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THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2017

AROUND THE WORLD IN 60 MINUTES

Aspen, Colorado

St. Regis Hotel Ballroom

Thursday, June 29, 2017

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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

JOHN DICKERSON

Political Director and Anchor

Face the Nation, CBS News

DAVID PETRAEUS

Partner, KKR; Chairman, KKR Global Institute

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AROUND THE WORLD IN 60 MINUTES

(8:30 p.m.)

MS. FRANKLIN: Good evening, everyone. I am

going to get started. Wow this is a great crowd, thank

you all so much for being here. My name is Libby

Franklin, I work with the Aspen Institute in our

Washington D.C. office. And I can say after a week out

here that this is the better end of the deal for sure.

Anyway, I'm just here to welcome you on behalf

of the Institute and The Atlantic. Whether you've been

coming to the Festival and supporting the Festival for

years, or maybe this is your first evening with us, we're

really pleased to have you here for what we think is going

to be a really -- really important discussion.

We're going to take a world tour of sorts, of

the most vexing security challenges facing the US. And

we've got two of the very best here to help us think it

all through and they can tell us what we should lay awake

tonight thinking about. And they really don't need much

of an introduction.

SPEAKER: No sleeping.

MS. FRANKLIN: Okay, no sleeping. We've got

General David Petraeus here with us who, as you all know,

was director of the CIA and held many top military posts

in the US Military for over 37 years. He's now a partner

in the investment firm, KKR. And joining him is John

Dickerson, political director of CBS News, I think we all

know him best as anchor of Face the Nation.

I think that's all I have to say so I am going

to let these guys take over and again, please help me give

them a warm welcome.

(Applause)

MR. DICKERSON: Welcome everyone, this is a

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thrill for me not only to be here with General Petraeus

but to be able to speak to him in more than a seven minute

time period. So we've got a whole hour, it is a big world

and there are a lot of places that make people nervous and

that are complicated in it.

But I want to start, General just with this

first very broad question. What does the world look like

to you right now from the US perspective?

MR. PETRAEUS: Well first of all, look thanks

it's a privilege to be on stage with you, we've done this

before, it's always fun, this is the extended version of

Face the Nation obviously. And thanks to all of you for

being here this evening, you do, do us really a great

honor. Look, I think the world looks to us as the most

complex array of challenges and threats and issues that

we've seen since the end of the Cold War.

And you know you're all familiar with the

challenges of, say the Islamist extremists of al Qaeda of

the Islamic State. You're familiar with the revisionist

powers, if you will, the countries in the world that

aren't satisfied with the status quo; Iran and Russia,

arguably and North Korea, revolutionary powers in that

regard; China, both our number one trading partner and a

strategic competitor in the most important relationship in

the world.

There are emerging cyber threats that I think

get more and more diabolically difficult all the time.

And these are not just the criminal threats and the nation

state threats, which we've seen in various forms. What

I'm worried about there is the threat of extremists

getting the cyber equivalent of a weapon of mass

destruction. And they are people who are willing to blow

themselves up to take us with them; what keeps them from

hitting the send key? We can deter, I think, some of the

other actors in cyberspace.

I think there are a populist pressures out there

thankfully, they were turned back in France, they were

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turned back in The Netherlands; they were not, obviously,

in the UK, with Brexit, arguably the election of our own

President was this -- a big manifestation of domestic

populism. There are concerns with some other major

countries as they face elections, I think Germany will be

okay; Italy though, does -- it does matter, it's a big

economy in the EU and we'll see how that goes.

And then, you know, we have a Washington D.C.,

which by rights with one party in charge should be able to

come to grips of some of the issues that -- in a course

that I taught for three and a half years at the City

University of New York called the North American Decades,

we identified what were called policy headwinds, and

legislative headwinds.

These were issues that were preventing us from

capitalizing fully on the extraordinary opportunities that

our country has, leading the world in the in the IT

revolution, the energy revolution, in the life sciences,

in the manufacturing, or among the leaders in each of

those. So it's really quite a bright prospect for us.

But because of some of these headwinds we weren't able to

fully capitalize on those opportunities. I'm talking

about issues like comprehensive immigration reform, tax

reform, getting the debt to GDP ratio going -- continuing

to go down rather than starting up here and in another

year or so a whole variety of different issues that need

to be addressed.

And so at the end of the day again you see this

extraordinarily complex array of threats, it may not be

the most dangerous period in post World War II history,

certainly the Cold War had some episodes that were very,

very close to the edge of actual nuclear exchanges. But

it is very, very challenging.

MR. DICKERSON: Let me ask you -- and we're

going to go through all of those complex challenges but

give me your sense of this administration and its capacity

without -- you know, I'll get specific on those individual

places -- but the general capacity, what's your

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assessment, what gives you pause, what's getting better,

what's getting worse.

MR. PETRAEUS: Sure. Well, I'm going to focus

obviously on the foreign policy, the national security

policy and I'm happy to leave the domestic policy issues

to others. I -- you know, this may stun a few of you but

you know the military is famous for giving the bottom line

up front and my bottom line up front to you would be that

the policy that is emerging is more continuity than it is

change.

And in a number of ways the continuity, I

actually like the changes to the continuity if you will.

Now, there are some exceptions to that and I'll tick them

off, climate would be one that is clearly a change. You

can argue it's more symbolic it doesn't happen till 2020

we'll meet our guides -- or objectives anyway because of

states, municipalities and -- but I think that's a

significant symbolic change. And it gets at something

I'll talk about in a second.

The second would be immigration, we're really

not sure where we're going yet with that. We do need

comprehensive immigration reform, we need more smart

people and we may need more unskilled workers. And we've

got to come to grips with how to do that, and to do it

safely. And certainly the Muslim ban, which is -- springs

from the reservations about what's happening with

immigration and refugees and so forth, I guess,

understandable but again I'm not sure what the -- the

message it sends is totally helpful.

And then the final issue is trade. President

Trump, as he said he would during the campaign, has left

the Trans-Pacific Partnership, something I thought I

argued was very, very important, not just in terms of

actually adding maybe a half a point to GDP growth, which

is not insignificant for the world's largest economy but

more important in terms of geostrategic respects and also

bringing countries like Vietnam into the fold rather than

leaving them out there to be perhaps plucked off by China

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with their alternative trade opportunity that they're

pursuing.

And then there is this seeming ambivalence at

times and obviously, you know, this is not an

administration that has had the most stellar message

discipline, shall we say.

