At The Boundary
“At the Boundary” is going to feature global and national strategy insights that we think our fans will want to know about. That could mean live interviews, engagements with distinguished thought leaders, conference highlights, and more. It will pull in a broad array of government, industry, and academic partners, ensuring we don’t produce a dull uniformity of ideas. It will also be a platform to showcase all the great things going on with GNSI, our partners, and USF.
At The Boundary
Will the U.S. Stay Ahead of China and Russia?
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The future of U.S. global relations hangs in the balance as shifting alliances, rising threats, and strategic competition reshape the world stage. Former Ambassador Barbara Stevenson and General (Ret) Frank McKenzie offer powerful insights on the intersection of diplomacy, military strategy, and national security, exploring America's global standing amid tensions with Russia and China.
Hosted by the Global and National Security Institute and USF World, this episode of “At the Boundary” examines the critical role of alliances, economic security, and military positioning in safeguarding U.S. strength in an era of uncertainty.
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At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.
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Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of At the Boundary, the podcast from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, senior Director for GenaSci and your host for At the Boundary. Before we get started, we do want to acknowledge the terrible mishap in Washington DC last week. As a career military pilot, mostly in helicopters, I personally feel for the loss of the passengers and aviators. I'm also keenly interested in what the investigation reveals. While the NTSB experts conduct the investigation, gnsi will continue focusing on our area of expertise global and national security issues that impact our nation. Therefore, on the show today we'll drop in on a conversation between former Ambassador Barbara Stevenson and retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie. The two of them got together recently at an event we co-hosted with our colleagues at USF World. They approached national security from different backgrounds and perspectives, offering a broad analysis on the future for US relations around the world over the next four years. A couple quick notes first. This summer, gnsi will send a USF student to the United Kingdom to participate in a study in the International Security and Intelligence Program presented at one of the world's oldest and most prestigious universities Cambridge. This is an opportunity to learn from some of the world's leading national security practitioners and we are raising funds to foot the bill for the selected student. The application window is open. So if you're a USF student interested in national security or no one who is, hit them up and send them our way. We'll drop a link in the show notes for more information. Our agenda for Tampa Summit 5 continues to improve as we refine and add speakers. We've already told you about John Kirby, a key member of the Biden administration's national security team. Joining him in March will be David Kramer, the executive director of the George W Bush Institute, as well as Peter Pomerantsev, senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. It will be a terrific two-day event, so reserve your space today. We'll drop a link for more information in the show notes. Okay, on to today's dialogue.
Jim Cardoso:Barbara Stevenson spent most of her career in diplomatic service. She served as an advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and was appointed the US Ambassador to Panama in 2008. Later, she became the first woman to serve as Deputy Ambassador and Acting Ambassador at the US Embassy in London. She's now the Vice Provost for Global Affairs at the University of North Carolina, chapel Hill, where she's led the university's global strategy since 2019. Where she's led the university's global strategy since 2019. She shared the stage recently with General McKenzie, gsi's executive director and former commander of US Central Command, for a fireside chat at an event we co-hosted with USF World. They lead the university's involvement in the international arena, working to promote a global culture at USF by enhancing student success and initiatives and deepening engagement, all at the global level. Usf World Vice President, dr Kiki Karusin, was host for the Fireside Chat. Let's listen in.
Kiki Caruson :Good evening. Thank you so much for joining us for tonight's event. It's an honor to have you here. My name is Kiki Karusin and I'm the vice president for USF World, and we are the office that's responsible for global learning and engagement here at the university, and we're thrilled to co-host this event with the USF Global and National Security Institute, and we appreciate the support of the President and Provost Office for this endeavor. We're looking forward to an enlightening conversation this evening with our guest Ambassador, barbara Stevenson, and our very own USF Bull, general Frank McKenzie.
Kiki Caruson :I'd like to acknowledge some individuals who are in the audience with us today who've joined us. I see right here our Dean of the Morsani College of Medicine, charlie Lockwood, so thank you for joining us. Is Mayor Ross here? I'm not sure he is there. You are, so thank you for joining Mayor Temple Terrace. Thank you for coming out and being here tonight, I believe, and so I've been in the green room, but I think Chuck Adams from our Honors College will be here. He could be on the very slow elevator that's coming up. We also have several members of our advisory council, the USF World Advisory Council, here, and we appreciate you and the service that you provide for us in terms of your feedback and guidance. And then our Fulbright scholars. We have some Fulbright scholars Dee Garcia, a member of our foundation board, faculty students, folks who support USF World and GNSI. Thank you so much for joining us.
Kiki Caruson :So I'm going to go through some short introductions, which will give a few more people some time to write up on the elevator, and then what we have is a series of questions to get us started. And then we have some cards and pencils. So if you would like to write down a question to pose to our panels, we would invite you to do so. So I think those have been passed out, but if you would like one, you can raise your hand now or during my comments and someone will get one of those to you. And then, bessie, if you would raise your hand, and Catherine in the back, we'll come around and collect those cards and we'll see how many of those questions that we can get to this evening. So it's my. I have to say I'm a little bit starstruck to be on stage with these two notable individuals.
Kiki Caruson :I'm going to start with our guest, barbara Stevenson. She is the inaugural vice provost for global affairs and chief global officer at the University of North Carolina, chapel Hill. She's a distinguished diplomat, former US ambassador I almost said USF ambassador, but maybe you'll be that too International leader and prior dean of the Leadership and Management School at the Foreign Service Institute. Dr Stevenson has spent 34 years as an American diplomat. In 2008, she was appointed US ambassador to Panama and later became the first woman to serve as deputy ambassador and then acting ambassador at the US Embassy in London, america's largest embassy in Europe. She has served as an advisor to the Secretary of State on Iraq during the height of US engagement in the Iraq War, as the American Consul General in Belfast, as the Consul General and Chief of Mission in Curacao, desk officer for the UK political military Mission in Curacao, Desk Officer for the UK Political Military Officer in South Africa and Political Officer in the Hague, el Salvador and Panama. She is the recipient of the State Department Distinguished Honor Award for her work in support of American efforts in Iraq from 2006 to 2008 to build governance capacity at the provincial level. Ambassador Stevenson served as the President of the American Foreign Service Association from 2015 to 2019, and she is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the American College of National Security Leaders, a board, member of the World Affairs Councils of America and a member of the Advisory Board of Global Ties US. She's a frequent public speaker and was featured in last year's St Pete Conference of World Affairs, which will be back in production next month, and we encourage you to join GNSI and just a little bit of USF World at the St Pete Conference on World Affairs, and Lynn Platt, here will speak to you about the conference on the St Pete Conference on World Affairs if you would like to, and we appreciate your service on USF World Council.
