough effort into human intelligence that area and the people in the human Clandestine Service would agree with you on that.

I think it's a false tradeoff to talk about putting too much into technical intelligence and not enough in the human. We haven't put enough of the right kind into technical one of another reason for the surprises is that the nature of telecommunications is changing radically and we have under-invested on a modernization of the technical intelligence capabilities. So we're hurting very seriously there. But you're exactly right on the human intelligence. Parity every speaking human intelligence is very cheap. I don't think it's so much getting the resources as it is. Leadership focused saying that we're going to make this a high priority target. We're never going to go into this area. I mean organizations and people in them respond to incentive structures. If you get promoted by going out and do that a lot of people will try to go do it. That hasn't been a high payoff career path.

It seems interesting that what's happened with the National Security Agency within the last few years and that is this body that was previously one of the most secret closed branches of the government entities in the government has it least to some extent opened itself up perhaps because they are interested in building a constituency and that knowing that that in future down the road there might be less money going into the defense in general or in intelligence. They want to make sure that some people actually knew who they were and what they were doing to make the case that it was important that they continue to have funding. What likely now is is going to happen I guess we should expect that certainly the NSA is going to stay around. Will the NSA get more money now. Well you raise a sensitive sensitive topic for me because I don't want to comment too strongly one way or another all my successors.

And I think the president wanted is a very able man as a member some of the things he's done. String important. I must say I I in principle don't agree with the strategy of trying to build a constituency. I think that is a hopeless and unfruitful tactic for any intelligence service and I think NSA is going to regret that and they're going to I think they're already probably going to suffer over it. With puffy face saying how great they are they don't look very good after what just happened. That's got to be terribly embarrassing. You know it makes pro harbor look small. Now having said that the right constituency for getting money for intelligence is the president the secretary defense secretary of state and the chiefs of the

military services. They are the customers that use this. And if you do a good job for them they're going to want to give you the resources. I suspect they're going to get a lot of resources now because the military services sector the defense and state the president all desperately need for them to be more successful. So the the the issue you raise it interesting very few people put it quite the way you did but I think you're right on target. This goes back to the formation of the committees the oversight committees in the Congress. That's when the CIA really begin to try to develop a public constituency. The FBI has always had a public constituency it's been the most effective. And look at what its internal performance has been. And it seems to me there's almost an inverse relationship between the good populists the foreign intelligence organisation and its effect. Perhaps at this point I should reintroduce the guest. For anyone who might have tuned in the last

five or 10 minutes we're speaking with Lieutenant General William Odom. He has served as director of the National Security Agency. This was between one thousand eighty five and one thousand eighty eight. He also held posts of the Army's senior intelligence officer. He was as well and member of the National Security Council staff under Zbigniew Brzezinski. This is from seventy seven to one hundred eighty one. He is now senior fellow and director of national security studies at the Washington DC office of the Hudson Institute. He is also adjunct professor at Yale University. Questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line that once good anywhere that you can hear us that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 1 if we shift our focus a little bit and talk about the the role of the military there is in terms of its mission. I think that after the Cold War defense planners in the Pentagon and other people in Washington were starting to talk about a new mission

for the military and for a while it seemed that one of the key. Points was that this feeling that the military should be able to fight two major wars at the same time and the the theoretical enemies where North Korea and Iraq more recently it seems that were backing away from that that idea that we should have to do that and in fact now the more most recent Quadrennial Review has come out and that it seems indeed officially now were saying that well we have to be able to fight two regional wars. We only have to decisively be able to win one of them. And now in light of what happened a month ago they are also saying that one of these conflicts in fact could be a global campaign against terrorism. What do you see as the role for the military in this in this area.

Whether the discussion in the Pentagon about to the to war strategy is somewhat artificial or misleading that the problems of programming forces to have them available are more manageable if you can just assume for planning purposes. I want to be able to do X. The probability that those contingencies you're planning for are actually going to happen may be practically zero. The real question is whether you develop enough capability so that you have for the president the flexibility to handle a range of surprises that may be facing. So it's not so much whether you have a two war strategy or not it's whether you have the capabilities to deal with the uncertainties and the certainties is with regard to threats and problems you're dealing with. I think a major misunderstanding of failure and understanding in the Defense

Department and its leadership under the certainly of the Clinton administration it looks like to some degree is persisting and this administration is that they don't realize that the end of the Cold War did not move. LEMON ate their military responsibilities in Europe in Northeast Asia all during the Cold War. U.S. forces in Germany not only kept the Soviet Union deterred from coming West. But it also made the Germans the British the French and other West Europeans willing to trust each other. If you want to understand that role in the Far East look at the public opinion polls in South Korea. During the 80s and then during the 90s it's remained the same. When South Koreans are asked What is the major military problem facing their countries country in the 80s they did not cite the Soviet Union they did not cite North Korea they cited Japan.

