republican presidential candidate mitt romney will be in lynchburg virginia this weekend to address liberty university graduates at their commencement ceremony.

>> coming back in an age, where crime is global and ways that was not 10 years ago and by that i mean, whether it be organized crime, whether it be cybercrime, white-collar crime, gangs, ms-13 alike, they are levalized and consequently that entity that has the best chance for addressing globalized criminal activity and the fbi and consequently if you cut as that it pointed time when much of the crime is globalized, it is a double hit in some sense.

>> over the past year c-span's local content vehicle cities tour has taken booktv and american history tv on the road, from tampa to nevada, charleston to knoxville, birmingham tibetan reason last month to oklahoma city. >> securities and exchange commission chairman mary schapiro said today the agency continues its implementation of

the of the dodd-frank law. and will take the necessary time to get it right in order to prevent another financial crisis. ms. schapiro's remarks came during the investment company institute annual meeting in washington. the chairman also discussed proposals to tighten regulations on money market funds, market volatility and financial literacy. ♪ ♪ >> good morning everyone. a warm welcome to you all. many of you like me still have beatles tunes buzzing around in your head from the great night last night. we are heading into the final sessions of our 54th annual general membership meeting and we are especially privilege this morning to have mary schapiro, the 29th chairman of the united states securities and exchange commission here to provide a regulatory update. our format this morning is a q&a and i'm pleased that she really

is the hardest working person in the gm m.. mellody hobson president president of aerial investments in their gm chair will serve as the questioner. we are eager to get to their conversation but first, permit me to say a few words about chairmanship euro. in short, she has had a remarkable career as an effective regulator and an extraordinarily strong advocate for investors. in 1988 president ronald reagan appointed her commissioner of the fcc. she was named acting fcc chairman by president bill clinton in 1993. president clinton later appointed chairman schapiro, chairman of the commodities futures trading commission where she served until 1996. from there, chairman schapiro entered the leadership ranks of the financial industries self-regulatory organizations. in 2006, she was named chairman and ceo of the nasd.

in that role, she oversaw an ast's merger with a member regulation operations of the new york stock exchange. she became ceo of the resulting organization, financial industry regulatory authority. in january 2009 president obama appointed chairman schapiro chairman of the fcc and she was unanimously confirmed by the united states senate. during her tenure mary schapiro and the fcc have carried out their mission on an amazing number of fronts. the implementation of the dodd-frank act, the 2010 reforms, changing the role of credit agencies and many many other subjects. for her extraordinary dedication and her extraordinary accomplishments over a yearlong year as a regulator, chairman schapiro deserves, and she has, our deepest admiration and respect. now there is plenty to discuss this morning so let's proceed.

please join me in giving an especially warm welcome to chairman mary schapiro. [applause] ♪ [applause] ♪ >> mary, i have to say we have had a fantastic conference. we have had great people but you are one of the most anticipated conversations in this three days, and the people found out that this was a q&a, questions came flying so i hope we have a really great discussion. i am very excited about this. i'm going to start off talking a little bit about your career and setting the stage for the kant -- conversation. you have had a remarkable career as paul mentioned, clearly now chairman of the fcc but you were

chairman of the commodities futures trading convention. you were also a commissioner in the '90s and the question that i have is, how have those prior rolls prepared you for the job you have right now? >> you know, i think everything you do prepares you for whatever comes next, if you are willing to take the lessons and learn them. for me, being in government is obviously helpful although it too is obviously different today than it was six years ago. the opportunity to work at finra and the role that straddles the private sector and the public sector was very instrumental and constructive and i obviously spent a lot of time brokerage firms and people in the business. i got to learn the issues that they confront every day. all of that helps form the fcc now and the rulemaking space. running the cftc and tying the

responsibility was again helpful in understanding, although much bigger agency, how to approach the issues of the fcc would have from a management and operational perspective, so that was helpful. i really think generally everything you do prepares you, hopefully, few are willing to be a sponge and absorb the lesson, for whatever comes next. you have to change course or you have to modify your thinking or learn from the new things but i think it helps you build a more solid foundation for whatever challenges are thrown at you. >> one of the things you said in that answer is government today is different than it was then. how is it different? >> you know when i think about what the fcc was like -- i was there from 1988 to 1994 and then looking at today. first of all the stakes are very much higher today because of the financial crisis and i came in at a time when obviously the

people were reeling and continue to be an understand -- howard schultz gave her remarkable talk about what people are going through today. that clearly wasn't the case in the late 80s and early '90s. so the stakes are higher, the job is so much more complex, the products are more complex, the market moves at lightning speed. the world is just more interconnected and more highly globalized, and confidence in government and governmental institutions is not what it should need. investor confidence in our industries is at a low, so i think it is all of that present a lot more challenges. and of course there are other big differences. i was a commissioner than any chairman now and the job is very much more complex as a chairman just because of the responsibilities for the administration and the management of the agency as well.

i read, or heard i should say, from a friend that you played basketball in high school. >> i played field hockey and volleyball in high school and field hockey and lacrosse in college. >> did playing those sports and some of the defensive efforts that you had to make help you in the role that you have now? >> i was basically, this is maybe my proudest media moment with lacrosse magazine. [laughter] i have to say i went to marshall college and the women's lacrosse team there is unbelievable. they have been division iii chance for several of the last five or so years and they are extraordinary athletes. they are amazing athletes and i think team sports does for you is, comity cheesy teamwork. it teaches you that there are

times to be aggressive and at times to hold back. there are times to get yourself out of the way and let your teammates do it they need to do. there are ways to signal each other and anticipate what the others on your team are going to do in order to achieve the goal, in that case the actual goal, and i think actually i tell this to my daughters. i tell this to young people when i do commencement addresses. being on the team is one of those things that will serve you well or are your entire life, because it really isn't about you. it really is about the team's. when i look at the team we have built at the fcc -- sec i'm so honored to work with people that are so committed, so hard-working, so creative and innovative and open-minded. i feel like being on the lacrosse field and taking cues from each other and driving