Kiki Caruson :Ambassador Stevens was appointed UNC Chapel Hill's first vice provost for global affairs in 2019. And she leads the global, the university's global strategy in support of its core mission of teaching, research and service to the state of North Carolina, our country and the world. Much like the University of South Florida, she's dedicated to ensuring that all students have access to a global education, to strengthening global partnerships and to articulating the value and importance of global engagement. Global engagement she and I served together on the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. Executive Barbara was reminding me Executive Commission on International Initiatives and it has been a true pleasure getting to know her in this capacity. She also holds a PhD, ma and BA in English Literature from the University of Florida, which we said we wouldn't hold against you I was banned from gator chomping we taught her the appropriate hand gestures.
Jim Cardoso:So please give a warm round of applause.
Kiki Caruson :Welcome for Ambassador Kee, thank you. So I know there's some. I didn't look. I saw some chomping.
Kiki Caruson :So now it gives me great pleasure to introduce a gentleman who most of you already know, but I'd like to take a moment to talk about a bit about General McKenzie. He is the Executive Director of both the Global and National Security Institute and the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, known as Cyber Florida, and he also leads the USF Institute for Applied Engineering. Under his leadership, the Global and National Security Institute is organized to address issues at the nexus of science and technology, including cybersecurity, and human and social behavior. The Institute produces a series of well-known events, including the Great Powers Competition Conference, policy dialogues, research and a podcast, which we are recording now that's why I have two mics, so this conversation will be available as part of the GNSI podcast series and learning opportunities that benefit our students, such as the Future Strategist Program for students interested in careers in global public service and I know we have some here tonight. So if you are a student in the Future Global Strategist Program, I know you're here. I saw some of you earlier. Okay, there you are. So these are the next generation of public service leaders in the global arena.
Kiki Caruson :In 2022, general McKenzie retired as the 14th Commander of US Central Command, completing a 42-year career as a US Marine. Over four decades, general McKenzie has held command positions at every level, in peacetime and in combat, as an infantry officer. Our general's assignments have included command of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which he led on deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and I recently learned that the 22nd is the most decorated of the US Marine Corps' seven such units. So that was fun for me, and if you don't know what a Marine Expeditionary Unit is, you should check that out because it's quite impressive. In 2008, he was selected by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to serve as Director of the Transition of Military Forces from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration. He returned to Afghanistan as Deputy Chief of Staff for Stability under the International Security Assistance Force. Following his promotion to Lieutenant General, he was appointed Commanding General of the Marine Forces at Central Command and in 2017, he assumed command command of CENTCOM as a four-star general, from which he retired in 2022. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow on National Security at the Middle East Institute, a member of the International Advisory Committee of the National Councils of US-Arab Relations and a member of the National Security Advisory Council with the US Global Leadership Coalition. He's a founding board member of the Advisory Committee for the Iran Strategy Project, an initiative created in 2022 by the Atlantic Council. He's a graduate of the Citadel and he received his master's degree in history from the National Defense University. If you don't already know, his memoir titled the Melting Point, high Command and War in the 21st Century was recently published by the US Naval Institute Press.
Kiki Caruson :We're very proud to be able to call you a USF Bull. And a round of applause for General McCabe. Thank you, and a round of applause for General McCabe. All right, would anyone like a card for writing down a question at this time? If you would just raise your hand. I see one here, a couple. So Catherine will make her way around and make sure she, if you'll just be patient and keep your hand raised and I'm going to kick off, and I'm going to start with Ambassador Stevenson and then General McKenzie, and then I encourage you, since we're sharing a mic. We have an unusual mic situation here. If there is dialogue or you want to go back and forth in the conversation, all the better. So, on the eve of a new presidential administration. How would you assess America's standing in the world? What sources of strength encourage you and what worries you? What keeps you up at night?
Barbara Stephenson :So thanks for that, kiki, and you know it's great to get these questions and to have a chance to reflect, because it's a topic I've been speaking about for a number of years at World Affairs Council's America's Place in the World, and that question about whether the unipolar moment is over and the East is rising and the West is declining, as Xi Jinping so famously said about 10 years ago and continues to say and I will say, as I've worked on this over the last few years, where I see us is surprisingly standing very, very tall and looking quite strong. So let me run through some of those sources of strength. A few years ago it looked like China's economy might surpass ours and in the short term it now looks like the gap. In fact, it is true that the gap between the size of our economy and China's is growing as China's actually loses ground on us. They reached 76% of our GDP three years ago and then they fell to 66. And the last IMF and World Bank figures have them about 63%. So the idea that China's economy will overtake ours in the short term, that's no longer the consensus. It looks like the US economy will remain the world's strongest really for the foreseeable future, and I would put that to the end of my lifespan. So that is a huge development.
Barbara Stephenson :The US military continues to be the world's strongest. We spend more on the military than the next 10 countries combined, and at least five of those are allies. So we've got we still have military strength, which is not to say we shouldn't be worried about China and the general will speak more about this as a military man but China now has more ships than we do and they really have to protect the South China Sea or to advance their interests there, whereas we have really the whole world to worry about. So China has gained on us and it's it's a close competition. It's something I worry about, but our military is still strong and has remarkable on us, and it's a close competition. It's something I worry about, but our military is still strong and has remarkable global capacity. Something else we bring to this game and it's so much stronger now than it has been and that I expected it to be is the world's unrivaled network of alliances. Nato at 75 is stronger and more united than I think any of us expected it to be five years ago. That's thanks to Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and reminding us of why NATO matters, but it now is beefed up by Finland and Sweden, strong democracies with strong military capability. So I have to say NATO comes into this in remarkably good shape, with 23 of the 32 members now actually pitching in 2% of gross domestic product for their military capability. So it's really a transformed NATO.
Barbara Stephenson :The piece that's gotten less attention is the and I think is really important and I'm looking forward to a conversation about this it is the strengthening of our network of alliances in the Pacific. We've always had a hub and spoke with relationships, treaty alliances with Korea, the Philippines, japan, australia. But now there are three way in many instances Japan, korea, the US, japan, the Philippines, the US and there was even talk of the AUKUS relationship Australia, uk, us bringing Japan in. So there's been a latticework of alliances and relationships built across the Indo-Pacific. These really seriously boxed China in. They have been really really effective. Rahm Emanuel, our outgoing ambassador there, writes about these. Look it up, look at it. But this thing, I think, has really strengthened our position. So, strongest economy, strongest military, unrivaled network of alliances.