(Laughter)

MR. DICKERSON: What's the military term for

euphemisms?

(Laughter)

MR. PETRAEUS: So and the reason I mention this

is because what you will find me doing repeatedly tonight

with John is asking you to come back and look at follow

the money, follow the troops, follow the actual real

policies on the ground. And if you do that, I think, we

actually the policies are of a US continuing to lead the

world but we've sort of gotten there with a lot of bumps

and so forth. And I'll walk you through the little bit of

that.

But I am concerned, I do believe that the rules

based liberal international order that's described, which

came into being in the wake of World War II, we helped

midwife it with the other victors of World War II. It

established financial institutions, multilateral

organizations, norms, principles and so forth. And this

all was brought into being because we've just been through

50 years that had two horrible world wars and the worst

economic depression in history. And it's done a

reasonably good job, not without shortcomings, the

institutions have flaws, the organizations have

weaknesses. But again, I think, by and large has done a

reasonably good job, and is worth sustaining.

And again let's not forget we brought it into

being because it does serve our national interests but we

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also do have the national interests of others, at least in

the forefront of our mind, and we believe that you can do

best by all working together. So that is something that I

think -- I hope will see emerge in brighter relief over

time.

But if you now look at the different issues,

let's take China. Of course, the President famously took

a phone call from the President of Taiwan, I mean it

hadn't been done in 48 years or so; tweeted about it

afterwards, which added a little bit of insult to injury.

Was sort of questioning China of a currency manipulator et

cetera, et cetera, et cetera ultimately embraces the one

China policy, calls President Xi, invites him to Mar-a-

Lago has the summit, fortuitously, during the summit, of

course, gives orders to launch cruise missiles into Syria,

you know, you can't make that stuff.

And by the way one of the areas of change is

that we had Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his

citizens and we did something about it, and we did it

within 36 hours and we didn't even have a red line

established formally. And you know the history of the red

line before which was a blow to our credibility around the

world when we did not act on it.

So China ultimately, again there's a dialog now

we just had the first of the four working groups that were

established, this is the one of Mattis, Secretary of

Defense Mattis, Secretary of State Tillerson, and their

two counterparts addressing issues like North Korea and so

forth.

If you look at Israel, Bibi Netanyahu is sitting

there in the White House, President says one state two

states, you know whatever they want. Ambassador Nikki

Haley, the next morning is out, you know, affirming that

the United States still embraces the Two State Policy that

is our policy going forward and you've seen this pursued

by the special envoy together with the President's son in

law.

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You can just keep working your way through each

of these frankly and in many cases we may have a

circuitous route to it, we may again, you know, you see

the policy and there maybe a discordant tweet or something

like that, keep focused on the policies, except when the

tweets actually do announce policy. And one well -- when

he said, will not happen, about the North Korean nuclear

program, I think that's where you -- that is policy.

MR. DICKERSON: Right.

MR. PETRAEUS: And so -- but I'm relatively

heartened, I think the team is terrific.

MR. DICKERSON: Tell me --

MR. PETRAEUS: And by the way the -- you know, a

lot of people make a lot of it, Trump and his generals,

look these generals are from a generation that know that

every problem out there is not a nail, and every solution

can't be a bigger hammer. I was mentioning to John

backstage, when we had the surge, this -- the campaign

plan for the surge, there wasn't an embassy plan and a

military plan. Ambassador Crocker and I merged the two of

them and we had a civil military counterinsurgency

campaign plan.

This generation -- every single person, Mattis

lived through that, obviously a great shipmate, he helped

write the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, the chairman of

the Joint Chiefs was on the ground, then ultimately was a

commander in Afghanistan, he was a Marine three star for

me, the commander in Iraq was a brigade commander during

the surge, the commander in Afghanistan was a two star ops

officer during that surge. Again, these are individuals

that know that that the military cannot solve every

problem at all. And desperately want --

I remember, you know, there's a -- when I went

to see President Bush, before going to the surge, having

been confirmed, and I thought I would come in and I'd get

some, you know, great wisdom and all this stuff. And then

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I got some guidance. But the truth is in the Oval Office

it's often about the photo op and this was. And so he

said, "Well we're doubling down, General." And I said,

Mr. President your military is going all in and we need

the rest of government to go all in with this.

So again, these generals understand what that

means and the team I think is terrific. McMaster ran four

civil military strategic reviews for me alone just in the

surge, and then at Central Command, and then went with me

to Afghanistan, I mean it's publicly known the only

promotion board I ever sat on my life, and believe it or

not came back from the surge to be the president of a

board, it happened to be the one star board that picked

him for brigadier general. That was not a mistake or a

coincidence. And Stan McChrystal was JSOC commander that

-- you know the ultimate killing machine taskforce came

back.

And so again these are terrific people. The

deputy national security adviser doesn't get much

attention, hugely important because he runs the deputies

committee. Many of the policies don't have to go to the

principals, much less to an actual National Security

Council meeting chaired by the President if they can be

resolved there. This is a guy named Ricky Waddell, very

high in his class at West Point maybe first Rhodes

Scholar, Ph.D. from Columbia University, highly successful

businessman, and a two star general in the Reserves, and

served multiple tours, of course, in Iraq and in

Afghanistan. Real, real talent there.

Yes, a lot of the foreign policy elite that you

know was busy signing letters last year this time and all

through the fall are essentially ineligible and in many

ways that's a shame. And especially for the State

Department because that, you know, one area there is a

change is we just haven't populated that. And we see it

now with this crisis in the Middle East, who can Rex

Tillerson send out to the Middle East to deal with this

issue? I don't know.

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MR. DICKERSON: Let me -- I had so many

questions cascading out of that.

MR. PETRAEUS: Sure.

MR. DICKERSON: Let me just -- on the generals

though, I want to just -- having spent some time with your

Counterinsurgency Manual and your -- and the surge and --

what it strikes me is, all those generals who were -- who

implement that I mean, McMaster, Mattis --

MR. PETRAEUS: Yes.

MR. DICKERSON: What always interested me was

the fierce use of force when necessary but also there was

a significant element of restraint.

MR. PETRAEUS: Absolutely.

MR. DICKERSON: And of risk taking.

MR. PETRAEUS: Absolutely.

MR. DICKERSON: Taking off the armor and walking

down the street in order to create those bonds. And I

think that just -- can you give a little bit more on that.

MR. PETRAEUS: Sure.