towards the same ultimate goal. >> we will come back to the team thing in it that but i want to ask you one other question as we talk about your career. where did you get this drive an interest in public service? you could do anything and yet you have been in a very specific niche serving. >> you know, i don't know where it came from but i do know that i have always loved it. i started my career right out of law school as, for one short year at trial attorney and hated it. i didn't like the tension of it and i didn't like the narrowness of this is our issue and this is what we are litigating on and this is what we are doing. i loved the breadth of public policy and i love the idea that we can affect people's lives amid you make a difference. we can build coalitions and collaborate and gather information and tackle problems and actually really make a difference. i never thought i would be in

the financial world for sure, but it is wonderful to come into the sec everyday fcc every day and know that you can save any one anyone of a dozen issues. our scope is so broad so we are talking about accounting issues and international financial reporting standards and from 10:00 to 11:00 and 11:00 to 12:00 we are talking about foreign sovereign debt holding by major banks and then from 1:00 to 2:00 we will be talking about the transparency of the trading market. from 3:00 to 4:00 we will be talking about mutual fund issues or fiduciary duties for broker-dealers and investment advisers. the scope is just extraordinary. that makes it interesting every single day. >> do you feel like you can keep up with all of that? >> i try. but we have an amazing staff, as i said, and they are so expert

and they help me to prepare the best i can. there are lots of issues i would love to study, more time and market structure and many have heard me say -- we have a hundred rule makings to do hundred dodd-frank. we have other things on our plate, but we can't do everything. i personally can't do everything to the extent that i would like to, but we have great staff who can and i have to rely on them. >> i want to go to dodd-frank. clearly that is an enormous amount of work on the agency. you have had some backlogs there in terms of getting where you need to be in terms of all that is required. do you think that backlog is good or bad? >> that's a great question. we get lots of conflicting signals, hurry up, slow down. get things done that you need to take your time because there is a lot of thought and there is

monumental rulemaking in many cases. taking for example the over-the-counter derivatives barcott, a completely unregulated market that exists, trying to get a regulatory regime around it, it's not as though we are riding on a clean slate. so they are complex. worry about our consequences. we worry and try to be humble about what we don't don't know and don't understand and leave for others to teach us in that takes a lot of time. on the other hand, we have this sense of urgency because these are financial crisis related rulemaking. these are issues that the congress expects us to address in the public expects us to address. we have our own sets of urgency is because we don't want to see repeated the issues that put us in this terrible shape that we have been in. so, there is not a simple

answer. it is not good that they are taking so long but it's not bad necessarily that they are taking so long. it has become a cliché about all the regulators who say we are taking our time to get it right. but the reality is, we are trying to take the time to get it right. >> there is no question that you have come into the chair of the fcc during an extraordinarily difficult time. we know we have felt on our side so we can only imagine how you have been drinking from a fire hydrant with all that is come for me. there've been some pretty bad things that happen come madoff obviously. we have had systematic failures and many of them you have walked into. you weren't there before they happened. as a result you talk about restoring the agency, restoring respect for the sec. where do you think you are in that process? >> you know, i think about this a lot.

each one-year anniversary i think, what have i gotten done and have i made a difference? and? and so i'm coming up on three and a half years now. when i arrived at the agency in early 2009, in january, madoff had just been arrested a few weeks before i took office and obviously still reeling very much from the financial crisis and some of the agency programs like the consolidated supervised and to see program over the large investment banks that had not function very effectively. it was a pretty dispirited place. i would have to say there were a lot of vacancies at the senior level. the budget had not run for years despite the complexity of the job having grown enormously. and so when i look at where we are today i feel pretty good about it. we are working progress, as every institution should always be. but we have brought an incredible talent, with very current wall street experience

in financial services experience. we have etf experts for the first time. we have people direct way from operations in major financial institutions, from credit rating agencies who it right and great talents. we have really focused on one of the core criticisms of the agency which a is a lack of cross divisional cooperation that allowed things like madoff to become a problem out of control. we have done lots of work internally through the hiring of senior managers but also things like our cross-border working group that brings people from all over the agency to tackle a problem. in that case, and you have seen the results of this, the use by chinese companies in particular of reverse mergers to show companies in order to publicly offer their stock in the u.s. and they brought lots of cases.

we have done lots with exchanges to improve listing standards in that regard so it's a collaborative effort. we took the enforcement division which is in many ways how people know the sec and it's a big division. at our largest but it's certainly not everything we do. we restructured it and organized it and took out a layer of management. not something you see happening in government very often and we put lots of people who were managers back on the front lines doing the investigation. we created specialized units like our asset management unit that could become highly expert in a discrete area of securities so that people weren't doing insider trading this month and market manipulation that month and accounting from the next month. highly inefficient. so we could get to deep expertise in you know the municipal securities market, the asset management area, market abuse area, foreign practices that. we reorganized our examination program and the results of that

are clear in the number of referrals from the exam program to reinforcement programs. of course we had a record year last year. we brought more cases than ever before and they agency's history. area by area we have tried to think about how do we do it better, how do we become more nimble, become more agile? how do we become a regulator that you have a right to expect us to be, the public has a right to expect us to be, and i say there is lots of work to do. there are always things and technology is one area where we still have a very long way to go. >> if you were to say 100%, it's the faith, trust and respect has been completely restored, are you at 60, 50, 75? >> it's a hard question. >> it seems like you are more than half. >> you know --