Well why don't they have war with Japan because U.S. troops are in both countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union hasn't changed that. So those forces there are providing a kind of security umbrella that keeps stability and lowers the transaction costs for international business and local business. And I think contributes to the prosperity in that region. I think the exactly the same thing is true in Europe. Now people. Think whoa. No in Europe that's not true they wouldn't fight each other. Well listen let me give you an example. Two or three examples of why that may be too hasty a judgment in 1904 the British foreign secretary was reported to have said after is anger over Germany that recognition of Croatia. It would be better to have the Russians on the Adriatic than the Germans. That does not show a high level of trust. Let's suppose in 1090. If the US had had almost no troops in

Germany because the cold war was essentially over and the CFE Treaty was being signed and all that and the President Bush had tried to push ahead with German reunification Maggie Thatcher was adamantly opposed to it. So was meta wrong. The reason they had both of them had to concede to Bush in the change of NATO's strategy which was essential to get this concession and get this agreement from the from the Russians was that the US just had more military power they didn't happen so they had to do what we said. Now suppose my youth that you'd had her way and we had a divided Germany and we didn't have NATO into East Europe what you see and cos of and Bosnia would be the case from the Baltics down to the Aegean. So U.S. forces there turn out to have a very important role now. Now in addition to that we have these other scenarios like Iraq the one we're involved in

now and there could be two or three others. So the role of the U.S. military in a post Cold War period is still much larger and more demanding than I think most people realize. It seems pretty clear that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld came into office with a mission and the mission being to restructure the American military. How how does the kind of military one needs if you're going to do the kind of war we're thinking about during the Cold War. How is that different from the kind of military that we think we need now. Well let me put this in kind of amusing terms and to some shock or just get their attention. Folks are we have a feather large merry time sir and I and we have cut our ground forces and our tactical air forces dramatic

rate. The army during a war against Iraq was over 900000. Its normal level before that was nearly 800000. Now it's down to four hundred sixty seven. The Air Force and suffered an equivalent cut in air wings. These sorts of things the Navy hasn't had much cut off. The Marines had virtually no cut. So we have a very strong maritime forces which put us in charge of the porpoises and a whale leaving the land of the tyrants for the lack of land forces. So we're very imbalanced in that regard that so I think if you take that as a focal point you can see what needs to be done. We have a huge sunk cost in a blue water navy with no big new blue water navy to sink. And so what do you know that doesn't can. And nuclear submarines don't contribute much to dealing with bin Laden or Saddam or anybody else. I would get rid of all of them but do you need. We certainly were going to not need this big plate for a long time. That's also true

with carrier based air which is hugely more expensive to land land based air and now we can put land based air almost anywhere. The carriers out supporting this operation in Afghanistan their planes can hardly reach Afghanistan. We will have real good tactical air on the ground there. I mean operating intensively over sustained periods and do you get ground bases and I suspect the Uzbekistan and Pakistan bases are going to greatly improve the amount of tactical air we will have available so we need that. Another thing that we are dramatically short of is air lift the technological changes in air lift have been underappreciated by the military. A C-17 can carry an M-1 tank it can pick one up and with route in route air refueling carry it from here to Kuwait nonstop. A 300 of them could move all the Tyson a division and one load out. So

we we haven't purchased that kind of aircraft. Now I think what we really need if I were trying to describe in very simple terms of what the kind of capability that the president the secretary had this right now they'd be much better shape if they had some years ago said we want you army navy air force to be able to project two heavy divisions to Europe in two weeks. You've got to get them over there two weeks. And I want the first one on the ground in five days. If we had that capability that would really sober people up if you saw two heavy U.S. divisions move all the way across the ocean or into Central into the center Persian Gulf region or to Korea. This is something dramatically new another capability we need is a long range forced entry. And I suspect you may see something like this in Afghanistan where essentially you're using a long range

airlift to do some kind of special operation like that. Those two things are capabilities that would usually enhance our ability to deal with with the problems that we face in the world today. There is a third capability that we need and I call it performing the military governance role. I don't see anything wrong with having troops in Kosovo and Bosnia and Macedonia in those places. That's a very good investment. It's much better than pulling out and saying we want to do this and then having it slowly burn into an all Balkans general war having our troops sit on these situations to provide stability has paid us handsomely in Korea Japan Germany and elsewhere during their During the Cold War. And that's going to continue to be the case in places like the Balkans. We can't do that everywhere but the Balkans are Europe and Korea's in an important part of northeast Asia. I don't call it peacekeeping I call it