MR. DICKERSON: Because when people hear about

the generals, there is this view of kind of -- you know,

it is a constant, always military thing but all of the

generals, you're talking about, were educated in your --

and you as well --

MR. PETRAEUS: We lived this. And you know, in

the counterinsurgency guidance that I published and I do

it -- republish it about every month -- it was always open

on my laptop, and I'd tinker away at it from time to time

every now and then hit the send key. One of them was,

walk -- and by the way they're all admonitions. So you

know, secure the people, promote reconciliation. Promote

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initiatives, walk. And it was get out of your Humvee, you

cannot communicate and engage the people through ballistic

glass of an armored vehicle, and take off your sunglasses.

So again there was a huge consciousness about that and

there was a huge awareness.

In the counterinsurgency manual we had what were

called counterinsurgency paradoxes, it said sometimes the

best weapons in counterinsurgency don't shoot. By the way

originally they came to me and said the best weapons in

counterinsurgency don't shoot, and I took it to the guys

and I said, "You've obviously never been shot at."

(Laughter)

MR. PETRAEUS: Because when you are being shot

at, the best weapons really do shoot. Or you know or

another one was, that originally, it was, money is the

best ammunition. I said again, "When were you last shot

at?" I mean try throwing money at the enemy. Money is a

great ammunition once you get a certain situation going.

So I think they're very, very nuanced on this. And again

McMaster runs a great study strategy review policy process

and I think that's ongoing.

And we see again in Iraq, yes certainly the

previous administration gets credit for getting the

initial concept going, you can argue it took too long, and

I would in time matter because the sooner you can show the

Islamic State is a loser, is the sooner they're less

effective in cyberspace and in the Internet in recruiting

and all the rest of that. But they're building on this

and pushing down the authority to increase troop levels a

little bit here and there, I think there's enormous wisdom

in that.

It was very frustrating to see the micro-

management and it got more during the course of the

previous administration. I'll give you one quick

anecdote, in Afghanistan there was a troop camp

established, I think it's 84 or 8800, you see different

numbers. That's down from 100,000 Americans by the way.

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So there was an aviation brigade, went over and the

commander, Mick Nicholson, again great guy, who's the ops

chief, when I was there, needed the additional helicopter.

So they sent them over but then they said but

you know you can't bring everybody in that brigade because

you're going to run up against a troop cap. So you've got

to bring the pilots, you got to bring the crew chiefs. So

you leave behind your maintenance workers. Now by the way

you're flying at a tempo, an operational tempo of probably

four to five times what you do in peacetime. So you're

just flying the blades off the helicopters, you

desperately need all the maintenance people you can get

and you had to leave them behind because they couldn't fit

under the troop cap.

Not only does this fracture unit integrity, the

readiness because they're not getting to do what they

normally should be doing, and their morale is, you know

their dog tags are dangling in the dirt as we say. You

then have to hire hugely expensive civilian contractors,

you have no idea what it costs just to find the people,

and then to convince them to go spend six months at Bagram

air base in the middle of nowhere, in Afghanistan and get

the occasional incoming rocket or mortar round.

So I -- a lot of this is good, don't get me

wrong, and by the way you all -- I hope you remember, I am

truly nonpolitical, I served in Senate confirmed positions

twice for President Obama and multiple times for President

Bush. And you know I'm not out to shill for anyone or to

criticize anyone. I'm just trying to objectively assess

what's happening on the ground, follow the money, follow

the troops, follow them into the Baltic states, where they

are now, for the first time, NATO, now an agreement that

was made on President Obama's watch, wisely. But has been

followed through, actually reinforced a bit, there will

even be more money in the budget this year.

Now Congress of course influences some of this

in a good way, they're proposing Russia sanctions for

example that I think would be good. So this is evolving,

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you know, in a way that is, I think, more heartening

especially if you remember some of the campaign promises

and the fears of those who were criticizing at the time.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah and so I want to get to

Russia and ISIS and -- but just staying for a moment in

Washington, you've got one of the concerns that people

have, and they had during the campaign was, the

impulsiveness of the President, you mentioned the tweets.

What allayed people's fears was that he would

have good people around him, I mean you've just talked

about this pretty strong team that he's got around him.

But you've also been in the room when these kinds of

decisions are made. Give us a sense of your -- does that

theory work, I mean at the end of the day it's a

President, by himself making a decision no matter who's

around him. So are people right to think, well his

decision can be shaped, when you've got a President who's

who is that impulsive?

MR. PETRAEUS: There's no question that it can

be shaped because we have seen it play out with again a

number of these decisions. I think the most obvious one

is again the strikes against Bashar al-Assad which were

taken quite quickly, decisively, were not out of

proportion too and so forth. And quite thoughtful in how

they went about it. You know now, let's not kill

Russians, we don't want to start World War III just yet.

But let's certainly take out a number of the aircraft that

were engaged in this, which they did.

And it does matter who's around him in the room

and that is where you do see a tug of war that is ongoing

and people have characterized this as MMT, McMaster,

Mattis, Tillerson. And then on the other side usually

they will pick Bannon and Steve Miller and a couple of

others.

And I think you saw them win, the latter one,

actually with the speech that was delivered at NATO

headquarters. And ironically, this is the unveiling of

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the 9/11 Memorial at the new NATO headquarters in

Brussels, the first time they actually had a summit there.

The only time that the Article 5 collective self-defense

agreement has ever actually been announced and implemented

was in the wake of the 9/11 attack. So it was for us.

And we did not take that occasion to affirm our commitment

to the Article 5 collective self-defense, even though it

was in the official speech that had been prepared.

Climate, the decision to leave climate, again I

think, Tillerson actually said it would've been his

decision, that would not have been his advice. On that

one, I think, you have a -- you do have a play here.

Obviously, a President who realizes he's got to make good

on some of his campaign promises. And to be fair on NATO

later it did come out that the Article 5 he personally

said that after Nikki Haley did as well.

By the way Ambassador Nikki Haley, I have been

hugely impressed by. As you know, a Southern governor,

not -- I wouldn't have thought would step right on the

stage as she has, very decisively, very effectively, very

eloquently. And in a number of cases has been the one who

is, you know, there's always in any administration, heck,

I had spokesmen that would go out after I fumbled

something and say what the general meant to say was this.

And there has been a bit of that, obviously,

with this administration. And she was the one who went

out after the One State Two State, she went out the next

day and announced that the Two State solution is still our

policy.

MR. DICKERSON: On the One State Two State, not

specifically with Israel but on the -- as you know, if

there is uncertainty, let's stay with -- let's stick with

NATO, if there is uncertainty in the US commitment to

NATO, other countries start behaving different ways.