[laughter] it's a dangerous question to answer. so i won't answer it. [laughter] but i would say, i firmly believe we are on a church after he and i think we have had tremendous accomplishing lands in revitalizing the agency, restoring confidence in our ability to do what needs to be done. but we have a long way to go and we should always view ourselves as having a long way to go. the moment we say we are done, we are perfect, we are the agency we need to be, i guarantee you we aren't, and it would be a mistake to take our attention away from internal reforms in our efforts to always get that her. >> ray crossed he said the saying that when you are right, you rock. when you are done -- back you made a point about the record number of cases that you're abroad and i've been curious about that. there is 42% more in the last

few years, 42% of your exams have identified significant findings. you stated in one of your testimonies. this led me to think, is it because your people are doing more things that aren't right, or you are finding things that you didn't find the four? >> i think it is more than our staff is better trained than they ever have been. we have had more expertise than we have ever had before and we are doing doing risk-based advance so we are looking at those areas where we think there may be problems or even if we don't have sufficient problems we haven't seen red flags, we know if there's a problem that could have a severe impact on investors and on investor confidence. so we are focusing on those things and we are more likely to make referrals more than those

significant findings. at the end of the day, we are not big enough to do everything. we aren't everywhere and i think sometimes there's there is a misperception by the public that the sec is everywhere doing everything that i like to tell members of congress when i am pleading for a budget, we are about the size of the -- police department yet we have responsibility for the largest capital markets in the world. there are 10,000 public companies and their 5000 broker-dealers and many thousand you mutual fund groups with trillions of dollars of assets under their management. we can't be everywhere so if we can't use data and risk analytics to help us focus those meager resources in the right places we will spin our wheels. so i think what our statistics show us, and that is another thing that is very different. we have great performance metrics that we have never had before that we really insisted upon to see if the things we are

trying or working or not. if we don't use these risks and all it takes to help us focus, we will spin our wheels and we will be focused -- won't be focused on the right things for investors. i think that is what you are seeing, we are doing more of the right things which is not to say we won't miss things but i think the numbers reflect that we are looking in the right areas. >> i want to switch gears to the regulatory environment that you were again and specifically you are a member of the newly created financial stability oversight council which brings all all the regulators together to concentrate on financial wrist. global regulation is taking a higher profile with the group of 20 creating the financial stability board. as i was thinking about it, you you are in a room with a lot of banking regulators. i was wondering, how does that shape your thinking? >> you know it's really

interesting because the oversight council which is our domestic u.s. regulators, our capital markets regulators like the cftc in the ftc and insurance regulators, or the financial stability oversight council. we really need new acronyms. we also have others, other oversight regulators like the federal housing finance agency oversight lord and the financial stability oversight or. >> you have answer that question. so the layer upon layer, does that make it harder for you? >> you know, it's good and its challenges. the good part is and i have been a regulator for a long time as you heard in paul's introduction. never have i seen regulators collaborating more closely.

we need to have a much better sense of what each of us is doing and what is happening with our regulated entities. >> and your lacrosse team? >> we are not quite there yet. [laughter] hopefully we will get there. so that cooperation and coordination is really critical and these are mechanisms to that. they are really the means to win and so domestically i think it works pretty well. we meet fairly regularly and we are now in the process of designating an answer market utilities systemically important financial institutions for hide credential supervision but we talk a lot about risk and they put out an annual report that will be coming in the next couple of months that talks about the risks that we collectively see in the financial system in the u.s. economy. it covers everything from markets i perform which i suspect we will talk about, to

cybersecurity and the low interest-rate environment. the whole range of issues. that is a wonderful give-and-take and it is forcing agencies to really get to know each other and work together well. on the international level, it is perhaps not quite as fluid, but it's also great for sharing essentially what we are all doing within our regulatory regimes and how hopefully through this process, with the fse particularly in the ge 20 we would create predatory regimes for over-the-counter trivets in particular but maybe see other entities that will work in a global financial environment and that we don't end up with regulatory arbitrage and we don't end up with -- but to your real question bank regulators, they speak a little bit different language than we do as capital market regulators. they are so different that we all share the same concern about

the stability and resiliency of the financial system. we have learned a lot from each other i think and it will continue to evolve i think. >> okay, you brought it up. >> i know, and i shouldn't have. [laughter] >> i was going to make sure you like me and that we were good. [laughter] alrightalright, it's no secret that the sec industry and the -- ad are at loggerheads over this issue of money market funds. we all know where we stand, so let's not debate that. how do we solve this? >> well, i think, although i have to say and i actually want to say thank you. there are a lot of people in this room who have come to talk to us and even in the last couple of weeks, about these issues, about how do we speak

the same language and roach the differences and find a way forward that is constructive and positive and collaborative? i think that is wonderful and i appreciate those that have committed to talk to us about that. i think we have a very obviously i think i have a very legitimate concern about the risks that are posed by the potential to cause runs. it's not hypothetical and we all know what happened in 2008 and we all know i think as well that but for the treasury stepping in and creating a guarantee program, and i was very close -- closely watching what was going on and had profound impact of course on broker-dealers and advisers as well as investors. we know what happens. we know that it was really the

fed in the treasury stepping in the stop the run and we also know the tools to do that are gone. congress made it clear that there wouldn't be a safety net available again. so we want to confront this issue and we want to have a very open dialogue. with i want to put concrete ideas out there for people to react to. we want to put out an informative, useful cost-benefit analysis and we want to talk about what happens if we go forward with a capital buffer, what happens if we try to go to a floating nabe, what are the other possibilities that exist to deal with these issues. and have an honest and open debate and i hope that is what we will be able to do ultimately. >> does that mean there is more

room for discussion? ..

