tv U.S. Senate CSPAN April 2, 2012 12:00pm-5:00pm EDT
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and discussions and using internet. and give the government new enforcement powers. the plan also calls on the commerce department to work with private industry and the new rules. the main speaker today is going to be white house deputy chief technology officer, daniel weitzner. [inaudible conversations]
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mouth that a plan to two-pronged approach to on line privacy. it calls on congress to pass a consumer privacy bill of rights while putting the onus on companies like facebook as well as privacy watchdogs to forge new data handling rules. now this report was released thursday, released thursday and it reflects the white house's support for a new law that would spell out how consumers personal information can be collected, stored and used in some of that information has wound up making companies finding themselves in a situation of mishandling users data. the administration putting at least as much emphasis on his proposal for internet companies to lead the way on codes of conduct that the politico reports says withdraw greatly from the rights and protections that the white house wants to codify. rules that even lawmakers dunn could still be important by federal lawmakers.
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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> while we are waiting for the congressional internet caucus advisory committee to get started, it probably should be a few more minutes. we want to let you know there is live coverage coming up on the c-span networks at about 1:15. president obama's going to hold a joint news conference with canadian prime minister
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stephen -- stephen harper. the leaders are meeting is part of the north american leaders summit and that will be live at the white house rose garden, a gannett 1:15 eastern. you can watch it on our companion network c-span. and the canadian prime minister will head to the woodrow wilson center later this afternoon to talk about u.s. canadian relations. former congresswoman jane harman the president and ceo will moderate the discussion. that will be live here in and c-span2 at 4:00 eastern. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]
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[inaudible conversations] >> welcome everybody. thank you so much for coming. i appreciate it. i am the executive director for the congressional caucus advisory committee and today we have a briefing by the white house on their proposal on privacy and the digital age called consumer data privacy in a network world. we are very fortunate to have the deputy chief technology officer from the white house here, presenting this breathing. his name is danny weitzner and we are thrilled to have him. this is part of a three-part privacy series we are doing on government proposals for privacy and in this really important digital area. several weeks ago we have the director general justice of the european commission here to brief the congressional staff on their data directive, which has been in effect for the past 50 years but they have an update that they will brief the
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congressional staff on. we have the audio on our web site, the european commission opposing this update to their private regime and frankly many many many u.s. companies applied basically by the framework established by the european commission just because of the data across "the atlantic." the second one is today's briefing and in a few weeks we hope to have the federal trade commission, commissioner julie brill brief staff on their privacy, what privacy framework report that they released a couple of weeks ago so hopefully these three together are enter meshed and part of the same construct a privacy and frankly they all have implications for congress. so i'm going i am going to open it up for danny to explain what the white house is proposing but this breathing and a series of briefings is hosted by the congressional internet caucus advisory committee in conjunction with the members of the internet caucus and we appreciate our chairs, senators said in leahy on the senate side
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and congressman goodlatte and eshoo on the house sites to let me just briefly say that the white house issued its report on february 23 on white paper and follow their green paper they have been working on for quite a long time. it's not fair to say that this is a proposal for congressional legislation. it's in them dishes project that seeks to convene this multi-stakeholder process among industry consumer groups and others to provide a framework for privacy but in fairness it does just certain privacy laws enacted by congress and i would link you to the report which is on our web site report and we are being green. we also link to it from her recent tweet back caucus acc can go to twitter and find a report there in pdf. but i would direct your attention to part five, which is enacting consumer data privacy legislation, what congress will have to do to enact this
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legislation. we really think it's very important that the white house proposal be discussed at length up here and we are happy to provide this format, so let me introduce danny weitzner who is the deputy chief technology officer for internet policy in the office of the white house. prior to this he worked at m.i.t. and also taught at m.i.t. and before that he worked at world wide web consortium which is the governing body for web standards across the internet. before that, danny was co-founder of the center for democracy and technology and that organization actually wrote the blueprint for the congressional internet caucus advisory committee briefing program so we are appreciative of danny's roland and before that he was with the electronic frontier foundation so with that, let me introduce danny weitzner. [applause] >> thank you, tim. thank's to everyone. let me add my appreciation to the co-chairs of the internet caucus, senators leahy and thune and representatives goodlatte
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and eshoo. it's great to see many of you here our colleagues from the hill, colleagues from the ftc from different departments, from the press. it's certainly been a very broad privacy discussion. it was very clear to us from the beginning that we really needed to take on these questions of consumer privacy protection, not only because of how important privacy is as an american value but also because many of our key initiatives, many of the priorities we came in with as administration whether his health care reform or environmental conservation or education reform, all depended in important ways on innovative and sometimes unexpected or an familiar uses of personal information. so we really wanted to make sure
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that we had a strong privacy framework across the wide range of sectors. i want to really start from ground zero if you will on privacy. when we announced this consumer privacy bill of rights and as tim noted there was a -- on our web site at whitehouse.gov as well as the internet caucus site. we started with the very basic foundation that government has always had a critical role in establishing trust and establishing trust in marketplaces. whether it's the creation of currency or establishing consumer protection laws or fair competition laws, trade laws, what have you, we have always depended on government to create a baseline of trust so that margins can grow. the internet is no different in that sense. we need a strong government role to make sure that consumers are
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comfortable in the on line environment and they are comparable with new technologies and importantly that innovators can continue to innovate and develop new services and new products based on what is an increasingly intensive use of personal information. we regard this as a positive development, not something to be feared but something to be addressed in a very straightforward way. while it is the case that we believe that government has a vital role in establishing trust, we actually think the way that role is executed has to be thought of in a somewhat different manner when we are operating in the internet environment. as they think you all know very well, the technologies in the business models associated with the internet and other digital technologies are evolving quite rapidly and we want to make sure privacy protections for consumers can keep up with that rapid evolution and a way that the innovation can continue to happen. we want to make sure that this does is have a very clear sense of what their obligations and
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expectations are as these new technologies develop. so we have proposed what is really a four-part blueprint that i want to talk you through very quickly and then i'm hoping you will ask me a lot of questions. in the roughly month since we have released this report, we have had the opportunity to come out and talk with a lot of different organizations and talk in a lot of different venues about what our proposals are. the house at a hearing last week which we were happy to be able to participate in, but at this point, i am hoping you will have a lot of questions because i have been giving this speech for about a month. so, but here we go. we have got four key components for blueprint. the first is the consumer privacy bill of rights. these are a set of seven substantive privacy rights that we believe consumers are entitled to and businesses ought to make available. secondly, we proposed a process
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by which we believe we can implement this super privacy bill of rights in a fast-paced manner and a flexible manner to make sure that as new businesses and new services develop, they are respecting those privacy principles and third, we have put out a general roadmap for legislation that we would like to say we have not come forward at this point with an administration bill. we are looking very much looking forward to working with congress to work with all of you, to take the consumer privacy bill of rights and enacted into statute. we think it's important to do that and we think it's time to do that and we are eager to have that happen. and forth, we proposed a framework by which we think we can increase what we refer to as global interoperability of privacy regulatory framework all around the world. i will talk about that if he and. these are all connected but let me step through them briefly. number one, we introduce this
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consumer privacy bill of rights. it has seven principles. i'm going to talk about a couple of them that are distinctive but let me just say right off that for us the privacy bill of rights really does double duty. as tim mentioned, we are going to begin right away. we have begun already to start a process working with industry, with the privacy advocates, with regulators, with academic experts and other consumer organizations to take the consumer bill of rights, the principles we have expressed in those principles, and implement them into what we call enforceable codes of conduct. that is, specific rules that companies or whole industries will take on that will be developed in a multi-stakeholder process for consultation with all the groups that i mentioned and that would be enforceable by the federal trade commission. that is part one of the consumer privacy bill of rights. part two, as they said we would like to see these rights enacted
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in statute so that they are enforceable directly at the federal trade commission. i will talk a little bit more about what that framework would look like but let me just highlight three of the elements of the consumer privacy bill of rights that i think we'll will give you a flavor for where we are headed. i will say at the outset that the consumer privacy bill of rights are a set of principles that are based very much on the well-established, fair information practice traceable. those of you who are privacy geeks know about the fifth. you know they were developed in the united states in the late sixties and really culminated in the early 70s and 1973 report on privacy connections put out by the department of health, education and welfare. they became the basis for the privacy act and really are the basis for privacy laws that are inactive in the u.s., all around the world in different countries and are expressed in the oecd's
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1980 privacy guidelines so these information practice principles really are the gold standard for privacy protection. we wanted to do two things with these pips. number one we didn't want to take this any more. number two, that was three things. number one we wanted to make sure these are accessible and understandable to consumers that they are laid a clear set of rights and expectations that consumers ought to have a number two, we want to make sure that these rights again, based on the fair information practice principle are tuned to both the challenges and the opportunities of the internet environment, that they take advantage of the fact that we are in a much more interactive environment, that individuals can exercise control in many cases over their personal information if technologies are designed the right way, but also obviously there is quite a bit of collection information and quite
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a bit of flow of information and they want to encourage that, but without creating undue privacy problems. so let me talk about the three principles that i think shows most the direction that we think is important to have. the first principle, the principle that we call individual control. consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it. it's a very simple basic principle. i think that, and it is meant in some ways to draw a contrast between the privacy challenges that we have faced in the past in many ways in which personal information collected would get something from a database run by someone, you don't know who it is, and really is left beyond the control of the individual. we want to cleanse -- restore control to the individual to make sure as consumers are interacting with entities that use their personal information,
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that consumers are able to make clear choices to exercise clear control. we think that much of the work that the federal trade commission has done with the world wide web consortium and the "do not track" technology's, is a very good example of how this principle of individual control can be realized. the second principle i will highlight which is principle number three, is the principle we call respect for content. and i will say, for those of you again who are privacy geeks in the round, respect for content is meant to combine the traditional principles of specification, that is supposed in traditional privacy practice by which anyone who collects information about an individual ought to say what they are going to do with it as a reasonable principle and secondly the principle of use its limitation that when information is collected there ought to be some limits expressed about how it will be used in how it won't be
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used. so, we have combined these in what we call the respect for context principle, which says consumers have a right to expect companies will collect, use and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide that data. this is really the principle that is meant to account for the fact that on the one hand we have have had to mend his innovation and tremendous opportunities for users based on a much more free flow of personal information. think about social networks, the hundreds of millions of people around the world who are able to exchange information in all kinds of ways which they clearly find valuable. but think also about the downside that has been articulated in some cases about the social networking environment that may be an interaction that you thought you were having with your friends, and whichever social network you choose, would all of a sudden be used in a totally different context. it would be used for example by a prospective employer to decide whether to hire you, perhaps
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based on how you appeared in a photo that you didn't really think of as exactly professional or that a company that was considering extending your credit or offering you health insurance might actually use information that again you thought was really present, being used in the social networking context and all of a sudden for a very important significant decision about your life. we wanted to draw a very clear distinction between these two contexts and state very clearly that this information is going to be taken from one context and moves to a materially different context that the other principles we have, for example the individual control principle, ought to kick in to -- so individuals would have some control over the fact that context was changing. and i will say that this principle in particular, we developed based on looking very carefully at the federal trade commission's report, the report that they issued, the staff
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report that was issued in 2010, which talked a lot about material changes in user personal information which on the one hand tried to make it -- reduce the barriers for the constant notice and choice mechanisms that some come panisse have felt might be required to keep getting asked questions and is this okay and is that okay and is the other thing okay? i think we all recognize that those kinds of overuse of notice and choice, perhaps in desire to be compliant with some understanding of privacy really aren't all that useful of individuals, but when they use is really going to be different when the context is really going to be different, some other steps up to be taken. we learned from the ftc report and i think if you look at their final report just issued a couple of weeks ago, you will see quite a bit of difference between our thinking for the
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context principle and they're thinking about how to evolve these ideas of individual control. the third principle i will point out is an accountability principle and it says very simply that consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to ensure that they adhere to the consumer privacy bill of rights. this means that even in advance of legislation, even in advance of a point at which all companies might be subject to these sets of privacy rules, what we want to make sure is that any company that handles personal information is careful, internally about how it handles that information and that there is a point of both legal and customer accountability, that if a consumer wants to know how their information can be used and they have some complaint, that they have a place to go in that company to state that complaint. this is a particularly important principle for us in the global context. i think you are all very well
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aware that many of the services that people use on the internet all around the world are provided by companies that might not be in the same country that individual user is actually sitting in a given moment. this causes i think considerable and legitimate questions for consumer protection and privacy regulators and enforces all around the world. they want to make sure that they are able to protect their citizens, that if their citizens have a complaint about the privacy practices of some service on the internet, that they have a way to help vindicate the rights of their citizens as a basic obligation for any government. what we want to make sure though is, as we have services that are increasingly provided on a global basis, that we have, that there is a streamlined mechanism to handle that kind of accountability and responses to both the consumers and to regulatory enforcement authorities as appropriate and i will come back to the global story in just a moment.
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so, the second major element of our privacy blueprint is a call to the industry tried to see advocates, other consumer advocates, academics, regulators that come together in what we have characterized as a multi-stakeholder process, to take these very broad principles in the consumer privacy bill of rights and implement them in enforceable codes of conduct. so what do i mean when i say first what i mean by enforceable code of conduct. that would mean a specific articulation of how these consumer privacy's and consumer rights would be respected in the case of a given company or perhaps a given industry. and that is obviously going to be somewhat more specific and more tangible particular context or a particular technology or service involved. it would be a privacy policy that would be articulated in
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many of the same ways that you see companies today place privacy policies on their web sites, and we know from the enforcement activities that have gone on in the federal trade commission over the last two years that if the company says it's going to do one thing and then handles personal information in a way that is significantly different, those initial promises, that they are going to hear from the federal trade commission. we have had meetings, u.s. companies now, being subject to consent decrees, 20 years of monitoring of their privacy practices and the possibility of significant fines if they violate their privacy commitments again. we right away wanted to take advantage of the fact that we have such a strong privacy enforcement authority in the federal trade commission, and be able to bring together a number of different stakeholders to actually begin to implement these principles right away in enforceable codes of conduct.
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the ntia, the national intelligence and information administration at the commerce department which is the president's adviser on telecommunications and information policy issues, and i think it actually closes today soliciting public input on what issues this multi-stakeholder process should start to look at and how to run the process so i think you can expect in the next couple of months, you'll be hearing from ntia about how those efforts will be handled. let me stress though that in our privacy blueprint, the government, ntia here, really is the convener, not the regulator or the decider about what privacy policies ought to be. we are looking to ntia to make sure that there is a thoughtful discussion about how to implement the consumer privacy bill of rights in a specific context, looking to make sure that there is a fair and open
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health information or financial privacy, we have lots of good privacy protection laws. we have an outstanding privacy protection enforcement authority but we have a pretty significant gap where there is actually no stat story privacy protection for consumers in the realm of general consumer, general commercial interactions. this is more or less everything that falls within the scope of the federal trade commission act section 5 authority. if the ftc find that a company has broken its promise in that context they obviously can begin an enforcement action, however, companies aren't obliged to make any particular privacy promises at all. that is a gap we want to close. we need your help to close. that you actually have to take the initiative to close. we do have a view about what kind of privacy legislation we'd like to see in this
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arena. we stated, number one, the substantive protections we think ought to be in statute. those are the seven principles in the consumer privacy bill of rights. we also have a view about how these protections should be implemented. we think that the multistakeholder process, especially with legislation as a backstop with these privacy protections in law as a backstop can actually develop rules, develop new privacy practices much more rapidly than a traditional apa-style rule making process. so what we would like to see is for legislation to provide a safe harbor framework within which companies would on the one hand be held accountable to the seven principles in the consumer privacy bill of rights but would be able to go to the federal trade commission and seek safe harbor approval of their implementation of the consumer privacy bill of rights and essentially get a yes or no, up or down answer
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from the ftc whether that company's code of conduct or that industry's code of conduct actually meets the conditions of the consumer privacy bill of rights, based on a safe harbor finding. there would be some sort of agreement to forebear from some sort of enforcement assuming the company keeps its promises in the act. there is a lot to work out to actually implement this kind of safe harbor mechanism but it is a process by which we think we can keep privacy rules fresh, keep them up-to-date, keep them flexable so they're both responsive to consumer needs but also allow companies to continue to innovate rapidly. i want to make just a final point about our view of the global picture. i know that some of you heard from the director-general of dg justice, the part of the european commission responsible for what they call data protection.