Either Russia feels that it has an opportunity to be more

aggressive or NATO countries in the -- you know, right on

that border, start to think, well we need to start

thinking about our defense differently. We need to think

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about our alliances differently.

So in that sense the ambiguity or the lack of

re-upping the commitment on Article 5 does have a cost.

Or do you -- or would you argue that basically --

MR. PETRAEUS: I would say there is nothing

ambiguous about the battle groups that have been added in

each of the three Baltic states and an armored brigade

from the United States in Poland with another battle

group. And we have our forces I think spread throughout

each of those, there's a lead nation for each one, I think

it's Germany, UK, Canada and the US. That speaks volumes.

MR. DICKERSON: Right.

MR. PETRAEUS: By the way there's some pretty

extraordinary, you know -- that there's nothing like boots

on the ground to show your commitment. And I think it

would be very foolhardy for Russia to try something now

with that particular situation. Yes there are scenarios

with little green men and all this stuff that could be

very challenging. But that is a very significant

statement.

I personally think we should have given lethal

assistance to the Ukrainians long ago. It was actually

authorized by the Senate Armed Services Committee and

appropriated by the Appropriations Committee for shoulder

launched anti-tank guided missiles. These are not super

long range, you're not going to -- these are not

offensive. I mean you're not going to run to Moscow with

these things on your shoulder, I can assure you. But it

will make the separatists pay a very heavy price if they

use these advanced tanks that Russia has provided to them.

By the way Russia has dialed it back up in the

last 48 hours, there are two very important colonels in

the Ukrainian forces, one in the intelligence, and one in

security services who were assassinated basically with car

bombs. And then there also was the additional cyber

attack was largely focused on Ukraine and really taking

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down some very important government networks for the

Ukraine.

MR. DICKERSON: So sticking with your idea of

watch what the administration does.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yes, watch the money.

MR. DICKERSON: Not what it says.

MR. PETRAEUS: Follow the money and follow the

troops.

MR. DICKERSON: Follow the money and the troops.

So give us your assessment of Russia.

MR. PETRAEUS: Look Russia --

MR. DICKERSON: Russia policy.

MR. PETRAEUS: I think what is evolving first of

all is very different from what was hinted at during the

campaign that you know I can deal with this guy and we

understand each other, and he said nice things about me,

so he just got to be a good guy. I don't -- I think

there's been a real recognition there that Russia is

causing major problems and that we're going to have to

confront them in various ways, as we also have to still

come to grips with the whole investigation over what they

did during our election, needless to say.

Having said that I am somebody who believes that

there should be strategic dialog even with our enemies,

and I have been heartened to see the strategic dialog

between President Trump and Xi. Trump has been calling a

lot of leaders, he's been fairly assiduous. Now

occasionally he's hung up on them a bit prematurely. And

you know he had the -- he remedied that with Prime

Minister Malcolm Turnbull and you know on the Intrepid,

the boat up in the -- New York.

By the way I was just in Australia last week and

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I did meet with Prime Minister Turnbull and the foreign

minister and so forth. They had just had a very good

meeting, the counterpart the minister of defense and state

meet with our secretary of state, secretary of defense,

and frankly found it very, very heartening.

And they see the activities in the South China

Sea. We are not doing what we did actually a few years

ago, were very robust speech at the security -- big

session called the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

Secretary of defense is all but pounding on the table.

And then it took us -- said we will sail anywhere, fly

anywhere and it took us seven or eight months to sail

through the South China Sea. We're just doing it.

So again we'll see how it all plays out but I

think Russian policy, in the end of the day, we will find

that we have to work with them on Syria, it's either going

to be tacitly or maybe even explicitly. Look the solution

to Syria, it got to defeat the Islamic State and the al-

Qaeda affiliate; putting that on the side.

The solution is going to end up being a series

of local cease fires, and you see some of these already

and so our second objective actually, for an interim

solution at least, should be to stop the bloodshed. So

it's defeat the extremists and stop the bloodshed. And do

that by again we will have to guarantee some of these

areas, which again, I have argued in Aspen for two or

three years that we should had safe zones so that you can

get humanitarian assistance in and then get the refugees

going home and not have the continued exodus of the

refugees.

So that I think is what's going to happen and

Russia will have to accept that tacitly or even perhaps

explicitly at the end of the day. I don't think you get

rid of Bashar al-Assad, as much as I abhor the individual,

and as much as I hold him responsible, and we all do, the

world does for the death of 500,000 of his citizens and

he's used chemical weapons on them repeatedly. But also

at the end of the day, I think, you really need to be sure

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who's going to follow. We do have some recent experience

of toppling a dictator and without clear plans about what

would follow.

MR. DICKERSON: Before we untangle Syria because

that's -- there's some complexity there. With what

happens how you how you can still go after ISIS if Assad

is still there. But before we get to that, recently -- so

the US shut down a Syrian plane last Sunday. The Russians

said we're now going to follow any drone or plane that

flies. And the rhetoric seems to be heating up between

the US and the Russians in Syria right now, so.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah, it has a bit. But my

understanding is the communication is still going on

between -- so you have, you know, air to air

communication, can command -- headquarters to headquarters

communication. I don't think you're going to see a

mistake. Now, if they start to threaten our forces that's

not a mistake.

And there's some very interesting dynamics here

because there's going to be a race for one particular

city, Deir ez-Zor, so once you take Raqqa and they're

making quite impressive progress in Raqqa, it's clear that

-- nowhere near the kind -- first of all, it's not

remotely the size of Mosul, which is some 2 million

people. Remember, I spent the first year after the fight

to Baghdad, up there as a two star. It's much, much

smaller you know, it's a fraction of that, and it didn't

have the kind of very extensive preparations, it does not

appear, we'll see.

But so once you take that capital of the Islamic

State, they're moving down the Euphrates to Deir ez-Zor.

Deir ez-Zor has enormous geostrategic importance because

that's how the Syrians are trying to connect up with what

could be a route from Iran, a ground line of

communications. And Iran has always wanted to be able to

connect Tehran with Baghdad with Damascus and then down

into southern Lebanon, Lebanese Hezbollah. They can't do

the shortest line between two points and it appears as if

20

they're actually coming in north of Baghdad, hitting the

Tigris for valley. By the way, they changed the sectarian

composition of this particular province to Shia favor.

And then hit.

