and if corporations are allowed to prioritize content on the internet or they are allowed to block applications you access on your i-phone, there is nothing to prevent the same corporations from sensorring political -- from -- sensorring political speech. now there are a bunch of tea party apps you can download, but maybe not for long. not if your wireless carrier doesn't want you to get them, and that is something every american should care very deeply about. i'm here on the floor today because i think americans need to understand just how critical net neutrality really is. this is complicated stuff, but it directly affects each and every one of us.

and it's not just about speech. it is also about entrepreneurship and innovation. it's about our economy. there is no question in my mind that without significant changes, the proposal currently pending before the f.c.c. would be bad for our economy. think about companies like youtube, which started in a tiny office above a pizzeria and grew to be worth billions of dollars. at the time, google had a competing product, google video, which was -- which was then the standard but was widely seen as inferior. had google been able to pay comcast large amounts of money to make its web site faster than youtube's, youtube would be nowhere. fortunately, google couldn't pay for priority access and the rest is history. you think about facebook.

once upon a time it was a small start-up. remember friend is ster r or my face. they were once the dominant social networking sites before facebook won over users with a vastly improved product. but that might not have ever happened if friendster or others had paid to make them faster. if facebook had taken a long time to load on your computer, it never would have succeeded. these are just a couple of examples how free and open internet has fostered innovation which has created jobs and has spurred competition, which has benefited all consumers. now, think of the next facebook or the next youtube or the next amazon. the only way to guarantee that innovation -- that that innovation will continue is to have strong net neutrality rules that will protect and maintain today's free and open internet.

so the f.c.c. has to make two big decisions. one on the comcast/nbc universal merger and one on net neutrality. these decisions will impact every american for years to come. you may not know this but the f.c.c. is an independent agency. independent agencies are nonpartisan. they are not beholden to the congress or the president, and they certainly should not be beholden to the industries that they regulate. that's why i am so concerned when i hear that the chairman of the f.c.c. is calling the c.e.o.'s of companies they are supposed to be regulating seek their public endorsement of his net neutrality proposal. independent agencies are charged with acting in the public interest, so when i hear that the f.c.c. is considering a net neutrality proposal that is supported by the largest media corporations in america, i am suspicious and you should be too. the f.c.c. should not be worrying about getting the

signoff from the very corporations that it's supposed to be regulating. period. the f.c.c. has made public its plans to act on its flawed net neutrality proposal this coming tuesday. i sincerely hope that the f.c.c. will make significant improvements before then and that each of the commissioners will think long and hard before they vote to approve a proposal that could actually make things worse for all americans. i have also heard that the f.c.c. is going to be acting very soon on the nbc-comcast merger. it needs to do this in the light of day, not hidden in the middle of christmas and new year's. the american people have the right to know about this merger. i will be supremely disappointed if approval of this merger is slipped through when most americans are unwrapping presents and spending time with their families. not worrying about their cable or internet bills. we are at a pivotal moment and

we need to stop the cascade of domino as that will forever change how we pay for tv and browse the internet. but it is not too late. the government has a role to play here and i hope the f.c.c. will step up, be brave, and do what is right for the american people. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. mr. brown: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent the committee on environment and public works be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 6510 and that the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 6510, an act to direct the administrator of

general services to convey a parcel of real property in houston, texas, to the military museum of texas and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there an objection to proceeding? without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table and any statements related to the measure appear at the appropriate place in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 6473, which was received from the house and is at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 6473, an act to amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to extend the funding and expenditure authority of the airport and airway trust fund and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. brown brown: mr. president,k

unanimous consent the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 6533, which was received from the house. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 6533, an act to implement the recommendations of the federal communications commission report to the congress regarding low-power f.m. service and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there any objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table and that any statements related to the bill appear at this point in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the finance committee be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 4915 and that the senate proceed to its consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 4915, an act to

amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to extend the funding and expenditure authority of the airport and airway trust fund and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? withouwithout objection, the see will proceed. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the baucus substitute amendment which is at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, that the title amendment which is at the desk be considered and agreed to and that any statements related thereto appear at the appropriate place in the "congressional record" as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h. con. res. 335, just received from the house and at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: house concurrent resolution 335, honoring the exceptional achievements of impassambassador richard holbrod

recognizing the significant contributions he has made to united states national security, humanitarian causes and peaceful resolutions of international conflict. the presiding officer: is there an objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, before moving to the unanimous consent, i would want to add that a particular word of thanks for the dayton accords held in dayton, ohio, which ambassador holbrooke played such a key role in bringing forward for our country. i ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution and preamble be agreed to en bloc and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, that any statements relating to the concurrent resolution appear at the appropriate place in the "congressional record" as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h. res. 704, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 7 704, to authorize the printing of a revised edition of the senate election law guidebook.

the presiding officer: is there an objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. brown brown: i ask unanimous consent, mr. president, that the resolution be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the measure be placed in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. the resolution is agreed to. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar 657, s. 118. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 657, s. 118, a bill to amend section 202 of the housing act of 1959 and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there an objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent the committee-reported substitute amendment be considered, that a dodd amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the committee substitute amendment as amended be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time,

that a budgetary paygo statement be read. the presiding officer: without objection. the clerk will read the paygo statement. the clerk: this is the statement of budgetary effects of paygo legislation for s. 118. total budgetary effects of s. 118 for the five-year statutory paygo scorecard, net increase in the deficit of $5 million. total budgetary effects of s. 118 for the ten-year statutory paygo scorecard, net increase in the deficit of $5 million. also submitted for the record as part of this statement is a table prepared by the congressional budget office which provides additional information on the budgetary effects of this act. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask consent the bill be passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. res. 703, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 703, recognizing and honoring bob feller and expressing the condolences of the senate to his family on his death. the presiding officer: is there an objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate and any statements related to the resolution be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i'd like to take a moment to speak about this last resolution. bob feller was a clevelander through and through. senator harkin is the prime sponsor of this resolution. i have joined him on it. he was -- and senator harkin sponsored the resolution because bob feller was born in van meter, iowa. he was signed by the cleveland

indians at the age of 16, apparently for $1 and an autographed baseball. struck out 15 batters, he was dea --in his first major lapse s first major league start, excuse me. he struck out 17 in a game at the age of 17, the only major league player in history to strike out in one game the number of batters comparable to his age. his greatness was he was perhaps the hardest-throwing pitcher ever in major league baseball. he pitched three no-hitters, then a record. it's been exceeded -- it's been passed since. he pitched 12 one-hitters, also a -- also tying a major league record. his -- he spent -- his records would have -- he would have shattered perhaps all pitching records short of cy young's number of career wins, perhaps, if he -- and walter johnson's if he had not served his country for almost four years in -- in world war ii. he -- he gladly did it. he won eight battle stars. he served in -- on the u.s.s.

alabama as a gunnery specialist. he was so proud as his service to the country. he turned down a huge contract with the indians in 1942. niewj thoshuge in those days, to join the military to serve his country, and he spoke about it frequently and was always very proud of that service. he stormed the country with satchel page -- barnstormed is the more correct name -- with satchel paige, the great black pitcher who was not allowed in the major leagues in those days before the color line was broken and feller and he traveled the country in the -- in the white major league baseball off-season and drew huge crowds with paige and he facing each with his -- his facing paige and in game after game after game. he was a key member of the last indians world championship in 1948. his -- and i was -- i saw bob feller pitch once. i was four years old so i don't really remember it. my dad took my brother's bob and

charlie and me to bob feller day at old cleveland municipal stadium. in i believe 1957. and i -- and my dad loved bob feller. i mean, he was a legend in cleveland. his statue is the only professional athlete statue in cleveland. and right outside jacob field. on jacob's field on east 9th street, you can see bob feller's statue with his famous windup. and when you go to an indians game in -- in the new ballpark, progressive field -- new, it's now more than 15 years old -- when you go to the ballpark, people always say, i'll meet you at the bob feller statue. that's sort of the place where you meet up with your friends and get your tickets and all of that. so he brought great joy to so many, like my father. he was perhaps the greatest pitcher that ever lived. and he died at the age of 92 in gates mill, survived by his wife anne, his children steve, martin and bruce. and i was proud to have gotten to speak a number of times with bob feller. i don't pretend to have known

him well but he was always a major presence in cleveland baseball and a major presence in cleveland civic life and we are all grateful to him and indebted to him for his service to his country in world war ii and to our community before, during and after world war ii. so i wanted to honor with that resolution with senator harkin his name and his life. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the previous order related to the recognition of senator specter on tuesday december 21st, be modified to provide that he be recognized at 10:30 a.m. that day. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to executive session and consider en bloc 1009, 1099, that the nominations be confirmed en bloc, know, en bloc, any statements related to the nominations appear at the appropriate place in the record as if read, that the president be immediately notified of the senate's action, that the senate then resume legislative session.

