i hope will be built, it took the trouble to write a book about the relationship between islam and america's ideas and it is true that glenn beck says that we should have sharia law in the united states because the things we have that already. but it is a profoundly dishonest. profoundly dishonest to misrepresent a mom in this way are not to imply that glenn bachus dishonest. [laughter] . .

>> i'm glad to say lots of figures are organized. discussion in this country, dialogue in this country. it goes to judges in synagogues all the time. he was there when danny pearl's funeral happened in the synagogue in his home; right? there are -- and he's an american muslim, by the way. he's one of us in that very important respect. i think that back to your question, i'm sorry, i got a bit

sidetracked there by my anxiety about this topic. i think there's something for us to be doing. which is to create the context in the productive dialogue. in that productive dialogue, we will learn as well as i hope change their minds. i was talking the other day and liu xiaobo. he's the got that got the peace prize the other day to an audience that includes some young chinese. they didn't agree with everything that i said, they were broadly supportive of liu xiaobo. in their response to me, they said we are glad to be in this country. we are studying this country. that's fine. we are not unhappy to be here. but we noticed that your constantly talking about the things that we're going wrong. turning us, the chinese is doing this and that. she said, this woman said, can we talk a bit about what you are doing in iraq and afghanistan? >> i said absolutely.

if we have these conversations, you would to tell us how it looks. as it happens about those things, i agree with you. i'm sure you are going to tell me about things i don't agree with you. they were more skeptical about the prospects of democracy in china than i am. i believe that roughly speaking all of the problems of democracy, i wish there are, of course, we can now see having done the experiment they are still there. they kept telling me, well, look the vast peasantry of china is ignore rat. the vast peasantry of united states is too. they are still entitled. to the extent that anything is vote for ignorance, it should give you the motive for informing themselves, since it's a rather big decision on who should run your state and

country. it turns out people don't invest in a lot for reasons that political scientists have written about. but they should. it has to be a dialogue and it has been to be respectful. then we can help each other. they will help us. we will help them. just one the other topic that i mentioned in the "washington post" piece, i think we are in this country kind of warehousing many old people. i grew up in a place where if you tried to warehouse old people, at least old people who have families, people would think you were a monster. so there's a place where the conversation, i think, would lead to, you know, where we have -- we here have a great deal to learn. it's a complicated matter. i don't mean they would just be able to tell us how to solve it and what to do. we would learn from dialogue about that. thank you. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you. >> kwame is an author at princeton. for more information visit his web site appiah.net. >> next charles kupchan speaks. he speaks at an event hosted by the naples council in naples, florida. this is just over an hour.

>> if you pick the newspaper, most newspapers, you'll find a story about war. these days there's probably iraq or afghanistan will make it on to the front page. if not both of those, maybe yemen or sai -- somalia, or pakistan, china. you name it. it'll be on the front panel. it's safe to say whether you pick up the local paper or "wall street journal." the headline is not going to be all quiet on the u.s. canadian border. if you pick up a newspaper in paris, it's not going to be all quiet on the franco-german boundary. it's self-evident why that's the

case. when peace breaks out, nothing happens. when war breaks out, lots happens. there's noise, there's emotion, there's color, everybody sends cameras and journalists. and so to come extent, it's reasonable that we pay a lot of attention to war and little attention to peace. obviously, people go to see movies spend $11.50 or whatever it is these days to see a movie about world war ii. but you are not going to pay $11.50 to see a movie today about the franco-german relationship because all you'd see if you had a camera at the border are some sheep grazing. and that's because that border long a sight of blood shed has lost it's relevance as a geopolitical boundary line. if we get in our cars tonight,

at 8:30 or quarter to 9:00, when we are done and we all head north in a big convoy and get to the u.s. canadian border, we'll find a few customs agent and passport controls. but you will not find the 82nd airborne. you will not find an armored decision. why? because canadians do not lay awake at night, thinking that we are about to invade. we don't lie awake at night thinking they are going to invade. why is that? in some ways it's much more profound observation that the fact that the taliban are fighting, the tajiks and some other ethnic groups and the american going after the taliban. because that's what happens since the beginning of time. and so what i want to discuss with you tonight is the other stuff.

