that here. [laughter] >> okay. well, monday, monday. >> you know what -- >> this wraps up three hours of coverage of the bill press radio show. starting shortly here on c-span2, the world affairs council of america is going to hold its national conference right here in washington. we'll first hear remarks from deputy secretary of state james steinberg on u.s. foreign policy priorities. later a panel discussion with diplomats, scholars and journalists on various aspects of u.s. foreign policy. we'll have the event all day here on c-span2, and that starts in just a few minutes. this afternoon we'll look at results of the recent midterm elections, the event this afternoon moderated by bill crystal, and this event will be hosted by the weekly standard as well as the washington examiner. we have it live at 12:30 eastern right here on -- i'm sorry, on c-span. that's 12:30 on our companion

network, c-span. president obama leaving town today for a ten-day trip to asia. he'll attend meetings with leaders in india, indonesia, south korea and japan. ..

>> and a live picture now from the world affairs councils of america hosted its national conference here in washington day. deputy secretary state james steinberg expected to open the conference in a few minutes with a speech about u.s. foreign policy priorities. later on we expect to hear from diplomats, scholars and journalists about various aspects of u.s. foreign policy. we will have live coverage throughout the day here on c-span2. as we wait for this to get underway let's bring you an event from yesterday's state department p.j. crowley clean off a briefing talking about secretary of state hillary clinton's trip to asia. we will break way when the event at the world affairs council begins. >> good afternoon and welcome to

the department of state. i got a whole lot of stuff to talk about, so sit back, relax. [laughter] all busy the secretary has completed her day in wellington, new zealand. she met with senior leadership of new zealand, including prime minister john key, foreign minister macauley, and leader of the opposition, feel golf. after meetings she and foreign minister macauley signed the wellington declaration that reaffirmed our closest local ties and recommit the united states and new zealand to research e.g. partnership. tomorrow, she has arranged to move on to christchurch where she will review on going and cooperation between the united states and new zealand. we expect over the next couple of days as her schedule permits the secretary will reach out to congressional leaders, you know, including majority leader harry

reid, minority leader mitch mcconnell, and john boehner on the house side as well as representative eliana ros-lehtinen to offer congratulations and to pledge cooperation as we continue to address national security and foreign policy challenges. facing our country. obviously on a range of issues from ongoing support for operations in iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, other issues, nonproliferation and so forth, we will need sustained congressional support to succeed. in particular, as she talks to her former senate colleagues, i think she will also reach out to incoming senator-elect mark kirk as well. she will stress the importance of ratification of the new

s.t.a.r.t. treaty during the upcoming lame-duck session. the tree was reported on the senate floor on a strong 14-4 bipartisan vote athletes from across the clinical spectrum including former secretary of state and defense from both republican and democratic administrations, as well as our entire military leadership, you know, including seven former commanders of united states strategic command have all endorsed this treaty. and we've had excellent discussions with a broad range of senators in recent weeks, and will continue to work with our senate colleagues to ensure timely ratification. we continue to be focused on hurricane or tropical storm homeless, the storm whether -- >> we will break away from this event from yesterday as we told you, we would take you live now over to the renaissance mayflower hotel in washington, d.c., for the world affairs council of america's national conference.

live coverage now on c-span2. >> we had a great day yesterday. [applause] >> we thank all the people who don't organizing and i think yesterday should also the power of the network. power of the world affairs council's, all about this great country. i also wanted to take the occasion this morning to thank our sponsors again because without them this would not be possible. the major sponsorship on, thomson reuters, the stanley foundation, contribute sponsors reagan, northrop grumman, the hutchinson family foundation and also other companies that if you join in getting them a round of applause i would appreciate it. [applause] >> we have what i think is a great day today. you will live up to the standard we set yesterday. we are very, very pleased to have keynote speakers and also as we did yesterday, a number of excellent excellent panelists. our first speaker today is the deputy secretary of state jim steinberg.

you all have his biography in the booklet that we passed out, but i just want to highlight this role of deputy secretary of state. a huge responsibility for the conduct of the foreign relations of the united states of america. before that, jim was the dean of the lbj school come university of texas, austin, service and our government and he and i have a good info -- fortune of serving together with advisor of the united states. and showed his commitment to american values and american principles and american operations. by helping us get to the very difficult challenges in the balkans. with jim's commitment to this set of u.s. interest, we are so pleased he is back now serving again in the united states of america state department. so jim, we thank you for your service and we offer you the floor. and i give you a welcome from the world affairs councils of america. [applause]

>> good morning, everybody. and thank you for having me here. it's a personal privilege and pleasure to be introduced by mark who is one of the great public service of our time. >> we've had a chance to work together through periods during the clinton administration both when i served at the state department or secretary christopher, and when he moved over to the white house. mark may take the deputy has an important job at i would take the undersecretary has a really important job. mark was a great one. and a real reflection, the best in our foreign service. i think somewhat underappreciated treasure of our national capacity. and as we work together now with secretary clinton, on what we call our quadrennial diplomacy and development review, the appreciation that we have gained for the role that our career foreign service play i think has

only grown as we begin to think about the capacity of the united states needs to meet the challenges for the 21st century. so i want to salute mark and his many colleagues in the foreign service. and i'm especially pleased to be here with you from the world affairs councils of america. i was telling laurie i think over the course of mike weir, which has include a few purple campaigns, i've spoken to about half of the world affairs council in the world. i remember when my girl is outings to a, i would during the 1980 presidential campaign. it is a reflection that while we have report national organizations, the discussion around our country on key areas of foreign policy national security is the grassroots organizations like yourselves and all citizenry. it is amazing that it allows us, the people to be well-informed and focus on the issues that may be a little bit not obvious in their day-to-day lives but which affect their day-to-day lives. they play such an accord service and that's why such a privilege for me to be here with you.

and i think it's especially important right now. not surprise i got a lot of questions in the last 48 hours about the recent elections, and impact on foreign policy. i am convinced we have a very strong bipartisan basis for the conduct of foreign policy in this country, and american leadership as i know, that the secretary under president and i and everybody else looks forward to working with the new congress. to sustain the bipartisanship it but because, frankly, we didn't have that much discussion of foreign policy and national security issues during the campaign. it's been all outside the political season that we continue a figure is engaged in bait and again i thank you for the role that you play in that. i think it's important to use this opportunity to reflect on some of the core challenges that we're facing. this morning i'm going to focus on east asia because the president and secretary are both deeply engaged right now in that issue. but i want to begin with a few broader observations.

and this month's foreign affairs magazine which i know most of you do read, some people read sports illustrated and others of us reformed affairs, secretary has an article and she begins with an observation. she said that today's world is a crucible challenge testing american leadership. global problems from violent extremism to worldwide recession to climate change to poverty demand collective solutions. even as power in the world becomes more diffuse but they require a effective international cooperation, even as that becomes harder to achieve. they cannot be solved unless a nation is going to accept the responsibility of mobilizing action. the united states is that nation. i think it's important to reflect about the world in which we live in, the changes that are taking place in recent years, nothing illustrates that more vividly than recent very troubling and scary incident we've had with these two package bombs coming out of yemen. because they illustrate the

conundrum of our times, which is that on the one hand we have benefited enormously from the progress of the globalization and interdependence that comes with a. the opportunities for economic growth, for increasing exchange among people, for sharing ideas and expresses of overcoming differences and isolation, that those forces bring. but also the very forces that bring us closer together also facilitate the forces that we tried to undo any damage these structures and the way of life in which we live. and vicious nothing that illustrates that more vividly than the continued attacks on our transportation system as the fact we use this for human exchange, for our increasingly interconnected worldwide economy and life. and it really illustrates as i said the twin dilemmas of our time is that our faith is extremely tight together, and yet therefore we need common action to try to address these problems. but at the same time, although

no one nation alone can solve these problems, without leadership it would be impossible to galvanize the kind of response that we need to meet the changes of our time. the changes that not only focus on issues like terrorism and nonproliferation, but also the new challenges like climate change and global pandemic disease and piracy, all of this require increased level of common activity. this is something i think we need to focus our efforts, how do we generate a capacity in the international system to be able to meet these challenges. and in our own efforts we've identified three core elements of a strategy going forward about how to mobilize that, that sense of common or collective action. first, begin with our traditional allies and partners in this hemisphere where we are deepening our ties with canada and mexico. i myself just came back from a visit to mexico and where, despite the very serious

challenges mac sick of faces and our common effort to deal with the problems of transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking, our increase in deepened ties i think give us a sense that we will and are determined to do with these challenges together to our partners in europe, which although we hear less about transit flag relations is precisely they are in such good form, and because we have such deep bonds of interest and values that allow us to work together, not only on challenges in our area, transatlantic area, but beyond that this does give our common efforts of global economic crisis, on issues like the iranian nuclear program. the united states and europe are cooperating ever more closely to do with his serious challenge and we will see this on display, this next month when nato holds its summit, in which we will reaffirm the centrality of our transatlantic alliance for the

21st century with a new concept and a new way forward that will allow us to do with the challenges of the 21st century, both through nato and through the u.s. e.u. that also with our traditional allies at east asia and i'll come back to that. so that's the core strategy. but is just a stepping off point because of it all recognize, he recognized her well, that in addition to these traditional allies there are new powers arising around the world which offer enormous opportunities for the united states to develop new relationships and new partnerships, to me is, challenges. we have to develop the kind of relationships with the emerging powers that will allow us to make sure that there will in the system is one that strengthens our capacity rather than weakens the ability to meet what we believe are largely shared challenges. these of course are the emerging powers ranging from india, china, to russia's new role, brazil, south africa, indonesia and so many others.

and beyond these, nation states are still quite critical to the core of our national, international system. we need to go beyond these relationships with traditional allies and the emerging powers to develop international structure cooperation, multilateral cooperation that we need to bring people together to do with these common challenges, both on the regional and global level by strengthening the u.n. and the other global institutions, global bank, the imf and others. we will increase our capacity to deal with the challenges of our time. and as i said, nowhere is the set of challenges more obvious than in east asia where we have this mix of these three elements very much at play. traditional allies, the emerging powers, and new efforts to develop multilateral cooperation. and over the coming days, over the past several days, these forces and this strategy will be very much on display as we

gather here today, secretary clinton is wrapping up her sixth trip to asia in less than two years as secretary of state. you may recall her very first trip as secretary of state to asia and on this trip she is visited vietnam, cambodia, malaysia, new zealand, australia and even a brief stop in china. and in a very sharp at a time the president will be on his way to india beginning a trip to india, indonesia, japan and korea which reflects a given his strong commitment and the administration's strong commitment to building ties in this region. and just as a final footnote of that i too am living on monday to represent the united states at the aipac minister in japan this coming week. so we are very focused on not to say the other reasons regions of the world are not, but there's no doubt that the forces at work in our world today makes these asia critical to our own

long-term security and prosperity. the economic dynamism increased focus on capacity to meet challenges like nonproliferation and terrorism, disease and climate change, all make asia a critical set of challenges for us. and opportunity as i think we are really quite enormous there, if we sustain our engagement and show leadership in working with the countries of the region. to me that. and again, it we can go through the three core elements of our strategy. first, our traditional allies. our relationship with japan i think is quite remarkable one. we have seen and i think it's important to reflect back over what's happened in the 60 years of our allies or even further back from the end of world war ii and the transformation of japan to a modern democratic open society which is partnering with the united states and economic, political, social, transnational and security issues. we are working very hard to make

sure that that alliance remains vibrant and relevant to the 21st century, and through our common efforts to redefine the ways in which we work together on the security front, the ways we work together in global institutions. i'm confident that relationship will remain vibrant and a cornerstone of our engagement in east asia. but we've also seen i think in recent years tremendous deepening of our relationship with the republic of korea, another remarkable story. think about what the situation was in south korea in 1960, the level of poverty and a lack of political opportunity in that system. and now we see a country which is not only a vibrant democracy and for the most successful economies, now having joined the ranks of g20, hosting the g20 seven, but also playing a role in the region globally. they will be hosting the second securities summit and partnering with us in afghanistan. it's playing a critical role in so many of the issues around the world, and we are really

enormously appreciative of the leadership of president bok and his administration, demonstrate that korea is moving from a country that was a consumer security to one that is helping to provide security to others. in australia, another steadfast part of our sustained alliance partnerships. we are celebrating our 60th anniversary of that alliance. there's no more reliable partner for the united states that we appreciate more for its own contributions, the security in its own region and also globally again in afghanistan and around the world. we work together in a relationship of confidence, of shared values and inches, which is really unparalleled. we also have important new partners in the region. increasing importance and attention in the countries of southeast asia, which includes two of our traditional treaty allies, thailand and the philippines, which remain strong partners of the united states.

