An hour with Robert Gates

from bramlage coliseum and kansas state university k pr presents an hour with robert gates kate mcintyre says the current secretary of defense appointed to that position in december two thousand six prior to becoming defense secretary gates served as president of texas in the university and director of central intelligence secretary gates appearance is sponsored by the landon lecture series and now here is secretary of defense robert gates rubber swan boy speaker neufeld thank you for being here it's also good to see general durbin and soldiers with us from fort riley and at leavenworth unlike extend the special thanks to the rocks and cadets in the audience your willingness to serve in this time of peril as a testament not only to yourself but to a new generation of leaders who will face great challenges in the coming years the pain his boat on a pleasure to be part of the landon lecture series for him that for more than four decades

has hosted some of america's leading intellectuals and statesman considering that fact i first wandered into the invitation was in fact meant for bill gates it is a pleasure to get out of washington dc for a little while i left washington in nineteen ninety four and i was certain and very happy that it was the last time i would ever live there but history and current events have a way of exacting revenge on those who say never and now been back in the district of columbia for close to year which reminds me of an old saying for the first six months you're in washington you wonder how little you never got there for the next six months you wonder how well the rest of you never got there as i look down at my remarks in the material i want to cover this afternoon i'm reminded of the time george bernard shaw told the speaker you had fifteen minutes to speak speaker replied fifteen minutes how can i tell him all i know in fifteen

minutes and shar reebok responded i invited to speak very slowly why warn you in advance that my remarks are more than fifteen minutes a recall has highlighted my case they both the days were just comment that my mother was ninety four attend my swearing in ceremony in washington at night conan o'brien remarked on the fact that i had announced that my ninety four year old mother was there and then he said and then she came up to me and said now go beat the hell out of the kaiser it is good to be back in kansas where my family has lived for more than a century i believe kansas in part to its children three characteristics that have been a source of strength for me over the years rejection of cynicism and enduring optimism and idealism looking around the world

today optimism and idealism would not seem to have much of a place at the table there is no shortage of anxiety about where our nation is headed and what role will be in the twenty first century i can remember clearly other times in my life when such dark sentiments that were prevalent in nineteen fifty seven when i was at wichita high school east the soviet union launched sputnik americans feared being left behind in the space race and even more worrisome the missile race in nineteen sixty eight the first full year i lived in washington was the same year as the tet offensive in vietnam or american troop levels and casualties were at their height across the nation protests and violence in or vietnam and gulf american cities and campuses on my second day of work as a cia analysts the soviet union invaded czechoslovakia and then came the nineteen seventies when it seemed that everything that could go wrong with america did

yet through it all there was another storyline one not then up our apparent during those same years the elements were in place and forces were at work that would eventually lead to victory in the cold war the victory achieved not by any one party or any single president but by a series of decisions choices and institutions that bridge decades generations and administrations from the first brave stand taken by harry truman what the doctrine of containment to the helsinki accords under gerald ford delay elevation of human rights under jimmy carter the muscular words and deeds of ronald reagan and to the masterful endgame diplomacy of george hw bush all contributed to bring an evil empire crashing down not with a bang but with a whimper and virtually without a shot being fired in this great effort institutions as much as

people and policies played a key role many of those key organizations were created sixty years ago this year with the national security act of nineteen forty seven a single act of legislation which established the central intelligence agency the national security council the united states air force and what is now known as the department of defense i mention all this because that legislation and those instruments of national power were designed at the dawn of a new era in international relations for the united states and arab dominated by the cold war or the end of the cold war and the attacks of september eleventh marked the dawn of another new era in international relations an area whose challenges may be unprecedented and complexity and scope an important respects the great struggles of the twentieth century world war one world war two and the cold war were covered over conflicts that had boiled and see them provoke war and

instability for centuries before nineteen fourteen ethnic strife religious wars independence movements and especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century terrorism the first world war was itself sparked by a terrorist assassination motivated by an ethnic group seeking independence these old hatreds and conflicts were buried alive during and after the great war but like monsters in science fiction they have returned from the grave to threaten peace and stability around the world think of the slaughter in the balkans as yugoslavia broke up in the nineteen nineties even now we worry about the implications of kosovo's independence in the next few weeks for europe serbia and russia that cast of characters sounds disturbingly familiar even at a century's remove the law long years of religious warfare in europe between protestant and catholic