Barbara Stephenson :And I'm going to throw in number four no, not the world's biggest producer of oil and gas, although it doesn't hurt the lion's share of the great research universities in the world. We're about four and a half percent of the world's population. We have 20 of the top research universities and then so many of them as you go through the next 100. That is a defining strength for us. I just heard Admiral Gary Roughead call it the secret sauce of American success at the USIP's Passing the Baton event. Passing the baton event. I don't think we should ever underestimate what a competitive advantage it is for us to have these great research universities, not only for the technological edge and the economic dynamism, but because we are attracting the world's best talent to our shores with those universities, and we really need to be smart about that. So what do I worry about? We're doing too much deficit spending. It really is high when you look at it. It's time to start worrying about that. China is catching up on some of this technological stuff. They beat us on 5G.
Barbara Stephenson :I've been watching Eric Schmidt, who's my favorite commentator on AI. He led that National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. He just said on Fareed Zakaria two years ago I came and said we were two years ahead of China. I think that gap is closed. That is a critical gap. It is crucial that the US remain ahead in AI and I think that when really I am worried about that and we have to keep in the university strong, I think is a really key part of that, and I do sometimes worry about the loss of America's standing when our democracy was such a beacon for the world and a powerful moral example. Polling shows that has declined so dramatically and that worries me, and that's a big job of work we have to do at home. So that's what I'm thinking about Strengths, weaknesses, as we start off with a new president.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Thank you, thanks, barbara, and first of all I largely agree with everything you said. So I'm just going to hit on two points. And the point I would make is I think the great strength of the United States is the alliance structure that Barbara outlined, whether it's NATO and Europe, whether it's our web of relationships across the Pacific, whether it's what we do in the Middle East. That is truly the hidden secret of the United States. China does not have that, russia does not have that, none of our opponents have it. For those who say that it's difficult working with allies, as Churchill said, it's the most difficult thing possible except not having allies. And that really is something that we've built up from the Second World War forward to now, and I would argue that that is the unique, asymmetric advantage of the United States. Our military is certainly very strong, very capable, but our military is even stronger and more capable when it's paired with partner nations. Look, I am an internationalist. I'm an unapologetic internationalist. That's my approach. It may place me out of favor sometimes, but you can't be the central command commander and not depend on the nations on the other side of the world. We are stronger when we align with other nations, whether it's in a formal alliance structure, in a community of interest or, however you choose, a coalition of the willing, if you will. However you choose to describe it, we are better when we do that. We are better in terms of goals, we are better in terms of capability and we offer then advantages that our opponents and when I say opponents, I'm really talking China, I'm talking Russia, I'm talking Iran, I'm talking North Korea advantages that they cannot have because they do not have that structure. I think that's a very important thing to consider.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:So what worries me? What worries me is the history of the United States says sometimes we turn our back on international engagement. We did it at the end of the First World War, when Woodrow Wilson came back from Versailles with a workable, bumpy, sort of rough-edged plan for an international series of agreements that mirrored the United Nations of several decades later. We turned our back on that. We looked inward. As a result. Decades later, we turned our back on that. We looked inward. As a result, fascism rose and we ended up having to fight a second world war as a result of that. It worries me. What worries me is the fact that we sometimes turn inward. We reject the leadership role that we have.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:I do not believe the defense of the United States begins on the North Carolina coast or the coast of California or in Hawaii. It actually begins much further afield and you have to be engaged in the world. The resources that this nation has, the geographic position that we occupy, make it very difficult for us to turn our back on the world, and if we do that, then we lose that advantage of the alliance structure that we've talked about, because here's do that, then we lose that advantage of the alliance structure that we've talked about, because here's the thing the ambassador eloquently described NATO. It's a remarkable organization, I would say. However, nato is nothing without the United States. If we exit NATO, nato will not be able to stand.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:That's my opinion. There are others who might have a different opinion on that, but we are the indispensable nation when it comes to organizations such as NATO and also the countries that we're aligned and allied with in the Pacific. So I worry, when we turn our about the possibility of us turning our backs on that. That's, of all the things that concern me, that's actually the thing that concerns me the most, because if we maintain our friendships, we maintain our alliance structure, we again possess profound advantages that no potential opponent can have. So those are the. Those are the two things that I think about the most, both in terms of advantage and the obverse side of it, the risk of turning our back on it.
Kiki Caruson :Thank you, General, could I ask you to maybe continue our conversation and then we'll come back to the ambassador and talking about the value of global alliances and your perspective on the future of NATO.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Sure. So the ambassador already touched on it, but the single person who gave rebirth to NATO's existence is Vladimir Putin. He, by his ill-advised invasion of Ukraine, has given the alliance a remarkable, a remarkable fresh breath and has launched it forward. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Finland and Sweden joining NATO. If you had asked me five years ago, or asked anybody, about the possibility of that happening, you would have been laughed out. No one would have thought that was possible. But what has happened is that has remarkably added to Russia's strategic problem. And it has added remarkably because both those countries have very good militaries, particularly Sweden, but Finland as well. They have added great strength to NATO and they have really increased the problems that Vladimir Putin has to face.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Look, I believe NATO is the most successful defensive organization really in recorded history. I am unable to find another organization that has done as much as NATO has to keep the peace for such a long period of time. And look, it's been bumpy. We talk about the 2% goal. Yes, nations need to spend more, and they are actually beginning to do that. But what has really changed is the threat is now very real and very manifest. I mean, people look at Russia and what Russia has done when it invaded Ukraine. Nothing sharpens the mind of countries more than facing somebody, an expansionist Russia, and they know, perhaps better than we do, that security for Russia and its near abroad has always meant insecurity for everybody that occupies that space. Whether they're bumping up against Ukraine, whether they're bumping up against Poland or the Baltic states, it's always involved. That predates the communists. That's an ancient facet of Russian expansionism and a uniquely Russian view of their own security. And the only way to combat that really is to combine, and that's what we have done, and as a result, we gave birth to NATO after the Second World War, following in many of the lessons that we learned in the Second World War. Profoundly successful.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:And right now I believe it is Putin's worst nightmare as he tries to find a way to get out of the invasion of Ukraine. He won't say out, and we'll talk a little bit more about that here in a couple of minutes. But what he hates the most and what he spends a lot of time trying to work at is ways to break NATO apart, and he has been remarkably unsuccessful in doing it. In fact, two new states have joined NATO, which is remarkable. So I think really the threat. The threat's very real and when the threat is very real, nations tend to focus on it, and that's where we are with NATO today.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:It really is a renaissance for NATO and I hope and I believe that we will stay in NATO because, as I said in my earlier comments, we remain indispensable to NATO. The United States is the glue that holds it together militarily and also politically, militarily. The fact of the matter is, it's our capabilities that actually provide, that, give NATO its ability to fight and be successful on the battlefield, and it's our political will that gives strength to the other nations of NATO. We are at a very, a, very a hinge moment, if you will, for Europe going forward, and we'll see what happens in Ukraine and, like I said, we'll talk about that in just a few minutes. But NATO is a good news story. It's a remarkably good news story, ambassador.