but also other long-term friends, friends with who we are developing stronger relations like indonesia, malaysia and singapore. and all of these relationships will be on display, both during the secretary's trip and the president trip as well. and, of course, beyond these ally and traditional partner relationships we have the two most significant in emerging countries in the world in this region, india and china. and i think is really significant to take an opportunity to reflect on the role that india has played both in the region and globally today, and the importance that we attach to building this bilateral relationship between the united states and india. as many as you know the first state visit that the president hosted was over the time since president obama has been in office, that relationship has only grown closer. india has demonstrated over the

last two decades that it is ready to play an increasingly important both economic and political stage, a country that experiencing sustained 8% economic growth, where u.s. exports and india have quadrupled in good over the last seven years and tripled in services over roughly the same period of time. india, the second largest increasing -- increasing an investment in the united states now. some of our global partners, and again critical international partner now with us in the g20. but also our relationship stands a whole range of activities in the economic, political, security and human dimension. i said in the past that we are entering what i call the third stage of a renewed relationship with india that begin with president clinton's historical visit to india in 2000 that took an important step forward. president bush's decision to move forward on nuclear cooperation with india, but now

we're in the third stage that puts us into orbit in which we broaden that relationship to go beyond specific issues to a comprehensive partnership reflected in the u.s. in the strategic dialogue, and the many issues that will be on display during the present visit include cooperation on education and technology, agriculture, not only to help build a second green revolution in india, but also forced to work together to help meet the agriculture and food needs of other countries, particularly in africa. and, of course, the enormously strong people to people relationship that we have with india. and it's significant that this is the first stop of the presence of trip in east asia, because india is not only a central player in its own region of south asia but it is very much in east asia country as well. for participating with those, and increasing engage with its partners in east asia is the

reason these between the prime ministers so amply illustrate. it's not coincidental therefore that we've seen an increase in our security engagement with india. it's now true that for india, the united states is a country that has the most military exercises with. we have deepened our security partnership in many ways, and it's something that i think and tribute broadly to the security of the region as a whole. so we welcome india's increasing role in the region, and see it as a partner there. now, of course, the second and obviously more important part of our challenge in getting with new system that powers is our engagement with china. as you all know, this past year china surpassed japan as the worlds second largest economy and past chairman as the world's largest exporter. and on almost all of the global issues, china has an important

role to play. and if they can play a constructive role as important contribution, which is why this past may we sent one of the largest u.s. delegations ever to participate in the second strategic and economic dialogue, cochaired on our side by secretary's clinton and secretary geithner. secretary clinton has said, and i'm going to come in a 21st century it's not in anyone's interest of the united states, china, to see each other as adversaries. and if you look back, in fact, our engagement has led this important achievements, including president whose participation on the security summit here in washington and china's support for u.s. sanctions against both north korea and iran. and while the past -- path getting there was not an easy one, china did sign onto the treaty treaty which provides a platform for us to begin to address this question of global climate change. and yet we recognize that as we

seek this relationship of increased cooperation and pursuit of common interest with china, we recognize that we will continue to be disagreements, especially as china's economic growth accompanied increase capacity on its military. and it's important that we find increased avenues of dialogue to address these challenges. that's what the academics, so the people they'll be on your panel mess, call it a security dilemma as countries become more capable military that there is a risk that will come into conflict. and the only way in which we can address that challenge is through dialogue. and in particular the importance of strengthening military ties between the united states and china. and we welcome the fact that china has invited secretary gates to come to china to begin to put that on a stronger footing, because we do think it's critical to our future. it's important to recognize that military to military ties are not in favor that one-sided can use the other as a bargaining

chip and allows both sides to prevent miscalculation and allow ways to understand our common objectives and achievements, particularly on sensitive issues like the lse and china sea. as well as the need to address the increased importance of our ability to talk through our different perspectives and our differences on human rights and the rule of law. and i was happy to be able to welcome the chinese delegation for a human rights dialogue in washington a few months pass. and it's important we continue to be able to address our differences candidly, whether it is about the condition of political dissidents or the broader question of openness and the opportunities for freedom of expression and religion. in a china's society. so these are big challenges. how do we sustain our traditional relationships with our allies to make in 21st century, our relationships, and also deal with these new merchant ours.

as i said come in east asia perhaps more than any other part of the world, the nationstate does still remain. the court of the senate of the activity, and the way in which we need to build up our efforts to meet these challenges. but that i think will be sufficient, and that's why we are focused on this third element of our strategy which is building new institutions of multilateral cooperation to enhance cooperation, to allow us to work more effectively together. and east asia presents a real challenge in that respect because historically east asia has lagged behind other parts of the world building the kinds of institutions. there's been a reluctance to move towards more formal institutions that can really tackle the hard problems of our time. but i think we're seeing now and have seen over the past decade or so and increased realization that we do need to work hard to build these structures. i'm confident the bilateral relationships, and if you look

over the past year or two you can see both your own decision to join the treaty of amity cooperation, to secretary clinton participation to regional forms, said she became secretary of secretary gates recent participation in the defense ministers meeting, and now most recently secretary clinton's visit to handle of which participated for the first time for the summit. as well as our continued occupation to apec this year and japan where i will participate and the present will join the leaders of today's after. and the anticipation as we move from the japanese chair of apec connection which will host a pack in hawaii to an operative to demonstrate that apec can be a cutting edge instrument to sustain and deepen economic cooperation, increased trade and investment, and particularly the

ability to deal with new challenges like dealing with regulatory standards and promoting a green technology and trade investment in green technologies. these all represent important opportunities for us to deal with the kind of challenges. but we also see a more flexible and innovative tools like the mekong initiative that we begin with our partners in southeast asia to address the environmental and economic challenges of countries united by the mekong river valley. to our efforts to work together to our dialogue on north korea problem, and others. they are all examples of how we're trying to find new strategy of multilateral cooperation in east asia. how this is all going to come out remains uncertain. but the one thing we do know is that the prospects for peaceful and stable east asia, the benefits all people, both in east asia and across the pacific depends on our engagement there. that's what we have placed such hyperbole on and why we look forward to building constructive

relations with all the region. i think was engagement doesn't guarantee success, in the absence of that we would have little chance of achieving the goals that are so important for all our people throughout the united states, as well as our partners in the region. so thank you for listening to me today, and i look forward to your comments and questions. [applause] >> is it on now? i am diane jacobson from jacksonville, florida. thanks for your comments. the underlying theme here has been that our nation can't be strong if our economy is not strong. and this morning, we attended a breakfast on information technology. and that that breakfast, we basically heard that while the

united states is good at trade agreements, we might not be so good at enforcing those agreements. the result of which china and korea and did not invite of other countries, number one, is just that we build manufacturing facilities have access to the markets which is not exactly free trade. and that more importantly, that our technology is being reversed engineered or outright stolen. we don't seem to have a mechanism to enforce that because we lose because it is not a level playing field. so my question is, number one, is that true from the perspective? and if it is true, what do we do about it? because it dramatically affects or economic security and our national security. >> i don't want to under estimate the challenges of enforcing trade agreements, particularly at the multilateral

trade agreements, but i wouldn't share that basic assessment. i think on the contrary that what we are seeing is, one, increased emphasis on rules-based trade, and a recognition by many countries who, in the past, have perhaps been scofflaws in international trade system, then adds in an old long-term interest busy strengthening that they begin to move up the value chain that they need to understand that it is in their interest to protect intellectual properties that they need to observe their own commitments. we are very determined to vigorously enforce our trade laws, and the commitment that our partners have made in the wto. we have found a number of cases involving our countries including china, most recently, and we will vigorously enforce them. that's a priority for the president. is made in the expansion of u.s. exports a priority for us and we recognize that we are confident that we can compete and the

playing field is level and rules are observed. and we will take every advantage of the rights that we have under bilateral agreement and multilateral agreements. but we also i think engaged in addition to the kind of rule based enforcement on a sustained engagement with our partner countries about why their own strengthening, the old laws and all commitment and their own enforcement will be critical to their own future. and i believe that we will see progress. we see this in our dialogue with china, with india, and others that we have to be vigilant, but i think that in the long run there is an increased recognition that countries will not be able to sustain their own economic growth through piracy or through means that would make it less, other countries less willing to deal with it. so we are very alert and very attentive to these problems. i think this is something that's not a long-term losing proposition for us. i think we have a better argument when it comes to this,

and i believe through our engagement we will continue to make progress. [inaudible] >> i will shout. our mayor and some hosted the biennial of the american -- our state if you're interested in the relationship with latin america and i know is that you did. benny: latin america in your talks. i wanted to address that part of the world? and the other left behind condit, africa. >> i've got to say, every time you give a speech, you pick one thing to talk about, you immediately get accused of neglecting the other. i plead guilty. but it just came back from my second trip to colombia and mexico. and so i don't, i'm not, i'm not apologetic. i think with a very, very deep engagement with latin america. although i didn't participate in leading that you describe, i was

in aspen for a meeting right afterwards with a number of former heads of state and latin america. this is in or was important region for the united states. again, if you think about, i mentioned, the first trip of the secretaries was to asia but the first meeting the president had with any heads of state was a meeting with president calderón before the inauguration. president obama's inauguration. and we've had a very sustained level in mexico. the secretary has twice participated in oes meetings. we had extensive travel to the region and we had a note of the key leaders in the region in the united states. the president just met with billy elected president of columbia in new york during the general assembly. i as i said was just in colombia for my second visit and the president had a chance to talk with the newly elected president

of brazil just a few days ago. so we see enormous opportunities and a real i think transformative environment in latin america. and what is significant about that is that we believe there's an opportunity in this region, not going to work together on common challenges, but to learn from each other, that it's not just a question of united states telling others what to do, but a recognition that we're all being with common problems. and how we deal with create economic opportunity and social inclusion throughout the hemisphere. and so are pathways to prosperity program for example, is a way in which we share ideas about create economic opportunity, how we learn from programs like brazil's program on the program in mexico to create jobs and economic opportunity for those who are less will all. how we work together on problems of transnational criminal organization and drugs, how we create an opportunity to do with the energy challenges and hemisphere, and particularly in

the area of green and we know energy with his tremendous capacity in the hemisphere to show that we can chart a new path in that dimension. and what is encouraging about it is that there's tremendous convergence of interest in the hemisphere. one of the reasons like you don't see too much in headlines is because we don't have enormous clashes. we have rhetorical differences, but there's not a deep debate in this region about the centrality of democracy, about the need to have our economies be open and grow. we have opportunities to build and strengthen those partnerships, both on the bilateral and regional level, what i am very optimistic from my own engagement in a sense that we have strong partners that we're working together to do with bilateral regional problems. we're also working together on a global stage. the fact that countries like mexico and brazil and argentina participate in global

institutions like the g20, a fact that mexico will be hosting the next round of the conference of parties on climate change in cancun, the participation of mexico most really in security council in colombia now joined the security council are all exams a deep engagement that we have with this hemisphere. so we do understand the importance, and it is something that is very i think resonant with the people of this country to understand the need to have strong political social economic and people to people relations throughout this hemisphere. [inaudible] >> in the course of yesterday, we had to remind someone one of the speakers that strategy is making choices that and in the course of yesterday, there was some areas of choice, either expressed or heavily implied. the first was a question he and

bremer put to tony blair talking about global economic governance in concert with countries with different values, namely china. and my question is, which of our values when we have to cover lies, adapt or otherwise managed in order to peaceful, orderly economic governance? and i think the flipside might be what of our economic interest might we be able to put at risk for the sake of our values? secondary has to do with security. we heard a lot of new areas that are becoming security concerns. we will expect this at some of us will have to absorb, and so the question again of priorities and choices, which are those areas that we would ask we devote resources to it which might we have to absorb. now i ask these two questions in light of two perspectives. i was a foreign service officer, for a number of years, and to be perfectly honest i wonder if art

governments institutional ability to to analyze questions of that nature, which means, that because of that i suspect also, and i'm going somebody, i forgive you, and are probably getting it wrong, the expression was u.s. strategy is a list of desirable objectives without priorities expressed and with no accounting for cost. i know in your position, especially the u.s. strategy pronouncements are a matter of spreading the good news, but i wonder if it is time to start taking out some very difficult public expressions. thank you. >> thanks for the important questions. and ones that i take seriously. as you may know, i had the honor of serving as director in the state department during the clinton administration during the first term. he would look up a on the wall and see the pictures of henry owens and so many other distinguished thinkers of our time who were challenged to

answer the very questions you have raised. i think of race two different kinds of questions because i think the issue about the role of values in our policy is a different than the real trade-offs, the real issues which are resources are finite. but i think the president has been very articulate on the question about how we pursue the issue of values and the fact that it's too easy and too glib to sort sees as a trade off. both in his cairo speech and most recent at the general assembly, the president made clear that we have a very strong interest running our values because it is not only, else our, achieve our long-term interest but it is also who we are as a people. we would not be will to sustain an american foreign policy that wasn't consistent with our values. you all are very close because you know this from ordinary americans that this is simply not sustainable, that it is kind of a 1950 politic would not be sustained in this country and we have had the support of the american people. side of any of us feel that is a question of trading off, but be

smart how we pursue them, and how we do this in a way advance our bags and does undermine our interest. and again i think the president has articulated a strategy that we need first of all to remain consistent to our values in our own behavior so that we can be an example as to what we advocate for others is borne out and how we act abroad, and from the first day of his administration when he signed the order committing to close guantánamo those are statements that we made about our values. as we speak, my colleague harold koh and and a number of others by the human rights council under god was cold universal periodic review in which we're talking about our own human rights record before others. because we recognize that if you want to be credible indeed with human rights violations, in china, north korea, and elsewhere, that we have to be prepared to have others criticize us and to get answers back in terms of what we think.