further as if in executive session, i ask unanimous consent that on sunday, december 19th, tomorrow, following any vote with respect to the risch amendment to the start treaty that the senate proceed the following nominations, 892 and 1092 and vote immediately on confirmation of the nominations with two minutes of debate prior to each confirmation vote equally divided and controlled between senator leahy and senator sessions or their designees. upon confirmation the motions to reconsider be made and laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate resume legislative session. further after the first vote in the sequence the succeeding votes be limited to 10 minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. brown brun mr. president, if in executive session, i ask unanimous consent that a time to be determined by the majority leader following a consultation with the republican leader, the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination, calendar number 703, benita pierson from

northern ohio district. if i could for a moment say that she was -- mr. brown: she was selected by a commit of 17 appointees from senator voinovich and me and judge pearson is -- was -- was chosen unanimously by this group, submitted to the president by -- i submitted her name to the president, the president nominated her. she was voted out of committee in february of this year out of the judiciary committee. i will be thrilled to move forward on that and discuss that tomorrow. also calendar 813, william martinez, debate be limited to 60 minutes, equally divided and controlled between senators leahy and sessions or designees. upon the use or yielding back of all time the senate proceed to vote on the confirmation of the nomination of the order listed. prior to the second vote there be two minutes of debate, the second vote be limited to 10 minutes. upon the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, the president be

immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate resume legislative business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, as if in executive legislation, i ask unanimous consent that on sunday, december 19, the senate resume consideration of the start treaty, that there then be three hours of debate with respect to the risch amendment 4839, with one hour under the control of senator kerry or his designee, two hours under the control of senator risch or designee and no order be in order to the risch amendment. upon the use or yielding back of time the senate proceed to vote with respect to the amendment. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until noon on sunday, december 19, that that following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved until later in the day, that following any leader remarks the senate resume executive session to consider the new start treaty as provided for under the previous order.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: senators should expect up to 3 roll call votes at 3:00 p.m., it will be in relation to the risch amendment and on confirmation of two judges, including judge pierson of cleveland. if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until

>> we now join our regularly scheduled tv programming already in progress. >> they have one person, one vote. i don't want to go into all my tirades about the american system and the senate and the way it looks in a kind of change. but you get teary and change.

why z. so important important? americans here and many people on the left politically are against it because they say the tea party will get in and take away marriage in all of this. that is a concern, but it shouldn't be the major concern because the europeans don't have that. what they miss is that the changes that the left puts in when the left gets into power, when it has majority are irreversible. so if you bring back the right to unionize you are just going to flip the whole character of the country in a way that is a better safeguard than having some filibuster system to shoot down proposals you don't like in the end it had people more and more alienated from the employment system. the way that you provide and i believe in the bill of rights on the. i'm a good liberal and they argue due process. the first amendment is extremely important and we have to have more rights in the constitution but the ultimate protection of

the liberty of people and progressive values is majority rule. to get these moments when you have a real socialist government or a new deal government in power that makes these irreversible changes like extending social security and extending medicare. i mean if we went to single-payer in this country we would never go back or khalifa brought in a right to organize it would change the united states forever. you know, extending the tax cuts for the rich, you know i don't want to extend the tax cuts for the rich but if that happens if the right got into power and it happened, that is reversible. that is what we should have majority rule and that is what the europeans have in one form another plus they have proportional representation which has its bad side because it gives power to the neo-nazi group in sweden which now has breached the five and 10 limit and that is very disturbing. on the other hand he get some real voices on the left like in

germany, the links which i don't favor. i'm not a links person but i'm kind of glad it is there to give a hard time. i'm glad that the green party is there to give a different take on the kind of germany they want to have. >> britain has majority rule too of a sort, but no pr. no pr and of course they can have minority governments that have majority power. but isn't accountability as much a factor here and majority rule? in other words, government can enact a program and then it can be judged on that program. the people can get rid of the government, where we don't seem to be able to get rid of the government possibly because we have too many of them. >> they have unitary government.

>> well, i am for the federal system and i m. for bicameral legislatures. i just believe there has to be one person, one vote. i do believe in a kind of check and balance. i believe it is a good thing. i believe in court. i don't want majorities to run while. >> how do social rights get enforced in the german system? is very court dead hand down decisions that then the elected branch --. >> very activist court. in some ways more at to this than here in the united states and they look at laws for example is this law going to hurt the family or hurt the family? they have to look at that under the constitution and you know is education free or nonfree? that is is the case that goes to court. and there are all sorts of constitutional checks on the system and i think these constitutional checks, the social rights are very important. i didn't write about this that much but i referred to it vaguely and, rick i could've

written another 400 pages in this book. and i think we made a right decision to keep it at the length link that it was. >> i was actually able to read it. >> yeah, but it is one thing to write another threaded boards because there are so many fascinating aspects of this but one of the things that this part of the constitution, that is not formally part of the constitution but is really important, is this labor model. you know i mean the fact that people are, there is a formal constitution and then there is this extended constitution. and i am really more interested in this book than the extended one. you know the works council, the co-determined boards, because i really think that the accountability of parties to the electorate is important as that is, is not as important as

pulling people and making them are responsible for the decisions themselves and learning in some ways the trade-offs. one of the things that is bad about the american system is that, because none of us have any kind of power, we end up being very irresponsible in the way we talk about it and we say irresponsible things. one of the interesting things about germany is they have 20 responsible germans there and people who say all sorts of crazy things but so often you are pulled into the system, at least compared to america and again i am focusing on the labor side. you do have to make decisions and these aren't just -- people in the elite. the wonderful thing about -- you know in the united states we have 27% of our adult population

has bachelor's degrees of one kind or another. that means 33% -- pardon may -- 73% of the population is just walking around either with no high school degree at all are just a high school degree. you aren't aware of their presence. i will tell you he were aware of the presence of high school graduates in german culture partly because of the labor structure and partly because of the unions. so important in bringing people and getting them to act rationally and looking at their economic interest in actually make trade-offs, something that the spd is really good at doing. that is just absent here. >> what is the downside to all of this? who loses in the system? >> to people who have lost in the system are the growing

number of high school grads who are cut out of it who don't have really decent jobs. for the time being, and i think this is going to change,, you know it is very male dominated for culture regions but i think germans more and more trying to do at the french are doing in terms of childcare and family and you know it the end of the day you know, in which country france, united states court germany is it possible for a woman to rise to the highest position in the land? well, in germany, i think that is a temporary thing that is changing very very rapidly. but what is more disturbing are the people who are out of what they call the system, who don't have these high skilled jobs, so the question as well, what to do about it? and there is an easy answer, and the answer is to do what we do,

which is just have more environmental waste, more fraud and cheating and everything else that drives of our gdp and especially -- you look around new york city and you can see the answer to the german problems, which is security people. has more crime here, have norman and this kind of thing. the germans really to pull these people into the system and eliminate unemployment and so forth is to have more servants. i don't know that in an egalitarian social democracy can survive if it is creating more and more jobs where people are serving other people in a kind of personal serving capacity and that is something i tried to get into a little bit in the book too. it is a good thing that they have a little unemployment. >> they have got a long way to go before they catch up with us.