Barbara Stephenson :I think it's so much more powerful when it comes from a general than an ambassador. Of course I believe in alliances, but let's let somebody who has to do the fighting tell you the only thing worse is the Estonian ambassador said when he came to University of North Carolina the only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them. So I think it's a good point. So I'm really I'm very positive about NATO. I'm delighted. On the upside, there are a couple of negatives that I think we should put out here. I mean, one is the uncertainty on our side about where we will be, and I think that's just lurking in the room. I think the second thing and the general may want to come about this from the expertise of a military man we really have found with, you know, the first round of Ukraine. Everybody sent all their surplus and it wasn't really all that heavy of a lift and we got Ukraine equipped. But we're done with all the surplus and now we're really having to produce new stuff to keep them armed and it is really costing. And I think we've seen the erosion of our defense industrial base, not only in the US but in the European countries, and I think that is something we don't really have the capacity to rearm quickly now. I think that's one July when the NATO summit was going on and the European heads of states came in and did panels and the Danish prime minister president in particular, was articulate about the need for us to recognize that we are facing a sustained disinformation campaign and that it really has now reached the level of hybrid warfare. And it's so interesting to see it come not from the big old United States, the big lumbering giant with the biggest military, but from the neighbors who've lived in that space with Russia all these years and they said these are not random things, they're not one-offs. When this blows up in the warehouse, when we have this disinformation, these are sustained hybrid campaigns and there are things that make us great that we're beginning to doubt. We doubt our democracy, we doubt higher education, we doubt the value of all this foreign talent flowing to our shores. I was just reading Gallup and Pew polling on this and watching the really dramatic decline over the last seven or eight years. So maybe this is all real. Part of this is things we have doubted as a people, but I will say the Russians have got an extraordinary capacity to see where we have doubts and to go into those and make the cleavages so much deeper Even being aware of it doesn't make you immune.
Barbara Stephenson :But I think it's my first start of a where do we begin to deal with this kind of hybrid campaign? Because we're not fighting in the open field, we're fighting in the shadows and in cyberspace, et cetera, and this is a new one and NATO has struggled with it. It wasn't built to do this and, as the Danish president said, we've spent enough time trying to decide what to call this and where this belongs. We need to actually recognize it's a sustained campaign that's going on and we're going to have to really worry that we don't end up being torn apart. Russia wants nothing more than to tear apart NATO, to get the UK to leave the EU, to get Scotland to leave UK. There goes continuous. That's the nuclear deterrent. This part about getting us to split apart and emphasize our differences. It's something that's new and I don't think we have a really good approach for addressing it, but I just want to name it to start that conversation.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:I will jump on the industrial base issue, because I think it's very important. The fact of the matter is that really since around 1991, 1992, the United States has systematically disassembled our defense industrial base. So today we have a very tissue thin industrial base that is not actually able to keep up with the demands that we're seeing today, and their demands are resupplying Ukraine and other places and demands of the campaigns that we have fought, and it's not just sophisticated stuff, it's what we would call dumb bombs, artillery projectiles, things like that. We no longer have the capability to manufacture them at scale. We were once the arsenal of democracy. We are not today. We're a long way from being that, and so here's the problem, though If you're going to convince someone in business to build a plant that's going to make artillery projectiles, you got to let them know you're going to do this for 20 or 25 years. You can't say well, we want to cut it on for six months. Then we're going to cut the spigot off because we don't see the need anymore. So that requires political action at the highest levels of the United States and investment if you want to revitalize your industrial base.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:I'll give you an example the Javelin, which is an anti-tank missile that you hear a lot about. The Ukrainians shot a lot of it. They make it in a small town in Ozark, alabama, and they don't make a lot of them. We probably ought to think about building more Javelins. It's one of the best anti-tank missiles in the world, but that's going to require investment and it's going to require those people who make that investment to have confidence that we're going to do it for a while and we're not going to suddenly stop, and we have a very bad track record in terms of industrial policy of doing just those types of things. You can't build a tank in the United States today. We don't have a tank factory anymore. The M1A2 tank and its successor is the best tank in the world Can't build any more of them because we did away with that. It's hard for us to build ships. The Navy has a shipbuilding plan, but they can't get the workers to man the shipyards.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:This is a crisis. It's a quiet crisis until suddenly it's not. You know, it's like F Scott Fitzgerald said how'd you go broke? Gradually, then suddenly, and that's the way it's going to be here. This is going to be a gradual thing until suddenly there's a major crisis and we're not going to have. We call it our locker, your ammunition locker. The ammunition locker is badly depleted. It's not a sexy thing, it's not an exciting thing, but it is a very. It's at the very core of what you do. If you're going to plan to fight People and by people I mean our opponents look at our ammunition locker. They know and understand probably better than most Americans do where we are in expenditure of these items. We're going to be in a crisis here. I hope it's a crisis that we can avert and that we can deal with it by making these investments that I've talked about. But sooner or later that bill is going to come due. You would prefer it not to come due in wartime.
Kiki Caruson :Thank you. In keeping with the theme of the evening, opportunities and challenges, Ambassador Stevenson, what does the next administration face in terms of identifying a resolution to the war in Ukraine?
