I like to point out that the end of the Cold War has brought a wholly new atmosphere about the use of US military assets before in the Arab during the Cold War. Almost nobody wanted to use the American Military for things like Somalia for Haiti for Bosnia those kind of situation those those problems existed but the idea of using US military to get involved in those kinds of situations during the Cold War was something that we never actually contemplated very seriously. First of all, the United Nations was not anxious to have the United States military involved in those car parts of the world. They didn't want the Soviet military involved for the same reason. They didn't want the super powers involved. So if there was some problem in Somalia or a problem in Bosnia or a problem in Haiti and the UN set upon out to try and figure out how to solve it and it involved the use of military somehow. The question was what military do we use and almost never was the thought to use the superpower military in those kind of situations. We did not want to extend the superpower rivalry during the Cold War into these parts of the world. So we use Scandinavians. We used lots of different countries the military from lots of different countries, but almost never the militaries of the superpowers and the United States being a superpower. Therefore. They didn't want to involve take Somalia didn't want to get Somali involved as a Battleground in the Cold War. So we didn't send US forces in there. We didn't send Soviet forces either we settled it with other kinds of forces. So the world didn't want to use the United States military as peacekeepers. Secondly, we in the United States did not want to use our military as peacekeepers. The United States military was the strongest military in the Western Alliance. And its primary function was to deter the West against any kinds of problems that might be caused by the Soviet military. So the priority was to focus on the Soviet military and if you got involved in these kinds of things like Somalia or Haiti or Bosnia that was second order of importance. You could get yourself bled by minor contingencies when you kept Take Your Eye Off the main contingency and the main contingency was the Soviet military. So what you had during the Cold War was a world that wasn't anxious to invite the United States into peacekeeping and the United States, which was not anxious to go in to various parts of the world to do peacekeeping. And so it was essentially a situation where we did not get ourselves into the question of should we use military United States military in things like Bosnia Haiti and Somalia and as I say, it wasn't the things like Bosnia and Haiti and Somalia weren't happening. They were it was just not that the United States military was involved in the calculation as to how do you stop it or how you deal with it? All right. Now it's different. The Cold War is Over and the Cold War has changed everything the end of the Cold War has changed everything. First of all now instead of nobody wanting us involved in these kind of situations. Now all kinds of people want us involved the countries themselves want us involve the UN wants us involved. There's a lot of Demands for the use of US military forces for all kinds of things for humanitarian purposes for peacekeeping for peace baking for involved in government changes. All of these kind of things them to man to use the US military is now very very strong and coming from lots of different quarters. Also, the resistance in this country is down we no longer say well, we've got to keep them for the war with the Soviets the war with the Soviets. His looked like it's that's receding. So now you have a big debate in this country about whether we should use the US military in places like Haiti feeding people in Somalia changing the government in Haiti keeping people from killing each other in ethnic cleansing in places like Bosnia. These are now debatable issues in the American public policy Forum. So it's a brand new world. The entry barriers are down. The the things in the cold war that kept us from getting involved in these things are now disappeared. We're now going to have to decide when we're going to make these circumstances and when we're going to get involved and when we're not so let me talk about that this morning. It says noon and I'd like to talk about three aspects of this question. The first aspect of the question is the US military's attitude towards the US military involvement in these kinds of circumstances as I'm sure anybody who's been following the debates on Bosnia and Haiti and Somalia knows the United States military is very reluctant to get involved in these kind of things. It's part of the debate that is going on. I'd like to talk about that a little while and why they are so reluctant and what is it that that that is so difficult for them to accept about the use of force in He's kind of circumstances second topic. I'd like to talk about a little bit is how do we decide how do we decide whether we should use the US military in these circumstances? Because we've got three of them out there right now, Bosnia Somalia Haiti North Korea if you want to add a fourth, but there's going to be others that are going to happen. The prediction would be that for sure over the next three four five years. We're going to have a constant stream of requests to use US military in these various circumstances and and others like it and the question then is going to be how do you decide how should the United States make that decision about where to go in and where not to go in and then the final point I'd like to talk about a little bit with the remaining time that we have here. This new is to talk about a little bit of the lessons that we have learned from the past of the use of US military forces. In recent history of that what are the things that can go wrong? What are the warning signs? What are the dangers? There's four of them. Look for these four situations or these four conditions when you're deciding or when were involved in a military the use of military. These are the four areas to