but, you know, one of the things that happened coming out of 2008 in the financial crisis and i was a regulator then, so i'm very attuned to this and lots of, and terse said where were the regulators? they saw risks building in the system, they saw a tremendous loss in the regulatory system whether it was how the sec supervised these very large investment banks that were not bank holding company is happening in the housing markets whenever the issues were they solve the risks were building and they didn't ring the alarm bell. we have to learn we can't sit by when we see what we think are genuine systemic risks in the system and not at least have the discussion and raise the issue and so i think that's what we are doing. that's why required to do. that's what i took the oath of

office to do. i see a problem. i think it's a threat to our system how can we try to fix it. i think from our perspective there is no question that we think regulation has made our industry a bitter industry. if you look at the long history of the funding it's been largely an unblemished history. we've had bumps into road along the way, but we have done what we said we would do for the investor and working with the sec, we have never dug-in like this. you haven't had that kind of relationship with us. how does that affect your thinking. they've never taken this stance before. >> they have historically had a really constructive relationship, and it's very important voice. in some ways you speak for 90 million americans who own

mutual funds, and this is the way into the investing and participation in the capitol markets for most people in the country 45% of households. so, you know, you have a responsibility i think to speak for those people. the businesses as we understand, you have some cases shareholders and other pressures, but you also have a unique opportunity to speak for people who don't otherwise have a mechanism through which to be heard on issues of real importance to investors. and look, we appreciate that this great passion and of this issue of money market fund reform, and the debate in the dialogue had been more dug in to use your words of than we had seen on some other issues. we've not regard, we walked

through the subway station and we see the signs. we don't think they are very effective but we see them. it over the fare card machine in the metro but go back to the office and talk about that the of the best comment of all time switches we look forward to trying to fit the metro station into the public comment. i don't take the metro said it was lost on me. but some employees did take pictures. so we understand the passion and around these issues but that doesn't mean we can't confront them and we have to deal with it. >> outside of the money market funds let's take effect for a

minute what keeps you up at night. what do you say? >> i will say i can't quite put money market funds aside. every time and this is truly through the summer so let me quickly say i think the reforms that we did in 2010 were very good and very positive. it's a very constructive force with a report so i received very shortly after i arrived but helped inform much of our thinking about the 2010 reform and they worked well for what they were designed to do but we still come in every morning when there's been a problem and say what the impact on money market funds whether it is a downgrade of the european sovereign, whether it's the nuclear reactor issue in japan they all reverberate all of these issues reverberate in the money-market

fund, so it is a frequent question what's the exposure of money-market funds. beyond that, i always worry about what we don't know and what we might be missing. and, you know call all you can do about that is try to have great people thinking creatively looking at the data doing the analysis trying to keep us focused. >> my last question on money-market fund isn't a perfect world would they be smaller? >> that's not for me to say and it's not for the government to say quite honestly. they should be the site as they should be a pity i want them to be resilient. i wanted to be reflective of the fact they are investment products and value does indeed fluctuate, and when i come this has nothing to do with me but they were $4 trillion now they

are two and a half trillion dollars. so, i think it would be a full aaron to try to say the right size. they should be what they should be. they should be resilient and strong and investors should understand exactly what they are. >> i want to go a little bit further on what worries you. we talk a lot in the industry about and i heard there's a sign on your door that says does it help the investor, the handwritten. >> it's in there for three and a half years and the question is how does this help investors. how was volatility helping investors? >> it's not. there are lots of questions of the market structure that i think deserves a lot more attention and scrutiny than we have been able to give it. the rainy day for the market volatility has to be may 5th,

2010 when as you all know, the crash happened and i was supposed to speak at this conference the next morning, and the director of investment management was in my place because we were so consumed with dealing with the aftermath of the crash and we put a lot of things in place very quickly to try to ensure we wouldn't have an event like that that is so devastating to the investor confidence and frankly so devastating to the public companies with out any regard to the demonstrating was in a space at second so we put in the single stock circuit breakers and had the ability to quote at $10,000, we band the access to the market so the customers have to go through the risk management systems and broker-dealers. we have the exchanges to the rules around the wind trade be broken. we did a lot of things to shore

up the system we put in the rules for the large trade report system. the next step will be to approve i hope very soon additional mechanisms and that should help the volatility in the limit up and limit down approach so that you can't put in an order that is outside of a certain range and to place a consolidated audit trail so we have better data and understand better what happening in the market and we can reconstruct trading much quickly and we could after may 6th. but we need to be looking at algorithm a trading and the tactics of high-frequency traders. we need to understand the unpacked his inaugural fund that the case aberrational the in the marketplace. there are so many key market structure questions for us to address and a lot of them go right to the issue of

volatility. there is no doubt in my mind is scarce investors greatly, and it isn't a good situation. we want people to participate in the capitol market. companies can't raise money. they can't create jobs, they can't build factories if investors can't rationally allocate their capital and people to understand they lose money or they make money when the stock goes up and down. they do not understand when the market structure doesn't serve them well, and i am completely on that issue. >> talk about the volatility and the discomfort this causes many investors and how it especially has affected young people, so younger people supposedly are much less invested than the prior generations of the same age and the available data are

around that. the financial security of those individuals as well what it means for the capitol markets. this and i think we have to be very worried about actually young people in our generation, too and don't have the capacity to do that that are working much later in life or have retired and have to go back to work. it's going to be very important for this generation to understand how to invest safely and wisely and they are so attuned to social media and influences that operate on them

very quickly and investing is still hard work and requires stock and diligence and care and understanding and i worry about the interception of those two things this instantaneous gratification. it's thinking for things like investment decisions and so i worry about it from that perspective as well, but i do think we have to deal with a nation, a much better job of preparing our young people to be financially literate. it's great that they can do things their elementary and secondary education in college education does for them but we have neglected other societies to repair them from this aspect of living in the real world. >> do they have a role in the education? >> we absolutely do.

