JERRY SEIB: Thank you all very much. We’re at the end of a long day, but we wanted to end with something different. I mean, we’ve been engaged in conversation about, mostly, things domestic, to some extent, things foreign, international – trade, international capital flows – because those are the topics of a domestic crisis at the moment. But there’s a pretty busy world out there on other fronts as well, and we wanted to talk about that at the end. And Adm. Mullen, thank you for taking some time to be here.
Adm. Mullen and I have a small connection. My son goes to Notre Dame. Adm. Mullen is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. The Naval Academy has beaten Notre Dame in football twice in the last 45 years.
ADM. MICHAEL MULLEN: We’re 2-0. (Chuckles.)
MR. SEIB: Well, I personally have been at both of those games. Adm. Mullen is going to get me lifetime tickets to every Navy-Notre Dame game from here on out, because clearly, I’m the problem for Notre Dame. So I appreciate that very much.
Adm. Mullen, you have a trifecta of serious issues to deal with. You’ve got Pakistan; you’ve got Afghanistan; and you’ve got Iran. So I wanted to kind of walk you through those as we go. The preface here is the one thing that Adm. Mullen cannot and will not talk about is the specific decision that President Obama is on the verge of making regarding troop deployments to Afghanistan. So I won’t ask about that and I suggest, when we get to questions from the audience, you don’t waste your time on that, either. You can try if you want, but I’m not going to.
But let’s start with Pakistan, which is arguably more important, anyway. There is evidence on the ground that the Pakistani government has gotten a lot more serious about taking on the Taliban, taking on al-Qaida elements. But that’s been seen before and it didn’t really last. Is this a movement in the Pakistani government, which you know well, that has legs, that will last? Or are we in for another disappointment?
ADM. MULLEN: Before I took this job, which was a little over 2 years ago, I had been to Pakistan once, actually visiting my counterpart as the head of their Navy. And since that time, I’ve made 12 trips over the last year-and-a-half and really done that to forge a relationship with the senior military leadership, and in particular, the chief of staff of the Army, who is the individual that the entire military looks to for leadership.
And the more I go, the more I realize how much I have to learn. And I’ve approached this from a standpoint of trying to understand their culture, trying to listen to them and listen to their challenges and see it through their eyes. In terms of progress, very few of us, a year ago, would have thought that this time this year, the Pakistan army would have 30,000 troops in South Waziristan and would be pressing forward, which is what they’re doing.
They’ve actually been – had, you know, a campaign plan over the last year which has moved through Moman, Bajaur, Swat, and now South Waziristan. It’s in that relationship that I’ve established with Gen. Kayani that, you know, he has talked to me a lot about what his future plans have been. And essentially, having learned lessons as well as I watched his country – and by that, I mean his people – become more and more concerned about the extremist element in the country.
And you see that almost every day and we have, certainly, over the last year to 18 months. And he’s laid out a longer-term plan and he’s pretty much on his plan, if you will. And it is informed by previous lessons. He’s fought in places before and they got into some pretty difficult circumstances. So I see them progressing; I see them – in many ways, it’s a counterinsurgency effort not unlike – and he has counterinsurgency requirements for his military that are growing and that are seen by the Pakistani military.
No one should ever forget that they see India as an existential threat. And it would be – we may not see it that way; that’s not of any interest to them at all. And it’s the Pak citizens as well as the Pak military. And so it’s a military that’s been raised on that threat for 60-plus years. That’s how they promote; that’s how they sustain their effort. And so it’s a military and a country that sees a threat, actually, on two fronts, if you will. And so he’s trying – they’re trying to manage both.
So I’ve seen a lot of progress. I don’t think I could have predicted that they would have been where they are right now. It’s a country that, about a year ago – last December, its economy was certainly barely alive. The IMF loans helped considerably and the rules tied to that have had a big impact there as well. And it continues to move along. Many of us, a year ago, would have predicted that their economy would be in much worse shape now than it actually is.
MR. SEIB: Do you think, though, this sense that India is the existential threat is changing, or is that a constant?
ADM. MULLEN: No, I think that is, by and large, from the standpoint of how it is viewed from Pakistan, that they do think that way. I think the leadership – Prime Minister Singh, a couple years ago with President Musharraf actually took some steps – significant leadership steps, which de-tensioned the Kashmir border. And those steps had an immediate impact on trade and an immediate impact on tourism and an immediate impact on de-tensioning, considerably, the overall relationship. And I think that’s a good model.