watch out for that could maybe cause some problems? Okay, that's the topic start with the question of the United States military. Why is the United States military reluctant to get involved in use of its military forces abroad in these kinds of places these kinds of situations three reasons. The first is the way we do it and all of this is premised on the way we do it we might be able to figure out a way to do it differently that maybe would solve the problem. But basically right now the way we do it it is very expensive from a man power standpoint. Because there is what is known as a three to one rule if there is a one unit that for every soldier that you need to do this job. You need to others to back it up. And that is the 321 rule in other words. We now have a battalion out on the in the Sinai doing peacekeeping. It was part of the peace between Egypt and Israel. We have a battalion out there that's on the a permanent basis what that means is according to the way the United States military operates is that we need two more battalions or a full Brigade in order to do that mission because there's a rotation you're out there for six months. The normal time is six months. They figure a person they ought to rotate a person away from an assignment like that after six months. So there's a battalion preparing to go out. There's a battalion out there and then Another Battalion which is just come back which is getting its equipment back into shape and its training for other things. There's a unit training to do it. There's a unit doing it and there's a unit training to go into a back into other units. It's a full Brigade if we put a brigade of peacekeepers on the Golan Heights that would involve three brigades or a full division in order to accomplish that mission and if we said a division in for peace in Bosnia, which is also something that has been discussed that's three divisions that is involved in making sure that that mission is done with the rotations that are involved that's a very expensive proposition. The United States military has brought its forces down its broads forces down enough to be able to but still keep the number of forces necessary to fight two major regional contingency. Simultaneously it going all the plans the question then is if you have too many of these peace keeping things going on given this 3 to 1 ratio, you're not going to be able to do the things that the United States military is expected to do in this world that we have have plans for so Point number one. The military would point out is it's just it's expensive Point number two is that it could be expensive in terms of military Readiness, and this is an interesting point. What the United States military will tell you is that we can as an institution as a country take 18 year olds and train them to be soldiers. We can also take 18 year olds and train them to be policeman. What is difficult to do is to cross train 18 year olds? To train 18 year olds to be policemen sometimes and soldiers another time and what's more complicated leaving it up to them to decide whether at any given point they're supposed to be policemen or soldiers in other words if you break into the room. Do you break into that room and fire or do you break into that room and read everybody their rights being a policeman is very different from being a soldier and if a young man or young woman of age 18 behaves as a policeman when they should behave as a soldier, they're going to get themselves killed and if they behave as a soldier when they should behave themselves as a as a policeman, they're going to create a big incident which is going to get in the press and is going to cause an enormous stir what the military says, which is an institution which has enormous experience with this kind of thing is that you're playing with fire. That half of these that these things that you're asking soldiers to do now are not really military tasks. What they are is they are police tasks and that if you have a soldier doing Police test you're asking for trouble and you can train them to do police task, but then they forget how to be a soldier and you're asking for trouble it is as they say a very very complicated issue and a very difficult one to deal with their point number two is it can be expensive in terms of military Readiness because of this complication and their final final point is that it can be expensive in terms of political explicitly expensive. It can be politically expensive exercise also because if the United States military, Has is out there to try and do something. And then the American public changes its mind and let's suppose that something's happened and it doesn't go so well and the public changes its mind and wants to pull the back of troops back and then we pull the troops back that costs. There's bad guys out there who are watching. There's Kim il-sung. There's Saddam Hussein. There are bad guys who are watching what was going on and if the United States military undertakes and an exercise in Somalia and then 18 people get killed and they put American public forces the government to change its course and pulls back. What kind of signal does that send to Kim ill sung about his nuclear program or what time the signal does that send to a Saddam Hussein that new Saddam Hussein who's thinking about being aggressive? It tells him that the United States is not that strong. The United States is can be had look just ate. Americans get killed in Mogadishu and all of a sudden the mighty super power the world's only superpower is now ready to withdraw from Somalia because 18 people get killed guys. Look at I say well we can kill 18 to those guys if it's all it takes is a team we we can do that. That's what the military says is. What it does is if we casually commit forces and then because it turns out to be more complicated or more difficult we want to pull them out there's costs associated with that and that says be careful all of this means all of this doesn't say that we should never use u.s. Military forces in places like Somalia or Haiti or or Bosnia, but it does say we should do it when we can do it