.. two, how to prevent it being f in the succeeding years. >> since he got a f on that but a b- overall it suggests this

process may be different. his big mistake it seems to me, and i don't think you can avoid concluding it was a mistake was he asked israel to give something he had no way to make them give if he didn't want to come the sort of complete total settlement freeze. and once he put that out there in public that was going to be the yardstick not only by which domestic opinion in the u.s. judged him but arab opinion because he set look i'm going to be different from those other presidents and i'm going to listen to you and now i'm putting this out front as the marker of how i'm different from those other presidents. then he fails to achieve that, and the arabs lose this is really feel your as we don't have to do anything now because they are not doing what you asked them to do. now to try to get the peace process going again he is in this awful position of saying well, you know, they've done everything i want but it sure

looks nice and the arabs are going to yeah, great. it's a bad situation. and it is entirely self created. there was no objective force making him set up that structure this way. in fact the concessions he has got from netanyahu are fairly substantial, and had he set this up in the beginning this could have looked more like a win than loss but he has created a difficult situation for himself. i don't think there is an immediate way out but fortunately in the middle east one event is always followed by another and i think there are some opportunities going forward. hopefully this has been a lesson and some folks who told him confidently this was the way to go maybe he won't listen to them with quite such a trust next

time around. >> i'm looking for gender balance. come on. i will go to this gentleman -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> talk about self created problems here. >> exactly. >> [inaudible] -- distinction. i am mike, contemporary review. compared to president, like, harry truman or george walker bush, president obama seems evidently narcissistic. his narcissism a political vulnerability or political strength and how does a president who seems, appears evidently to harness that to augment to increase the public good? >> yes, steve. >> there's a very interesting book many journalists revile because the journal about three close to the president it's by

richard wolfe called quote polk renegade: the making of the american president." if you read that you are as close to an official biography approved by barack obama as you will get and it's fascinating to see how he does seem to see himself in these issues and sidestepping the narcissism question it is interesting that for -- [laughter] -- it is interesting -- [laughter] -- let me say this: in terms of what terms obama on and this man of attention like you seen it over and over again from afghanistan to the cuba policy to israel, palestine there are cases where he grows distracted and disinterested to things that had of dawn or have been delegated to read it is the is losing more where he can walk in like the michael jordan and the last moment and change the game and make himself the deliverer of an outcome otherwise on achievable and this is the narrative we are getting out of copenhagen he walked into a meeting supposed to be a bilateral with china, the

chinese were trying to elevate him and he broke in and sat next to llewelyn from brazil, changed the game and got the deal, the five power deal with ever and it's perfectly fits this narrative of obama savings the day of what would have been complete disaster and i don't want to get into great detail but i've noticed this in the cuba policy i tracked closely even up to two or three days before the summit of the americas jeffrey, ambassador, former ambassador to mexico was essentially delivering, excuse this, richard, the neoconservative line of latin america. there was no evidence they were willing to say to diprete position where obama is coming. when he got the portfolio 180-degree shift in the direction comes of this is interesting you set up one attention challenges you got to be losing terribly to get his attention but when you do get his attention there is a very need almost to actually fundamentally change the dynamics and feel that and when

you get this access show the narrative in the stories. >> i judge that adequately responsive to the narcissism question. [laughter] >> this is bald dreyfus with the nation and rolling stone magazine. i want to pick up on throttle. john bolton said a while ago we cannot release of iran at this point from getting a bomb if they want one and regardless whether that is their intention or not aren't we setting ourselves up for a failure to say our goal is to stop this enrichment program in its tracks when the rest of the will i think is coming to terms china, russia, arabs, europeans with an idea we are going to have to either accept or contain iran or something like that is going to happen and here's the united states saying we want to continue the bush policy saying iran has to stop. it is in richmond. so why not change the policy to

say okay we will allow iran enriched uranium under these terms and inspection and so on or otherwise we are setting ourselves up for failure and that is why i think it is wrong to make a test because if you need to test something you can't achieve of course you are going to get an f. >> i believe you can achieve something. i don't agree with that narrative and i don't believe the scenario with iran is automatically one that depends on complete -- >> what is achievable? >> what is achievable is changing the environment around iran was within the middle east and other great states like india, china and russia to essentially both running room to spread its influence through transnational networks also closed on other opportunities but then to offer what i think obama wanted to which was a constructive course, i am not a believer in that kind of hillary clinton's style of course of

diplomacy at the moment because i don't believe the united states has the wherewithal to achieve that but i don't think we have put on the table a strategy with iran that ultimately will change the direction. in fact i worry about the sanctions policy because it is likely to dissuade iran from moving down. it becomes an emotional and political holding place for the fears and ambitions, not something that will necessarily be efficacious in moving the direction. >> that's good. richard what do you think is achievable, and also if you recall professor krasner referred to a series of ratcheting course of steps leading toward a blockade but stopping short of a military attack that he thought would achieve something worth paying the cost for. what is your view of what is achievable and the means to get their? >> i think everything now must be put in the context of turbulence following the

election there is discontent with the mahmoud ahmadinejad administration and it goes beyond mahmoud ahmadinejad. i think if you can do a real poll which is impossible in that situation you would find that support for the islamic republic of iran is way below, way below half we ought to be able to make something of that we should have started years ago putting ourselves in a position to make something since it has been clear for a very long time that this was a very unpopular regime. it's now undeniable. i think the key to stopping and iranian nuclear weapon is a change in that regime and i think the most likely way to achieve it is when the people of iran decide to throw off --

>> if something has to be put in the context does that imply a case for pressure on the regime -- to exacerbate -- >> let me give a concrete example. there's talk about and even legislation making its way through congress talk about trying to limit the importation of refined petroleum product into i -- your on. roughly half the gasoline that goes into iran and cars and trucks and tanks for that matter every day is imported and there's only four refineries in iran, a combination of the disastrous accident of one or two of the refineries and real restraint in the sale of refined product could bring iran essentially to a halt. and when you get very unhappy citizens cuing up for hours to

get ten leaders rationed in the tank, who knows what result of what have. there are things we could do in my view to assist those who want to change their regime. >> walter, do you accept the proposition that a narrative of pressure and external sanctions and disrupted fuel supplies aids popular resistance for the revolt against the iranian public or does it only reinforced the revolutionary guards narrative of siege and compare is conspiracy they refine on their grip on power? and this is of the questions when president you have to get an answer to even though you don't know the answer. and i think the reality is barack obama will have to decide between the two courses of evidence with a lot of smart people telling him each one of there is a disaster or each one of them will work and this is one of the reasons presidents age pretty quickly in office. but i would say there is another factor we need to take on board

which is that there are other countries in the middle east with a concern on the iranian nuclear program and the president may not completely free hand. the israel can launch some sort of strike on its own and it might well be that did have complicity or didn't and in any case might lash out against american interests and response in a way that would be very difficult for the u.s. to avoid a military response back. so i think part of what the president has to think about is that he is not fully in control of all the factors that could present him with very serious decisions. the other thing i think that's important to keep on board is that if the president were now

to avow that he has given up the attempt to stop a robbery in progress toward nuclear weapon this would be spectacularly on a popular decision. the last time i looked 61% of the people said they favored military action against the pyrenean nuclear program. part of the problem is with the same 61% still support you nine months in to your military actions against iran? but nevertheless i think one reason that a policy of relaxing and learning to live with an eye iranian, board has not been held by the administration is because you can't in american politics to that. and so in this sense we may well be trapped into a policy which cannot succeed and which we

cannot change. that may actually be where the administration sits right now. again, presidents earn their paychecks. >> we have reached the 2:00 hour, and i think that is an excellent place to conclude. [laughter] thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

the future of the u.s. economy was discussed at a panel

hosted by the university of virginia miller center. economists and scholars discussed spending, taxation and debt in a forum that runs just over one hour. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. welcome back to the concluding round table. we have in the last 12 hours covered a considerable amount of ground. our concluding round table is designed to take what we've learned and contemplate. questions having to do what is there an optimal level of debt coming to the debt and deficits but american leadership at risk, as preserving the status of the dollar require sacrifices so far as domestic fiscal policy is concerned? we have drawn from our earlier panels to bring together representatives from each one to talk about these issues. we have christian kastrop from the government, ray scheppach from the government, thomas rice

from ucla, alice rivlin from the brookings institution and hoagland from this institute. we will be led by margaret speed, reporter and anchor for lubber television tv and i am especially happy to introduce margaret because she is a graduate with a major in foreign affairs, my home department, and she received her bachelor's in 2002. all of you students out there and you wonder what you can do or when you contemplate what you can do with a major in foreign affairs here is your answer. [laughter] >> margaret? >> thank you. i'm still trying to explain to my parents i'm doing my be a in foreign affairs and minor in arabic and i still trying to figure it out myself but having fun doing it because i get to talk to wonderfully smart and accomplished people like the panel we have today. right before the session i was reading headlines on my blackberry and i saw house majority leader steny hoyer has now said they are going to vote

next week on raising the debt level to either 1.8 or $1.9 trillion, so as we have all been talking the can has been kicked further down the road that's the fourth time in the 18 months the debt ceiling has been talked and effectively changed so we will see how the vote happens next week. but i would say one of the takeaways that i would have just from consumer response or media response to the question of debt and deficits is debt is the four-letter word that has absolutely no visceral reaction in the consumer space when they hear it because it isn't real. 1.8, 1.9 doesn't sound very real. a sound like fake numbers, and obviously as we've gone through the past two days we've gone through issues and potential dangers that may result from high debt and deficits in this country, and i know alice rivlin thinks that 2010 may be the year

we see a change in the public space in terms of the concept what that means to them. so we are going to try to come up with some actionable ideas, concrete from this conversation now, and i think there is something unique about this time period in that even just during the past two weeks of a sudden death is dominating headlines in the financial median and somewhat in the mainstream. all of a sudden this little place called dubow i became worldwide news and moved equity markets around the world because of concerns about debt levels and the question about just how much debt there is not just on the government to government related entities and recent reports say that debt in the small number is about 116% of their gdp. i was just an dubai. before that i was in dublin ireland where they were talking about spending more than half of gdp on bailing out their financial sector to try to stabilize it so this isn't just a conversation that seems far

removed and confined to the halls of congress and not meaning anything. there is money and spillover effects and certainly in the international space which is where i want to talk and began the conversation right now. so when you hear all of these topics and the countries i threw out as well here in the u.s. there is the question of when negative does become dangerous. when the deficits to become dangerous when is that? where are we right now? >> so, you know, you want a number? but we come to the number at the end. [laughter] i think as alice said, clearly the run-up in debt which is rightly frightening people was unavoidable, was necessary because it averted a financial and economic catastrophe so that buildup was necessary.