A lot of that, obviously, went by the wayside after the attacks on Mumbai. So it’s a vital area. It’s a regional area – it’s not just Pakistan or India or Afghanistan; it’s a region. And that’s one of the reasons I think the president’s strategy, focusing regionally, is so critical. And there’s a great deal to continue to do to try to get this right for the future.
MR. SEIB: You know, in recent history, the Pakistani government has been a lot more interested in getting at the Taliban guys who caused them trouble, a lot less interested in getting at the Taliban guys on their side of the border that cause trouble in Afghanistan and for our forces in Afghanistan. Is that changing?
ADM. MULLEN: It’s – I think it’s very important to remind ourselves this is a very proud country, it’s a sovereign country and they have their own self-interests very much out in front and as a priority. And that doesn’t surprise me. Most countries do. They are a country that is worried about Afghanistan. They’re worried about India. And they have a history that is very much for – and a view – very much formed around being surrounded for a long period of time.
What I have seen in our support – and it really is support that they request, and it’s back to this relationship. And it’s important to remember, we were out of a relationship with them for 12 years. And we did that when they became a nuclear power and we sanctioned them and so we have – there’s a lot we still don’t understand about each other and we don’t have any good, solid military-to-military contacts because of that gap. And we’re rebuilding trust.
So as I see them, they basically put their interests first and we are trying to support them in that regard. They clearly understand what our interests are. They know that al-Qaida resides in the FATA. They know that we’re very serious about that. And it’s a conversation I have with Gen. Kayani frequently. And I think it is for us to try to work with them in support of their interests and give them an opportunity to be able to help us get at the extremist threat that threatens them, as well as threatens us.
MR. SEIB: Let’s move next door to Afghanistan. You’ve been pretty frank, over the last six months or so, in talking about a security situation in which the trend lines are going down, not up. In the aggregate, what does it take to turn that around?
ADM. MULLEN: I think what we overestimate over the time of this war since 2001, when we’ve been in Afghanistan, and then really over the last three or 4 years is, because we under-resourced this effort, we underestimate what it’s going to take to move forward. And I’m not just talking about military. It’s too easy to talk about troop numbers. In the fullness of the challenge, if you will, it’s an enormously complex country – back to the region; I talked about that.
And it is going to take an effort, both diplomatically, economically, from the development standpoint, from the governance institution standpoint at every level, in addition to the military side. And it is in the totality of that under-resourcing and focus – because we had our focus – quite frankly, we had it on Iraq – in that totality that we’ve got to address this now.
And so what we’re going through is a comprehensive review of, how do we get at this in breadth and depth in a way that allows us to achieve our goal, which is get at al-Qaida and make sure that al-Qaida can’t return to Afghanistan, which is where they were in 2001. So more than anything else, it is – what I have learned, even in this review process is the impact of that under-resourcing and that’s what we’re coming to grips with right now.
MR. SEIB: And at this point, does Afghanistan have, in your opinion, a national army or a national police for that, really, is worthy of the name?
ADM. MULLEN: Their army – actually, the army is a pretty good army. I mean, they certainly struggle in certain areas, but this is a country that’s been at war for, essentially, 30 years. We have good military-to-military, war-fighter-to-war-fighter connection with their soldiers in particular. And while there certainly are challenges – some of them organizational, some of them, how do you enable their ability to get at the extremists – most of us are encouraged by where the army is. And they still have some way to go.
We’re much more concerned about the police force, which is critical to moving forward in Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq. We have a tendency to forget how far behind we were, even at the time of the surge, in the police development in Iraq a couple of years ago. We think we know how to do this; we think we understand what the challenges are. But we have – there’s no question that developing the police is probably the long pole in the tent right now.
MR. SEIB: And an expensive proposition for the U.S., potentially.
ADM. MULLEN: It is certainly expensive from an absolute sense. I think it depends on – you know, the more Afghans you put into security, the fewer that you’re going to have to have on the part of the Americans. And indeed, there are 43 countries who are providing forces over there for all of us. So the way ahead is really to develop the Afghan security forces.
MR. SEIB: Let’s switch to the third element in the triple crown, here: the Iranian situation. The diplomatic engagement began in October. There was an agreement in which the Iranians agreed to ship out a goodly portion of their low-enriched uranium to France and Russia for reprocessing – took, essentially, potential nuclear weapon material out of the country. The Iranians now seem either unwilling or incapable of following through on that agreement.
Is that a sign of intransigence, of playing the negotiations, or of some fundamentally deep divisions internally that stop them from being able to say either yes or no to something their own negotiators agreed to?