christians find an eerie contemporary echoes in the growing sunni versus shia contest for islamic hearts and minds in the middle east the persian gulf and southwest asia we also have forgotten that between abraham lincoln and john f kennedy to american presidents and one presidential candidate were assassinated or attacked by terrorists as were various stars and chris's princes and on a fateful day in june nineteen fourteen and archduke other acts of terrorism more commonplace in europe and russia in the latter part of the nineteenth century so history was not dead at the end of the cold war instead it was reawakening with a vengeance and revived monsters of the past have returned far stronger and more dangerous than before because of modern technology or for communication and for destruction and to a world that is far more closely connect in an interdependent in the world of nineteen forty unfortunately the dangers and challenges of old have been

short joined by new forces of instability and conflict among them a new and more malignant form of global terrorism rooted in extremist in violent jihad as a new manifestations of ethnic tribal and sectarian conflict all over the world the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction fail and failing states states and rich with oil profits and discontent with the current international order and centrifugal forces in other countries that threaten national unity stability and hear an internal peace but also with implications for regional and global security worldwide there are authoritarian regimes facing increasing increasingly restive population seeking political freedom as well as a better standard of living and finally we see both emergent and resurgent great powers who's huge impact is still unclear one of my fire lines is that experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again

four times in the last century the united states has come to an end of the bubble war concluded that the nature of man and the world had changed for the better and turned inward unilaterally disarming and dismantling institutions important to our national security in the process giving ourselves a so called peace dividend four times we chose to forget history isaac lara once wrote howl like a paradise the world would be flourishing enjoy an arrest this man would cheerfully conspire an affection and hopefully contribute each other's content and how like a savage wilderness now it is when light while the slave x and persecuted worry and devour each other he wrote that in the late sixteenth hundreds or those are the words of sir william stephenson author of a man called intrepid and a key figure in the allied victory in world war two he wrote perhaps

a day will dawn when tyrants can no longer threaten the liberty of many people when the function of all nations however vary their ideologies will be to enhance life not controlled it's such a condition as possible it is in a future too far distant to foresee after september eleventh the united states re arm and again strengthen our intelligence capabilities it will be critically important to sustain those capabilities in the future it will be important not to make the same mistake this time but my message today is not about the defense budget where military power mine message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades this country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power problems and challenges abroad in short based on my experience serving seven

presidents as a former director cia and now secretary of defense i am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating that with hard power one of the most important lessons of the war's interact in afghanistan as the military success is not sufficient to win economic development institution building in the rule of law promoting internal reconciliation good governance providing basic services to the people training equipment and equipping indigenous military and police forces strategic communications and more these along with security are essential ingredients for long term success accomplishing all these tasks will be necessary to meet the diverse challenges i can describe so we must urgently devote time energy and ought to how we better

organize ourselves the meeting international challenge of the present and the future the worldview students will inherit and lead i spoke a few moments ago about the landmark national security act of nineteen forty seven and the institutions created to fight the cold war in the light of the challenges that i have just discussed i'd like to pose a question if there were to be a national security act of two thousand and seven looking beyond the crush of day to day headlines what problems must address what capabilities what it creates or improve where should it lead our government as we look to the future what new institutions do we need for this post cold war world as an old cold warrior with a doctorate in history i hope you'll indulge me as i take a step back in time because context is important as many of the goals successes and failures from the cold war are instructive in

considering how we might better focused energies and resources especially the ways in which our nation can influence the rest of the world to help protect our security in advance our interests and values what we consider day to be the key elements and instruments of national power trace their beginnings to the mid nineteen forties the time when the government was digesting lessons learned during world war two looking back people often forget that the war effort though victorious was hampered and hamstrung by divisions and dysfunction franklin roosevelt quipped that tried to get the navy which was its own cabinet department the time to change was a candid hitting a featherbed you punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you're finally exhausted he said and then you find the damn thing just as it was before and harry truman noted that if the army and the navy and fathers hard against the germans as they had fought against each other the war would've been over much sooner this