>> yeah, that is true. i want to turn to you out there and please if you have got a question, guess i don't know how we handle the microphone problem. is there a microphone? please just identify yourself and make your question or comment. >> and we are happy to talk about the u.s. senate at great length appear. rick and ii, if anybody --. >> before you asked that question, i don't know if you know the answer to this one tom, but the german constitution, essentially the german political constitution, formal constitution wasn't written under american auspices? >> the germans, some germans deny it but you know, all these constitutions were heavily influenced by the u.n. charter for human rights, which was an

eleanor roosevelt and franklin roosevelt project. and they were heavily influenced by the war aims of the allies because they always were the occupying powers. what are the four freedoms? it is the new deal, the global new deal. the great thing about germany, it's a project in some respects and i understand the way in which you know i mean the spd is the oldest political party in the world. you walk into the spd which is the democratic party over there. what is the difference between the democratic party? you walk into the spd headquarters in berlin and one of the first things you see is a picture of karl marx. you don't see karl marx and the democratic party headquarters. so they have got their own traditions and there is the -- at the allies and u.n. charter for human rights and the american idealism and it was america that was the social democracy when europe was

fascist. that is the imprint of the united states united states is on the german model. >> european should be kinder to your old american granddad then. [inaudible] >> one of them had to do with unions and for the u.s. you propose is civil approach including the right to not join, and a lot of your friends, including some lawyers, are appalled on this notion and i wonder if you could tell them how that works in germany? >> well, you don't have to be a union member in germany. it is all volunteer, and one of the great things about -- i mean

it is open shop. >> it is open shop and a union person turned to me and said is that what you are producing -- proposing here in the united states? yes that is exactly what sweden has in germany and france have. it works for them and i think about to be tried here. there are two problems. there is a problem with labor in america. and my friend steve holmes has a friend albert hirschman who has made this point about boys in exit. either you have got to give people a voice in running the organization or you have got to give them access so that the organization has to did for their loyalty all the time. as a union side lawyer i love labor in trying to do everything possible to bring it back but there is no real voice. it is not democratic. and there is no exit. you can get out of it. once you are and that you are in it. you have to pay dues and in most situations or the equivalent of

dues whether you like it or not and that is why putting in a union is such an un-american act because people are in there and they can never get out. my proposal is let them out. is that i want to pay that to pay. that way we don't have to worry about union democracy anymore because of the unions really want to hold onto this money they are going to do whatever they can to find people to that organization including giving them power. i mean the german unions i think are much more accommodating not only because they have worked, but because it is a great way of finding people to the labor movement, giving empowers the people feel they have to go to labor and they want to get to labor and labor is always over there thinking of their marketing schemes which is so wonderful. they sit around thinking, you know we don't talk about international global justice enough so we could get a lot of union memberships that way. i think it is, i think it is wonderful. >> would that have to be kind of

part of a grand bargain where would be illegal to organize a union, by which i mean it wouldn't be a corporation just following a fiduciary responsibility to blatantly disobey the law and then pay whatever piddling fine two years later that involve? >> that is why i wanted more than that, which is i wanted to give people their rights to join again in the way you have and to be free from discharge or discrimination the way you are free from discharge or discrimination based on race, sex gender or handicap or anything else in the level employees to opt out of that liability if they enter collective bargaining agreements with unions, where people are free to pay their dues are not paid their dues. we live in a very individualistic country and europe has a much more individualistic kind of labor operation than we do. it makes no sense. the collectivist model here was fine in 1933, when you know,

when, when --. >> when there really was a left in this country and win it even neocons of today were members of the communist party. that era is gone, so i think we have to have something much more individualistic in this very individualistic age, but i think it can work. >> anyway we have got to try something. >> i am lawrence selzer. two things with the outlook of the corporation. they take a long-term approach and they are not thinking about when they get to the next quarter come every quarter and to maximize the profit and then quit and resign from the company

with the highest stock options and you know make -- pay as little taxes as possible because the german outlook is in the long term and then as you said in best in human capital and that is why there is no rust belt in germany like there is here. >> bea and i should say rick mentioned that i was from the midwest. the midwest, as a midwesterner i'm especially fascinated with germany because it is not just that we are the rust belt out there but we are the part of america that ought to be selling abroad and we are not. and, so what is it about the german corporation that makes it attractive? i am not sure -- you know i used to believe the long-term thing and i still think there is a lot to that and it is probably a cultural thing as much as anyone else, anything else.

in america we believe in a fast buck but the bigger problem is right now but not that our executives think in the short term. it is that they loot the company's and they aren't accountable to anybody, and they are constantly you know at war with their own workforce. i think that is a bigger probley corporations that i have seen in my career as a union lawyer, so many corporations shut down and chicago. they move away from their 26-dollar an hour jobs down to the south. it is not globalization. it is the nationalization of the economy that is coming. they get people for $8 an hour. things are fine for two or three years. the products are. they don't sell abroad anymore and the companies go belly-up and nobody cares because at this point they have made gazillions off of it and put the money into derivatives and they are now into banking instead of

manufacturing. you know that is the dynamic in the united states. it is not just long-term versus short-term. but i think there is a lot to what you say. >> we don't have in china into tears on the politburo and there seems to not be as many people and why the system -- bell system work so well. telephone men and women on the board whereas it is again it is not people not making things by people running the companies don't know exactly making deals and as you mentioned derivatives, the whole financial casino economy. >> again it is accountability. as i was saying to rick at the beginning, either the authoritarian capitalist model, where if you screw up as a ceo the chinese government takes you out and shoots you, we aren't

going to do that here. there was a big op-ed in the times today about how there is this danger. it is just hard to imagine. barack obama's going to take people out and shoot them? i don't think so. our share howard -- shareholder model has no shareholders anymore because they are all mutual funds. frank is put in some things where you can nominate an outside director but it is not going to take the ceos accountable. [inaudible] >> say it again? >> siemens made an agreement with the unions. not to outsource all of the work this was only a few days ago. >> forwarded were heavily criticized in the financial times in an editorial but there are all sorts of escape clauses but heck they entered it. it is really a very very responsible thing and it does change people's outlook at the

top. we all try to keep jobs for people. >> i was interested in me talking about the political structure and really to me like the elephant in the broom is campaign finance reform in a way. like i'm just kind of curious how we are going to change anything in terms of authoritarian capitalist. for me it seems like another capitalist model in america. i am just kind of curious, how does that translate in germany? i was curious how common is that an issue in terms of like donations and how much industry control the government? speak you know, i have to punt on that because i'm not familiar with the campaign finance laws in germany. or the amount of money that is

in the system. i do know this much. it is one of the many aspects of germany i didn't cover in this book and i covered quite a few. i do know this much. they have a career politician class, so it is not like the united states, where although there are occasional errant exceptions as this guy who was the defense minister, a forgotten his name, who has got a ton of money. but, the politicians a, don't make a lot of money and they are in it for life, so you never stop eating a politician. you go to the opposition and use it somewhere and it is quite different from the u.s., and it is not as wide open in terms of campaign finance. but up until citizen united came down, i would have said the campaign finances is not really

that significant issue in the united states. the real significant issue as we saw during the obama administration is that we don't have majority vote. you can't get things through the senate. you can have a social democracy because it is so easy to veto anything that comes close to that and the united states and it started with the senate in slavery and it went through jim crow and it is right up to the plutocratic inegalitarian antiunion american model we have got today. you can go back to 1789 and 1787 and fast-forward up to the present. you change the constitution. >> i would be interested in hearing what you have to say about the german education system and how school students have a very young age are separated into college-bound or trade down, and how this can end

up being a fairly racist approach to education? i lived in germany for a long time and i tutored minority students from turkey or from syria or morocco and it seemed as if they were just completely programs to head into very low pay jobs and there was nothing that the families could do at any point in their lives to change that. >> well you know, i mean there were three tracking systems, so one is the universities. the others is the end of the vocational schools and the third is other, you know in the real problem is who gets into other? >> at what age that is decided. >> those are permanent decisions. there is some back-and-forth. well, can only tell you what people told me. you may have a different

experience of it, but the tracking in the united states is you know also rigorous. i am representing right now the chicago teachers union and chicago public schools. you want to talk about the tracking system? come out of chicago and i will show you a tracking system. it is far more brutal and than what the germans have, but there are people who go the other way, you know and i mean maybe this is just sort of urban legend in germany but i was told by many germans about cases, and i was mentioning my good friend, his sister was an example of someone who leaves the university track and goes into another vocational education track because the vocational education track him he could end up as a landscape architect, jeweler, all sorts of things that we have for college graduates, so the other thing about the tracking system, if you are a college graduate you end up in a college job where is in the united states, you know you go to college and you end up

in a $60,000 in debt and you get a job as a nurse or a cop which is not regarded as a college job exact we over there. the thing about the german education system is it is not so much the tracking is worse than it is over here, although you know i think it is rigged up for the benefit of the middle class and the upper middle class and the professional classes, but is that any different from anywhere else in europe or the united states? what is different about germany and really really interesting is how little education there is. you know, about 27% college graduates. what is it in germany? 15%. 15. and you know the associate degrees, they really have under invested in education. it is very bad. they probably spent too much money bailing out the e.u. in east germany. they haven't put enough into their schools and it is a terrible terrible thing but what is interesting about it is they

are you know, by god they are the most competitive high wage developed country in the world today. here is barack obama getting up there saying how are we going to be competitive. it is education, education, education. whatever the secret of the german success is, it ain't education because they are not doing it. on the scale that they are or should. that tells you something about the role of education in and may gain a country competitive in the world economy and it tells you something about this democratic party whose only strategy for raising people up and becoming more competitive is education. look at germany. there are all sorts of reasons to push education. i am all in favor of it. i don't want anyone to think i'm against cicero or getting high school training and so forth, but shoveling more and more people into college and piling

up debt is not going to get us out of debt as a debtor country. >> i am sorry. i would like to add though that i didn't see the turkish students ending up taking part in any meaningful part in society. >> well, you know, it is an anecdotal sort of thing. i asked, if you walk around a city like berlin where i spend a lot of time you probably see more entrepreneurs who are turkish and german. people running small shops of one kind or another. when i marched with a game mattel and i described it in the book, and a day, left because i've been in a lot of labor march and i thought the german one is going to be all white. i hope that isn't me. how awful. i thought i turned it off. this is like what happens in court.