providing effectively military governance on Bronner which stability may maintained liberal democratic institutions can be rooted. We have less than 20 minutes left in this part of focus. Conversation with General William Odom will continue in a moment I do want to mention as I said at the beginning of the program that General Odom will be here to take part in two events one tomorrow and one Saturday on the U of I campus. The first is on Friday afternoon at 1:30. This is a panel discussion on blocking the impasse on nuclear arms control. And this is sponsored by the program an arms control disarmament and International Security and will take place in the international studies building on the UVA campus. The other is a current affairs forum looking at the relationship between Russia and the United States. This is taking place on Saturday. And the law school auditorium on the U of A campus from 10:00 in the morning to 1:30 in the afternoon. There are a number of sponsors

including the arms control program but also the Russian and East European set or international programs and studies. The European Union Center these events are open to the public. Anybody who was interested in attending should certainly feel welcome. Again our guest this morning William Odom is a senior fellow and director of national security studies at the Washington DC office of the Hudson Institute. He's also adjunct professor at Yale University. He was from 1985 until 1988 director of the National Security Agency. He also served as the Army senior intelligence officer and was a staff member of the National Security Council. This was at the time that Zbigniew Brzezinski was the president's national security advisor. Questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 that's for Champaign-Urbana we do also have a toll free line that once good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a caller to talk with here in champagne. Number one.

Hello hi how are you. I had a comment and a couple questions for the general. I would say first of all I think I think that your side of the overstating the distrust in Europe I think if if they didn't trust each other then why several years ago were they talking about forming a European defense force as things seemed like they needed medo less and less and the U.S. was in a kind of a. I wouldn't say an isolationist direction but it just the Europeans were talking about forming their own defense force so they didn't have to rely so heavily on U.S. backed forces in NATO's. Well I think the level of trust is a lot higher than when you make it seem and not arguing against the ability to project force abroad but I think Europe is. It doesn't need our forces to ensure stability at least Western Europe. My questions would be. 1 Why do you think there hasn't been art. Maybe I'm missing it but there doesn't seem to have been much talk about the possibility of including Russia in NATO's eventually as Neda continues to sort of gobble up for lack of a better word Eastern European and other European

nations. I think the Russians will get increasingly nervous as anyone who is a student of history of the last century realizes they they are very nervous about being isolated. That's the whole reason that they took so much territory after World War Two and built that buffer zone. If we start doing the same thing isn't there a potential for a large amount of nervousness on on the Russian side. So why do you think that. I mean I don't see why we couldn't include them in NATO's I mean it is a collective security alliance and we could we could sort of I mean I know you have the issues around the Balkan countries and some eastern European countries but we had that issue too to a lesser extent with Turkey in Cyprus and Greece. So I think within the structure of the organization we could probably work around most of those problems. And the other question is I'm glad you pointed out the whole two front war thing which I recall was a production of a paper a white paper I think by a Democratic senator rep back in the 90s when I was in grad school I don't remember his name but but it was exactly as he

described it a recommendation for a force structure not so much a strategic doctrine that we had to focus on North Korea or or wherever but in the future do you think we will need so much more ground personnel and say tactical ground strike aircraft that you talk about when if one of the problems we face is terrorism and in which case this is I can't conceive of an operational larger than the one we have going on now and it seems that we have sufficient capabilities to deal with that although they may not be in place through think we need more of those types of people to deal with terrorist incidents around the world. And I'll hang up and listen. Thank you. Well thanks. Go ahead General. First on trust in Europe. I just invite you to look at what has happened at the so-called European Security Defense Initiative. They've talked a lot about it but they put almost no money in it. And the more they've talked about it the lower the greater the greater the decline in the defense budgets has been part of the talk is I think was a reaction against the Clinton's

administration its unwillingness to put troops on the ground in the war against Serbia in 1909. But the issue come up earlier than that and the French lead it. And they would. The French are very ambivalent on the one hand you know they would like to get us out of Europe on the other hand they're scared to death to let Germany run Europe which will be the case. You know Scott Fischer said very clearly and that is my private view but he then add it pointed out that there will be no European defense capability or they're not going ahead with the political integration unless there's a federation. And the reaction to that in Europe was hostile to Fischer the French just absolutely blow the why this is just out of the question. So if you follow the other things that are going on I think you'll put this so-called common Defense and Security Policy into a clear perspective on