record drove the thinking behind the night nineteen forty seven national security act which attempted to fix the systemic failures that have plagued the government and military during our work too on reviving capabilities and setting the stage for a struggle against the soviet union that seemed more inevitable with each passing day and the night dean forty seven act acknowledge that we had been overzealous in our desire to shut down capabilities that had been so valuable during the war most of america's intelligence and information assets disappeared as soon as the guns fell silent the office of strategic services the war intelligence agency was acts as was an office of war information in nineteen forty seven oh ss returned as cia but it would be years before we restore communications capabilities by creating the united states information agency there is in many quarters the tendency to see that period as the pinnacle of

wizened governance and savvy statecraft as i wrote a number of years ago looking back it all seems so easy so painless so inevitable it was anything but consider that the creation of the national military establishment in nineteen forty seven the department of defense was meant to improve unity among the military services it didn't a mere two years later the congress had to pass another law because the joint chiefs of staff were anything but joy and there was no chairman to referee the constant disputes at the beginning the secretary of defense had little real power despite an exalted title the law for bad him from having a military staff and limited him to three civilian assistance these days it takes that many to sort my mail wrap the long twilight struggle of the cold war the various parts of the government did not communicate record may very well with each other there were military intelligence and diplomatic failures in korea vietnam iran grenada and many other

places getting the military services to work together with recurring battle that had to be addressed time again and was only really resolve by legislation in nineteen eighty six but despite the problems we realized as we head during world war two that the nature of the conflict required us to develop the capabilities and institutions many of them non military the marshall plan and later the united states agency for international development acknowledge the role of economics in the world cia the role of intelligence in united states information agency the fact that the conflict would play out as much and hearts and minds as it would on any battlefield the key over time was to devote the necessary resources people and money and given nothing's right while maintaining the ability to recover from the states along the way ultimately our interest paid off in the soviet union crumble and the decades long

cold war ended however during the nineteen nineties with the complicity of both the congress and the white house he instruments of america's national power once again were allowed to weather or were abandoned most people are familiar with the cutbacks in the military and intelligence including sweeping reductions in manpower nearly forty percent in the active army thirty percent in cia's clandestine service spa what is not well known and arguably even more short sighted was the dotting of america's ability to engage assistant communicate with other parts of the world the soft power which have been so important the state department froze the hiring a new foreign service officers for a period of time the united states agency for international development saudi state staff cuts its permanent staff dropping from a high of fifteen thousand during vietnam to about three thousand in the nineteen nineties

and united states information agency was abolished as an independent entity split into pieces and many of its capabilities folded into a small corner of the state farm even as we struggle that the world became more unstable turbulent and unpredictable and during the cold warrior years and then came the attacks of the september eleventh two thousand and one one of those rare life changing dates shocks so great that it appears to have shifted the tectonic plates of history at de abruptly ended the faults piece of the nineteen nineties as well as our holiday from history as is often the case after such a momentous events it has taken some years for the contour lines of the international arena to become clear what we do know is that the threats and challenges we will face abroad in the first decades of the twenty first century will expand well beyond the traditional domain of any single government agency the real challenge as we have seen emerge since the end of the cold war from

somalia into the balkans iraq afghanistan and elsewhere make clear we and defense need to change our priorities to be better able to deal with the prevalence of what is called asymmetric warfare the golden army gathering last month it is hard to conceive of any country challenging the united states directly in conventional military terms at least for some years to come indeed history shows is this more irregular forces insurgents or religious terrorists have for centuries found ways to harass and frustrate larger you're right robert larger regular armies and sow chaos we can expect an asymmetric warfare will be the mainstay of the contemporary battlefield for some time these conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature and require the application of all elements of national power successful big lesson matter of imposing ones will and more a function of shaping behavior of france adversaries and most importantly the people in between