[laughter] i described it quite a bit in the book and again it is berlin. it is not west germany. i could have been back in south chicago. there weren't african-americans, but the range of skin color of the people who were working, and you know i hate to say it about south chicago or berlin but the number of people whose shirts were talked out and just going off to have a beer, it was so much like the steelworkers that knew back in the 70s and 80s that i just burst out laughing. and you know, again it is more true about berlin than other places but at the end of the day, there are two things that really strike me about the immigration system, and you could you not talk about how difficult it is, and it is difficult.

number one there are probably more foreign-born persons in germany than the united states, living there, and second what really i think is fascinating is the e.u. labor mobility. if we had people coming in from other countries the way they did, i mean i just think the -- i can't seem to turn this off. if we had people coming in from other countries the way the germans and other europeans did, you know there would be enormous social tensions here in this country. i just think, unthinkable. they are serious in italy. they don't seem to be nearing a serious in germany as other places. but one of the reasons i picked germany is because i really as

an american i did want to deal a lot with race and immigration problems and i think of all the places in europe, france, the netherlands, italy, things in germany are at least difficult and stressful. the final thing i would cite issa's poll pull the financial times did. it was in the financial times last week. they did surveys of countries, america, germany, france, england and the question was -- [laughter] i just can't get it off. >> now it is off. >> the percentage of people who say immigrants have made things worse, the highest in britain.

i forget where the other countries follow. the united states is somewhere in the middle of the pack in germany is below the united states. not much below but it is below, so you know there are plenty of people in germany who have made things worse but relative to the united states and certainly relative to britain, the it is not the worst country. >> we have time for one or two more questions. >> i understand your book research was for many years. species 1997. >> in those 20 as much as changed in the world. economies in asia for the future, which model will have a better chance to survive or even hold up against china, india, the american or the german model? >> which model?

i have given my opinion. i think that -- i don't know the answer to that, but i think that the united states has reached a point where the shareholder models that we have, which isn't really a shareholder model anymore, it doesn't work. something has to replace it. now we may come up with something new on our own but between the alternatives of an authoritarian model and a stakeholder model, ticket makes more sense to go to a stakeholder model so i think the european model has a lot. look at our problems now. we are in a recovery and we have more unemployment than ever. we have companies that have money stashed away and they aren't hiring workers. they downsized and they are keeping downsize. we have alternatives like siemens which is made this guarantee that workers are going to lose their jobs. a democratic society ought to be

opting for a corporate model that reflects the values of a democratic society in some way, so i just think if the alternative in the end, if the corporate model here is broken and can't he fix, and if the alternatives are east asia or central europe, you know, china or germany, how can we not be pushing for the german model? now, the other thing about the german model that i think is really important that i haven't talked about and didn't talk enough about in the book. if i could go back and write this book again i would make it much bigger point about this. is the whole notion of consumption. germans don't consume enough, etc., etc.. and the importance of not consuming, you know, in the years of head, and developing an economy that isn't going to waste and pillage their because

we are going to hit limits. the interest in germany about not just a stakeholder form of capitalism but in being green. the germans haven't solved these problems. they have injustice and inequality and all of that but the level of the debate about things like environmental constraints, corporate accountability are just way ahead of where we are in the united states. and while they have all sorts of of -- they are roiling with all the problems of globalization. at least the quality of debate there is a lot better, so i, i believe the answer to your question is that in some way i can't put my finger on it but i out of more kind of human optimism than anything else, that co-determination in some form or another will he, and export even across the atlantic.

>> then we have to rethink our we have to reeducate the political thinking here, away from a individualistic concept to a more social orientation. is that what i understand? >> well, you will never change individualism in america. we are always going to be individualistic but yes, and i think the democratic already has to change and the two things they have to do is realize how important it is to stop telling their base, which is largely high school graduates, they have no future just because they are high school graduates and figure out someway some way to give them a future and to adopt the kind of responsibility that the political class has in germany for making sure that the countries and running a huge deficit. i'm talking about a trade

deficit, not a budget deficit. to be a little more mercantilist and a little less blasé about whatever happens. >> and strike down the filibuster. >> and strike down the filibuster. >> a question? >> one more? >> it strikes me that what you are talking about in the german model is more cultural and you know value centered than any other political considerations or anything like that. that is just what is coming through and what you are saying, and the other thing i want to ask is i thought germany was having the big problem because their population doesn't spend money. is that not a problem? >> yes, that is regarded as a problem here in united states. >> it seems to me to be tied up in the whole model that you are talking about. >> it is tied up in the whole model. so your question, i understand it as the corporate model is really based on all of these cultural things.

i wrote the book for just the opposite reason. doesn't seem to be based on cultural things or at least i think the laws change the culture and that you know germany is a great example of the. so for example, look at communism in east germany. here they took the prussian character and you know tortugas. everything you've regard as west germans look on these germans now as a bunch of slackers, don't want to work in and this and that. these were the russians who used to terrify them. so, i really think that the whole point of what i was writing about, americans coming in after world war ii and putting in our system to a largely fascist culture and putting workers on the board and putting in all these new deal values change the culture they are tremendously, and the fact

that we lost unions at these new law deals were eviscerated change the culture here tremendously, so sure it is cultural but you can change the culture with a set of laws that you put in and as to their not consuming enough, you know i think that is really one of the fascinating things about germany that they are so prosperous without this excess consumption which drives everything in the united states. we can keep chewing up the countryside and engaging in the kind of waste and fraud and environmental pillage that we have as a way of propping up gdp. there must be another model and the fact that they don't consume so much is a good thing. why in the world should the west keep kind of supersizing itself and bloating itself up instead of doing what the germans are doing, which is selling to the developing countries, selling to the chinese, selling to the brazilians. let them have a stake in the world economy rather than us

just you now turning our kids into versions of prescience as they sit in front of the tv and load up. the west has to figure out a way to consume less and to maintain its economic standards in a way that brings up the standards of other people, and that is sort of one of the aspects of this german model, selling to the chinese, selling to brazilians, selling two developing com -- countries. if they have more money to buy german goods, that is the kind of model we should be looking at, one that talks about some restraint here while we let the people in other countries. is one of the things that interested me about the book. >> that seems to be a good ways to move to the discussion to the wind table. [applause] ..

>> in the mid 1990s. this is about an hour. c-span: richard holbrooke, where did you get the title of your book, "to end a war"? >> guest: well, we had a long argument with my publishers at random house about this. i don't know, their objection to the title was interesting because i came up with it a year ago. they had suggested a precarious peace, and i said that's not right. this is about a peace that's not going to work. so then they said, you know, if

war's resumed, we're going to look like fools. i said, it's not going to happen. it just came to me. it's an accurate description of what we did. c-span: what do people get in this book? >> guest: well, this is the story of how american diplomacy and military power and presidential leadership finally ended this war in bosnia. belatedly and reluctantly we got pulled in, but once we got in the fall of '95, it was decisive. this is a book for anyone who cares about american power, american leadership and how if we'd done it earlier, it would have been better, but how we finally did it. the core of the book, brian, is the 14 weeks from august of '95 through the date and negotiations that ended the war, but there is an important section in advance of that describing how we got there which was pretty sloppy. and then there are three chapters afterwards bringing the story right up-to-date including

the current crisis in kosovo. c-span: what was your actual title during that time -- >> guest: well, random house suggested -- c-span: i'm sorry, your title. >> guest: oh, i was the [laughter] assistant secretary of state for european and canadian affairs. i was also responsible for nato enlargement and a whole lot of other things, but increasingly bosnia was the monster that was consuming us all. c-span: and what years were you ambassador to germany? >> guest: i went to germany in fall '93 and came back in fall of '94 payoff the boss -- because of the bosnian crisis. when i was a young man, i worked for lyndon johnson at the johnson white house in '66. i was 25 can years old -- 25 years old. and then i wrote a volume of the pentagon papers which we were promised would never see the light of day and, obviously, became world famous for other reasons. and then when the negotiations

