in this case�in today's case ISIS. This meeting is designed to be a little different

from our usual Council on Foreign Relations meetings, in that we are loosely simulating

a National Security Council meeting. As the national security advisor, I will try and

interrupt frequently. I will try and ask a lot of questions so we can discern a matter

of answers so that we might be able to put a policy prescription before the president.

After all, that's our job on the National Security Council.

So the way we'll structure this is that we will begin with�I will begin with what I

believe to be the current U.S. policy vis-a-vis ISIS. We will turn as a group to discuss what

we believe the policy to be and the way it is working. We will expand it to a conversation

about the strategic interests of the United States and the region, and then finally we

will try and develop some policy options. Assuming that we don't have consensus and

that these distinguished panelists have recommendations for the president, we will try and hammer

out what those are. And like any typical NSC meeting, I expect

it to end inconclusively and resolve that we need more meetings to come up with a new

policy. So let me begin with a brief scene-setter

to get the ball rolling, and I will then turn to our distinguished guests and introduce

them as I pose a question to them. Our ISIS policy seems to begin with Iraq first and

then Syria. Let's start with Iraq. Our policy seems to be that we support the Iraqi central

government and we encourage them, especially through the departure of Prime Minister Maliki,

to have an inclusive government. But the heart of our policy seems to be military

airstrikes upon ISIS, apparently to help the peshmerga on the ground and also the Iraqi

security forces in the ground part of this particular campaign. The U.S. is of course

engaged in striking military targets today and we should explore whether we need more,

what that means and whether that should be expanded, perhaps beyond the advisory role

that our U.S. servicemen and women are in now, and whether we perhaps should even commit

more ground troops�or ground troops to the effort.

Finally, the state of the Iraqi security forces is unclear. In many cases some of their success

is at least in part attributed to the Shiite militias operating across the region. We should

discuss whether we think we are winning today, and ultimately whether U.S. interests are

being served when apparently, if we believe it to be true, that the U.S. is, as BOOT has

put it in an article, being the air force for the Iraqi Shiite militiamen.

Finally, we need to discuss what our posture should be vis-a-vis the Kurds. They are very

frustrated that they haven't received arms directly from the United States and they are

angry about our policy that everything should be done by, with and through the central government

in Baghdad. And finally, we'll turn to Syria. We've hit

some targets there but our policy is ostensibly to arm the moderate rebels so that they may

become more of a fighting force, to force a stalemate in Syria so that eventually we'll

be able to get to peace talks. And then as I understand our policy to be, we will then

insist on the departure of Assad. We need to discuss also whether in our campaign

to defeat ISIS, whether Assad must go, or whether we need to make greater common cause

with him as we move forward on the campaign. Janine, let me start with you. You are a senior

fellow for defense policy here at the Council on Foreign Relations. You are a former pilot

and Air Force officer. When you were deputy assistant secretary in the Obama administration,

you were charged with reviewing strategic plans and military contingency plans.

As recently as August, you wrote that America has no policy to stop ISIS. Do you still believe

that, and can you give us some sense of what is happening on the ground today? Is our policy

working, and are we making progress against ISIS?

DAVIDSON: Well, thank you for presiding and for the overview. I think you pretty much

get the outlines of what's happening pretty much correct. I think what is happening now

is that there is a recognition that there is no short-term, there is no purely military

and there is no purely United States approach to this that is going to solve it, that is

going to win, that is going to defeat ISIS. So, what we have is a�we have is a policy

to defeat ISIS, but we have actions that have been sort of slow. So we may have missed a

few windows actually. We can get to that a little bit later, but to the extent that we

need to arm a moderate rebel force in Syria, where are they? Where - what�what's left?

On the military side, there�I think that the outlines of the military strategy is about

right for the Iraq peace <ph>, but it is a bit of a Rubik's Cube, because you can't just

address the Iraq issue. You have to address the ISIS issue, which is a cross-border issue,

and that's what I meant originally to say�when I said we don't have a strategy against ISIS.