effectively, which is we can do it we can go in we can do it we can get out number two. We should probably not do many of these Multimedia SLI and number three we should not do it in a situation where we are forced to through public opinion changes forced to reverse courses. So that's the first point. That's the point about the US military is involved the US military's attitude towards it. It's something that we should keep in mind. It's something that we should keep as we as we follow this issue as we debate this issue keep this as a matter of concern keep this in mind how then do we decide how should we decide when we should use u.s. Military forces and when we should not use u.s. Military forces, that's a second question. And as I said before I think we're going to get lots of requests. I mean, I think that Haiti and I think Somalia and I think that Bosnia and those kinds of situations are situations that are going to be repeated Let's let our speaker. Let's let our speaker have his say. We will have you removed from the audience. Freedom freedom of speech is one of our most valued values. We will have you removed. So the question is how do we decide when to use the United States military in these kinds of circumstances? Because as I believe we will see we will see a lot of these cases that will come up again in the future Haiti Bosnia and Somalia are our issues that are with us today next year. There will be other places but they will be similar kinds of circumstances. I think one of the things that's important here is to understand the role that the the the TV plays and that the Press plays in calling these issues to our attention and why is it that we end up with dueling with these kinds of circumstances because of what comes over on the TV? In the ideal world we would deal with these circumstances that came up because we would choose to do so rationally, but if you were to look at all of the places where people are being are starving in the world all of the places where they're starving and then ask yourself. How much would it take in order to deal with those starving situations everywhere in the world? It would be a humongous a number a tremendous big number. It's something that we wouldn't be able to do. So then we ask yourself. Well, does that mean we're not going to do anything? Well, no people feel uncomfortable with that. So inevitably means Choice it means going to some places and not getting involved in others. I mean look at this cakes with Somalia and Sudan, for example, you make a very good case that so that the famine was worse in some Sudan then it was in Somalia yet. We ended up sending troops into help feed people in Somalia and not in Sudan. Why because frankly it's because that's where the TV cameras work. It was the thing that came back to us at night. And on CNN on the TV tube was the people were starving in Somalia and not in sedan. Take the case of Rwanda. There are more people today being killed by ethnic cleansing in Rwanda than there is in Bosnia. Yep, the issue is sending troops or using US military assets is in Bosnia. Why because that's where the TV cameras are. If you were to ask ourselves how many places are people shooting at each other and killing each other through ethnic cleansing there's all over that's happening all over the world how big a military would we need to deal with ethnic cleansing in every places in the world you'd be bigger military than we had at. The peak of World War II that was 12 million people. We now got a military that's down come down to about 2 million people 12 million people. We even with a 12 million people we couldn't deal with Ali the ethnic cleansing. So does that mean we deal with no ethnic cleansing? Well people feel uncomfortable with that what it means is that we end up picking and choosing And in a world that we live in like today we end up picking and choosing an awful lot based upon TV. It's just not the same to read about it in the newspaper or even to see still pictures of it as it is to see ethnic cleansing or starvation live and in color on the TV in TV footage. So what in the what happens is in this world we're being presented with these Alternatives and the only and what we do is we end up saying yes or no. Yes, we want to use troops in Somalia know so far. We don't want to use them in Haiti. Well, we sort of halfway want to do it in Bosnia. And that's the choices. How do we make those choices? How do we decide that? Basically what you should do and what we as a country have to do and what we have to do is a debate is to debate these issues in terms of What is the benefit if we go in there with our forces or our military assets? And secondly, what is the cost and the real term here is military assets not necessarily military force because in some cases there is no resistance. If you're going in to starve people to feed starving people there is no it's not a matter of much resistance, but it takes military assets. So there's humanitarian there is peacekeeping. There's peacemaking. There's a whole list of things that we might end up doing that you with our military assets. But we have to pick and choose now. We pick and choose based upon some calculation of what is the benefit and what is the cost the benefit has got to be somehow that something that we're doing there create some kind of a benefit either it protects our security or it protects our interests. Or it protects our influence. Or it protects our values somehow something were out there to protect if it's our security that's easy. It's an easy case if somebody is threatening us with an in with a nuclear weapon our use of force to go out there and do something about that. That's an easy case less easy is our interests less easy than that as our influence and less is our values but our values are that we should not let people starve. So if that's part of our value system, then we would evaluate benefit some benefit from a value system of having it US military and Military assets used to feed people but then there's a cost and there's a cost in terms of time and there's a cost in terms of money and most importantly there's a