Russia. We have a membership action plan requirements to join NATO. If we applied those to Russia and said OK you can come on and if you're a serious student of political development economic transformation I think you'd see straight away that Russia is probably not going to meet those requirements in the next 30 years. So in principle I'm not going to project to Russia making that trying transformation in joining the Western community of liberal democratic nations. I would applaud that welcome that realistically that's not going to happen in my lifetime. I doubt it's going to happen in your lifetime. I know a Russia that came in with exceptions that didn't have to do that would essentially destroy the ATO system and that I'm sure some Russian leaders would like to see happen. And then if you know the

interwar period in Europe we could get back to the have and have a lot of instability and slowly choose up sides and have another big war in Europe. So an early admission of Russia to NATO is a formula for destabilizing Europe not stabilizing. The issue of whether Russia is going to recover and be angry and fight back. I don't think Russia's going to recover. It's a different situation now and that's a longer issue and I can't talk about that in detail right now. Let me go to your final point about whether we need more ground forces. The point is we cut our ground forces hugely. And the answer is yes when one need more. And we cut them too severely in Europe before the war before the after the Cold War. Let me give an example. If we're going to bring these countries effectively in the natal Poland Czech but the Czech Republic Congress maybe a few others if we admit them. Training up their militaries and

integrating in the West is a key factor. And that has a very strong binding political implication So you want to do it knowledge to fight wars. But for its political consequences that requires big U.S. forces there to run these exercises and train up those armies. The partners ship for Peace program which I was not very enthusiastic about I think I have been totally wrong about has turned out to be a bore or a roaring success. But it has greatly overburdened our forces in Europe and our ability to handle all these problems he said 500 troops to Ukraine it turns out there are 10000 in the tale supporting it. And you run 30 40 those exercises a year. Then it keeps our troops out in the field all the time. The ordinary sergeant and captain lieutenant are away from their families nine months of the year in Europe because we're so short. And let me give you an example of why fighting terrorism requires. We're

not going to put a new government effectively into Afghanistan which they seem to be inclined to do without some U.S. troops on the ground. Afghanistan is not the last target in this. You can bet that some other countries are also harboring terrorists. And we're going to turn around to find ourselves having to do something about that. Let's suppose just hypothetically rock Iraq turns out to supporting bin Laden or gives them haven if he runs away from Afghanistan or that we we found out that he was Saddam was actually providing intelligence support. What are we why are we going to take Iraq. It's going to take pic ground forces. We're going to have to take it and this time it can't act like we did in 1991 and say we want to come home. You'll have to govern that country out there for 20 30 years. So that that upcoming acquirements ground forces I don't want to exaggerate them but they're they're not small. And there's a tendency to kind of think that we can sit here in the United States is a great wealthy country

and not have heavy military responsibilities in the world. I call it just the transaction costs we pay for doing business in this world and being very very wealthy. Again as a percentage of our own GDP as a percentage as a as a real level of force it's pretty small. It's in the 3 percent range of the GDP. It's not anywhere like the manpower levels in the Cold War which certainly didn't bankrupt us. So I think if we're trying to candid and fair minded on this it's doable I think most Americans will be quite willing to support it. We have about 10 minutes left a little bit less we have several callers will try to get as many and we can in the time their main's next in law. Minus Chicago and then is lie number four. Well thank you I really appreciate the insight you're offering to us here very very much. But the matter of insiders for funding is pretty short and the world picture. I would like to go back to a comment that President Roosevelt made at the time

of the changeover from Chiang Kai shek and the onset of amount to him presence and he sought out the advice that might shed some intelligence upon the situation then. And who do they have to turn to. There were missionaries with and I'm having trouble hearing you could you. Oh what is the case you're referring to. While I talk about insight and intelligence and referring to President Roosevelt back at the time of the changeover from Chiang Kai shek to the advent of the presence of Mao Tse-Tung. But Roosevelt was dead then. While I have asked and sought the advice of Mr. Casey and in the matter it was left to the knowledge we knew about Marty John and and others and then information we could gather from missionaries shortcoming on our intelligence quotient was very very apparent way back then and even going back to other times right.