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i think everyone's aware that we have a, there is significant differences between the european privacy framework and the u.s. privacy framework. i would say that, and we have spent a considerable amount of time in dialogue with our counterparts in europe on these issues. i think that what we've learned is that we actually have quite a bit of commonalty on the broad privacy principles that we all share. the differences come in the regulatory enforcement style and in the fact that we still do have a gap here in the protection of consumer privacy rights under law. that's a gap that we very much hope to fill. we think that as soon as that's filled, there would be the basis for entering a conversation with the europeans about really significantly lowering the barriers to the cross-border flow of personal information
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between the u.s. and europe. but even in advance of that we have been working very hard to explain to our european counterparts that once a company makes a commitment or an industry makes a commitment to one of these enforceable codes of conduct, that in the united states, that commitment has the force of law. it is an agreement that's binding on the companies. it is an agreement that is enforceable by the federal trade commission under the statute we propose. we would also seek to have those agreements enforceable by state attorneys general. we certainly think that one of the critical privacy protection questions particularly in the commercial context is to find a way to reduce the barriers that we have today between the united states and europe in the way that services that use personal information are governed. i want to just close with a
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final word from the president that's in the introduction to the consumer privacy bill of rights that we released. he said, one thing should be clear. even though we live in a world in which we share personal information more freely than in the past we must reject the conclusion that privacy is an outmoded value. it has been at the heart of our democracy from its inception and we need it now more than ever. that is our basis for going forward. we look forward to working with all of you and happy to take questions. and tim's back there with the mic. >> as i was about to say, thank you for participating in coming and doing this briefing. i have a question and we want to open it up for any questions you may have. you can come up to the podium, the microphone here
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or i can do a phil donahue thing and bring it out to you if that's okay. my question is specifically on the framework if i could ask, as proposed how important how much of a lynchpin is it that congress enact legislation? can this framework go on with success without legislation or how important is it, not only for your view of success, in mtia's view of success but also when it comes to meeting a little of adequacy when it comes to the european commission's privacy directive? >> that is an excellent question. i'd say we think a long run, in the long run legislation is essential here. and there's two reasons. first of all, i think that there was a sense in the mid-'90s when we first engaged the question of internet privacy in the united states that this was
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a very new environment. that we didn't want to certainly overregulate it. we wanted to allow it to continue to evolve and we still feel that way. i think that what we've learned is that we actually in the framework that we described in the legislative model that we described, that we can maintain the kind of flexibility for continued innovation while at the same time providing increased certainty for consumers. we think it is the right time to do this. we think we have a decade or more of experience of this kind of interaction. i think what we've learned from that decade is that consumers really do want a clear sense of what their legal rights are. we want to make sure that the federal trade commission has a clear basis for enforcing privacy rights. frankly, we want to make sure that's clear both to consumers and to businesses. we think that a clear set of rights, if implemented in a way that's careful, in a way that's flexible, can provide
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increased certainty to innovators as well as to individuals. i would stress in particular we heard during the two years of developing this process, that small businesses, that innovators, startups in the internet environment, have a growing set of questions about what it is that they're expected to do and not expected to do in this environment. we think a statute can provide clarity and can provide the basis for continued innovation. on the european front, you know, it's a complicated question. i think it's very clear if the united states enacted a privacy protection statute of the sort that we described here, that that would go a long way, that would probably provide the basis for what you referred to, tim, as an adequacy finding. let me say what that means. european privacy law provides that personal information about europeans
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can not be transferred outside of europe to any third country, unless that country is found to have, quote, adequate privacy laws. now, because we don't have a single comprehensive privacy protection statute in the u.s., europe never found us adequate. we actually think we're quite adequate. we think we have, as i've said, an extraordinary privacy protection enforcement authority in the federal trade commission. anyone thinks that they don't adequately enforce consumer expectations of privacy should talk to facebook or google or twitter or any of the other companies that have been investigated very aggressively and now under 20-year consent decrees. by the way i'll point out that if you just look at facebook and google and twitter the estimates are there are over a billion individual users across those three services. it is really interesting. last time i checked we don't have a billion people in the united states. so, we have a case here
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where the united states consumer protection authority that the europeans have said is not adequate is actually doing the work of privacy protection all around the world. i think it is what they should be doing but we very strongly believe that they should be recognized for doing it and you think there's good progress in that dimension. the court challenge that i think we have on this adequacy question really has to do more as i said with the mechanisms we have for privacy protection in law than for the underlying principles. we share a dom mon set of principles -- a common set of principles with europe and we share through international agreements such as the organisation for economic co-operation and development we all agreed to a common set of privacy principles, however, from the european policy perspective i think it is sometimes a little difficult for them to look at the
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large collection of privacy laws that we have and view that as adequate. they have one overarching privacy protection framework and they don't understand why we don't have one of those toot. and the reason we don't is for all kinds of historical reasons because we're more of a dom mon law than a civil law system. any number of other reasons but we clearly believe establishing this kind of privacy model in the united states law would both be helpful in europe but also would be helpful for the numerous other countries that are in the process of trying to determine how they should be regulating privacy. these are, the world is obviously a lot bigger than the united states and europe. right now because of very aggressive advocacy by europe many third countries in asia, in south america, in africa, are beginning to
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enact european-style privacy laws that we think are quite a bit too restrictive. that can be very limiting for innovation. that can actually limit the opportunities for u.s. companies doing business in those third countries. so we think it is very important for congress to be able to establish an alternative model to the european model. we wouldn't try to say that it is more protective of privacy. we also wouldn't say it is less protective of privacy but it is a different model and it is one we think can help advance innovation of a new technology environment. >> thank you. any other questions? >> lynn stanton. tr daily. last week there was a hearing before the house commerce manufacturing and trade committee with larry strickland from mtia and ftc chairman leibowitz and a number of members seemed to feel or be concerned about
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restrictions on business and how might curtail innovation to have this kind of legislation. and do you think you're doing a good enough job or the administration is doing a good enough job getting across its view in your opinion and maybe business's view this would actually be helpful to innovation for business? >> that's why we're here. i think that, you know, we're getting here of the legislative discussion, we've spent two years developing this problem -- policy framework and establishing what we think is the right model. we clearly, we have said very clearly that if businesses follow the principles expressed in the consumer privacy bill of rights, that there ought to be no additional regulatory burden. i think that a number of members who look at this question may be imposing a traditional view of how a regulatory process works where there is a long cycle of rule-making and judicial
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challenges and, you know, a lot of uncertainty, which we think would be harmful. so we have proposed a model that is a nonregulatory model but provides for legally binding rights for consumers and would also provide legal certainty for businesses. in many cases that legal certainty would be based on businesses actually following the practices they currently follow today because we think that many businesses actually have responsible privacy practices. they have good relationships with their, with their users. and, they're able to continue along. so, i think, we'll certainly begin a phase of working with congress to make sure there is a way to enact this so it doesn't impose undue burdens but i don't hear, i think it is important to distinguish the question whether the burdens are excess from whether
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underlying protection is needed. there may be some that have the view we don't need any privacy protection at all. that individuals can fend for themselves. that is not our view. we view this as a basic consumer protection need and we think we've expressed a framework that it can be achieved without burden on innovation. >> you mentioned there are some gaps between what is going on here and in europe and after assuming that legislation is passed here that you all hope to talk with europe about lowering barriers for information-sharing. just wanted to get, wanted you to elaborate on what that would mean. >> sure. so this is a reference to the adequacy process that existed under the current european data protection directive, a process by which the european commission actually makes a legal finding that the laws
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and policies in some third country are, quote, adequate to protect european citizens privacy and then information is able to flow freely across borders. companies doing business in europe can move personal information back and forth between europe and wherever those companies are located. we are at the same time, and that's a process we could begin based on having a statute enacted. we have, there are things we're doing right now though. we have been in discussion as i said with european officials as well as the data protection authorities in many of the european countries and members of the european parliament who are now considering, who actually now have the job of determining what the new european privacy protection framework will be. they have expressed very strong support for the
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principles expressed in the consumer privacy bill of rights. and, we are talking with them in the near term about working on making sure that the current u.s.-eu safe harbor framework remains in place and remains strong. thousands of u.s. businesses demend on the us-e.u. safe harbor agreement to do business in europe. we would like to see that expanded in a number of different dimensions. we think that is a very important baseline to begin with in advance of whatever statutory changes we will have, both in europe and the u.s. i think it is very important to stress that both, both entities, our country and the european union, are in the process of rethinking our privacy protection framework. we've worked very hard to urge europe to make sure that their framework is open to the global nature of the
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internet environment. so there are a number of mechanisms, not just the national adequacy mechanism. that is a determination based on the state of national law. there are other mechanisms that, that european countries have begun to develop, the data protection authority, that make it easier for companies doing business on a global basis, which really means any internet company, which make it easier to move information in and out and around europe. those are things that can happen in advance of any legislative changes in the u.s. and, we are working very hard with our european counterparts to make sure that whatever we do in u.s. law, which we're obviously thinking very carefully about and people in this room have responsibility for, that at the same time, as europe evolves their law, that they keep in mind the imperative of keeping the internet openglobely. >> hi. common sense media.
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also at last week's hearing several of the industry folks on the panel expressed a preference for discussions that were private and discussions that were mainly held by industry players. how will the stakeholder process respond to that and how will you create a process that's open and inclusive given those preferences? >> so i can't comment on what those industry witnesses said or didn't say but we've said from the very beginning the process that will be run by nta will be an open process. it will be open for anyone to participate. the discussions will be transparent. they will be publicly visible. we'll work hard to make sure those that want to participate who hay not be in washington or don't have a way to get to washington will have their views expressed and follow the process and be active participants. i'd also say that, you know, the process of coming to
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consensus is always complicated and we're not going to try to prevent anyone from something -- having conversation that are quiet. we want to make sure at the end of the day what comes out of the process, the agreements that come out have received the broadest possible public input. >> if there are no more questions i just want to thank you for coming down and doing this briefing and appreciate you taking the time. >> thanks, tim. thanks everyone. appreciate it. [applause]
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[inaudible conversations] >> wrapping up hear some of the details of the obama administration's internet privacy plan here at the congressional internet caucus advisory panel. if you missed any of the discussion you can find it online shortly at c-span.org. more live coverage coming up on the c-span networks. president obama holding a joint news conference with canadian prime minister stephen harper and mexican president philly pay calderon. their meeting is part of the north american leaders summit. their news conference from the white house rose garden will be live 1:15 eastern on our companion network c-span
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the. canadian prime minister will head to the woodrow wilson center later this afternoon to talk about the u.s.-canadian relations. jane harman is the wilson center ceo and will moderate the discussion and that will be live on c-span2 at 4:00 p.m. eastern. with congress on break for the next two weeks we're featuring "book tv" programs on c-span2. a look at revolution in the middle east. liberation square inside the egyptian revolution and rebirth of a nation. at 9:55. the invisible era. the promise and peril of the arab revolution. and at 11:05 p.m. with the devil we don't know. the dark side of revolutions in the middle east. and again that is "book tv" in prime time all this week on c-span 2. >> when we're warned in the
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next 12 to 18 months america will suffer a catastrophic cyberattack they don't choose those words indiscrimminantly. we're already four or five months into that warning period, it tells me we have to move rapidly but not in a way that either violates privacy or the basic tenants of privacy and that encourages quick reaction, not, not sort of regulatory environment. >> tonight the chairman of the house subcommittee on chairman and technology, congressman greg walden on privacy security and privacy at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> ex-perlts on iran, nuclear weapons and national security met last week to debate the pros and cons of a u.s. strike on iran and the next round of nuclear talks expected in april. michael adler of the wilson center said the chance of a
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military conflict have lessened in the recent weeks. the cato institute in washington hosted this event. >> good. we're good. all right. thank you very much. welcome. welcome to the cato institute. my name is christopher premel. i'm the vice president of defense of foreign policy studies here at cato and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the new hayek auditorium and newly redesigned cato institute. so welcome. we are very fortunate to have for this conference a terrific lineup, two panels. it's my privilege to be able to introduce them. i do want to thank before i forget the ploughshares fund for their support for this project. really congratulate and thank my colleague justin logan who was responsible for organizing it. i think many of you here in the audience have the bios but for those who are
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watching online, for your benefit -- what's that? or on c-span, right. i want to very quickly introduce the four panelists speaking in the order they will speak and i will get out of the way and let them get started. our first speaker today will be michael adler a public policy school lore at the width drove wilson. he covered uprising in burma in 1988 reconstruction of kuwait of first gulf war, the war in bosnia and moving from german capitol from bonn to berlin. he. digs alley michael covered iranian nuclear crisis while in vienna from 2002 to 2007. he has reported from tehran, genieve. >>, berlin, new york, tripoli and other key cities on iranian issue. he is writing a book on the diplomacy of the iranian crisis. our second speaker is barbara slave vinl. she specializes on iran a nonresident senior fellow.
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she authored bitter friends, bosom enemies. she was assistant managing he had for world and national security at "the washington times.". in 2008 and 2009 prior to that she served for 12 years as senior diplomatic reporter for "usa today" where she covered such key issues as the u.s.-led war on terrorism in iraq, policy toward rogue states and arab-israeli conflict. she accompanied three secretaries of state on their official travels and also reported solo from iran, libya, israel, egypt, north korea, russia, china, saudi arabia and syria. all the garden spots. our third speaker today is ali nader. senior policy analyst at rand corporation. his research focused on iran's political dynamics decision making and iranian foreign policy. his iran publications include coping with
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nuclearizing iran, israel and iran a dangerous rivalry, the next supreme leader. saudi arabian relations since the fall of saddam. and many others. his commentaries have appeared in a variety of media including foreign policy.com. globalsecurity.org, national "herald-tribune", "new york times" and other and he is a frequent guest on television and radio. and the final speaker is my friend and colleague justin logan. he is the director of the foreign policy studies here at cato. he is an expert on u.s. grand strategy, international relations theory and american foreign policy his current research focuses on the shifting balance of power in ish asia and the formation of u.s. grand strategy under uni polarity. authored numerous studies and articles on u.s. china policy, u.s. russia policy, stable says and reconstruction operations and policy approaches towards a nuclear iran. his articles have appeared in many policy journals including foreign policy in
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the national interest, foreign service journal and others and he also has appeared on many television and radio networks. with that i will get out of the way and i will introduce our first speaker, michael adler. michael. >> good morning. thank you all for coming here. >> make call, would you speak from the podium please. >> okay. thank you very much. good morning. when i first was asked to, the topic here today is can diplomacy work? when i was first asked to do this which was before the meeting of prime minister netanyahu and president obama in washington and they had asked me to defend the concept of diplomacy could work i thought this would be a very thankless task but it is amazing how much things have changed over the past month in the month of march. and the first development was that the rush to war which seemed to be accelerating ground to a halt, not a etch. >>ing halt but a halt anyway. there is still some
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screeching about war. when netanyahu met obama. and what happened there is that the president, both gave a kind of statement the united states would eventually use force if necessary but also said that it was time for diplomacy. the israelis have reluctantly come aboard with that and the day after the meeting of, just want to watch the time. the day after the meeting of the two leaders katherine ashton, who is the foreign policy representative for the european union sent a letter to the iranian negotiator on the nuclear issue to say that she had accepted talks which he had proposed earlier . .
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there have been several side posts along the way but not to go from the whole history, but what ring suspects to what is happening now in october 2009, there is a meeting at which the two sides agreed, where iran would ship out most of the enriched uranium they had made in return for getting fuel for a research reactor in tehran which make medical isotopes and the idea behind that and the idea behind these talks in general is that would have be confidence building measure. iran would have shipped out most of the enriched uranium which
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makes them less able to break out a new weapon. at the same time they have gotten de facto recognition of continuing their enrichment and that would set the stage for serious talks. that deal fell apart. then there were two meetings in geneva, in december of 2010 and in istanbul in january 2011, at which the two sides tried to relaunch the process. this ended badly. at a in istanbul, after the meeting in geneva where the two sides had prearranged or express their opinions on the nuclear issue, the iranians have brought out a range of other concerns they had about world peace, about the influence of capitalism in the world. the iranians came to a second meeting and instead of negotiating composed to conditions which basically killed the process and they were -- all the sanctions against them would be lifted and that they
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would have an unequivocal right to enrich uranium. so this prevented any kind of deal in istanbul. after that, pretty much, you had a growing march to war. what can i say? israel was about to take action. iran's program as an existential threat and that was what was stopped at the beginning of this month. now we have the talks coming up again. so these talks are not taking place in a hopeless atmosphere where people are just going through the motions. these talks are actually a chance for a new s.t.a.r.t. after there has been a step back from going to war. so i guess the question to ask is, what is the chance? i think that's certainly the p5+1 and certainly the united states are coming into these talks with low expectations, and
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the success of the talks will probably be if a second round is scheduled. the second round would occur fairly quickly because the idea would be to start moving ahead. but this is not the meeting of which there will be a dramatic rate through. this is not a meeting in which there will be a fuel swap and a major confidence building measure. so the main thrust of what is happening is just to start talking again. but once again, this is an atmosphere of saying we have stop the russians at war and warren let's see if diplomacy can work. in the past, there has been, it's been very much -- justin said to me as i come up with a suggestion as to things can be better. my suggestion which will never happen is to simply sit down. the talks are scheduled for
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mid-april. we don't know where they're going to be. they will probably be somewhere in switzerland that when they sit down, i think p5+1 should say do you know something? let's not really get down to talks until the afternoon. let's have some tea, let's talk to each other. how is your family? what are things like in tehran? because the iranians like the sort of approach. the iranians want an informal kind of talk where everything is laid out on the table at once and above all they are not faced with an ultimatum. and so i think the best thing that the united states could say to the iranians at this meeting is, tell us how we can help you. we are in this together, let's try to work it out. i don't think that's going to happen but i do think there is a real determination at least on the american side, to make these talks work so there will be an effort to do things in a way with the iranians can feel there is a form for them to talk out.
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another way to measure the success of the talks is that there are bilateral talks between the united states and iraq. iran very much wants to talk directly to the united states. iran feels that the united states is the country which is going to deliver the goods and at the beginning of this process, from 2003 to 2006, the europeans were doing most of the negotiating and the united states was not present at the table. diplomats told me that they always felt that the iranians were looking over their shoulders to state where were the americans to guarantee the kinds of security guarantees and the kinds of delivery of technology that would make the deal work. so i think a key sign of success of this meeting will be if there is a bilateral talk between the iranian representatives in between the american representatives. and the talk in geneva, the last two talks, there were no
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bilaterals between the americans and the iranians. if we get through this first round, and if we get to a second round, which would happen fairly quickly, that is where the real difficulties come in because you want to have the confidence building measure. now this can't be a fuel swap, what would be a smaller confidence building measure? it might be something called at hearing to the additional protocol where iran would agree to wireless inspections of their nuclear facilities. it might be iran agreeing to give early notification when it is constructing new facilities. right now iran will only disclose new facility six months before they are going to introduce nuclear material. those, believe it or not, are the small confidence-building measures. the larger confidence building steps -- would be, iran has enrich its uranium right now to 3.5%, which is the level needed for a
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nuclear reactor. they also started to enrich to 20% because they didn't get the fuel for their research reactor. 20% is very close to the above 90% you need to make a nuclear weapon. because, because it's an exponential so it is more than charismatic. the thing is the first significant confidence building measure is if they stop enriching to 20% and ship out to 20% they have argued me, this would really be a sign that we are in a process that mean something. it is a sign that the israelis are looking for, where the diplomacy is serious. after this would come a larger fuel swap where they would ship out much of their low-enriched uranium and at that point i think the p5+1 would begin to move towards freezing sanctions. if that happens, we would definitely be in a significant process. of course the chances of that
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are low, but the bottom line is that there is hope of a serious process, which was on for seen two or three months ago, and let's see out develops. thank you very much. [applause] >> good morning. thank you cato for inviting me. i basically want to endorse much of michael's analysis. i think that the race to war has been halted. i think president obama handles netanyahu william clay and he embraced him close and at the same time he basically read them the riot act and said no you are not going to start a war now and you are not going to start a war before my re-election, at least my hope for re-election. if you look at the remarks ever made at the a-pac conference and when the two of them met and
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afterwards, this was rather clear, at the same time we have seen some interesting signals from tehran. and perhaps alireza will talk about that more as well but not exactly well, what passes for tehran is the best way to put it. right after the comments that obama made talking about decrying the loose talk of war and stressing that diplomacy was the preferred option for dealing with the iranian nuclear, the supreme leader reiterated in 1995 fatwa in which he said building nuclear weapons would quote he e. a great sin" back and he praised obama which is not something the supreme leader of iran often does, for tamping down the threats of war. he said such remarks are good and indicate a step out of dilutions. he also at the same time claim that the economic sanctions that
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have been imposed on iran are having absolutely no effect. as we all know the sanctions are having a huge effect and i think this is another reason why we might actually have a diplomatic option in front of us. for those of you who haven't been following it, the sanctions are unlike any that have been imposed on iran since the 1979 revolution. they are the most draconian i think that it been imposed on any government if you look in terms of u.n. sanctions combined with the american sanctions and european sanctions. iranian banks are essentially excommunicated from the financial system. there are few banks in iran they can do any kind of transactions. iran is resorting to barter increasingly. i would refer you to the atlantic council web site, ac u.s..org where we have a number of papers that are task force has done and a couple that deal in particular with iran's reliance on china and on bartered transactions.