and i think if you look at sustained basis, you know, nobody believes you can just by counting the table that you get countries to change their ways on important issues of freedom of expression, religion and the like. but we have to stay at it. we have to support those who are fighting for those and we have to provide assistance in smart ways to pursue it. so i don't believe that these are profoundly deep trade-offs from the strategy point of view. our resources, that is a trade off and we have obligations. the first question of sure that we have an obligation, we have to make sure our economy is strong so we will have to do our part in a national security committed to deal with the challenges of our budget deficit and the like which means we can do everything we want to do. one of the reasons we have undertaken this quadrennial development and the policy review is to be smarter about our own ability to make these long-term strategic decisions. the pentagon is pretty good at these things. they are qdr, quadrennial defense review, is a long-term look out at the capabilities

trade-offs that need to be made to be ready not just for today's fight, but 14 and 20 years. and similarly, we need to capacity and the state department to do that kind of thing and make those choices. i'm confident that after we completed, and i dissipate the secretary will be announcing the outcome of this in a month or two's time, that you will see a very clear attempt to address this question. trade-offs, priorities and what are the things we most need to be able to do to meet the challenges of the toy first century consort i have to go, but thank you all for your attention and thank you all for the work you are doing. [applause] >> we think the deputy secretary of state. if you'd all just stay put we will bring on the next panel. and i offer you tax back thank you very much. stay right there.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good morning. it's my pleasure to introduce the next panel. my name is coming apply, either director of the small new world affairs council in reno, nevada, the northern nevada international center. this is a very interesting panel, exciting to talk about america in a new world order.

you have complete bios on all of the panelists, so i'm just going to hit the highlights. i would also like to thank the stanley foundation for the interest in this particular topic. our moderator this morning is david, a visiting scholar at the carnegie endowment for international peace what he has written running the world, the inside story of the national security council and the architects of american power and superclass, the global power elite and the world. our first speaker is doctor cory shockey, a research fellow at the hoover institution and an associate professor of international security at the united states military academy. next we have doctor stuart patrick, senior fellow and director, global governance at the council on foreign relations. and, finally, a senior research

fellow at the new america foundation and the author of the second world, empires and influence in a new global order. please help me welcome our panel. [applause] >> thank you very much. we've got a great panel. it covers virtually every issue that it is in the world today. but forcefully for all of you we have insights and solutions both. so take notes, and by the time we are done you should be in great shape to go home. in any event, we've got great folks. and water plan is, we'll go through a couple of rounds of questions, and then open it up to you as soon as possible. so we can really cover what is on your mind as her as possible. so please think about what you want to ask and get involved as early as you possibly can.

they're sort of two parts to the title of this discussion. one is new rules and new syste systems. the other is america's role within the context of that world. and i'm going to be very literal minded and going to take it just that way. so naturally the first question comes to mind at this particular skeptic is, are there new rules? is there a new systems? cori, why did you start us off? >> i do think there is, -- [inaudible] >> i do think the rules are changing. and importantly is because the way that globalization is affecting the state power. a lot of people overstate extent of the state. they have the ability set boundaries about immigration, capital flows, important things that affect the shape of

society. so i do think the rules are new, but there are not as much new as the general discourse could ask. >> are you not in? [inaudible] expect this will be the shortest panel. there are no new rules. everybody go home. >> i'll inject a little bit of difference year. you know, there have been some changes the past two years, partly as a result of the global financial crisis, and as a result of attribute with the united states did not. no, did not appear to be multilateral engagement. >> we've seen, we've seen a number of changes in the global financial system in particular, creations of new regular three mechanisms, a plethora of changes in the nature of what the international monetary fund does, in the balance of power with the financial institution

that but however i would agree with cory, that fundamental reform that a lot of people expected that at the outset a bomb administration, a new president, creation, we have releasing that. i think there a number of reasons for the pick one of them is it's just very difficult when you have an existing order, an institution to sort of region for this sort of influence are with the basic ground rules are. i do think and hopefully we'll build a come back to this, when the big challenges the united states going forward is to try to integrate rising powers, particularly china, but also countries like india and brazil, which sometimes come to some these global issues with a very different mindset, whether we're talking about trade, nuclear nonproliferation or human rights that's i think that will be one of the challenges we face going forward. >> let me follow up on these questions before i go on to --

if you look at the lay of the land right now, this is way too hot -- i can fix that. i may not be that technical, b but, even a jewish boy from new jersey can fix a microphone. in any event, if you look at the lay of the land, we are not in the bipolar world of the cold war. we're not really in the unique point -- unique polar world, multi-polar. is not in the world -- we are moving into the world of the g20, at least. we're not in the world where the center of intellectual our economic gravity is over the

atlantic. it is now over the pacific. we are in a world in which nuclear capabilities is spreading to new places. where any world world in which asymmetric complex -- a lot of things are different, always between inertia and what's new. are we actually just, it's not we don't have new rules in business, but we are on the verge of new rules next do we think there are major changes that are going to stand in contrast to what we have seen? let's go back to you guys. i know that you think it's all action very, very old rule, we will get to that in one second. >> i agree with your judgment that it is messy and it's difficult to see the pattern. and i also agree with, the rules are breaking down to some extent. i mean, the predictability, but again i don't mean to be a one trick pony, but it does seem to

me that the rules were always overstated. i mean, if you look at the management of the nato alliance, presumably the place where america was most predominate. this is always difficult. there was always a struggle. you know, the europeans have pipelined agreement with the soviets, in the 1970s. is difficult. we overstate a golden age in which rules governed things, and things worked predictably and easily. >> trying to make a case -- >> i think what's difficult is that we have inherited a slew of international institutes that art particularly adapter solving some of these dangers problems that we find today. so that we have nato, i think part of, nato is working on a new strategic concept now, people joke at the pentagon, nato, keep the dream alive. it's hard to know, we're not

waiting --.net. >> but what is its rationale in the world ahead? if you're a cold war there was some solitary between the diocese and its allies. that now is up for grabs. united nations, one of the interesting conversations over the last year has been, what's interesting, what's in the walls of the united nations, are we still relevant at all? remember when george w. bush, proved irrelevant by improving iraq. what everyone think about the way that war unfolded, he was trying to suggest that perhaps the relevance was declining. and what's interesting, people inside institutions are asking those very same questions. we live in a much more fluid environment where there are rising powers who are clamoring for a role. they want to change some of the roles, the rules of the global changing -- trading system. there pushing the roles on the

role of the dollar. perhaps they'll come up for grabs. we need to have new rules, but the problem is there's so many institutional inertia built into what we have already that it's hard to know where those are going to be coming from. >> you've written a terrific book, which looks at the rise of the second world and talks about some fundamental changes that are taking place. you've got another book coming out which will look at this from another and the. presumably, you must be more in the school that there some new rules coming, right? >> we wouldn't be talking about new rules, the new system, the need for that if we didn't have any order. therefore, i think it's beyond that we are entering a new order of some kind, or primarily for this order. the unique polar world, i would argue is very rapidly shifting

toward a multi-polar one. let's go back to what order, the order doesn't and need america on top of some else on topic order is analytical question, what is the distribution of power in the world, a respective of who sits on top of the hierarchy. the distribution of power is, in fact, dissipating very rapidly as we talk to rising powers. that's what we can also talk about multinational corporations, nonstate actors, transnational threats. all that means we are moving towards something that is more unpredictable and somewhat more disorderly and what we've had so far. so you can't even talk about the system into your appreciate the new systems, and to you appreciate just how, especially the order we think we knew our we may have, and then think about what the new system might come in the pipeline. the system we seem to talk about is his multilateral system. united nations associated institutions, if you're really up to the moment when you talk

about the g8 or the g20. so, even that doesn't quite capture this new set of powers, new set of players that even the nonstate actors that are out there. so you can we talk about that g20 system that somehow reflects this new order. it doesn't. it doesn't take into account all the actors, all the power, it doesn't even take into account all the issues that are on the agenda. and then you get the rules for that system, which have to be negotiated in light of all of those new players. and all of them aren't even at the table. so we are just at the very first stage of a very long period of renegotiating where the order lies, who has the power, what kind of system can possibly be captured and what kind of rules that system may have. . .

>> do you think we're in one of those periods? >> i think we are very much many one of those periods, and i think it's much likened to the middle ages. that was actually a period of history where we in the western world think of it as synonymous with the dark ages in europe, but it was a time when china, india all sort of flourished. and they each could call their own shots on the regional level. and that's kind of what the world actually looks like today. we can't really boss each other around as much as we thought, as much as america thought it could. because you look today at the rise in power in china and india and the middle east. that world, then, is multipolar

or apolar, and yet, therefore, it means that we don't, again, have a security council which represents those power centers and, therefore, they all come together and negotiate their differences. things are very much handled ad hoc and according to cultural principles and local rules that may not derive from international law. >> i know you want to jump in, but can i pose a question even before you do? you know, we talk about the g20, and, you know, that's a step forward. we're two years into that, and so far the g20 can't really agree to anything meaningful that treasury ministers, finance ministers just met. they sort of said, well, it's kind of the rodney king approach to world finance, can't we all get along here, and not, you know, signing up to anything particularly serious. but the g20 only deals, as parag implied, with economic issues.

and when you look at the security structures, a lot of those big players that we talk about rising up, the chinese, indians, some of these others, they don't want to play in that game. nato struggled to go out of theater into afghanistan, and they don't want to stay there. they want to come back home, and is europe can't get together on foreign policy. isn't there a particular void in this era in terms of strut structures? >> no, i don't think there's a particular void in this area because i think that's always been the case. i think we overstatement the extent to which the united nations was ever all that helpful in managing all of our problems. i think we overestimate the extent to which nato was awl always helpful in managing all of our problems. i mean, if you think about president eisenhower and john foster dull husband in 1954 talking about the nato idea possibly run its course or the suez crisis in which we refused to help two of our allies in a war they're fighting. this is always a lot dicier, and

i think one of the risks, big inte -- risks big intellectuals run in talking about it is seeing systemic patterns and thinking institutions affect more than they do. seems to me there's a lot more continuity in the conversation, even, parag, your comment suggests about the medieval model. it seems to me it states what has always been true even in that high-water mark of systemic cooperation, the post-world war ii american age is that it's always the roll your sleeves up, hard work, one government persuading another government what it wants to do on security, on economics, on trade deals. the individual adds up to something greater than itself, but the systemic order doesn't remove the responsibility of individual states working and managing their interests. >> yeah. i think there's a constant tension throughout history between disequilibrium and

equilibrium, and you'd never get to absolute on either side. sometimes you have a little more equilibrium, but, stewart, i want to propose a specific question about this. you talk a little bit about the rise of emerging powers. we've seen an example of the new role emerging powers might play recently in iran where the brazilians and turks got together and tried to cut a deal. and immediately -- within about an hour and ten minutes -- were undercut by washington. that was really uncomfortable with, you know, plan b, with, you know, a diplomatic avenue that didn't go through washington. is this, you know, a sign of a coming series of problems that we're going to have or a set of issues we've got to grapple with? >> i think that it is. what's interesting, if you look -- as many this of you probably have -- at the obama administration's national security strategy that was released this spring, one of the main themes that it has in that document is the important of

integrating rising powers. they don't use the phrase responsible stakeholders as the bush administration did for china, but in effect that's what they're saying. let's bring them into the tent and, therefore, they will embrace this sort of western or established international order that we've come to take for granted since 1945. i think what the gambit that turkey and brazil made showed very quickly the united states, obama administration that other countries have their own ideas about, for instance, the situations that would require security council action, what they would be prepared themselves to continue nance, and i think -- countenance, and i think they were taken by surprise. i think the administration was clumsy in how it handled it, certainly diplomatically, because they should have tried more to co-op these two countries. i think it's, in a way, the shape of things to come. i would disagree in a little bit with crr key, but i think the

world does risk being more than a little bit out of balance on the security front. i think you've seen great adjustments with respect to moving from the g8 to the g20, you've seen some adjustment within the international financial institutions, even actually a couple weeks ago in korea in terms of readjusting some of the weight within the world bank and the imf. but in the security council i think that it is problematic. it's not necessarily dangerous in the short or even medium term that the security council does not reflect the world as it exists today. but the fact that it does not have india, brazil, arguably japan and germany at the same time is problematic when you think historically. i do not think -- >> [inaudible] the security council doesn't work very well, and not having those countries in it makes it illegitimate. >> right. just at a practical level those countries will not invest in the united nations in terms of actual resource commitments as much as we would like if they

are not inside that body. now, there is a question particularly with the big, emerging developing countries who want to free ride. they do tend to want to free ride, and they say, hey, we're developing countries. we're poor, we can't make those sorts of -- >> like china with $2 trillion in the bank. >> exactly. but if you talk to the chinese -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah, right. exactly. this is a constant refrain, as you know when you speak to the chinese that, wow, on a per capita basis, we're really still a very poor country, and you hear some of the same things from the indians and brazilians. at some stage they have to decide am i a card-carrying member in the big 77, big developing countries, or am i ready to pull my own weight. >> we talk about multipolar world, and a lot of the time we talk about that there's a bit of an admonition brought in which is, calm down, united states of america, we need to balance things out.