those magical, all too rare moments in international history when peace breaks out. when nothing happens. when countries become so comfortable with each other that they demilitarize their relationship. they un -- they keep their bordered undefended. they let down their guard. they eliminate war as a legitimate tool of state craft. that's the puzzle. so i'd like to do and treat things in the next 30 minutes or so. one is tell you how i went about examining this puzzle. how and when peace breaks out. tell you the story i found. second, highlight for you what i think the most important con cushions of the study are. what did i find that you would want to take away tonight? and ruminate about that may affect the way that you think about want world and diplomacy moving forward? and then i want to end by saying a few things about president

obama and his engagement strategy. because his readiness to talk to the enemy was in some ways one the most distinguishing features of his presidential campaign and also of his time as president. reset with russia, reaching out to cuba, trying to negotiation with iran, trying to reach out to syria. this is an unusual foreign policy. so i want to offer some thoughts on how that outreach has gone and where it's likely to head in the months ahead. so for starters, i'm trying to answer this question when and why peace breaks out, i went back and i just read widely through history to find as many cases that i could where long standing rivals found their way to peace. where they moved from entity to antty. the earlier case i look at is

the foundation of switzerland in 1291. where three forests in the alpine region long enemies of each other formed what became the swiss confederation. i look at the formation of the indians in upstate new york which was born in 1450 in a small town that still exists today. when the tribes came together, they had been killing each other and eating each other literally from centuries, from 1450 to 1779, not is single tribesman died in battle with another. i look at the concert of europe, 1815 to 1853, a system that preserves peace among the great powers and on up to the present day. cases from latin america, frommed middle east, southeast asia, northeast asia spread the

net as widely as possible. to get different cultures at different times. some states, some nonstate actors, trying to figure out how these magical moments of peace occur. let me tell you what i found. and i'm going to tell you what i found by telling you the story of one particular case. and that is the case of the united states and great britain. a case which today we take for granted. the idea that somehow the u.s. and great britain for enemies. we have forgetten because we were partners in world war i, partners in world war ii, now we talk about the special relationship. but from 1700s when we broke away from the british empire through the war of 1812, when the british kindly burned down the white house, through the balance of the 19th century, breath tan -- britain was enemy

number one. in uk, america was enemy number one. at the time of the battleship, we kept our cruisers ready. we almost went to war on numerous occasions in the 19th century. everything starts to change in 1895. the precipitating event is a dispute that breaks out between british and venezuela over their border. you may say, what does that have to do with angelo-american relations? the united states, keep in mind in the 1990s, the u.s. is coming on as a great power, believing it should have a say in the world commence rate with the the -- commensurate with the economic power. this dispute between britain and venezuela is in the western

hemisphere. it's in our backyard. we believe we should have a role in this. we recommend that you take this to nuclear arbitration. and lord salisbury discussions this with his cabinet, sees this as the front to the pride of the britain empire and dispatches a note back to washington that basically says forget about it. at this point, there's talk of war in congress. there's a sense that the united states has been ashamed, has been embarrassed by this, there's talk of the british empire continuing to tread where it shouldn't be trespassing on american interests. and once talk of war is swirling in washington, the british cabinet reconvenes, lord salisbury calls in the admiralty, the royal navy and says what do we do? are you ready to go to war against the united states?

the admiralty goes away and looking at the disposition of forces and it sees a rising america. it sees a rising america, a rising japan, the boards are getting uppity. they go back to lord salisbury and they say we can't do this. there's no way we can go to war with the united states because we don't have enough battleships. we can only do this by exposing our positions in the north sea, in the mediterranean, and in the far east. we can't do it. the admiralty said to lord salisbury, if you can't fight them, turn them into a friend. and lord salisbury said this is an very interesting idea. he wrote a note to president cleveland. goes back to washington. this note said we've rethought this issue. and we've decided that you are right. we will take this to neutral

arbitration. and arthur balfur who was the leader in the house of commons, the united states has legitimately articulating the monroe doctrine in the western hemisphere. we brits recognizing the legitimacy of that claim. the americans don't know what's going on. here's the enemy telling them they are the western hemman. what happened is the american government correctly interpreted what the british were doing. they were engaging the enemy, they were attempting to return a relationship of empty into a relationship of amity. because washington understood, they reciprocated. and between 1896 and 1898, the