cost in terms of lives and people getting injured. That is the real sticking point. The American public standpoint the American public a rather generous with using our military Assets in the cases. Like what we're doing is to protect our values but they are reluctant to do that. If it costs American lives, the pretty Americans are pretty pretty pretty generous with their time pretty generous with their money not very generous with the American lives and the lives of young American women men and women is what is a very very tough cost to assess in in an assessment of what goes on. So this is what we have to do we have to look at what is the value what is the benefit from use of getting involved and then we have to have a cold I'd look at what is the cost? What is the cost this is where intelligence comes in this is where our judgment comes in because we have to judge this correctly. What is the cost and in particular? What is the cost in terms of American lives take them Somalia case we sent forces into Somalia. It was a value what we were doing essentially was protecting American values. We send them in there to protect American values to feed people people were being fed it then turns out that the thing involves some cost and in particular it cost the lives of 18 Americans and that particular Sunday afternoon in that shootout in Mogadishu and American public mood on that whole thing changed dramatically and instead of being willing to go and do something for our values when the cost became too high which was 18 people. They decided the American public decided it didn't want to do it anymore. That is the kind of calculation that we need to drink but we need to make it right from the first we have to get it correct at the outset because as the United States military will tell you it is not a good thing to send American Military in to do something then find it's harder than we thought and pull them out. It sends a bad signal to bad guys in the world. And so what we've got to do is figure out how can we have a debate about the benefits and the costs and make this turn out correctly and I went might want to point out that right now the American public in the light of using US military forces with such incredible low-cost loss of life, very low loss of life in Just Cause in Panama, very low loss of life in Desert Storm in Iraq The Americans American public now has a very very high expectation that the military can go in and do all of these things without any loss of life at all. So when 18 people get killed in Somalia that seems to them like a humongous large number of people that are being paid for this the cost of that turns out they believed to be very very high. So what we've got to do is make this calculation we've got to make this calculation in a way in which we can make this kind of a judgment and we've got to get it right and we better figure out and be able to do it right from the outside. The third point I'd like to talk about today. That's how you make the Judgment of when do we use mu s military forces and how do we pick among all of the things that we might use u.s. Military forces where we ought to use the US military in the in the several cases that we want to let me at this point talk just briefly and then we'll go to your questions. But Park just briefly of some of the things to look out for what are the lessons from the past what are the dangers that we have that we've had in from the times we've used u.s. Military forces. We've used u.s. Military forces an awful lot over the years for less than of course fighting the Soviet Union, which we never did but having the u.s. Military forces in places like Grenada Panama bombing of Libya, lots of things like feeding people most people People don't understand don't remember most of them Bangladesh had a typhoon we had operation see Angel going in and feeding them feeding the Kurds the whole there's a whole host of these things that have come across. What have we learned from them? Where is it that these things could go wrong and when they do go wrong what has gone wrong what has caused it to go wrong. There's four things. It's really clear. There are four things that we need to look out for Let Me Go part of them because in fact most of the cases where we've used them have been successful. Most of the time that the United States has used its military assets. It has been successful successful here is defined as going in doing the job and then turning around and getting out it's not a total success if you end up having to stay there and this is one of the issues of this thing, but if you end up having to stay there and keep doing it, that's not very Decimal because that means we're going to have to continue to keep forces there to continue what we're doing. You don't want to be do that. You want to go in you want to do it and you want to be able to get out that's success. Let me point out for areas where things can go off the track. The first of those is when we Define the mission and we end up with Mission creep. It is very important when we go in to use US military forces somewhere that we know what that mission is. What is it that we want the mission to do what do we want to do? And if we think for example that the issue is humanitarian and then it turns out to be something else. That's for the first danger signal that the thing might be going off the track. That's what happened in Somalia. What happened was that the people were starving and people were starving. So we said we'll send the United States military in there and help feed the people. But the people were starving because of a natural cause and because of a political cause what was going on in Somalia was that a drought had caused people to be without food, but when the sub when the aid came when the age started to flow into Somalia sent by civilians civilian Aid agencies sent supplies in there it became the aid supplies became part of the battleground of the clan Warfare the Civil War that was going on. So the the clan Warfare took over and they would grab the aid and feed their own people and prevent the aid from getting to the other