it's now a high but it isn't unmanageable if you look at it historically or cross-country. it is not on manageable. however there are two things here. one, can this number be brought down credibly in the medium term, and can we credibly to get from 80, 85 down to where it was before we began 40%. that is one big, so that's part of the medium term consolidation that needs to happen. the second thing which is what i spoke about yesterday and alice referred to is we have added an additional dimension of portability because now a large part of this government iou are held by farmers and frankly let's be honest security person sitting in the national intelligence thing it's held some of it by a potential rival to our superpower status so that

is not irrelevant. so, the combination of high debt, the fact that there is a lot of uncertainty whether it can be brought down credibly i hope callis is right. plus the fact that foreigners hold a large part of that is what is vulnerable so in terms of action i do think we need to bring this down fiscally, and i do think that larry summers is right that in the long run superpower status and net indebtedness are not compatible. one can argue that but in the specific case of the u.s. that is a problem which means also the u.s. pattern of growth has to become less reliant on importing and consumption and more reliant on generating positive net exports so that in long run we also reduce our work international indebtedness. the purists will say international indebtedness

doesn't matter and maybe there is something to that. but if he were running policy and if you had the strategic interest in mind you would also try to reduce international indebtedness which means depreciated dollar, growth strategy that goes away from consumption and imports and finance to goods and services and exports. that is what the u.s. needs. >> christian, when we look at europe right now all of a sudden greece matters, all of a sudden spain causes and bellyaches to traders on wall street because they have seen s&p and fitch and moody's, the rating agencies all of a sudden say ghosh, we don't like the fact that you have such huge deficits right now. when do those deficits matter? we see today there are questions starting to float about whether or not ireland and greece would be able to even stay in the year rose zone. they've been dismissed but they are certainly floating because

it's been deemed the debt and deficits are out of control. so when do they matter when the market decides? >> of course. i have not a fundamental answer to all those questions. there is no definite figure. in principle is a question yesterday was set i think it was charon is all about confidence and i think as long as confidence isn't lost, i think also the deficit may still be a problem but it's not a catastrophe. so if it comes to greece and spain of course it is difficult and i think spain of course as arlan said it has economic and lands, very bad structural policy especially on the construction sector but they are doing good on the banks on the other side we have to say the spanish banks are doing very well. so the spanish problem is manageable. it is a little bit more difficult for greece because i think increase, the administration is not in every sense working properly at least if i follow a report from

eurostat which is monitoring the greece administration on delivering data and they sometimes have a feeling the minister is not knowing the data. so simply not delivered. so there is a problem. the last remark to that i think still it is a danger for the euros yonah yes but we have to keep in mind that the bureau 27 and the euro zone is a growth in fact, the stability growth pact if you look at the whole history in spite of the crisis you may see that it worked quite well. it brought down deficits and the debt for most of the country's, so i think as long as the confidence also in the overall stability and the growth pact is not lost i think we can cope with that but i will not deny that there is a certain risk and of course we have to be careful and you know there is also critical discussion starting

from some big european countries looking to the stability and growth and there we have to be as we say alert not to let it go. >> alice, when you're talking about consumers starting to perhaps get, conceived that these numbers are real and they could potentially be a danger and that the need to be addressed right now to what degree do you think these headlines we are seeing swilling right now are going to play into that? is there sort of a question of confidence that's going to be heightened, an issue because of this right now? >> probably all know what i actually said was that general on ease about the economy and economic future was what drives the average voter and the attempt of politicians to

connect that to government overspending as it is often put toward high debt does resonate on might will resonate. but you haven't gotten a number of anybody so i'm going to give you a try. bill and i are involved in a group of people putting together a set of proposals for trying to get the debt under control, and what we came out with was 60% of gdp if we can stabilize the debt at around 60% that would be good. it would be quite hard to do that. what mean cutting the projected deficits over the next ten years. the end date was 2018, by quite a bit. but why 60%?

there is no magic number. but there has been a sort of international consensus around 60%. it is in the treaty and it's been endorsed by the imf -- >> is that a good thing or bad thing? [laughter] a lot of people have thought about this issue and have come out with 60% is about right. there is no magic to that that is what we are saying in this report is if our goal, we should set a goal and the goal we did suggest is to stabilize by 2018 at 60% so there is a number for you. >> so, thank you. [laughter] we were letting you think until the end of it. i wasn't going to let you get away. well done. [laughter] so, when you were saying, and thank for clarifying, it wasn't so much of the growth coming from the consumer in terms of concern with the ability for the

politicians to sort of connect the dots, right? >> i think that is what happened in the 80's that there wasn't a lot of understanding about the debt but the politicians began on both sides it was bipartisan to connect the high deficits to the future of the economy, and it worked. >> so, when you look out at -- you're looking at the gubernatorial space, but in the midterm elections we are going to be seen that are right around the corner knowing the political space as you do or the botts cui to be connected? >> i would agree with alice the could be connected on something like social security. there is a problem there, there's a matter of political will and will power but we kind of know what to do. it isn't complicated so it seems to be moving their makes a lot of sense. i am probably a little more pessimistic about the health care.

we've got to remember health care is the pac man of state government and federal government, 90% of these problems are basically health care. and i think we've got at this point i am assuming these bills are going to pass in congress and in some ways i think that the date is going to change at this point, and i also think probably the senate bill is going to dominate given how fragile it is with the 60 votes and so on. and you have to start looking down, breaking down the pieces and pulling back and deciding whether you can create a framework around those changes that begins to bring health care costs down. a lot people argued and i haven't been one of them but a lot of people argue you have to get everybody in the system before you do that, and government, bill and i talk a little bit, everybody says they didn't give the public program. i think they got more than the public program than the latest. you've got to remember what happened, another 15 to 17 million people now and

medicaid. i don't know the exact number but clearly with the body of medicare of 55 and over we are going to pick up two or 3 million more. now you've got the program operated by the opm and you have a bye in there of several million people. there's a provision most people haven't focused on which is a state can set up a separate program for people, government-run between 133% of poverty and 300% of poverty and any number of states will essentially do that. finally in all probability the exchanges are going to be run by the states. so, as that system comes forward you've got a bigger medicare, bigger medicaid, the fixed rates other components which are going to have negotiated rates. the bad news is going to take four years, five years to get this up and operating so i'm not sure there's going to be a lot of changes. but i think we have to start thinking how do we bring those

together? it may be that medicare and medicaid are dictating rates for the groups that are negotiated. >> if we take that as a presumption we are going to see something built i would like you to respond what we were talking about here but there's also the broad question of, and certainly i know for some of the younger people in the room medicare and medicaid again, something, not very concrete to the average person. talk to me, what you, about what the impact would be if we see health care reform as it was just suggested on research and development, on the type of health care and options that will be available to the average person in the immediate term. >> okay to read >> i would say it was not well articulate in the media or the public space.

>> i had a senator that said always start with -- you don't answer a question that's been asked, give the answer you want to give so i want to make one quick point that there was an impression on my panel that i was a donner, a gloom and doom so i want to start on a positive note and that is i still think we are a very rich country, a very good country, and i will say we are probably the best looking worse in the glue factory, too. [laughter] now, having said that -- >> that was cheerful. [laughter] >> it's a tough question, but first of all i would say unfortunately, and we will probably have a discussion about this, let's go first of all to whether or not the group of the uninsured, and i will get back

to the uninsured it is primarily this focus of this bill has been on the individual market and the small durham, not the big guys, not the national council and all that, not the signals, that small individual and that individual is the young people back here who if they had to go out and buy health insurance on their own they would find it extremely expensive because they are not in the pool. i support all of the mechanisms, the exchange mechanism and bringing them in. unfortunately, because -- and this gets into the weeds and this is why health care reform is so difficult because the rating and branding issues quite frankly the aarp is beating the young people out again which is unfortunate because your premiums will be higher than they would have been if you went out on the market today because of a banding issue. this has to be the way that we've reached your insurance. my first is not very good message to the young people in this room and i don't see that this particular bill was going

to lower their health insurance premiums going forward. broadly speaking, the other thing most of the items you touched upon, margaret, as i see and i'm getting into the budget stuff that john knows well and that is it seems to me you're talking about things that are subject to what we call appropriations, annual appropriations and discretionary spending, research development, even comparative effectiveness. i know that there is a dollar amount in there that goes to the insurance industry but most of that is subject to appropriations. why is that important? because if you can't control the entitlements and you come back and try to -- at johns proposal is kept you are going to continue will squeeze education, university grants, student loans write down a line so in the long run it is a circular unless we do something about controlling the entitlements and growth of the entitlements it will continue to put pressure on the kind of investment programs we need for the young people today. >> when using controlling the

growth of entitlements, tell me when you really mean by that. >> unfortunately it falls off the tongue so nicely, doesn't it? [laughter] people say i'm a farm boy from indiana, somebody pointed that out. i said go ahead and eliminate the farm programs, don't care, that will buy you all $20 billion may be. that is not -- when we talk about entitlement let's be honest what we are talking about, social security, medicare and medicaid, the three hardest issues politically to deal with, and as i said this morning what worries me and i'm guessing what ray on this one, i think we are taking some of our degrees of freedom of of the table with this bill that we are not going to be able to come back and address the programs unless we set up something like john said, some sort of and then tie it to alice and the proposal will come out on monday with the rising red ink. as you lock in, i'm not a big

formula fan but you lock it in and pick a number, 60% held by the public, login and anything changes beyond that it's an automatic across-the-board freeze in taxes and cutting spending or both. speed this is also in your house here in terms of health care what your response to that? >> to which part of it? [laughter] >> welcome the presumption we are going to have to see entitlement, basically any kind of medicare medicaid and social security slashed. >> i do think we are going to -- >> is that fair first of all before i ask you to respond? >> the term slash bothers me. [laughter] >> say what it is -- >> slow the rate of growth, just to bring it down from currently two times the rate of growth of gdp just to bring it back down to the rate of growth of the economy i would be very happy

with. >> i agree we have to slow the rate in spending and medicaid. if you look at the house and senate bills about half of the financing is supposed to be coming from the cuts in the growth and medicare, so it is something that i think we are willing to do. the fact aarp supports this legislation is being funded by cuts in the growth of medicare i think is quite significant. i'm a little bit more sanguine that we might be able to do something in terms of our controlling growth and health care costs. it's going to continue to grow fast and the rest of the economies of the proportion of national income will continue to go but to look at estimates from the late 90's some predicted we would be spending over 20% of the national income on health care. we're spending about 16% now. over the years we have found ways -- the haven't sustained but every so often we need to control health care costs. you can go back to the early

70's there were wage price controls of all things out of the nixon administration and in the late 70's there were voluntary controls and the hospital sector under carter because there was concern that there would be mandatory controls. we saw a big dip in inflation in health care during the managed care revolution of the mid-1990s. if you look in the last couple of years you will see that actually the distance between growth and wages and growth in health care costs has slacked and part because we have raised deductibles and co-payments so there's ways in which we can control health care cost to it i do think they will continue to exceed economy but i think if we have to do we will find ways to cut them, cut the rate growth, they are not going to be pretty ways that they will entail benefits but i don't subscribe the idea it's been to spin out of control. having said that we need to do something about medicare before part a trust fund before 2017.