there's another component to it which we don't hear perhaps as much of in the united states which is, grow up, the rest of you. the europeans don't pull their weight, the chinese don't pull their weight, the indians don't pull their weight, and, you know, give you a perfect example, we have a whole host of issues in the middle east, and for the first time ever china is central to those issues. there is no way you get iran to back off of its plan unless there's pressure from china. china's central in pakistan, china's central in central asia, and they don't seem to want to help out. they don't seem to want to take a stance on terrorism, they don't want to take a stance on weapons of mass destruction. is that sustainable? is and what are the consequences? i know you've followed very closely afghanistan, you might want to take that as a particular illustration of the roles of these emerging powers and where it's going to play out. >> well, let's talk about this question of they don't take a stance. they actually do take a stance.

not taking a stance or laying low is a stance, and afghanistan is a great example. you can go to the chinese and say, can you help us out in afghanistan or pakistan, and what does that mean? does that mean they have to sign on to our end vision of what that place should look like? if they don't, that doesn't mean they're not doing something -- >> [inaudible] lithium in afghanistan. >> and that is very much what their long-term goal is. but the notion that another state is not playing a global role just because it's not supporting our vision is, is actually not exactly compatible. they're doing a lot of things. if china's vision, for example, with the role that it's played in nuclear proliferation is to say, well, you know, the united states is going to be bogged down in this part of the world and around the world for a very long time, and we're going to let them expend their energies and gradually withdraw and retreat, and then we'll be able to move in and have more influence. and that's what's happening. patrick mentioned earlier countries that have a mind of

their own, and to me all of these so-called middle-tier countries do precisely that. but you see that ambition play out first and foremost on the regional level. so at the same time that you see brazil being very active in climate and trade debates and even with respect to diplomacy with iran, they are also building a much stronger presence in the region and leadership role in the region, building regional institutions. you see this happening with europe's own sort of self-absorbed focus on itself, though it has widened and deepened and has grown to have 27 member countries in it. even the african union, again, really early stages. china has been working on developing the shanghai organization cooperation which has a strong role in central asia as well as the east asian summit type operation. so when we jump straight from the national to the global level, we miss this entire set of activities going on that are extremely important. and regions are becoming very

self-absorbed. they want to mansion their own relations -- manage their own relations with their neighbors, and i think that shows really how if countries like china, brazil and india can become leaders in their own part of the world, then you're going to see them more confidently step outward and start to negotiate global issues more. >> in that it seems to me that you underestimate the tiltty of -- difficulty of them getting from where they are to the vision of where they'd like to be. take china, for example. i agree with your description, it looks to me like what the chinese strategy is to free ride on the existing system, allow the united states to expend all of the systemic energy, pick off opportunities where you can cheating on the iran sanctions, that kind of stuff, and that's a terrific near-term approach. it maximizes their prospects, but it's less clear to me that's a successful long-term approach.

because if you are not investing in making the world a better place and helping the afghans through their difficulties, eventually the law of gravity applies to china as it does to us. and if i were advising the chinese government, i would have them read the history of united fruit in honduras and central america because their basic approach to places they are investing looks a lot like american multi-national corporations in the 190s -- 1890s. and that didn't work out so politically successfully for us as we tried to establish our role in the world. i think there are a lot more difficulties associated with what they're trying to pull off than we sometimes freight them with. >> let's talk about that, and then i do want to open it up to you folks, so think about your questions. i'm going to ask one last round of questions here about america, and then i want to do that. but maybe the chinese are very canny. in fact, any country that's grown for 30 or 40 years at 6 or 7% a year and has risen as

rapidly as they've risen is certainly very canny, and they've avoided a lot of pitfalls along the way. one of the things they're best at is figuring just how far they can get in a negotiation without giving anything up. they're really good at that. and one of the ploys that a lot of these countries have been using is, well, let's, you know, it's kind of like that old commercial you remember, let's let m irk key eat -- mikey eat it, you know? and they think, well, let's let the united states eat it. let's let the united states take care of solving these problems, carrying the weight on security, these type of things, and that seems like a pretty good strategy because thus far the united states has stepped up. terrorism's a global problem, but we were the ones, you know, that took it upon ourselves and i think not entirely successfully managed an effort to go after it. we've, you know, we've gone into some regional issues, and we're paying the price for this which is huge, you know, what is it

$2.7 billion a week in afghanistan or whatever it is? we're paying a lot of money to do these things, and they're free riders. how long can that go on, and more importantly, stewart, let me turn this to you, how long can we go on playing the role that we've been playing, or do we have to figure out some new burden-sharing calculus or we're just going to go bust of, perhaps more accurately go more bust than we already are? >> there's no question that the domestic political dynamic and fiscal situation in the united states would suggest that the grand strategy that we pursue in going forward is going to be a little less grand. as one of my colleagues, charlie cupton likes to say -- i think -- >> [inaudible] >> there we go. it's rare in this town, but i'm going to do it. i think that we, you know, there's obviously a commission that's been set up that's going to release it report next month on presidentially-appointed commission on how to insure a

more fiscally-sustainable future for the united states. but, you know, obviously, a lot of the election returns that occurred on tuesday were about restoring some sense of financial balance, and i think that some of that -- >> [inaudible] >> well, they were about -- >> i couldn't make out what they were about really. >> well, there's, there was one element of the tea party movement, shall i say. so i don't want to exaggerate too much on reading exactly what the message into that was. but i think the congress that we will be facing will be quite attuned to issues of federal spending, not least in foreign aid spending and what we call in this town the 150 account which is basically the international affairs account. i think that people are going to be looking at that and each the defense budget, notwithstanding the fact republicans have traditionally been strong proponents of the defense budget. all of that suggests that we are going to be moving not into

necessarily an isolationist or total retrenchment mode, but there are going to be real constraints on what the united states can do. i don't know if you would call it the vietnam doctrine or the nixon doctrine, i guess, towards the tail end of the vietnam war nixon sort of started looking around at regional players and allies to pick up more of the burden. i think we're going to start to see partnerships with india, for instance, on how to bring order to the indian ocean and that part of the world. trying to look at different regional anchors where we can find them and where we're confident they'll do things that we'd like to do to try to pick up some of the slack. again, i don't see true isolationism, but certainly a major sense amongst the american public that we're exhausted, we've been spending a lot of money abroad, and we want to maybe -- to the degree we're investing, we might want to be doing that at home. >> let's take one example from this week, and then we're going to go to you guys for questions.

parag, the president, you know, was doing what people do after they've had a rough few weeks -- road trip, you know? [laughter] and so, you know, he's going to go to korea, and he's going to go to indonesia, and he's going to go to ya parent, and -- japan, and then he's going to go to india. and this india relationship is very interesting because india talks a lot about china, india's the counterbalance to china. we share democratic heritage and yet embracing india is a little bit tough because we've also embraced pakistan, and they don't get along so well. so, you know, he's facing a conundrum that seems to me to be illustrative of a whole family of conundrums that are associated with what we've been talking about here, and i was just wondering what you think, how that's going to play out. >> those conundrums is us having to realize and following on what patrick said, it's not about the

u.s. needing to find region regional anchors, it's really about those countries rising and deciding what role they want to play and, hopefully, there's some synergy there. but we're not really able to compel them as much. during the the period when the united states viewed india as its very important counterbalance to china emerge anything the region, india wasn't looking at china in that way. they were trying to boost trade and having all these summits with china where they would declare a multipolar world is coming, and china and india together are going to usher in that era. now things have changed a little bit, and india wants to be much more of a naval power straddling the indian ocean -- >> [inaudible] >> exactly. and that is something they see much more as their role. so they didn't really play along with the u.s. in terms of this, oh, yes, it seems so simple. the u.s. and india and japan and australia will balance china. hasn't really worked out that

way. india is seeing itself much more, again, having this central presence, overseeing the growing density of commerce and trade between the middle east and the far east, and that's the role that's much more appropriate for it. if united states wants to be a part of india playing that role, india welcomes that help. but it's not the way i think, you know, you were sort of phrasing it which is, ah, america would like to see stability and, you know, in these sea lanes and, therefore, let us sponsor india's ride. india sees itself much more centrally, i think, in that picture, and then you can apply that to every other such rising power in the world. it's not united states wants to help brazil rise and become -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. brazil sees itself as the america of south america. it's -- >> [inaudible] >> i don't think this is a new development. i think india has viewed itself in those terms for a long period of time. it's not, it's not the sunrising

anew. >> where the tension comes is what should their agenda be, what should their priorities be. should they sign on to the iae, you know, sanctions on iran or not? should they stop exporting refined petroleum to eye a ran? >> the point is the countries have always viewed themselves that way. there's a tension you talk about, there's also an opportunity. the opportunity is that the united states is more willing to go along with that than they have been in the past. and so, you know, but it's different in each case. and i think one of the mistakes that we can make in this is to say, oh, well, here are the bricks, and the bricks behave monolithically because the bricks are very different. india doesn't get along so well with anybody in its neighborhood. brazil does but, frankly, views it neighborhood as a ghetto and wants to play on the international stage. russia has a whole different set of views, china has a whole different set of views. so all these countries pull in different directions.

anyway, are you standing because you have that lower back trouble? [laughter] or because you've got a question? all right. >> all right, just waiting for the questions. >> go ahead. >> i'm rich mcbride from pee yore rah, illinois. so that puts things in reference. i'm sorry. [laughter] >> go on, go on. >> no, i'm just very conscious of where i stand at the moment. at any rate, if i could talk about some of the key words i'm hearing in this panel discussion. number one, rules, rules, rules. >> mic. okay. >> so i'm hearing rules, rules,

rules, and i've heard -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> institutional inertia. now, yesterday we heard a great deal about strategies for killing people who don't like us. and we've heard just a little bit about possibly our behavior might have something to do with why they don't like i. like us. is there a possibility for us to embrace a multipolar world, stop throwing our weight around, stop demanding rules to try to keep the u.s. in the lead and on top and controlling things, will we be capable of operating in the multipolar world which is, in fact, on the ground, and we are not, frankly, successful enough to change it.

>> parag, you talked a little bit about a different take on that which is we don't get to set the rules. so maybe sometimes rules preserve the interests of others. how about following up in that direction. >> i think that question is accurate, the multipolar world is a fact, it's not something you can roll up and reverse. and even when we tried to set global rules in terms of those international institutions, they also suffer from a great deal of inertia and to a very wide extent effectiveness. and even as we may be able to sustain leadership through center institutions, there's also new institutions coming up where we're not necessarily the leaders. again, i mentioned earlier the shanghai cooperation organization, the east asian community, and you have linkages across regional groupings in the which we don't really have a role. again, one of the underanalyzed aspects of diplomacy today is looking at interregional relations. it's when latin america and the arab countries have a summit.

