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Under Secretary Feith Breakfast with Defense Writers Group

Presenter: Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith
February 20, 2002











Feith: The Defense Department doesn't do covert actions.

Q: But that would be a covert action.



Feith: The Defense Department doesn't do covert action, period.


Feith: No.







Q: Still clarifying it. (Laughter)

Q: There's no way to go wrong. (Laughter)


Q: You're expecting aggressive changes throughout?


Q: Why?


Q: (inaudible) (Laughter)


Q: We'll favorably consider (inaudible).

Q: Missile defense question. The administration decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. A lot of attention out there. That clears the way for the missile defense program the administration wants. Are you also looking at some other arms control treaties, and looking at the interpretations in them to see if they will prevent the administration from (inaudible) missile defense plans? I saw recent analysis on the INF Treaty that may have, depending on your interpretation, some restrictions of the U.S. inability to develop weapons for a particular range, 500 kilometers up to 5,000 kilometers as a weapons delivery vehicle. Have you taken a look at any of the arms control treaties the U.S. has signed outside of the ABM?

Feith: In our discussions with the Russians about strategic forces, offensive and defensive, we have talked about a number of existing treaties and both sides have raised the question of whether there's anything we might want to do to modify, (the Russians use the term "perfect") to perfect any of the existing agreements.

Those conversations haven't gotten very far. I have not heard any suggestions along the lines that you're talking about regarding the INF Treaty. That's news to me. But there have been some discussions of whether all of the verification provisions in all of the agreements are as they should be or whether they might not be improved or modified somehow. But those discussions are, as I said, fairly preliminary.

Q: I want to turn to Iraq policy, particularly the INC. After the president's State of the Union speech they met with State Department officials and Pentagon officials. So far they've received non-lethal training, INC training, logistics, communication and so forth. Now apparently they're pushing for a lethal style of training, how to call in air strikes, anti-tank training and so forth. Will they receive that kind of training from the Pentagon? And what about as far as drawdown of Pentagon equipment?

Feith: I don't believe that any decisions have been made on that question. There is the Iraq Liberation Act and there are certain, there's a certain amount of support for the opposition, the Iraqi opposition, for which approval has already been provided and funded and provided by Congress.

I don't think I can shed much light on your question on the nature of the training.

Q: But it's under consideration do you think?

Feith: All aspects of our policy regarding all state sponsors of terrorism are continually being reviewed. We've got a lot of thinking going on throughout the government about how to deal with the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Iraq and others. There's a special focus of course on those state sponsors that have significant programs for nuclear and biological and chemical weapons and missiles.

The answer is, is anything under consideration with respect to any of those countries? All kinds of things are under consideration with respect to all of those countries.

Q: With Iraq, though, the INC's been around for a while, they have a lot of support in Congress, they're pressing for lethal training. I'm just trying to find out what the holdup is, if anything. Is there disagreement about whether they should get lethal training? Can you give me a sense of that?

Feith: I really can't say that much about that. Sorry. I just can't shed a lot of light on that for you.

Q: Going back to Afghanistan, does the U.S. military sort of now have a third policy there which is beyond defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda, we now see our mission as supporting Afghan forces loyal to Karzai against other Afghan forces? And if there is, if that is now part of our mission can you talk a little bit about the implications of that? Are we increasingly going to find ourselves in the middle of these clashes between Afghan warlords?

Feith: I wouldn't say that we have a policy of supporting any specific leader as such in Afghanistan. We do have an interest in the kind of political stability in Afghanistan that will make it less likely that Afghanistan will become a base for terrorist operations against us in the future. And we want the Afghans, the current Afghan political experiment, to succeed. We want the interim authority to stabilize. We want it to establish its authority throughout the country. There are extremely difficult questions of what is the proper relationship between the central government and regional powers in Afghanistan, and this is a problem that goes back a long way in Afghan history. We're interested in having the Loya Jirga process succeed sometime in the spring, late spring, and produce a permanent structure for an Afghan government. We have an interest in that and we have ongoing responsibilities in the country.