arguably the most important military component in the war on terror is not the fighting we do ourselves but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern themselves the standing up and mentoring of indigenous army and police once the province of special forces is now key mission for the military as a whole but these new threats also require government operate as a whole different way to actually unity agility and creativity and they will require considerably more resources devoted to america's nonmilitary instruments of power so what are the capabilities institutions and priorities our nation must collectively address through both the executive and legislative branches as well as the people they serve i would like to start with an observation governments of all stripes seem to have great difficulty summoning the will and the

resources to deal even with threats that are obvious and likely inevitable much less threats that are more complex or over the horizon there is however no inherent flaw in human nature or democratic government that keeps us from preparing for a potential challenges and dangers by taking farsighted actions with long term benefits as individuals we do it all the time the congress did it in nineteen forty seven as a nation today as in nineteen forty seven the key is wise and focused bipartisan leadership and political will i mentioned a moment ago that one of the most important lessons from our experience in a rack afghanistan and elsewhere has been the decisive role reconstruction development and governance plays in any meaningful long term success the department of defense has taken on many of these burdens that might've been assumed by civilian agencies in the past although new resources have permitted the state department to begin taking on a larger

role in recent months still forced by circumstances our brave men and women in uniform have stepped up to the task with field artillery man and tankers building schools and mentoring city council's usually in a language they don't speak they've done an admirable job and as i said before the armed forces will lead to institutionalize and retain these nontraditional capabilities something they are at sea sea cadets in this audience and i anticipate that it is no replacement for the real slam civilian involvement and their expertise a few examples are useful here as microcosm of what our overall government effort should look like one historical attitude contemporary however uncomfortable it may be to raise vietnam all these years later the history of that conflict is instructive after first pursuing a strategy based on conventional military firepower united states shifted course and began a comprehensive

integrated program of pacification civic action and economic development the corps program as it was known involve more than a thousand civilian employees from us aig and other organizations and brought the multiple agencies into a joint effort it had the effect of in the words of general creighton abrams putting all of us on one side and the enemy on the other by the time us troops were pulled out the court's program had helped pacify most of the hamlets in south vietnam the importance of deploying civilian expertise has been re learned the hard way through the effort of staff provincial reconstruction teams first in afghanistan and more recently in iraq the pr t's were designed to bring in civilians experienced in agriculture governance and other aspects of development to work with and alongside the military to improve the lives of the local population a

key tenet of any counterinsurgency effort where they are on the ground even in small numbers we're seeing tangible and often dramatic changes an army brigade commander in baghdad recently said that an embedded dr t was pivotal in getting iraqis in his sector to better manage their affairs we also an increased their effectiveness by joining with organizations and people outside the government untapped resources with tremendous potential for example in afghanistan the military has recently brought in professional anthropologists his advisors york times reported on the work of one of them said i'm frequently accused of militarize in anthropology who were really can't apologize in the military and it is having a very real impact the same story told of a village that had just been cleared of the taliban the anthropologist pointed out to the military officers but there were more widows than

usual and that the sons would feel compelled to take care of them possibly by joining the insurgency where many of the fighters are paid so american officers began a job training program for the widows similarly our land grant universities have provided viable expertise on agricultural and other issues texas a in amistad faculty on the ground in afghanistan in iraq since two thousand and three and kansas state is lending its expertise to help revitalize universities and cobble and maz are e sharif and working to improve the agricultural sector and veterinary care across afghanistan these efforts do not go unnoticed by either afghan citizens or our men and women in uniform i've been heartened by the works of individuals and groups like these but i'm concerned that we needed even more civilians involved in the effort and there are efforts must be better integrated and i remain concerned that we've yet to create any permanent capability or institutions

to rapidly creating deployed these kinds of skills in the future examples i mentioned have by large been created a pothole on the fly in a climate of crisis as a nation we need to figure out how to institutionalize programs and relationship if such as these and we need to find more untapped resources places where it's not necessary not necessarily how much you spend but how you spend the weight institutionalize these capabilities is probably not to recreate a re populate institutions of the passages aig or us i on the other hand just adding more people to existing government departments such as agriculture treasury commerce justice and so on is not a sufficient answer either even if they were to be more deployable overseas new institutions are needed for the twenty first century new organizations with a twenty first century mindset for example public relations was invented in