Barbara Stephenson :So I think we can see where this ends. I think richard haas, the president emeritus of the council on foreign relations, has been telling us for eight months and I have had briefings with state department officials in november and they can see this. That's the biden administration. And then I hear the Trump administration officials in the passing of the baton, say the same thing Ukraine will not get the Donbass and Crimea back. The deal will be to cede those to Russia, at least on some kind of a temporary ceasefire basis. Nobody likes that. We kind of had an agreement that you wouldn't take territory by force. It sticks in the craw to have to do it. I'm not sure the Europeans are going to buy this, but this is kind of where the Americans are and I think it's both administrations. They do not see a reasonable path to taking back the Donbass and Crimea. And I will say what's left of Ukraine then when you take off that Russian speaking component that borders, russia is a pretty stable, very pro-Western Ukraine. That's left. So can they join NATO? I don't think so. Can they join the EU? There probably is a path to accession with that and then with a whole lot of bilateral security guarantees for Ukraine, say I think one of the most important things that the new administration can do is provide the weaponry and the assistance that Ukraine needs to keep up the fight as long as Ukraine wants to. The idea that we would force Ukraine to fold is so unthinkable to me, and there's going to be a lesson drawn about whether invading your neighbor and taking territory by force was a smart move.
Barbara Stephenson :It's looked kind of smart for Russia for the last year. They've done pretty well. They haven't done that badly on the sanctions. It's turning now it's turning and they're really feeling the pressure. Gazprom is laying off a very significant portion of its workforce. The ruble is under stress. Russia is losing something like 320 barrels a month in combat. It can replace 20. Do the math. How much longer can you do that? Reduce our adversary? But if Ukraine is insisting on keeping up this fight, it is not to America's strategic disadvantage for that to go on. When Assad needed Russia to come in and save his bacon, russia was too busy with Ukraine to do so. The picture of the Middle East looks fundamentally different when Israel took out Tehran's S-300 anti. What are they called Air defense?
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:S-300, the air defense system S-300 air defense batteries.
Barbara Stephenson :They are without them now. They need to go to Russia to get them replaced. Russia's otherwise occupied. There are some real strategic benefits to having Russia tied down in this long war, and if the lesson for China and every other would-be invader is that when you go in and you take your neighbor's territory, you come out with 600,000 casualties, 150 to 200,000 of them dead young men, and your ruble wrecked, your economy wrecked and egg all over your face, this is a pretty good message to come out of an atrocious action like that. So I'm usually the first one as to how to stop the fighting. I'm not quite there yet. I think it is really important in this case that we stand by Ukraine. I think that's how we keep faith with our allies in Europe. I think they are looking to us not to abandon Ukraine and to reward this really egregious behavior.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Thanks, ambassador. Again, I find myself very consistent with what you're saying. I would just say, if we look at how we got here and I would grade the Biden team like this Putin drew strength from our withdrawal from Afghanistan that we would perhaps not respond forcefully if he invaded Ukraine. That's probably something that we wish we had a different way to interpret. I believe the Biden team did a very good job trying to convince Russia not to actually launch the invasion. We knew about it, the intelligence was compelling and, I think, very, very smartly, we downgraded some highly sensitive intelligence to share with the world and with the Russians to say look, we see what you're doing and we're going to expose it. And we did. It did not deter Vladimir Putin. So, while unsuccessful, I thought that was a very good. I thought there's a very good, robust response from this administration.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Where I fault the Biden team, though, is they've sought to manage the war, not back Ukraine enough to win a more significant victory, and the time is now past when that can happen. There was a time period in the first six months nine months. Had we actually given Ukraine significant capability, we might be in a very different place today, but that's a fork we didn't take. We went this way, and we're no longer in a situation where we can do that. We've given them longer range missiles, atacms that can range deep into Russia. We've given them F-16s, which is probably not as big a thing as it might seem. It's a pretty airplane, but the airplane sitting on the ramp is not what makes the airplane effective. It's the human being sitting in the airplane and all the command and control, the logistics, the other stuff that goes on that only the United States can do. Ukraine will never be able to do that, even if the F-16 is an attractive airplane on the ramp. So we're in a place now where we had chances to materially change the trajectory of the conflict. Those chances are behind us. Now it's an ugly, bloody deadlock, and I agree completely that it is slowly turning against Putin.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Putin is unable to dismount, though there are no guardrails in Russia for Vladimir Putin. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Nikita Khrushchev undertook a very adventuristic movement and moved missiles into Cuba, he actually had a politburo around him that graded him and ultimately restrained him. There is nobody around Vladimir Putin. If you give him advice, he doesn't want to hear. You check into the ninth floor of a Moscow hospital and you decide to jump out the window. So there's not. There's just not. There's nobody around him to give him advice. He planned the operation without consulting his military. I know General Gerasimov, the chief of general staff. He was not in it. The FSB what we would call the organs of state security planned the operation, not the Russian military, and it's been a disaster. But the Russians have vast resources to throw in it and they are continuing to do that, although they're now back to much earlier, simpler tanks than the ones that started the campaign, because they can't replace their losses.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:So what does that mean? That means there is going to be a negotiated settlement to this conflict, like it or not, it may be one that we find unpalatable. I would certainly find it unpalatable if I had to give up Donbass and Crimea. I don't see another way around it. I wish I did, and so you know. The question is going to be what form of economic and security guarantees are we going to give Ukraine, and what's it going to mean to Vladimir Putin? And the one variable here is this, and this is an interesting thing. The one variable here is this, and this is an interesting thing Putin is very unpredictable, and that's been their ace. The United States has been very predictable, but here in a week, the leader of the United States is going to be an unpredictable guy and that's actually going to change the equation a little bit, I think, in this particular case maybe not necessarily in a bad way, in this particular case.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:The last thing I would just say the most concerning thing of all to me and we haven't talked about it is Russia is a declining state with a terrible economy, bad demographics, a very small rentier economy, but they have a vast and capable set of nuclear weapons. In fact, they're the only country in the world that could kill all of us in this room in about 45 minutes if they chose to do it. No other country can do that. So therefore, you have to respect that capability and that's why, when I am critical of the Biden team and I am critical of them I also remember they have to balance the fact that Putin rattles the nuclear sword a little bit, because he knows he gets our attention when he does that. So we have to know, understand and respect that capability.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:I don't think he's on the verge of dropping a nuclear weapon on Warsaw or Kiev, but I think it's possible that he could do a demonstration shot.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:He could do a variety of things with a tactical nuclear weapon that would say, hey, look at me, I'm crazy.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:And the next one might be against Warsaw or run another European capital. So that's something that we just have to think about as we try to find an end to this war. It is not going to be a solution Ukraine is going to like, probably not going to be a solution the Europeans are going to like, but when it's all said and done, the United States remains the indispensable nation, and the way we want to go is probably the way the Europeans are going to go, and probably the way that Zelensky is going to go, as ugly as that might seem. I would just hope that key to that are going to be security guarantees and economic assistance to ensure that Ukraine is not a rump state but is a viable economic platform and is able to flourish. As the ambassador noted, I see no other way this is going to end. Ukraine's not going to pull some kind of dazzling victory here at the end, and the Russians are not going to be able to do it either, unless they do something dramatic that probably involves a nuclear weapon.