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hard currency cannot change hands. currency can change hands so essentially iran is sending oil to countries such as india and china getting a credit and receiving goods and services from those countries. iranian oil production is going down. i think in part because iran realizes they can't sell the oil that it wants and get the money that it wants. it's down to 3.3 million barrels a day. that is down from 3.8 million barrels a day to just a few months ago and 4.1 million barrels a day a year or so ago. this is truly hurting the iranian economy. the currency has dropped in value by about half against the dollar. inflation is up. of unemployment is up and there is a lot of discontent within the country. what are the other signals we are seeing from iran that it might actually want to deal with the united states and the rest of the p5+1? the kinds of things that we
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follow would be interested in iranian war and politics inform policy. on march the 50 iranian supreme court ordered the retrial of former u.s. marine and iranian americans who have been sentenced to death for supposedly spying for the cia. on march 13, the u.s. deported back to iran and arms dealer and iranian arms dealer, who had been caught in a sting operation in the republic of georgia a few years earlier. in this country, it was revealed that our treasury department has begun an investigation into the former governor of pennsylvania at rendell, and several others, for taking money to promote an organization called the mujahideen holed. this is an iranian opposition group that is on the state department terrorist list who has been trying to get off the terrorism list for years and has been paying very, very well-known former u.s. officials great sums of money to advocate
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getting off the terrorism list. they have not gotten off of the list. the there were supposed to be a march 26 deadline for the state department to rule. that deadline is gone and i would predict that there'll be no decision on this issue, certainly before the nuclear talks. this is another signal to iran because the iranian government hates this organization. is believed to be responsible for assassinating five iranian scientists in cahoots with the most of. we have new talks that are scheduled. i believe april 13 although there are still some april 14, some question about the exact date and the exact venue. i agree with michael's analysis. i don't believe we will see any dramatic rakers but what we are looking for is to manage the situation. nobody's going to solve the iranian conundrum overnight. the idea is to cap the program in some way and do some limits, introduce some greater transparencies that will contain
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the israelis. i think the problem is to contain israel, not so much to contain iran right now that will provide confidence that iran is not rushing towards a nuclear weapon. it will also help contain the u.s. congress, which insist on passing more and more revolutions -- resolutions that would attempt to tie the hands of the obama administration in negotiating a solution. there is a resolution that would forbid containment, that was making its way through congress until rand paul stood up and said, you know, this is a kind of backdoor authorization for war and we can't have it. it was remarkable actually that we have to live -- rely on the rand paul to prevent congress from passing ridiculous legislation but there you have it. there a number of good proposals you have out there to provide this management of the nuclear issue and michael has referred to some of them. most of them center around iran's halting enrichment to 20%
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which is perilously close to weapons-grade. if iran will forestall that, if iran will stop enriching at a facility which is built into the side of a mountain, and very difficult for anyone to attack, if the would slow that, stop putting in more centrifuges fair, that would be a major step catherine ashton, the e.u. foreign-policy chief, has said that she wants a sustained process of constructive dialogue with iran. this is her letter back to -- in the way it worked with ashton for sunday letter to the iranians last october and took iran until february to respond and finally in march after the meeting between obama and not in yahoo!, ashton said yes, the p5+1 would be willing to me. so she wants a sustained process of constructive dialogue which means not a one-shot deal, not one, two day session and nothing
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after that. so we do need to see there are more meetings scheduled and they began to get into the nitty-gritty of the nuclear program and they're not just talking about the principles and that iran is not simply preventing a litany of grievances against the west which it is done in the past. a couple of more things about iranian internal politics that i think are useful. the iranians have parliamentary elections march the second. they were not what we would call free or fair but the iranian government declared them a great success and declared that 64% of the iranians had participated, which is undoubtedly an inflated figure. there is a joke going around that 80% of iranians at home on television watching 70% of iranians vote on television so there was something in there that is a little bit off. but nevertheless this victory allows the supreme leader i think to consolidate his base.
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he has one fight with the president of iran, case you hadn't noticed. the president of iran has been fighting the leader of iran for the last year. the supreme leader reached out to another president hashemi rafsanjani and appointed him to another five-year term as head of something is a largely toothless group but it is supposed to mediate conflicts between various rafsanjani of course is the famous pragmatists. he's somebody who is identified with outreach to the west and can be a little bit u.s. goal is to prevent iran from developing a nuclear weapon. i think this was also very useful during the net and instead of talking which is what
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the israelis have the red line now is is a lot easier in terms of preventing a conflict and also gives a lot of leeway for the iranians but not a nuclear weapons program. and that kind of definition i think is going to be key if we are going to be able to achieve some sort of success. there is a the congressional research service just yesterday that talks about the fact that iran, of course we know they have dispersed their nuclear facilities widely across the country but also their accounts if makes centrifuges widely dispersed around the country which means that there the iranian nuclear program.
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known sites coming and kill a bunch more scientists but you will not be able to destroy iran's ability to reconstitute its nuclear program and as iran would be the one thing that would convince iran that it absolutely has to have a nuclear weapons program in order so i think we have very useful clarification in terms of the goals if the united states and developing -- stopping iran from developing a nuclear weapon containment is an excellent option. we have been containing and i think we can is more isolated now in the region. i don't know for going to get into a discussion of its problems with its neighbors. certainly very very worried about the situation has lost its
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cachet, its narrative as being the champion of the oppressed. it doesn't wash so well when oppressing its own people, putting down demonstrations after its 2009 elections and supporting the assad regime in syria. so i think we are in a relatively good place. the real question frankly is whether the u.s. government is going to be able to come up with some creative ideas in what is for us an election year and whether obama will have compromise. and i will leave it thanks to cato for inviting me to speak today. diplomacy may not work with iran, what are before i get into that i just want to commend people on experts, commentators and analysts who emphasize
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diplomacy with iran, because by the united states or israel would cause the iranian nuclear crisis and i do believe that it would the interest in the middle east. as positive indications open to compromise or engagement with the p5+1 president ahmadinejad is not as big of a player in iran and politics so decision-making on the nuclear program has been streamlined. in 2009 and after that, one of the the fact that there were so many players involved. players that were often
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domestically opposed to each other under attack from the trying on uranium enrichment. so we can argue that hominy is now more did praise president diplomacy. he has kept has stated that iran is can list a number of other positive indications. and the sanctions call me knee that reasonable man. he is a rational but we also
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have to are his personal political interests? what iran's supreme leader is his worldview? how and when we look at him, the islamic republic is engaged in an existential conflict believes that the islamic revolution of 1979 and will never accept the revolution. he doesn't believe the united states iran specific policies on a nuclear very and i don't think this is going to change as long as khamenei is participated in
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the revolution. he was one he helped overthrow the shah and he believes to be u.s. domination of iran. so his the islamic republic and khamenei may even believe that the nuclear program is an important military deterrent if iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, the fact that it has if need be, think serves as a valuable deterrent for iran. iran has seen the united states overthrow a regime like the regime of saddam hussein and the taliban with relative ease. and so,, the united states may take military circumstances for
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that right now are u.s. intention but a possibility khamenei believes that the nuclear program is a sign at as a success for the them being strong. they are very draconian has been under sanctions for more on the nuclear program shows that it's been able you look at khamenei's speeches this is a constant theme. infosys -- emphasizes iran's progress. his last speech was all ranked number 11 in terms of scientific
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progress. this is what he claims, etc., etc.. of course khamenei's viewpoint of the nuclear program is not like rafsanjani but also the leaders of the green movement the act and political reforms but this is not aipac teen's mindset. he is very much compared to these other figures and isolationist is not clear how the iranian public feels about the nuclear program. we hear that there is a sense go a lot of iranian support the civilian aspect of don't know
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for certain how iranians feel. regime has had some success at selling matter of national rights and should israel, pakistan india etc., the west have access to nuclear technology iranians probably would argue that will khamenei give into pressure? sanctions have undoubtedly heard devalued. prices have gone incredibly high. of the people that support democracy in iran, this is one of the unfortunate iran from
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because of the overflow of pro-american regimes in there is instability in, that the u.s. also time maybe on his side. we can argue that he has exiting from delusion that we can argue that is the viewpoint of a man making decisions for an entire iranian population. so where does that leave the united states in terms of policy options? i believe the next panel will talk that, even within israel, that there is a military solution. there is an attack against iran and iran can call the iaea. the regime -- i i don't think
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iranians necessarily will but it will put the regime, or it could very well put the regime and a favorable position especially not manage to really damage iran's military strike will also set back the u.s. lead to greater instability in the solution the goal is really prevent an armed conflict. but in situation can go the next several years. ultimately there has to not just to the iranian with the islamic
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republic. i would argue that as long as khamenei is in power in iran we will not solve a normal relationship with the united states and he will do everything in his interests in the region. i think the good has not decided to tells us there is no indication that khamenei and the leadership has decided to weaponize the program and given the bulmer allied -- this gives us the opportunity to contain the islamic republic and emerge in the future. if you look at iran, you so than a lot of countries real
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potential for democratic iran will be the solution to the nuclear thanks very much. thank you thank you overcoming. of thank you to my co-panelists here. we were originally trying the stuff i thought there was going to be a trick of is some hope for pour cold water on the fact that i sublime is the. i think i would support a is but i politics and in system.
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i should also reveal that potential proliferation in 2000 for the past year or so to because i think the pivot back to the middle east. so my co-panilist. you have to say though the good thing about a u.s. iran or that they are really good metaphors. they are zones of it's like a salvador dolly painting of nuclear proliferation. again i want to and i favor an unrealistically ambitious diplomatic approach but the approach is unrealistic that or
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not we will get where we want to go. diplomatic resolution problem. i politics and the structural impediments and suggest where it's a general efforts in that i've been trying to the public can't happen and what might happen cannot work and i think that is a fairly glum assessment and i hope i'm is what i believe at this point. as barbara mentioned the congress attitude has on top of the existing pressure and promise not to concessions made and in fact pressure. the central bank sanctions for example, the congress did not
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and oh by the way if you fulfill these 57 demands that we were removed the sanctions. if if you are iranian and looking at what congress is doing, alright what are conceivably that would give us a the congress stopped by and large even gesturing the idea of an offering so i think that is something of an indication of the role am pretty much a part of the they have with their participation in u.s. is that they appear very concerned to various interesting constituencies about the problem the one saving grace that we may have as an institution they are cowardly war was referred to
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handwaving and table pounding which perversely i think it's probably a good thing. so the congress done some boneheaded iran diplomacy, but they constructive i think that the administration has follow. as for the obama administration itself, you have to give it credit. he didn't put its neck out there on the campaign saying that it was open to diplomacy. in 2009 by gesturing the direction of diplomacy, but i perceive not too terribly much interest in spending gobs and gobs of political capital on getting diplomacy with iran a way that will be fruitful. i can't entirely blame them for
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that. it's not clear to me akel f. particularly this year a full direction and obviously we have to the supreme court they have lots of domestic capital so i position in which the obama administration find itself. to echo what some of the is russ is that is the hope of reducing long-term results would be of that would be easy to sort of demagogue as out to the thing for the administrations do and for a variety of reasons, gladly on this and hope he is right. i'm not sure obama's message.
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again i remain open to being persuaded that is. moving on to remind me of the in situ one of the panelists. the diad, the relationship between iran on the one hand. the united states of the decided to, could a big mess and i don't support doing so but in terms of material power there is simply no comparing the two countries. given that, if you look at things from iran's perspective,
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>> pointed to cases where he thought diplomacy had produced good results in terms of nuclear non-proliferation, and he pointed, of course, at south africa and then pointed at libya. well, if you're ayatollah khamenei, and you say, well, we could get ourselves a libya deal, what about that? it doesn't look like a very good deal because, again, the united states could easily renege on assurances that were made if, for example, there were another political crackdown. iran has credibly denuclearized and the united states decides it's had just about enough of a dictatorial regime in tehran cracking down on protesting civilians. so i think getting our heads around how to convey credibly security assurances is maybe my sort of sunday punch here in terms of pouring cold water on the prospect for a long-term diplomatic deal that works.
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so i want to reiterate just in case someone, perish the thought, would quote me out of context. i favor diplomacy, i favor a very robust diplomatic approach to iran, but i worry that what might happen can't work. so in terms of where from here in wrapping up, i'll offer a couple of thoughts about how to prove me wrong. we have this peculiar belief in the united states that when we win concessions at the u.n. security council to do another resolution sanctioning iran or what have you, there's a sort of or else on the other side of that in terms of the people that have signed on to the deal. so we censure iran for doing this, and it should stop. and in our mind we have an "or else" at the end of that statement, or else we will force you to stop. and i think the rest of the world really doesn't have an or else on the end of the security council resolutions or any other statements. if we decide that there's going
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to be an "or else," it's going to be us and possibly a very, very small coalition of the willing, to coin a phrase, that tries to put teeth into these sanctions militarily should it come to that. i think it's particularly odd that lots of conservatives who have particular views about the united nations tend to endorse the idea that the security council sanctions should bite in important ways. i think we would probably have to make large, probably prohibitively large con versions at the out-- concessions at the outset to get iranians to believe that we're serious about diplomacy. if you look at 1737, 1747, i think it's probably unlikely that iran is going to agree to suspend outright as those indicate, and i think we would probably have to do something in terms of the unilateral sanctions from washington or from europe in order to convince the iranians that we were serious. i also think that's probably a political nonstarter. if you could get them to do something like stop enriching to
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20%, i would be willing to walk back some of the things that we're doing. not just to promise not to do anything in decision, but, indeed, to walk back to some of the things we're already doing to try to credibly convince them we were serious. it would be a political nightmare. or just one other thing we could do particularly if they agreed to stop enhancing the facility, that would be terrific, and i would take that as a sign that we should be willing to walk back some of the things that we're already doing. this is not a mainstream point of view. i've not heard it from the administration or from the congress, and i think it would be a political nightmare. but there again i think you see the domestic political influences constraining our ability to operate internationally. but the net takeaway, i think, is that if you really want diplomacy to work and if you really think that a military option is a terrible idea, you're going to have to really bite the bullet so to speak and
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do some things that you really would rather not do in order to get the train rolling in the first place, and in the second place realize that this is going to be a long, agonizing process that's going to have lots of setbacks and may not in the end work. i hope that we get that far, um, but i fear that we will not. so i think i'll just believe it there -- leave it there and turn the podium back over to chris to field questions. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you all very much. we left a lot of time for q&a. maybe before i open it up to the audience, do any of you wish to respond to anything that was said by the other panelists? >> go to questions. >> all right, very good. with that, i will throw it open to questions. we have a rule here. the rules in the new hayek auditorium are the same as the
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rules in the old hayek auditorium. when you ask a question, wait for the microphone so that everyone can hear you, including those watching online, and frame your question in the form of a question. this is a jeopardy rule, okay? no speeches, please. who's first? hands right there. >> my name is jane, i'm with peace action. you were talking a lot about, um, people mentioned the sanctions, um, and that that's hurting the people of iran. but no one really talked about whether sanctions ever work, and i recently read a report that they don't, that there was some study that was done that showed that they have never worked. um, so my question on that is, why are we pursuing a policy that doesn't work, that's very
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harmful, that would be perceived as bullying, i would think, by the people of iran? um, and you were talking about confidence-building measures. that wouldn't, that doesn't seem to me to be a confidence-building measure. >> okay. thank you. so the question is sanctions don't have a terrific track record, what is different about these sanctions, if anything? i think all four of you. barbara first? many. >> yeah. well, they do work in some cases. we have south africa, for example, where sanctions did help get rid of the apartheid regime, and that's usually referred to. we have sanctions because it's a substitute for war, and it's a substitute for diplomacy. people don't want to declare war in this country. i mean, even the congress, even some of the more gung ho neoconservatives are not anxious to have a war with iran after our experience over the last decade, so they have to think of something else. and they aren't really ready to make major concessions to the islamic republic, so what do you
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have? you have sanctions. and they've taken on a momentum of their own. this started under the george w. bush administration, our treasury department has become one of the most creative parts of the u.s. government in terms of devising ever more clever ways to destroy the iranian economy. um, i was at a session with ehud olmert, the former prime minister of israel earlier this week, where he basically bragged that when he was prime minister and his talks with the u.s. treasury department, they'd already come up with the idea of expelling iran from what's called the swift which is the system that enables banks to do transactions with foreign banks. and he said this is an idea that they were already talking about four years ago. so, um, we're good at it. we're good at sanctions. we're, obviously, not good at diplomacy, and we don't want to go to war. [laughter] >> michael? >> i think in a sense we're
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definitely in a state of conflict with iran, and it's taking place with the sanctions, it's taking place through covert operations inside iran, it's taking place every pressure short of war. and not the defense sanctions, but the purpose of the sanctions is basically to get iran to talk. so you could see the talks that are coming up as one way in which sanctions have succeeded because the question with sanctions is they certainly are causing problems for iran. but the main question is, are they sufficient to get iran to strike a deal with us on the nuclear program? so i think the jury is still out on how this policy ends, and once again the fact that we're having these new talks which, um, justin referred to the difficulty of getting forward and getting real concessions. i think that the way at least the west is approaching it is they want to start very slow.
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and, um, there are actually two plans out there for the diplomacy. one is called the russian plan, the other is an american plan. and interestingly enough, the first step in the russian plan is that the united states would give security guarantees to iran, and in return there would be freezing of sanctions. news bulletin, that's not going to happen. [laughter] i remember back in 2004-2005 when this whole thing started, i got what's called a nonpaper, and a nonpaper is a diplomatic brief on how to go forward. and the europeans prepared it. and one chapter was security guarantees. once the americans got ahold of it, that chapter disappeared. but that is not to say there couldn't be security guarantees at the end of the process. and in terms of it being a political nightmare, what you said, it is this -- this whole thing's a nightmare. we're in a situation that, in a sense, is not going to end well. someone's going to be unhappy,
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it's going to end in tears one way or another. but i think in spite of the elections, in spite of everything going on if we can get a start to this process, um, you have a situation in iran where barbara spoke about it, after the parliamentary elections there's a possibility for a consensus in iran. this is a very polly anish view, by the way, but there's a possibility for con consensus in iran which did not exist before the elections. if khamenei has effectively rendered ahmadinejad a lame duck through these elections and if there are businessmen, revolutionary guards coming to khamenei and saying, look, we are really having trouble doing business, can't we do something to get out of this, there might be a way in which the iranians would decide that, um, if they can get a face-saving solution where they get to keep some enrichment, where they can go forward with what they say is only a civilian program, that that would be a way where they
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might want to strike a deal where it might be in their interest. this is a best case scenario. and in that situation you would move very quickly to the sort of things i was talking about where you would cut the enrichment to 20%, where the enrichment would be shipped out. and i think you will find if this first meeting is a success, there will be a second meeting. and the second meeting will come very quickly because everybody's afraid of drawing out the process and of iran delaying. and if that happens and there's a second meeting and there is a stepping down from 20% enrichment by iran and they're starting to move towards a fuel stop and then we would move towards freezing sanctions which is incredibly different because they're mandated by the u.s. congress -- speaking of a nightmare, that will be an outright nightmare. but i think the way to sell it walk to say if you're getting concessions from the iranian side, this is the chance, this is the last chance to reach an agreement. and that's a good way to see sanctions. >> can i comment on that? >> please.
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please, ali. >> sanctions are a blunt instrument. they do hurt certain u.s. objectives and promote certain u.s. objectives at the same time. in terms of hurting the u.s. objective of democracy in iran, and if that's not the ultimate u.s. object i have, it should be. sanctions are hurtful. they do hurt the iranian middle class, the same people who came out to the streets of tehran and other cities in 2009 to protest against the government. sanctions hurt our allies within iran, and not just the iranians within iran. there have been reports that sanctions are hurting the iranian community, diaspora community in the united states, canada and sweden. and that doesn't help the united states. in terms of promoting u.s. interests, the sanctions have made the cost of iran's nuclear program higher. if iran decides to weaponize its program, it has to consider even more damaging sanctions. i do think that the sanctions
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make iran think or rethink its policies quite a bit and, potentially, causes fissures within the iranian government where you have revolutionary guards officers who are involved with the iranian economy be hurt by sanctions and pressure the supreme leader. also i think sanctions help contain iran. if iran developed a nuclear weapons capability, it would be in a much weaker state. it wouldn't be able to project power in the middle east as well. and sanctions, finally, show other countries who are thinking of violating the non-proliferation regime that there are costs associated. so if iran decides to go nuclear and saudi arabia thinks, well, we should obtain weapons, i hate to say it, there are benefits to
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sanctions. >> there was an interesting article in the post a few weeks ago or a month ago where there was sort of unnamed u.s. official that was talking about the sanctions. what is the goal of the sanctions? and the quote, i forget the exact quote, but it was something like regime change the goal of the sanctions. and then people said, whoa, whoa? they said, well, not regime change, just sort of to cause pain to the government in iran, etc. and i think that's clearly what's going on here is that there's an effort to create fear in the iranian government that the domestic political situation might be so upended by the sanctions that are causing pain across the iranian pollty, not just the sort of irgc officials or officials involved with the nuclear program, but you get a lot of bang for the buck out of destabilizing the government. again, there was this walkback that came, and it was, well, we're not regime changing, we're doing something else. but i think in the main, the breadth of these sanctions clearly is designed to cause
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iran to fear destabilization, and that fear of destabilization in turn to cause iran to come to the table to attempt to get some relief to where it doesn't fear destabilization as much. >> thank you. on this end, and then we'll get the other end. mike? >> thank you. media benjamin with the peace group, code pink. and talking about the dismal situation in congress, i wonder in particularly, logan, i think, why can't we get more republicans that are friends of yours at cato on the libertarian side to join with some of the progressives in congress like barbara lee that put forward or these bills for diplomacy? it seems like we get walter jones and maybe ron paul, but that's about it. so what can we do to strengthen some alternative to this call for war in congress? >> yeah, i guess that's targeted at me.