the united states yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and the culture about freedom and democracy better policies of our goals it is just plain embarrassing that archive is better communicating its message on the internet then america as one former diplomat asked a couple of years ago as one man in a cave managed out communicate the world's greatest communication society speed agility and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing us strategic communications similarly we need to develop a permanent sizable card rate of immediately deployable experts with disparate skills and eight which president bush called for its two thousand seven state of the union address in which the state department is now working on with its initiative to build a civilian response corps both presidents secretary state have asked for a full funding for this initiative

we also need new thinking about how to integrate our government's capabilities in these areas and then how to integrate government capabilities with those in the private sector in universities and other nongovernmental organizations with the capabilities of our allies and friends and with the nascent capabilities of those we are trying to help which brings me to a fundamental point despite the improvements of recent years despite the potential innovative ideas hold for the future sometimes there's no substitute for resources for money funding for non military foreign affairs programs has increased since two thousand and one but remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities consider that this year's budget for the department of defense not counting operations in iraq and afghanistan is nearly half a trillion dollars the total foreign affairs budget request for the state department is

thirty six billion dollars less than what the pentagon spends on health care alone secretary rice has asked for a budget increase for the state requirement an expansion of the foreign service the need is real despite new hires there are only about sixty six hundred professional foreign service officers less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group and personal challenges loom on the horizon by one estimate thirty percent of usa ids foreign service officers are eligible for retirement this year valuable experience that cannot be contracted out overall our current military spending amounts to about four percent of gdp a lonely historian norman well below previous work time periods nonetheless we use this word benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense we lack a similar benchmark for other departments in

institutions what is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security diplomacy strategic communications foreign assistance civic action and economic reconstruction and development secretary rice address this native in a speech at georgetown university nearly two years ago we must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military beyond just our brave soldiers sailors marines and airmen we must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the years to come i'm well aware that having a sitting secretary of defense talent way across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget in other agencies might fit into the category of mine man bites dog or for some back in the pentagon blasphemy it is certainly not an easy sell politically and don't get me wrong i'll be asking for yet more money for defense next

year still i hear all the time from the senior leadership of our armed forces about how important the civilian capabilities are in fact when the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral mike mullen was chief of naval operations he once edie and a part of his budget to the state department in a heartbeat assuming it was spent in the right place after all civilian participation is both necessary to making military operation successful and relieving stress on the men and women of our armed forces who have endured so much these last few years and so a certain flagging bravery and devotion indeed having a robust civilian capabilities available could make it less likely that military force will have to be used in the first place as local problems might be dealt with before they become crisis alas point repeatedly over the last century americans avert their eyes in the belief that remote events elsewhere in the world need not engage this country how could an assassination on austrian

archduke an unknown bosnia herzegovina affect us or the un that annexation of a little patch of ground calls today in land or a french defeat at a place called the indian food or the return of an obscure cleric to tear wrong or the radicalization of an arabic construction tycoons son what seems to work best in world affairs historian donald kagan wrote in his book on the origins of war is the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace and the preponderance of power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose in an address at harvard in nineteen forty three winston churchill set the price of greatness is responsibility the people of the united states cannot escape a world responsibility and in a speech at princeton in nineteen forty seven secretary state and retired army general george marshall told the students the development of a sense of responsibility for world order and

security in the development of a sense of over well ming importance of this country's x and failures to act in relation to world order and security these in my opinion are great mosques for your generation our country has now for many decades taken upon itself great burdens and great responsibilities all in an effort to defeat despotism in its many forms or preserve the peace so that other nations and other people's to pursue their dreams for many decades the tender shoots a freedom all around the world have been nourished with american blood day across the globe there are more people than ever are seeking economic and political freedom seeking help even as oppressive regimes and mass murderers sow chaos in their midst seeking always to shake free of the bonds of tyranny for all those brave men and women struggling for a better life