british and the americans traded dialogue, discourse, traded confessions over fishing rites in the sea, over america's right to build and fortify panama canal, which they were forbidden they said fine, go ahead, fortify it. in 1898 when they kicked the spanish out of cuba, colonized hawaii and the phil -- philippines, the british said or ray. the only great power to welcome their arrival as a player. at that point, the game switches from the realm of high politicians, the realm of diplomats, the realm of secret cables. i'll come back to it in the second, it was deliberately secret because the american government and british government were afraid if they

let out to the public they were making nice to the enemy that the opposition would come after them. they had to do this quietly. but after 1898 when there's this outpouring of british support, well known to americans for the arrival in the pacific, then societies start to get engaged. then travel picks up. then there are novels, magazines, the atlantic monthly, cecil rhodes, the rhodes scholarship, the first to nuture the angelo-saxon leaders. the ann -- angelo council is formed. they sing "the star spangled banner" and "british saved the queen" and fly the american and british flag side by side. this deepens the roots that the diplomat had carried out between

1895 and 1898. then the final stage of the process is a change in the dialogue, a change in the discourse, a change in the way that leaders talk about the other. and you see teddy roosevelt who by this time was president calling war between britain and the united states a civil war. and british counterparts similarly refer to war between the united states and great britain as photograph side. war against a brother. war within the family. it's that change in language, the sense that the british and the americans are united states and not them, that you will begin to see a stable peace settle in. and in 1902, britain removes the united states from the two-power standard, which is the standard that they used to size the royal navy. and in 1906, the last contingent of british regulars leave the canadian border never to return.

the u.s.-canada border was demilitarized from that time on. so that story, and initial bold gamut, a rapping of knuckles on the window to get the other side to pay attention to your willingness. to move the relationship from conflict to cooperation. a period of dialogue and putting your problems on the table and discussing them. society is getting involved more after that. and then this change in discourse. that's the basic story that i found more or less through all of the different 20 historical cases that i looked at. let me now touch ons second set of issues. that is what are some of the broader lessons of this story? what do i hope that you will chew over after you've left the

hall tonight? the first is in the big debate that takes place among scholars and among politicians, about whether engagement is appeasement or whether engagement is good diplomacy, i found that engagement in most cases is good diplomacy. there are some enemies with whom one should not engage. and those will enemies that you know to have maxalist, ideological ways to make the willingness out of the question. was chamberlain right to appease hitler in 1938? >>no. why? because hitler had demonstrated he had a predatory ambitious.

vis-a-vis his neighbors, vis-a-vis his jews. this is not someone with whom i think i can do business. should the united states engage al qaeda today? why? because al qaeda has made crystal clear they have a set of extremist goals and they want to do us harm. those are generally the extremes. that's the hard case. and in most other cases, engagement has at least a chance of working. that doesn't mean it always works. that doesn't mean that if we talk to r shar or iran or cuba or syria or burma or china that they will reciprocate. my findings do suggest that long standing rivalries engage and put their dispute on the stable and negotiation and not when one side coerces the other side into submission.

second take away. if there is a potion, a magic elixir, an ingredient that keeps repeering through all of the cases, it's the practice of the restraint. the willingness of the parties in question to give ground, to take two steps back. to tie a hand behind the back. to withhold power. and it can take many different forms. in the case of the british, it was backing down over the border between british and vern -- venezuela. in the case of norway and sweden, it is a willingness by both parties to dismantle forts on the frontier. in the case of brazil and argentina, it was a willingness to cooperate on the nuclear technology that we were beginning to develop. in the case of indonesia and malaysia, they backed away from

challenging the malaysia federation. restraints takes different forms, but it's important to sending the signal of benign intent that you mean the other party no harm. another interesting practice that i found, and this is more for groupings of countries and parodies of countries, is deconcentrating power. so, for example, one of the magical maneuvers that helps the united states consolidate as a zone of peace was putting the capital in a swamp. a location that i suffer from as a resident of washington, d.c. [laughter] >> why do i live in washington, d.c.? because it's the capital and because it's the only place that northerners and southerners could agree. which might have been in philly, it might have been boston, new york, maybe princeton, but no, somewhere right in between north and south.