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i don't know, is the answer. [laughter] there are too few libertarian members of congress, in my view. so i will loudly endorse that sentiment. no, i think, look, if you're looking at it from a congressional standpoint, there are lots of reasons why you would want to sign on to another sanctions bill, and there are lots of reasons why you wouldn't want to sign on to a jones-lee bill, and lots of them are political reasons. so creating countervailing political pressures, i think, is probably the most fruitful thing to do in that regard, although it's a tough hill to climb. ..
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i thought those are really key point. so basically saying we have sanction, we have rules, but ultimately he was saying in effect there is no military -- even while all remained stable. even matt romney and others apart from ron paul beating the drum for an even more aggressive towards iran than that of the obama administration. so i think it is going to be very hard to get things accomplished before our election and where we require u.s. election. i think that's just a fact there's the best best we can hope for is to start a process and if the iranians can simply slow and not do more and more provocative things, one of the
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problems we've had a few green ants keep sticking a finger in our eyes with one announcement after the affair. it was in january they announced they were starting to enrich uranium to 20% at ford and this has crossed the line is that it's real fear supposed the best the iranians can be incidents in to u.s. politics which is a big leap, but if they can be and can than to restrain themselves to the next iaea report is not civil landing, i think we'll buy enough time with talks to at least get to our election. if upon israel like it, i would hope you'd be able to be much more proactive on this. >> a couple quick that on romney. first of all, it karl rove and ed gillespie were saying don't believe all this business about foreign policy in this election. republican candidate should really go all in on the foreign policy of obama.
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i would be very weary about taking political advice from karl rove about how to use foreign policy. it looked pretty good in 2004. didn't look so good after that. so there was a lot of discussion about this article and i think romney appears to be taken in size to try to get a foreign policy going. what is interesting as obama has tried to carry back and say all these people on the campaign are complaining about what i'm doing. why don't you tell me what you'd like to do. i think he's playing a bank in on the idea that there's a little bit floating around out there. voters don't like iran. they don't like the idea of iran having a bomb. but if it comes to if i'm elected president i promise i will have a war with iran, that is a different political calculation. sirs there's a lot of handwaving and table pounding and apologizing for america in august atmospheric stuff. what obama appears to want to do is to have precise policy
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discussions. i think that is how he thinks he can carry back. whether or not the work i don't know. >> i have one right there in a market to 11 in the back. it's hard to see in the new hayek auditorium. the lights are really brave. >> matthew kroenig. how do you deal with the iaea's persistent answers to its questions about the military dimensions with iran's program? >> michael, will you take out quite >> short. right now the iaea is seeking to get access to the military site where they think this container which is in a shack in which iran may have done the trick or for nuclear weapons and may have used uranium, natural uranium
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and doing it. say you have a kind of idleness and being drawn by the iaea and the concentration, which could really pay big in the junior quarter. that said i don't think any of this will impact the diplomatic process and i've been told that pay people from several members of the transfix. first of all it's not news that iran is cooperating and hiding nuclear rich and the iaea. i think there is a divorce between the diplomatic process, which itself is so tentative and investigation. so the short answer to the question is whatever happens to the iaea, and unless iran is working on it from somewhere, it will not affect the diplomatic process. >> in the middle there. please wait for the mix.
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>> by ray mcgovern from veteran intelligence. >> please speak up on the fair. >> ics server a servile aspect discussion. there are two elephants in the room that are either referred to by euphemism or not refer to it all. one is the euphemism for domestic considerations. what is not by that is the israel lobby and our president contention to march in lock smith with israel. number two are the facts. this is my question. it is widely recognized, not only by the u.s. israeli community -- intelligence community and by both defense ministers that iran is not working on a nuclear weapon. iran has not yet i'd need a nuclear weapon.
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now we have all this rhetoric about we have to stop them if they're not working on a nuclear weapon, how do we stop them from not working on a nuclear weapon? last thing here is the defense minister of israel gave an interview in 18 of january and let's ask him if you agree with the american that iran has not yet built a nuclear weapon? he said yes, next question. is that it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter because it happened at the iaea. when they do that come come back and i make in assessing. what are we doing here? what is the purpose? for not working on nuclear weapon? >> i wanted to pick on this here this is something i wanted to ask anything barbara, you raised it. how significant is it that at the time as president obama
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clarified the objective of u.s. policy is prevent a wet then as opposed to weapons capability? and how significant is it all so -- and this is the rest of the point that congress' language in their sanctions and other measures is very different. what is really going on? >> first, i think this distinction he made is really crucial. iran already has nuclear weapons capabilities in the sense to how to build the bomb and has amassed enrich uranium tamika maybe four or five nuclear weapons if it decided to do so. they could make a device, put it in a suitcase and deliver xml. perhaps it couldn't put it on a missile yet. so it's a meaningless term to talk about nuclear capability
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even though it's a term they have been touring around for years in congress continues to tour around in this current resolution. that was the most important thing to me. if she'll notice, netanyahu picked up the same language afterwards and also referred to a nuclear weapon, not to nuclear weapons capability. so that's the big tree in terms of the priority. it means that iran can do a lot of things that it's already doing as long as it doesn't actually build a nuclear weapon and it doesn't have to face the threat of nuclear action. >> the distinction between capability and the weapon is absolutely crucial and it is a big difference between the united states and israel. the concern of the israelis is iran is developing and it's really not really to breakout and make a nuclear weapon. they want to make several.
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in answer to your question, it was discovered in 2003 hiding two decade of secret military work in the richest special forces and the whole range of activities where it begs the question, why are they doing this? when iran was unable to answer those questions and more to the schema, that is when investigation he can and iran has not cooperated fully with the investigations. but yes, there is no smoking gun and the united states says they have not made a decision to have an investigation and a step weaponization work in 2003. the iaea feels they were acting in 2003. there are legitimate questions about intentions. the capabilities they are able to amass is the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
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they would dance on several fronts with the enrichment technology, missiles with technologies or possibly what the nicene and it is at that point where they put all their ducks in a row that they would do this so called breakout. so that is the difference. one thing to note on obama, president bush would also say it is an accessible for rent nuclear weapon. the obama administration has deliberately change that language, that they will prevent iran from getting the west end. so you have this feel wearing hard to define what's going on, but the position in the ways more forceful than eight minutes ration. the israelis are very uncomfortable with the american definition of what to do and we'll see how it's developed. >> i think there are very real differences between the iranians and nuclear programs.
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israel is small tough neighborhood surrounded by allies, hezbollah hamas and potentially even one nuclear rainy and weapon or even iran's capability that by a lot of israelis within israel has allowed us of the top leadership buster.yahoo with ehud barak had this viewpoint that even a virtual nuclear iran is very dangerous. whereas, i would argue they do not want even in iranian nuclear capability, it is better able to handle that capability are not
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our israeli entries. president obama has stated that it's not his policies, for reelection and policies can change after presidents are like it. so there is a possibility even that the united states could move towards a policy containment towards iran. i don't think this is something israelis want. and not just israelis, but other allies in the middle east, especially the arab countries in the persian gulf. >> time for tumor questions. on the side i have two folks. keep your hand up either, great. >> arms control association. i agree with the assessment of this bill of handling israeli pressure in large, but it does
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seem in the process of doing that, he ended up making it very clear promise that if the iran move to acquire a nuclear weapons, he would respond with military action, which is a fault throughout all of endorsement in which george w. bush 2002 and.you may the attack. my question is, how is that heard in iran quake doesn't make a difference? is that what they always thought were -- or is it better organized and move to do good weapons? >> one of the arguments we have to present is a realistic military option. if there is no military threat that iran would not come to the table.
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where israel is necessarily protect his. you can always do that. that is where it actually may compel iran to weapon as the program in the future. even i think sanctions -- you don't entirely know sanctions will have the effect from what the nicene. it could get to the point if it's in paralytic be a nuclear weapons capability of the solution to his problem. so threads, when it comes to a man has a very limited effect. iran is already under the impression that it is the military swept by the united states. reiterating did not is not necessarily perfect date. >> last question. we have time for one more question right there, sir.
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>> thank you. [inaudible] my question is particularly with the sanctions and further squeeze on iran come what you see iran doing in the region particularly and in iraq particularly? is iran take it out on u.s. and not allowing such a thing to happen where iraq recounts the battlefield and a proxy war happens? >> the question is how would iran react to sanctions recently? >> iran is react into u.s. policy is overall in the region not specifically on sanctions, but you have to look at the higher u.s. policy towards iran. iran is potential in iraq and is hoping from afghanistan without maintaining permanent from
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afghanistan. iran is very much again any source agreement in the afghan government entities exerting including arming those airwaves around can exercise. this is not meant for the united states in the signal to saudi arabia and the uae and the sanctions regime against iran. again, looking at sanctions there are drawbacks and the drawbacks that iran can we encounter u.s. interests when it is faced by sanctions. they're a very powerful act
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carries in the region and the fact that iran has threat to the strata for those in itself and not of deterrence and retaliation, oil prices have gone up and this is iran's way that if the united states hurts iran's economy can also hurt the u.s. economy. of course it's not on the same deal. iran's economy has been hurt much more. there is things are intended to retaliate an italian military option is not really a solution because potential conflict in the middle east would be very messy to the content. >> particularly the assad regime is. where iraq can afghanistan will both become major battlegrounds between the united states and iran, between saudi arabia and iran. nobody really talks about it,
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>> please feel free to take seats. if anyone knows outside not a worse he, they're welcome to to come in. for those of you kidding here, it perished the thought you would miss the first panel, but i am justin logan, director of policy here at cato. we are very pleased to have our second panel on the choices facing the united states should diplomacy fail in the medium term and long term for otherwise a nuclear or nuclear rising iran. we have a very diverse panel. we pride ourselves with trying to disagree civilly, but interestingly together anything will fill that demand a period as crested at the first panel, i'm going to introduce the speakers in the order in which
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they will speak and then take a place here in the audience and sit back and watch the fireworks. so to begin with, our first speaker is matthew kroenig, assistant professor for government at georgetown university and stan nuclear's facility at the council upon relations. worked as a strategist at the office of secretary of defense and office of defense award for outstanding achievement work on deterring terrorist. he's the author of exporting bombs, technology nuclear weapons, which we had an event last or if i remember correctly, which is very good and a number of other books and a global survey. he is the coeditor with the causes of nuclear proliferation. his articles have been published in the american pew compared his strategy may have heard the recent foreign affairs, foreign house international organization, international security, journal of conflict resolution, perspectives on
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politics and wall street journals, new states, under a as well. commentary featured on many broadcast. our second speaker is nuno monteiro, the assistant professor of political science at yale university and research fellow at the inventing had international and area study and a member of the scientific goal of portuguese international relations institute. his research interests are theory of security studies including great power policy causes of war, pure proliferation currently working on a book with the theory of polarity and on a series of papers of topics including by the same, causes of war and they determine it with military competition, nuclear proliferation, successful occupation, credible deterrent threats. his research appeared at the international beauty this year or late last year. an international eerie and commentaries appeared in the
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corn affairs national interest projects at "usa today," "boston globe" and the radio. the first speaker today will be jamie fly, executive director foreign policy initiatives here in town. certain the bush administration, secretary of defense 2005 until two-fisted national security council to fascinate until 2009. his work addressed issues including the iranian nuclear program, chemical weapons, proliferation finance another counter proliferation issues. for his work in osd he received exceptional public service in addition to his position had enough fbi he is a member of the double life, double s. national institute of studies and member of the council on foreign relations in his writing are in "politico," weekly standard, "forbes".com, "usa today," u.s. news, daily color and national review online. last but not least is josh
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rovner, associate professor of policy at the u.s. naval war college is the author of an excellent new book and politics of intelligence. he also contributed an essay after proliferation that second nuclear age in your buttons. he's written articles on intelligence reform. nuclear proliferation and the stanley cup when postdoc rants at american foreign policy at williams college. so that i think clearly establishes a bona fide of everyone on the panel to discuss military options, containment options veered off against a nuclear nuclear rising iran.
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who will turn the podium over. >> thank you for that introduction. so pleasure to be his cato. i was here a year ago talking about my last book in the old auditorium i think that there's wide agreement that iran rapidly advancing nuclear programs perhaps the grading programs in the united states in deciding on the deal is the most important issue is to discover today. i would like to see there's only three raised the issue will be resolved. first he could get the diplomatic settlement with iran. second wicket complete acquiescent nuclear armed iran or third time that israel could take military action design for nuclear weapons.
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clearly the diplomatic settlement would be ideal if they could get it, but i think there's very good reason that we can't. in fact it's hard to imagine over that to agree to in terms of kurds washington and the international community is that iran's nuclear program is no longer a threat. as we all know, translates to returning to the negotiating table and they'll discuss the uranium enrichment program and european program when asked about the prospects as the only hope you can provide. so it's diplomacy failed for the enemy face-to-face is very difficult decision between acquiescent to new year and iran and military action.
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the united states would take way deterrence in the regime. the nuclear armed iran would still be nice to. it's a nuclear armed iran would likely lead to further proliferation and other countries to acquire nuclear weapons in response. i ran it up to become a nuclear transferring enrichment elegy to adversaries around the globe. nuclear armed iran would become progressive payrate.restrains foreign policy and major military actions in the united states or israel. nuclear would have been nuclear counter deterrent to deter a major action of this would require a cover for her to step out for comparison. some engage in more diplomacy in the region. and it's very nice weight around which means the middle east could be more crisis prone with the nuclear armed iran and have a nuclear armed iran, nuclear armed israel and attach the other nuclear armed states in
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these crises could fire out of control with nuclear exchange and i don't think iran could launch a suicidal nuclear war and given the multipolar nuclear environment, i think that there are a lot of possibilities for accidental inadvertent nuclear exchange. given the small size of this really nuclear exchange. once iran has nuclear missiles at the expert five years, one of the crises could be their exchange on the east coast. so these are serious for. the united states have to deal with. as long as i ran it says the state announced it to your weapons, this could be even longer. so if president obama said, nuclear armed iran is unaccustomed. so that leaves us with one option. it is not an attractive one and there are many downside is. it's better than the alternative. a u.s. military iran could
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almost certainly destroy the capabilities and it's difficult to estimate with any capability, but i has to it would set the program back between three and 10 years and this would create a lot of time for some thing where it ends up without nuclear weapons. there is a significant upside to strike. there's also downsides to military action, but i think that these risks are often exaggerated and are not as crazy as many people believe in the united states of putting a strategy. so the most obvious cost of military action bpa ronnie military action. it's important to understand iran does not have a strong conventional military said that there has been in the military actions. so a man's fertility reactions after a strike would be to prepare attacks to launch an accurate ballistic missile and to cause problems in the persian
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gulf up to and including a straight up or move. for that is that iran could do. then we have to think what would iran do? we have to understand iran would have its own strategic dilemma after a strike. on one hand would want to strike back to stay faith domestically. on the other hand, primary would want to exist and would not pick his site. one state could very well start a conflict that would be the end of the iranian military and the end of diacritic regime. it's almost certainly going 10% calibrated to the straight back. they don't strike back hard enough to lose their heads. i think the united state plans on this reason a man in the made state can put in place a clear deterrent strategy and communicate to iran before, during after the strike are only interested in the key nuclear
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facilities and not in overthrowing the regime. i think i'm making the message very clear that we can prevent iran from crossing the red lines such as those in the strata form is, connecting major terrorist attacks in the united states using chemical and biological weapons and make it clear if they cross the red lines that we would be willing to engage in a bigger fight if they stop short to be happy to trade nuclear program for retaliation. some in sum, it's diplomacy and sanctions fail and if the united states finds itself choosing between a nuclear armed iran in strike and a point at which we have to make that decision is that iran's kicks out international inspectors and begins enriching above person 90%. if the united states finds itself in that position, you think we should work to build an international coalition to pull
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back and insert an inevitable round of retaliation and escalate the crisis. so again not an active option, but it's better than the alternative living with the dangers of a nuclear armed iran for decades. [applause] >> i will take the opposite position. i'm going to talk about versus what are the possible and games of the situations in iran and what would either result of attack? i think there's a little bit of what i do about the endgame may be. i agree with him that the
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program is likely and i don't think the other two options are strike or acquiesce to nuclear iran, but there is also iranian.a latent capability would maintain control and the capabilities also on attack is that what makes this endgame less politically. the more we antagonize on this topic, the less likely the capability is sufficient so the more likely it will be what the names. on the consequences of not attacking iran, there's three consequent is that i usually mention and what i'll do if we get nuclear weapons. the second one is nuclear cascade and the least possibility and the final one is a likelihood of accidental
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exchange to the solution to the nuclear level in a future crisis in the middle east with the intern. the first one involvement is important to know first of all but it depends on weaponization. emboldened would have been nice nuclear iran is actually what a nice but it's hard to figure out how they would feel. but the question to ask and i have it order the iranian action they like to take that we couldn't be deterring that we would no longer be able to acquire here but do they want to do if it doesn't have nuclear weapons and i haven't seen a good answer to this question.
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does it want to supply more as weapons to hezbollah, does it want to encourage the attack on the homeland? all of these actions, even if it possessed nuclear weapons. the argument that possesses the nuclear weapon, it was the great risk of nuclear retaliation if it takes bold action because you're not in the habit of attacking attacks on nonnuclear state. but iran says and then provokes a crisis that put the date and important in the u.s. it is possible to suffer a devastating nuclear strike. and so i don't think nuclear weapons changed the iranian regime to survive and i don't think nuclear weapons changed the art against the nuclear resurrection. i don't know which direction's
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iran would like to take. and which of those who think in the future as a result of nuclear weapons and would in fact create serious trouble for israel and the u.s. not be in the survival. and so on this question of involvement, i would like to note that i think is internal contradiction, which is if we strike iran preventively, we can expect the iranian regime to be rational and be trained in their response. but don't go overboard in your reaction. but the ocean of fact, which they become unrestrained bowl. the changes the effect in which they become international stability, where the attacks and how they will actually kind of okay with it on the strike on
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the ground which will at the regime and without going over the reaction. without one way or the other and both reasoning that an attack because you want to retaliate on us or it is not necessary. iranians are so restrained that they would not. they are both possible and necessary strike. the second point i'd like to talk about is the possibility of a nuclear test gave. the pain in the argument, even
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if you like the late fee, then even if iran only have like they would follow suit. iraq, saudi arabia i would like to know a couple things on this docket. the u.s. has existing security vis-à-vis based on current capability will spend more money events are depends then. and in fact i'd argue the connecticut area, there is no extent of the u.s. allied on which they sit plowshare a nuclear station in which preventing its allies from deliberation.