there is and must be no stronger ally or advocate the united states america let us never forget that our nation remains a beacon of light for those in dark places and that our responsibilities to the world of freedom the liberty to the oppressed everywhere are not a burden on the people or the soul of this nation they are rather a blessing how close with a message for students in the audience the messages from theodore roosevelt whose words ring as true today as when he delivered them in nineteen oh one he said as a keen eyed we gaze into the coming years duties new level rise thick and fast to confront us from within and from without the united states should face these duties with a sober appreciation alike of their importance another difficulty but there is also every reason for facing them with high hearted resolution and eager and confident face in our capacity to do them a right

he continued a great work lies ready to the hand of this generation it should count itself happy indeed the two it has given the privilege of doing such a work to the young future leaders of america here a kansas state today i say come do the great work that lies ready to the hand of your generation thank you you're listening to sweet five robert gates secretary of defense well ladies and gentleman i think you can see with his land and present asian here today with a keen sense of history as why his readers such an important cabinet member this administration and why he is so popular with people

on both sides of the aisle in both the house representatives in the us as you can see that with his present issue here this afternoon so ladies and we're going to proceed with some questions and answers so mr secretary ready ok so let's start over here the deepest experimenting as brian cox virginia and political science here to stay calm in your lecture you talk about the importance of diplomacy and diplomatic measures in our foreign policy and how institutions need to be created to assist with those major that germany was escorted out as is sure i would agree with you but i am my questions i had was how can such support for diplomacy and support for those diplomatic institutions really succeed when we don't have a president who is willing to speak with the national leaders of countries that are having issues with such as iran and north korea why although my views say you know bill

line where you stand depends on where you set i did am but i think i can describe for you for example my view on on contacts with iran in nineteen eighty and two thousand and four i co chaired with dr zbigniew brzezinski a council on foreign relations report on the attack on the us relationship with iran and what we should do and one of our conclusions was that the united states should reach out to the iranian government can and began a dialogue two things have changed since that time the first of all the presidency of iran has changed and we've gone from a reformer president carter me to president mark medina john who has stated quite explicitly that he wants to destroy israel he has been quite explicit that iran is going to defy the un security council resolutions calling on them

to submit their nuclear program for inspections and to not enrich uranium so iranian policies that have really changed i think in some significant ways since two thousand and four i would tell you i have been engaged in the search for the illusive iranian moderates since nineteen seventy nine the same dr brzezinski and i were attending the twenty fifth anniversary of the algerian revolution in them algiers and the iranian president the new iranian revolutionary president the prime minister rather than the foreign minister and defense minister wanted to meet with urgency and so we met and agencies that were ready to accept a revolution were ready to sell you the arms we had contracted the silva shaw we are prepared to move forward in this relationship they're only talking

point was give us the show finally at the end of the two hours brzezinski said to give you what you asked would be incompatible with our national honor two days later the iranians seized our embassy and within two weeks all three of those men were out of power and one of them was in jail all i can say is we do have a dialogue going with the iranians i think to meet with them at a presidential level is not appropriate we and the administration has made clear they are prepared to have a broader dialogue with the iranians if they make commitments to stop enriching most of the countries of the world and a unanimous security council has called upon iran to stop and i think that if the iranian what what our policies are about are not changing the iranian regime but getting the iranian regime to change its policies in behavior i think that if we had

some attractive prospect of doing that with a meeting at a high level it would be worth considering but under present circumstances i don't think those conditions prevail we're here today is my name is on canadian a senior management your case they are questions about the so called enhanced interrogation methods that get a lot of headlines nowadays one person's picked up by our government and interrogated them that ever been trying to fit never been convicted and they've never been sentenced because of any crime it's such a person were to be picked up and interrogated and because the interrogation methods were wrong or the nature of the methods and if that person or to die at the hands of our government would you consider that murder well i think that requires nate knowledge of the law and the knowledge of and hypothetical knowledge of a hypothetical situation that i'm not prepared

to to respond to what i can tell you is something that i feel very strongly about and that is that the army field manual controls what the military does in terms of interrogations the rules are quite explicit and of those rule in terms of what techniques can be used and an if those rules are broken by an interrogator then it has it's my impression that that interrogator would be subject to investigation and legal proceedings that covers all of the military and thomas summers i'm a senior in high school first like to thank you for coming against a university particularly insightful the question is how can the united states increase our power when we are so between the old and the united nations to the middle east is also our enemies to really be a lawful in areas like the middle east and then i