it's when china and african countries have a summit. it's when europe and asia have a summit. and there's tons of deals and agreements that go on there, and they make their own rules on how they're going to deal with each other. and we wouldn't call it global. it's not the world trade organization, it's not the imf, but it's every bit as important because they are, from the bottom up, rewriting some of these rules on a regional level. >> there's another story here, either one of you address it. you know, i sort of do believe we are sort of at that present creation 2.0 moment simply because we have two kinds of institutions in this world, you know, dysfunctional ones or ineffective ones. and, you know, within the context of those institutions -- and they overlap a lot -- but, you know, we've got within the, within the context we either have to reinvent them or create new ones. and the security council needs it, the u.n. needs it, the wto needs it, the imf needs it,

there is no climate agreement, you know, npt, you know, we sort of need npt 2.0, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty isn't working. so doesn't that create a great moment of opportunity to refashion a set of more balanced, perhaps, rules? >> i think so. i mean, to pick up on rich's question, i have some sympathy with the notion that this simply shouldn't be the u.s. throwing its weight around, etc. but on the issue of are rules, new rules necessary, i think there's no question, and i think there is a moment of opportunity here. there are rules, you know, we do face new challenges that require new rules. we do need rules just to take the struggle against terrorism, for instance. we do need rules about how to treat folks who are not full-on combatants but aren't necessarily private citizens. we do need rules about whether or not drone strikes are permissible. looking in this other areas, we

need rules about what is the balance between those who have been historically responsible for global greenhouse gas emission versus those who are increasingly becoming responsible for them. we need new rules on investment around the world, etc. so there is an element, there's certainly on the demand side a need for new rules. now, on the question of whether or not the u.s. should be throwing its weight around, you know, i think that there's a major debate that needs to occur as to whether or not the pursuit of primacy, u.s. hegemony should continue to be, basically, the core aspect of u.s. foreign policy. and i think that adjusting to this multipolar world will be very hard psychologically for the united states -- >> [inaudible] >> i served in the bush administration. >> i wanted to make that clear to everybody. >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> will but i think that, you know, it's a major question of whether or not it's going to

require psychological adjustment on the part of the united states. and part of it will be, you know, how do we coordinate cooperation amongst countries that aren't necessarily like-minded always and don't always have the same regime type that we have? because we need to cooperate and be able to sit down and get a modus vivendi with the chinese even though we're at loggerheads on different issues. >> i see two people over here, i just want to make sure everybody knows we've got about 10-15 minutes. two? no, no, we were told we have ten more minutes. do we? yes? there you go. if you want us to finish early, we're happy to do it. [laughter] >> good morning, charlie mcgown from sonoma county. there was some discussion, i think dr. patrick mentioned the idea that there's going to be with a new congress there's going to be intense pressure to pull back internationally. and it seems to me that gip the

new -- given the new congress the pressure will be both at the state department level and perhaps in a foreign assistance level. do you also anticipate that there's going to be more pressure to withdraw from afghanistan and from iraq more quickly than the obama administration intends to? >> i grew up in a town in sonoma county. i'll take the first whack at that. it seems to me more likely that the expansion of republican representation in the house will give the president more time on the clock for afghanistan. i think he has written off iraq, so i don't think that timeline's going to change significantly, although i believe it should. so, no, i don't think there will be pressure on the president to wrap up the wars more quickly than he had. i do think there will be pressure on foreign assistance. and this links to the earlier question which i'd like to take a quick stab at. it does seem to me that you

characterize american power in the international order principally as a function of the use of military force. and i think that's actually a much too narrow way to think about it. the american order such as it has existed for much of the last 60 or 70 years is a small liberal order. it's an order about free markets, prosperity, representative government, sort of burgeoning cultural innovation. that's actually the basis both of our power domestically and internationally and the order. and one more thing about that. it is voluntary. we mostly don't force it. we don't force the french to go to mcdonald's, we don't, for the most part, force people to opt into the american order. one thing that most countries realize is that it's quite difficult to be prosperous outside the american order, and the voluntary opt-in, rather the

enforcement of it, is what makes american power more cost-effective in the international order than others. >> i think that changes, by the way, and we may want to talk about that a bit. but with regard to the last question just let me throw in my own two cents. i don't think the president of the united states needs any additional impetus from the republican congress to want to get out of afghanistan quickly. and i think 2012 will be plenty of impetus, and i think that you will see the pace continue roughly as it has been as a consequence of that. i'm going to go here. is there actually a microphone in that stand? >> [inaudible] >> oh, okay. all right, fine. go ahead. >> karen wilson, first, from western massachusetts, world affairs council. and just wanted to correct one thing, i've been with the world affairs council for seven years and attended all day yesterday, i never once heard one speaker talk about killing someone who doesn't agree with us. just wanted to make sure that's

been stated. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> the world affairs council. all right. now, i've got a tough question for the four of you, and i'm going to make you do this. we've been challenged to come up with a two-year program of structured debate on the six most important issues of national security. would you, please, put those in order for us? what -- in order. what are the top -- wait a minute, i want to get my question. what are the top six issues of national security in order, because this important group has the ability to take this to our country. >> pick two. >> energy security, financial stability. >> pick two. >> nuclear proliferation and climate change.

>> managing rising powers and -- >> [inaudible] >> you can't -- pick two other ones. [laughter] >> i said energy security and financial stability. >> i said nuclear proliferation and climate change. >> managing rising powers and cost effectiveness of our strategies. >> all right. and in terms of importance of those, in terms of domestic importance, it's going to be economic stability, and we're going to view foreign policy through the lands of it impact on our economy for the next couple of years, more than any other single factor. so you should take that as one. in terms of real security implications, it's probably either the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction because that poses proximate threat of the greatest nature, or alternatively, the subject of this panel which is how you cope with a multipolar world, what kind of structure you need to do it and what kind of diplomacy.

i think one of the really interesting dimensions of going into a multipolar world is that diplomacy, that whole big building down in foggy bottom there that you may have visited which has sort of drifted away from the center of american foreign policy for several decades, has got to come back into the middle. because if you've got to deal with eight or nine or ten powers, diplomacy is the way you're going to do it, and we've got to learn how to repractice that art. so that, i think, may color what you've got. next. >> delve a little bit more into what rich said, but it's in keeping with what we're talking about here. i see a disconnect very much at the center of what the secretary was talking about today, was the focus that the world accepts american leadership. that american leadership has to be at the core if anything happens. and yet what we've been hearing here is that may not necessarily be the case, that there is a rejection sometimes or not needing american leadership.

we also, i also remember a recent gallup poll that said that young europeans are not necessarily even looking to the united states as the leader of the free world. so with that being said, how would you have changed the priorities that the secretary issued today for dealing with this new world? what would be different if americans had to be one of equals rather than number one? >> >> okay. that to wrap up. so each one of you take the answer of that, and with 60 seconds. and if you don't know what the secretary said and that's an impediment to you, you don't belong in the washington. [laughter] however, deferring to kori is a slick move. [laughter] so 60 seconds each and then we'll wrap it up. >> i'll start by saying that i disagree with the premise of the question. >> that's good. turn it around. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughter]

>> by the way, by the way -- >> but i have a substitute -- >> the approach you take is then answer the question you wanted to answer anyway. [laughter] >> which is that if you look at the countries that want close relationships with the united states, they are countries that have worries that they want our help with and problems they want solved. that 20-year-old western europeans don't feel in particular need of american friendship and amity and involvement is, i think, less a judgment on us than the happy p judgment that they don't feel that they have that many problems they need our help with. if you look at the countries that are pulling in closer relationships with the united states in the last couple of years, asian countries that are worried about china's rise, the countries of the gulf and other parts of the middle east who are worried about iran's behavior. so i think it core lates less

with is the united states -- well, i would recharacterize the question that when countries have problems, america still feels extraordinarily powerful to them. and i think that's the way i would answer your question. >> okay. on the question of american leadership and what the secretary said, the -- it's very difficult for a sitting u.s. official in charge of u.s. foreign policy not to suggest that the united states should somehow be a global leader. that would be a very short tenure for that person. [laughter] so notwithstanding that realism, i think -- excuse me, not withstanding that ideological context, if it is bipartisan that we live in, i think the administration would be wise to think about ways of coming up with a concept of collective leadership that takes as parag began to intimate, that takes as its point of departure what

other countries, how they actually see the world and tries to come up with strategies to actually find some common ground or concert on particular issue areas. i think you're going to find a much -- rather than everyone signing up hook, line and sinker to u.s. preferences across a wide range of the global agenda, i think you're going to find a among modular approach to international cooperation increasingly. as this administration has begun to recognize, i've heard jim steinberg speak about this in other times, an appreciation that there will be different formats and different frameworks to try to handle some of these issues, not just the united nations but sort of more smaller group coalitions. so that's the way i would like to see them correct things. >> the prems of your question that -- premise of your question that each country views itself as the center of it own world rather than deferring immediately to the united states is accurate, and i think that's

increasingly the case. their first priority is not necessarily to have the best relations with the united states, but to gain the maximum advantage of whatever relations they do have with the united states for their own benefit. and the corollary is what i call multialignment because the world is as you describe it which is that powers see themselves as relatively equal, no one above the others. that means that they are going to multialign. they will have, get some benefits from the united states, get whatever they can from the europeans, deal as well with the chinese and so forth, and these may be fluid sorts of relationships, that's exactly what we're seeing emerging if you analyze the foreign policies of countries like brazil or india or russia. you see this playing all sides as much as possible pause they know -- because they know that they can get away with it and that whatever the united states can do to punish them is not sufficient to make them change this multialignment behavior. at the end of the day, it's going to be, basically, an environment in which we can't

really assume that alliance are so sacrosanct. the difference between the word alliance and dalliance is just one letter. [laughter] >> all right. on that, on that note let me conclude by saying this: we posed the question about whether the new system and the new set of rules, and i think while there was some disagreement about the nature of the system and some disagreement about the nature of the rules, we are clearly in a period of transition. we are clearly in a period of substantial change. the old approaches of the united states, the old approaches of great powers no longer apply. the old formulas don't apply, the old institutions need to be changed. and what is exciting -- except, kori disagrees with that. but i was about to offer a compliment to you and everybody else, so keep quiet. [laughter] the way that we are going to cope with those changes is with new thinking and not the same old people saying the same old stuff. and you guys with all of your world affairs councils have a

great opportunity in getting new voices like these guys and listening to those new voices because they're the ones who are going to be the architects of these changes, or in kori's case the architects of the lack of change. [laughter] but in any event, that's the future, and that's why listening to a panel like this is so interesting. thanks very much for taking the time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> we want to thank the panel very much, and we'll make a switch and bring in our next group. [inaudible conversations]

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>> hello. if everyone would, please, take your seats, we'd like to start with the next panel, energy, environment and security. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning. i'm diana with chevron ask a corporate representative -- and a corporate representative board member on the national office for the world affairs council. i'm particularly pleased to be able to introduce this panel this morning because at chevron we certainly agree that there is, indeed, a critical linkage between energy, security and the environment. access to reliable, affordable, responsibly-produced energy is and will continue to be a strategic element for our make's security. nation's security. our panelists this morning are particularly well versed in these issues, but at the same time they each bring a unique, diverse perspective on what we

need to be doing on energy policy to impact our national economy and national security. steve clemens has has agreed to moderate the panel, he's the founder of the strategy program at the new america foundation. and through his widely-read blog, "the washington note," steve is also providing a regular platform to help infuse the policy debates that go on in this town with some pragmatic realism. our panelists this morning, you have their bios in the program except for denny, so i'll give him a little bit more time. retired vice admiral dennis mcginn serves as the directer on the board of the national conference on citizenship.

he is currently serving as a military adviser on the board of cna. but he'll be talking to us this morning in part from his perspective as a senior policy adviser as well with the american council on renewable energy. he also serves as an international security fellow at the rocky mountain institute. so a lot of different perspectives that he brings to the table. also joining us is christine parthemore who is a senior fellow at the center for new american security where she corrects the national security program as well as the national security blog. she's also the co-author of a book, "a strategy for american power: energy, climate and national security." so, again, a lot of background to bring to these issues. karen harvard is the president and ceo of the institute for

21st century energy. the institute is organized to help formulate a common sense energy strategy for our country. karen travels widely both here in the u.s. and internationally to help to raise awareness and inform those policy debates on how we can take meaningful, realistic actions at local, state, national and international levels. and then bob kaplan, another cnest fellow joining us this morning, a noted author and journalist. bob is also national correspondent for the atlantic where his beat covers the globe. and he's regularly turned to for his very insightful, thoughtful perspectives. you will also find his late e

book out on the table -- latest book out on the table out there, "monsoon: the indian ocean and future of american power." so encourage you to check that out during breaks. and with that, i turn it over to you, steve. >> great, diana, thank you very much. hopefully folks can hear me. i am steve column ons -- column offense, i'm so pleased that chevron is helping to support the activities of the world affairs council in the general. i remember when i lived in california and chevron was wayed in san francisco -- based in if san francisco, they were supportive throughout the state. i don't know who's here or from l.a. or irvine or san francisco, but i used to live in your organizations and, basically, attend as many functions as i could through the state. and i think that the role of world affairs council across the country -- i know i'm in here today -- here today in part because of skye forester. he's off in colorado now but was

running the pittsburgh world affairs council. i've traveled to many this others. so it's a great, great pleasure. we've got a cool panel, and we've got about an hour to have a discussion on one of the most portfolios that any nation -- not just the united states -- would be considering; energy, security and the environment are those topics that make or break nations. as you look ahead, this is not a soft panel. these are tough questions. president obama today is off to india, indonesia, south korea and japan. and i have to tell you that a big chunk of the discussion points and talking points, the strategy that will be discussed with other global leaders will deal specifically with these questions of energy, security and the environment. we're going to ask admiral mcginn to help set in the next 8-10 minutes a quick overview. i'm a ruthless moderator. if you go over, i'm going to get the hook. i hope we can have a very active discussion and exchange here. i know we're being recorded live on c-span as well, and we want to make sure we give those many

millions of viewers right now a very good show. so, admiral mcginn. >> great. thank you, steve. it's great to be with you, and thank you to chevron as well. i know a little bit about chevron having commanded the united states ship wichita, a fleet oiler home ported out no oakland, california, when we still had some naval presence in the bay area. and we used to go up to point beloti right near the chevron facility to take on seven million gallons of liquid cargo, about 60% of it was what we call boiler fuel or dfm, marine diesel, and the other was jet fuel. so i know a little bit about that aspect of our energy portfolio. i've been a member of the cna military advisory board for about three years now. we consist of about 15 retired three and four-star officers from all of the services including the coast guard and

the national guard. the cna military advisory board first came together in 2006 to take a look at this thing called climate change, and in 2007 in april put out a report entitled "climate change and the threat to national security." it was groundbreaking in that what a bunch of retired flag officers and general officers doing talking about climate change? isn't that something that tree huggers and big business is supposed to be fighting about? you know, what's the national security aspect of it? this but the report was groundbreaking in its conclusions. based on 15 months of intense analysis, talking to experts from across the world especially from the united states, the conclusion was that the effects of climate change will act as a threat multiplier for instability in critical regions of the world.