and finra thus, too. it was at one time the largest foundation devoted to the financial literacy and it may still be. i only half jokingly and i serve on the board made the suggestion that we actually use all of the money in the foundation to hire a lobbyist in every state and go to every state legislature and governor and lobby for a financial literacy requirement in order to graduate from high school. if you can't to the basics you can't graduate. just like you have to take the basics for english and history. obviously they didn't do that and they were right not to do it, but frankly i was only half kidding. you have to have a national commitment to this issue and they do have a role to play. not focusing so much on young people although we do have a program we started last year. we bring high school teachers and to the fcc -- sec for a significant in the summer and we

train them at the sec on financial matters, how does the bond market were, how does the equity market work and all the basic concept of investing as well. so it has been a hugely successful program. they go back home, go back into their high schools and they teach the children either through existing math courses or specialized financial literacy. we focus a lot of our resources on alerting investors to problems as much as we do on educating them about the basis of investing, so warning them about the implications of it by ian foreign stock or structure products or the structures for the mutual funds or other investments and try to keep people overt to ongoing scams and if she was the need to know about. >> last two questions before we

end. you mentioned traditional media. and clearly, in some ways a lot of your rulemakings or guidance that you are giving the industry it's hard to keep up with the technology. how do you support that circle? and against such a good question and it relates to high-frequency trading and algorithms and pulls how we take the 21st century markets or 21st century media and make this 20th century regulatory regime for it all of these new developments and that is a challenge and we are working through those issues. we are trying to provide guidance on where we can and some in conjunction with fnra and the industry and directly as of participating in some of that, and it's just something we have to stay really attuned to and on top of the best we can. at the same time we will also be

guided by and argue that firms have a responsibility to provide their employees with social media come to have broken records, to be thoughtful about how the social media is used to educate investors to promote services, to promote products, and that responsibility that the broker-dealers and others have had forever face-to-face in traditional media applied equally in the social media. >> you have two daughters you mentioned them a couple of times. if they were to come to you and say i dream of being a regulator -- [laughter] watching you has made this my life work what wisdom would you in part upon them? stegano lenihan i would be proud of them for wanting to be regulators because i do believe we have such an important role

to play, and a smart and resilience and strong effective regulatory system is absolutely critical to the functioning of the markets and our economy, so i would be enormously proud, and i would be a little nervous about what they were taking on because the response abilities are great and they couldn't handle that. the criticisms of many and spot lights are bright so those are things to think about. but at the end of the day, i would be unbelievable a palette of them if they could create some public service and i genuinely hope that they do. >> mary, we are very honored to have you here and we appreciate very much what you do. we know you have an extraordinarily difficult job, and we know that we may not necessarily always agree that it doesn't change the amount of respect we have for you and where you are trying to get done.

>> thank you. [applause] mary schapiro addressed news that jpmorgan chase the largest bank in the u.s. lost more than $2 billion in six weeks in the trading portfolio the bank uses to hedge against credit risks. the chairman responded saying it's safe to say that all regulators are focused on this. the news comes as regulators are working on language known as the volcker rule which would limit trading by banks with their own accounts. the regulations which were part of the 2010 dodd-frank financial reform law don't go into effect until july of this year.

>> i thought it was important to write a book that took people seriously so the movement that elected obama, how do they built over time, obama didn't come out of nowhere, to those three come to those of ford and also the tea party movement that came out know where, how did the work? occupy wall street. those were important things to take seriously to look at the social movement. we the people perspective. i have my ambition to walk with pocahontas.

there's one right there and one right here. this is a rectangular space the would be the council. pocahontas married john in this church, 1514. so, i guarantee volume standing exactly a little deeper than she was the this is where pocahontas stood when she got married. the atlantic council hosted a discussion on rasas new government and the future of the nation's opposition movement

under newly elected president fun rear putin. he served two terms as president from 2000 to 2008 before stepping down and endorsing his eventual successor dmitry medvedev. russian law prevents presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms but does not prevent a feared non-consecutive term. mr. putin was elected in march amid political protests in the election called. this is an hour and a half. >> i want to welcome all of you here today for another series of events on developments in russia. others that we have had so far this year include one that examine the outlook for u.s.-russian relations during this year of political transition in both of the country's trade another look to the mood in russia in the presidential elections. the trade implications of

russia's accession to the world trade organization. today looks of the domestic political scene and the outlook from the space opposition movement that bursts into public prominence last fall. much of the 50 years' history of this organization russian politics is often seem to be frozen, motionless or a least take. the work of the moscow embassy the picture is one of waiting for the inevitable death of the leader of the position that we thought would follow and it came the iceberg during the perestroika years and for the decade or more that followed the soviet and russian political scene was a very boisterous and lively one of the russian watchers marked the transition

away from popular politics back to a country that the key political issues in the struggles behind closed doors. it's been of interest in this coming year of the atlantic council that we observe the senate and the emergence of something that came to really in the public politics since last fall since the elections that took place on december 4th and wave after wave of demonstrations in the years and months that followed. those that cared deeply about russia found it encouraging the fact the countries are at least in very important segments of that seem to have spoken up from religious lumber to the country faces. russia has complete this election cycle, the large election produced its preordained result in our gereed on monday and a large seventh

but term after the hiatus as the country's prime minister. so the putin regime that never really became anyone else's will continue but the demonstrations are continuing as well. so too i think is the public sentiment that is seriously less accommodating an arbitrary governments and corruption. to help examine the nature of russia's current political struggles, the newly vibrant voices of populism and the trees is that president putin has and the substantive issues russia faces today are pleased to welcome vladimir the former candidate for the russian state who is a member of the federation council of russia's space opposition movement solidarity. it is founded in december, 2008 by a number of well-known members in the space opposition

including dairy last december's parliamentary election and the protest that took place earlier this week. a washington bureau chief on television earlier he was a correspondent and editor-in-chief of the russian investment review. "the wall street journal" and published a number of books as well. as someone who witnessed firsthand the events unfolding in moscow is directly affected by them. his observations and comments are of particular importance and value in this discussion today. with us to moderate the session as donald jensen, a longtime distinguished analyst and manager after radio free europe, radio liberty to is currently in washington on the center for transatlantic relations. he is one of washington's most prolific and respected