We have an Iraq strategy. We don't have much of a Syria strategy.

MODERATOR: Well, let me�let me press you on that a little bit. As an Air Force officer,

is the air�is the air campaign working? DAVIDSON: Yeah. I mean, the air campaign is

working to the extent that it's not going to solve the problem. It is necessary, but

not sufficient. The air campaign is necessary but not sufficient, just like military action

in general is necessary, but not sufficient. What I mean by that, is it is very clear that

compared to last summer, when we had this lightning sweep across Iraq of ISIS, that

kind of�that kind of activity has been put in a box. Airstrikes can suppress that. They

aren't�they�they aren't able to mass forces and do what they need to do to continue to

take territory, so they've�it's like a Band-Aid on a problem.

To get the next step, however, in a military way, you're going to have to go into the cities,

and that's where airpower is a�is a lot less definitive. You can't win wars with airpower

alone. MODERATOR: Well so, let's talk a little bit

about that. Max is a distinguished author and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign

Relations. You've been a scholar on counterinsurgency activities and terrorism in generally. From

some of your writings you seem to be a skeptic of the air campaign. You wrote very recently

that we are serving as Iran's air force, as the individuals on the ground apparently doing

most of the heavy lifting are the Shiite militia forces, apparently armed and trained by Iran.

Can you give us a sense of whether you believe the current policy of airstrikes is working,

or are we ultimately employing a self-defeating policy by enabling Iran to exercise still

more influence in Iraq? BOOT: Well, if the objective is to increase

the Iranian stranglehold on Iraq, then I would say the policy is working brilliantly. But

I would question whether that should be our in fact our policy. And in fact, I think we

need to widen the aperture a little bit when we're�because I think one of the issues

here is that the administration has been so narrowly focused on trying to combat ISIS,

it has lost sight of the bigger picture, which is that if we can push ISIS out of Iraq, and

theoretically maybe we are on a trajectory where that might be possible by the end of

the year, you know, knock on wood, fingers crossed, et cetera, but even if we are able

to do that, if the price of doing that is to deliver Iraq into the hands of the Iranian

Quds force, that is a poor bargain to my mind. So what we really actually need is a strategy

that is not just counter-ISIS, but counter-radicalism and extremism throughout the Middle East of

both the Sunni and the Shiite persuasion, and we should not be losing sight of the bigger

picture here, as in fact I think we are doing, because right now, you know, we are bombing

certainly. But if you look at, for example what is happening

in Tikrit, maybe it's the case that Iraqi forces have taken Tikrit. Who knows? They've

claimed victory a number of times in the past. But let's say that's true. I mean, you have

got to be�you got to be pretty credulous if you think that the Iraqi forces that are

taking Tikrit are actually the Iraqi army forces.

And leaving aside the fact that a lot of the Iraqi army forces are probably affiliated

with Abad (ph) organization and other militia groups to begin with, the reality is, I mean

from everything I have read, the vast preponderance of those forces belong to various Shiite militias,

which basically report to General Qasem Soleimani (ph), who is now the most powerful man in

Iraq, in spite of actually not being Iraqi. He is, you know, the head of the Iranian Quds

force and I think we need to be extremely careful about empowering bad guys like General

Soleimani as the price of trying to push back ISIS in Iraq.

And that's, by the way, just in Iraq. I don't think we have any policy in Syria. I don't

think there's the remotest hope in hell that we are going to push ISIS out of anywhere

in Syria on the current trajectory. In fact, as far as I know, they have been expanding

their area of control since we started bombing them last summer, so.

MODERATOR: But Max, so we'll definitely in the course of the NSC meeting here get to

options towards the end, but am I hearing that you would pause...

BOOT: Sorry, I'm getting more prescriptive than descriptive, sorry.