clans. It became a tool in the Civil War that was going on. And of course the civilian Aid agencies were powerless to do anything about this Yusuf. Aid is part of the Civil War. So then the issue was we should we send in the US Military and the answer was yes. So we said in 25,000 people the 800-pound gorilla arrived in town and sure enough the aid flowed it flowed to where it was supposed to and within a matter of months. The situation was under under control and the aid was flowing to the people who needed it and people were being fed. But then the question became, how do you get out? How do you get out? Well, if we just withdrew our forces it go back to the situation as it was before where the aid would be part of the clan Warfare. So it turns out that we had to do something or at least the Clinton Administration believed it had to do something about the clan Warfare. It had to do something about eliminating the clan rivalry and that brought us up in conflict with the biggest clan leader or the guy who controlled the Mogadishu Port the guy who was the the king of the of the of the mountain there when we didn't have 25,000 troops namely mr. Hadid so we came up in conflict with mr. Deed. So it turns out that our mission there was not just to feed the people. It was not just humanitarian. It also involved an element of coercion to keep the Pharisees from from going the forces from taking the food. And if we were going to to be able to leave the country we had to deal something with this in a way that was to make sure that when we left the deed Clan didn't just dominate the whole situation. So we ended up in a clash with mr. Or deed. In other words. The original Mission was more complicated than we thought now contrast that with the mission of see Angel typhoon came through Bangladesh and the bangladeshis were starving because the typhoon had flooded lots of parts of Bangladesh and we sent the US military in there to help feed the people that was purely humanitarian. There was no other fight that was going on. And so when people got fed and it was solved and then as soon as the floods receded and people were well off we are able to come home. That was a pure good. That was a good case of a At Aryan effort it had none of these other complications. But the first thing to look for if something's going to go wrong is that it turns out that the mission is more complicated and sometimes that mission is humanitarian Aid. Sometimes it's peacemaking or peacekeeping or something. But you first thing to look for when something's going to go wrong is that that mission suddenly you suddenly find that it's a little more complicated than you thought so Point number one think it through from the beginning make sure you understand what it is we have to do and if it isn't just feed people or is it feed people and sit on somebody else? Is it just to feed people or is it the feed people sit on somebody else and develop a democratic governmental structure separate from the Clans? Because if it's anything like the second or third it's going to be a lot more complicated than we thought that's Point. Number one Define the mission correctly Point. Number two it the second thing that goes wrong whenever we use military force and some things do when some things go wrong in milder. The second thing to look at is that we underestimated the enemy there are times when we underestimate the enemy we underestimated the enemy in Vietnam. We underestimated the enemy in Somalia. Mohamed Farrah aidid turned out to be a tougher not than we thought it's a tough old guy. He was a stronger person at strongest a lot of more strength than we thought now, there's other places where we thought we were worried about the enemy and I think we overestimated the enemy we overestimated the enemy in Panama. I think a lot of people thought that when we landed in the middle of Panama with nor Yeager's National Guard troops that we were going to be in there for a real fight. Turned out to not be so tough. We probably over estimated that enemy. We probably overestimated the araki's we thought there's a lot of people who thought that when we get into a war in Desert Storm that we're going to have a bloody nose that this is not going to be a pushover. This is an army that is fought in uranium's for eight years. This is a tough army. They thought and this is not going to be easy turns out to not to be true. All is this to say is that this idea of getting an idea of how good those other guys are is hard? It's very very hard. It's where intelligence comes in but it's the hardest thing in this whole equation because what it can do is affect the cost when we're talking about the benefit cost ratio of calculating when you go in if you estimate the cost to be low that these guys are a pushover. We'll go in there and it won't cost American lives and we could do this and then we can get out and if it turns out to be more costly than that than the public changes its mind. We don't want to underestimate the cost of the the enemy and if the second thing that's most likely to go wrong is that we underestimate the enemy. So before we go in what we ought to do is say suppose this enemy turns out or the opposition here turns out to be stronger than we thought suppose they turn out to be tougher than we thought. What do we do then? What's our next step? How how much trouble are we in? In other words think about this before you go in not after your in there and you suddenly find out that it's happened at the best. It's only going to be a guest here. Anyway, we're not going to know for sure because intelligence and particularly Intelligence on this subject is an inexact science. You got to make the best guests that you can but what you got to do is think of the contingencies think of if we don't get it right what happens next third point out of for the third thing that can go wrong with these things is that we don't have an exit strategy. He got to think about how we're going to get out before we go in if we go into Haiti to restore era Steed to government or just to get rid of said Ross and Francois in the military people. How