And they go up the Tigris River Valley. There's

all Shia militia still there, even though these are Sunni

provinces. And then you go west, south of Mosul, you go

out through the border and ultimately you hit Deir ez-Zor.

And by the way, the Shia militia are all along this area

as well. Maybe coincidence, I may be given the conspiracy

theories after spending too long in the heat in Iraq, but

that seems like the likely route and --

MR. DICKERSON: So when this isn't --

MR. PETRAEUS: -- then it goes to Palmyra, then

Damascus or up to Homs and then down into the Beqaa Valley

in southern Lebanon.

MR. DICKERSON: And that's a supply line, I mean

that's a highway.

MR. PETRAEUS: They'd love to have that.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: Again, whether they can keep it -

- whether they can establish or keep it and so forth I

think is in question, but it is certainly something that

they would like to do. They've always wanted to turn the

Shia crescent into the Shia halfmoon which is of course a

huge concern of our Gulf state partners, of our Sunni Arab

partners.

MR. DICKERSON: Talk about Raqqa, what's

happening with ISIS and bring back in --

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah, good question.

MR. DICKERSON: -- that you talked about

micromanaging earlier --

21

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah.

MR. DICKERSON: -- because, you know, the

President has said he has given total authorization to the

military.

MR. PETRAEUS: No, to the Secretary of Defense.

MR. DICKERSON: Okay, sorry, yeah. Well --

MR. PETRAEUS: And General Mattis is in a suit

these days, however uncomfortable --

MR. DICKERSON: That may be for him, right.

MR. PETRAEUS: -- that may be for my shipmate,

my great marine buddy.

MR. DICKERSON: But what is the -- how is the

operational tempo different and how will that play out in

Raqqa and in the fight against ISIS?

MR. PETRAEUS: Well, first and again to be fair,

over the last six months in particular the previous

administration was gradually doing what a lot of us had

recommended, which is relax the level at which decisions

are made for the use of force. You have established rules

of engagement. Everyone knows them and the question is at

which level do you have to bump something for a decision

as you're interpreting the rules of engagement. The fact

is there are fleeting targets out there and if you don't

get these bad guys, keep in mind this is an enemy that is

so barbaric that it literally surrounds itself with

innocent civilians. They live in apartment houses. And

any time they leave, they are sprinting because they know

that the unblinking eye is up there and may well have

something with their number on it.

So when you have an opportunity, you've got to

take it and that's where it's good to have the authority

pushed down. There is a keen awareness still obviously of

22

the need to minimize collateral damage and innocent

civilians' deaths and injury and indeed infrastructure

because we're going to have to rebuild it. And that's why

it's going so slow in Mosul.

But with Raqqa, I think this brings us to a

really important point and that is that a lot of us have

never had a doubt that once we reconstitute the Iraqis,

got them back on their feet, took advantage of all of the

infrastructure, headquarters, equipment, all the rest that

would provide them over the years and they had purchased,

and then provided them the enablers, what we've built as a

result of demands frankly from the battlefield during the

surge and in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular is a

constellation of intelligence surveillance and

reconnaissance assets, many of these unmanned aerial

vehicles. And we can put them in the sky 24 hours a day,

that means for every one of these you probably have to

have three platforms because there's one out there, one is

putting back because they're not very fast, the other one

was putting out. And you've got this incredible

communications architecture to push slow motion video all

over the world, actually to have them flown from a base

outside Las Vegas, Nevada; they skip satellite back to

there. That's where the pilots in the payload operators

are.

So you've got all of this and this enables these

-- enables us to understand what the situation is after a

while and then you fuse all of that with all of the other

intelligence that we have from signals intelligence, human

intelligence, you name it, other overhead systems and

we're providing that to our partners. And we're giving

them advice, we're giving them assistance and then we're

providing the precision strike assets for them as well.

This is a game changer. It's really much more

revolutionary than I think people realize because this

enables us to do what we were talking about backstage,

which I have contended we need to do in the future and

that is to have a sustained -- or a sustainable sustained

commitment in the fight against the Islamic State, Al-

Qaeda, perhaps some other enemies.

23

Sustainability is measured in blood and

treasure, and if you can keep your troops out of the front

lines and they're the ones doing the fighting and dying

for their country, if we can keep the cost down because we

don't have a huge footprint, I mean we're doing this in

Iraq still with probably somewhere around 6,000 troops.

We had 165,000 when I was privileged to command, that are

just Americans privileged to command the surge. By the

way, we had a similar number of contractors. So if you

can do that, you can then sustain it for a long time and

we need to do that.

Make no mistake about this, we are in a

generational struggle. We will take away the geographic

caliphate that the Islamic State occupies in Iraq and in

Syria. They'll still have insurgents and terrorists cells

which we'll have to focus on then. But we will not be

able to take away the virtual caliphate. That's the

caliphate in cyberspace. They're extraordinarily

effective at using this for recruiting, for educating, for

teaching how to make explosive devices. Many of the "self

radicalized" actually got the inspiration and the

instruction and so forth from something in cyberspace.

So this is going to go on and it will

metastasize. Wherever there are ungoverned or even

inadequately governed spaces in the Muslim world, we are

going to see extremists take advantage of them. The

problems will not go away. This is not something -- you

know, in Washington we're sort of famous for trying to

admire a problem until it goes away. This is not going

away. And beyond that, Las Vegas rules do not apply.

What happens there does not stay there.

(Laughter)

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: And, you know, you have the case

of the geopolitical Chernobyl that is Syria, a meltdown of

a country which ultimately spews violence, extremism and a

24

tsunami of refugees, not just into neighboring countries,

but all the way into the countries of our NATO allies

causing the biggest domestic political challenges that

many of them have had since the end of the Cold War. So

we -- this is enabling us to do that now. We'll see this

in Afghanistan. I hope that we will, I've called for

publicly an additional for 4,000-5,000 troops added to the

8,500 or so that are there now. NATO does a like number,

but still in the advise and assist, relaxing the rules on

our air power for a long time until relatively recently

before this administration. We were not allowing our

commanders to use our air power to help our Afghan

partners whom we had trained and equipped unless we happen

to be with them and we were actually in danger against the

Taliban.

We could use it against Al-Qaeda and ultimately

against the Islamic state, but there is a distinction

made. Now keep in mind that it was under the Taliban that

Al-Qaeda had the sanctuary in Afghanistan where the 9/11

attacks were planned and so that logic escaped me a little

bit, but now we're able to use that.