>> before 2017? >> that is when it is supposed to run out. >> alice, i know you want to respond and if you would, you were there during the clinton administration when health care was at the time in the headlines much as it is now and was seen as detrimental publicly to put it diplomatically. >> well, it didn't pass and showed a president who wasn't able to pass something that he had put his enormous prestige and his wife's behind, and they didn't handle it right. i think they did not precede although everybody said they were for health care reform they were for different kinds of health care reform and there was no consensus and what most people mean by health care

reform is i'm going to get the same amount of health care for less money and it's hard to explain to people that isn't possible. but i am with the optimists here. i think there is a lot we can do and have done. managed care was an example to make the system somewhat more efficient and it is so inefficient and so high cost compared to everybody else right now that we can squeeze out quite a lot. now, in the long run health care spending nationally is going to grow faster than the economy and we have to figure out what to do about that. but for a while we can get some of these efficiencies out, and medicare has a history if the congress will let it of being able to lead. when medicare changes its rules it is the biggest pay command if it changes its rules and says we are going to pay for an episode

in the hospital rather than each finger hospital does, the private payers go along with that and it brings cost down. >> we were speaking earlier coming to breitling and if you would share, the story about how you don't think necessarily in the sort of broad public that medicare and medicaid is viewed in the true sort of sense of what it is as a program, that it isn't truly understood as some form to summarize essentially what you were saying, some sort of socialist program. >> again as an outsider what i find puzzling and i am with the optimist because i think that eventually this country will sort out the problem. basically i am an optimist. but here is my puzzled and as an outsider i would like to pose

this to all of you who know this better is as alice rick healey said in her keynote lecture all of this focus seems to be just focused on the spending and entitlement side. there isn't the same focus on the tax side. the question is why is that the case? in fact session number one yesterday began with a promise is a tax revolt this country will accept higher taxes so let's focus on entitlement. now, the problem i see, and i see the premise as coming from something very real and important from at least a certain section within the society. but the question i have is if the narrative in this country is essentially more government is bad government we've got to keep burying it back, then i think the compromise that alice proposed that we need to get expenditures 24, 25% of gdp but that means that taxes have to go

up to around that much if you to stabilize it at 60 and i would have fought this crisis should help the narrative because i hope this crisis will have discredited the alan greenspan market fundamentalism. i hope this crisis will have set look at the end of the day all you can fall back on his government, that t.a.r.p. and the fiscal package were absolutely essential if the debt negative comes out that this is what -- this society needs that can pave the way for the social consensus that says yes entitlement needs to be controlled, but equally taxes like dat or consumption tax need also to be part of the discourse, and i don't see that to the same extent as i see the emphasis on entitlement. >> you don't see public support for higher taxes? when would you?

>> owls i was telling you what struck me about the panel, the medicare panel was that watts of elderly people in this country don't think of medicare as a government program and that is a problem here that needs to be addressed. >> if i could respond briefly, 160 million americans get their health insurance not through medicare and medicaid in this country the tax issue because i agree totally with i believe it was the commission. we have had a tax discussion and got blown out of the water. the quickest way as i see to do something about the cost of health care overhaul is to modify the way we handle the employer sponsored exclusion, and that unfortunately president obama attacked the candidate last year proposing something along those lines and that has

removed off the table. one small little tax proposal which i think should remain in the bill which is the cadillac tax. it is being fought it strenuously right now even to take that out. so it's not that we haven't had a tax discussion in the context of healthcare reform. >> it strengthens my proposition that there is a problem here in the public discourse. >> you agree, alice the present more conversation about higher taxes? >> well, you're making fun of it -- >> i'm not, i'm just rolling it down to it is because i feel like we are getting lost in a lot of jargon and that hurts a lot of the stories we are trying to tell. so that is why -- >> let me come back to what bill said. most americans get their health insurance from their employer. they don't pay income tax on

that benefit. if they did they would have an incentive to say to their employer i would rather have the wage increase than the more generous health benefits to and they don't do that now because the health benefits tax were in the way benefit isn't. so john mccain was right about that. he did introduce that and i think president obama, candidate obama made the mistake in trashing it and he probably knows that now. but it's not that no candidate even a republican candidate can propose a tax increase. john mccain did. he didn't call without. but he certainly said we have got to pay for broad health care coverage with this getting rid of the exclusion from the income

tax which is a big deal number and would have been a good policy i think. >> i agree with the more general point about the social discourse as a little bit in balanced -- >> i do, and i think we are not saying if you want these benefits that we've got to pay for them and we've got to figure out how. >> there's a lot of reason when you look at it politically we have numerous covers that get vv to over raising the taxes. it's the reason we don't have the energy taxes on imports and such. it's the reason we don't have carbon taxes and as alice indicated before we come up with alternative ways because we don't want to call them tax so the politics of tax, they have been off the table in a serious way for quite awhile. now also as previously alice indicated that is why the crisis is going to get so big and i think what is going to happen is we are going to get the value

added tax because we have got to put money in both medicare and social security trust funds and laid down the deficit and it is going to be one heck of a large omnibus agreement. the only question there is what happens to the health care coming out of the other side? >> succumbed to follow-up on that, you do think that we are going to see a vat tax, on the state level ucc texas so how is that going to be balanced? >> it is a problem because depending upon how it is done, it is going to preempt the state's sales tax. >> the value added tax. >> some people might argue and i think that alice did of putting a piggyback, having the state piggyback tax having it on the federal government for state sovereignty reasons it puts me in a very dog's-eared place. [laughter] >> i don't work for the governor's so i think this is a simple and straightforward way.

you basically buy out the states by saying the federal government will collect national sales tax and you can make it vat. it doesn't matter and we will share it with the state's on a formula basis and then you have to fight about the formula, the germans do this by the way, and it would be a windfall for states that didn't have a sales tax but there are very few of them and you would have a fair uniform tax. >> can we put it in the constitution? >> i would be happy too. [laughter] >> tom, since you have your hand raised but i also want to get to christian since we were talking about the germans having the model alice was talking about -- >> -- healthcare so do you want to do that or move on? >> would you move on if we had -- mind if we let christian respond and come back? >> of course i think we have a vat, it has risen in the last legislation period, the beginning of the last

legislation period was a big political problem and a major problem for the start of the great coalition so i think that the vat and the principle is not really disputed. there is a dispute in germany right now about several rates, there's a normal rate and low word rate and there is a discussion now how to abolish the law were rate or increase the low rate for subsidizing certain things like hotels right now the moment, a very stupid aspect of the new government program. so, but in the tendency of course and this is i think not only true for germany but for most european countries you can clearly see that the indirect taxes increase the part of the tax revenues and i think if you look at a tax base you still see the capitol taxation is very difficult even income taxation for skilled labor is getting more difficult so you are really looking for taxes which are able

to finance government without going into the debt and i think this is what the german deficit for will will in the and do so we will not -- i think it is a boxed approach in principle so we will say okay this is your for cyclical reasons eckert did not differ said allowance and now you have to see how you do it, how to get it financed either on the expenditure side or on the revenue side and then of course you have to draw you what taxes will probably least hamburger or growth. for instance green taxes were already mentioned here in one of the last things so this is kind of the german we of thinking as this is closely linked of course to the european stability and growth backed system. i think there you see where the discussion is going in the direction of the consumption tax is. also there are small consumption tax is we shouldn't forget about that so the principal you could think about smokers taxation,

you could think about drink alcohol taxation. small things that we should not forget about them. >> and a number of things you talked about a statewide basis here in the u.s. and that raises its own controversies among many economists to say how do you raise any kind of tax during the recovery which we presumably are in but it may be a tenuous -- >> i would like to make a very critical or prefer to remark. i think the best macroeconomic program would be to call for a debt increase 2012. >> or 14. >> 14. siskel for the vat increase in 2014 and would be better than a lot of expenditures now given for the macroeconomic purposes. >> they couldn't actually did the vat up and running before any way. >> you been waiting patiently. >> this has gone back to the health care. i wanted to respond to bill's

thoughts on the taxation, the cadillac plans and we learned last night you have to get all of your ideas in one minute 15 seconds. [laughter] so i will try to do that. >> i will count down. >> i don't have to leave a problem with the tax on the cadillac plans. i don't think it is going to get us very far and i don't think it gets in the real problems we have in the health care system. if you have a tax on cadillac plans it means benefits are going to have to go down to read one of the ways that is likely to happen would be for example higher deductibles, higher co-payments. what we know from the research evidence is when people have to cut more scheppach or the cut back on the things they need just as much as things they don't need free lunch. i call that a meat axe approach to health care reform. i think that what we want to do in terms of reforming medicare and cutting the costs is not throw it all to the consumers but rely more on the providers and that is what john skinner's talk was about earlier today.

if we can conduct research to find out what is effective and then provide financial incentives to the organizations and individual providers to give them incentive to do that we can cut away the chaz rather than weeds so i don't think focusing on the provider is going to be more productive than focusing on the consumers. >> focusing on the providers in terms of cost controls? >> yes. >> how do you -- >> giving them incentives to provide services, the necessary services and will be unnecessary services. >> what do you mean by those incentives? >> we already have certain programs called the pay for performance but what i'm really looking -- the bill -- the compromise the freshman senators came up with how these elements about the medicare commission and about setting up accountable care organizations trying to bundle payments, just ways that

you pay for high-quality care but don't pay for the low quality care. we have had lots of them, lots of demonstrations on this. this is stuff that we've already tried but haven't enacted nationally and there is a lot that can be gained by trying to bring down growth rates and the high utilization areas. >> does that mean salaries doctors must of compensating their much for their performance? >> be accountable care organization he was talking about can set up any payment system they want. >> go ahead. >> one of them on your list of the most fundamental changes besides changing the tax code is to change the way the we reimburse from the fee-for-service of the end of the day. you heard dr. lani's name mentioned and i'm always struck by the article he wrote in june or july when he found the most expensive piece of the doctors office was his pen,

oversubscribing. and until we change the way that we reimburse, and with all due respect this bill compile the studies i've heard pilot studies for years. when we move from pilots to actually doing something? that is my major criticism even with the freshman proposal. >> rivlin, did you have something to say on that? >> i think putting a medicare commission with teeth would actually do that and that was in the original proposal and has been weakened in the process. but we do have an existing organization known as medpac that has made very sensible proposals over several years along the lines we were talking about and then congress has backed away from them. conagra's has got to figure out that they have got to let some of these reforms go.