ADM. MULLEN: I think the dialogue and the engagement is critical and I’ve been a vocal supporter of that for a long time. Certainly, negotiations continue on. Next week, there’s another meeting of the board of governors of IAEA, which is an important meeting. And I think that will certainly, to some extent, really, give us a better feel for exactly where we are. That part of the world – and Iran is obviously at the center of all this – I’ve spent a fair amount of time on strategic, both, thinking and planning on what to do to stabilize a pretty unstable part of the world.
And a lot of other people, as well, worry a great deal about stability there. And so I think that responsible leaders globally – you know, regionally and globally – have to look at this to move forward in a way where we create stability and not instability. And it is a very, very tough problem. There are great challenges with – from my perspective – with Iran having a nuclear weapon because of the potential for proliferation, the potential for, literally, a nuclear arms race in the region. There are, obviously – there’s great downside potential for striking Iran as well.
So that’s why I am hopeful and yet realistic in terms of, one, needing to address this and hopeful that the dialogue and international pressure will work, but it is – you’ve hit – you talk about the trifecta – I mean, for me, you’ve hit the two most challenging areas that I’m dealing with on a regular basis.
MR. SEIB: Let me step outside of the trifecta for one last question from me, and then I’m happy to open it up to some questions from you all. The tragedy at Fort Hood, which occupied a lot of your time in the last couple of weeks, suggests one of two things, both troubling.
One is that you have a military in which there might be some strain of Islamic extremism, however faint, that can be seen. The second possibility is, depending on what you think the motivations of the shooter are, that you have a military that’s very stressed out after seven or 8 years of two simultaneous wars to the point where maybe there’s a breaking point for some people. Both troubling – which is it, do you think? And which worries you more?
ADM. MULLEN: You know, I was asked, actually, the day before the tragedy occurred at Fort Hood about the stress on the force. And it is something that I’ve paid an awful lot of attention to. Of the priorities that I have as the chairman, first has been this broader Middle East/South-Central Asia part and then secondly really has been the health of the force. And when I was asked that question, I specifically said I don’t think we’re near a tipping point.
I still, even subsequent to that, don’t think we’re near a tipping point. But I certainly don’t underestimate, or I would not want to understate the seriousness of the stress issue, for individuals and for families, particularly for our ground forces – our Army and our Marine Corps. And at the same time, I have been taken aback by the resilience of both families and the forces. And I think success in Iraq, quite frankly, had a lot to do with that.
I started to meet with deployers who came back from Iraq. I saw them in the surge while I was there and then after the surge. And you know, they had a skip in their step that they just hadn’t had on previous deployments. At the same time, there are limits. And we’ve made the Army larger. We’ve made the Marine Corps larger. We’re now, on the Marine Corps side, starting – we’ve deployed those extra battalions. So there’s pressure that’s actually coming off in terms of the deployment demands on the Marine Corps and it’s starting to be seen on the Army, which I think has absorbed a greater amount of the overall pressure and stress.
So something we pay an awful lot of attention to, and I think it is still manageable. And I want to be very clear that we’re still going to be in this stress window for the next couple of years. But I do see us getting to a point in the next couple of years where soldiers and Marines are back twice as long as they’re deployed, and that’s our near-term goal.
With respect to the issue of, obviously, the background for Maj. Hasan and the whole issue of any kind of extremism within the military, I mean, I’ve just gotten absolutely no feedback on that whatsoever. And that doesn’t mean I have perfect insight. Many of you run big organizations and you rely on an awful lot of people.
I thought Gen. Casey had it exactly right when he was asked about this and said, it would be a travesty that, in addition to the loss of life and the impact of this tragedy that has occurred, that our diversity could somehow be a victim of all this as well. It is a great strength of our military, which is marvelously diverse, and it is a great strength of our country. And I certainly haven’t seen any indications about that whatsoever.
And I have immediately indicated to the military leadership that this is something that we need to pay a lot of attention to, to make sure there isn’t any backlash. And I would not want to – I’d want to caution against, you know, overly reading that possibility at a time when tensions are so high, stress is high, et cetera. Certainly, it’s something that, if leaders see this, they’re actually tasked to do something about it and I expect they will.
MR. SEIB: Just one quick follow-up: Can you do a plus-up in Afghan deployments of whatever magnitude and get to the less-stress-on-the-force stage that you just described?
ADM. MULLEN: It is – to some degree, it’s dependent, obviously, on the additional deployment requirements. But as we look at it right now, I think it is manageable. And I’m not just saying that, because I’ve had this discussion with the commandant of the Marine Corps and the chief of staff of the Army.
MR. SEIB: Okay.
ADM. MULLEN: Can I say one other thing?