Kiki Caruson :In terms of conflict. We're hearing some potentially positive news out of the Middle East about a possible peace plan. What advice would you provide the next administration about addressing America's interests in that region of the world? Hand it off to you, ambassador Stevenson.
Barbara Stephenson :Well, this is perhaps the biggest change really from when we started thinking about these questions to where we are now. It's really been a remarkable evolution. As you know, iran struck Israel directly for the first time ever, and then it did it twice. But it turns out that our aerial defense was so effective with us and Israel and I think the UK pitched in that only a couple of missiles came through at all and had Russia's. Iran's capability really didn't leave a dent. There was one casualty and I'm sorry about this, it was a Palestinian on the West Bank, that's who died in that. So Iran's strike was, you know, it didn't have the impact. And then the walkie-talkies and the pagers probably the most brilliant intelligence operation I can ever remember in my life. And Hezbollah, which is such a force to reckon with, just toppled and weakened, and then the leader killed and collapsed. And then you see a potential for Lebanon maybe to rebuild its state, which has now left Hamas ready to sign a peace agreement, because it wasn't going to before. So it's a dramatic change. I would give we were debating this and not everybody loves this thing, but it's taking me a while to come around to this and I won't bring everybody with me, but there's a moment here. I mean, iran is weak, hezbollah is not functioning, hamas is much weaker.
Barbara Stephenson :There is a really good day after plan for Gaza. Jim Jeffrey and Tom Warrick wrote it. You can find it on the Atlantic Council's website. It's really good. It doesn't have the Israeli defense forces or Hamas running Gaza for a while. It has a multinational force that goes in and you get aid provided and you get the place stabilized. And then you do need to figure out at some point what the hell is the political solution to this. We can't go on just doing this tactically. So I think that piece I've seen a plan. It's a good plan. Here's the part you're not going to like. It's a good plan. Here's the part you're not going to like. I think we should just move on expanding the Abraham Accords and sign a defensive relationship with Saudi Arabia and take advantage of this moment to rewrite the kind of structure of the Middle East and really see that Iran's ring of fire doesn't get reestablished.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:So that's kind of where I come out on that and I'm going to pass the mic to the general of where I come out on that and I'm going to pass the mic to the general. Thanks very much, a lot there. So if we look at it from a very high level, what do we want in the Middle East? I think we want Iran to be a responsible member of the family of nations. We don't want them to export terror. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon capability. We don't want them to have as a fundamental part of their statecraft the explicit statement that they're going to destroy Israel. A couple other things, but largely that's what we want with Iran.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:I don't think you can solve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis without some form of sovereignty for Palestinians. My friends from Israel laugh at me when I say that I've got a lot of time in the region. I don't understate. I don't underestimate the complexity of that task. But unless you can come up with a realistic plan for the day after and Jim Jeffrey is a brilliant American diplomat I would urge you to take a look at what he wrote for the Atlantic Council You've got to come up with some way for people in the West Bank and in Gaza to have a hope of living. Otherwise, you're going to fight them forever, and I don't think anybody except Hamas ultimately wants that to be the outcome. So Hamas can't be part of the solution, but there are Arab states that can fund this solution and there are Arab states that can provide troops for this solution and they are not necessarily the same states that would do that, but there is. I can see a path forward here Now. I understand the political complexity of life in Israel right now with a prime minister, and that may be something that's going to make it very hard to do, but there's no way forward that doesn't involve that solution. You've got to find a way. You've got to find a workable solution to this, even as you find a way to contain and ultimately to modify Iranian behavior, and Iranian behavior is capable of being modified.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:There's a famous episode from 1987 in the Iran-Iraq war, a war very few people know anything about, but millions of people died in that war. It's a long, bloody war between Iran and Iraq. In 1987, things were going against Iran and the Supreme Leader, khomeini, then said he signed a truce with Iraq under unfavorable terms in order to prevent the destruction of the Iranian regime. And he called that drinking from the poisoned chalice and he said I would rather what he said was roughly. I would rather I'm drinking from a poisoned chalice. I would rather do anything in the world than do this, but he did drink from the poisoned chalice and he did accept a truce. Iran will behave rationally when the regime is directly threatened.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:And today the regime, as the ambassador noted, they don't have effective. They had four S-300 systems. Those are gone. They can't defend Tehran. They can't defend what we know and I know is the Tehran Esfahan Corridor, where all the Iranian nuclear capabilities are. They can't defend that from Israel. If the Israelis wanted to go back tonight, nothing's going to stop the Israelis from going back tonight. So Iran is weak. Their hedge against Israel was always Lebanese Hezbollah. Lebanese Hezbollah is not in a position to threaten Israel today, not saying where they'll be two or three years from now, but they're not in a position to do it.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:And in fact, lebanon this may be an opportunity for Lebanon. They just named a president, general Aoun, who I know personally. I've been to his home several times. He's going to be the next president. I think that's a step forward for Lebanon. Maybe they can end the confessional gridlock that has really choked government development in Lebanon and move forward. So there are opportunities here opportunities against Iran and opportunities with the Palestinians to perhaps try to find a way forward. No one's going to be completely happy with this, but I don't see a way to go forward that doesn't involve this and that's what our interests in the region are. If I'm looking at it strategically, those are the things that we want. Those are the things that make it possible for the United States ultimately to reduce our footprint in the region. To look to China, we want to reduce our footprint in the Middle East. We do the things we're talking about, which may mean not reducing the footprint for a while, but ultimately, in the long term, this is the path to being able to focus more directly on China.
Kiki Caruson :Thank you. So I want to be aware of the time and I do want to be able to address some of the questions from the audience. We've talked about Russia, we've talked about Iran. We haven't yet talked about China. I'm sure one of our questions asked about China. I'd like to pose that and then I'll, if you will give us your blessing, for just a few more minutes. We'll look at a few audience questions. So the national security strategy articulated during Trump's first administration flagged the return of a great power competition with China as the greatest national security threat. Ambassador Stevenson, did the Trump administration get that right?