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the u.s. was not consistent with the professor and pakistan. even in saudi arabia among the greatest recipients of military support, second-largest in the umbrella, iraq is a bit more complicated towards iran in which case it was in response to iran are to iran, which is likely best supported. so it's unlikely in my view that even iranian weaponization would result in a nuclear capacity in the middle east. so it is consistently successful at present and allies. the mac it would result from the iranian. but as is the case of the individual stories follow the
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weaponization of the title and it's hard figure out because you actually need the weapon, that even if you have one, the argument he makes is iran and the u.s.? the communication channels and the types of assurances that the u.s. and the soviet union had that allowed us to escalate. i would like to note that during the cold war even before we have robust communication channels. it is before the soviet how the linux variant for five years at most. it's unclear whether they have retaliation. in fact now we have actually can use history to make the opposite point phenolic to argue as there is no historical evidence that would lead you to believe that
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escalation is a likely event. even in relation to nuclear, we have members and to ask a late to the nuclear level. so now we can talk briefly about what would happen if we attack before points to which they differ from the appointments that an attack will be far more at per se did. this is an analogy that makes fictional son. one facility we talk about a couple of weeks of attacks. in fact, if you look at the request, you see it's an attack would lead to scratch realistic capabilities. clearly israel is not particularly weak. so we're not talking about one strike one day. we talk about the bonding and
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then assess that. so that is far more costly and far more generally than a think a single attack. the second point is the race is the race of an attack would not of an attack would not end the program, would not delay a program on the assessments, but we agree on the assessment that it's not the end of that the israeli attack were if anything led saddam to redouble its efforts and he was only ultimately lead to java programmer on i-295. >> so containment, sanctions regime with be the aftermath of an attack. they need to continue after not to have been nice to an attack
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at the endpoint at the same time an attack was to please the likelihood that would assemble the international coalition that we have to put containment and the regime in place that if we attacked we make it hard to contain therefore less likely that iran be persuaded to not let the nice nuclear programs. for at the same time we could be and this is the third effect. it could be pursued by an attack. it's perception that requires itself from what is a very increased because they've just been attacked. it's even less like we would appeal to persuade them not to weapon nice. every neanderthals is actually great already 88. i don't have any thoughts appear soon in a nuclear weapons
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capability. but i think even the devil presold we attacked them. the final consequence of an attack is the lake and game. the likely endgame would become weaponization. and so i conclude a same very quickly that i think we should heed the lessons of north korean nuclearization here, but as the u.s. was greatly can ferrand with you do not have the north korean bomb, but we haven't been involved -- we certainly have not been nuclear cascade to maintain its assurances in japan, south korea for a cascade. we haven't seen escalation during the crisis or a escape in a couple years, but we haven't seen any escalation in north korea. it's a better template to look
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at this case than the possibility of a strike succeeding. [applause] >> i want to thank cato for inviting me. i often work with cato scholars on a variety of issues. i appreciate the willingness. i also say up front i'm in front pamina nonphysician because i've been on at least one other panel and a great man of certain aspects of his argument. i find myself agreeing with nuno in my other colleague on some aspects, but it's a very important issue need to be discussing. we need to remember this is not something that just comes out. the problem is essentially been a slow-motion train wreck in front of her eyes over more than the last decade.
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security council has been dealing with iran's nuclear file and i think if you look at the previous panel, it's very clear that an engagement, which is not working, but i don't have high hopes that much of that meeting will be the p5+1 and they have not had the desire to impact and have not changed the machines basic calculus about the program msi and up where matt does it appears to consider military options. i just say up front i think one thing we have a range of viewpoints let's not fool ourselves. i think some people in the q&a lost -- and gone into this. the obama administration is near a its rhetoric.
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president obama has said clearly that containment is not policy. this can be very difficult and i don't think he has any interest in that approach even if it comes to the decision that he may need to make sun time after reelection. where i differ with matt is i don't think a limited strike is the theory. and the reason on why has the thing about contain rent is we are overlooking the fact that cafaro is james carville and the regime and the nature of the regime is the problem we are working on right now. it's not just that duties. it's a broader set of dvds and the point of some serious discussions with the current regime in iran but very difficult to make anything seriously if they agree to and believe they could actually trust, given their past deceit
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about the nuclear dvds. i remind everyone this is a regime that are decades has been killing americans in your salad most directly. most recently the lethal support to militias in iraq and taliban. address long-standing support and has below. it has executed more people especially since the crackdown of the green movements in 2009 in the number of imprisonments. it also has for years been to instability which had been paid to the global impacting market and undermine u.s. interests. before i get to matt's argument and limited strike. i talk first about what containment they raised.
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even if you set aside and i will you have been a devout interest about whether iran would actually use nuclear weapons against israel, whether it were transferred to earlier tech policy to terrorist groups, i will set this issues aside. but even if you don't care are moved by those concerns, i think alone the cascade of collaboration that will result in something that can be avoided and that some large part by president obama has picked out the containment he has. she would rely on to argue we been successful from going nuclear in the past. i find it hard to basically transfer the case of japan for instance. it's hard to see what america mineral challenge to people that we should extend and clear about
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a pen protector re-audit in the same way we protect london. there's a difference in culture because of the difference in values the fundamental fact that saudi arabia would need to protect democracy and i don't think the american people are going to be ready to take the steps and other means to ensure that people need to proliferation. regardless of whether actual nuclear tech elegy networks and tears but iran's terrorist are bold and am they are active elsewhere around the globe. i think also we have to be concerned about the errands of the regime. even if you don't believe the regime is irrational, if you believe the regime but not for use nuclear weapons, it is likely most analysts believe this will not last. perhaps five years given the political opposition, the
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broader trends within the region. who knows what other actions who may and output control of nuke leer but in, even if the current regime is considered rational. one final concern we need to raise for the nuclear tech knowledge used book in pakistan. a lot of the current capabilities around the world of countries have been niftily aided by the a.q. khan network, bush there are varying reports about how much the actual pakistani government knew or encourage that network, but it's something the proliferation of type knowledge she to be turned about. it's another reason the north korea case is instructive. north korea has been a problem and not an issue that has not had impact on u.s. or allied
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security. advanced technology in the proliferator to elegy to a number of countries in the salt we need to be concerned about if we had iranian regime. so getting beyond the containment discussion, when you look at the military option, and certainly is not a good option. if we were truly serious about taking military action, time is right and number of years ago when the program was much taller, less spread out and would've been easier to destroy the limited strike do not advocate. also i have read with nuno for the syrian program with the israelis this is what the news article a variety of centrifuge on the component parts are
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produced and now they are dispersed and how the united states and israel late they don't know locations of all of those facilities. it would be very difficult to take out a limited strike here's what i advocate is a more straight. if the united states disappointed when the military opposition, any u.s. military action is not done in a limited way of life take out defense capabilities. the policies go after missile sites to respond it would probably collapse her evil facilities to help the ability and so this operation is carried out in article i. to last several eithne dimension, why not expand the target center command-and-control elements to go after elements of regime impressions used against iranian people. and basically try to keep this space for the opposition to
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perhaps rise up and ran up for expensive version of what we did and hope that we can help move the country toward some sort of regime change. regime change is obvious we be satisfied if it occurred from within. i think that's the hope of a lot of us, but i think the problem is that iran's political internal political timeline are not in sync and i think we do not have enough time to wait for the iranians to change the regime. so i guess i will just end by saying that down by our clear. the cost of containment are incredibly significant. i think the cause outweigh the many military strike. but the limited strike from serious doubt guys. and i think if we go down the path considering the military
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action, we need to remember that the regime is the issue, not just nuclear program. [applause] >> thank you very nice. i like to think the cato went to two and logan for organizing. i want to applaud the impeccable timing. secretary panetta said recently there is a strong likelihood that it will strike iran. here we are in march 30th. it is impressive you were able to organize not only his statement, but this conference. well done. if israel does strike, we have a lot to that what will happen back. for such a strike help or hinder
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your assent is that occurred around future? my bottom line is that deterring iran, even a nuclear iran straight or proposition and deterring iran ties than had preemptive or preventive or doing straight, especially from israel will make it much, much harder in the future. our main is a bad idea. a little curious necessary to describe my argument. dram is the latest example of a long-standing problem. that is how do you deal with emerging powers? scholars and observers have worried a lot about the new nuclear powers for a number of reasons. they had incomplete and immature security protocols. we are not sure they can be reliable custodians. they have command-and-control arrangement. new nuclear powers are usually
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flushed with nationalism. achieving the nuclear -- but the moment of intense national pride and nationalism can be very dangerous semmel. new nuclear powers tend to overestimate a nuclear arsenal. they made the technological breakthrough may think well, we've got it. we can do a lot of things with our newfound nuclear things. actually they can't do that much. nuclear weapons had to have little use he on the basic deterrence. he takes the rear powers to learn that. but it can be dangerous. these are reasons why we worry about then. not a debate about how to deter a power is focused on the question of whether or not they are rational. deterrent hearsay in order for deterrence to work they have to pay the national adversary ways to cost benefit and some have argued that the nature of the iranian regime is such that it
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doesn't weigh costs and benefits in the way that we weigh costs and benefits. it is motivated by ideology, religious extremism and you might be going to take extraordinary risks that are not rational as a defined term. this is an important question of rationality. i will come back, but it's not enough. how to deter a country like iran would have to ask, what exactly are we trying to deter? what reactions and therefore. first we would like to deter a rapid reaction of the rams nuclear weapons. we achieve some modest nuclear arsenals would be happy with that, but we wouldn't want it to go in the campaign of rapid expansion. that would exacerbate all of the concern but it just mentioned. would be especially concerned overtly. best case scenario that extends only and terribly. that we could probably do
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quickly and update you we would be very very nervous. the second is for the transfer of nuke your materials, for all of the third party. to the poorest are dimension if iran will particularly can turn the transfer of nuclear materials to terrorists. hezbollah. we would like to deter the use of nuclear weapons as cover for congressional objections. it would be somehow emboldened by having a more likely conventional risk act that would be confident that we would not intervene. they be emboldened due to lack that essentially are to increase their subordinate proxies. finally, perhaps most importantly we would like to deter iran for actually using a nuclear weapon water.
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in one sense this is the easiest thing to deter because this is the only kind of action we can credibly represent with their own nuclear arsenal. nuclear threats against all of the lesser action simply are not credible. no one would believe us if you do something conventionally. it just would not be credible at all. but we can credibly reach bond in the sense to a new air attack. on the other hand comes i'm observers are simply not rational. they are not motivated by cold war calculations and cost-benefit. in the summer of 2006, for instance, lewis wrote in "the wall street journal" that according to his readings of islamic texts, he wrote on august 22nd and an appropriate day for the apocalyptic end in of israel is necessary if the
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iranian leaders treat him with disdain. a lot of iranian leaders are frankly worried about international prestige and international respect. and if we carefully and continually promised them that a rapid expansion of the nuclear effort will lead to international opprobrium, they might slow down. in fact i think it's likely that they will slow down. second, we can deter transfer to proxy actors. one way that we can do this is by disabusing of iran of the notion he can remain anonymous. one thing people worry about is i rank it quietly and covertly deliver nuclear and hezbollah and it would be safe as long as they can unit use it anonymously. just think about it. think through the actual chain of events. if a nuclear blast went off in israel or in the united states, who would we immediately look at? without question, without
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hesitation iran would be number one and pakistan would be probably number two. we could also indicate to iran that we have actually made some pretty substantial developments in the science and nuclear forensics, that is the ability to trace fissile material back to its origin. now there is debate among citizens about how far along we are in this process. all i care about is telling iran that we are going at a pretty steady pace, planting a seed of doubt in the minds in the notion that they can remain as anonymous providers. first -- the third we can be as confident as deterring use as cover for conventional aggression. iran's conventional capabilities are pathetic. they have no power projection capabilities of any sort. they have the conventional capability that they were reliant on 1970s and hunter the regime of the shop. they have basically sacrifice
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spending on the air force because they know they can keep up. their surface navy is just not very capable at all. iran can cause some problems. they can lash out a little bit but they can't watch anything like assisting conventional operation, especially not against countries like israel or the united states. so i think that we exaggerate those concerns. what about the danger that they increase their support for proxy action? i think this concern is overblown. as a lot of the observers have pointed out, iran proxy actor has been tepid. when they feel heat from the international community, the pullback on them and i don't know why that would change just because they had a very small arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal. i see no obvious reasons why not go finally the united states can use weapons and war as i said
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one case in which we can make a serious and unambiguous threat of reprisal. unfortunately, my bottom line is deterrence is not only possible but it's like me lee and it can succeed. it will get a lot harder if israel launches an attack. it will be a lot harder to deter all four kinds of behavior. in the aftermath of a strike on its nuclear complex iran will have gigantic incentive to disperse and conceal its program and basically mimic the actions of iraq after 1981. this is what we don't want. they would become more overt and harder to deal with in the future. and iran might believe to reduce its vulnerability to subsequent strikes better to give it to hezbollah and. in the aftermath of the strike you will be harder to deter the use as cover, simply because it will be harder to assemble and
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maintain an international coalition to block iranian expansion. especially among key regional actors. the gulf states come to mind. it will face significant pressure to move away from the united states, not towards it. finally and most worrisome that will be harder to deter the use of nuclear weapons in war. deterring the abuse of weapons requires two things. it requires threats of reprisal and requires assurances. we all forget this. there has to be an assurance attached to the target, that if you restrain yourself, we are not going to hit you anyways. you will not be targeted as long as you said the yourself. it will be almost impossible to issue anything like a credible assurance in the wake of a strike. iran would have no reason to believe us and i disagree with matt kroenig on this. iran would take a serious lucid
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or -- use it or lose it problem. if it's worried that it was going to suddenly lose this program, this crown jewel of its regime, it would have incentives to fire away and the crisis would be very very unstable. and just to finish with a couple of thoughts. we have been maintaining iran for a long time and we will continue to contain iran whether or not our politicians say so publicly. what we do and what we say are not always the same thing. deterrence will also proceed a pay. this is actually pretty straightforward. about the only thing we can do to undermine the quality of deterrence is to attack now. [applause] >> thank you all for your contributions. in the interest of fairness matt you left yourself a little time
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and probably have some play clearing to do if you want to but i will pile on and be the imperial moderator here if that's her right. i wanted to clear up, i do remember how you phrased it that during your talk, you didn't necessarily think it was time to strike iran today but if some future threshold were crossed it would be. so i wanted to ask that question to both you and jamie. is it your position that we should strike today or win at some theoretical point in the future and in particular to jamie, if it's the regime stupid, would you favor bombing if it had no nuclear program whatsoever? i think we will start over here and end up with this question. >> thanks for the question, just in. as i said in my introductory remarks i think if we get to the point of deciding between in nuclear armed iran or strike it is at that point we should strike so the question is when you get to that point and as i said we are returning to the negotiating table and it would
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be wonderful if iran agreed to give up its enrichment program, i would go out and immediately celebrate. i hope some of you would join me but i don't think that's likely. when do we reach the point of decision? what i say in the foreign affairs article is there a certain thresholds that iran would cross that would indicate that they are clearly dashing toward a nuclear weapon and if we don't act about point that we would be forfeiting our last chance to prevent them from acquiring a nuclear weapon so the first would be to enrich to higher levels. iran is enriching its uranium to 20% or to construct new weapons it would need to enrich up to 90% so if iran enriches above 20% to 90% that would be one red line. if of bea then iran will have nuclear weapons and second would be if iran kicked out international inspectors. inspectors on the ground visit a nuclear facilities every two weeks writing detailed reports every three weeks or so so we can know that they have some confidence they are not
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enriching above 20%. if they kick out the inspectors that would be an indication they are up to no good and that would be another red line that they cross and we should take military action. there is another one that would cause me concern. experts estimate if iran made the decision to enriched to 90%, that it could have enough material for its first weapon in about four months but that timeline is shrinking as iran brings more and more centrifuges on line and increases stockpiles of 20% low-enriched uranium and rutgers estimates by the end of this year december 2012 the timeline will have shrunk to about one month, so i think the progress, at some point it, we'll take the military option off the table even if iran crosses some of those clear red line so i think there are other things, advanced centrifuges that should cause us reason for concern. the difficulty there is i think the united states if we took military action would do it
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different than israel would. i don't think the united states would do that. i think we would make in advance to make a case under international law to build an international coalition that would take time. i think it's easier to sell these kind of clear, bright red lines such as enriching towards 90% to an international audience. >> on the question of whether the u.s. should strike now, i think as i said in my remarks, this all would have been much easier if the options would have been much better if this would have been done several years ago so the longer we wait, the more difficult the military option becomes. now, having said that, i do think that it's worth seeing what happens in this next round of talks and in mid-april although i said in my remarks i don't have a lot of high hopes. i don't think the iranian regime is currently in a situation
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because internal division where they will be willing to even accept the most basic offers from p5+1 but i do think that probably needs to play itself out. i am also all in favor of piling on any additional sanctions, getting crippling sanctions as much as possible in the coming months. i do think the obama administration believes that this is an issue for 2013, not for 2012. i have some fundamental concerns with how they are going about making that assessment. i think the u.s. intelligence community has over learned weapons of the iraq wmd intelligence debacle that they are overly cautious in their assessment. i think this whole notion that the senior obama administration officials have laid out in the public domain that they are willing to let iran essentially get to the nuclear threshold and then just wait for to make the final political decision for action would be taken and very dangerous. i don't know the u.s. intelligence agency will ever see or know that the supreme
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leader has given that the go-ahead and as subonly that we are getting to the point with the various elements of iran's capabilities where we are talking by some experts account about a matter of month that it would take is that decision is made in that would be a dangerous situation to get into given our past failure with a wmd program. in conclusion about an israeli strike i don't think in israeli strike is ideal from a u.s. perspective and i do have some concerns about if israel feels that they do not have enough support or assurances from this administration and the act alone the united states will likely get dragon and we will have the worst of all worlds. if it comes down to the fact that israel will take action in the coming months, i would much rather see the united states take actions rather than israel because i do think we are we are going to be left to deal with a lot of the consequences if israel acts alone. although i think if israel was not an actor or a player in the
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situation that we probably could wait a bit longer. i do think that just the israeli concerns and their unwillingness to see iran even get the capacity of a nuclear weapon might have encouraged the u.s. to act sooner. >> i want to jump in and address a couple of points that jamie made about the likelihood of a nuclear cascade. i was pleased that you think that you agree that the emboldenment of the nuclear exchanges are like effect but your major concern is with the debacle of the nuclear cascade and there to point to make. one is it likely the u.s. would be willing and able to mostly willing to extend the nuclear umbrella to deter the saudi's from acquiring their own nuclear weapon and on this point we don't need to extend any relevant, not that the only security we can deter their nuclearization.
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arms supplies to the level that we have done in the past that has worked pretty well so this apply conventional arms is sufficient reassurance not too nuclearized. he also mentioned north korea, that they are in fact part of the problem and they claim they are. i just don't see any evidence that the north koreans have it been emboldened to acquire nuclear weapons. i also don't think the iranian regime is my favorite regime but the question is have the north koreans become emboldened and become more of a problem? i don't think so and one last point and i will conclude on this. it's actually striking to realize, no pun intended on the striking, it's important to realize that the states and we fear will nuclearized in response to an iranian nuclear weapon are states that did not nuclearized in response to an israeli nuclear weapon and these are states that cannot count on u.s. support against israel but can count on u.s. support against iran. so they did not nuclearized
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against a state that is far more threatening to them than iran. >> we will throw it open to questions. this same preble rules apply. please wait for the microphone and asked your shortest, smartest question among many that you no doubt have. i think the gentleman on the aisle was the first with his hand up. yes, that is you. >> david isenberg, scholar to professor krone. fundamental to any strategy is a connection between and then means. you are asking if a military strike is pretty clear but you have seen to put it as creating space in the future for something that happened, which doesn't seem a very concrete goal. if you are going to go to war, it should be something. what is your response to that?
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>> is a good question. i think actually the connection between ends and means is pretty clear. there are four nuclear facilities iran is operating that we are trying to get them to shut down. we are negotiating with them and asking them to shut it down and they are unwilling to shut it down. if we bombed those facilities they will be shut down so that is the ends and means calculation. what you are getting at is this point that there is no guarantee that iran will never develop nuclear weapons. that is absolutely right. on the other hand, if we step back and let iran build nuclear weapons we will be guarantee that they have nuclear weapons so a strike at a minimum and poses a significant delay and then i think there is a lot of reasons that this delay could become permanent. iran might give up. most people assume that iran will be bombed on friday and be back on saturday morning rebuilding their nuclear probe them. that is possible and i think it's also possible iran would give up and say we have invested decades building infrastructure.