commentators on russia appearing regularly on cnn, fox, the news hour, bbc and several other mechem organizations. today's event is on the record after opening remarks, don will lead weigel will be a lively discussion. i hope he will be thinking of questions. if you have one please get his attention and when called upon please state your name and affiliation. they might come around for the audience. without further ado please join me in welcoming vladimir and don johnson. >> thank you very much. one of the most popular features

on russia's social networks in the last couple of days has been a collapse that the juxtaposition photographs, one, assuring the inauguration here in washington, d.c. in 2009 for the tens of thousands of people from the capitol to the lincoln memorial. the city's center not a single person of the interior troops. the pictures are coming out of moscow in the russian capital something apocalyptic there wasn't a single person from the government house to the kremlin. not just the the social squares and the nearby streets of the metro stations shut down and cleared off outside of the

perimeter there were some 20,000 minister troops guarding the president-elect on the inauguration day. and the city looked like it was under occupation. i remember the same thing back in march for the presidential election we had in the days after it the i remember working now and where we have the protest after the quote on quote victory and i've never seen the police and vehicles running up to every single street going to either side. it wasn't since the crisis of 1933 where there were so many troops in central moscow. what ever it looks like the behavior of the legitimate winner.

just a few words on what did happen in march. on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. the only candidate was removed arbitrarily of course on television in december totaled kremlin control there was a monitoring study - done by the company that showed 72% of the campaign was given to putin in 28 and the nominal competitors. there was the harassment and numerous violations of the above not enough. someone on the really bigger

scale before the carow salles we are seeing that the number of years now from one common place to another. the local papers in moscow some up to 20% of people in moscow these are not people that are registered to vote the of the control and monitoring and the the legal voters to monitor the elections which fuel several thousand across the country reported about a quarter of its monitors are brought in violations of the various kinds from the commonplace and the citizen of server on the monitoring group estimated that about seven or 8 million virtual votes were added through the tally. we just don't know and it's

impossible to know and we do not know what the result of the reelection on march 4th was. and that was exactly the message of the tens of the lessons of people that came out to central moscow to protest to the alliteration of a the president. there weren't despite efforts by the authorities to present people from a riding to moscow from the region's chains canceled, buses turned it is between 60 to 100,000 people cannot to protest on sunday and the response was unlike what we had seen when we had a similar sized rallies and was extremely harsh and in the style of dolorous sometimes called here by the western cattle because that employed vladimir putin is a democrat.

but the response was very much a mixed style and peaceful and and demonstrated and there's a deal going in and just in the last couple of days a policemen kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach with her foot. she was protesting this is on the publication's witnessed from his report they were beating people into bullet smashing their faces on the pavement and dragging them by their hair regardless of gender or age. up to 50 protesters were injured and more than a thousand a arrested with two days of protest according to the figures it may be more what they were arrested after the processes and walking down the street as they were sitting in a cafe opposition having a cup of coffee. the police walked in and detained him and there were still a lot of people over there and released the information to little of this was not good enough because we heard

mr. putin's press secretary when he was asked for his reaction the treated protestors he thought this is in harsh enough and in his words the protesters this is a direct call they should have had been spread. this was only two days ago. so if anyone needed a preview of putin's attitudes and plans, political latitudes it's as good as a preview as any seen in the last few days but that is another main question because of putin hasn't changed. there's no reason he should but russia has and that is the main point in the introduction. it's changed beyond recognition in the last six months especially and beginning in december when 120,000 people came to central moscow to protest against the parliamentary elections to demand a free and fair vote. these were the largest in russia since the anti-communist

revolution of 1991. a driven primarily by the younger educated middle class and increasingly affluent middle class are people who've achieved certain degrees of economic well-being and who now want to live in a country with willful and want to be true citizens, not as mr. markey calls them in december. this is no economic slogan. this movement is about dignity and political rights and this is a movement that for the first time in 12 years force the regime over the fence. when the kremlin was forced to reinstate the direct elections mr. medvedev recently promised it wouldn't come back over a hundred years it came back 12 days after the first purchased in december. they were forced to change the political parties and opposition parties that had been bad for years and are beginning to come back in the last couple of days

the republican party was banned in 2007 was reinstated as a legal political party able to participate. i don't want to overstate this because these are timid concessions, but affects are still the regimes and defensive in the 12 years and as we have seen in the past couple of days and this past week the movement isn't going away. this movement is here to stay and the latest poll from the agency, the latest poll shows 38% of the russian population, the general population is supportive of the protest movement and its goals and demand. that is serious but i also think it is worth noting that even according to the official results of putin's commission released after the fourth of march some of the largest cities in russia with the majority of the people against even according to his unofficial

talent i think that is also important to know. so this will be very different than the ones before. and the time he could do as he pleased finished and coming back and there was also a very interesting report forecast by the strategic research and the was published to think in the middle of march which is by no means an opposition trade, this is a think tank predicted by the associates to draft his presidential program and today is chaired. that cannot with a forecast in the middle of march saying that prediction for the next few years is the spread of protest beyond the large cities of in the provinces and a crash in the approval ratings and very likely there early parliamentary elections which were largely won by the opposition and then put

himself struggling to come up with an exit strategy. these are areas delving he will be able to complete his six year term until 2018 given the kind of situation and in closing just a few words to say about the opposition's strategy and what the opposition plans what we will be doing in the coming months and years. the opposition and beyond the protest strategy although that is one of the concessions to the regime was forced to return to reinstate in december presents a new opportunity even though very much watered-down and limited form of the law it was passing the end. there were several conditions to make it difficult for the opposition candidates to