with the vietnamese, north vietnamese started in the spring of of 1968, 30 years ago at this time, the negotiators asked me to be a junior member of the team. that was for me a seminal experience. c-span: where did you grow up? >> guest: i'm a new yorker, native new yorker. c-span: the city? >> guest: i was born in new york, moved to scarsdale and on to brown university. c-span: what did you study at brown? >> guest: history. actually, i went there on a math/physics major and national merit scholarship, but i realized i wasn't going to be a nuclear physicist, i didn't have it, so i witched to -- switched to history and joined the foreign service right after graduating. c-span: you talk about a trip that you made over to the yugoslavian part of the world when you were about 19. >> guest: yeah, i hitchhiked

across yugoslavia when i was a sophomore in college. and i described that -- because that was the only time i'd been in the area until the war started. and i went to share jay slow -- share jay slow -- where the arch duke was assassinated and started world war i. and be i remember so vividly, brian, that a translator explained to us that the inscription said here struck the first blow for serbian liberty. and i thought, what is all this? i'm a college student, we're studying history, everyone knows that that started world war i. it's my first encounter with that kind of nationalism. and i always remembered that. when i finally got back to share jay slow 32 years later as a private citizen traveling for the international rescue

committee on a fact-finding trip and the war was on and the city was under attack, and i ran into john burns, the great new york times war correspondent who was a friend of mine from asia. and i said, john, could you show me these foot printses? and he laughed and said they've been blown up by the muslims. c-span: you say you're a descendant of east european jews. >> guest: yeah. c-span: what countries and when did they come to the united states? >> guest: well, my mother was born in germany and grew up in hamburg and left hamburg in the spring of 1933. and she never went back to germany even though she traveled all over the world until i became ambassador, 61 years later. and then she came back. it was very traumatic for her, and the germans treated her very well. and my father was born in a part

of the world which keeps shifting countries. sometimes it's poland, belarus, russia, the soviet union. but in that area. i think today it would probably be in belarus, but i'm not sure. and then my grandmother was a nurse with the czarist armies, and she started this westward track like so many other russian emigres from the chaos of bolshevism. and she went to warsaw and italy and paris and, finally, my parents separately ended up in new york in the '30s, and they met at international house at columbia university. it was just before the war engulfed europe, but it had nothing to do with them coming over together from the old country. it was a meeting of two refugee immigrants in new york. c-span: do you remember when you first got interested in the foreign service? >> guest: oh, precisely. i wanted to be a journalist when

i grew up, and i was, i was always interested in it. but i first heard about the foreign service from the father of one of my closest friends in high school, david rusk, whose father had just become secretary of state. and who thought this was a great and honorable profession. and dean rusk was a great figure in my life when i was a teenager. and so he always mentioned this. but i worked for "the new york times" two summers in a row out of college. i was the editor-in-chief of the brown daily herald. and at the -- and i applied for a job with the times when i was a senior. but the times didn't give me an immediate response, and i took the foreign service exam, and be i passed it. and they said, come on right in. so one month after i graduated from brown and two months after i turned 21, i was in the foreign service, and 11 months

later i was on my way to vietnam. c-span: what did you do in vietnam? >> guest: i was assigned to the provincial aid program. i was very young, 22, 23 years old in charge of the aid program, a very corrupt, very corrupt situation, quite a learning experience. i lived with the military, but i was not in the u.s. military. c-span: there were two things in the book that you said you once believed that you changed your mind on. i'm not sure i'm characterizing it right. you were against the bombing in north vietnam, but when it came time to need bombs over in bosnia, you'd changed your mind. tell us about those two experiences. >> guest: well, i want to be very clear on this, brian. i still think the bombing in north vietnam was a mistake. the whole war in vietnam was misconceived. what i said was there was great irony in the fact that having been on the dervish side in vietnam -- having thought that

what we were doing in vietnam didn't make any sense -- i found myself now leading the charge to use air power in bosnia. but i believed then and i believe now that you have to fit the situation to the circumstances, and the method to the moment. and in this situation in bosnia in the early 1990s we were facing a type of aggression which, if left unchecked, would destroy europe. it wasn't -- it didn't have the complicated roots of vietnam. i didn't buy this theory that ancient ethnic hatreds made it inevitable that as former secretary of state eagle berger said you have to let them kill each other until they're exhausted. and he really said that publicly, and i just thought that was wrong. and i felt that a very strong dose of military power would disperse these people. this wasn't the hardened viet cong or the north vietnamese. these were thugs, automobile

mechanics and farmers and school teachers who had taken up weapons and were just slaughtering their neighbors based on some kind of race hatred that had infected them. and and it could have been stopped much earlier, and we could have had a better deal than we got at dayton earlier at less cost of lives if the west had stepped in 1991, '92. that's why i advocated military power. and i recognize and i wrote a comment in the book as you pointed out about the irony of all this. c-span: by the way, when was dayton? >> guest: dayton was november 1st to november 21st, 1995. c-span: the second point that i wanted to bring up in here was at one point you say that you're a big fan of the u.n.'s, but at this point in this situation in bosnia, you said i don't want to negotiate through the u.n., i want to go our way. can you explain that? >> guest: the united nations --

i was brought up on the u.n. when i was a kid, my father took me down to the buildings that were riding on the east -- rising on the east river, and he said this is going to be the last best hope of mankind. he was a medical adviser to one of the delegations at the u.n., and i really believed in the it, and i still do. this made the failure of the early '90s all the more tragic to me. i thought pugh tres pugh tres galley was not doing the institution he headed justice, and i thought he was weakening it and making it vulnerable to attacks from its critics. i thought the bureaucracy was out of control and the system had collapsed. and this was at a cost of $5 million a day. and hundreds and hundreds, indeed, thousands of u.n. peace keepers were being killed and wounded, and they didn't have the right to fight back. and my two trips out there as a private citizen in '91 just enraged me about this u.n.

failure. i think it's easier to be, to enjoy your u.n. if one hates the u.n., but i cared about the u.n., i wanted to see it succeed. and its failure in bosnia was a disgrace both to itself and to the situation. so, meanwhile, you had the domestic political situation in the united states as you well know from your interviews. the republicans were skewering the u.n. they were threatening to cut off all funds. we were $1 billion in arrears in our payments and, i regret to say, still are. it was clear to the whole administration from president clinton on down that there was no chance that the u.n. could continue to play a serious role, that the thing was either going to collapse or the u.n. was going to have to be replaced. so it became clear not just to me, but to the president, to vice president gore, to secretary of of state christopher, to madeleine

albright who was then u.n. ambassador. we all agreed in order to save the u.n., we had to take bosnia away from the u.n. c-span: how would you characterize, if you can, your personal style of diplomacy? [laughter] what are some of the things that you always want to do -- >> guest: low key, quiet, modest, retiring, soft spoken. [laughter] c-span: it begs another question. [laughter] how do you, how do you approach it, say, based on what you learned from others, or what's your own code? >> >> guest: well, negotiations -- in the book i say that negotiating bosnia was like a combination of mountain climbing and chess. but i would offer to you a different metaphor which is not in the book, that negotiating is like jazz. you improvise around a theme. you know where you want to go, but you're not sure you're going to get there.

you may need to take a big detour, you may need to slow down, speed up, timing is critical. and my negotiating technique in this case was designed to match the circumstances. i got a reputation in some quarters through some newspaper accounts of screaming or yelling or being a wild man. that really was not true. the yelling, the so-called yelling may have happened once on twice but very rarely, and it was usually pretty deliberate because of the situation. but one needs to match one's style to the situation. and, oh, i spent most of my career in asia, as you know. and in asia you don't yell at chinese or koreans or japanese. it would be unconscionable, unacceptable and unproductive. when you're dealing with the people in the balkans, you have to be very tough. and one also need to remember in

any negotiation if one is negotiating at the head of a delegation, one is speaking not just for one's self, but for the whole nation. and this is a very heavy responsibility. it can fill one with pride, but it also requires one to behave in a certain way. c-span: you're, you say your wife and your son by, i guess, a previous marriage were both somehow directly involved in the negotiating or in the writing of this book. explain more about that. >> guest: well, my son, my younger son, anthony, was a refugee worker in thailand for the, for the irc, the same organization i had gone over for. and when the worst war crime committed in europe since world war ii -- and this was july of 1995 -- the president of the refugees international refugee organization, lionel rosenblatt, one of the most will i can't refugee officers i know and

whose picture is right there, yeah, he's the guy on the left there in the flak jacket, and i'm on the right, and we are on the road to share yea slow on the day before new year's, 1991. and lionel rosenblatt asked my son two and a half years later to fly from bangkok to bosnia to interview the refugees coming out of the -- fleeing through the forests away from the bosnian serbs to safety. so while this terrible tragedy in kosovo was taking place, anthony was calling me up telling me what he was hearing in these refugee accounts. as for my wife, her name is kati martin, she's been on c-span to discuss her own books, and we got married two months before

the negotiations started. she is born in budapest, her parents are very noted journalists who had themselves been victims of communism, jailed by the hungarian communists, covered the budapest uprising with great courage. and kati had written two books which were extremely important to me. there she is on the left in a very dramatic picture. that picture, i should explain, is taken at andrews air force base after we returned from our first tragic effort to reach sarajevo where three of my four colleagues were killed, and that is just as the caskets had been unloaded to the hearses. on the right is the deputy secretary, and you can see in the photo the strain on all our faces. that news, that photograph appeared in the newspapers in august of 1995.