We also have the fact in terms of finance how much better off would we have been if we expanded our diplomatic civil and commercial relationships with countries in lieu of the fact that we have spent something like 6 trillion dollars in armaments alone in this country since the Second World War up until the middle of the 1990s. So I can see where we're willing to expend a lot for that. But we should certainly spend more in intelligence and wisdom gathering like you are benefiting us. And certainly we should follow through and developing closer relations in the area of trade and so forth which will be put the fact of the folly and irony of war over in Japan and Germany were our enemies another our allies and cooperative and more harmonious in our relationships. Thank you very much. Any comment you want to make on that I would just make a brief comment that I certainly would support the idea

of having as much insight intelligence as we can analysis. But I reject outright the proposition that you can prevent war by trade. You know the peace movement the British and Great Britain all during the 19th century peddle that line all over and over again. John Stuart Mill was a great proponent of it. It just never been the case and the countries that trade with each other are quite capable of fighting and in fact trade sometimes can even inspire wars. So the question is not one of the other the question is whether you provide security that facilitates trade that doesn't lead to war. And I think that trillions of dollars we've spent have allowed us to make many many times more trillions of dollars and increase growth through international trade. The record of U.S. expanding trade in the postwar period is wholly unprecedented in history. So if you think that you have a program for improving on that by

suspending cutting back to military I'd. I don't find that a credible argument. And it's not a proposition I really want to test. Let's go to another caller here champagne county line one. Hello. Hi well I don't think it was an argument he was making actually because he was very complimentary of your basic Reale politic analysis which I completely take issue with. And then I get you know I apologize to me now you can disagree with me. OK OK. I'm not him I think. I don't think trade is the solution I think maybe if more more comp countries had boycotted the Nazis in the 30s and not participated in the militarization of Japan like the U.S. did maybe something could happen on a longer range but actually you're talking about Russia being kept out of NATO taking 30 years I'm struck me as well. Turkey apparently has already done what it's needed to do which is to solve their Chechnya problem

which is the Kurds by just obliterating them. And I guess the credential that allows us to ask them to help out in Afghanistan which apparently were going ahead with that is the Turkish military is good enough to be part of NATO. I don't know if you see the metal level that I'm arguing I know it's it's outrageous that Turkey can be let in and Russia can I mean we need Turkey actually that's why they're let in and that's why it's nothing to do with their credentials that democracy or representative government. That's what you were saying earlier which you were shocking through the morning actually. I don't think anybody's out there sleeping after you saying that you know that it's really military might it's really what the US does too. What we need to of course Europe basically this is what's that got to do with representative government. Well let me say I understand your perplexity over the

turkey and the Kurds. That's been a difficult issue for us. And we have number relationships in the world where those kind of kind of fictions are serious and strong and they always create tensions between us and those countries and. There's just not a clean cut easy choice there that makes all the moral requirements most of us would like to meet. And so I understand exactly what you're saying there. I think making the parallel between Russia and Turkey as well were drawn and I didn't rule out Russia. But just to write it it would take 30 years for them to get in whereas track Turkey was let in quite a few years ago because as I said it's got nothing to do with Representative he did have a turkey and had representative government elections. You know I look back at what happened. Turkey you had an editor who took it from being a radical Islam rather than being a purely theocratic country under the Ottomans and to a secular society other words

Turkey is the hope for Islamic societies. If they want to have secular governments and at least try to become democratic they they they have a representative government that works for occasioning than a periodic be the military intervene briefly and then they've gone back to it. Would you just totally abandon them and say we're not going encourage that kind of effort just struggle forward at all. No I don't think we should I think the same thing about Russia. I'm just trying to be realistic about it. I'm absolutely supportive of our transition efforts in Russia. The forces are obstructing that internally in Russia are are not just the minorities like the Cheshire just not the problem. It's it's the big bureaucracies of the old Soviet regime that are still around. It's the generals who don't want to give up their positions and cut the forces. It's the recruitment system that brutalizes Russian soldiers and military service.

It's on all sorts of of egg kind of things you could expect that would get in the way of a smooth transition to Russia. I can't make those go away by just sort of changing U.S. policy. And I said at some point I don't have any problem with Russia coming. The question is can they even get to the turkey level in the next 10 or 20 years. I'm I'm going to have to jump in at this point my apologies to the caller and to the other person we have a holding we're just going to have to stop because we've come to the end of the time. Well I want to say to you General Odom thank you very much for giving us some of your time today we appreciate it. Our guest Lieutenant General William Odom. He's a senior fellow and a director of the national of national security studies at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. office is also adjunct professor at Yale University and will be here on the campus of the University of Illinois for a couple of talks this weekend. One Friday afternoon 1:30 at International Studies

on nuclear arms control. And then Saturday morning starting at 10:00 at the law school in their auditorium taking part in a discussion of Russian American relations.