neither commercial nor urban. why does europe today have it's capital split between brussels, strasburg, and -- same reason. because the protestants and the catholics wouldn't agree which section. so each got one. then the catholics couldn't agree this city or that city. so it moved. you had two capitals moving around the prod -- protestant and catholic in switzerland. it work. because nobody was afraid that a stable, permanent capital would create a balance of power that would threaten them. again, strategic restraint. withholding power. third take away, and this is quite surprising, or at least it surprised me going in.

regime type democracy doesn't seem to matter. i went into the project thinking that i would find that liberal democracies were great partners. very good at making peace. that's partly because we are led to believe we the politicians and scholars that democracies are specific, autocracies are warlike. i've found that autocracies can be reliable in concert of peace. the concert of europe was divided between britain and france, russia, prussia, ah tree -- australia. when britain and germany embarked on the path of peace, both countries were ruled by military hunters. when indonesia made peace with malaysia, it was governed by general mahartar, one the biggest thugs. but a peacemaker in southeast

asia. i think we make a mistake when we look out the world and we choose our enemyies. making peace, democracies and autocracies can get along just fine. we should not make the mistake of turning our back on relationships that might make the world a safer place just because we don't like the flavor of their government. third point, again, a surprise -- fourth point, a surprise to me. because we are led to believe that economic engagement is the lubrication for good diplomatic relations. i found that it's about diplomacy. it's the diplomacy stupid. it's the politics, stupid. it's not the economics. in only one of the 20 cases that i looked at did economic

integration clear the way for political regular -- reconciliation. that was germany in the 19th century. in all of the other cases, political reconciliation cleared the way for economic integration. in the absence of that political reconciliation, we can trade, we can invest, until we are blue in the face. but it's not going to have geopolitical consequence unless the politics are right. we can give money to subs and bosnias. and palestinian and israelly to farm together. if they disagree, the chain is politics first, then the trade seals the deal.

final observation. this will lead me into the closing event about obama. those who study diplomacy tend to spend a lot of time worries about international politics and not domestic politics. i found the studying the peace breaking out, good politic requires good politics. that making peace with an enemy is as difficult domestically as it is diplomatically. whenever they reach out, there are opponents at home ready to unsheave the knife and come after those who talk to the enemy. in the cases that i found where he failed, children -- china and the soviet union, senegal and egypt. it also always failed because the domestic i points --

domestic opponents at home who undermined the leaders. that means that as the diplomacy proceeds, leaders have to be very, very careful to make sure that they have the domestic support at home. because otherwise you may get mr. a and mr. b striking a deal, but as long as mr. a or mr. b is gone, there's no domestic constituency to keep the peace and the friendship moving forward. let me conclude by saying a few things about obama engagement and where we go from here. first, as you might guess, as someone who is in favor of engagement, i support obama's readiness to reach out to the adversary. i support his readiness to negotiate with russians. i support his readiness even to talk to iran, despite the fact

that regime is just about as odious as it gets. when peace breaks out, it usually does so because the parties come together and find their way out of the impasse. not because one side forces the other to back down through coercion. i think obama is right to try to set aside for now questions of democracy and nondemocracy and take a more pragmatic approach. if russia is ready to help us on iran, on afghanistan, on nuclear arms control, on conventional arms control, we should worm with them, despite the fact that we don't like the way that putin and medvedev governor. second observation is that i think that obama has generally gone a good job with his strategy. that is to say, it's done incrementally. he has made the first move and

now he waits for the others to reciprocate. it worked with russia. the russians are playing ball. it worked a little bit with cuba. some political prisoners have been let go. it hasn't worked at all with iran. that's why i think obama is connect to say the ball is in tehran's court. let's see if they are willing to resip pate -- reciprocate the gesture of goodwill. there are two places where i think he's less than in the strategy. too much on his plate. too many balls up in the air. and he hasn't done a good enough job where he wants to put his efforts.

spread himself thin. i think he has begin to realize the long hanging fruit is russia. if russia anchors itself in the atlantic community, that will be a strategy of engagement that will give him so wind in his sales. the other is i think he started off too intellectual and not political enough. giving speeches to russians in iranians and egyptians and only more recently has he begun to realize that politics is dirty. politics requires getting in the trenches, politics requires working the phones and cutting deals. i think his diplomacy has become more realistic in the second year than in the first. but nonetheless, still a bit too intellectual and idealistic and not enough hard core politics. final point, as i said, policy