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are we really going to go through another decade of rebuilding this expensive nuclear infrastructure only to invite a future attack? maybe they would decide not to. second coming think the time is valuable in and of itself and we need to face all these threats and i think most people on the panel agreed would emerge from a nuclear-armed iran. i would much rather face it this year than next year and then third i think there are a lot of things, there's a lot that can happen in that period of the tenure window so it's possible by this time we reach further diplomacy it creates a space for indigenous regime change in the government i'd have a different nuclear policy to create space and decide to give up the program for some future conflict that would lead iran to never develop the nuclear weapon in fourth and final at changes the the -- in other ways it could actually make diplomacy easier.
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if iran's supreme leader i would be much more willing to trade away shattered nuclear program than one within eight months of a nuclear weapon. >> the gentleman, back there. >> could the united states -- my name is stephen shore. could the united states restrain israel if israel is determined to abort the iran nuclear program and if so, could that possibly be used as a bargaining chip in american negotiations with iran? >> the united states restrained -- though no and no. [laughter] >> succinct. anyone else care to get in on it? know, crickets up here. let's go back there. i think i see john mueller. do i see john mueller? yes, i do.
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>> john mueller from cato and ohio state. i have lived long enough to have sat through this debate several other times in various other countries and i would like someone in particular since he has a background in nuclear proliferation to suggest any parallels. one of the biggest ones is in china in 1964 with seemed at the time more dangerous than just about anybody. and very unstable and said the debate then was about arming china to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. they were determined they wouldn't do it and they did get nuclear weapons. what has happened since that time as they have built far fewer than they could. we had a no first use policy and basically hasn't said much of anything so the question is, what experience in the past to make's see you think that proliferation will be dangerous
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when it seems to have been relatively undangerous so far? >> question about whether to strangle the baby in the cradle if it was termed in china and whether it applies to iran. >> of course it's a difficult question to answer in some ways because it depends on an assessment of what would happen if the united states had not struck and how history might have played out differently and we just don't know. but you know, the other example, north korea and pakistan and nuno so we didn't bomb north korea and it hasn't been that bad. i think i would strongly disagree with that. i think north korea has transferred nuclear technology to syria and possibly to burma and possibly to other states. i think north korea has been more aggressive with the south korean shift recently. in the north korea has only had nuclear weapons for a few years. we still haven't seen the full range of consequences that would play out from a nuclear north
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korea. we could still have a stake collapse in a loose nukes problem in a nuclear exchange between north korea and other states and so i think you know well we have been lucky in the past and we haven't had a nuclear exchange, we did come very close a number of times, and they think it is just naïve to think if we keep playing this movie over and over more and more countries getting nuclear weapons a dangerous region with matt military conflict that these weapons will never be used just because they haven't been used for 50 years i think is probably wrong. >> on that point, i disagree. i am struck that we have had this discussion in the 1940s and the 1970s. we have this again and again and again and history really isn't a useful precedent for understanding the dilemmas of deterrence because eventually at some point it's going to go wrong. that is very fatal. i don't think it's right. i think we do have a good track
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record now with knowing how to merge nuclear powers. i will agree that in the first few years, they can be unstable because they simply don't know the limits of their arsenals but over time, they realize that it's just not that valuable. it really doesn't get you that much coercive leverage in international negotiations or the ability to cow your rivals or anything else. i'm not willing to top off the danger simply because some hypothetical nightmare scenario might happen in israel. >> one thing i just want to pick up on with josh, i think one thing that is being overlooked by our colleagues who are kind of arguing in favor of deterrence is, i think you can really only make that argument of the middle east does not go poly-nuclear because i would argue that this sort of deterrence that we required in this case, if you have four or
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five nuclear powers in the middle east, would really be groundbreaking. i just don't think we have been through that sort of situation before. i don't know quite how it would work and how the united states and other countries in the west could really help ensure that there wouldn't be even an accidental escalation. if you look at what is happening right now in the middle east on the conventional side, you really see a series of proxy battles going on between iran and countries like saudi arabia throughout the region. currently in syria, weighing in on the side of the conflict unfolding, so i do not know if you had multiple nuclear powers involved how traditional deterrence models would actually work in that case and i don't think they want to go down that path. that would be my main concern in this case. >> i think that they would work because states would he fearing extinction. what is happening between saudi arabia and iran is sort of a low
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grade, nasty nibbling at the edges cold war. they don't like them very much and they are trying to undermine one another but the danger is national extension and i think their behavior will sober up. there is a clarifying logical extension. i don't think it's unique to the west or unique to any particular region and i think it would apply in the middle east just as it would anywhere else but again i just point out all of these hypotheses are based on a sequence of nightmare scenarios. the first is that iran is not satisfied with a virtual arsenal and i think right now we have got pretty much what is after, that it goes full nuclear. saudi arabia in the face of american security commitments says we don't care, were going to go and get a nuke or weapon ourselves and buy one from pakistan. in response to that turkey would also go nuclear and egypt would go nuclear and there would be this automatic cascade. there are a lot of it's in this scenario and i'm very hesitant
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about supporting military action on their syrian event. >> just two points. one is a general point and i'm aware of the fact that i am not in academia so i cannot make general points but there is a general point that there seems to be two uses of history. you can use history to say there are 10 cases that went this way so it's more likely that the 11th case will also go this way or you can say they're 10 cases that went this way but this time it's different. i think the role to the extent scholars are using this debate they are useful in the fact that they studied long hours and therefore they should be telling us what it is in the historical records and in all these cases, including particularly in matt's scholarly work they indicate that it wouldn't be such a big problem. the second i would like to make is that i agree that a nuclear middle east or a nuclear iran is worse than a nonnuclear middle east or a nonnuclear iran but
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those are not the two scenarios we are contemplating. the two scenarios we are contemplating are whether a strike is a better idea than acquiescing to iranian nuclearization are not. that is, where the middle east is better after a strike against iran or was the middle east better without the strike against iran, with the possibility that iran will go nuclear. and i think the mechanisms for instability that derive from a nuclear iran in the middle east would be exponentially greater if we would strike iran preventively. >> we will go to more questions. let's go on the aisle there, that tanned, brownish jacket and a blue shirt. see my name is nina and i'm a graduate student. thank you for taking the time to speak to us today. ms. slavin on the previous panel wrench in iran had the capability to currently reduce
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for nuclear weapons and mr. kroenig i believe you said they don't yet have the capability to produce any nuclear weapons yet but they are getting close to producing their first one so someone could clarify that for me and if this was to go forward, you touched on it before but what are the chances israel would go this alone and really kind of go at an iranian strike in the face of the u.s. saying that they are absolutely not in line with supporting them? >> where is iran today and how far away is iran today and will israel -- goes to be according to the last 98 quarterly report which is very interesting in a lot of ways, iran has on the order of 109 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride which has been enriched to 19.75%. if you took another stab at enriching that up to 90% which
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is how we judge weapons-grade, you are looking at the lower bound of one bomb, about 15 kilograms. so if they took that step, operably somewhere between six months in the year. now i should look at that one with them. the number four comes from, ran has a much larger amount of lower enriched uranium, which they would have to subsequently go up to 90% and then you could do some math and see how they get for weapons and a very large stockpile but that would be tough to do. the other point about weaponization is, if iran wanted to break out politically, it's not simply a matter of deciding to go to 90%. you have to do the enrichment up to 90%. you would have to convert that gap back into metal which is not an easy process. you would have to machine the pit basically. it would need a pretty explosive device and presumably you would want to test it.
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it is an idle threat that we have that may maybe you do and maybe don't. we didn't start caring about north korea until i tested it so you have to go through all the steps. that's not something you are going to do between iea 80. that means kicking the inspectors out, leaving the ntc and that would be something that we would see in our intelligence capabilities notwithstanding. that would be pretty remarkable. so iran's behavior up until now, up until now seems to me to be a country that wants to be in the scientific place, where they can break out if they so choose. i don't think they have made that choice. they just want to have that latent capability. your second question was about, with israel and the united states. can you just repeated?
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[laughter] c. i will take both of those up. my colleagues over your have raised a number of ideas that iran is going to stop at a virtual arsenal. we can wish that was the case. i don't see any reason to believe that is the case. iran has been very clear that it's its two primary strategic goals are to continue to exist which they think that means being able to deter a major u.s. or israeli military attack in their second goal in their strategy documents they have published in public is to become -- in the middle east. so my colleagues think they will go with the japan model where you have a lot of hq and the ability that i don't think the japan model is going to deter a u.s. israeli attack program think the japan model makes you the most dominant state in the region. they need weapons, so i think they are playing it smart in terms of the way they move forward. they might stop short after a while but i think initially they are going to weaponize.
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i think there's little reason to believe they are going to stop this late capability. in terms of israel's decision, this is something that maybe didn't come out enough in the talks but the israeli option in the u.s. option are very different. major difference between the united states has a much greater ability to inflict lasting damage on iraq's nuclear program so on balance the israeli and military option is not a good one and the israeli strike. i'm an of u.s. strike is i think of the greater damage we can inflict on balance the benefits outweigh the costs. in terms of whether israel will go, the problem they face is their window for effective military action is rapidly closing because they have less ability in the various underground buried facilities and is iran follows through to do more and more enrichment work at home israel see this window for effective action closing so i think it's very likely in the next six months or so if we don't get a deal and israel
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isn't absolutely convinced that the united states will take action if necessary later on which i think the strike would be a very hard case to make that israel will take action so i do think that there is, difficult to say, but to put an estimate on at there is a high probability there will be a conflict this year. >> matt covered most of the points i was going to make but going back to the early question to whether it be united states and prevent israel from striking in the coming months, i mean part of it is whether the israelis trust this president or a newly-elected republican president to take action, but at least with this administration as much as it looks like this of might be reelected i think it's going to be very difficult at least with the current israeli government to have a lot of confidence in president barack obama's willingness when all the chips are down to act if the israelis really feel it's necessary. because they do have this, as matt referenced, as administrator braude has worried
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about iran entering because of their limited military capabilities, i think there is a decent likelihood that they will strike in the coming months. i don't know if this of administration can do anymore than it's that authority done over recent years and what previous demonstrations have done convince them otherwise. our assessment is iran is getting increasingly close to at least having that capacity to make a final push towards a nuclear weapon. >> two quick points. one is, i am the grain with matt on both. one is that i don't think the capability is a highly likely outcome. i think it's the most likely outcome of not striking is iranian nuclearization. the second is i think israel has not only operational reasons to strike before the summer
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because their window closes, it's also politically a very interesting time for them to do so. there is one thing in the obama administration for the current administration which is a second term obama administration and of the israeli strike on iran during the summer puts obama in a tight corner. if we support the strike than the u.s. will be directing one way or another and if we support the strike, we lose the center so it's a very prolific situation. >> very quickly on this point, i don't know how much course of leverage we have over israel, but just one thing to bear in mind. it's not all about president obama. president obama can change the tone or the substance of his rhetoric he doesn't control eight. congress controls aid so there is an important point to remember that the president is somewhat inhibited by taking a
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firm stand against israel. the money is going to flow. >> one more question. let's go somewhere in the back. let's go to the far back corner over there. >> hi, joe storm. just a quick question for the intervention aside. >> a little bit louder. >> a quick question for the left side of the table, intervention. sorry. [laughter] how can we be certain that we will not be dragged into another iraq and afghanistan like scenario after getting involved in iran, after a strike? >> tell me how this ends question. >> yeah, i mean i certainly am only advocating basically a more
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extensive air campaign that i think the united states what terry would already plan if it were pursuing a limited strike. so yes that could lead to a regime collapse and that is partly why i am advocating is that it could be chaos and a lot of uncertainty in the aftermath. now, that does not mean that the united states would be able to be completely hands-off as we have in the case with libya for instance and never putting boots on the ground or there would be no international force to help with some sort of stability. but i don't think anyone, haven't really read any arguments of anybody advocating a ground invasion of iran so i don't know how we would get dragged into an iraq or afghanistan style operations because we would consciously calm be i think advocating a large occupying force which is generally not what i'm advocating. >> i certainly understand the
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iraq analogies, but you know, there is a professor at oxford university who wrote a great book 15 years or so called maliki's warren he says people reason by analogy and foreign-policy, what are the elections in munich and what are the elections of iraq? is always almost -- almost are is a mistake to do so. them as the underlying differences in cases that are really important so many people use the iraq analogy to understand iran and i think it's misleading to do so. i understand the superficial similarities but they're a very important differences. the first is i think iran is much closer to a nuclear weapon now that saddam hussein was in 2003 and we know that because again international inspectors on the ground writing detailed reports every three months about what iran has and again in iran is according to experts, according to david albright, the expert here in town, about four months from having enough material for his first bomb to make the decision to do so so
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much closer than saddam hussein was. second the operation we are talking about is very different. for the reason iran was so extensive and so costly in blood and treasure is because we put 100,000 troops there and stayed for 10 years. no one is talking about that kind of operation in iran. the kind of operation i'm talking about his is bombing a few keefe facilities in air defenses. you need to get to those facilities of this so this is a limited strike. depending on iranian retaliation they could be over days or weeks, not a decade-long ground where. >> a quick follow up on what regime change would actually look like and what we would do in the aftermath. the last decade has caused me to be very dubious because you are talking about undoing an existing political order. no matter how odious it is and how wrong it is, they have reasons for doing things like making and storing fissile
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material so in the event the regime changes those procedures would be in doubt. so in that case, it strikes me that you can't just be happy with regime change because that they have done all the different regiments up to now and they have done all the nuclear work that is a going to be there in the event of a regime change. would you be in favor of sending some force to safeguard the eastside? what is the next up after a regime collapse? >> i was certainly think the international atomic agency with need to be involved. they party had so much access to certain elements of the program. i do think that when it comes to counter proliferation this administration has taken some risks that i would certainly not have advocated. in the case of libya, we have seen the weapons proliferation that resulted, mostly conventional. luckily because of their, it turns out that the remainder of their cw stockpile which they had lied about, the organization for chemical weapons not transferred anywhere that we
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know of. i do think we are going to face a challenge in syria in the coming months or over the next year if there is a assad regime collapses because serious wmd capabilities are much more extensive than those in the punitive think if you're concerned about counter proliferation you need to seriously consider whether some sort of international force or whether it's u.s. allied special forces but yeah i think there would need to be some effort to secure a site. we can't have sites that are left open for terrorist to go and and get a variety of materials. in the case of syria, the has not seemed willing to really at least publicly talk about their options. there is i think the press reporter to about jordan providing troops. my guess is though that the scale of the problem in iran goes to the nuclear sites and nuclear material, enriched uranium as well as chemical weapons arsenal with also necessitate some sort of international discussion. i don't think this would be the sort of thing where the united
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states alone be the only country concerned about what the aftermath of a regime change would look like. and it's the sort of problem we will have to do with whether it's a regime change brought about because of some sort of external reaction or external action or from within. if we have political instability in iran which is very likely in the coming years and the regime falls and we don't know who is in control we will have the same concerns in the u.s. and its allies will be watching despite the suspects very closely from afar and monitoring what's going on and i'm sure there will be proposals debated about sending in teams be you and if it's a regime change from within so this is not something that is directly related to external military action. >> just a brief comment, i think there are two reasons for wanting, wishing, hoping, praying for advocating for regime change in iraq at that is how you like to be sure time. one of them is certainly gone. the nuclear program and the
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shah. so iran strategic interest in having nuclear capabilities don't and with the end of the regime. stay let's take two more questions and then we will clean the whole table and start with a gentleman here and then we will go back to the back corner over there. >> i was born in tehran, and. [inaudible] i was here at the first panel and heard the second panel and i heard those gentlemen more than once. the more i listen to our experts, it seems that the united states cannot even -- their own country with 75 million people. we claim they don't know anything. they don't know how to do this and they don't know how to do
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that and then the only option that they are promoting is to bomb them. well there are 75 million people and you want to bomb all of them, part of them, as selected group of them? and what kind of day which we have after those bombs have fallen on the people of iran, which is 75 million? >> thank you and let's take the other one in the back corner and then we will go all the way around just to wrap up. >> thank you so much. thank you very much for a fantastic discussion. is there anything to the allegations of iranian influence in latin america and the humdrum sort of sleeper cell? we have heard is bandied about and if anything it is sort of whips up national hysteria with the united states. is there anything to these
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allegations? >> i guess i would relate mostly to iran's ability to hit back, and then i think the first question was mostly about how to stop the day after etc.. so should we start with nuno and then sweep back down? >> on the question of whether the u.s. is powerless to do something, the work i'm doing and i'm writing a book on this, the work we are doing, what it indicates is there is a pattern of proliferation. it states that require nuclear weapons, acquire nuclear weapons because they are already significantly powerful before they acquired the nuclear weapons which is the reason we don't strike them. the soviet union couldn't do it and consider the chinese couldn't do it. consider north korea could not do it before they acquired nuclear weapons. that is indeed u.s. power is very great but it's relatively limited in dealing with these things because the cost of terminating the iranian program would be very high which is also
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why i don't think the difference we would have as a result of the iranian nuclear action is very great because they are to have to a great extent capability. >> you have any final thoughts? >> a couple of final thoughts. i was struck with her, that the united states will not do anything else except for bombing. i don't think that is true. i don't think the united states is impotent at all. there's a long-standing policy objective to have some stability and security in the middle east and the free flow of oil to market. it can do that and have been doing it for a long time. there's no reason why became continued to that. iran simply does not have the wherewithal to close the strait. it can cause trouble but it cannot interrupt the flow of oil that would really affect the internet markets for the long-term. maybe it is very good at reopening this trade if it ever has to face that problem. we can do a lot of things. i think that the implicit debate
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between matt and jamie's interest about whether not we should be a limit strike only against the nuclear program off we should think about regime change more broadly, strangely i disagree with both. but in a weird way. i don't think that there is any scenario in which iranian leaders would see a limited strike as anything more than a prelude to an unlimited strike. the u.s. behaved over the last decade has been of regime change. they have seen this. we hault to do it in libya despite the fact that we had made deals with gadhafi regarding his nuclear program so i don't see any way of assuring them. so i think, there is an argument for regime change but it's going to make that argument you have to think very seriously about the long-term consequences. and given that the whole argument is on the fact that iran has this large sprawling aggressive nuclear program, that would seem to me a call for a large substantial state
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occupation force. we would have to be willing to pay that rise and take that risk. if i really want to get a regime change. one last comment. i do think that it's good we are thinking long-term. most of the questions up until now have then as i said earlier in in the near-term immediate operational question. it's worth thinking about what the long-term looks like. suppose i'm wrong. suppose we can co-opt a limited strike against iraq's limited program. i think what we are left with in that case is an ugly, it in stable, unstable stalemate. i think iran robert or a heart to rebuild facilities and would never have any reason to deal with the united states or the west. i think we would also lose their international partner, who we have done a truth that drifted job compiling up until now. if we don't act and if israel doesn't act what does the future look like? i think it looks like an unpleasant but livable stalemate that we can afford.