suddenly lets at this is able to increase our home and we would become overly reliant on soft power and turning the perceived as weak in the middle east well obviously requires balance i would i would say to you why basically lost track at this point that in eleven months i've been in this job i think i've probably visited forty or forty five countries i didn't run into a single one that does not want to work with the united states and does not want a better relationship with the united states that includes recent visit both russia and china i think that that there are many opportunities there for a second and you never can tell what's happening for one thing we now have a french president and having to frankly review the forty years of biases when dealing with the french

and with the with the new administration in paris and they are amazingly the president new president is amazingly pro american and is looking for ways to cooperate with us the german government that is angela merkel is very different from the government of her predecessor so i think that there is a sense out there that the people are that there is a lot of anti americanism i think that we've gone through a period of that probably but right now it seems to me most governments are eager to work with us and i think the facts you look at the number of arab countries that have come to the annapolis conference including syria i think it indicates the continuing an enduring strength of all of our diplomacy so i think that and in in the middle east it's mainly i think people are worried that we will be both too weak and and that we will be too strong it

sort of like europeans during periods of the cold war and didn't want our troops there but didn't want our troops to go home either so there is some some ambivalence but i think there's plenty for us to work with her cabinet secretary gates welcome back of the camper i'm teri covington and grabs him gradually to speak of engineering and worked in construction in the local community so my friends and i have served portions of the confirmation hearings and we thought that a question that senator byrd was forgiveness you without a thought provoking when he has to use for attacks on rain and when he revived and you would consider that a last resort and that you refer to come see as a first choice in dealing with iran so my friends and i'm wondering what you might've done in the pursuit of this diplomatically to

travel in iran and perhaps one of the last tuition during your story if iran does not attack united states one of its allies and if the diocese congress does not declare war and yet president bush or the sago in order preemptive strike on iran would your true faith and allegiance be to the commander in chief or did the constitution well first of all my allegiances will always be the constitution and that has been true under seven presence i think that we do as i indicated and the answer to an earlier question we are engaged in diplomacy with iran more importantly we are engaged in diplomacy with a number of countries around the world and trying to secure their support for economic sanctions to bring pressure on the iranian government to resolve this

nuclear problem in iran in a peaceful way and my answer you would be the same answer that i gave my confirmation hearing all options have to be on the table i believe military action is the last resort but i think the secretary gates that my name is made of three some retired social worker here in manhattan over sixty thousand american soldiers have been wounded in iraqi and thirty percent of those have mental health disorders and a lot of those are irreparable brain damage and so the total cost of taking care of our soldiers when they come home is estimated six hundred and sixty billion dollars sought my question is happily continue this human tragedy in the economic cost our nation and when will we bring our troops home well first of all the numbers of wounded are tragic if the number rose won it would be tragic but the number one didn't interact at this point is about thirty thousand not sixty

thousand the fact is we are beginning to bring troops home and the first humans not to be replaced came out in september within a few days of the president's speech i'm going to fort hood and later this afternoon and one of the brigades and brigade combat teams from fort hood is coming home next month in december and general petraeus says laid out a proposed timetable of having a brigade combat team come out about once every forty five days for the first time through july which would bring us down by five combat brigades brigade combat teams my hope is that the circumstances will permit continuing those drawdowns after july and i think what is important if

you talk to the soldiers and they want to come home but they also don't want their sacrifices and their efforts to have been in vain and they also don't want their sons to have to go back in ten years and we've had some remarkable progress over the last several months and they add that progress is what is enabling us to begin bringing down our troops and i think we just only pray that we're able to continue that ok we're more questions welcome to kansas mr gates my name is mel cooler i'm a proud alumni at kansas state university and a member of the manhattan community my question has to do with the troops i myself i'm a big supporter of the american troops cbs just i mean he's just released the results of a study on the number of american veterans who take their own lives these veteran suicide statistics are from forty five states