in this any case, kati, kati wrote two books one on wallenberg and one on count bern edad each one of which celebrated the life and, i regret to say, deaths of two great swedes who had saved tens of thousands of refugees. and to do it they met with the worst people on earth, adolf eichmann, himler. and where kati's books were critical to us were as we prepared to meet the war criminals, we had to decide whether or not to meet with them. and i wiz was inspired by her books to realize that the thing to do is to meet with these terrible war criminals knowing that it's all right to meet with them if you can save people who are still alive.

it's not disrespectful of the dead. if wallenberg can meet with eichmann and save hundreds of thousands of jews, it seemed legitimate to meet with the two most wanted indicted war criminals in the world today -- they're still at large -- in order to save people in bosnia. so we did do that. and then kati flew out during the negotiations in bosnia. c-span: how did you meet her? >> guest: i met her long ago when she was married to someone else. and when her, when that marriage ended and she was unattached, i was in germany, but i always thought she was special and so as soon as i heard about it, i called and said let's get together, and we got together, and we've been together ever since. i'm very lucky. i could not have gotten through this dayton period without her

support. c-span: you mentioned her books, and i noticed -- i know you have a bibliography in the back -- but i kept writing down your reference to books including a point when you were going into the negotiations where you were passing out, i think, a chapter from jimmy carter's book regarding camp david. >> guest: that's right. exactly. c-span: what role and i can, you know, even mention some of them the, robert wrap land -- kaplan, harold nicholson, what role do books play in diplomacy? >> guest: well, there is a very interesting subject. an extremely interesting book was written by ernie may and richard new stead called thinking in time. i don't know if you're familiar with it, brian. where they make the charge that too many policymakers do not know enough about history. and i think that if one is involved in a negotiation like we were at dayton, one should study as many earlier

negotiations as possible to learn from them. and you're the first person i've talked to about this book who's picked up on my e case of other books, but you're absolutely right. i think that i don't see how one can do one's job -- at least in the government -- without a sense of who preceded them. and what happened at camp david, indeed, what happened at versailles in 1919 is directly relevant. and one learns from books. c-span: there's one here, and my french is not very good and i'll get to the page that i wanted to ask you about because i think it was talking about a fellow, i'm not sure i pronounced this right, it's bernard henri levy? a french philosopher who had a book. what was the purpose of this one? >> guest: first of all, we have to say that levy is a philosopher/rock and roll star. i mean this -- france is

>> guest: of efforts to get nato bombings started, one of the most critical passages in this all of american foreign policy since the end of the cold war was this today. and that night she gave a dinner party for us while we waited to see if nato and washington would start the bombing which we had strongly recommended. and we were jumping up and down getting up and down from the table all night long on the phone to washington, to brussels, to saw grab. and levy was there, and he witnessed it, and he wrote about it in an extremely witty and funny way about ambassador hairyman with her secret smile and her impeccable manners, this lunatic performance of this ambassador holbrooke who he'd never seen before who kept jumping up and down like making this general named wesley clark

who was dressed like he was a character in "full metal jacket," the stanley cue brick movie. clark today, by the way, is the nato commander. and he describes this in a very witty way, and i thought since it was one of the few times somebody saw us in action and he didn't know what we were doing, it was funny. so i just included it. c-span: how do you like being called a bulldozer diplomat? >> guest: he concludes the last sentence of that excerpt, i think, is the tipoff where he says that history will record that in these few hours it will be seen that, that -- c-span: page 100. >> guest: page -- yeah, i'm looking for the beginning of this chapter where -- c-span: oh, okay. >> guest: this is how he concludes the section. the time will come where those few hours, when those few hours will say much about war and peace in bosnia. the role that the united states

played in the outcome, the real importance of france and, perhaps, the world order that will reflect it. and, you know, i like levy, and he couldn't figure out what was going on. he said it was the rudest behavior he'd ever seen in the his life was what general clark and i did that day. but then afterwards he realized that what we were doing was trying to get the bombing started. c-span: speaking of books, it also occurred to me as i was reading it what if this man, richard holbrooke, wants to become future secretary of state or any other job in government at all? do you worry about this recruiting a vealing your techniques? -- revealing your techniques? >> guest: that really was not part of my consideration. i should state that a book like this must be cleared and approved by the u.s. government. this book was cleared by the state department and the white house. and i made changes at their request. so on the national security issue it's not my decision, it's

the collective decision of the government. on the issue you raise, you know, i mean, i don't think that, i don't think there's any relationship. i'm trying to tell a story for people so that they can understand how their country works in the postcold war era -- post-cold war era, and also having read many books on diplomacy and none of them conveyed the way it really felt, i wanted to give a feeling for what it's like to be inside a negotiation with all these physical events going on. not just dry diplomatic positions which are usually fakes anyway. c-span: back to the, you know, the pages. all the books, of all those books you quote throughout, you know, little quotes at the beginning of the chapters, harold nicholson's 1919, what's special about that book? >> guest: well, to me i read nicholson's week on versailles before -- during the paris peace talks on vietnam in 1968.

and he wrote in that that he wished somebody had kept a diary of the congress of vienna for him. so i thought, gosh, i'd like to do that. so when the opportunity arose, some of my friends -- professor at columbia, my agent -- all said, hey, you've got to write a book. i said, well, i'll dry, but i'll try to make it different, living, breathing history. not just dry diplomatic positions. c-span: one humorous anecdote, and it's way out of context of what we're talking about, is a man named me -- milosevic. who is he? >> guest: he's the president of yugoslavia. he is the man most people hold most accountable for starting the war, and he was essential to end it. and he remains the head of yugoslavia today. there he is on the left at

dayton. we are having drinks. and at that particular moment we're discussing the release of an american journalist, david rohde, who later won the pulitzer prize for the "christian science monitor". and i was telling milosevic as that picture was taking we're not going to move forward in the negotiations unless this journalist is released, and he's saying to me, you're not going to release -- you're going to hold up negotiations over one american journalist who entered our country illegally? and i said, that's the way our system works, and he couldn't believe it. milosevic has been described as both the arsonist and firefighter and -- in bosnia, and he's a very complicated man, very difficult. c-span: what i was getting at, the humorous story, you talk about going to a sports bar in dayton. >> guest: paki's all sports bar. c-span: and he was the only one

that wanted to go out? >> guest: yeah, he's a night owl. he likes late nights. tushman likes to sit around playing cards with his people, and milosevic went to paki's all sports bar. this was a bar at the conference center at the wright-patterson air base. there's, unfortunately, no picture of it in the book, but you have -- that's milosevic sitting there at a very critical moment in the negotiations. general clark is above him hunched over the map. c-span: that's you at the back? >> guest: well, that's me -- yeah, that's me. that's general clark. that is general caric with his back to us. there's milosevic. he's staring at a high-tech computer right off the screen. that is rudy perino, very senior diplomat who was with us, and we're trying to figure out a

route to the isolated eastern enclave right along that area. and we've got this high-tech computer screen. c-span: but the small story was, you know, you just tell about the waitress. >> guest: oh, waitress, yeah. helped our listening in dayton. she is a legend now. milosevic asked her what her name was, and he speaks excellent english, but he does the v and w transto vision. so when i went back out for the anniversary celebrations, i was proudly served by waitress wicki herself. i hope she's listening. the story that i think is most amusing perhaps to me in the whole book is the one with the french representative at dayton, jacques blow. can i mention this, brian, this story? c-span: sure. >> guest: the, you know, dayton

was extremely complicated. there were 800 people there and all these countries. and it was much more complicated than any comparable negotiation that anyone could think of. and although as you meanted on -- commented on i studied all the previous books, we didn't have much precedent to go by. so there's a lot of security out there. and the french, british, germans and russians were all there. the co-chairmen of the conference were the british, the european union and the russian. the french representative got extremely upset during the conference because early on in the conference the security dogs gave him a rather close inspection as he passed through the gates. and he got extremely upset at this. and he refused to attend some very important meetings that we were having. and he called me up and said, said that -- he said, i will not

be sniffed. because the dogs had sniffed him. and he said the not just him who had been insulted, it had been all of france. and from that point on he was, everyone always joke withed about how he -- joked how he had said he will not be sniffed. but things like that happen under tension. people were very, very -- the pressure was immense at dayton, and be people showed the strain from time to time. c-span: while you're on it just for a moment, the french come up in your book as being different throughout the book almost from every other delegation all the time. you even use so bell's excerpt from her book, longitude. >> guest: you like that one? c-span: yeah. that's the start of chapter 19. as a matter of fact, you might want to read it. chapter 19 is on page about 314, 35 -- 315? it's just -- and i want -- read it, if you don't mind, and then i'll ask you about the french.