MR. SEIB: Absolutely.
ADM. MULLEN: My wife and I and many others were down at Fort Hood last week and we see wounded down there, and I would like to say, in particular to this audience, that one of the things that I feel very strongly about is that we properly care for those who’ve sacrificed so much – those who’ve fallen and the wounded and their families. And in fact, I’ve also spent time on veterans because I think – and I’m a Vietnam vet and I think what we allowed to happen as a country after Vietnam with our veterans was something that we should never allow to happen again.
So one of the things – and as I look at, certainly, you as a business community – that I want to try to tap are communities throughout the country that would reach out to these families and ensure that they have futures. They are incredible people, if you’ve ever met them. Every time I’ve visited a wounded – every time I’ve visited someone wounded – I come away more inspired and more moved than by anything I could give them.
And they’re young – they’re 20, typically – 20, 25 years old. They’re going to be with us for 40, 50, 60, 70 years. They have great potential and their dreams haven’t changed. They want a job; they’d like to go to school, raise kids, buy a home. And I think that we, as a country, for their sacrifices, need to do everything we can to sustain that. And the only way I have figured out that, that might be possible is to reach to communities throughout the country that would then reach out to them and take care of them where they’re living.
So I call – I believe there’s a sea of goodwill out there – and many of the wounded that we just met last week at Fort Hood would be another example of that – but we’ve got tens of thousands who have been wounded – 35 (thousand) or so physically; tens of thousands more who are – have sustained wounds that you can’t see that we, as a country, I think, need to do all we can to make sure they can continue to contribute. They are marvelous young men and women and they’ve tried to make a difference – I’m sorry, they’ve made a difference up to now – and they want to continue to do the same.
Q: Adm. Mullen, I’ll just take you back to Pakistan for a minute. I’ve just been in India meeting some of the most senior people there. Whereas they have great respect for the Pakistani army and understand that it’s a cohesive, hierarchical force, they say, in fact, it is also talking to and in touch with all the bad elements in that country and has done very, very little to follow up on the Mumbai massacre. And they really fear another one – a bigger one – and if one came like that, they said that Indian public opinion could not be contained.
ADM. MULLEN: I was in Delhi two or three days after Mumbai and very much struck by the outrage of the Indian people at the time and have the greatest respect for the restraint shown by Prime Minister Singh and certainly, the Indian leadership. I was also struck – and this was a population that was outraged. I was also struck, a few months later, by the strength of his party’s – the re-election, if you will, or the election results, which put them in a much stronger position. And then I go back to President Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh and what they did a couple years ago.
And I so much believe that leaders have got to reach out and try to set the stage, because what you’re talking about is what I hear constantly. And I can give you the Indian version and I can give you the Pakistani version and I can give you the Afghan version. And this is not to say that there isn’t – there aren’t strings of facts which support each one of their allegations, but I believe until the leaders kind of step forward and set the stage, if you will – I’m not just talking about the two countries; I’m talking in the region and internationally – that those kinds of – and those go back a long way – those kinds of positions are going to be very difficult to change. They are – actually, some of them are moving a little bit. But to take the significant steps that we need to take, I think it’s really going to have to be led.
Q: Thank you.
MR. SEIB: Right behind Rupert. Hold one second – there you go.
Q: Admiral, do you feel we need a draft in this country?
ADM. MULLEN: No. I’m a – I was – I joined some time ago, and I was here when we had a draft, obviously here for the transition. And it’s very easy for me to compare the military that I grew up in versus the military that we have today. And it’s an extraordinary military. That’s one of the reasons – it’s the resilience piece that I talked about.
I spend a lot of time with them and they’re the best – in my view, they’re the best we’ve ever had. And we are asking them to do great things and they continue to do that. So I believe in the all-volunteer force and the professional level that we are able to be at and sustain ourselves at because of the all-volunteer force.
MR. SEIB: One final question, I think, right here.
Q: Actually, I have a question, but before I say that, I want to say, Admiral, that I’m confident that everybody in this room wants to thank you and your colleagues for the great job you do for our country. (Applause.)
ADM. MULLEN: Thank you.
Q: The question I have is, we’ve just gone through a long, extended conflict in Iraq – we’re still going through it. I wonder if you could characterize the differences in the difficulties in Iraq versus Afghanistan and how you would judge success in Afghanistan, or failure.
ADM. MULLEN: Secretary Gates answered that question – what does success look like in Afghanistan – a few weeks ago, and I thought he had it very close to right when he said it looks a lot like Iraq right now, where we’ve developed – helped develop security forces, they take responsibility for their own security, we get into an over-watch situation and then we back out and come home. So that, to me, is a good model.