MODERATOR: No, it's fine. I'm�I'm going to ask you a prescriptive question. Would

you pause the bombing, because apparently in your mind it is only benefiting Iran, and

wait until we have either retrained up the Iraqi security forces so that they can play

the lead, which you now contend is being led by Qasem Soleimani (ph)?

BOOT: I mean, I'm not sure that we ought to stop all the bombing. To the extent that the

bombing is necessary to keep ISIS from advancing and to keep it in check. I think it may make

sense. And especially if we are�if we have good targets that we are actually servicing,

it may make sense. I just don't think we ought to be running close air support for an Iranian-directed

offensive. That's what we should not be doing. And what we really ought to be focusing on,

if we can get this�when we get into the more options side of the meeting, is we really

ought to be focusing on building up indigenous Sunni forces that will oppose ISIS.

MODERATOR: Audrey, as a distinguished professor of international relations at George Mason

University and author of "How Terrorism Ends," you've made a great contribution to our understanding

of terrorism. You've most recently published an essay in this month's Foreign Affairs,

where you cautioned policy makers that ISIS is not al-Qaida. You wrote that it is a pseudostate

led by a conventional army. Can you address this and what it means for

our current policy, and what policy might flow from it?

CRONIN: Sure. Well, there are really two different questions there. One is specifically about

ISIS and the fact that the way we have treated ISIS since it arose is as if it was just the

new form of Al Qaida. And so, therefore we've turned our very elaborate counterterrorism

strategy and policy in the direction of ISIS, and tried to apply the same kinds of tools

that we've used for counterterrorism to ISIS. And they don't fit, because counterterrorism

against Al Qaida was in part aimed at trying to undermine Al Qaida's narrative, and Al

Qaida was very concerned about mobilizing forces in order to have that narrative attractive

to the Ummah <ph>. Whereas ISIS has a very different argument, different narrative, and

a different set of ways of going about it. And that is that they want to show brutality,

they want to show strength, they want to show power.

So when the United States is focused on the brutality that ISIS carries out, they are

actually strengthening ISIS, because ISIS wants to be considered to be intimidating.

So, I don't think counterterrorism as a broad overall strategy or policy for the United

States works well with ISIS. I also don't think that counterinsurgency is the right

strategy or policy. Counterinsurgency depends upon having a very

powerful, and to some degree, in control of a territory government. The government in

Baghdad has undermined its own credibility, and to some degree, I believe its legitimacy,

and what I see happening in Iraq is more of a civil war than an insurgency.

And so, you know, one of the developments that you did not mention, is that the�what

the Iranian Shiite forces, who are called the popular mobilization forces by many Iraqis,

are actually wanting the United States to step back so that they can take a bigger role.

And this is causing a problem for the current Baghdad government, because they want to win

and it doesn't�it's not always clear exactly whether it matters who carries out the actions

on their behalf. So, counterinsurgency is the wrong strategy

too. We have a tendency to think about Iraq as if we were still there in occupation. We

spent a lot of resources and�and lost a lot of lives. There were a lot of sunk costs

in that way of thinking about Iraq, but that Iraq is not the Iraq of today. The Iraq of

2006 is very different than the Iraq of today. So I would say that the best policy with respect

to ISIS, is containing their current advance, excuse me, but also thinking about American

interests in a broader sense. I mean, we've�we've been talking a lot about policies and operations

and we're not actually thinking about what are American interests in the region? Because

you can't decide how exactly to respond to ISIS, or how exactly to respond to Syria,

or how exactly to respond to Iraq, or indeed whether airstrikes are the right means, unless

you actually think about what it is that the United States should try to accomplish within

the region. MODERATOR: All right, well, let's�let's

drill down on that. What are the U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East right now?

CRONIN: Well, I think there are four. Others would disagree but this is where my thinking

comes from. The first is that the United States should protect its�its homeland and its

people, its citizens. The second is that the United States should protect its allies. The

third is stability within the region. I think that is an interest for the United States.