-- good policy requires good politics. we are now at a moment in which the reset with russia, obama's engagement with russia, may well fall because the senate refuses to ratify the start treaty. the nuclear arms control agreement that is now before us. if that happens, if the treaty is rejected, it may well be this whole investment with the russians either stalls or starts going backwards. and that says to me a couple of things. one, obama needs to do a better job of making sure he has legislative strategy to back up the diplomatic strategy, and that probably means trying to get republican buy in. if it looks like some kind of dialogue that moves forward with iran, why not get james baker obvious -- baker or james joe

croft to get involved. >> finally, i think one the big threats to diplomacy overall is not the daily ups and downs of engagement, but the difficulty that we face as the country. if we are going to rise to the occasion and suited to difficulties of engaging adversaries and suited to deal with the world in which power is disfusing. we need to get our own house in order. our strength abroad depends number one on our economic vitality, and number two on our political will. both are lagging today. and both are lagging today in part because we live in a country that is more divided than it has been for over a century.

and i think in the aftermath of the midterms, obama has no choice but to tact to the center and try to cobble together governs coalitions of democrats and republicans. let's not be polyanish about it. it's going to be bloody difficult. and that's because the mm democratic -- the democratic party has lost a good portion of it's moderate consistency and has shifted to the left. the republican party just picked up a lot of votes. but there were many cases not centrist members, but further to the right. the republican party has gone this way. the democratic party that way. and the centrist voters left standing in the middle holding out the cup. obama will attack to the center, he will appeal to many americans who reside in the center, but he will have neither the republican party or the democratic party

behind him. neither party establishment today lives in the center of american politics. obama, therefore, is in a very difficult position. and so my final thought would be in a country where the parties are as far apart as they are, perhaps it behooves us, citizens, to rise up and say to our elected officials, we're going to put you in a room, we're going to lock the door, we're not sure we're going to give you food and water, we might because we're upset with you. we don't want you to come out until you have a good -- a consensus, a plan to bring down the deficit, to deal with social security, to deal with our problems abroad. because i think right now the political establishment isn't rising to the occasion. as i said, our strength abroad, our wisdom abroad starts at home. and unless we get the home front fixed up, we certainly are not

going to be able to meet the challenges that the country faces abroad. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. now we'll be happy to have questions. we have a microphone in the center aisle and the microphone in the aisle on this side. come forward and ask your questions. >> yes, i'd like to know your take on the recent wikileaks release as far as how it's affected relations throughout the world with our diplomatic relations. >> i think that the drove

documents that are now floating around in the public domain represent a serious breech of security. they embarrass the u.s. government because this shouldn't be happening. and they embarrass governments around the world because we have a people magazine of diplomatic tables. who said what to whom, who doesn't like whom? i don't believe that we will look back at this as a water shed, and that's because most of what we find in the cables, we already knew. we have more color, we have some details, but we don't have any bombshells. so i don't see this as a time at which the american ship of state is being knocked off course.

i see it as a time when president obama, secretary of state clinton, and others need to do a lot of damage repair. damage limitation. and they are doing it. they are getting out and they are trying to clean up the mess. but i don't see it as something that historians will look back at a grievous blow to american diplomacy. >> is there some way that you can teach from international relationships the same type of message that you are giving so that peace could break out within the united states? [laughter] >> because -- because -- because, you know, we about a month ago or two months ago heard there's sort of a revival, perhaps, of the whig party, representing a center group. because right now people in the

center have no place to go. that's not just to people in this room. it's the congress people. they have no center. perhaps for international relations, we need a leader, someone who can define the center and be a statesman as opposed to a politician. i'd like your thoughts. >> very good question. and i think an urgent question. i think there are sort of two ways to come at it. one is to suggest that this might be a moment when a dark horse third party candidate could actually survive in american politics. because as i said, and i think as you agree from the trust of your question, there are many

americans and i'll put myself in this boat, who feel like we are more or less in the big center of american politics, but that are political system has veered to the extremes and so we're sort of out there in a life raft. and i'm not quite sure which direction to head in. and so you could think about a third party candidate as really being able to ride that wave of voters that feels that it doesn't have a home. i'm a little skeptical that that's going to happen, simply because it is so difficult for a third party to get traction. and part of the season is that the party system has locked up the financial structure. you know, we live in a world like it or not, in which campaign finance is the pathway to getting elected. and those campaign finance system is deeply entrenched in the democratic and republican party. so it's very hard for a third party candidate to get his or