you going to get out? How you going to get out? You got to think about it. The normal way you get out is you go in your accomplice the mission and you get out what happens if accomplishing the mission turns out to be harder than we thought well other ways you can get out is to have a handoff saying okay. We're going to do this for a little while maybe a year maybe six months maybe two years, but then we're going to hand it off to other forces is a un effort but the point of all of this is number three point number three before we get in have some idea of how it is that we're going to get out and announce that at the outset and have that all work out final Point final. Point is that that we that when things go wrong and when it sometimes goes wrong is that we did not use adequate forces. Whenever we use forces and use military force the best thing to do is to go in there with overwhelming Force to accomplish it. It means fewer casualties on our side. It means fewer casualties on their side. It means a big difference when we went into Somali. We went in with 25,000 people that was a big force and that worked it was when we had a smaller force of 4,000 and tried to expand what we were doing that we ended up with the troubles if we end up when we do these things when we did desert one you remember the disaster in desert one were Jimmy Carter the under the Carter Administration where we tried to rescue the hostages in Tehran didn't use enough Force. We almost didn't use enough force in in in Grenada. There's there is clearly cases where you the force of so that is the fourth thing that can happen and that the Thinkin things can go wrong. So the things that can go wrong our first so we don't get the mission right? Make sure we get the mission, right? The second thing that can go wrong is that we end up with a is that we underestimate the enemy be sure you think about ahead of time we think about it at a time. If we don't if we have underestimated the enemy, what does it mean the third thing that can go wrong is that we don't have an exit strategy. Make sure we have an exit strategy when we do it and fourth the thing that can go wrong is that we don't use enough Force whatever you're planning to use increase the number of force increase the size of the force. It will greatly increase the probability of it working. What is all of this a look it all says that there is no There's no easy way to determine when we're going to use military forces in the world today. We're sure that these things are going to come up in the future today. It's Haiti Somalia Bosnia next year. It'll be three other places or at least by three or four years from now, it'll be three or four other places that were talking about. But the same issues are going to be here. We've got to start the debate now to figure out when it is that Americans are going to use military force use their assets because it is quite clear. We can't do everything. We have not the the resources or the inclination to go anywhere and do anything but on the other hand, I think most Americans feel very uncomfortable with the notion that will do nothing somehow. We have to work on middle path between doing something and not doing everything that means choice. That means we want to be successful. We want to go into the places where it will do the most good it is these kind of calculations that we need to go through in order to do that and it's part of the debate and I appreciate Coming here today and giving me the opportunity to talk about it. Thank you very much. very thoughtful remarks we have some excellent questions is the Clinton administration's foreign policy really is incoherent as it appears to be I think I can say no. I don't know exactly how incoherent it looks from from the question or standpoint how bad it looks look the what we're dealing with here is a brand new world. I think that the reason it is difficult now is because the questions are so difficult. The time what has happened is that we've got a brand new world here in a lot of things being moving from one Administration to another Administration was changing things at the margin. The policy the foreign policy that Harry Truman followed and then that Eisenhower followed all the way up to the policy that Ronald Reagan followed was essentially not that different from one another it was differences at the margin and you could absorb what was going on from the past and learn from the past and make some changes at the margin now we used to talk a lot about those changes at the margin is making them sound like they were a big difference and they taunt sounded like it was brand-new and things but basically it was Containment and it was a policy that was devised and owned over the years. But essentially it was the one that was invented in Harry Truman's day and it was essentially modified at but only at the margins it was essentially an easy proposition to come up with a coherent foreign policy. He rinse was not the problem. It was coherent because it was tried and true and the problems that it was said it to address is is we're the problems that still existed which was a very large Soviet Army and a nuclear weapons and trying to deal with those problems. Nobody ever accused anybody of having an incoherent foreign policy because it was essentially the same foreign policy that we had for 40 years. Well starting essentially with the second half of George Bush's Administration. We've had a different world and policy is going to look incoherent because frankly it's the coherence that the familiar isn't there anymore. It's no longer familiar and the coherence comes from familiarity. What seemed coherent was coherent because it was familiar. It's a different world. Now, there's lots of ways we can go into it, but at the For that is the problem and I would contend that it's the problem no matter who the president is is it the policy is going to seem less coherent because it's less familiar. It's less sure. We're less certain about what we want to do. We're less it danger in the world now and so it's we just assume the world go away our public would just as soon have