overcome that tells the of seen even in the watered-down condition that elections present a great headache for the current regime and we have seen that in the recent opposition's in the middle of elections across russia and major spectacular cities merged in april in the run of the opposition candidate against the kremlin candidate by 70% of 28 and the kind of consensus among the experts was that wasn't so much a particular opposition candidate it was people coming out and voting against the ruling regime and so now has russia prepares to hold the elections once again for the first time in eight years experts are saying that several are likely to go into the opposition's column. a very controversial and well-connected analyst in moscow predicted the opposition and the

governorship where he was governor already in the 90's and he was elected before to parliament. running for the governor of st. petersburg when he has a pretty important foothold they have a good results in the parliamentary of the local parliamentary elections just in december so they have a kind of power in that city. so if we see several regions coming into the opposition i think that would be a game changer. one of the experts here in washington has a paper coming out where he compares the opposition victory set the level that we are already seeing unfold to the loss by the several communist party secretaries in 1989 and the first partially free e elections to the soviet congress as a

shock to the system and dozens lost, and it was very important in the initial breaking point he compared what was going to happen and what happened in the coming months back to what happened in '89 so it's fair to assume they are on the verge of some important changes and very interesting place to watch in the coming months and years. thank you very much for hosting this and i look forward to the discussion. thank you. >> thank you. i want to thank degette cleantech counsel for hosting this discussion and having spent time at the embassy during the housing days. mostly attached as always intellectually attracted. someone said the other day inauguration day napoleon

entered. what the has the first question and we will go around the table. there are a number of narrative's out there by people little skeptical about the opposition and the prospects and there are many versions of the narrative but one is there is no natural opposition. in the embassy in 1989 when healton and rose from what seemed a very elite set of associations. you address that issue is there a leadership out there, do you need a leadership out there and part number two, fascinating but amazingly indigenous characters. he's a certain international economic institutions in this town and owsley understand and the inauguration earlier this week despite having the opposition the opponent of the kremlin. can you comment about the

opposition and the allegation there is no natural leader of the opposition. >> on the first point i think it has been a great trend of the movement, not a weakness. the fact that it has no political structure unlike the kremlin and it is a grass based movement it's a civic movement as a political movement and if you look at the people that make up the protest, the majority are pro-democracy in the liberal, but they are leftist and socialist and nationalist, right-wing, is a very wide movement in the common goals of the free elections in allowing the opposition parties to compete in elections, so i think it's not a detriment and it is an advantage to the fact that there is no kind of set structure to this. once these elections began, he

did of course begin his kind of return to power after he was part of it by winning in the moscow district for the 1989 elections so we will see when they do begin to take place and we will see those new leaders a merger of the about box that is just a question of time. he is considered by very many in the position as one of the very least and there are those that are favorable to say he's not a clever one of the regime and he's one of the first ones to jump ship back in september because he was the maid sec possibly back in september to our three days after the movement that was of course the major trigger for the protest movement in the big cities is it

o.k. enough is enough. we will go out there and swap the jobs in the country who do you think they to you are. he jumped ship to our three days after that happened. nobody really considers him the genuine opposition. but in terms i think it is very telling that he was removed from the ballot in that election and he was given greenlight, they never considered him the general position millions of people to read the protest vote such as one of the most respected figures and his people to vote

because it's in those conditions beyond a useful way to express against the regime and in most places we see those more or less like moscow and other big cities and those places they came relatively close and was a close second. what we see now people saw him on tv -- >> to pass a logo. >> please identify yourself.

>> bill jones. this is a matter of some or grapes from the opposition at this point. 38% of positions are going to continue to operate we don't expect putin to crack down on the more the major shift people have to work with the situation he seems willing to want to do it. i think that the argument of comparing is really beyond the pale. he did at the 64% of the votes or whatever that is and he has the right to govern. do you think this is going to lead to the overthrow of the administration it seems to me very far-fetched. the other thing is what this

president putin going to do? there is a program of developing the far east, developing the arctic stops, the major and faizal council put forward in major plan for the development of these really under developed areas and putin has put his weight behind it. if he is successful with that he will become more popular than he is today and the opposition has to deal with that program radically and i just saying why is this such a dramatic thing that you think he will not last out his term when he has been elected with a significant majority he does have a program and the program doesn't work he will be in worse shape and will be looking better off. how do you deal with this? you can attack him for being who he is because he has won the election. >> do i need the microphone? >> one of those people beaten to death on the streets of moscow for the peace is coming out a

comparison, one of those people arrested and thrown into jail for 16 days we wouldn't see this. the only difference i can think of in the end prove it is that he allows or did allow in 2010 and the major crackdown he did actually allow the genuine opposition figures in december, 2010 just released from jail recently the election was down but he did allow opposition in serbia. putin doesn't allow the opposition. when you talk about 64% that is just ridiculous. it's not just the mechanical process, you need to have candidates and we are seeing

them registered. i think over 20 political parties go back or unregistered between 2003, 2007. that's not an election when you vote for the opposition. when you see on national tv putin, putin, that's not an election, that's not a campaign. that's let's talk about elections and results. more or less, anything comparable to an election it was 1999 and 2000 when the official was out with 52% and the investigation showed the numerous cases especially then he didn't get it. it resembles a free election because the bill that so you ask

why people think he's not going to last of his term. well, because look at the divergence between where the public mood is going with him and where he is going. he said he seems willing to work with the opposition. it wasn't harsh enough. that's not willingness to work with the opposition. we will see if. they are not very encouraging but they are just as he seems very strong and mr. banaa leavitt indonesia and the examples we have seen before, people think very strongly in the 64 or the case of mubarak 80% results before, so it's come from i'm just back from moscow