>> okay. arvind, one to come back to you and where we started the conversation, which is looking at the question of when that starts to matter and put it in the context of you throughout security concerns. you're talking about a major buyer of u.s. debt presumably you meant china. we were talking about national security concerns. right now we have them in the financial media focusing to a large degree on the dollar weakness but obviously pleasing and to u.s. influence but also somewhat of a positive in that you see american goods being purchased, helping to be purchased outside of these borders. so how do you balance that? >> first i have to answer the numbered question. what is the number -- [laughter] >> you ready now? >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> i think alice's 60% number you cannot really quarrel with it because internationally it is

a norm. the imf has given its stamp of approval supposedly although i don't know if that is good thing or bad thing. but here is the experiment i would like us to conduct. >> do you use to work at the imf? so the stamp of approval is not necessarily a good thing? >> not necessarily a good thing. [laughter] i want to have a thought experiment. supposing we had started this crisis, we went into this crisis at 60% of the debt to gdp and added 40% roughly 100% of gdp that i think what spoke psychologically might spook markets and the other contrast i have is china went into this crisis with public debt 20% of gdp, and in some ways the chinese were highly affected by the crisis because there was

exporting so much that when the demand collapsed in the world economy their exports took a beating. but because the public debt to the gdp was so low the the fiscal ammunition to throw everything at the problem to recover and from my own country india is 80% of gdp wasn't able to do the same thing so while i think 60% is a good target to aim i think looking experience in this crisis, you know, and good times especially if we get growth going forward i would be much more comfortable with something even lower than 60%. we began in 40 so why not get back to 40. [laughter] exactly. coming to the question about the dollar i think that we have to keep in mind and separate the fact that an orderly decline that is happening now with the dollar is what the doctor orders and that is what we need. it helps our exports, it helps

us reduce our were foreign indebtedness which i think we need to do for political reasons. but what we don't want of course is orderly decline turning into a stampede. we don't want the u.s. to become like a classic emerging market like dubai or thailand and 77 or russia in 98.

>> for social security and medicare. and i still feel that those number of 60% of the target about is fine as it relates to this report that we are laying out alt a on the table the other unfunded liabilities provide no if the media can communicate that in the one minute 15 seconds. >> it helps when it is

communicated from the floor of the senate when it is clear the track or communicated elsewhere of the rising get back to the problem with people being able to afford to do the hallmark. give me your number. >> we are already at 98%. with the unfunded liabilities of social security and medicare. we're well above 60%. i would argue for even stronger. >> mint-- may offer at many historical version? why 60%? why do we have 60% just because at the end of the '80s those countries that are referenced days relevant so how do you club to the other figures because then you say 60% stabilizes it is

a deficit of 3%. it is also the treaty of the european rules and then the average then that deficit with and nominal growth of stabilize and right now we are on days beyond this and this is the core essentials for the liabilities. this is why we're now going down. if you look down the value can see also the logical of any international organization let's be clear we have to go further down. maybe 60 percent is good growth but for germany it is clearly too high. year ago 60% may be in the direction of another figure. >> that seems to be the new consensus.

at least here. >> what impact is important is the direction of change. there is no magic number. bill is right when he says 60% would is told by the public and does not count the amount of social security and medicare. and to have to pay those liabilities. these are a lot of numbers to keep juggling. but what is important is the direction of change. debt held by the public is rising as a percentage of gdp you are in trouble. it has to come down. >> a lot of the discussion of easily passed to the dollar and a crisis but

first, the cost of interest itself is growing quite rapidly wants interest rates move up it will be significant. there'll be issues around they're beds the other issue is because of the entitlements they basically cut discretionary research and development and education so long term competitively will be a lot lower because right now we do not have a good long run future outlook. >> when you were just talking i do want to ask dallas when she things at interest rates are going up but talk about reducing and stopping the rising, however

, there you go, slowing the rate of growth. talk about changing entitlements lending. i was say producer at the time that anchor was interviewing president bush about changing the social security program as it stands to be in essence another a said chile you do your 401(k). people could take their social security money and put it into the market. i am oversimplifying. that is what we're talking about and then we have this crisis and then we say thank god we did not do that but if you're talking reducing spending and slowing the rate of growth what is that sort of question for the soon to be retired look like? what form should it take? when you say reducing it does that mean no longer

existing? >> what do you may cut in benefits or reducing? but how would you do that? do you change the program entirely or make it into another form? >> it is easy. social security you take the cpi and that is easy. health care it is much more difficult because are you doing actual benefits are reimbursement rates? how much comes out versus the individual. >> you talk about who is paying into it? >> two is receiving. >> i don't think anybody thinks that social security and needs to be totally change. it is the question how fast do the benefits go up? and at what age do you get them?

the two most likely ways of adjusting the benefits are raising the retirement age and changing or lowering the initial benefit when you retire so that it does not go up as fast or increase as fast as wages. it is structured now the initial benefit rises over time with the wage level. that means it is a real increase in the benefit. it does not have to go up that fast. a very small change would mean the social security system could get back in balance quite easily. >> we have already raised in that age at 67. >> but longevity has gone up more than that. >> bled to raise it 65 and

67 has retirement age risen at all? >> yes. >> people are retiring at an older age than they were before. >> the complication of public policy and the interactions and unintended consequences at the same time for the united states congress and send it considering changing medicare to have by and between 55 and 65. quite frankly if i was an employer out there i would say goodbye. you have just went to the opposite direction in terms of extending retirement. by having a policy that provides the company to say go on to the medicare buy-in and you're off my role i don't have to worry about paying your benefits. the unintended consequences consequences, that is why this is so difficult. i am sorry to the media, it

is difficult to follow it is difficult for the american public and difficult for us. there are so many of these currents going on is the best way to phrase it. >> we only have a few minutes left. i want to give the audience of a chance. any hands out there? >> something i read that caught my attention. >> guy read something that's is a very intriguing idea and all that i have learned that this conference and i complement you all, i read that obama would be the american and gorbachev. does that mean anything to battle? and if it does so by to get some reaction because to be a encapsulates a lot of what

i have learned here today and yesterday that its declining power with a system that is extremely stressed andrea have to explain to our own people and the international community that we have to change. >> i don't know if he is gorbachev but nixon going to china is what i help because of the issues we have discussed. he will have to go that far and really come around. >> what do you mean really come around to? >> he will really have to put on the table to link the tough decisions we really have to take on entitlements in a big way and raise taxes and it is hard to say that. if we address this with ggp you have to break away from something of his own party members civic that is ripe for a crime not sure the

question but it might mean that's he was a gorbachev in this sense of being a onetime president percy duty was to blame for their problems and he did not fix them or he is the one who said we have to face up to them and do the hard things and the public did not like it. >> i think of the gorbachev says the man who does something really good bets people really hated him. [laughter] >> any other questions? >> i was not here yesterday and if it was approached i apologize and will sit down. we're talking money and big bucks. fraud. fra ehud day. the last time and i remember and i may be wrong the last

time they tried to investigate was a jimmy carter administration. the gao or whatever it was but i have heard and correct me if i am wrong that the medicare system has fraud in the billions of dollars. that would pay for a lot of mri is. am i correct? id understand some of the parts that we pay for, remember the hammer the big investigation about paying $500 for hammers and the military. what energy or what time is spent in our government at the federal bubble investigating and stopping fraud in each and every department? to we spend as much time there as we do debating issues and saving dollars

through investigating fraud? >> i think we could do better on medicare fraud and medicaid fraud. there is broad there are providers to build four people or patience they never saw. and we could put more resources behind that. of that is actually done in the clinton administration when shalala was secretary. and it paid off. then it slipped -- slipped behind. it makes doctors very uncomfortable but it is very important. >> "60 minutes" has done some important work on that topic in the public space. we're coming up on one of our. we are done about thank you so much.

[applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, over the last two days we have commented on the fact over the past year the global financial crisis has generated consensus here and abroad that the increase government spending of the last year was quite necessary in order to deal with severe long-term consequences of government response is. the point* was too little attention was given to the long term fiscal consequences of programs designed to do with the meltdown of the last year are so. i hope we have dealt with some of those questions about providing more attention to the impact and the long-term consequences of debt and deficits and how this country and others can

govern and those at situations. i listened with a little amusement thinking that at this session we would get all the answers to all of the questions that have been posed over the last couple. it reminded me of the saying attributed to harry truman after roadwork to. he was tired of getting advice and been frustrated at not finding answers bracket was said he was in search of the one army economist so that the guy could never make a statement to him and then say on a the other hand. [laughter] sometimes i get the feeling that said questions are so complex there is no simple answer. you can make a statement and immediately counter on the other hand, there are these considerations. that may be where we are today. we have reached the

conclusion of this conference. i want to thank our patron saint and mort kaplan. [applause] and our conference director david. [applause] and also for putting this all together. [applause] this has been a very lively, productive and engaging conference. the proceedings will be archived in the website in about one week. you can go to miller center.org. c-span has cover this conference last night and today and i suggest you check your local listings. and the miller center will produce a printed report in due course. thank you again. we stand adjourned a.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> we will go ahead and get started. happy new year to all of you. thank you for coming today. i am glad i just had to come down four floors instead of coming across town. it is our great pleasure to have you hear for a second session on expanding the agenda of the alliance. as we look forward two a complex and multifaceted world it is a worthy objective to explain the way the alliance can be changed for a new alliance and raises questions whether the

new missions are a good piece of resources and whether they will make a difference. and with that i am very pleased 215 has taken the initiative to undertake this project and scott snyder will now bring it to a successful conclusion. that is enough for me i won't invite scott to talk a little bit about this subject for the discussions this morning. >> thank you richard. thank you for your hospitality and:hosting this with us and for your generosity to bring such a wonderful crowd out. the karina policy is the first major project the objective is for new ideas

for consideration by policy makers with the goal of promoting with stronger alliance co-operation between the u.s. and south korea. to that end of the first project has examined in new areas of cooperation in the alliance. some of view i think we're here in october at which time we had a first meeting of this project also a series of presentations in november of we have done is a list of things identified from the list released last june from the two presidents in the white house meeting as a litmus test about the initial assessment for expanded into cooperation and in a range of areas identified in that statement.

frankly, the results have been mixed but it has been a very interesting exercise that has illustrated a whole new range of ways the way u.s. and south korea can cooperate effectively more with each other. what we covered in october we had presentations on pandemic diseases. we had a presentation on counter-terrorism cooperation and by kevin shepard and a presentation on space cooperation. we also had papers on naval cooperation between u.s. and south korea and also the topic of peacekeeping.

and the career representitive has written a paper on overseas development assistance. and then on non-proliferation corporation. today we will examine three topix together cities pros separate the unique challenges to expand a vision of climate change, a human-rights come and conflict stabilization. to have cooperation on climate change issues should have a basis upon which to judge the extent the alliance is equipped to engage in political and technical cooperation on human security issue the discussion on human-rights as a lens through which to examine front and center

whether the joint vision statement means what it says when it talks about common values and but question of post conflict stabilization in afghanistan with the understanding what is really possible to extend the alliance space cooperation in ways that suit our mutual interest. i am grateful to each of our authors today and also to the audience for coming to attend this symposium. thank you. >> our first speaker advertised is professor heejun chang from portland state university. you can speak from here or there. >> thank you for introducing me hear. it is my pleasure to see

everyone. with the climate change issue why we should cooperate and expand the relationship into the future. here is a brief outline of my talk. first i will talk about the science of climate change and what is causing the climate change and why we should care about it and how we can cope with the situation mitigation an adaptation and how they're different and how we can incorporate in each area. from there into this

strategy have there can be a closer relationship and then i draw some conclusions. this is a graph showing temperature change in the past 150 years and takes data from the u.k. starting 1850 through 2008 it indicates a temperatures around the world average overlay and and the black light shows the temperature. this is a departure from 1961 and 1990. the temperature has risen about 0.7 degrees celsius in a decade but in korea it is much higher.