MR. DICKERSON: I want to go back to Afghanistan

in a second but just staying with Syria, there are a lot

of people who think that you cannot have a successful

Syria if Assad is around still and that it will -- so but

you think --

MR. PETRAEUS: I don't know -- well, when I

talked about the object of being to defeat the Islamic

State, Al-Qaeda affiliate and stop the bloodshed now,

that's as opposed to trying to achieve diplomatically a

democratically elected multi-ethnic multi-sectarian

pluralist democracy in Damascus that is going to rule all

the people in a country where 500,000 of them have been

killed. I just don't see how that happens. In the

majority the country, keep in mind, of course is Sunni

Arab but it's been ruled by the Alawite Shia and which is

why you have a Shia Iran with their Revolutionary Guards

Corps Quds force on the ground, the Lebanese Hezbollah

Shia funded by Iran Shia militias from the region, and

25

then ultimately Russia comes in because Syria was a client

state and that's the only naval base they have in the

Mediterranean and the only air base they have there as

well.

MR. DICKERSON: And I guess --

MR. PETRAEUS: So I think you end up -- you

don't end up with Syria being back. I don't think you can

put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I think you end up

with a variety of zones, so in the north you'll have one.

This is actually in existence. Remember the Turks and

then our air power ultimately helped them that they took a

city called Al-Bab. So they pushed all the way down.

This is Sunni opposition and there's a road that runs

east-west south of Al-Bab that has actually become the

line of demarcation between the regime forces of Bashar al

Assad and these opposition forces supported by Turkey, and

they're not coming across it.

Over here you have the Syrian Kurd area which we

have helped the Syrian Kurds to clear and to hold. And

now we're moving down towards Raqqa which is a -- that's

where the Sunni Arab part starts and we'll do that with

many more Sunni Arabs than we've had available for the

Syrian Kurds, but we're going to have to guarantee that

area. Down in the south there is there's an area. Now

some of this is very contested and there are some others

over here very contested, but that's starting to -- you

can you can actually draw it on a map. I have -- there's

in fact a great guy who stayed on, Ambassador Brett McGurk

is the special envoy for the fight against the Islamic

State took over from General Allen; he was his deputy

before that. We've actually looked in a map and sort of

said, Okay, you know, what do you think? I think it will

be okay here and how? And the question is who gets Deir

ez-Zor.

MR. DICKERSON: Right.

MR. PETRAEUS: Who ends up with that and I don't

know because that's going to race and that is where

26

General Mattis wisely said, you know, the closer we get,

the dicier it becomes. And that is something the regime

forces will want to take before we can get there. There's

actually still an enclave of regime there, but it's

something we would want to take because the Sunni

opposition is very strong there as well.

MR. DICKERSON: And the Iranians obviously have

--

MR. PETRAEUS: And the Islamic State and the

Iranians would like to see that connection.

MR. DICKERSON: On Afghanistan, Secretary Amanda

said we are in a strategy-free time in Afghanistan. What

does that mean to you?

MR. PETRAEUS: What it meant, this is -- she was

talking to Congress and what it meant was we haven't yet

finalized the civil military campaign for that and he is

working with Secretary Tillerson on this. He has just

been at the NATO ministerial, the defense ministerial

talking about that, presumably getting some commitments

from NATO countries -- if we provide X number of

additional forces, can we get a like number something like

that from you all. And then he said publicly he wants to

go back, sit with Tillerson again and work out some of the

issues.

You know, there is a really good relationship

between the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of

State. If you think back, that has not always been the

case and there's a great relationship between the two of

them and the National Security Adviser. Again not always

typical in these very -- you know, sometimes you term

these, the challenges there, ego management.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah. But some people would

look at Afghanistan and say 16 years and we're sending

3,000-5,000.

27

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah, fair enough. And the

answer to that is, look, we went there for a reason. It's

because that's where the 9/11 attacks were planned and

we've stayed for a reason to ensure that that won't become

a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State again.

There's a certain affinity that the Islamic State even

already has and Al-Qaeda definitely has for eastern

Afghanistan. And for the life of me, I'm not -- it

escapes me. I've spent time out there, a fair amount of

time on the ground as a commander and before that as the

Central Command commander after CIA. And, you know, the

attraction of Tora Bora and these mountainous areas is a

little bit elusive. It's not quite Aspen on a good day.

(Laughter)

MR. PETRAEUS: And --

MR. DICKERSON: Very hard to get a facial.

MR. PETRAEUS: It is, it is, it is. So but

there is this attraction and they keep trying to come back

and we therefore need to stay. Now again this is where to

come back to what I was alluding to earlier, you know

we've had tens of thousands of troops on the Korean

Peninsula for over 65 years. Now I'm not saying we need

to do this for 65 years, I'm merely saying that if you can

have a strategy that is sustainable -- and again we're not

losing troops in Korea, we haven't lost him for a long

time -- and you need a sustained commitment, then maybe

that's appropriate. So I think one of the challenges with

the previous administration and the previous

administration was there was always, of course, pressure

to drawdown and you have to.

Again, what we were doing in Iraq was

unsustainable, that we had everything possible out there.

I mean if it was anything else, I would have asked for it.

And we had to extend our tours to 15 months from 12 months

which is long enough for the Army already. I end up doing

19 and a half that time. These were long, long grinding

experiences. But if you can get those numbers down and

28

then keep him in that range as opposed to trying to just

go to zero, and President Obama wisely did halt, he did

not carry out what he had intended to do and so that's why

I think -- and I do think that additional number with the

relaxations on the use of our air power and perhaps some

augmentation of some of the platforms that we have. By

the way, keep in mind also that Afghanistan is the

platform for our "regional counterterrorism" effort.

Without going into what the CIA might do from there's,

certain members of the press have certainly reported that

there are certain things that emanate from Afghanistan

that may actually terminate in, say, North Waziristan of

Pakistan and so forth. And of course, it's publicly known

that the raid to get Osama bin Laden was launched from

eastern Afghanistan as well.

MR. DICKERSON: Speaking of Pakistan -- we're

going to get to North Korea, but -- we used to talk all

the time about Pakistan.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah.

MR. DICKERSON: And they do have nuclear

weapons.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah.

MR. DICKERSON: And it is highly unstable, but

what's your --

MR. PETRAEUS: And trying to develop tactical

nuclear weapons which are particularly dangerous, because

these become much shorter range they become use them or

lose them, you know, and then you have to, by the way

because it's only a short range and if the enemy is coming

at you, gee, can you take the time to get the pit, the

igniter if you will and put it in or maybe you actually

store it with it now. And so that -- this is -- it's

inherently dangerous, and it's dangerous in a crisis,

because again you never want something that is a use or

lose --

MR. DICKERSON: Right.