nothing to do with foreign policy and deal with jobs and crime and Healthcare and stuff. That's at home that matters to them. So it's I think that the reason it looks incoherent has to do with the times rather than with the people doing it. I have two questions that I'm going to put together we often do first question is isn't the real reason we keep large troop deployments overseas so we can intervene to protect our economic interest. That's first question. Second question is what moral rather than economic principles do we use when we make a decision to intervene in a country to have thoughtful question? Okay. I think that the reason we keep I think the things that we keep foreign troops abroad for is a complicated reason of which our interest is clearly one of them. I think that what we the reason we have troops abroad is for the same reason that we intervene abroad and whether the troops come from the United States are already there is a minor question. The question is why do we get involved in foreign policy? It all or why do we get involved in foreign situations at all? One of them is for security. One of them is for interests in interests our oil supplies and things like that that are important to us. A third is for influence and a fourth is for our values and that's much more moral our values our morale in the sense that we don't want people to starve. Our values are that we prefer democracy to other forms of government. We think people have a right to judge have their own opinions taken into account. So we have a moral basis clearly in our values and our values are part of the reason why we intervene abroad and why we have troops abroad but I think it's a complicated equation and it's hard to determine in any one sense. You know, what are the specifics of why this particular group of people are involved are stationed abroad? In basically it is to protect American Security interests influence and values and that's a complex manner of self-interest enlightened self-interest and moral judgments that go into it. There's a second part of the question. Well, I think you ain't going to do it. Okay other right? Mr. Congressman one last question. It's one of those on many people's minds in this case. The question is signed by a person who identifies him or herself as being from a local high school. Why didn't you said Aid armor to Somalia as this would have protected and prevented the deaths of the 18 US soldiers killed there. Yeah, the the u.s. Armor that was the request for the u.s. Armor into Somalia. Came at a time when the policy of the United States military was 2D emphasize our military involvement and to try and emphasize a political settlement. What we had done is we've gone through several phases of our strategy and Somalia the first phase we didn't take on a deed at all. We just overwhelmed them with forces and delivered the aid and kind of didn't bother him in his clan in his running is glad and everybody else running their Clan then we decided that if we leave we're going to leave these Clans fighting each other. So we have to somehow deal with that. So we took on a deed starting in May and May and June July and August. We took on a deed and fought with him and With him by the end of October beginning of September we had decided that this wasn't going to work that it was going to be too expensive cost too much money spent too much time trying to get a deed. We were changing our policy towards a policy of cooperating with a deed trying to get a political settlement with the leaders of the Clans at the same time that we were then downplaying the military confrontation at the point where this policy changed came a request from out in the field for some tanks and some armored personnel carriers. He was my judgment that this would send the wrong signal would send the wrong signal to the to the clans in Somalia that it would send the wrong signal to the to the outside observers. It certainly would have raised some problems in Congress who were expecting us to downplay the military. Action, so I said let's not try and do this by sending in more visible more armor. Then of course came this event where we had this fire fight that happened in the first week of October in retrospect. It's still not clear that if we'd a had the armor there. That whether that would have made a difference the people on the ground say it would not have that the armor would not have gotten to the fight in time to have made a difference. But certainly the armor there had it gotten to the fight at the time would have made a difference. And as I said at the time that in retrospect, I was sorry. I had not sent the armor that I thought that I could that that if I didn't own that we were heading for this big firefight at the beginning of October. I would have sent the armor in spite of the fact that it would have probably sent the wrong signals to have done that these are these are questions that you have to deal with lots of times you make a choice in retrospect you ask whether you made the right one. In retrospect. I'm not sure that my choice was right, but I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure that was wrong. But I'm I'm not sure it may have been the wrong one in any way case I think when when when things are in doubt you wanted to err on the side of safety and that's why I said that at the time at the time I said and I believe now that had I had I known about this fight that was coming up. I certainly would have sent the armor and I whether it whether it would have made a difference or not. I would have felt better. If I didn't own that we'd sent the armor and we done everything that we could have for the people who are doing the fighting but you you pay your money and you take your chances you the decisions come at you you you judge based upon what was going on? And what was the mood and what was What was the policy was and and that's what I did and I don't know whether it would have been right and I still don't know whether it was right. Mr. Congressman. You've been very candid and forthright with us. Let's give him a big round of thank you all. Thank you.