Barbara Stephenson :Yeah, thanks for asking that one, general Mattis, another great Marine general gave us that national security strategy during the Trump administration. When I look back on it, I just marvel at the years I think we squandered with a single-minded focus on the global war on terror, which had, by this point, become lone wolf terrorists you know how much damage a lone wolf terrorist really does. It ain't existential. And meanwhile we were not looking at Russia and China particularly. And this return of great power competition and that 2018 national security strategy was such an important wake-up call and it really caused us to realign at the CIA, the State Department, through the whole national security apparatus, to get ourselves to look at where this challenge was really rising. So Russia is a declining power, as the general has said. Their top-ranked university ranks 350, something like two-thirds of their intelligentsia have fled in the last 20 years. So remember Sputnik? I do, you don't, but it was. You know they were really a great science power, but they really aren't anymore. They ran their intelligentsia off. They wrecked their universities. They don't really have this capacity to regenerate. Once they pump the oil, they're kind of done. They can do a hell of a lot of damage on the way down. So that's one of the things I would just remind us. They're not technologically that great, but they know how to play our scenes and to amplify our social cleavages, not just ours in America, but across the whole the West, nato, et cetera.
Barbara Stephenson :But China was the other big piece of this. And China it is really a force to be reckoned with, and even though it's hit serious economic headwinds, its growth has slowed from 10% a year for years sustained in which they lifted 800 million people out of poverty the biggest achievement like that in the history of the world. It's not going like that anymore. It's fallen to at least half that, maybe below that, and it's got a declining population. So we're not talking about slowing growth, we're talking about a population that is smaller each year than it was, and it's smaller fast. It is remarkable how small China looks at the end of this, at the end of 100 years from now. It's remarkable. So they've got a declining population and they have to then compensate for this. They must bring productivity up or they will continue. The gap between the US economy and China's will continue to fall. The thing is they're a command economy. They have invested a lot of money in sending students to the United States. A bunch of them have gone home. They're really well educated. They have now got Tsinghua University moved this year into the top 20 for US News and World Report, and there are a couple of other universities that are starting to come up there.
Barbara Stephenson :They've got real capability in this technology space, and they've been making things all these years, while we've been not making things and that cycle of trying to do this innovation with some of this. You really need to make things in order to do the whole thing right. This is a rising challenge. We've been restricting the sales of the most advanced computer chips to China. I'm not saying that was a bad move. It sure ain't. Sufficient, though it will not be enough to keep China from gaining on us. Sufficient though, it will not be enough to keep China from gaining on us, and if there's one thing I would urge us not to do, is be smug that our culture of innovation and that whole ecosystem we've built is going to be enough.
Barbara Stephenson :I think China has really recreated a lot of this, and they are really putting a whole lot of people and money into developing a superiority in AI and machine learning and quantum computing, and, by some measures, they're really closing on us. Eric Schmidt, who headed the National Security Commission on AI, says China won the 5G competition. We need to get in front of this so that they never win it again. That was his call to us on AI, and his verdict just two or three weeks ago was that they've largely closed that gap. Who controls AI and shapes it? More than half of all the money that China has invested in artificial intelligence has been invested in improving surveillance capability. Now, is that what you want AI to be used for?
Barbara Stephenson :I was really hoping it might help citizens and democracies thrive, that it might help us make more sense out of healthcare records and improve our health, but that is the direction it will go in if China dominates this, because the technology will be optimized for surveillance.
Barbara Stephenson :That's not what I'd like to have it happen. And as this divide grows between the US and Europe about how to use these technologies, with the Europeans being more conservative, wanting some privacy, constraints on it and to know some things like explainability, which did not survive in the EU but was very carefully considered we won't be going together on this if we're not careful. If we don't go together, nato doesn't function as well, because all the information is going up into the cloud, we need to be able to access it on the same kind of terms. So a divide between the US and Europe on these technologies weakens us in a whole series of ways, including weakening NATO. So I think China is the big threat. It's multifaceted and there are things that we're certain about like we're going to out-innovate them that I used to be sure about and I'm not sure about at all anymore.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Great comments. China is the pacing threat. It's who we need to bear in mind as we design the military forces of the United States. But at the same time, we need to bear in mind as we design the military forces of the United States. But at the same time, we need to recognize that you need to think beyond the Western Pacific, you need to think globally. When you think about China, it is a global problem. They're in the Middle East, they're in other places.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:52% of China's hydrocarbons come through the Strait of Hormuz, so if we find ourselves in a conflict in China, might we not want to prevent that moving through the Strait of Hormuz, rather than fighting in the Strait of Malacca or even further, even closer to mainland China? We need to think globally. We don't do a very good job of doing that. When we tend to think about military competition with China, we tend to think about the Western Pacific, and that is, in fact, very important. But we have advantages that we can apply globally. As they try to expand globally, they're beginning to encroach on areas that we're very familiar with operating in, and we have tremendous advantages and we should not give that up. But again, I would just say you don't want to be fixated on the geography of it in the Pacific, because it's a global problem and we need to think as a global power and we are uniquely a global power and a sea power and an air power and those are our inherent advantages and we need to apply those as we think about how we're going to compete with China.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:I'll go back to one thing on the industrial base. That is a problem. The Chinese are turning out submarines remarkably quickly. Now the submarines are very noisy. We joke and say you can hear them from Hawaii, but they'll get better because you always get better when you build stuff like that. And they got a lot more submarines. They can build far more submarines than we can. We would be hard pressed to replace existing submarines if we got into a major war with China, and submarines will be the coin of the realm in the Western Pacific if you're going to fight the Chinese. That's the platform that gives us our unique powerful advantage. So it's concerning, it's very concerning.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:But I'll just share one other story with you. A friend of mine, the chief of naval operations, but when he did this he was an admiral Back when we were visiting Chinese ships. We don't do that anymore for a lot of reasons, but used to go spend a day or two on a Chinese cruiser or destroyer somewhere. They'd send a couple officers over, and so he's on a cruiser and they're on the bridge which we steer the ship, and there's a up in the middle of the bridge. There's a black ball, one of these security balls I don't see one in here, but you all know what I'm talking about where there's a camera in it and they're talking about, yes, a skipper, what's that? He said? Well, that's where they monitor us. The Chinese Communist Party has these security balls on the bridge in combat, main damage control, central wardroom, chow hall, across the ship. They're being monitored and that stream goes off the ship. They don't see it on the ship, it goes off the ship. So the CCP can keep an eye on it. Additionally, of course, there's a political commissar on the ship and you have almost a dual key system.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:Here's the one point I'd leave this with. I want to fight that Navy. That's the Navy I want to fight. Just remember that because they're always going to be looking over their shoulder. They're always going to be second guests. They've always got another guy on the ship who's got an opinion. You want to fight those guys. So whenever we think about how good the Chinese are and they are pretty good we should remember that they are not perfect and they have profound limitations. I want to fight them. That's the Navy I want to go up against nations.