29

MR. PETRAEUS: -- situation. And then the other

side knows it so they make -- you can see where that goes.

Look, I -- in you know the latest piece I did in

Afghanistan I said it is time to be firmer with Pakistan.

I went through with Ambassador Holbrooke, we were a team,

we got more money for Pakistan, $6.5 billion for various

development and economic assistance and so forth. We have

more money on the military side. We were actually flying

intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets for

the Pakistani army to help them as they did -- they did a

-- a really impressive campaign to go after their version

of the Taliban not the one in Afghanistan when it

threatened Islamabad, the capital of the country. But

they sort of ran out of gas, closing the jaws on North

Waziristan.

And that is the heart of darkness; that's where

Al-Qaeda is, that's where the Haqqani Network which is

affiliated with the Afghan Taliban and truly

irreconcilable I think and indeed there have been certain

operations reported in the press in there. If that's the

case the platform for that would be in Afghanistan. So we

need it for that purpose as well. Keep in mind, again, we

-- you cannot put a stake through the heart of these

movements.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: You can put a stake through the

heart of Osama bin Laden, we'll put one through the heart

of Baghdadi the leader of the Islamic State; it will not

end the threat that those organizations pose. And of

course, you have to get at all the other issues that might

give rise to -- that allow recruiting.

MR. DICKERSON: Yes.

MR. PETRAEUS: So this is the battle after the

battle which we should talk about very quickly. After the

Battle of Mosul is over and it's just about is --

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: -- the prime minister has

30

reported it, what really matters is governance.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: Because what gave -- what made

the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq fertile ground for the

planting of the seeds of ISIS was the alienation three and

a half years after the surge -- it went really well for a

good three, three and a half years and then the prime

minister basically undid what we did in reconciling with

the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. Some less than 20 percent but

very important in a Shia dominated country and government.

And when he did that and when the Sunnis peacefully

protested after their vice president was sought the

Minister of Finance was charges preferred the

parliamentarian and then violently put down peaceful

demonstrations then put leaders back in charge that I'd

insisted be fired before we would reconstitute units

during the surge on and on.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: That was bad governance. And so

the question is can the governance, once the Islamic State

is cleared from Iraq, be sufficiently inclusive that it

gives the Sunni Arabs a reason to support the new Iraq

rather than to continue to oppose it or to support those

tacitly or actively who do oppose it and we did that

during the surge. That was one of the huge achievements

of the surge, was reconciliation.

MR. DICKERSON: Right.

MR. PETRAEUS: You can't kill or capture your

way out of these industrial strength problems.

MR. DICKERSON: Thank you --

MR. PETRAEUS: So we've got to get that kind of

governance.

MR. DICKERSON: Thank you for this transition,

because what that requires is an attention to corruption

in countries.

31

MR. PETRAEUS: Yep, yep.

MR. DICKERSON: It's an attention to human

rights and democracy in the country. Maybe not democracy

in the sense of pressing it upon them --

MR. PETRAEUS: Yep.

MR. DICKERSON: But at least liberal

institutions.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yes.

MR. DICKERSON: And we see the budget at least

for the State Department has been significantly --

MR. PETRAEUS: Yep.

MR. DICKERSON: -- drawn down and also on the

question of human rights you know, okay, Cuba gets beat up

for their human rights record, but Saudi Arabia, the

President went there and so I'm not going to lecture you.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah, yeah.

MR. DICKERSON: How can people who see what's

happening in Yemen with -- where -- what happens just

inside Saudi Arabia, doesn't that create that (inaudible)

still that needs to be taken care of?

MR. PETRAEUS: I mean, it is -- it's a bit more

complex obviously than that and to be fair the now crown

prince of Saudi Arabia is trying to modernize the country,

he's trying to liberalize. Again you know, small steps.

He's the one you -- it observed to me one time when I was

with him you know women can drive in the Quran, but they

can't drive a car today. And he wants to do that; he

wants to have music, he wants to have amusement parks.

There is one university at which men and women go to

school together; the Science and Technology University.

Look, I signed a letter I don't do very -- much

of that, but I signed a letter with a number of other very

32

senior retired four stars calling for additional money for

the State Department in questioning and quoting Secretary

of Defense Mattis who backed -- in some unguarded moment

before he realized he'd be Secretary of Defense in this

administration said "if you don't give me diplomats you're

going to have to give me more bullets." So I'm very much

with you and I am concerned about the seeming drawback

from the embrace of, really I guess the idealistic

motivations for our foreign policy. But keeping in mind

that there is always this tug of war and we have to be

careful not to go too far. You know, we should remember

that we're the ones that insisted on an election in Gaza

and Hamas was elected, and there's not been an election

since then. So it's always -- you know, it's complicated,

and look at Egypt a democratically elected basically

political Islamist Muslim Brotherhood government wrote the

most exclusive exclusionary Constitution imaginable and of

course then is overthrown.

You know, we don't like a democratic government

overthrown, but maybe not all bad, because the new

constitution is much more inclusive you know with

protections for Christians and so forth. Yes, some of the

restrictions on the press and others give us pause, but

it's this kind of thing. I've been a fan for saying let's

work patiently with countries behind the scenes. There

was a great Arabist at Princeton who used to say that

"democracy in the Middle East is strong medicine; it

should be administered small doses at a time."

You know, it's simplistic of course but it is a

cautionary tale. And I think just trying to patiently

move forward -- I've had the conversations, for example,

with our Saudi friends about the influence of Wahhabism in

other countries and so forth and they're keenly aware of

that now too. So this is difficult, but I do believe -- I

fought for the values of our country. I remember when the

MoveOn.org went after me. And that full-page New York

Times ad on the morning of the biggest testimony you know,

in my life that we're going to report to Congress this 6-

month report on the surge and they attacked me personally

--

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

33

MR. PETRAEUS: -- not just over the policies or

you know how I was leading or something like that. And I

remember the next day at the National Press Club

Ambassador Crocker and I did a press thing together. We

did everything together; everything. And they said so you

know what do you think about that and I said I feel very

privileged to have defended the freedoms of MoveOn.org to

criticize me in the press. I just wish they hadn't gotten

a discount on it from The New York Times.

MR. DICKERSON: Let's -- we have saved the

toughest problem for last which is North Korea.

MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah.