There's also the international community's involvement in security issues in Afghanistan. You've got the, as you all know, the International Security Assistance Force that the British leads doing their job in Kabul. We have a relationship with that force. There are questions about what that force is going to be doing down the road. There are important police functions that need to be fulfilled throughout the country. There's the question of developing the Afghan national army. These are all things that we're thinking about right now. Then there's the question of what's the proper role of the United States? What's the proper role of other members of the international community in either providing security functions in the country or helping assess security needs, helping in some cases finance.

We're talking with other countries about possibly contributing to the financing of the effort to train Afghans to perform both the police and the military functions. There are all kinds of issues also if you talk about the security area, how do you handle things like border control? Do you set up a separate force for that? Do you make it part of the army's responsibility? Do you make it a police function? All of those kinds of things we're spending a lot of time focusing on and working with allies and friends who can help either provide trainers or military personnel or funds or other kinds of in-kind support to help the Afghans.

But I would, while a lot of that is going on, I think it addresses a large part of your question, I would not characterize that as saying we're in there committed to an individual and we're going to help that individual against his rivals. That's not the way we view it. We view it as a matter of promoting the kind of general political stability in the country that serves our interests in not having Afghanistan revert to serving as a base for terrorism.

Q: So what do we do in instances, and we've had a few of these recently, where we literally are sort of in the middle, and in fact have a couple of times been asked by Faction A to bomb Faction B. What do we do in that case? If we are more friendly with Faction A or Warlord A than Warlord B?

Feith: Our main focus, the main focus of our military activity there, is finishing the job against al Qaeda and the Taliban. That's what we're really concentrating on. And we are not involving ourselves in internecine politics, including the politics backed by guns as the definition of our military mission.

Q: Having said all that you said about the U.S. responsibilities and ongoing responsibilities and ongoing activities in Afghanistan, is it fair to say that we are, that all that is sort of tantamount to nation-building and that we are in fact heavily involved in nation-building in Afghanistan already?

Feith: We don't think of it that way. (Laughter)

Q: Mission creep?

Feith: The idea that when we will have accomplished what we set out to do against the Taliban and against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the idea that we would have an ongoing interest in preventing the reversion of Afghanistan to its old role as a base for terrorism against us and other countries, that was in everybody's mind all along. I don't think that involves nation-building.

We're not, I think we're not naive about our ability to fine tune the political situation in Afghanistan and we not only don't have the capability to do that, we don't have the desire. We're not trying to run Afghanistan. We've made that clear from the beginning. If Afghanistan is run by the Afghans and the country is not used as a base for terrorism against us then we have no interest in the way they run their own lives. And so we do not think of ourselves as going in there and building their nation.

Q: To follow up on that, how would you define nation-building? You're in there trying to bring order to the country, trying to help it build up institutions. It seems to me that the Bush Administration is just sort of pathologically averse to the term nation-building. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Feith: I don't call it a pathology. I call it a sound policy. (Laughter)

Q: But what do you mean by, why is it not nation-building? What is nation-building that what you're doing is not?

Feith: It's like a lot of broad terms that people can throw around in political debates. People define the terms as they see fit. People tend to choose terminology because of what it connotes more than what it denotes, and we don't like the connotation of nation-building because it implies an ambition that we don't' have to exercise a degree of control that we're not interested in exercising and are not sure that we could organize to exercise even if somebody were so inclined. It's just not what we're interested in doing.

We're not trying to shape the politics of other people's countries. And what we are interested in is, as I said, we have a legitimate interest in making sure that countries don't allow their territory to be used as a base for attacks against us. That's a legitimate interest of the United States. It's recognized as legitimate around the world. That's what we're interested in. And helping the Afghan, having operated in Afghanistan to remove the al Qaeda and the Taliban rule, we're doing what Americans are famous for doing which is we're now trying to help the people of Afghanistan in various ways through humanitarian projects and the like and we're certainly willing to give them a hand in the economic sphere and to the extent that we can help promote political stability there within bounds we're doing that. But we think that's far short of what the term nation-building normally connotes.