now, when the military advisory board first got started, our chairman -- retired army chief of staff gordon sullivan -- said, look, i know there's a lot of controversy out there about climate change. we're a bunch of military guys, and we don't want to come across like we're climate scientists, but he said, let's take this approach. if you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, something bad is going to happen. and we never have 100% certainty. so let's take the view, and i would recommend it to this, this group and this organization, that there are risks out there, that climate change is not a political issue, it is a natural phenomenon issue, and that we need to take prudent steps to prevent, mitigate and adapt to the ifects of climate -- effects of climate change. prudent steps, steps that don't

hobble us as a nation economically, steps that don't impact our quality of life presently and going into the future. in many ways when i hear some of the climate denial or climate keptism, i'm -- keptism, i'm reminded of my own position regarding my home's fire insurance. i don't have fire insurance because i think my home is going to burn down. i have it because i can't be sure that it won't burn down. now, if i had a visit from my insurance agent and he said, admiral, got some bad news for you, your insurance policy for your fire insurance is going to go up to 10,000 a month next month, i guarantee you i'd find a way to not believe in fire anymore. [laughter] i think the psychology and the reason that we are so charged in this nation, many this nation fair -- in this nation fairly

uniquely -- about this thing called climate change is we've somehow made a connection psychologically that if we believe in climate change and we have to do something about it, it's going to ruin our economy, and it's going to ruin our quality of life. nothing could be further from the truth. in fact, i think if we go about it in the right way and use this challenge of climate change in the right way, we can actually increase our economic strength and increase our quality of life not just in the united states, but around the world. the other conclusion from this 2007 report was that climate change, energy and national security are inextricably linked. the topic, if you will, of this forum. so we took a look at the energy posture and put out a report from the military advisory board in 2009, may of 2009, and the conclusion of that report was fairly stark.

it said, america's energy posture is a serious and urgent threat to our national security militarily, economically and diplomatically. and further, that this vulnerability primarily driven by our overdependence on fossil fuel, could be exploited by those who would wish to do the united states harm. so the conclusion was business as usual in terms of energy for america is not a viable option. we can't drill, baby, drill our way out of it as a nation that uses 25% of the oil consumed every year and uses, sits on about 3% of the known reserves. we can get more of those assets, but it isn't sustainable over a long time. and in the energy business you have to think long time. during the course of our deliberations as we put together our report on energy, one of my

colleagues from the military advisory board said, you know, i'm starting to get the idea that there isn't a silver bullet to solve our energy challenges and our climate challenges. and i said, no, there season. but there's some silver buck shot. and what we need to do as a nation is we need to take a look at each element of that silver buck shot and create an energy portfolio that is driven by objective analysis and real data and take a look at the costs, the benefits and the risks of each form of energy and create a government policy that gives some certainty to the market so that investors and entrepreneurs and large existing companies know where to put their money and let the market decide as we move into a broader portfolio that is less vulnerable to single-point failures.

because think about this, gas or cost of oil on the world market, i think, went above $84 a barrel. remember back 2008 from $40 to $147 many one year -- in one year. we spent $386 billion out of our economy in 2008, over a billion dollars a day last year and this year. it's not sustainable if we are worried about our deficit, we're worried about our trade imbalance, we cannot continue business as usual. so what we need to do is to look for ways that we can create an energy portfolio that doesn't exacerbate the effects of climate change, aggravate them, accelerate them, magnify them and to do it in a way that enhances our economic, diplomatic and military components of national security. i'll look forward to your questions and thank you very much -- questions and thank you

very much. >> thank you very much, admiral. [applause] now, just to remind karen herbert, harbert is president and ceo of 21st century institute for energy. and just to make this fun, one of my friends has become a big believer in the need to move on climate change, but we're ten years into the new century, and it might, you know, and your report was in 2007. a lot of the folks including myself who have been arguing that climate change was going to be a defining challenge for many countries think that we're very, very late into this game. and so i'd love, karen, in your comments thinking about energy policy to look about what the costs of moving late in the 21st century are. karen? >> well, thank you. i think, you know, i'm no longer in the energy business, i'm in the reality business. and so i think there's a lot of reality that we need to get on the table here about what we are actually talking about, what the nature of the challenges are. because energy is no longer an

energy issue, it's an economic security issue, it's a national security issue, it's an environmental issue, it's a competitiveness issue. and i think that's really important to understand because energy policy or the way that we fashion our energy policy, our regulation if done right, we will have the affordable, reliable and increaseingly the opportunity to power our economy in this a poor world. done poorly, we won't, and we will be a second-tier nation. and our economy is dependent on that energy. ..

>> everybody is trying to close that poverty gap that it will take a lot of money to get a energy sources we need into the marketplace. at least $26 trillion. i think the question for us is to we have the policy and raiders were environment here to attract any of that money, and i should to meet our energy demands? i argue right now, the answer is no. what is the energy market look like going forward if you take the energy, the international energy agency forecasts, you

know, in 23 the market place doesn't look that much different. fossil fuels are here to stay. that's something we need to understand, except, and to manage and decide how we're managing that here at home. and are we becoming more self-reliant or not. if we wring our hands about the amount of money we're sending overseas, and we know we are 94% dependent on oil for our transportation sector, that's not going to magically change overnight, are we investing in the resources, are we able to invest in our resources here at home to bring those resources to market. so, we're not. daily look at sort of the other issues of how the market is changing and where the demand is coming from, and we see that 70% of the world's energy demand is going to be not in the developing world, in the developing world, not the developing world. china is going to surpass the united states as the largest consumer of energy. interestingly, the middle east is the second fastest growing region for energy. obviously, they are home,

residents to a lot of fossil fuels on which the world depends and they're looking now to satisfy their own into the market first and then they're looking to the next consumer. their next customer. that is not us. that is asia. you are seeing the entire supply chain in the fossil fuel era as referred to reorient to new markets and next markets. that's not this market. i think we have to be cognizant of what that means for our policy framework. we have to look at where the resources are, and how many more fossil fuels we will need. i will talk about renewables, but when you look at the existing oil spills we know today, they are going into decline. it isn't geologically difficult places. places that are hostile to foreign investment. we need to find six times the capacity of saudi arabia between now and 23 to meet the demand of oil as we know it. we have a big daunting challenge out there, and are we up to it? that's the big question for our

policymakers. we saw a big election on tuesday. that did change your energy reality. this is our energy reality now. it's the same. quite frankly the response republic or democratic is the same. and it is the silver shot if you will approach, it is that we need to realize that we're going to have to become more self-reliant. what are we doing right now? are we bringing more oil and gas reserves into the marketplace here at home? in the wake of the tragic spill. revenue revelatory and violent, we have a moratorium on the atlantic coast, on our pacific coast. a new regular regime in the gulf of mexico. we have taken off large portions of alaska. we have canceled leases in wyoming, utah, and areas in colorado. we bring in those resources that an off limits in our country for the better part of 30 years. so do we need more electric need an essentially? yes. what are we doing in that area. i would bring in more nuclear

power into our country? china has 100 plants they are planning. 40 of which are under some construction. we have 26 application in front of the nuclear regular commission and they haven't made it through the process that is getting more and more expensive and more and more competitive to find those around the world because we no longer make them here. we don't have new nuclear coming on. renewables, everybody would like to see more wind and solar. dick armey comprise only 123% of our electricity. you can get renewable projects built in this country because we have a policy response that goes on and off like a light switch that nobody wants to build anything anywhere. we have a banana syndrome. it is equally discriminatory against every sort of the source of energy. it's not just dirty nasty this. it's not call, just natural gas are patrolling our pipelines. we don't want wind off the coast of nantucket. we don't want solar power in the mojave desert that we don't want to build transmission lines to

moody's electrons to market. we don't want to build anything. i can tell you that's not happening in china. they are building a coal plant every week. they're building a nuclear but every corner, tournament -- transmission lines here and yet we are not. we have 400 she projects today that have been stalled in litigation. that is about 250,000 jobs that were not created and a ton of investment at a time when our economy is desperately in need of investment. then we have to think about what i'm going to get beyond that. we have the gumption to say we will have to get some things built in this country. right now our policy response has been to talk more about taking things off the table. the piece of legislation that passed the house of representatives well over a year ago, for climate change, to deal with any these issues. it didn't say we will have more nuclear. a nuclear title was absent from that piece of legislation. it did nothing to get more transmission cited in this country.

so have to do a much more thoughtful adult conversation that we're going to have to of a much more comprehensive approach that breaks down the silos that have completely stopped energy policy in this country. we have 13 federal agencies. i used to work for one of them. that is involved in this policy and with 26 congressional committees. everybody looks at like this, which is why we don't have a policy that should look like this. so when agency demonizes another set for another agency, and so we had this very bifurcated unintelligible energy policy. and that i think the fundamental think that that means for us come in the economic condition which we find ourselves, in an increasingly competitive economy is that is going to kill us. to use a texas terminology, we are shooting ourselves in the foot and reloading and shooting again. we are unwilling to use the toolbox that we only have, the resources we have here, both conventional and renewables. we are not willing to build

things to move these things around our country to generate jobs and investment. would not want to compete internationally for the resources we need. so i think it should be a big wakeup call that this is a time to start, we don't have the luxury again of the next 30 years. we have to make decisions now. we need that investment, those resources, the jobs. most importantly we need to affordable and reliable and clean energy to power our competitiveness for the first century. >> thank you. i'm sure we will be back to you. christine parthemore, before christine speaks, i've made sort of hobby now of going back into look at bob woodward's books. if you look at which research assistant you really lavished, praise on. and you'll see bob woodward taking the very best research assistant and say that you do much more than walk on water. christine is one of these. a very tough job working for bob woodward, as she did on the books. but more importantly, she is

also a blog which i am as well. so welcome to the stage. i don't think you're blocking yet. we will work on that. i don't know if the institute -- [inaudible] >> i will tweak in just a moment. anyway, christine parthemore. >> social media is wonderful. there's a lot of different aspect of our focus on teeing off of what admiral mcginn was discussing, and was interesting is how the obama administration is looking at these issues and putting them into action. one of the early examples with the department of defense get off the great work that cna did in looking energy and climate change. i'm also bridging the relationship between energy and climate change and national security. one of the things that they instructed in a quadrennial defense review, strategy doctor at the department of defense produces every four years was that they not only discuss the energy and climate change were threats, that the affected security, but they did a

thorough job in talking to the different combatant commands and talking to regional partners around the world about what to do about this. one of its findings was the international cooperation was going to be key in getting this right. the previous speakers have talked about and what we focus on a lot is that there are very distinct trade-offs to be made. there are trade-offs between the different energy sources and the relationship with other natural resources. for example, of nuclear energy, very water intensive. there are perforations. none of these solutions are going passionately things like biofuels have to take account for food production, for land use change, for deforestation. every country around the world, including our own, including many of our key international partners are going to have to be making these tough trade off choices. policy decisions for energy and environment over the coming decades. we foresee not just the direct effects of climate change, how

they drive new migration in changing energy sources and how that affects geopolitics, having to deal with venezuela and some of the producer countries that are not so friendly to u.s. interest all the time, those are difficult. but if we're not careful about how we conduct international engagement on these areas, we could wind up in worse places than we already are, and accepting of issues in negative, negative repercussions that we don't expect. i would point to the recent tension between japan and china on rare earth minerals as something that has been piling up for years now, but no one quite expected it to manifest in a severe a policy as has become. our administration, our government and showed the japanese and chinese governments are now having to deal with tension over mineral resources, they might be said of lithium supplies being concentrated in only a few countries. as clean energy technologies