MR. DICKERSON: We just take a -- where do you

take a hold of North Korea? Where does it begin and end

for you?

MR. PETRAEUS: Well I, -- it's great to end with

this, because I do think this is the most pressing

problem. This is the potential crisis that could confront

the President of the United States with that most awful

and awesome of decisions which is to use really a

significant amount of force knowing that you know there's

no good option. So first of all let's keep in mind that

there is a different reality that faces this President,

and that is that on -- in his watch, his first term, an

impulsive, arguably mad, at times young dictator of the

hermit kingdom could have a nuclear device that could

actually strike Los Angeles or San Francisco, and that is

a really difficult conundrum, and he has said "will not

happen." Again policy making tweet. And so he's got to

figure out -- and what they're doing right now is they're

showing China how serious we are about this. And yeah, I

don't know if you saw today the next step, a bank, a small

bank --

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: -- modest bank, $12 billion under

management or something like that was designated by the

Treasury Department, I believe --

34

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: -- as a participant -- potential

participant in money laundering presumably for

facilitating North Korea's front companies in this kind of

stuff.

MR. DICKERSON: Right.

MR. PETRAEUS: That's the first next step.

That's -- and we'll see more secondary sanctions. And

this comes right before the G20. So this -- and it's a

significant step. It's something we certainly never took

in the previous administration.

MR. DICKERSON: And this is sanctioning Chinese

companies that are helping North Korea.

MR. PETRAEUS: It's a Chinese company that's

helping North Korea. So what we have to do is convey to

China as -- in every way necessary, that they have to

reduce the umbilical cord that is keeping the lights on in

Pyongyang. You know, 90 percent of the crude oil that

goes to North Korea, the entire 90+ percent of their goods

and so forth, the trade and all the rest of that and they

can turn the lights off in Pyongyang. If the -- now, they

don't want to, because they don't want the country to

collapse, because it's unacceptable to them to have a

reunified Korean peninsula, it'd be unacceptable to have a

hostile power in Pyongyang.

They don't want massive numbers of refugees

coming across the Yalu that's why they have two entire

divisions up there and now as you may have seen, and a

special airborne unit -- parachute unit -- presumably, to

deal with if there's some kind of collapse with perhaps

safeguarding nuclear weapons or something like that. So

then we've got to have -- continue the strategic dialogue,

and that's why I believe strategic dialogue is hugely

important, and why I support it for Russia as well as for

China. And you sit down and say okay, what are we going

to do together about this? This is not just our problem,

this is your problem, and you don't like the Theater High

35

Altitude Air Defense system that's going into Korea; it's

because of those guys. And if you don't like that you'll

really not like the one that goes into Japan, and you know

on and on, so --

MR. DICKERSON: Tell them what --

MR. PETRAEUS: -- how do we do --

MR. DICKERSON: -- if the theater would -- tell

them what THAAD is.

MR. PETRAEUS: The Theater High Altitude Air

Defense system is this massive radar array that gives very

good -- and the Chinese think it can look into China; it

can't. It's more limited, but it can take out some of the

missiles that can come at you. It -- and it's really for

Korean defense much more than anything else. So it's

going to -- it's when they're coming back down. So it's

not the ballistic missile defense that we would have in

the continental United States.

MR. DICKERSON: When the president says "It will

not happen." What is the "it," what's -- I mean --

MR. PETRAEUS: I -- the way I've interpreted

that is North Korea possessing an intercontinental

ballistic missile and a miniaturized nuclear warhead that

could be mated and could actually be launched and hit the

West Coast of the United States.

MR. DICKERSON: But there seems to be a lot of

ambiguity in -- and for obvious reasons between whether --

you know, there's a time in which it's going to just be 6

more weeks until they're going to have it, and so you

would act then perhaps. Or do you --

MR. PETRAEUS: I think this is years.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: Not months.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

36

MR. PETRAEUS: -- not weeks.

MR. DICKERSON: But I mean -- but years till

they could press the button and it would go, or years till

they have you know breakout capability.

MR. PETRAEUS: No. Years until they have that

actual --

MR. DICKERSON: Okay.

MR. PETRAEUS: -- intercontinental, at least.

And again, it will depend on the -- of pace of testing.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: Which of course they dramatically

increased in terms of their shorter and medium range

missiles. And of course, have continued nuclear tests as

well. So this is a real, real conundrum as I said. And

keep in mind this is a leader. And North Korea -- I mean,

how more inventive can you -- or horrific can you get than

to have your brother -- your half-brother killed by people

putting nerve gas on his face in a public airport --

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: -- and gunned down his uncle with

an air defense cannon. He is creative.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

(Laughter)

MR. DICKERSON: So -- the last question is, I

mean, it seems like all the options are bad, and the end -

- what is the end state? Is the end state him saying,

"Oh, okay, we'll give up our nuclear weapons." Well,

there's a number of different end states. I mean, you

might be satisfied with a freeze, and then we see where

that goes. It could go as far as to say let's figure out

how we could Finlandize China and the US. How could we

Finlandize North Korea?

37

MR. DICKERSON: What does that mean?

MR. PETRAEUS: It means, make them neutral. How

could you get there from here?

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: Obviously, that -- you're not

going to get there from here with Kim Jong Un still at the

helm. So how do you make that happen? I mean, these are

serious conversations that need to be had.

MR. DICKERSON: Are being had.

MR. PETRAEUS: Because this is -- and are being

had. But they're still in the exploratory stages. But

they're getting -- you know, they're moving on. By the

way, this is where you do need to populate the State

Department in particular. Defense is gradually getting

some of the additional individuals confirmed, but as you

have crises the one in the Gulf right now between the

Saudis, Emiratis and the Qataris, who you going to send?

I mean, you just got a deputy confirmed; he's really more

the admin guy, I think.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah.

MR. PETRAEUS: So he's not the policy deputy.

You have an acting deputy as the Undersecretary of Defense

or Secretary of State for policy. There's no unders

beyond that, and most of the assistant secretaries are

acting. And the one for the Middle East is a fine

ambassador, Stu Jones -- just came out of Iraq, but has

announced his retirement plans. So we've got to get the

talent pool restocked there.

MR. DICKERSON: Yeah. And the Secretary of

State is not happy about that delay.

MR. PETRAEUS: According to the press.

MR. DICKERSON: Yes, well, which means it must

be true.

38

(Laughter)

(Applause)

MR. DICKERSON: General, thank you for fighting

for those values and for being here tonight.

MR. PETRAEUS: I thank you. Thank you all.

(Applause)

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