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>> jamie, do you have any closing thoughts? >> first i guess i would disagree with josh's point of a limited strike would necessarily be a prelude to regime change. put yourself in the shoes of the iraq supreme leader and your primary goal is to protect the regime and to make sure the regime continues to exist and you wake up one morning and your key nuclear facilities are destroyed by your military and the regime are intact. i don't think your instinct would be to say let's fight with united states and commit national suicide. i think it's very likely a limited strike would result in limited read a toleration that they united states could absorb and it would be much less dangerous than living with a nuclear-armed iran. on the questions of iranians in latin america, iran has been trying to increase its influence in latin america and developing relationships with hugo chavez and venezuela and also bolivia and iran has already signed nuclear cooperation agreements with both countries so i think
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this gets to the risk of technology transfer that i talked about before. i think it's entirely feasible that iran could say, venezuela's sake country in good standing in the npt and has a right to peaceful nuclear technology and to help them we will transfer uranium technology so they can produce fuel for nuclear program and i think this would be a real problem for the united states and the u.s. non-proliferation policy and all the issues we have been dealing with iran for the past decade, and we would be dealing with it. so i think there is a real risk. my colleague said we could deter iran from doing all these nasty things including nuclear technology transfer but i don't think that is the case. what is the threat if iran announces it will transfer uranium enrichment to venezuela. regarding really going to use military force to stop them from doing that? we have been unwilling to use force after we found out north korea was transferring nuclear technology so we have not done it in the past and in the
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scenario iran has nuclear weapons are we really going to fight a war against a nuclear arms state because they transfer their technology? after we were unwilling to go to war with iraq when it didn't have nuclear weapons so that is one of the major troubles with the deterrence. we would have no credibility. we are unwilling to go to war and nobody is going to believe us, that's it would be one key source against a nuclear-armed iran. iraq would not believe us. >> i just want to respond to the gentleman in the front, the point about dave rainey people and also relates to a point that nuno made about the aftermath of a regime change. i'm not advocating and i don't think anyone appears advocating bombing the iranian people out of existence just as i don't think you could argue that the united states is bombing the libyan people are bombing the serbian people in the 1990s. the iranian people do not support the current regime. my understanding and the iranian
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opposition figures that i've spoken to, there is not broad-based support for the current regime. their current regime will fall at some point. it's just a matter of when and they do you think military strikes, series of strikes and a targeted manner civilian casualties could be kept to a minimum. and so there may be some initial kind of rally around the flag notion inside the country, but it was made clear that this was going after the regime and elements of repression that have been used against dave rainey people that have been used to record the iranian people in the streets of tehran and other cities than i do think it would be easier for the united states and its allies involved to make their case rackley with iran and this was in their long-term interest. what would it result in what would emerge certainly could have some critic who. you could have a shake up where you've got other hard-liners in power but i think it's hard to imagine a regime that would be much worse than the current one
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across the broad array of u.s. interest and i think it's very difficult to argue that if you got to the point where you had a democratically-elected government that followed, that it would want to continue under this crippling yoke that is in place to the country of sanctions. the first thing if they want to do is to be repaired the economy and bring back i ran into the community of nations. they would certainly want to negotiate in good faith, unlike the current regime and so then you could have discussions about what exact nuclear capabilities they could be trusted to maintain given their past program so i think it would be much easier for the united states and other countries to have these sorts of negotiations with a democratically-elected government. >> with the debate now settled, i'm not sure how, but would like to think were going for coming and encourage everyone to continue the discussion i think upstairs over diet coke and -- so thank you very much. [applause]
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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] c-span2 will be taking you live in about five minutes to the woodrow wilson center in washington d.c. where canadian prime minister stephen harper will be talking about u.s.-canada relations. the wilson center is currently run by former congressman of california jane harman and she will moderate the discussion with the prime minister. again that his life here in just a few minutes on c-span2. the canadian prime minister was at the white house earlier today, where he took part in a joint news conference with president obama and mexican president felipe calderon. president obama says the u.s., canada and mexico are working together to get rid of outdated regulations that are cycling job
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creation. here is a bit of what they had to say. >> ladies and gents monk, the present of the united states accompanied by the president of mexico and the prime minister of canada. >> please have a seat. >> good afternoon everybody. it is my pleasure to welcome two to great friends and partners, president calderon of mexico and president -- prime minister harper of canada. i've worked with steven and stephen and phillipe on many occasions and join our international partners from aipac to the g20. from our last summit in guadalajara, that of the mexican people including some very good body archie and some tequila if i'm not mistaken.
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i can't reciprocate the music, but phillipe, steven and i are proud to welcome you here today. between us, we represent nearly half of a million citizens from the canadian north to southern mexico. in between the diversity of our peoples and cultures is extraordinary. but wherever they live, they wake up every day with similar hopes that provide for their families to be safe in their communities, to give their children a better life. and in each of our countries, the daily lives of our citizens are shaped profoundly by what happens in in the other two and that is why we are here. today we focused on our highest priority, jobs and opportunity for our people. the united states, this is that created nearly 4 million new jobs. confidence is up in and the economy is getting stronger, but
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with lots of folks still struggling to find work, and pay the bills, we are doing everything we can to speed up the recovery and that includes boosting trade with our two largest economic partners. as president i made it a priority to increase our exports and i'm pleased that our exports to canada and mexico are growing faster than our exports to the rest of the world. in fact last year, trade in goods with their two neighbors surpass $1 trillion for the first time ever. this trade support some 2.5 million american jobs and i want more trade supporting even more jobs in the future. so today prime minister harper let us in a very good discussion about how are three countries can improve our competitiveness. we agreed to continue making our borders be more efficient and more secure, both faster and cheaper and travel and trade. we are expect -- expanding cooperation to create clean energy jobs and combat climate
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change, an area in which the president called the round of mexico has been a real leader. i am pleased to ask -- announce that our three nations are launching a new effort to get rid of outdated regulations that stifle job creation. here in the united states, to cut red tape and ensure smart relations will help achieve savings and benefits to businesses, consumers and their country of more than $100 billion we are our it working to streamline and coordinate regulations with canada and mexico on a bilateral basis so now are three nations are going to sit down together and simplify and eliminate more regulations that will make our joint economy stronger. this is especially important by the way for our small to medium-sized businesses, which when they start exporting, it often starts with mexico and canada. this will help create jobs and is going to keep us on track to keep my goal of doubling u.s. exports. more broadly a rear traded my commitment to the conference
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is -- conference of immigration reform. i am pleased that canada and mexico have also expressed an interest in the partnership and consultations with their partners are underway on how a new members can eat the high standards of this trade agreement which could be a real model for the world and i very much appreciated president calderon updating us on preparation for the next g20 some of which he will be hosting in june. our weather major focus today was the security our citizens deserve. criminal gangs, narcotraffickers pose a threat to each of our nations in each of our nations has a responsibility to defeat that threat. mexico president calderon has shown great courage in standing up to the traffickers and the cartels and we have sped up the delivery of equipment and assistance to support those efforts. here in the united states, we have increase cooperation on our southern border and dedicated new resources to reducing the
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>> it wouldn't have been possible without the leadership and sense of purpose that these two outstanding leaders brought to all of our efforts, including our efforts today. as a result, i believe our nations and our citizens will be more secure, more prose -- prosperous, and in a better position to give their children the lives they deserve. >> you can watch that entire briefing with the three leaders on our network, c-span at 8 p.m. eastern. right now we're at the woodrow wilson center downtown washington, d.c., and stephen harper is about to address, and the associated press reports trade among the u.s., canada, and mexico now exceeds $1 trillion, and the president said he wants to see that number rise. also while we wait for things to get started with the canadian
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prime minister, news from the hill that reports president obama will address congressman paul ryan's budget tomorrow. it says, president obama will deliver an address tuesday emphasizing his differences with budget committee chairman paul ryan's budget and makes those remarks during an associate at the associated press luncheon at the american society of newspaper editors convention, and officials say the president will outline his own proposal emphasizing why he disagrees with paul ryan's approach and why americans can't afford to did in that direction. that news again from the hill. while we wait for things to start here at the woodrow wilson center, a look at the headlines and your phone calls from this morning's "washington journal." [inaudible conversations]
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>> host: promising disadvantaged students an extra year of school to recognize their strength and make them competitive. this is what he has to say this morning. when operating in disadvantaged communities, there's financial aid and other financial tools to skim candidates from the best public and private schools. this approach may be effective in improving an important goal, but ill reel vabt from retrieving prompting students from under performing dysfunctional k-12 school. among the possible amochs could be red shirting, and the january 11th spreech to the ncaa convention. red shirting the is practice of giving college athletes a fifth year to increase their size and strength making them for competitive. here's the thought we want you to weigh in on this morning.
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could we provide scholars with an extra "red shirt year" to increase their intellectual strength and become more competitive. we'll examine options laid out, but the question for us is based off the op-ed about an extra year of high school for disadvantaged students. again, we're going to divide the lines for patients, teachers, and others. parents 202-747-2001,. you can reach out to us on e-mail if you wish at journal@c span.org, and twitter's always available at c-spanwj. let's go to a call to set this up. eli on the other line. what do you think of the
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thoughts? eli, go ahead. are you there? >> caller: yes, i am. >> host: go ahead. >> caller: all right. well, here's what i think. i think that there was a time back in american history where people used to not go to college or high school, and they ended up fine. james garfield, for example, and abraham lincoln, our great presidents who never went to college. we may live in a more advanced time today, but in my opinion, i think the four year way we do things in the high school and i think the way we do things now is fine. i think it's a bunch of fuss and it's not necessary to have an extra year whether you're a wealthy kid, poor kid, middle class family, keep it the way it is. what we have to do in the schools is the parents know more about what's going on in their son's education. >> we are going to leave this. you can watch the rest at c-span.org as we take you live to the wilson center for a discussion with the canadian
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prime minister, steven harper. >> i'm the trade directer here and want to recognize the prime honorable stephen harper, honored guests, and diplomatic and business communities here today. i'd also like to welcome and thank the host of today's program, the woodrow wilson center for international scholars. the reagan building is a mixed use facility along with special events and hospitality services, pride ourselves on being an active hub for trade policy promotion with various signature events throughout the year and serve as the world trade center for washington, d.c. connecting us to our world trade center partners in hundreds of countries throughout the world. we have a wonderful network to promote events that take place here in the trade center. our partners include various government agencies, ngos, and
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think tanks that foster dialogue, various education opportunities, and educate here in the nation's capitol. this afternoon offers us better insight into u.s.-canada relations as we're on the heels of the trilateral leader summit held today at the white house. we thank the wilson center for the panel this afternoon, and i'm certain the program will be thought provoking for all of us here today. it's now my pleasure to introduce the host, james harman, directer, president, and ceo of the wilson center. thank you, all. [applause] >> thank you, andrew, and good afternoon to everyone. i hope the iran yi is not lost on you that the woodrow wilson center, the living me memorial of our only ph.d. president, who was the only president of
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the democratic party, is in the reagan building. i have been the director of the wilson center for about a year. on day three of my tenure here, i had the pleasure of welcoming mexican president, filipe calderón to speak in the building. it seems like bookends today to welcome the other neighbor, canadian prime minister stephen harper to the wilson center's directer forum. as you probably know, all of you, the fex can president and prime minister harper joined president obama in the rose garden just a couple hours ago to talk about the meeting the three of them had this morning. i'm sure we'll hear more about that in just a moment, but let me also recognize and welcome a few more people.
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wilson center chairman, ambassador joe gildnehorn and his wife, member of the counsel, ed fast, canadian member of international trade, john baird, ms. sarah, the ambassador of canada to mexico, and he's already been acknowledged, but my good friend, ambassador gary duer, canada's ambassador to the united states. now head of the non-partisan institution, i want the audience to know how impressed i am that prime minister harper chose gary, the former new democratic party premier of manatoba to be the ambassador to this country. such bipartisanship is to be applauded and rare in this country these days. he invited me to lunch at the canadian embassy is few months
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ago, and in addition to having the most gorgeous embassy in town, he demonstrated an ipad app that shows canada's contribution to the economy of each state and each u.s. congressional district, a great way to show our congress why this relationship matters to their constituents. with me at lunch that day was david beyet, the directer of the wilson center's remarkable canada institute. he worked hard to bring the prime minister here today and all pleased his efforts were successful. one housekeeping note -- after my conversation with the prime minister which should last about 30 minutes of the hour we have, we will take some questions from the audience. if you have a question, please write it on a note card, which i think you have, and one of the ushers will pick it up, and then we'll cluster the questions and put them to the prime minister. in this audience, some may feel
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prime minister harper needs no introduction as canada is such a close ally and neighbor, but i thought i'd adjust a few notes. stephen harper spoke up boldly for israel, an canada's been a loyal coalition partner in some of the toughest fighting in afghanistan over the years. his handling of the canadian -- of canada's economy through the recession and his role at meetings of the g8 and g20, the next of those g20 meetings is in los cabos in june, has attracted widespread approval. the world economic forum says canada's banks are the soundest in the world, and not one failed in the long recession. "forbes" ranks canada as the best place on earth to invest. wrap that around the best place on earth to invest. alas, no one's said that about the united states lately. now hear the back political story.
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before stephen harper could contest an election, he first had to unify the canadian alliance and progressive conservatives to form the conservative party of canada. to do so, he fought two leadership campaigns. once he was leader, he fought four elections. he has governed as prime minister in the most challenging, economic, and security circumstances since the second world war. the wilson center was obviously impressioned six years ago when we presented the wilson ar ward for public service on mr. harper. receiving the award, he was modest and said, "as someone who is only served as canada's prime minister for eight months, i'm not sure i yet merited this recognition." well, prime minister harper, you served your country for six years now, and you have surely revived canadian leadership on the world stage. we know we didn't make a mistake when we gave you the award, so,
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ladies and gentlemen, the right honorable stephen harper, prime minister of canada, will join me in these chairs and make a few opening remarks. i believe that he will open in french, but he promises that he will translate his french remarks as he just did in the white house so that the rest of you can understand, and we will, as i said, then go directly to questions and to your questions. please welcome the prime minister of canada, stephen harper. >> thank you, jane. [applause] thank you very much for that kind introduction. i will be very brief. [speaking french]
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>> so i'm here primarily today as i just said to meet with the president, as you mentioned, president obama and president calderón really to discuss the economy, and the competitiveness of the region in the context of recovery in the global recession, and we discussed the common security challenges that we increasely have in this hemisphere, and we discussed the values as we approach the summit of the americas which will be held in colombia very shortly. this has been, i guess, today you're probably aware former president of mexico passed away, and he was, of course, one of
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the ark -- architects of the agreement, and this has been a burgeoning relationship since then. we meet periodically to share interests of concern, and k of course, we never miss an opportunity to discuss our relationship with the united states, which for canada, as you know, remains overwhelmingly important, but this crowd knows as not too many americans know, canada economic relationship with the u.s. is the largest economic relationship in history, largest trade relationship in history. $700 billion a year now in trade. we are the number one export destination for the united states. just to give an idea of the scale, most americans do not understand anything like these numbers. united states exports more to canada than it does to the brit countries, u.k., and germany combined, and, of course, we're
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also your largest supplier, external supplier of energy and 25 #% of all oil imports come from canada, larger than any middle eastern country. we never miss opportunities to discuss the very important trade and other relationships we have with this great, great country here. >> well, thank you. [speaking in french] [laughter] okay, now we'll talk in english. let me start with competitiveness and innovation because as i listened to what the president said and what you have just said and what president calderón said, we're talking about when you add in moment koa, a trillion plus dollar market and that adds up to real money and real clout. one of the things on the
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president's list agreed to today, i think, is a joint regime for simplifying regulatory reform. at the wilson center last week, we had a meeting on american innovation and competitiveness, and, of course, one of the subjects that came up was stifling regulation. what could that agreement mean, and what are some other ways to spur competitiveness and reach, you know, take the trillion we now have and multiply that by a lot in some near term? >> well, in terms of regulation and what we really were talking about today is falls from agreements made earlier bilaterally between the united states and mexico and obviously as well as between the united states and canada, that we just put into effect in the last few months, what we call the regulatory cooperation com. we have officials working, have been working for several months now and working with industry on
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a range of ways that we can standardize, harmonize, simple regulatory industries between countries. someone used the expression today that we're captain of the tyranny of small differences, and we want to find a way with the largest trading partner to make the border as seamlessly as poll and dealing with regulatory simplification and standardization is a big part of that. i met with the business community earlier, and everyone is very engaged in this. this is very important work going forward, and now i think we're going to look as well to see how the two bilateral exercises could result in some trilateral agreements as well. in canada, we're going a step further. we're not concerned with the microregulatory environment. we just introduced a national budget in canada last week.
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our next stage of what we call the economic action plan. one of the things we're doing there is we are trying to streamline project approval, particularly from major resource developments. we have tremendous opportunity, not just here, but obviously now in asia, to develop and to find new markets for canadian resources, and we have found in recent years that increasingly our regulatory process is well necessary for good environmental reasons that are often becoming very long, creating a lot of uncertainty for business, and so we're legislating clear timelines. it doesn't guarantee people get the answer they want, but clear time lines to create more certainty for investment and ultimately bring more projects to fruition quickly. >> well, i'll get to the energy question, which i know you all want answers to in a moment, but staying on this just for a bit. you have been able to do things in terms of your budget that we
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can only dream of here, and obviously, i think everyone gets the fact that a healthy budget environment also spurs your economy and can hopefully fix any other issues related to economic growth. how did you -- how were you able -- how was canada able to stay -- i wouldn't call it healthy in the lowest point, but to stay healthier than the united states and obviously europe and other parts of the world? >> well, there's been three big differences in canada. first there's been we had a very solid system of final institution regulation. one that's not entirely translatable here, but one that is, i think, helping to form the basis of some of the international efforts going on, and so we had a strong financial
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sector, strong household and corporate balance sheets as well, and we had a strong -- this is a big difference -- we had a strong fiscal position going into the recession. not only was the government of canada and provenn issue governments running surpluses, but we had debt levels that were very low which moment a couple of things. it meant our fiscal position was solid and had more flex the. we did a very large scale stimulus program in canada on the order of $60 billion which, you know, it's comparable to what was done here, but the difference was because we had such a low debt level, we could incur that kind of deficit in the short term without worrying about the effects on our interest burden down the road, so we did that. we withdrawn that stimulus quite quickly as the recovery's taken effect. like i said, that's made all the
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difference, having that fiscal flex the, and -- flexibility, and we're determined to preserve that. we said the stimulus would be temporary. we didn't create new bureaucracy that would want to sustain that, and now we're moving very quickly in the context of the majority government in the parliamentary system, you have more flexibility. >> that makes a difference. >> it does. we're working quickly to ensure we return to balance, and we'll return to balance in the course of this mandate. in fact, we're about half. we may be a little less than half the deficit we had at the height, and we should be by 2015, at the latest, in balance. >> in balance. wow. [laughter] can you -- i would be curious, can you give us information about what the stimulus program did and how you were able to avoid an overhead, you know, a bureaucracy to get the money to where it needs to go? >> well, there were a lot of components to the stimulus
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program in canada, but the lion's share was essentially the federal government funding a portion of, you know, so-called solve-ready projects of infrastructure already planned and close to launch infrastructure projects of government, colleges and universities, and in some cases the private sector. what we did was go with projects that were set, developed the time lines, and we largely did it outside of our own government and required in most cases contributions from all other partners. they had not just the stake financially, but a stake in the thing not being indefinite. we found that was, you know, that was pretty effective program. >> was the private sector money in those too? >> there was some private sector projects, but mostly intergovernmental projects. >> tax revenued involved in some
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of this? for example, in los angeles, close to my heart, there's a program called or it has not been realized yet, 3010 with the goal to take some of the sales tax dedicated in los angeles, apply it to the build out of infrastructure, but get the federal government to front load some of the money so that instead of it taking 30 years paid for by tax revenue, it takes 10 and creates tens of thousands of jobs. is that the kind of thing you do? >> we didn't have anything quite like that. we did require shares from the other participants which were mostly provinces and municipalities, and we also did have available for some municipal sighs a loan facility, although it was not that broadly used, but we didn't use tax revenue first. >> did not? >> yeah. >> well, we have a variation on that proposal called an infrastructure bank which sounds like that. let me turn to energy, a subject
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that everyone cares about. canada is rich in energy resources. today, the president talked about a joint effort among the three countries to build clean energy jobs. my question is this that relates to energy security. i think that would be the least polarizing word we can use. do you see a possibility of north america, again, the three countries, putting in a, you know, into the game, the energy resources we have with pipeline and other capacity to move those resources around and achieving energy security? that would mean no reliance on middle eastern oil. that's what it means to me. it could be other things, but the ability to basically power whatever our needs are. some mix of clean energy and oil resources and other, and if you can see that future, what role do pipelines play?