her ore in the water. the other would be to find someone from the republican party or from the democratic party who just calls it quits to the war. who rises above the bile and who says i will make it my business to govern and to fashion a consensus because the american people deserve no less. you know, i think obama apyred to be that american as a candidate. that's the message that we sent when he said this is not red america, this is not blue america, this is the united states of america. he got into office and i think he found it extremely difficult to realize that potential. but i do think that we need a states person of extraordinary potential at this time. because as i said, i think that the challenges that we face

right now are every bit as severe as they were in world war ii or in dealing with the soviet union or the missile gap or whatever it was. but we don't have a political system at least now that is capable of rising to the occasion as we did earlier. and i see it as an urgent national task to fix that political system, otherwise, i think, we are going to be in trouble. >> i'd be interested many your thoughts on the boundary between the united states and mexico. two countries on which the surface would be appear to be very friendly if you look at the cultures that both embrace, but tremendous tensions between the drug and immigration. is there anything that your studies might reveal that would help untangle that situation? >> well, one of the things that i found in the research, i

didn't speak that much about. cultural commonality and similar social orders help deepen peace. the fact that the u.s. found a peaceful border with canada before it found a peaceful border with mexico should not be surprising. because there's greater similarity north than there is south. and the same argument applies to norway and sweden and many of the other cases that i look at. you can you build peace across social and cultural boundaries. it's just harder to do. because the underlying natural glue and affinity is harder to come by. i think the u.s. and mexico have succeeded in reaching a stable peace. our border between canada and mexico is guarded. but it's guarded because of drugs and immigration. it's not because we are fearful of mexico geopolitically or vice

versa. mexico rail about the history of american intervention. but there are no mexican troops waiting for an american invasion, it's not going to happen. and so the trick now is really twofold. one, finding some way to help mexico get control of its gang and drug ridden culture or system in the north. and the second is to -- and this comes back @ previous question, get democrats and republicans to come together and fashion a serious immigration bill. probably some combination of tightening the border controls and dealing with immigrants who are already here. but finding that compromise is at least for now one the casualties of a political system where the two parties continue to move further apart. >> as we deal with the difficult

nations, could you talk a little bit about a unilateral approach versus a multinational approach? >> any particular countries in mind? >> well, i think there was criticism of us initially when we tried to do things supposedly under bush with north korea. and it was a unilateral approach. then we try the multinational approach and neither ones seems to have been very effective. i'd like to know your views as to which approach you think would be most affective generally. >> well, i think that the -- the united states has recovered a certain legitimacy and popularity abroad that it lost during the first bush administration, but actual he recovered during the second bush administration. i mean george w., not george

w.h. and there was a significant between george w. and george w.h. bush's term. on the unilateral and multilateral dimension and obama has to some extent continued the multilateral tradition. i think in negotiating with toughies, north korea, iran, we need a combination of unilateral and multilateral. you need the multilateral because you need other countries to be part of the equation. so, for example, iran, if we are going to have a carrot in a stick, the carrot being engagement, the stick being isolation and sanctions, we need the international community to stand with us. in general, we've got them. the sanks -- sanctions that the u.s., the russians, europeans are biting in iran in a way they

haven't. you also need the unilateral. at the end of the day, tehran is scared of the united states. china is scared of the united states. if there's going to be an issue, that requires an understanding between the united states and the government of iran and north korea that deals with their security issues. that can come only from washington. it can't come from brussels or moscow or anywhere else. that's why i think you need the multilateral and unilateral to be working hand in hand. >> you mention the number four or five factors that are very important for peace to break out. and i was wondering whether you would be -- whether you would comment on what's happening in europe. which of those factors that you

mentioned have been your viewer specially responsible for peace to break out in europe and where do you see our weaknesses, in other words, what do you expect of europe in the future in terms of further integration? >> well, i think that this story of european integration and of peace deepening it's routes after world war ii was a product of that same kind of story that i told. fundamental understanding between france and germany where they settled their disputes and they began to bind one another to each other. through the european coal and steel community, through confessions over border issues. by restraining their power and therefore making the smaller states of europe comfortable with joining the union. so i think in many respects with the the european project is