Kiki Caruson :I want to fight them. That's the Navy I want to go up against. Excellent Thank you. So we're at 730, but if you would give me the generosity of posing a question from our audience, that would be wonderful. So President Trump has had a lot to say about Panama, and we have a former ambassador to Panama here. A lot to say about Panama, and we have a former ambassador to Panama here. So I'm rephrasing the question just a little bit. But are there legitimate US concerns involving Panama? We spoke about China, China's role in the Panama Canal and sort of what should we be paying attention to in Panama, if anything? And I'll add that we have wonderful students from Panama.
Barbara Stephenson :So I will say when I was ambassador to Panama, so 2008 to 10 range, when members of Congress would come down and they would see this Chinese business on the Atlantic side and the Chinese business on a port on the Pacific side, and then you know, they would see this growing commercial presence of China and I will say that our talking points, which are kind of the corner of the realm for a diplomat, were oh, don't worry about that, those are just commercial. They won those with international bids and they have no security consequences. If there's one thing that I think is screamingly naive, from where I sit today with hindsight, are those talking points. Of course, all of this commercial and trade dominance has security implications. So let me first of all acknowledge that that no importa como lo mida, no important doesn't matter how you measure it.
Barbara Stephenson :The Panamanians have made a complete success of running the canal. It was whether it was the safety record, the number of passages through it was accident free, all of these things. Every single metric was that they had done a damn good job. And when I was there the first time, we endlessly talked down to them about how they would never be able to even maintain such an engineering marvel without us. Well, they did quite well, thank you. And then that expansion of adding those different, those larger locks that handle the post-Panamaxes, which are significantly larger, 100% Panamanian financed, run and overseen. So they did this themselves. Those bigger locks they built. So I want to give the Panamanians all credit on that.
Barbara Stephenson :I was, I would say the rains failed really for kind of the first time anybody can remember, they had just a serious drought in Panama and the way that the canal works is that the freshwater that comes in the Chagras River is used to lock the ships through and it flows out to the ocean. So when the water levels fell so much they really couldn't lock as many ships through created a real choke point there. And so what do you do? They auctioned off. You know the spots. We ran it as a utility for the years we ran it until 1999 break even. The Panamanians did not. The Panamanians have run it as something that's an important contributor to their economy by some measures. Things related to the canal are 34% of the Panamanian economy. They were when I was there. So we went through a period where the Panama Canal was a choke point and some of those auction prices for those ships to go through the canal during the drought were eye-popping. Now this only works while there really is a drought, because it's in the Panamanians' entrance to run as many ships through as normal. So I'm not sure that this ever really happens again.
Barbara Stephenson :I was surprised to see because when I was ambassador, we were not, as the US, really overly reliant on the Panama Canal for trade. It wasn't really that big of a deal for us. But I just saw a chart and we are the overwhelming user of the canal. A lot of it is LNG shipments that are going through and as this LNG thing came online, we use the canal a lot more. So I think you probably have some LNG shippers complaining about how much it costs to go through during the drought. So should we take it back over? Absolutely not.
Barbara Stephenson :I'm kind of thinking about, you know, I think, one of the things when you threaten to do something like this and there's just nothing that the US could do that would more upset Panamanians than to suggest this. There is just no more neurologic point than the idea that we're taking this back from you. I mean it just. It is the core of Panamanian identity to have taken the canal, regained the sovereignty of their country and to have done a really good job and to have made Panama an upper middle income country in the course of it. So this pains me to have them do this.
Barbara Stephenson :So why is he doing it? I don't know, but I bet you that President Molino is more compliant on policing up the flow of immigrants to the dairy inn than he might have been otherwise. And I don't know. I just think this kind of behavior is very upsetting to me. I think it's reckless and I think it stirs up some very old memories in Latin America. That won't be a good thing, but I don't think we're really harmed by this. I do think that once the rains have come back, people are passing through the canal. They're just paying the tolls. I don't really think that there is a real problem there, but I do know that it is. I've been listening to Panamanian radio and it is all over the radio and my friend, the foreign minister and vice president at the time, samuel Luis Navarro, was arguing for cabeza fria. We have to keep cool heads and just breathe through this. We can talk this through. So I hope that that's what happens. That's certainly what Greenland is saying as well. Let's talk this through.
General (Ret) Frank McKenzie:So I can't add to that. I would just say there's really, the further we stay away from military as an option as we talk about this problem, the smarter we'll be in the long run. I think there's nothing for me to add to that.
Kiki Caruson :Thank you so much. So we have come to the end of the time. We've actually run a bit over. I want to thank our two speakers for such an interesting conversation and thank you for your expertise and thoughtfulness and for spending some time with us this evening, and for you all for joining us and sharing your thoughts and part of your evening with us. So thank you very much for.
Jim Cardoso:We hope you enjoyed a great conversation between GNSI Executive Director, retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, and Barbara Stevenson, former Ambassador to Panama and currently the vice provost of global affairs at the University of North Carolina, chapel Hill. Next week, on At the Boundary, we're going to start exploring a topic that is important to me and everyone who has served the United States military the recruiting crisis that is plaguing every service branch. Gnsi research fellow, dr Guido Rossi, recently wrote an article for Real Clear Defense exploring the crisis and explaining a simple suggestion for improvement, prioritizing the appointment of a new Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. He'll be joined by Dr Alicia Gill Rossiter, a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and currently the Chief Officer of Military and Veterans Affairs in the College of Nursing at USF Health. She's done some inspirational research on a similar topic the impact of parental military service on military-connected children. I think you'll be surprised by some of the numbers we'll talk about and I'm really looking forward to it.
Jim Cardoso:Thanks for listening today. If you like the podcast, please share with your colleagues and network. You can follow Genesi on our LinkedIn and X accounts. At USF, underscore Genesi and check out our website as well at USFedu slash Genesi, where you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter. That's going to wrap up this episode of At the Boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso and we'll see you at the boundary.