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does the decision to delay a portion of the keystone xl pipeline affect that time line, and does canada's interest in having other energy partners, especially in asia, dilute the possibility that cap da will bring enough -- canada will bring enough energy to the north american energy security objective? >> well, first of all, there's several portions to that question. canada's -- canada, you know, i like to say that whatever the energy mix of the future is, canada will be a major supplier. canada is, you know, among the top two or three in virtually every single energy source that is out there, and so energy security -- not that we don't have energy challenges, but energy security for canada does not mean the same as it does for the united states. we don't have the same kind of
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fundamental threat of an energy shortage. in the case of north america as a whole, though, obviously the shale gas developments, the developments in natural gas in particular, you know, as president obama said earlier today, have a capacity for enormous geopolitical shifts. the u.s. is particularly rich in natural gas of that variety, and this creates the potential for north america as a whole to be essentially not just energy self-sufficient, but an energy exporter. now, in fairness, though, canada's interest here are a little bit different, and particularly, i might as well be frank with you, in light of the interim decision on keystone, what's that highlighted for canada that our issue with energy and energy security is not north america's
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self-sufficiency, but a necessity of diversifying our energy export market. we can be be as a country in a situation where really our one, and in many cases only energy partner could say no to our energy products. we can want be 234 that position, and the truth of the matter is with oil in particular, we do faith a significant discount on the market place because of the fact we're a capitalist supplier. we have made it clear to the people of canada, one of our national priorities is to make sure we have the infrastructure and the capacity to export our energy products outside of north america. now, look, we're still going to be a major supplier of the united states. it will be a long time, if ever, before the united states is not our number one export market, but for us, they can want be our only export market. that's not in our interests.
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>> can clean energy can an increasing part of the mix? we're trying to export energy to asia, china, and other issues in that mix, but today, at least as i heard president obama, he was talking about clean energy, and obviously, if we an easy choice between dirtier forms of energy and clean energy, who wouldn't take clean energy? how big a piece of the energy pie do you think that is in >> clean energy is a growing part of the mix. as far as fossil fuels go, natural gas is a cleaner form, and that's where the growth is. in terms of clean energy and climate change, we have engaged in quite cooperative actions with the obama administration, for instance, on transportation regulation, to try to get better and cleaner energy like the united states. we also up vest in new -- invest in newer technologies,
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wind, solar, tidal, carbon capture and storage, you know, all kinds of energy inin vaitions, but the truth of the matter is this, that, you know, i know this is not necessarily a pop popular thing to say, but the truth of the matter is if you look at supply and demand curves for energy in the future, the demand for hydrocarbons is going to remain enormous even with the growth of clean energy sources. in fact, the argument i make to many people, especially those more skeptical of climate change, is that if you look at supply and demand issues, and we've got to be finding ways to get a presentful, reasonably cost sources of energy outside of hydrocarbon because i'm not sure that production in the long term, and certainly oil production cannot keep up with demand. that's why there is, you know,
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not just right now, but over the last several years a rising price of oil. it's simply a supply and demand phenomena, and so, look, the way i see the energy of the future, we're going to have lots of hydrocarbon still in the mix including increased natural gas. as unpopular as it is, nuclear has to be a growing part of the mix, notwithstanding the challenges and risks of nuclear industry. it remains the only other today large scale reasonably cost effective option. other options that we all have great hope for today are either not large scale or not reasonably priced. >> well, i share your view on nuclear, and i have. the challenge is obviously safe storage of spent fuel, and there are some new ideas. there's also this idea, which i know you're familiar with, about an international fuel bank that
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could provide for this function around the world, that might be in some future lifetime an answer to iran, and, in fact, it was talked about a few years back, the fuel bank would have been in russia, but could be a worldwide solution, and the iaea talked about that too for all solutions in nuclear energy production. at any rate, there's a lot to talk about, car production, clean engines. i mean, the canada-u.s. collaboration on cars is huge. most people don't understand exports between the u.s. and canada keep adding content on both sides of the border. the same is true in moment koa. -- mexico. >> the average car, north american car, when being produced crosses the border 16 times. as it's being assembled. >> and wilson just did -- i have to show up for the wilson center one more time, the mexico institute on research with the shared border with mexico
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showing 40% of the content of exports to mexico or imports from mexico is contributed by both sides of the border. it's very different from an import-export relationship with china or pick a country. let's finally turn to foreign policy, and david, if you have these cards, you need to be bringing them up to me. if anyone has questions, i hope you handed them off splice, please. foreign policy. as i told you, my focus in congress was on intelligence and security. we have an extraordinary close intelligence relationship with canada and have for years. on security, canada's been our closest ally or certainly one of them in terms of things we have done and are doing in the middle east region, hard things. one of those hard things is trying to find some better answers on syria, and i asked
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prime minister harper whether his country was at the friends of syria meeting over the weekend in istanbul attended by secretary of state hillary clinton and we decided with others to provide some humanitarian aide and communications equipment to the opposition in syria. how do you assess that? are there any better answers? if we could break syria away from iran, my suggestion has been to grant immunity to the baashar family and do what we do collectively and provide a stable, alternative government, but if we can want achieve that, how do you as the leader of canada see a way forward? >> well, first of all, we agree
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with the united states and all our allies that there's no resolution without the stepping down and stepping aside. that's an essential part of this, and we're working cooperatively with our allies and sanction the regime, and, obviously, would be helped along if all members were cooperating with our objectives here. this is, though, you know, i think we have to be frank and say this is a more complex situation than we faced in libya. you know, in libya, we faced essentially a family regime. >> where canada played a very leading role. >> we played a significant role. general b, ushard was the leader, but we faced a family regime, and a widespread consensus and a widely formed opposition against that regime. in the case of syria, it is more
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complex, the support for the assad regime is deeper, and in the case of gadhafi, and the opposition is much more fragmented, and the possibility of prolonged and widespread dangerous chaos is much more marged, and so, you know, i think we'd all like to see more unity, and john baird just came back from friends of syria, and we want to see more unity and strength among opposition, but we also want to see the government make changes and reach out and work with the opposition. it's hard to see how this ends well if both sides don't do that. our assessment is that the government -- the opposition does not appear strong enough to
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overthrow the government, and it's not clear to us that there would be a unified opposition if that did take place, and it also appears, and you'd think it would be clear to assad and his people now, doesn't appear any amount of repression stops the opposition or the rebellion or the demonstrations. it would be grateful helpful to get all members of the security counsel pulling towards resolution, but we don't have that today. >> right. i need questions in my hands. somebody bringing them? i assume you're asking questions. how many of you wrote questions down on a card? we need this. >> can you do them verbally? >> well, the deal is, the question man arrived -- this was the plan we had. okay. okay. sorry. we have received questions on keystone xl. what a surprise.
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>> yeah. here's a summary of it. americans are concerned about increased greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands. should companies be forced to offset oil sands productions with greener production? i'll ask them together. if keystone xl is approved after the u.s. presidential election, does this affect your government's position on the northern gateway pipeline? >> right. well, first of all, i think -- first of all, i, you know, everything i've seen in the united states indicates pretty overwhelming public opinion in favor of the keystone pipeline. president obama has told me repeatedly this decision will ultimately be made on the basis of its merits, and i have no reason to believe him on that. in terms of -- looking i think there's two things very important to say about this keystone pipeline. the first is one should not in
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any way minimize the sheer economic scale of this. i mean, this has the capacity of employing up to 30,000 people on both sides of the border. this is a huge energy project that will have enormously positive employment and economic activity effects across a range of industries in both countries which is why business and labor are so strongly supportive of it. secondly, we talked about this earlier, energy security, the united states -- it is not possible for the united states to get a friendlier and more secure supply of oil than anywhere than from canada. it's just -- if one looks at the options, middle east, venezuela, i mean, it's so obvious this is the better option for energy security. the third is that the environmental impacts of this
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should not be exaggerated. you know, oil sands oil, while they are heavy in emissions, are no heavier than typical heavy crudes, no heavier than veeps way la, for example, where a lot of the displaced oil will be from. not that there are not environmental challenges in the oil sands, there are, but they should not be exaggerated or somehow unique or out of the map strene oil industry. that's just not the case. in terms of your second part of your question -- >> the -- >> would approval of this change our mind. the answer is no. look. the very fact that a no could be said underscores to our country that we must diversify our export energy markets, but as i said, we have taken a significant price hit by virtue
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of the fact we're a supplier, and that just does not make decision in terms of the broader interest in the canadian economy, and, look, i'm strong and firm believer in the importance of not just the economic importance of our relationship with the security importance and the importance of the united states and the world, but we cannot take it to the point where we create risk and significant penalties with the economy and not diversify to asia when they are growing. makes no sense to canada. >> well, i -- canada has every right to take that position, and i don't speak for the obama administration, but i do think most americans would prefer to buy oil from canada than from a long list of other countries. i also think in our country with a strong environmental movement, there is this issue about
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offsets because it's heavy crude, and we buy it from other places, but people are concerned about that, and there were concerns, aassume there are about the moving of the pipeline or at least the northern part. >> my understanding is the rooting concerns have been addressed in nebraska itself. offsets, look, i'm not sure i'm a believer in offsets. if you're concerned about emissions, you find a way to control it. offsets are a way of pretending you addressed issues when you really haven't. >> changing the subject. [laughter] >> when will canada and the united states or to you, canada, decide to form a customs union? >> yeah. well, i think that's a theoretical question because i certainly, you know, since we've signed nafta, there's obviously
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been a tremendous growth in trade and integration and integration of supply chains between our economies, but i have sensed no appetite particularly in the united states to take the economic relationship to any fundamentally deeper level than it is today in terms of things like a customs union. i don't think that's in the cards, particularly in the context of nafta, and it probably has more to do with the mexican-american relationship than with the american-canadian relationship, but nevertheless, i think that's the situation. what we have done with the obama administration is we have this beyond the border initiative. >> right. >> where we are finding ways of avoiding repeated screening when we cross the border, finding ways of doing more and more of our screening and security checks on the perimeter of the continent rather than at the
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boarer. these are ways to significantly increase integration and trade and tourism flow across the border, but i don't think -- i just don't see a customs union being in the cards. >> i think they are smart initiatives. you know, another term for that is a "smart border," and pushing the border out that way is smart. we did that in the united states with something we called the safe protocol which requires cargo that can be a great risk to the country to be screened at the point of emphasizing -- embarking, and then the embargo is secure across the ocean so when it arrivessous our ports, it's not danger. it speeds up commerce, and there's a way to mesh priorities and it's that initiative. >> adopting the view, you know, something -- well, i forget the exact term, but once it's
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checked once, it's good in both. >> checking my watch, but i think we have time. i could use a few more questions which i can't see that clock well, which i can't, but here's one. you made arctic a essential priority. ice has been melting causing concern among some, but opening previously unavailable resources and new shipping routes. is it a place for cooperation or competition? where does canada fit? >> well, it's parole a place for a little of both. it is true that -- it is true that more of the ice is melting. it's also true that i think the economics of commodity prices are going to drive resource development in areas like the arctic where costs are higher and where traditionally it's been harder to make economic
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projects viable. we have put a big part of our country that's in the arctic region, a big emphasis on secures our sovereignty there and seeing those resources develop not just for the benefit of the country, but particularly for the economic opportunity of the people who live there, through the arctic counsel and others we, you know, we do cooperate and cooperating on the law of the sea and mapping of the arctic seabed and the resolution of various claims, but those things all said, there will be as there are in all parts of the world these days, also some pretty, i think, increasingly intense competition for economic activity in that part of the world. >> changing the subject back to the border. can we do more on each side of the border such as biomet tricks
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to allow good people to across faster and easier. >> yeah, as i mentioned earlier, enhanced research in biometrics and advanced security screening between the agencies, all part of the program we put together with the obama administration. the principle is really very simple. it's how do we -- how do we increase the ability of ordinary businesses, ordinary travelers and tourists, friends and neighbors, to cross the border regularly and seamlessly while at the same time being able to identify risks and threats and identify them early and often away from the border, and for biometrics, information sharing, all part of the answer to that equation. i'm, you know, i'm of the strong view that, you know, we've seen this all over the place. i'm of the strong view that, you know, checking millions and
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millions of people, making them go through lineups, go through screening is not in and of itself an effective way to identify the potentially dangerous, and we have to have more sophisticated ways of doing that. >> well, i think you were just describing tsa. [laughter] having talked to the -- having. at the creation, i just would say a couple things. one, we're getting smarter about how we do that, but, two, we have, in our country, and i assume you do too, layers security. we don't just don't have one way to try to catch people, and these things are all deterrents, and sometimes they seem silly, but what the tsa is hit with is why do little kids or babies have to be checked? well, if some of the folks
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attacking us have no respect for human life and happy to use babies and little kids, put explosives on them or strap things on them, it's unfortunate they don't value life the way we do, and therefore we need processes sometimes that look at people who would not lomingically or likely, and in most cases be suspects, but changing the subject to health care which didn't come up. i didn't raise it. you didn't raise it either. it's a big topic in this country in the last several weeks. as head of a country with long standing universal health care, do you see this as a budgetary burden or bloom? >> that's -- [laughter] that's a tough question. you any, it depends on the context. many canadian businesses tell you that having yiewn veer -- universal single payer system simplifies life for them and
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reduces the cost of doing business, but on the other hand, we can't fool people and not tell you that the sheer growth of health care budgets in canada is a serious concern to all senior governments, health care budgets over a long period of time growing faster than our economy. now, mind you, i would make, jane, this observation. i know that the health care system of the united states is very different than the health care system of canada. you know, all western developed countries have variants of a mixed health care system. my observation would be that in spite of the various differences, the problems that afflict virtually all of them are the same, and that is the costs and the pressures on them keep growing faster than the ability of western countries to sustain economic growth.
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why is that? two reasons. one is a fact of the matter is, and 24 is a good thing. the fact of the matter is that nowadays we can do so much in terms of health care, so much in terms of curing people and extending life. in fact, if we have an unlimited supply of money, we can do an unlimited of amount of things, but we don't have that so we have to find a way to limit, but our capacity to improve and sustain life has grown e enormously over the past couple generations. that's a more difficult problem. the other problem, of course; is our economies are not growing fast enough. this is something i talked to the canadian people about. i mean, we've, you know, we just want a national election in canada by emphasizing the fact that the canadian economy has done so much better than other developed economies over the past several years during the recession and recovery, but the truth of the matter is that's not a very good measure because,
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you know, most developed economies are not growing the way they need to be growing, and one of the things we have to do in canada and everywhere is find ways of increasing productive capacity and the growth capacity of our economy. that's why, you know, as i said, just tabled a budget, a whole range of measures there, not just fiscal measures, not just the regulatory measures i talked about, but immigration and innovation and other measures so that we can keep growing our economy and keep funding programs like our health care program which our citizens want and they value, but the truth of the matter is, and i say this as a wakeup call to canadians but here, in the united states, and europe, is, you know, i travel to asia, and i know many people here in the audience do and other parts of the world, and when you see emerging economies, these people are smart, hungry, and hard working, and unless we
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find ways of competing with them and growing, we're going to be under considerable pressure regardless of what the nature of our health care system is, and that's the real challenge we have. >> well, i surely agree. i think everyone agrees. the challenges are hard. one of the big issues that came up during the health care fight i was in in congress was this issue of rationing care, and the disproportioned amount spent at the end of life opposed to the beginning of life. i assume you have the same issues even with national health care? >> absolutely, and in some ways more. >> in some ways more because there's defined benefits that go to a certain point. >> well, the government's the sole provider so that lands directly on the government's lap, and, you know, frankly, it's the governments in canada that figure out how to ration services and how to make the best use of the dollars as they are increasingly are difficult decisions. >> right. all right. well, we have a lot of other
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questions, and i think we've -- i can't really see, but i think we have 11 minutes to go or so. let's just pick a few random ones. this one about the transpacific partnership. it came up today about the tpp and canada's interest in joining it and mexico's too, and i think president obama was asked whether he would support that, and i believe he said yes. >> he was very positive in the comments. >> this question is when will canada join the tpp? [laughter] you're the prime minister, and we expect you to know the answer to this. [laughter] >> well, canada's made a strong interest in this and have a trade agenda that i remind people when our government took office in 2006, in spite of the fact that we're one of the most open trading economies in the developed world, canada had fraid agreements with just five countries in the entire curled
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which was one of the absolute lowest. we signed deals with nine countries and in the process of negotiating with 50 others including the european union, still optimistic about agreeing with them this year, with japan, with india, and so our interest in joining the transpacific partnership is only natural. we already have agreements with three of the countries in the transpacific partnership, including, obviously, the united states, and our strong sense is that most -- is that most of the members of the transpacific partnership would like to see canada join. i think there's debates, particularly within the administration about the merits of that, but, you know, our strong view is that if we're to build on the north american vantage, to work with nafta, and get around the table where people have strong interest, it
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makes sense for all three of the nafta partners to be a part of it. >> we have put these together, couple more environmental questions and another border question. you have just instituted spending cuts, and the question heard there will be cuts to air quality programs. he wants -- he or she wants to know whether canadian scientists can continue to collaborate with the u.s. counterparts and another question could be answered together is what role should hydro power play in clean energy exports to the u.s.? >> first of all just on the government's bumming -- budgetary savings, the scale of our budget is modest compared to what you read about in most western developed countries. our budgetary plan to get back to balance involves essentially a 2% reduction in federal spending over a 3-year period,
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so this is not -- these are not enormous sums of money, and what we're trying to do in all kinds of areas of government is essentially find ways -- i won't say we're not cutting some programs, but trying to find ways that we can deliver similar services and goods to the public at a lesser cost than we've been doing, and we believe there's a lot of room for efficiency in the federal governmenting and i hear rumors about that here in the federal government as well, and so, look, i, you know, our -- the fact we engage in air quality programs and collaboration with our american counterparts that is not going to change. what was the second part? >> hydro power. >> we're already a significant exporter of hydro energy to the united states. quebec is the very big exporter of hydro power, and we have a
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fairly integrated electricity market between the two countries already. look, there's lots of capacity for canada to drewmatically increase its hydroelectric power and export more of the power to the united states. this is one form of energy we're not exporting to asia. [laughter] >> that would be tricky. >> yeah. we have tremendous capacity for growth here. there are regulatory obstacles on both sides of the border. we're addressing the ones on our side of the board r, and we think it makes sense for the united states to find ways to purchase more clean hydropower from canada. >> speaking of borders, this is very specific. the new bridge between windsor and detroit help makes the border seamless, why not forming an agreement with president obama on this? >> yeah. we have been working with american governments for some
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years. some of you may know that there are unusual circumstances, i will just say, around the detroit-wind sore crossing we're trying to overcome. we think it's essential -- well, let's be frank about that. there's a bridge today there that has a private owner, and my understanding of the private owner's position is that he not only own the bridge, but somehow owns the broader crossing. of course, we don't accept that. it's obviously a public space, and government's on both side of the border have a right to ensure we have the ability of the growing cross border traffic to be accommodated within infrastructure, and i think the preference of all governments would be public infrastructure. we have found that in terms of your responsibilities on your side of the border, we find ourselves primarily
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