every bit as profound as the american project. nitting together the union. i worry more about europe than i have at any point since i entered this profession. and that's because i think the european project has begun to stumble in a way that is perhaps irreversible. and it's not the euros so much that i worry about. i don't think the euro is going to disappear. it's conceivable that ireland, greece, or larger economy could temporarily drop out of the euro zone. i don't think the euro itself will come apart. i think what we are seeing underneath the surface is a renationalization of european politics. politics drifting from brussels back down to national capitals. the collective spirit of the

european enterprise, i think, is at jeopardy. here in the united states, you know, we move from a stronger federal government back to the states and then from the states to the federal government. but it's always within a certain band. europe hasn't made it past the point of no return. it is not yet a union that is deep enough to withstand a serious reversal. i would simply say the jury is out as to whether this pause in the european project is just yet another period of second guessing, soon to be replaced by the next step towards deeper union, or whether we are actually witnessing the high water mark of europe. and in the clears ahead, we will see europe begin to cycle in reverse. i think it would be a problem if that happens. i think the united states

desperately needs a collective europe as a partner. but unfortunately, the united states has very little ability to affect this process of renationalization that's taking place in europe. >> we are going to take two more questions. first from tom dyckman, then from the gentleman in the center. >> the process that you has been talking about typically takes a good deal of time and a lot of hard work. we seem to be faced right now with some very serious problems that don't have that time to deal with, in particular i'm thinking of north korea. what are your suggestions, how would you handle the situation that we face now that's becoming extremely serious in that part of the world? >> i think you are spot on to refer to the timing issue. and it has two different dimensions. one is the ability of time to

work to our adversaries advantage. particularly in a country like iran which minute by minute, day by day, gets closer to being able to enrich uranium to weapons grade. and the time cuts against us at home in the sense that political time is today measured in seconds and minutes. because of the 24 hour news cycle, because of the internet, it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. to pull off a serious episode with an adversary takes five to ten years. five to ten years is a century in political time today. wasn't an 1895. pause time moved more slowly become then. and that's why i think it's so important for obama or whomever is leading this effort to worry about the domestic landscape.

because you need to be able to carry political support for something that takes a very long time. on the substance of dealing with north korea and iran, i think we really don't have much choice but to take this two-pronged approach. the threat of containment with north korea and isolation, coupled with a willingness to talk and to normalize if they are willing to get rid of their nuclear program in a verifiable way. with iran, i think the same would apply. i think there are -- many of you maybe saying why are we talking to this regime? this is a mistake. the bottom line if we don't talk to them, we don't we will not get a diplomatic solution. if we don't, there are two potential outcomes.

one potential outcome is an iran that has a nuclear weapon. that to my mind is ugly, unattractive outcome. the second outcome is an american bombing campaign against iran that will probably last several weeks and will lead to who knows what. that in my mind is also a very bad outcome. and that's why i would sit and leave the door open to dialogue with iran until the 12th hour. and that's because the consequences of diplomatic failure are sufficiently awful to warrant the dialogue. >> yes, sir? >> i, like you, are concerned about the extremes of our two-party system. if i may, i'd like to put you in a time capsule and send you back to the deliberations of the constitution. with your knowledge, what would you -- what changes would you have made vis-a-vis limited term limits, the english system of

limited amount of money on election campaigns, et cetera? would there have been something, a change that might aavoided this? >> i think that the -- the constitution and the structure of the american government was predicated upon a different political ethic. it was predicated upon a kind of deliberative democratic in which there was a sense that people would as a matter of course put the interests of the nation before the interests of the party or the interests of the politician. and in that sense, the constitution is today operating in a very different political environment than the one that was envisioned by the founding fathers. i think that -- there are multiple causes of the erosion

of civility and the erosion of centrism in american politics. one of them, you eluded to it, is the money. congress, people spend an enormous amount of the time raising money. in the american politics, the centrist, reasonably, generally nice voter doesn't have as much influence as the single special interest group that is funding candidates. so what happens is that the squeezy wheels were getting hurt and voters who want to do their job is fish on the grill are getting heard because they are not playing that game. the game in which fund raising has become so critical to winning elective office. the second problem has been the

re -- the congressional restricting. where districting have been drawn to be generally political homogenius. if you run for office, if 90% is republican, you have no incentive to either govern or campaign to the center. :