>> guest: well, first let me say that this quote has nothing to do with bosnia. but it seemed to me to illustrate a core issue which is that the french always take a core position, what they would want to assert themselves. now, i have the greatest respect for the french. they were indispensable to success in bosnia, and this book makes clear how important president chirac was. but this incident which was over 100 years old seemed to me to prove the point, and it's on the book called "longitude." in 1884, the international meridian conference in washington represented some 26 nations voted to make the greenwich meridian the prime meridian of the world. in this decision did not sit well with the french, however, who continued to recognize their own paris observatory meridian as the starting point for another 27 years until 1911.

even then the french hesitated to refer directly to greenwich meantime preferring the locution. paris, meantime, repardon standarded -- retarded by 9:21. and, you know, it shows you that when people -- and washington people are always angry at the french. i don't feel that way. i think one has to accept the french for what they are, a great culture but one that doesn't want to recognize that the rest of the world might run on again itch meantime. c-span: i want to ask you, two things. i want you talk about the three colleagues you lost in a moment, but before we do that before i show a map, i do want to quote from your book. you quoted brent scowcroft who used to work for george bush -- >> guest: president bush's national security adviser. c-span: you said, and this is a quote, bush would say to me once a week, brent scowcroft's saying

this, tell me again what this is all about. which i read that after i'd gone through your book in this all these little details. did you find as you went through this people so confused about this they just threw up their hands b? they didn't understand it? >> guest: well, sure. it is incredibly confusing. most wars only have two sides. bosnia had three. c-span: here is one of the maps you have in the book. try to walk through a little bit so we can better understand what you were up against. >> guest: let's start first by looking at the area around it. there is austria, hungary, romania, greece, albania, italy and the adriatic. in the middle of this is what used to be yugoslavia, now broken up into four different areas, slovenia which seceded first in 1991 after a brief war, croatia which broke away at the end of '91 and had a brutal war

with serbia over its dissolution, the former jiewg slav republic of macedonia here on the north of greece which broke away without a war. they're the only part that became independent without a war. and today any ya herzegovina where the war which this book is primarily about took place although there's a lot here, also, about croatia. now, here is yugoslavia divided into serbia and be montenegro. and down here is kosovo, the area of the current headlines which is a province within serbia. now, when each of these areas broke away, the serbs said, shot on our watch, and they went to war to prevent it. claiming, by the way, the american civil war as one of their precedents. in each case they were really trying to protect the serb minorities in the other countries, the serb minority here in crow croatia and along s

area. and the serb minority which lived in this part of bosnia on the outer part. and in each case the international community recognized the breakaway republic for slovenia, croatia, then bosnia-herzegovina. the wars raged on with 300,000 kills and, finally, they gave up, but not before this -- the whole area -- had been shattered. and now in the post-dayton period we're trying to rebuild it, and we're making very real progress throughout the region with two exceptions. serbia itself is having a crackdown on the media which is unconscionable and is creating its own problems. month negative grow is -- montenegro is in the process of having its own arguments with serbia right now. and kosovo, the area that's been most in the headlines in the last few months, is having the beginning of its own war. so while croatia's over it and

bosnia's over it, we're still not done with this area. that's a pretty long explanation, and i apologize, but it is genuinely confusing, and i can understand, brian, why americans would say, i don't care about this area. but it does matter. c-span: and how many people live in all that area you were just talking about? >> guest: oh, boy. i think about 17 million. c-span: and how much money since you've been involved in this have americans spent? >> guest: i don't know the figure because a lot of the money floats through the international community through the u.n. but the current cost of the military deployments is about a billion and a half dollars a year. that's a lot of money but well worth it to keep the peace in the region because if you don't keep the peace, you end up paying more money just for refugees and reconstruction. and furthermore -- and i want to stress this -- no americans, no nato troops have been wounded or killed. c-span: this is about the 4 72nd book notes in the last nine

years. there's never been a book that i can remember in which an thousand had a dead -- author had a dedication where they showed pictures. and here as you open up the book there are three pictures. who are these three men, and why did you do it? >> guest: the book is dedicated to three cherished colleagues who did not reach dayton. joe cruisal, upper right, bob frazier, upper left, and nelson drew at the bottom. bob frazier was my deputy, joe was senior assistant secretary at the pentagon, and colonel drew was at the white house. they died in an armored personnel carrier that was directly behind my vehicle as we tried to get into share yea slow the first time. i was in a humvee in front of them with general clark. we had no business being on that road, brian. it was the most dangerous road in europe, and many people had died on it. it ran through enemy country,

indian country as bob frazier called it. and, but we couldn't get in any other way. the city was under attack. it was under mortar and artillery attack. so we set out after protesting to my milosevic that this was unconscionable we had to go in this way, we set out by helicopter and started in over this very dangerous id dangerous, narrow road. and we came around the corner, and french tanks were pulled up against the other side of the wall. and we went around the outside of that. and when our car got to the last french tank, somebody jumped out and started waving his hands. and we got out of our car which was armored, and he said to me in french the car behind you is missing, gone. it fell over. and we looked behind us, and the

armored personnel carrier wasn't there. general clark and i ran back, and we started down the mountain to look for the missing car and be explosions went with off everywhere, small arms fire, machine guns, two very loud explosions. and people started yelling mines, and we were pulled back up on the road. finally, after a terrible time with gunfire everywhere and rain coming down we began to realize how serious it was. and so they died, and we dedicated the rest of the mission to them. c-span: what impact did that have on the whole mission? >> guest: you know, these, these were very important, very senior government official. the senior monomouse mid levels -- anonymous mid levels of the government that make it work. and they were well known to everyone, including president clinton who came back from

jackson hole where he was vacationing to attend their memorial service. and their death pulled everyone in this washington together, focused us. the first americans to die over there. and we dedicated the rest of the mission to them. and when we were in the middle of dayton without any publicity at all, the press never knew about this, we brought out the three widows and the six children, and they spent a day out there. and we had a very emotional meeting in the main conference room in which i said to the children, you know, we wouldn't be here today if it weren't for your fathers. and last month, two month ago bob frazier's wife and i and the children went to estonia. frazier had been our first ambassador to the estonia. and can the estonians, who loved ambassador frazier, have established a memorial on his service, a lecture series. and i gave the speech in honor of ambassador frazier. and i think they will be long remembered in washington. c-span: by the way, what are you

doing now? >> guest: i am a vice chairman at a new york investment bank, credit suisse first boston. c-span: what do you think of that compared to your foreign service work? >> guest: well, i'm very happy. i'm living in the city i grew up in and i love, i'm with my wife, both my sons are there, they're both in television now as producers one for fox and one for cbs. i, credit suisse first boston is very supportive of me, and i enjoy the investment banking, and i continue to do things for the u.s. government on an ad hoc basis with the support of my colleagues at credit swiss first boston. c-span: wanted to ask you a couple of little questions, just things that i wrote down while reading it and get you to explain a little bit about it. you say in foreign service brilliant means arrogant. [laughter] >> guest: you read this book very carefully. sometimes brilliant is a code word for brilliant but difficult.

and i wasn't, i was referring to one of my most esteemed colleagues who is currently our ambassador in germany and was my deputy and successor and whose career was beginning to languish unright -- wrongly so. he was brilliant. and the foreign service, it's a great institution, and i have nothing but affection for it and pride in my past association with it. but sometimes it tends to reward conventional caution rather than some degree of creativity. c-span: you say that kofi annan in the united states' eyes went up and gali went down. >> guest: well, it was very lucky for us in all of 1995 that kofi annan was acting secretary general of the u.n., otherwise i don't know if we could have gotten the nato bombing started. and that bombing was essential. and kofi annan really won american support for the job he now holds as secretary general in that critical week.