so it indicates if the trend will continue, with the temperature and particularly in korea it will have impacts on the biological system and society. and what causes the climate change? there are two factors. the climate can change by nature. there are changes over a long time point* over 21,000 years or 46,000 years so the changes is like how the climate can shift for a long point*. but particularly for a short period and the main cause of the climate change is increase aimed gases such as

carbon dioxide and methane. these guest primarily are emitted by human activities including combustion as well as changes -- the card and can be released which adds to the concentration of the guest on earth. some people argue the climate has changed or the history of the earth. what is unique about the climate change over two centuries? ast you can see there is a close relationship between the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. if you look at the first figure, you can see with the industrial revolution which happened about 1750, the concentration of carbon

dioxide has gotten bigger exponentially. whether by the ocean they cannot observe because the concentration will increase. the diagrams illustrate the process of greenhouse guest which shows the incoming short wave radiation but also releasing it out but these greenhouse gases are trapped in the outgoing radiation and radiate heat back to the service -- surface prep of that is why the lower atmosphere has warmed up in their recent years. there have efforts of measuring carbon dioxide concentration and it shows

it now assured in a remote island in hawaii. they happen mr. rainn carbon dioxide since 1958. and as you can see their dioxide concentration has risen almost 400 pp end in 2008. you can see also the sea horse which reflect when trees have a full leaf they can cover and then when they lose the leaves the carbon dioxide is released. but the bottom graph shows a factor of increasing the rates based on eight years of data. some people are associated not only what is happening in korea but also what is going on in adjacent countries such as china

because pollutants could be transported from a neighboring country from the western these. this illustrates there is a close relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide lovers. a and as it increases the global temperatures it is a natural fluff to a shaft. a lot of scientists project will happen in the future with the concentration radius based on the year 2007 and if we continue with economic activity, we could reach a scenario based on

whether reintroduce more efficient energy. this is based on all of the different economic social and development scenarios. the picture is taken from the ipc sea report. that is based on three different sets of climate change. the height emissions and a low emission and it illustrates the rates and a source of energy that means you have both of fossil fuels but also cleaner energy. it shows the changes of the extreme events which is measured by the number of the amount of precipitation

by debt amount of precipitation. and it is increase in the future and we continue the greenhouse gases. the impact of these changes and not spatially the same. for example, you can see it will rise in the future but to based on different climate change compared to the previous period ridges 1980 through 1989 and what will happen by the end of the 21st century? at the same time never dry-- will increase as well. but you can speculate you have a very heavy torrential rainfall day but in the meantime money -- many more are dry-- . am i not change necessarily

but the more extreme events are likely to happen. but the impacts may be very different from one place to the other. that is why we need a specifically explicit climate assessment. that is the areas we can concede. he is planning mitigation with adaptation and you can reduce the source of the greenhouse gas emissions to control the power plants and ask them to use more of clean energy to introduce hybrid cars or electricity cars. with the source of the mission but at the same time concede the adaptation that means we have to change human behavior or adapt to the changes like the amphibian house that has not been introduced into western

european countries because we have to make space for watcher. people have to live with water whether trying to combat the floods but most can migrate to other areas. >> identify these different to areas how the u.s. can have strong collaboration. with the renewable energy transportation and reforestation i will discuss each one. this is how we have to address all of these together. how do these two countries have thin trading, you can perceive their different

levers also the lover so for example, in the u.s. in 2009 the climate action recommended the national cap-and-trade legislation and in the meantime they have just released last week they have been trying to implement a carbon emissions and trading system which would be launched as late as 2010 and at the same time they introduce a cash bid into the system so basically that consumers are private industry they could get some credits. but with reasonable partnerships established in the northeastern states from

new hampshire down to merrill lynch and also there are four canadian provinces joining the initiative as well. but interestingly some states like estrogen york or pennsylvania are not part of what they have the power plays. and california is one of the leading states in terms of reducing greenhouse gases and with the global warming solution act since 2006. and incur react there are over a carbon point* system and the consumers use less energy and they can get some

credit back and get deiter cashback or give them gift cards. the difference is basically the u.s. is primary lead the for the state has the economy and makes changes. but it is privately-- primarily driven by the approach but notice there is some movement of the private sector because they commit profits as well. the ceo illustrates the consumption rate by type. it is about 7% and out of that with the renewable energy of 53% but it is less

which is 2% but one-fourth of them come from waste. most countries have ambitious goals comment they now have over 50% of the electricity comes from renewable energy by 2030 but also use 6% of the energy's buy 2020 and also have a trend the environmental protection agency it has a relationship between the federal government and the states. and also the administration introduced the loan guarantee program for the

power plants. and they were searching for a new source of renewable energy since 2008 when it will skyrocketed and also trying to get some incentives. this is part of the package so we also introduce foreign investments of foreign companies which is jpmorgan to collaborate from developing countries with your generation. at the state and local level the u.s. and state has autonomous power and can develop there on clean energy plant and some requirements for new construction.

they also have some plans only use renewable energy and increase by 20% and also because of that nature they can also use building materials to generate. the other area with the structure of the development if you can see them a different history of a government with most cities less than 200 years of history a rather than korea which is much older that has more than 600 years of history. and typically you can see if this process which people have to travel a lot. people living who come here

you may have to travel more than 10 miles one way. but there is a new challenge for the new developments. in the past now people try to use the space-bar wisely. but in korea there are some new towns surrounding the city's and a new trend in the u.s. as they introduced it using less energy and water a concept of urban planning and it makes a neighborhood more livable so they can walk around and shot and talk with the neighbors more closely. one thing you notice and korea to develop a public

transportation system because you're not allowed to enter. and some aspects again over planning business a managed at the city level. basically the city can do what they want to achieve. there is a trend there are seven u.s. cities and there's a substantial decrease and my emissions have been reduced as well. looking at transportation more closely morale also for their implants. with the ministry of land

and transportation day announced they will use more efficiency with urban planning by 2025 and regulate the consumption of all of the buildings by 2010. so the transportation sector is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions accounting for over to do% of the missions so the strategy's you can think of you have to reduce for the travelling distance and increase our renewable source of energy. both countries have introduced a hybrid car and consumers have tax rebates. and then with throws our bridges they can have more friendly technologies.

so then you have to integrate with land-use planning. they came up more than 10% of carbon uptake and we have to give some financial incentives for example, the department of u.s. agriculture you can have some farmers to preserve the land. so there is some plans and to preserve the land is one of the questions we have to address. but also consider we may have some changes

particularly with more forest fires and conceive of the potential changes with the climate change when you make up plan. some areas we can incorporate and talk about adaptation brick a one way we can do this, we have to make a more decentralized system. maybe people have to produce their own or have the water from the lowlands instead of importing it. and also consider preserving the natural and pipe for example, have to maintain. and implementing at the

adaptation at the municipal level they can make a change in a more dramatic way. and the participation they have to communicate with each other. so at the municipal level between the u.s. and career and exchange some ideas and technologies. i do want to draw some common areas that we have interest. first we can have more incentives to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions unless there is one that might be at to implement but also say thank convenient for the public transportation system because no doubt about it. it has to be more efficient system and also continue to

invest in renewable energy and you can see there are more compact and at the municipal level we have the strategies. what each city can learn from each other. also increasing the alliance supported by how the powers can adapt to the climate change. this is more on a general level how we can make the cooperation and. we have to foster a more open dialogue. without communication between the two it may be hard to implement because the security has the eventual human security but

there are many different strategy is working at different levels so one strategy might work and the other is that you have to conceive of other countries such as china or japan and what they're doing and also an alliance established between china and india. those are the other operations as well. think you. [applause] >> thank you very much professor heejun chang i am sure your presentation and generated a lot of questions i won't ask you to hold your questions we will probably have a full hour to get to hear from you. the next speaker is peter beck with the walter

shorenstein center from stanford university and speaking of human rights on the subject of which he knows a lot. peter? >> i guess it is appropriate to have pictures of call their peers behind me while i give my presentation. i had forgotten how cold it can get here now that i live in california. i want to congratulate scott and richard for putting this program together and tell them what it honor it is to be the weak link in a strong team they have put together of papers in areas of cooperation we don't typically look at plan rethink of great relations and i think it is a project that thinks outside of the box about what we should be concentrating on. one of those is human-rights and it gets a lot of

attention in the press and in the korean press but said there is not much we can do about it but we're not doing much by the utterly. there is a lot of area for potential cooperation. s scott mentioned in the introductory remarks. in the vision statement that the two presidents agreed on last june in washington, there is a statement we will work together to promote respect for the fundamental rights for the number three and people. it is a short document but it is not clear what they actually intend to do in terms of cooperation. actually we have a new special envoy for robert kane who was going to seoul career next week and we

welcome him of the we have a full time on foia and have never expectation he will do a wonderful job. he has a big job because almost ready agrees his predecessor was the unmitigated disaster. not all the invisible most of the time but then when he did get the attention it was not so much for human rights but criticizing the bush to administration's approach two north korea. we're definitely making progress in the right direction. we have a few mint on foyer rights but they have never met each other before. there will be a lot for them to talk about. what of the challenges that we face four the previous 10 years centel 2008 liberal governments in seoul that takes the hypocritical

approach only focusing on human rights in south korea and virtually no attention to number three and our silent on the issue. and on the governmental level as well for ago there was a reluctance to take up the human rights issue and abstain from boats in the united nations. there is the fear that by pursuing human rights and raising the issue to a prominent we would bring a chill in the north-south regulations. that is still a concern today as you may be read the members of the north-south summit to try am sure human-rights will take a back seat and any discussion that they have. but i do think there are various for potential cooperation because we have to presidents to take a fundamentally similar approach to human rights.

looking more broadly that will focus my discussion on north korea sens i think that is the most potential cooperation. but if you look at the dali lama for example, of both presidents making a decision not to meet with him for fear of upsetting china there is a recognition that global politics and international security and national interest takes priority over human rights as much as we may think they are important. they have a compatible approach to dealing with the human rights issues. the first we have to try and negotiate with north korea and that has to take priority over pressing human rights concerns. i think governments with fundamentally similar world view is particularly when it comes to dealing with human rights in north korea there

are great areas for cooperation. unfortunately when we look at the experience of south korea in the united states it remains very polarized that you have liberals remaining largely silent on the issue and conservatives take up the cause of the number three and human rights. here in the united states it is increasing and becoming bipartisan and project with the passage of the 2004 north korea and human-rights act and it was unanimous vote and i thought it was renewed again recently and unanimous once again. there is no fundamental disagreement when it comes to the human rights situation in north korea but still a big divide and south korea so it is certainly possible to work more closely together.