Q: As you discuss the security situation, I'm a little unclear as to whether or not, or the extent to which you think U.S. troops are going to have to remain. I understand that you put the primary focus on getting al Qaeda and the Taliban, but the truth is that there is continued armed conflict in that country, it undermines your goal basically.

So to what extent are you considering an extended presence for the U.S. military, a U.S. military role in (inaudible)?

Feith: Our immediate goal, the goals that we set at the beginning of the fighting there have not yet been fulfilled. There's still a lot of work to be done against the Taliban and al Qaeda. And until we finish that I can't really answer definitely what we are going to want to do in the way of any kind of continued military contact.

I suspect that we will -- I suspect we will establish friendly relations with the permanent Afghan government when the permanent Afghan government comes in, and I suspect we will have the kind of military-to-military contact with them that we have with lots of countries around the world. And help promote the education and professionalism of their officers and the like. So I imagine we'll maintain those kinds of contacts in Afghanistan. What's beyond that I can't say at this point. As I said, we haven't finished our first job.

Q: Are you leaving the door open for a peacekeeping force with Americans in it?

Feith: I think that the best option for Afghanistan is really that they have their own Afghan forces keeping the peace in their own country. And the International Security Assistance Force has a very narrow mandate and it's really just providing security in Kabul. And there's not a great inclination to expand that mandate.

Q: But clearly there's a need for them down south. I mean everyone you talk with in like Kandahar and elsewhere is dying to have peacekeeping troops down there.

Feith: It is understandable there are major security requirements throughout the country. As I said, of all types. Police, military, and in-between. Border patrol and all kinds of stuff. And as I was saying, one of the things that we're spending a lot of time on right now is trying to figure out how do you get those responsibilities fulfilled and how quickly can you train up Afghans to do the job? What do you do in the interim? How long is the interim?

We are very aware that if you create interim arrangements you run the risk of creating dependencies that are very hard to end. There's some French expression that I used to know about there's nothing more permanent than the provisional. And we're conscious of that. So our strong inclination is to work as quickly as possible to put the Afghans in the position where they can perform the security functions throughout their country that are necessary.

Q: But is there a danger if you don't put troops in in the interim that the warlords can run amuck - - and other problems along those lines?

Feith: It's like all interesting policy questions. There are dangers in either direction, in every direction. That's why it's such an interesting field. In any one of these things if you head off too far in any one direction you've got danger.







Q: I just asked for a few examples.



Q: Those are all things we did before --










Q: Secret.








Q: How about outside (inaudible)? Dot coms.


Q: By hiring others to do that?

Feith: I think I've really --

Q: Let's move on.



The issue of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. You're correct, it gets very little attention. The Russians have lots of tactical nuclear weapons. We view them at this point not as a big military headache for us but as a, more from the point of view of the danger of nuclear proliferation. But it is a very large arsenal and I don't know what more -- your general point that it's not paid a lot of attention to is true.

Q: What are you going to do?

Feith: What are we going to do?

Q: Is this on your radar screen? Do you have a plan of action? Okay, now that we've done this whole ABM thing let's move over to tactical nukes?

Feith: In general the idea, if the Russians -- When the Russians are interested in demilling items like that we do have a mechanism through what's called the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, the Nunn/Lugar program --

Q: Are you interested in pressuring them to demilitarize?

Feith: We're interested in -- if they want to work with us on helping to demil those, we'd be happy to do it. As I said, we're not viewing them as an immediate threat to us. They are mainly a threat because of the proliferation problem. But I don't think -- we're not in the business of pressuring the Russians. We actually have quite a cooperative relationship with them.

Q: The immediate threat I think is very clear, especially with al Qaeda, and there's a great deal of concern about weapons of mass destruction getting out there. You say there's no immediate threat, but that really doesn't jive with what's in the news.