and, again, many other things are happening besides bosnia in this book. the future of the u.n., russia which we had a whole separate negotiation with the russians. the russians had 200,000 troops under the american command in bosnia. nato enlargement could not have taken place. so a lot of things, including the kofi annan story, come to a head in this book. c-span: you say that you asked ron brown to make the trip to bosnia. >> guest: yeah. c-span: he wouldn't have been there without you? >> guest: well, i don't know about that, i'm just recounting the facts. i had the highest respect for ron brown. i thought he was a terrific person and a great commerce secretary, and we worked very closely together when i was in germany. in my farewell call on him in february of '96 before i left the government i said to him i felt economic reconstruction was the key to the future in boss ba

and would he consider taking the kind of trade mission he'd taken elsewhere? he said, if this is what the president and the secretary of state want, i'll do it immediately. so he took off on his tragic last trip. and i would note, also, brian, i've said several times in this discussion today that no american military had been killed in bosnia or even wounded. and we can be proud of that. but i would also point out that over 30 americans have died there, and they're all civilians. all serving their country in civilian capacities. c-span: ask you about the press. at one point you discuss in the book how the television yugoslavia created the hatred. what's the point there? >> guest: there is a longstanding theory that the war was the product of ancient hatreds. i don't agree with that. i believe that the war was caused by demagogues who gained

control of the media and carrying out the highest principles of people like going else, they turned the media into a vehicle for propaganda. if you will, the anti-c-span. the exact opposite. you just present events and let people judge. these people take footage, and they write false history. it's as though the ku klux klan and the most extreme elements are in control of the american media and constantly bombarding young people with a completely polluted and perverted view of history until finally you create enraged people who want to go out and kill their neighbors. it wasn't until october of last year after 16 months that nato finally took down the bosnian serb control of those transmitters and stopped this racial hatred that they were spewing out. and only then did the process begin to accelerate.

so i consider control of the media one of the most critical variables of the whole region, and there are huge lessons in this for the united states. in the post-cold war era, the freedom of information is incredibly important. incredibly. and i talk often about c-span over there as an example of what should exist in the world. unbiased media where people get information and can process it themselves. c-span: there was a point in august of '92 where you had your own video recorder, your own camera. [laughter] where was that and what were you doing? >> guest: cbs said take a camera with you on this private mission and see if you can get some footage, and we'll use it on a program with ed bradley called "street stories." but i was a total failure, nothing got on the air. it didn't work. c-span: all right. what impact did the media have on this country getting involved

in bosnia? >> guest: well, as you know from the book i'm a big fan of the american and international coverage in bosnia starting with christian am an pure of cnn who was extraordinarily good, john burns and roger cohen of the new york times, john at "the washington post" and many others, roy gutman of newsday. these men and women at great risk to themselves brought the reality of boss bosnia home to e world and prevented it from getting swept under the table. and i was always amused that the pentagon and other parts of washington in the early '90s were so angry at journalists like john burns and christiane am amanpour because these journalists were covering the truth, and washington was trying to obscure it. c-span: the president was giving you a little bit of a needle because you had a positive editorial written about you in

"the washington post." [laughter] i know, do you have to worry about that -- >> guest: no, no. he was saying how did you get that editorial? i never get that. this picture that -- this is the lower picture you're showing now, brian. this picture refers to the incident i mentioned earlier. this picture's in the back room at the chapel in arlington cemetery. and it's all here in this picture. the president has just finished addressing a heartbroken crowd of people who are, who are remembering bob, joe and nelson. and we're having a meeting, and the drama in this picture is that we're not sitting in the cabinet room in one of these trite arrangements. this is random. and everyone is in this picture. let me just go around the room quickly. a couple of people are just out of sight. there's the president and going clockwise, rather -- i don't know, clockwise, tony lake next to him; national security

adviser. general wes clark, now nato commander. this is leon first right under your hand there. if you move your right hand up, he's in the shadow. there he is. that's leon firth, vice president gore's national security adviser. leon panetta, secretary of state christopher, and can the person in charge of the kosovo negotiations now, then the man who had just joined the team. general caric, now president clinton's deputy national security adviser. then the nsc advicer. john deutsche, the cia directer. myself. jim par due, then a member of our negotiating team now in charge of a major part of the program in bosnia. madeleine albright and the chairman of the jcs. and sandy berger and talbot to their great regret as they've told me are just out of the picture. now, the reason i like this picture so much, brian, is that

very rarely does a photograph capture much of the drama of a government meeting because we're sitting around tables. but here you have an informal moment of incredible tension and drama. and they're all there in that picture, the team that ultimately ended the war in bosnia. c-span: tony lake was in the picture, and you describe in the book your friendship with tony lake. but also it seemed that from time to time you were at odds. >> guest: well -- c-span: who is he, first of all. >> guest: in the course -- tony lake was president clinton's national security adviser. in the course of a tension bureaucratic process, you degree and disagree with people on a regular basis. tony was important because he was in a critical position, and he is in the book a lot because of that and because he and i had been friends and colleagues for a very long time. and we disagreed sometimes, we agreed other times.

he was instrumental in this making sure that the -- in making sure that the talks took place in the united states at dayton. in that respect his support was critical. but on other issues we had some disagreements. c-span: who is this man standing with you in this picture, and why does he almost sound like an american when we see him on television? >> guest: this is the unite nationed ambassador, then the foreign minister. you can see ambassador pamela harriman standing between us and owen on the right, our legal adviser, a brilliant lawyer who was an indispensable part of our team. he was then foreign minister, he was brought up in the united states, worked, i think, for smith varney if i'm not mistaken before becoming ambassador, and he was a major figure at the talks. c-span: who other, who else did you meet that you found to be interesting as human beings in this whole process? >> guest: as human beings? gosh, you know, you really see people under tension.

you see how they perform. i think that the most interesting -- i think president chirac was one of the most interesting people that i dealt with. c-span: and you do say at one point over at blair house, he shed a tear -- >> guest: he at his own initiative gave medals to the fallen three americans. he pinned them on his, on the widows, and i saw the tear running down his cheek. i was very impressed with president chirac. i know that he takes a lot of criticism in france, but he kept pushing us and pushing us to come to terms. c-span: what about these two men? who are they? >> guest: the man on the left is carl built, the former swedish prime minister who was the co-chairman of the negotiating team at dayton. and the european union representative. this is the tenacious, absolutely determined, one might say ruthless leader of the bosnian muslims whose sheer

tenacity kept the bosnians alive. if it were not for him, i don't think bosnia would have survived. and he's remarkable. could we show the picture on the other side? this one, yeah. this picture is taken on the morning of october -- of november 31st. this is warren christopher with his back to the camera watching president clinton making the announcement on television from the rose garden. i'm there. and this is tom donlin, secretary christopher's chief of staff, who's an indispensable part of the process, a brilliant part of the team. c-span: how important are friendships like you mention quite often your friendship with talbot, the depp isty over at the state department. >> guest: well, they're very important. you know, you come to the government with prior relationships, sometimes they're forged in iron and they hold under tension. other times they crack apart. you sometimes find a person you

weren't close to that you become an ally of. i'll say one thing, brian, you do not know how people are from dinner tables as well as you find out about them when you're with them under the extraordinary tension that this kind of situation provokes. c-span: is there any other government job you want? >> guest: i've had a great career, and if i get another shot at public service in the next 20 years, i'd be grateful. if i don't, i'll be honored to have done this. c-span: what's the hardest part of writing this book? >> guest: my wife saying, get it over with so we can get on with the rest of our lives. and wait, and after you've done it waiting to see if people react. the initial reaction of the book has been so positive, and i cannot tell you what a pleasure that is. i also can tell you that i got a letter from president clinton, handwritten letter of congratulations on the book, and that meant an enormous amount to me. c-span: this is the cover of the

book, and the book and our author has been richard holbrooke. the title of this book is "to end a war," and we thank you very much, sir. >> guest: thank you, brian. >> to view this and other "booknotes" programs online, visit the web site at booknotes.org. the redesigned booknotes web site now features over 800 nonfiction authors. view the programs, see the transcripts and use the searchable database and find links to the authors' twitter feeds. booknotes.org with a brand new look and feel. a helpful research tool and a great way to watch and enjoy the authors and their books. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction books beginning every saturday at 8 a.m.. here's our prime time