drive new manufacturing markets, you have to pay attention to the broad natural resource input implications for those. and one of those going to do to drive new markets, drive importance of new countries, drive reliance on some type of concentrated supplies of minerals. given the president current trip in asia, i'd point to indonesia as a great example of this. so indonesia has some of the greatest tropical rainforests left in the world. they are a critical player in climate change negotiations, that kind of a neutral player and sort of smoothing out some of the relationships between developed and developing countries. but they themselves are between a rock and a hard place. as the united states is trying to develop indonesia as the new strategic partner in the region, we are looking at climate and energy as distinct, you know, secretary of defense and kurt campbell our assistant secretary for the region, have market energy and climate and resources as distinct areas of cooperation with indonesia as we develop a

strategic partnership with them. but they face nothing but hard choices, that we need to be cognizant of in her international relations with them. for example, their tropical rain forest that they need to protect, they are standing to be resilience of millions of dollars in funding for reforestation and for protecting their current, their current forest, their current forest land. yet they are trying to develop their mineral resources as well. they are offering a place in same area in the same land area. they also want, with growing demand in the region, growing environmental issues in the in china, that they're more concerned about, they are interested in becoming an exporter both the food and biofuel. so yet different, you have mining, fuel, energy, climate change and forest nation, and biofuels production, all concentrated on a chain of islands. this is going to involve for

indonesian government a very tough range of policy choices on the trade-offs they made and how best to use their land to how best to develop their economy and how best to manage the resources. you see this everywhere. pakistan for example, china is building two nuclear reactors there. pakistan is the most water scarce country in its region. its water supplies are dwindling as is population growth. so invest in nuclear energy they are which is in cold water intensive with this soundtrack is they're looking at might not be the best choice for a water scarce country. i have handed over to bob, just as climate and energy as admiral mcginn discuss, i would promote as well as look at this very to consider the broad right of environmental and energy and security trade-offs involved with all of these policy decisions. >> thank you very much, christine. i can't think of a better person than robert kaplan who is now a fellow, but what makes bob

kaplan so cool despite his ability to write about everywhere he goes, is i don't know anyone who is a more granular understanding of everything global. those should be in conflict with each other, but bob is one of the few people in this country and really in the world who is able to get a granularity of such a series issues that have such enormous consequences. so bob kaplan. >> thank you. let me give a geographical perspective on what all the speakers have discussed to kind of reduce this to geography and particularly eurasian geography. karen has said that world global energy demand is going to go by what is a, 50%, in the mid-20, 30. half of that demand is going to come from india and china. you know, the united states as a missionary foreign policy, whether under democrats or republicans. we seek to bring liberal

democracy a round the world. the soviet union had a missionary foreign policy. it sought to promote communism around the world. the chinese are not burdened by ideas. their foreign policies driven by the need to acquire hydrocarbon. oil, natural gas, as well as strategic minerals and strategic metals in order to lift the standard of living dramatically, a fifth of humanity, to bring hundreds of millions of chinese into the middle class. its enormous stores of these natural resources are necessary. that's why what china is doing is fighting on all fronts. it's building oil and natural gas pipelines from the caspian sea, across turkmenistan, through uzbekistan, into western china, across kazakhstan, into western china, it is building deepwater port in burma, while

major natural gas fields, with construction of a pipeline across burma directly into western china. china is prospecting for copper in war-torn afghanistan. if the united states stabilizes or partially stabilizes afghanistan and brings better government to pakistan, china will be the beneficiary. because it will enable china to completely build this build and pipeline network throughout central asia and the greater middle east, bringing energy directly into western china. that if you look at a map of this emerging nexus of roads and pipeline, it is equivalent to the chinese map during the eighth century. wind chime extended and its influence extended all the way to the northeastern iran, on the

subject of iran, there is a chinese iranian access developing, predicated on energy. china needs iran huge stores of natural gas that is less polluting, that china can either bring over land or through persian gulf, ship across the indian ocean. in china's quest for energy, it faces what hu jintao has reported called a melodic a dilemma. too much of china's energy has to negotiate its way through the narrow shoulder written precarious strait of malacca on oil, major oil tankers coming across the indian ocean. that's why the chinese want to diversify. why they were building a pipeline in central asia. it's why they wanted to direct pipeline link from the bay of bengal across burma, and one

day, decade 10, the chinese have just built a big port in pakistan. you know, perhaps in the future to bring energy from the middle east across all through pakistan into western china. in other words, the real energy nexus of the world between the hydrocarbons at the arabian peninsula and the iranian plateau, and the burgeoning middle class is east asia. china, south korea, japan. in the also will be a major, a major gobbler up of energy. it is increased, buying increased amounts of coal from mozambique in southern africa, which is a shifting by, shipping by tanker ship to india. india is also building a port off bournemouth coast near these

natural gas deals where china's pipeline want to go, east and northeast across burma, india's pipeline want to go west to bangladesh into india. india and china are fighting over burma. think of the burma as the belgium before world war i. squeezed between france and germany, think of the squeezed between india and china. burma is not only one of the most united authoritarian military regimes in the world, it is also incredibly rich in natural gas with timber, and hydropower, in uranium, in gold. it's an energy storehouse. and so as china turned burma into a satellite, building of roads and rail links to get energy and other natural resources, democratic pro-western india cannot cannot stand aside. it cannot issue moralistic

pronouncements from the sidelines half a world away about democracy in burma. it has to engage burma. so india has extensive military links with the burmese security forces, extensive political links, et cetera. a lot of this is driven by energy. what we are going to see in the 21st century is a global energy interstate around the whole navigable southern eurasia land, extending from the middle east to the horn of africa, all the way to the strait of malacca, and through the western specific -- pacific the coastal china, south korea and japan. and were energy goes, military activity will go. because world navies are navies for one reason is to protect the sea lines of communication and to keep the open. globalization happens because we

have relatively safe seat lines of communication with piracy as a nuisance that makes an interesting story for the media, that has not yet at least not yet, reached strategic proportions. so in this future we're going to see the growth of navies in india, china, with a relative distance between those in the u.s. navy slowly starting to close in order to protect these energy routes. thank you very much. >> thank you, bob. [applause] >> let me just pose a question before i opened up to the four. and i guess we have microphones here for people to move to, as you see fit we will move that way. but let me just say, my sense is that, that in the latter half of the 20th century, up until a few years ago, the united states was essentially the hegemon when he came to oil and energy moving all around.

yet you had the saudis, yes yet other energy players. but the bottom line was we were calling the shots. you can get away without having that because then essentially everyone depends on you can't reserve currencies, et cetera, all parts of you being basically king of the hill. i don't get the sense today. when i listen to bob kaplan, and i also -- i hear two things. china has a strategy but if you look at the largest companies in the world today, they are all oil and energy companies and their all national companies. without respect to chevron and exxon, et cetera, the largest firms in the world are in russia, and these are really the newest features of a state capitalism that has taken over. what's behind state capitalism? state strategy, energy strategy, hydrocarbon strategy. i need to combat your point, karen, when you say you don't have a strategy. and am wondering whether the composition of the way we have these discussions is, needs to

change. that being dna of our companies and players that need to change, that we have an inability actually to address what's happening with china and russia and other players. because we basically are still in a whole, we think where the hegemonic player and we're not that i would love to get responses and and i would appreciate opening this up. >> my definition of strategy, it's the art in size of allocating scarce inside the resources. in the case of the united states, we have not done that as wisely because we have not valued energy to the way that we must do going forward in the future. in china's case, i want to go back to the early 1990s when the cold war had ended. the wall came down. the countries of the former warsaw pact want to have a world-class telecommunications capability. now, they could have gone out

and done it the way we did in western europe and in the united states, and cut down a bunch of trees and created telephone poles, and they could have gotten futures on copper and strong wire, but they didn't. why? because they didn't have to. they didn't have to because of wireless. and they have a world-class telecommunications capability with all the benefits to their economies and all the light. my point is this, as we look not just at united states, but nations like china and india, we've got to recognize that they don't have to achieve this quality of life, economic vitality the same way that we did. in fact, they can't. it is not sustainable for them to do it that way. therefore, it creates a tremendous opportunity for us, diplomatically, militarily and economically, to engage with these copies to bring the best of innovation, the best of technology from the united

states to show them what we can do with energy efficiency, what we can do with clean energy, what we can do using the scarce and valuable resources at our fossil fuel reserves represent. across the board, going after the silver buckshot approach, and do it in a way that really enhances the leadership value of the united states for ourselves, as well as for other nations in the world. if we think we're going to do it in the 21st century the way we did it in the 20 century, we are headed for unsustainable pretty ugly world. >> a quick retort. when barack obama, he won't do this, but if he gets on a metro and goes through all those crowded hills in seoul, south korea, and he pulls out the blackberry he likes to use, he will find an unbelievable infrastructure there that he doesn't even have walking around the streets of new york city. so we need to be careful of what

we think we have to do. another picture of this is how miserably we have invested in our infrastructure, while china is just pouring in. karen and bob? >> the market upon which we relied for so long, we don't have an energy policy. if it was after animal global marketplace am able to market that. but it's much different as the supply center starts looking to new demand centers. so you look at coal for example. we don't really have for any intensive versus any coal power generation bill in this country. to talk to the poll covers and they say, if we're going to decide if we don't want to a new coal plants, that doesn't stop the production of coal. it just changes who i'm going to sell it to. i do so everyday all of my production to china and india and several other countries. we have pretty good quality coal here compared to what china has. so we don't want to hear, i

still going to still and still going to get burned. it's going to be burned in countries that don't have environmental regulation like we do. we have to start thinking about what are we looking at insurance of our resource capacity here, and are we developing the technology. i would stiff we don't want to export all of our technologies because we did with nuclear and now we don't produce anything here more. we certainly saw what happened on the renewable side of things and now we don't produce any that here anymore. to use the resources, the technologies and innovation which is the foundation of our competitiveness much more to our advantage. >> where this will come to geographical head, america without a strategy, and china with a strategy is in the gulf of new guinea and africa. because the chinese have a thought out strategy that combines state owned companies and government, and workers, you

know, to get the hydrocarbons from the western coast of africa, particularly the gulf of guinea, to mine for iron ore and cobalt in the congo and building railroad lines in everything. >> we've had a haphazard approach that our companies are not in line with the government, and we are having problems africa demand. we can't get, you know, we can get in the state department into the mix with a military. look at how dynamic the chinese art in africa and how less so we have been. >> i would add that your example is even more pervasive than just energy. bob discussed this a little bit. the chinese plan and have been working since the '80s to develop their rare earth minerals sectors because they understood the role of the raw material's and the resources and manufacturing and abroad economic trends that they were

trying to push. they're doing the same thing now with fertilizer, trying to invest in canadian companies because they understand the coming pressures on their food system. dave arce and a passionate and they're playing for. is a very, very stark contrast that we're seeing what we're seeing because of planning. we can replicate that. little tidbit for contrast. on rare earth minerals in our own country congress about a year ago require department of defense to look at how we use rare earth minerals and off our weapons systems. it took them many months to compile this because we didn't know. so not only do we not have a greater strategy looking at all these issues in a holistic manner internet where we need to go, but oftentimes the details we need to know to do that are buried in the private sector we don't have good enough relationships to be able to pull that to solve the problem. . .

>> we're now dependent on bolivia and afghanistan for lithium. you know, and are we going to -- you know, we look at uranium. there are tradeoffs. we have to look at those, and that's why the knee jerk and magic solution policies, we have to have an adult conversation about the consequences of these policies because they are not well-thought through. >> thank you. >> we need to be very careful to avoid this temptation to believe

that china has a right strategically, and we have it wrong. there's some tremendous downside to the chinese strategy. why did they shut down industrial activity for a month's time about the time they hosted the olympics? and all the disasters you hear of mineral extraction, polluted rivers and land and air, they do not have it right. in fact, the exploitation in the gulf of guinea or other parts of africa can cause tremendous stability and security problems. >> to reenforce what was said, i lived in china for three months this year and there was three days of the three months where i didn't walk into a candy cotton type gauze that you would breathe and taste. it was the most horrible pollution i experienced. >> i'm a member of the dc world

affairs counsel. i have the question from a different part of the world. i got back from three years of living and working in the united arab emirates and i haven't heard about the mines where the uae building a pipeline to get around the strait and dubai trying to build a channel through the mountains to sell it to the saudis to get their oil out. what's the dynamics of that older part of the world? >> vulnerability relies on fossil fuels exploited by those who wish to do us harm. as we increase pressure sanctions on iran, who can guarantee us we won't see the radical wing of the republican guards close down the strait with 25% of the world's oil

flows every day. the united states and allies will kick their butt, but it will not happen overnight. it would take months to clear miens, high -- mines, high speedboat, and all that time imagine the economy especially in the united states being denied 25-30% of the oil for the life blood of the world's economy. >> iran has an incredibly complex shattered coastline along the persian gulf. it's twice the length of coastline of the next longest coastline which is the united arab emirates. you have the iranian revolution guard corp. navy, a whole different beast in itself with small speedboats swarming in operation, and in this intense global media environment that we live in, imagine just a nick of

a fired missile from one of these boats on a warship, on a warship of one of these other nations. you know, that would be a great media story, and they could do a lot worse. >> but what is the right place on energy point of view? if we're dpaising a potential catastrophe in that part of the world, why aren't we expanding production here? saudi arabia as natural gas, and we have a lot of oil in the country, and yet it's off limits for exploration. we have to understand the threat and yet we do nothing about it. >> it's very important mind you to recognize that the carelessness that often, the recklessness that i think happens when it comes to talking about war and peace in washington, when you think about iran or something that may happen, iran, russia, china, ect., are beneficiaries of any spike in oil prices. the u.s. is not.