Feith: The word is immediate. What I mean by immediate is the Russians threatening us. I said there's a significant threat from the point of view of proliferation.

Q: Is it better not to demil them? Are they safer sitting on top of a big old rocket than they are unpackaged and put in a nice small container and put on a rail car to some storage center when they can be stolen?

Feith: They're better off being properly secured.

Q: Are you confident in the command and control (inaudible)?

Feith: Confident. The issue of command and control of anybody else's weapons is always an issue. We're confident of our own. And when weapons are in anybody else's hands there's always an issue.

Q: On Pakistan, last week Musharraf came in. Can you give us a sense of what comes next by way of mil-to-mil startups? And F-16s, they said they want those [20] F-16s. Will the Pentagon agree to releasing those?

Feith: There's no decision on -- we know the Pakistanis have expressed interest in the F-16s. There's no decision on that. On mil-to-mil relations with Pakistan, we are eager to engage in mil-to-mil cooperation with the Pakistanis.

We serve the national interest in I think important ways when we have good mil-to-mil relations with different countries. The United States has over the years through legislation cut off our ability to do military-to-military contacts with various countries at various times as a sign of disapproval. And I understand the concerns that lead to that kind of legislation. I think that that kind of a move, those kinds of restrictions on military-to-military relations I think tend to net out negative from the national security point of view from the United States because the political message you send with it is more than offset by the harm done that we for ten years sometimes or longer have no contact with the officer corps of these different countries, and it winds up creating many more problems than it mitigates.

We're now in a position where we can resume military-to-military contacts with the Pakistanis, and that's a good thing.

Q: The F-16s. A number of years ago there was concern that those things could carry nuclear bombs and that was one of the reasons there was concern about giving them back to Pakistan. What are some of the policy considerations held by giving back a small but symbolic amount of airplanes? Or giving what they paid for?

Feith: The issue of payment -- that was actually worked out. That was settled.

Q: I know, but it's symbolic. They want the planes back.

Feith: Right now our focus on that area is, on getting tensions lowered in light of the mobilization and so all I'm going to -- I'm not going to be commenting on arms transfers. That's not a smart thing to be highlighting at the moment. What we're trying to do is resolve the current tension.



Q: I wanted to ask about the war against terrorism overseas. It would seem that in the Middle East and possibly other parts of the world it's perceived that it's not being something in the interest of those countries but rather as being a war against Islam. How particularly has the Administration moved into taking a more aggressive (inaudible), how do you overcome that? And going back to the Office of Strategic Influence, how does that fit into that process?

Feith: When we started the war against terrorism and begin military operations in Afghanistan we heard from lots of people that this was viewed as a war against Islam and against Afghanistan. We said from the beginning, of course, that it's not. And there were all kinds of warnings how we were going to lose our position throughout the Muslim world, the Arab world in particular. That the street would turn against us, we wouldn't have cooperation from the government. You remember, of course all the talk about if you bomb during Ramadan it's going to be the end of our relations with all these countries.

What became clear in the course of the war in Afghanistan is that we were not fighting against Afghanistan. We were fighting on behalf of people in Afghanistan who wanted to rid themselves of the domination of al Qaeda and the Taliban. And it is now clear to everybody that we were not fighting against Afghanistan. Let alone or much less I should say, against Islam.

There is a war between various terrorist organizations, a network of them, and you could say the civilized world, the United States in particular.

There is also a war within the world of Islam between a particular extreme view of how their societies should be organized and the more moderate view.

That was true in Afghanistan too and it was clear that the United States was not fighting against Muslims, we were fighting to help the more moderate people against the extremists. It turned out to be a war of liberation as we said all along we conceived it.

So I think the particular problem you're referring to is a real problem. It has not been solved completely in the minds of people around the world, but I do think that the way the Afghanistan situation has evolved and people have seen what our role was and what happened after the initial fighting ended has helped us enormously. People understand that we're not at war with Islam. And that there's I think a greater recognition of this fight within some of these societies between the extremist view and the more humane, moderate view.