really this was not possible until we have the election and of the president. human-rights the north korea remains a polarizing issue for those who care about politics and some reconciliation with past governments in south korea have left to rely on two main arguments and one insisted he had too few facts about what was happening in north korea and could not write authoritaauthorita rian -- authoritatively on the issue which i don't find very plausible. and the sec and the fear that raising the issue will make negotiations impossible and it the second justification that the government used quietly was all of our projects with north korea are a trojan horse threat of the way we

bring about change is through economic and treatment not be teeing a drum or screaming and yelling the finding cooperation. with the industrial complex have improved the lives of north koreans and exposing them too south koreans and the rest of the world is a way to bring about change. those of the arguments that you see me most frequently used as to why the south korean government could not bring up the issue. that approach has been changed fundamentally. for starters the mandate the national human rights commission before, the government funded commission could not to work on north korea. now they can. and it has a full branch. they have done zero work. that is quite amazing.ua >> now. they're looking at this issue starting with the

abduction of hundreds of south koreans before and after the war and still being held for about years. but sold really has the overwhelming number and north korea. but those number three and governments were silent on the issue. . .

in the south korean government for the new north korean human rights is university law professor who i had a chance to meet with last summer. a wonderful man but unfortunately he only serves part time. he still has a regular teaching load at his university and he's not just looking at north korea but he's looking at all off human rights issues internationally and has a full plate and very limited amount of time to look on those issues, so like washington still needs a special envoy for human rights who can focus full-time. at the non-governmental level again the two biggest ngos

assistance coalition for economic justice and people solidarity for purchase of the pro-democracy effectively chose to ignore the human rights issue of north korea and focus only on human rights in south korea. but over the last ten years we have seen the emergence of ngos in south korea. the most active is the citizens alliance for north korean human rights run by reverend benjamin and good friends and as you probably know run by who make regular visits to washington and host conferences and commission papers and research on human rights conditions in north korea. they are really working effectively alone for several years and then i would argue in 2005 there was a and even to the change public perceptions in south korea and the was the summit for the north korean human-rights in december 2005

when he was with freedom house and helped put together, brought together dozens of ngos for major international gathering that gained a great deal of press attention and helped mainstream the issue of north korean human-rights. it's also about this time in addition to citizens' coalition for human rights and the buddhists you also have a whole host of ngos being created by the north korean defectors. several north korean radio stations broadcasting every day to north korea. they are at least a dozen ngos being run by north korean defectors focused on the north korean human rights. they are all living in very much hand to mouth, all of these ngos, even the big two are on the big in the relative sense that they have ten or 12 for a dozen people working but they are still very small organizations particularly in comparison to the largest in

korea. so, south korean ngos are still toiling with an of security and with very limited budgets but finally we of the government in south korea that has attached greater priority to this issue. in the united states again we had the passage of the north korean human rights act in 2004 but congress and bush at administration often didn't put its money where its mouth was in terms of actually allocating the funds set aside in this bill. president bush talked a good game on human-rights but often didn't have -- wasn't able to marshal funds to actually act. fortunately we did see expansion in the service of the voice of america and radio free asia who are here today. they are now broadcasting five hours a day to north korea but clearly we could do better. we should be having 24-hour coverage to north korea.

so actually very little progress was made at the governmental level in terms of advancing -- president bush did with me become meet with family members and defectors. i met with families in seoul and probably have pictures on their wall of meeting with president bush. and he did when he appointed a special envoy he gave the on face time so the world salles the envoy had in fact the era of the president. but again, it wasn't until the end of the bush administration we started to see north koreans come to the united states which was part of the north korean human-rights act and now we are off to about 100 north koreans defector's residing in the united states which of course is almost nothing compared to the 17, 18,000 residing in south korea. at the ngo level there are three organizations that have been active that you are probably aware of, the most grassroots

orie in the organization liberty and north korea lincoln was very active but they moved to california and have taken a bit of a lower profile. you have also the north korean freedom coalition run by suzanne schulte. she won the peace prize last year, very active individual, extremely committed and trying to bring different groups and tibetans and other new groups and individuals that have an interest in human rights to bring them together to try to press for human rights. she has the most important and you will have any which is a wonderful gathering of defense and sharing of information in north korea. in the committee for human rights in north korea where i work which is also doing important work and complementing the work the other to buy publishing reports on north korea. the most famous being hit in

gulags by david hauck, looking at the prison camp system in north korea. but all three of these organizations combined have a budget combined of not much more than $1 million if that in some years. so again, very small underfunded organizations that are struggling to try and advance human rights, so again you have a commitment at least a verbal commitment of the government level but not much action and then you have ngos both and south korea and the united states struggling to advance human rights on very limited budgets with very small staff. so i think again we can see that there is common value, a common approach being taken and north korea but to date there has been a failure to coordinate activities this raises the question what is the most effective vehicle for advancing

-- advancing human rights and in a coordinated manner between seoul and washington and one logical vehicle is the united nations. after all the u.n. has been passing resolutions every year in recent years condemning human rights in north korea. the human rights commission just held last month the universal periodic review did not receive a lot of attention in the press the north koreans for the first time had to submit a report on the human-rights and were subjected to a lot of criticism even on the commission that has friends of north korea including libya and other regimes we don't necessarily think very highly of. but the commission issued a long report with 150 recommendations of how north korea needs to improve human rights and north korea agreed to at least look into these about 100 of them they rejected 50 of the recommendations and they said that they would look into 100 of

the recommendations, so there is some attempt by the united nations to try and press north korea and human rights. there's a special repertoire who visits washington from time to time who's issued several reports. south korea is a member of the human rights commission. unfortunately the united states is not. the bush administration decided they were too hard on israel and had members that didn't belong on human rights commission and decided not to join the commission as a member. so that -- the u.s. did participate in this periodic review the they have not been a member of the commission so that is obviously one change the obama administration should make is to join the commission. given the u.s. isn't a member of this commission and these bodies are not meeting on a regular basis i still think the most effective means for the government to coordinate efforts on human rights is bilaterally. and of course the first step i

think is for our human rights on voice to have regular meetings with each other and their first meeting will be last week because already will be ahead of the progress made the last ten years in terms of coordination. so that is the step to have regular guice meetings. i have eight areas and the first as having regular bilateral consultations. the second is one that i am having a little trouble getting a positive response from u.s. officials i talked to owls trilateral consultations. i always thought mechanism was coordinating focusing on primarily security issues in the north korea at the peery issue but a whole range of issues i think could be addressed if it were revised the number of current and former u.s. officials told me we don't need this, we are already meeting

with each other enough as it is. we don't need this formal mechanism. but even if there isn't a formal mechanism in place japan has such a priority to the human rights issue it makes sense to have trilateral coronation to share ideas and pool resources and come up with a joint strategy because often japan has been working and today has been working in isolation on pressing human rights in north korea. the third area of cooperation i would emphasize is expanded and coordinated public outreach given the limited capabilities of ngos in washington and in seoul that there's a need for expanded ullrich efforts and that this could be effective in raising public awareness and the average korean unfortunately doesn't care about human rights and the average american is totally unaware of human rights in north korea so it is very

disappointing when i attend the north korean freedom weekend there is only -- this is the biggest national event on human rights and if they get 100 people out and even they are doing very well to have this many people at and even is a major accomplishment. again this is a nationwide effort they are undertaking so it's hard to mobilize even just korean-americans live alone average americans to get involved and care about human rights in north korea. the fourth area of cooperation is an radiobroadcasting. south korea again has their own government channel but they also have religious and detector stations targeting north korea. we have a voice of america and radio free asia but by south korean law become a south korean government transmitters cannot be used to transmit foreign radio broadcasts and so they have had to catch as catch can to get the broadcasts to north korea.

recently they were allowed to use a religious station transmitter, but there is more potential for cooperation. and we do know that retial is getting through. the defectors that come out are seeing one of the things that is influenced the will of you and even their decision to defect is the fact they can quietly at lightless into north korean radio. i was personally skeptical about this until a few years ago, and then on and noticed a couple of friends of mine who grew up in the soviet union and romania, each week to broadcast for radio free asia and cory in and it's wonderful to your career and with russian and iranian accents. when i was asked to review their radio broadcasts. but the don't do it for the money. the dewitt because they themselves were listening to the voice of america in 1980 is when they were living in the soviet

union and romania they made a difference for them and they know some north koreans, we all know exactly how many are listening so to the colin it comes to video broadcasting. and finally the fifth area of capricious would need to jointly press north korea on its treaty commitments that is the signatory to covenants and treaties related to human rights, so it's not over in a u.s. standard, it's modeled in a standard for human rights, it's holding up north korea to the standard which they themselves have signed on to and a variety of human rights treaties and charters whether it is international covenant on civil and political rights or the rights of the child there are a whole range of treaties and conventions north korea has already signed on to to read the sixth area i would recommend is to upgrade the human-rights discussion the six-party talks. we know that the six-party talks are tightly focused on the nuclear issue but human-rights have always been a part of the

six-party talks, and that's taken the form of japan raising the issue in its working group with north korea on a regular basis. but it should be multilateralized instead of bilaterally being raised only by japan. the seventh area that i would propose is that over time we try to transform the six-party talks into the helsinki process. there are several people that have been trying to -- and jim could be for example has led the efforts. roberta here at the brookings have been pushing for a helsinki process. it worked with the soviet union to try and bring together security and humanitarian issues together in one discussion. but that's the direction we need to move the six-party talks in. particularly as scott called the six-party talks. i agree with scott they are unlikely to resolve the nuclear

issue. the best we could hope for is crisis management mechanism east we should be able to use the talks to have a wide range of discussions with north korea. finally my final recommendation is the boldest probably of all to establish a north korean refugee protection result of the organization to assist north koreans trying to leave north korea and resettle in the united states. we've had informal cooperation. this is an area that cooperation has been very quiet for understandable reasons but we don't have any cooperation between the two governments when it comes to helping north koreans leave and resettling. there was a sense of competition noeth seóul not wanting north koreans to come to the united states. but the fact is we are not in a very strong position to evaluate potential defectors and potential immigrants to the united states and really rely on

the knowledge and experience of south korea in particular the intelligence agency in terms of evaluating the north koreans and the veracity of their stories. and so there is a need for cooperation. and again we are approaching 20,000 north korean defectors and south korea, the u.s. and japan and there is a need -- all three countries even south korea a whole book could be written on this and books have been written on the struggles of creance face in resettling in south korea. has to be that much more difficult for the hundred in the united states. and we don't have the formal assistance program south korea has for resettlement. so there would be i think you're be a great deal of benefits to create an organization to help north koreans resettle. now again i will close by pointing out that there are obstacles to cooperation that there is still going to be reluctance in washington and