and cover the year's nineteen ninety five to two thousand and five in two thousand and five along those forty five in those forty five states there was a total of six thousand two hundred and fifty six that and suicides and just that one year moreover they found that the highest rate of suicides were among soldiers twenty to twenty four years of age obviously those would be the veterans of fighting in iraq and afghanistan my question is as secretary of defense what we do to reduce the number of suicides an american soldiers fighting iraqi are soldiers who fought in past wars and also would you consider the suicide epidemic among veterans another good reason to get all us troops out of iraq by the end of next year well first i think it's important to note that the cbs analysis hasn't been validated by anybody

and it's apparently analysis they get on their own not buying an independent group that said the suicides are soldiers there's a real concern to us and i can tell you that every commander every unit leader is looking at ways to see if they can identify soldiers who are exhibiting symptoms of the psychological distress there is a very intensive effort underway training has taken place route the army in terms of recognizing post traumatic stress syndrome to be able to try and identify soldiers who have these problems the truth of the matter is though these these kinds of things sadly know when you're fighting a war stand when you're putting the soldiers that we have been as brave and dedicated as they are under the stress they're under this is going to be a problem and it is one that we're looking at closely it is one of the measures that

we look at in terms of the health of the army as well as divorce rates disciplinary problems retention recruitment numbers and so on her so what i can tell you is that it in along with these other measures are things that we're monitoring very very closely heiman is any brown like i'm a sophomore in economics of the question about are our responsibility both lead diplomatically and militarily in conflicts in other areas of the world we seem to be focusing on the middle east but they're conflicts over their equally tragic in places like africa africa seen the overlooked is that arm is our responsibility based more on the threat level of the country or is it based on sort of on the human rights violations cause it seems like there's an equal amount of emphasis on both in

iraq well this is this has been an inner resting they frankly that has gone especially since the end of the cold war and that is do we employ all the forms of our national power only when our national interests are at risk or do we do it in other circumstances when there are when they're our own humanitarian and tragedies or aura genocide such as we end this debate was actually sparked principally during the quantum illustration because of the genocide in rwanda and and the failure of the international community to act and it in it it also involves this debate in this country and a legitimate debate it seems to me over whether we act to defend our interests and the humanitarian things

or whether we become the world policeman and insane estimate one of the reasons frankly what i thought i would have been against them in the first bush administration actually was against and deploying us forces to the balkans that was that it seemed to me that that was in the europeans backyard and if it were a real security concern than the europeans on to take care of that problem the europeans are very eager to add to try and get and they are trying to send their soldiers high end to the sudan that to help with the dar for situation but the sudanese government won't let them in and nobody for bear go to war i with the sudanese government to gain access to the rebels themselves are are divided so some of these are very complex situations right now we have two navy ships that are in bangladesh are offering assistance that we have offered a great deal of humanitarian assistance over the years part of the problem in terms of how we

promote human rights is that as we learned during the carter administration if you apply sanctions to those who violate human rights then the people you end up hurting our principal a small countries who are often your allies because those are the ones you have leverage over and we found ourselves in a very awkward position that at that time two of the biggest human rights violators in the world the soviet union and china were beyond their reach of any of our sanctions so how do you balance how you use the tools american foreign policy american national power in terms of promoting human rights at the same time as you as you protect our national interest i gave a speech a democracy forum in williamsburg a couple of months ago in which i talk about these competing interests and american history from the very beginning when united states turned aside assistance to the french revolutionaries because george washington didn't want the united

states to get involved in it was if they had we can we join in an alliance or we basically signed a peace treaty with the british and the french had helped us fight to get our independence we joined with the brits against the french revolutionaries so from the very beginning it's about a complicated decision on the part of our governments and i would tell you that every president that i've worked for as wade them differently and come down in different places on when and how to act and promotion of human rights thank you all very much by robert gates the secretary of defense recorded november twenty six two thousand seven bramlage coliseum it was a presentation of the landon lecture series at kansas state university the recording engineer was larry jackson i'm j mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas

next time on k pr presents the friends of darkness conservative political columnist robert novak on fifty years reporting in washington navy yard presents robert novak eight o'clock sunday night the kansas public radio