There are aspects of Afghanistan, an enormously complex country, that are different – significantly different – and there are others that are the same. I am – I talked about us becoming the best counterinsurgency force in the world, and I believe in history. And we did that through Iraq – it took us a while to learn that – and at the same time, we did that just in time because that’s the kind of force we need in Afghanistan.
That’s the kind of fighting capability and engagement capability that we need to handle the complexities in Afghanistan right now. It is a country that we’re going to have to, I think focus on local governance – sort of bottom-up, in terms of creating governance and support, creating jobs. It’s much more agriculturally based. It was a country that not many – you know, a few decades ago actually fed itself and exported its own food.
Its infrastructure is very poor, certainly, compared to Iraq. And that will present challenges. But it’s also a people that – you know, they really are very tired of war. They really do want to have their government do something for them. They want to see this thing wrapped up. The Afghan people are not in support of the Taliban to any degree whatsoever. I mean, the numbers are very, very – the percentage of Afghan people who support the Taliban are very small.
Geographically, obviously, it’s different. It’s a different kind of fighting. And so dealing with – the principles that are the same is, they want jobs, they want prosperity, they’d like to raise their children to a higher standard of living, they’d like to educate their children. Those are all the same kinds of things.
I think some of the means by which we would do it there, specifically, will be different. And I don’t want to underestimate the complexity because it is an enormously complex country. But I think we recognize what the challenge is. We know – I think we know what to do and how to do it. Certainly from my perspective, I’m very comfortable in that regard.
MR. SEIB: Adm. Mullen, in addition to the general thank you, I want to specifically thank you because we put this together on fairly short notice in the last couple of days thinking it was important to give you all a chance to hear a little bit about some of these crucially important issues. You and your office have been incredibly cooperative in doing it on short notice and I appreciate that very much.
ADM. MULLEN: Thanks. The only thing I’d like to add, if I could, is I want you to do well, because – I saw job creation and education; at least, those seem to be the top two, both of which are absolutely vital – because obviously, the better you do, the better the economy is, and in fact, the better, I think we’re able to focus or support the resources we need for national security, which will continue to be needed to be out there in these very challenging times, economically, as well as security-wise.
MR. SEIB: And if we can get two more minutes of your forbearance, I think Robert Thomson, who’s my boss and therefore deserves a round of applause just for that. (Laughter.)
ROBERT THOMSON: Thank you very much. You somehow make a very complicated, somewhat dangerous world seem comprehensible and a little more secure, at least in this room. Every room should have an admiral. (Laughter.) Had you been here a little earlier, you would have heard some creative economic thinking from our guests.
Clearly inspired by the Cash for Clunkers program, we had what you might call the swapping of conceptual clunkers for cars. Jim Cooper proposed that every patient in Miami should be given a Lexus. We had the splendid Michelle Rhee proposing that every student in Washington be given a Saturn. And then, of course, Sen. John McCain proposed that the best use of resources, as allocated at the moment, would be to hire a fleet of DC-3s just to open the cargo doors and drop the money on the country. (Laughter.)
MR. SEIB: Those would be his DC-3s, by the way. (Laughter.)
MR. THOMSON: It may not be the best use of your aircraft, Admiral. However, at the very least, we hope that our sponsors feel that their resources have been rationally used, and again, I’d like to thank them, among a small list of thank-you’s. And they are NASDAQ, America’s Natural Gas Alliance and the CME Group. I’d very, very much like to thank Alan Murray and Gerry and our other comperes. They not only can write; they can talk.
To people that you won’t know, Dorothy Ann, to John and Chris and the team who’ve made all of this possible – these chairs don’t suddenly appear overnight without someone putting them up after having taken down the dinner tables. But most of all, frankly, I’d like to thank all of you for the seriousness of purpose that you’ve shown over the past day or so. I think, if anything, there really is a tangible sense of frustration in this room. And that frustration is that a great country is somehow failing to realize its potential.
And I think that you’ve all done your bit to further that debate, and that debate will continue next Monday in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, where we will run the collected volume of your thoughts and the thoughts of our other guests. And I think it’s pretty fair to say that those ideas will echo around the world.
And next year at about this time, we’ll gather again in Washington – and before then, we’ll e-mail you a copy of the report and the collected works. We’ll also share with you our relevant research that we gather on the topics that we’ve discussed and, hopefully, be a conduit for your comments and share them among yourselves. Look, in the meantime, there are cocktails outside. So there’ll be drinks and nibbles and now, thank you all very, very much.