seoul if we move forward. there will be a temptation to step back or ease of of pressing north korea on human rights. unfortunately that is just the reality that there is often a false choice that i think sold and north korea tries to force the u.s. and south korea to make this a false choice either focusing on security issues or on human rights issues and we have to find a way to focus on both at the same time and that is when to be a challenge. the second dilemma is whether or not future economic development and cooperation projects with the north should be tied to concrete improvements in human rights and that is something i am not sure either the obama were the administration's have. it didn't matter of number three tested a new car and how about human-rights situation was there's still a fundamental support for the industrial

complex but should future projects be tied to improvements in human rights. the human rights situation in north korea is grim and there's every indication it will only get worse particularly of the famine returns to north korea in the not too distant future. but most the north korean people suffer in silence. having spent the last few years focused on the plight of north korean refugees in china i'm not holding my breath the situation will improve until north korea -- china changes its policy but there is much more washington and the world can do to improve prospects of the north korean people. the security and economic benefits of pursuing human-rights are vigorously minimal in the short term and could impose significant costs but as freedom loving people we have an obligation to north korea's 24 million people to do better. thank you very much. [applause] thank you, peter. very well said. our next speaker is michael

whose grin as the compost conflict resolution. do you want to speak from there or here? before you start i would know what that mike is certainly not a one trick pony. he recently disseminated an outstanding paper on the u.s. japan alliance which i recommend to you all. mike? >> thank you, richard and all of you for coming to light on a brisk morning here in washington. also i would like to think scott for putting together a very interesting project, 3:00 took a group of areas to explore. i'm going to take us -- peter said we were out of the box on some of these areas of cooperation. i'm going to take us back into what might traditionally be the box for cooperation between the u.s. and iraq and that is security cooperation. but a corner of that box that is not explored well enough and that is the area of stability operations and reconstruction and i will get to why that hasn't been explored but for

several years while i was in the pentagon and previous to that i spent a lot of my military career looking for ways to expand cooperation and find ways to broaden and deepen this alliance. on the one hand the alliance managers have struggled to give the alliance more heft to provide to give more versatility , more applicability if you will as a tool of national policy. on the other hand, we've looked to diversify the portfolio somewhat and provide that a broader rationale for the alliance said that if we were to suffer catastrophic success and north korea was to disappear on us, the alliance would still have some applicability after all the investment we've put into it. at the same time we've obviously been very focused on ways to enhance and increased capabilities to carry out the

current mission of the alliance which is the primary role of defending the republic of korea and ensuring stability on the peninsula. there is a certain tension between meeting that near-term need of a building capability capacity for the current session and looking at the broader mission. but as i looked at this, it seemed to need the cooperation on stability and we construction operations was something of a natural area for expanding cooperation. as it seemed to meet several of the alliance's needs, and indeed our political leadership in the summit statements and the most recent vision statement on the alliance has identified every construction operations as an area for cooperation. so i was very pleased when scott asked me to take a look at this area. the interest of time what i

would like to do is make four brief points that summarize the paper. the first point is when looking at the republic of korea's capabilities, there is broad agreement that iraq is one of the few countries that has the political, economic and military capacity to make a meaningful contribution to international stability and reconstruction efforts. the iraq military for a simple now has a wealth of experience to bring to bear on such challenges and has done so in a remarkably effective and sophisticated way. the unit's performance for the simple as well as the performance of units that were in afghanistan up until 27 has been exemplary. both of those activities will looked at bye coalition partners as models for how such operations should be done and as i wrote in a recent piece for

the center, the u.s. military looks at iraq participation in any coalition operation very favorably because of the capabilities they bring. the professionalism and iraq is a valued partner and fully capable of the types of cooperation for stability operations and we construction operations. my second point is despite this great capacity on both iraq and the u.s. part combined stability and we construction operations have been given a fairly short shrift in the discussions and actions. the single most challenging operation in u.s. and iraq will likely face on the peninsula is a situation of instability in north korea to which they both must jointly respond. unfortunately that missionary has not received priority within the alliance. indeed during the previous iraq

administration, the entire process of planning a response to the instability of north korea was halted. think about that. if this is the most dangerous mission and maybe the most likely mission for the alliance on the peninsula to halt the was a serious statement. but tension in this critical area of cooperation has always existed. it's been seen as sensitive, politically charged and both of the domestic iraq and inter career and political level. finding a way to address that tension and thereby allow us to address the shortfall in this mission set but that the operational and strategic level has been an elusive goal for alliance managers. my first point however expanded global cooperation that is off the peninsula, cooperation and area of stability reconstruction will allow the government to

develop an alliance capacity. the individual and organizational skill sets necessary to better deal with instability on the korean peninsula this is a bit of a bank shot. such cooperation will be useful in and of itself because we are cooperating on the international level but also be useful real experience that would translate into save lives should we ever need to kill the house to the the operations in korea. on the one hand there would be a value in taking the cooperation to the strategic level and developing a whole alliance approach to stability and free construction operations. the u.s. approach as a whole of government approach and interagency approach. of iraq has taken a similar approach in its internal or unilateral planning efforts from north korea. if the allies believe that this

missionary, that this area of cooperation warrants the expenditure of resources, then drawing on both of the systems to develop a generic if he will whole alliance system to deal with, to assess, to plan, to implement stability and we construction operations would go along way to fill critical gaps in both our mutual understanding of how we would jointly approach stability from a strategic level as well as provide additional half for our operational plans. exercising such a system of the peninsula would to an extent to politicize a very sensitive area of north koreans to the planning and perhaps allow the necessary room for bilateral -- for meaningful bilateral thinking. taking this one step further and

institutionalizing this to the operational and tactical level, we might consider the development of iraqi lead combined with interagency center for excellence for stability and reconstruction operations in korea. perhaps leveraging already outstanding training center. such a center could develop for the alliance combined procedures and policies translating the strategical alliance approach to the operational and tactical level. and a fourth point to the elephant in the room, afghanistan. if as it appears korea has made a decision that redeployment to afghanistan to help stabilize and build that country is in korea's national interest. an argument i hope president lee begins to make with vigor. in the allies should seize the opportunity for all it's worth.

for the discussion of the iraqi let prt on the province is a great starting point. in vetting u.s. support in to that prt thinking something like a sonnet on plus unit would go a long way to building an alliance capacity for the reconstruction operations. obviously the primary mission for that prt must be stabilizing the afghan situation and assisting the afghan people. i'm not suggesting otherwise. but arguably the iraqi and u.s. cooperation in afghanistan can serve additional purposes of both preparing the allies for potential combined operations of north korea as well as broadening, deepening a strengthening the overall security alliance. it is an opportunity i hope our leaders will explore and

recognize and exploit. thank you. [applause] thank you very much for getting us back on time. we now turn to scott snyder for some commentary. >> my job here is to be a discussion but i do feel a little bit of an obligation to also provide some framework through which we can understand how these papers and together. mikey used the word eclectic to describe the offerings we've had as part of this project and that is true but i can try to answer the question for any of those in the audience who are still wondering what great presentations but what do they have in common with each other? and i think the way of doing that is by going back and looking a little bit at the

joint statement that was released last june by the two presidents at the white house. and the key phrase from that statement is quote on quote together we will build a comprehensive strategic alliance of bilateral regional and global scope based on common values and mutual trust. i think this is a very ambitious statement of purpose because it magnifies the importance of the alliance in two dimensions. one is geographical and i think mike just touched on that. issues in the u.s. our bilateral relationship are now conceived of the joint statement as having a regional dimension and also global dimension not stick peninsula dimension. that means the bilateral relationship -- with little relationship between the united states and south korea can be related to what goes on almost

anywhere in the world. the second dysfunctional and i think that the presentation on climate change illustrates the functional challenges. essentially according to the joint vision statement and some of the topics listed there is in theory nothing, no functional issue that would be outside of the bounds of u.s. correa cooperation. every issue we can and arguably should be examined through the lens of the question how can we address the shared challenge together. so the joint efficiency but could be interpreted to mean all winans cooperation as relevant to almost anything anywhere. but do both countries have the capacity to live up to the standard? and is it in their interest to do so? so i want to highlight some of the aspects related to that. i think it is clear there is a gap still between the scope of u.s. interest and capabilities

and the scope of south korean interest capabilities. but at the same time the reason we are able to do this project is cory in capabilities have increased and that there is considerably greater potential for u.s. korea cooperation than they're used to be. so is new capability in many new areas. so i think the real importance of the joint vision statement is it identifies and pledges both sides towards more diligently to realize the potential adherents in the relationship and that this framework drives a broad set of forms of cooperation that has existed than has existed between the two countries in the past. now there is a second aspect of the joint vision statement i think is very intriguing and it is the shared values and mutual trust and i want to make a critical evaluation of that particular phrase.

to the phrase shared values and mutual trust is expressed as the core of expanded cooperation between the two countries. but this is misleading in two aspects. one close student alliance interaction of mutual trust is almost impossible to achieve because the main task of managing relations between allies often boils down to the need for constant reassurance which is arguably evidence of lack of trust. the second danger presuming the alliance is based on mutual trust is it gives the impression cooperation cannot occur in the absence of trust. yet the institutional structures to support the alliance in many cases have compost the infrastructure that enables effective coordination despite lack of trust. i think we can look back on the alliance and see numerous occasions with that proposition has been tested and thus far

there hasn't been an abandonment of the institutional mechanisms for coordination despite severe interests instances of lack of trust between the two countries. another way of putting this is the institutional and political commitment on both sides are necessary to survive moments of mistrust if commitments are based solely on trust the mabey capricious. the second aspect is this idea of shared values and this gets i think in many respects to the human rights paper peter gay. the standard axiom and also by the way this issue of shared values is new in the obama administration's formulation and april 2008 u.s. summit between yongbyon was to develop the current he was for the alliance

into a strategic alliance that seeks to enlarge common interest. it doesn't talk about values and i think one of the interesting things about this project that i've wanted to explore is this question of what do the common values provide and i don't want to say they are not important but traditionally the rationale for the formation of alliances has been on the idea that alliances are based on shared interests. common threats have effectively served the basis for the alliance cooperation between states with very different systems. at the same time it is absolutely true south korean social and political structures have much in common with those of the united states and a common commitment to space and economic freedom has enabled the two countries to see eye to eye more easily than would be the case elsewhere and i think the history of alliance cooperation where we have a context in which south korea's own political

system has evolved from what it's the fact we can cooperate greatly now when there are common systems and then lost the case when south korea had a different system but one of the challenges of the project that in fact was raised in the october meeting by the resident here brookings especially as it relates to non-traditional security or functional cooperation is the question of what value added those working with in an alliance offered compared to the potential for cooperation with them on allies and to put this in stark terms if china is the country that has potential and willingness to cooperate on a peacekeeping or pose conflict stabilization, and an ex countries while the u.s. allies in theory are unable or unwilling to do so does it mean the united states would not seek cooperation from china because it has a system founded on different values from those of