when oil was -- when the price of gas was over $4 a gallon, i have a buddy working in the highway safety administration and said, you know, steve, no one is dying on the highways. i said, what do you mean? he says people have stopped driving. we see behavior changing. there's no social driving going on in the country. it's an inflex point where you see a change in behavior. i don't hang out with richard or charles, not my cloud. we got together and talked about how could we keep the price or attacks on oil and energy in this country because we saw changes of behavior not just in the way people were driving, but what's the opportunity as an industry? if you have a very, very subsidized price of oil and gas in the united states which is part of our strategy, you actually buffering american public from the cost of questions from what's going on in iran and ect., so i think it's complex. the key is there's no larger discussion of general strategy.

yes, ma'am? >> kansas city, and all of you have talked about the fact that china has a strategy maybe right or wrong, and the united states doesn't. it's easy to see how china can develop a strategy because they are not a democracy. they just have to get a few people alone in a room and say this is what it is. in the united states just looking at tuesday in the election, how do we ever get to agreement? how do we get to a strategy whatever that might be? >> i'll respond quickly on this. that's an oversimplification of china. they have many moving pieces. it's a mistake to think decision making in china which i think has been getting a lot right and some wrong, nonetheless is more and more sophisticated if not a democracy. on the united states side, i think the question is not -- it's how you bring together and

are you willing to bring the environmental community, the energy community, the 17 different parts of the energy picture together in a serious discussion about cost and benefits of a variety of approaches? i would put that to you. i think it's vital. i can tell you in the senate, we didn't want to have that. we wanted to talk about fads, solar or this or nuclear. it could be any one of these. it's not that any one is the silver bullet. n., there is no -- in fact, there is no silver bullet. >> it has not done our energy picture any good. we have to have that adult conversation. it is one that has to recognize, again, back to the beginning, we have a fundamental reality. we may want it to look like we can have wind all over, but the reality is that's not going to happen. we have the opportunity to have a comprehensive energy policy. there's a lot of agreement. i mean, the american people, 62%

is in favor of drilling. there's 72% of nuclear. everybody is in favor of energy efficiency. there are elements, but what we choose to debate in policy circles is everything where there's not agreement and that's the climate change. we focused political muscle on addressing climate change without the energy picture. the climate proposals forward raise the price of energy or loudly rejected by the american people because of our economic picture. we need to focus on actually putting forward those solutions to keep energy affordable, not change the quality of life because i don't think people enjoyed $4 gas. i remember giving speeches then when people canceled their summer vacations, and they were mad, and the kids don't let them forgot it. we want to make this solution cheaper. we need the technologies and we need to invest and we need all options. saying we're only going to have this or that which is our policy

response, is ill informed. we need it all, and we have to recognize that. >> how many of -- you would not have had these in the way the spectrum was allocated in the united states. there's no more interesting exraition or med -- comparison or metaphor i can think of in energy. you have the department defense sitting on way too much of the spectrum and you are new entrance to the market that couldn't get in. we had a institution and debate in the country in which we finally got out of the fad approach and winners and losers, but we brought all the stake holders together and had a serious discussion about changing the game of winners and losers and creating a dynamic that opened up spectrum policy to many more innovators out there and included a rational

approach. it is a lot like the energy picture when you talk about oil, talking about not having industrial level projects in renewables or offshore ect.. i put that that it may be a useful metaphor to look at. yes, sir. >> good morning, matt poke from illinois. my question relates to the issue that you brought up earlier about the high pollution especially in these new emerging areas. with our high intellectual capital here in the country, why aren't we exporting our services for, you know, pollution control and, you know, that kind of thing to china, and, you know, to help them with their air and water pollution, ect., you know? >> well, unbelievably there's high on --

[inaudible] that's something whether you believe if it's going to succeed or fail. if we wanted to do something globally, we would lead an effort to eliminate the high tariffs. it would create jobs here, but we're not willing to do that. that's something that is free. it doesn't add to the deficit. there's things we could do immediately to address that. >> i would just say quickly that again, i don't want to be the mist buster on china. china is ding everything. anyone who goes to china sees natural gas plants going up, solar, wind. china is growing so fast that they are doing everything, and we are in fact exporting tons of services, but the scale china is changing the way global gravity works by its plan to urbanize 3 million more people in 15 years.

it's going to be the biggest economic change in human history in a very short prosecutor, -- period of time. don't think they're not doing anything. it's just that everything bad and good is happening at the same time. yes, sky, forester? >> steve, that's a great segue to my question. i want the panel to look further out. the thrust of all of this is yes, china and india are going to be out there getting resources and looking for energy means we'll bump into them in not so nice ways, but further out, ultimately china and india are becoming more vulnerable to others, and we, even when we were king of the hill and had all the cards found ourselves uncomfortably vulnerable to our own clients. i'm wondering about china's long term as a vulnerability and india and china on a capital

basis, they are still very poor countries. >> they are becoming more vulnerable to each other because as each expands a sphere of influence rs those spheres overlap. china and india outside of a border war in 1962 throughout history didn't have much to do with each other, but now you have air bases in tibet where fighter jets include india and indian warships in the south china sea. there's first that. secondly, china is making enemies in places like africa because, you know, of the way it does things, the way -- you know, china has this idea that you build big mining operations, and hydrocarbon extraction facilities and build railroads and roads to there, but they haven't figured out when you do that, you become

invested in that country's politics. you just are. you become full necial to those -- vulnerable to the politics, and you become just like americans became -- just like big burger king, big war style military basis of the united states in japan and germany and turkey became focal points of local medias in those countries in a negative way. the same is happening to a lot of chinese facilities in africa and other plays, and you can include a little bit of central asia. the burmese regime is terrified of becoming a satellite of china, but doesn't know what to do about it. india because india is not at the scale that china is in terms of power. india is still a great regional power more than it is a great power. >> be careful what you wish for. you have to be really, really

strategic in the long range way beyond the next generation to see what the likely unintended consequences are, and that applies certainly to our own posture. the less vulnerable we become, the more secure and economically prosperous we will be. christina? >> with the broadening, i appreciate that. i project if we have the same conversation, hopefully a better conversation, but still talking about the issues in the same light in five or ten years, we're going to be talking about the arctic as much as china and india. there are regions where these issues are hitting on questions of not just territory, but sovereignty and what that means over the next century that has to do u.s. security in the world. i project that in thinking about the long term. >> thank you. karen? >> it's a reordering of the world order if you will.

we have to decide what we're going to do and energy is at the forefront of that, and we have to decide to become more self-ri lint and do the right hard choices at home because the battlefield is more complicated and we don't know who the enemy is. right now, the enemy is us. >> ten years ago if we had this discussion, we might very well have had it in many world affairs counsel 678 -- the stakes were lower and united states wasn't going to become -- my worry is that america has enormous capacity around the world, but so does general motors. i worry about the united states being a well-branded, but underperforming corporate asset around the world that needs to rewire itself. it's not what china has today, but what people expect and other countries expect that china will look like in 20 years.

you have to reinvent american leverage on the issues. the status quo doesn't buy us that but makes sure that we're not able to shape the international order in ways that i think are beneficial not only for us, but many others. let me thank our panelists, bob, christine, karen, jenni, thank you for your time, and you have a great day lined up and all the best to the c-span viewers and watchers. [applause] >> that was a fantastic job and made our morning. bob's book is on sale outside, and you can probably catch him to sign it. we're going to -- you know, i want to take a moment to thank c-span for covering us. they are covering us the whole day, and that's afforded us the opportunity to share this wonderful con tend in terms of our speakers and quality of the questions from our leadership from around the country and world of various counsels of

america, so thank you to c-span, and thank you to all of you for your participation and thanks to the panel. this is great. we're going to break, and i ask you to come back at noon, and we'll have the next session, the lunchon session. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] the world affairs counsel of america is taking a break. we'll bring you more when they return, and we'll hear from the keynote speaker, former am bass do to iraq, brian crocker. at 11:30 the weekly standard and washington examiner take a look at this week's elections. the discussion is moderated by bill crystal, editor of the weekly standard and that's live at 12:30 eastern on our companion network, c-span. meanwhile, president obama is heading out on a ten day trip to asia meeting with leaders. on monday he's in new delly before heading to jakara. he'll give a speech to u.s. troops as well. he returns to washington on sunday, november 14.

this week's midterm elections gave control of the u.s. house to republicans. oregon representative, greg walden has been chosen to lead the transition effort. he's putting together a 22 member team of newly elected members, long time incumbents. it may include rules changes to apply to the entire house of representatives and conference rules. for more go to gopleader gopleader.gov/newmajority.

>> the world affairs counsel of america is meeting here in wash dc. they are breaking for lunch. early -- earlier james steinberg introduced the conference. we'll take a look at that portion now. >> we have what i think is a great day today. it's going to live up to the standard we set yesterday, and we're very, very pleased to have keynote speakers and also as we

did yesterday, a number of excellent, excellent panels. our first speaker today is the deputy secretary of state, james steinberg. you have his biography in the booklet we passed out, but i want to highlight his role, a huge responsibility for the conduct of a foreign relations of the united states of america. before that, jim had been the dean of the lbg school, university of texas, austin, service in our government and he and i have the good fortune to serve together when he was the deputy security adviser of the united states and showed his commitment to american values and american principles and american operations by helping us get through the very difficult challenges in the volingens. it was jim's commitment to this set of interest that we're pleased he's back now serving again in the united states of

america in the state department. jim, thank you for your service, and we offer you the floor, and i give you a welcome from the world affairs counsels of america. [applause] >> well, good morning, everybody, and thank you for having me here. it's a personal privilege and pleasure to be introduced by mark, one the great public servants of our time. we worked together through periods during the clinton administration when i served at the state department under secretary christopher and then when i moved to the white house. the deputy has an important job, but the secretary of political affairs has a really important job. he's a great one and a real reflection of our best foreign service which is i think an underappreciated treasure of our natural capacity, and as we worked together now with secretary clinton on what we call our qawn dren yal deploam

silver bullet review, the appreciation that we gain for the role that our career foreign service plays has only grown thinking about the capacities that the united states needs to meet the challenges of the 21st century. i salute mark and his many colleagues in the foreign service. i'm especially pleased to be with you here from the world affairs counsel of america. i was telling over the course of my career which is included a few political campaigns, i've spoke to half the world affairs counsel. i remember one of my earliest travels to iowa during the 2008 campaign. it was a reflection of the fact we have important national conversation conversations to lead our country on key areas of foreign policy. it's the grass roots organizations like yourselves to involve citizens in the debates and allows the people to be well-informed and focus on issues that may be a little bit

not obvious from their day-to-day lives, but affects them that you play such an important service, and it's a privilege for me to be here with you. i think it's important right now, you know, i surprisingly got a lot of questions in the last 48 hours about the recent elections and its impact on foreign policy. we have a strong bipartisan basis for the conduct of foreign policy in the country and american leadership. i know that the secretary and president and i and everybody else looks forward to working with the new congress to sustain that bipartisanship. we didn't have much discussion about foreign policy during the came pain. it's all been outside the political season that we continue a vigorous engaged debate of our citizenry. i thank you for the role that you play in that. i think it's important to use this opportunity to reflect on some of the core challenges that we're facing. this morning i'm going to focus

on east asia because the president is engaged on that issue. i want to begin with broader observations. in this month's foreign affairs magazine which i know most of you read. secretary has an article in there and begins with an observation. she said, today's world is a crusble of challenges testing american leadership. global problems from violent extreme itch to worldwide recession to climate change, poverty demand solutions even as power in the world is more diffuse. they require effective international cooperation even as that is harder to achieve. they cannot be solved unless a nation is accepting the responsibility of mobilizing action. the united states is that nation. i think it's particularly important to reflect about the world in which we live in and the changes that have taken

place over the years. nothing illustrates that more than the troubling accident we have with the two mail bombs from yemen. on the one hand, we have benefited from the progress of globalization and the interdependence that comes with it and the opportunities for economic growth, for increase of exchange for people and ideas and experiences and overcome ling isolation, that those forces bring, but also the very forces that bring us closer together also facilitate the forces we're trying to undo and damage the structures and the way of life in which we live, and there's nothing that illustrates that more vividly than the continued tax on our transportation suspect and the fact we use this for human exchange, for our increasingly interconnected globalized economy and the like. it really illustrated as i say the twin dilemmas of our time that our fates are incas