the united states? or floating around, is it fair to allied to create expectations the contributions to and out of a real challenge will always be higher than that of the mom allies? i think these are very practical questions the project has raised as part of its effort to evaluate specific terms as was mentioned in the joint statement. in some cases, the studies we have commissioned we feel there are considerable asymmetries between their respective capacities of the united states and south korea to tackle the items on the international agenda. i think to a certain extent although he didn't explicitly mention a climate change is one of them. overseas development assistance is another. but that doesn't mean that there isn't a potential for limited cooperation in these areas and ways that reinforce the mutual

interest. and so maybe the best way to illustrate that is to make some specific comments on each of the presentations. i think the paper on climate change provides an excellent test whether the alliance can cooperate on newly emerging functional issues. i think actually climate change presents an issue where the situation is very mixed. at the same time the paper underscore climate change is a document security issue, common security challenge. but the manifestations of climate change may pose different challenges that countries may need to face with differing levels of priority. and i actually think that the graph showing the rise in temperature in seoul and south korea compared to the world outrage shows geography matters

on this issue. just yesterday seoul received i think it's largest snowfall in history. geography matters. we are concerned about the cold but not about snow today. and so this means i think this poses a potential challenge how one coordinates effectively on this type of issue. second issue i think it is interesting that he didn't touch on but i want to highlight president has made -- we just had the copenhagen summit but i don't think that the south korean president was in the room with president, at the end of the day and i don't think that south korea was involved in meetings together with south

africa, brazil and india which were the key players in terms of brokering a broad climate change deal. on the other hand, he has taken on the business development aspect of the low carvin corrine growth in ways that may create an entirely new set of opportunities for u.s. private-sector cooperation. and some of these are referred to in his presentation. these avenues to be explored more aggressively i think given that south korea is poisoned with as a competitor and partner in a newly emerging sector where there is a host of opportunities to be exploited. another aspect that i think came out of his presentation is the difficulty of managing policy coordination in a context where south korea is pursuing the issue from a centrally planned approach while in the united states it's really more of the

bottom-up approach. the question i have given the multi dimensional and multispectral set of challenges he laid out is what does he think is the most important area where the united states and south korea had a chance to cooperate together with each other in addressing climate change, and also what are the specific areas where the united states and south koreans have the most to learn from each other in their experience this far in dealing with climate change. peter's presentation illustrates both the promise and the disappointment associated with new opportunities for cooperation on human rights as i suggested. on the one hand those who remember human rights issues in south korea from the 70's will no human rights used to be the issue that poses the greatest threat to the sustainability o

the alliance. from that perspective is truly remarkable to see the implications of south korea's political revolution. but on the other hand as peter windel, south korea's's public debate over human rights has been politicized and really limited to north korea. and so, the question is really can human-rights, can share values be a basis for the policy coordination is related to north korea but related to other parts of the world. human rights is a universal value. it's provided a limited basis for alliance coordination. peter outlined the difficulty of that. i just want to ask peter what is his projection about whether this might change in the future. and finally mike's paper explores the broadening of the geographical scope of the alliance in a core area of

security cooperation. and the administration showed willingness in this eckert but it remains to be seen how but the point that will play out in particular whether or not the deployment can win public support. i see this as a direct challenge to one of the catch phrases that the myung-bak administration has used, the idea of a global korea. the idea of the south korean government willing to incur obligations and responsibilities proportionate to the benefits that the lives as a major economic player in the global system. and so the question i have for mike is whether or not he thinks the south korean public is ready to support off the peninsula deployment and then also if they are in what ways can the alliance serve to enable a more active role for south korea in

pursuit of a higher profile in the area of post conflict stabilization. thanks. >> thank you very much. those are good questions. what i propose is we go ahead and open up to audience questions. our speakers are smart enough to leave their answers to others. the floor is open. please wait for the microphone once you've been recognized and once you get a microphone please identify yourself and your affiliation and to whom your question is posed. i see a hand back there. >> miles from the center for nonproliferation studies. i have a doctor for dr. speed.

i was intrigued in the presentation dealing with climate change it didn't mention nuclear energy which is the largest low carbon source of power that korea has by far, something more than one-third of its electricity i believe comes from the nuclear power and the plans for expanding that even further. at the same time you've mentioned alternative energy supplies about 2% i think of the energy needs and i am wondering how much of this is a conscious policy decision by the government to favor nuclear power verses when you hear from the nuclear industry and people in the nuclear establishment it's not a lot of sources of potential of energy so i'm wondering how much geographic endowment and how much of this is government policy?

>> is, you're very right. the korea nuclear energy is about one third and mostly we know is an export in the nuclear that they have an agreement to contribute to korea. so i think also people's perception have been maybe changing. they are very concerned about the nuclear waste so it isn't a safe source of energy. but as with other countries there is no doubt of nuclear can reduce the carbon dioxide emission and for example in the case of france the carbon dioxide is low compared to other so i think still my point is the less rely on coal or oil, while maintaining the nuclear energy but they want to diversify the source of renewable energy at the same time i think that is my

understanding. >> yes, mike billington from the executive review. i'd like to expand on the question. i was struck nuclear wasn't brought up either in times of the deployment change but also in terms of cooperation between the u.s. and korea and that there wasn't any reference to the huge shift in asia over the last couple of months and especially korea who have dramatic agreements between russia, china and india to use the chinese dollar reserves to build massive infrastructure and russia will be building nuclear power and china, russia is going to build nuclear agreements in india. these are a shift in the geometry of asia generally in korea is very much involved in this government has committed to working with russia on the development of the far east, this nuclear export policy, they

are very proud and it is a dramatic shift in their role and as i am sure you know the u.s. is already part of that, they're going to get out of billion dollars of the parts production for this and they intend to expand all of the southeast asia is looking to create support for the nuclear power in visions so this is an area where the u.s. if it were to return to a kind of roosevelt approach to policy instead of the current mess could play a dramatic role with the rest of the countries in what i think is the new frontier for the human race right now which is the development of the eurasian region and i would be interested in what mike and scott as well have to say on that. >> other comments? >> there is a situation with nuclear weapons, but in terms of energy security i think you are very light.

traditionally korea, a lot of technology exports from the u.s. but now korea is trying to export these to other developing countries that there is a place how the u.s. can have a better relationship in that area. >> mike, do you want to comment? >> i will take your example one step further not only is the u.s. involved because of westinghouse but japan is involved because toshiba owns westinghouse so it is so the deal starts to illustrate how these, how the nuclear energy is tied together globally and it's right for some regional cooperation strategies. i think northeast asia for me house for a long time 18 example of how energy security environmental security and traditional security if he will kind of come together. that is the sort of nexus it

this is an area that is right for cooperation, finding the way to expand nuclear power because as the point was made it is far proven low carbon energy that is out there so could we expand nuclear power in northeast asia to meet energy security needs to deal with some of the environmental issues, could we developed cooperative strategies for handling spent fuel the? to keep it out of the proliferation area. there are several areas where the chinese government, the russian government, seoul, tokyo, the united states could find a way and have expressed desire for cooperation with their we can bring it together in a meaningful way is a good

question. >> i just want to mention that as a part of this project we did have a paper on u.s. non-proliferation cooperation, and in fact it was written by frederick. we have a version that focuses on some of the challenges related to the upcoming renegotiation of the u.s. south korea bilateral agreement that's available outside. his paper doesn't go into much detail about the idea of the nuclear energy cooperation but that's also an important area of interest for us. >> you have anything to say every negotiations based on myung-bak's request that the u.s. dropped its provisions preventing the processing and reprocessing so that they can have a full cycle nuclear? >> fred's beeper addresses some of those issues and tries to

explore possible ways of managing differences between the two governments. >> question might -- right here. -- [inaudible] i was particularly interested in peter's comments on the great impact on radio and communications to the north breaking down barriers and increasing the standing of the population when it is they are not getting, and we have a unique opportunity here to hear from this panel the extent to which there is beginning to be a breakdown in the north and extent to which the realization of what else is available may lead to replication of what is happening in east germany, it would be interesting for military and environmental aspect communications human rights standpoint.

>> excellent question. the fundamental challenge we face when we are looking at the radio to the north korea is assessing listenership and obviously we can't have a representative sample of the north korean people so we have a very self selected sample, so it's difficult to compete even though the surveys are being done of north korean defectors of the listening habits prior to leaving it is still anyone's guess how many north koreans are actually listening anywhere from 1% to ten or 15% or even higher but we can't say with confidence when we look at the terms of the spread of information whether it is through radio or dvds and cds going back and forth across the border life that young defectors who said they knew which house and the neighborhood

was quietly selling movies, american and south korean movies and friends would trade with you or trusted you could treat movies with each other, and they are listening to radio stations to the point the government has had to issue -- publicly criticized the radio stations for their slanders activities and told north koreans to not be influenced by the west. swindel the information is getting through but on the other hand when we look at absolute terms for north korea information is starting to get there but when we look at say other regimes that seem to persist and closed if we look at iran for example it was amazing to me to see these almost real-time images coming up from the demonstrations in iran. burma, is there a few years ago meeting the burmese took on the south korean and lawyers

traveling freely meeting with whoever i wanted to meet with in burma and meeting monks disgusted with the regime and wanting change but were pessimistic about the change coming so north korea still has a long way to go before it even reaches the point of say burma or iran and i don't think we see those regimes falling soon enough, so that makes me a bit pessimistic at least in the short term. it is a long-term project that i don't think will necessarily yield short-term results. to quickly answer scott's question about how do i see cooperation involving in the near future it is always hard to prognosticate but i would say there are three factors that will determine the extent of which washington can go very effectively on human rights issues. the first is how is the policy

making mechanism which organ the obama administration now that we have a part-time nuclear envoy and full-time day to day envoy and full-time human rights envoy and it's not clear to me all these pieces are going to fit together so what voice will robert have in the policy-making process on north korea i think remains to be seen. the second factor i think is the nuclear talks that for the time being i don't think the overall administration is going to try to insert human rights actively into the nuclear talks and to the six-party talks if the talks get bogged down that i think there will be more of an opportunity for the voices to be raised on human rights and for south korea it's going to come out to the summit if it looks like a summit is going to move forward and i think it depends on how much money south korea is willing, the myung-bak government is willing to put up. if they put up enough money the summit can happen that it looks like the summit is going to happen south korea will get

laryngitis when it comes to human rights and so those i think are the three factors that will shape what happens. >> mike, do want to talk about the securities? >> very briefly. i think we have seen, pardon the pun, mixed signals on how the radiobroadcasting is going and the affected is having and north korea. there are the factors that help the did hear the broadcasts and that it did affect their decisions. however i also had many discussions with the detectors the main motivation we were thinking was just get to china because china is better than north korea and once they got there they became more exposed to this within this kind of a mixed bag right now. it is not having a great effect yet, but as peter what it is a long-term investment and