and we see these people when in our modern times just to begin to think somebody can be in power for 20 or 30 years this is a 21st century when putin came to power will get with the world leaders, david cameron barack obama was a state senator, look at the world leaders today and what they were doing when he was in charge of russia. this isn't kind of thing people are willing to accept and these are the young educated russians. are you kidding me? they've been there for 12 years and he comes out and says we are stopping jobs it's not going to happen. so, that's where this comes from. it goes against everything that's happened in the world including everything that's happening in russia. putin has lost the big cities and a vacancy the majority of moscow is against him. he does great before he lost

soviet. i don't think he's going to last about six years is not great deal to complete the six years. >> [inaudible] >> of the committee on eastern europe and nato and i gather your perspective is that something like a new space transition or new democratic restoration will occur in our lifetime may be in the next decade and maybe in several years and i don't want to debate schedules because i can't predict the future. when i first road that nato ought to be able to throw an umbrella over the space it was 1985 and published in the

gorbachev was not get elected. i didn't expect it to happen in the next decade. i was surprised. now you've written some things about what a future democratic transition whether it comes in one year's time or 15 in terms of its international policy. i think that is of interest to us here in washington and those here from the atlantic council and one of the things you said which is identical to what yeltsin said how many years ago that they would need to be part of the west no longer that means of course, shut is negotiating and is a member of the verve of age -- burba of eight. you've written an article about this how they were damaged at the start by nato not having any friendly response to them. i think that is corrupt.

i remember very well what will you need in the future and how would it be better for them to be prepared if such an agent with you were to occur in i am not going to put on about it being one year or five years or 20 but it would have been in our lifetime and we are considering what we need to be ready with also. >> thanks for that question and you are referring to a late 91 when he publicly expressed his answer. that was 20 years ago. the goal of the membership was the major russian democratic liberal and the party talks with the integration and political space. an example of the european union

uzi consistently in the polls especially russians under the age of 35 and the european union so there is this kind of parallel track of democratization happening alongside of integration into the western structures. the european country there's no question about it is just a question of institutionalizing that as you mentioned the european organization under yeltsin in the mid nineties and the g8 that he brought russia in 1998 and was under president adults and they are in history so i would certainly be in favor of the membership. many of my colleagues are. some would be against the internationalists' the devotee sought about. there's no structure or program,

there's no kind of single. as you understand the main question is to change this horrendous regime starting with political prisoners and elections and i just want to thank you for your efforts sympathetic here and hopefully when a new democratically elected government in russia does indicate an interest in the european it's not going to be the same response as president yeltsin in late 1991. ..

the extent to which the opposition is made up of democrats as opposed to important segments of the population that oppose this because there are two different things. being for a democratic society and being for a more liberal society. but certainly, much of what we read here, elements of the protesters and elements among those who have organized the protest, appear by no means to be liberals. and have quite dubious democratic credentials. if we drill down in the nature of the opposition as a democratic movement, elements that may be somewhat different.

and we would also like to answer walters questioned. >> in 2004 and when we were asked about it, the united states from 1913 didn't have the direct elections of senate. we had to come up with these [inaudible] the example would like to use, a few years ago i was a member here read the "washington post" -- i don't remember the details now, but there was a big scandal. the newspaper force the attorney general at the time to resign his post. that was five years ago. in russia, after the mtv channel came up with information that the prosecutor general received an apartment from some of the people he was supposed to investigate for criminal acts and corruption, the kremlin shut

down the mtv channel. that is the difference. you mentioned some senators and i'm sure a couple like richard lugar, who just lost in the primary, maybe there are a handful of congressmen serving longer than the two to four year terms. i imagine bill clinton would still be president. would that be ill conceivable he'll? or george bush senior? >> we could have that conversation for several hours. the democracy is loaded in russia. if you look at all the polls come, consistently, and if you ask people to decide what preferences -- would you want to run for it leadership, how people would want to choose, do

you think the press would have a right to criticize? do you think government should be elected or appointed? the vast majority would say elected. you would see that a strong majority of the russian society are democrats. all the things like press freedom and independent judiciary and elections for governor and for the heads of state come all of these things, there is no question on where the majority of the public stands. in terms of the democratic positions, [inaudible name] left the democrats. that was played out very much by the media when the process began in mid-december.

what the state television was forced to come up for the first time in a decade, was to show position leaders, because they were standing in the middle of red square in moscow. they were forced to sure the process. there was a tactic to scare people for a wild. maybe we are back, maybe we are corrupt, but look at what these guys are doing. in november they did a big survey. it was part of one of the largest surveys. on the 24th of december. it was the end of december. 120,000 people participated. they did a poll to find out who these people were.

actually, i printed all of the software just to get it right. 69% described their views as democratic or liberal. 16% said that they are communists, and others are national. i think that is the representation of the broader movement. the broad-based, it is certainly democratic or in a european sense, liberal. people who want to be citizens in their own country.

[inaudible] [inaudible] when you have some nationalists, yes, sure, and some harder people too. these are scare tactics to suggest this is the alternative. >> i do want to respond to a comment he made to the first question. you said let's not talk about elections or results. i agree. we should talk about policy. i have seen in november 2011, the announcement. i have seen persistently ahead of russian railways discuss the

cooperation of the united states and russia to construct the bering straits tunnel. which i am very sure the people here are familiar with. now, in a situation and context were two major things are driving the fear of the american population, which is the prospect of war and the financial collapse, this being put on the table, i find is something to be seriously discussed between two major powers, which are to nuclear powers, in a time where civilization is needed. i would like to add that i have been to a number of these types of events. there are consistent questions about humanitarian concerns to the russian situation. if that is the case, i ask why do we not add the grease situation to a discussion. the conditions are atrocious.

again, i would like to pose that question that once you clear policy initiatives between the united states and russia, don't you think that that is something that should be strived for and discuss even by the opposition, russians as well as various people in the united states, as opposed to the current situation, which could lead to a confrontation between two nuclear powers. especially with the construction of two [inaudible] in europe. >> i think just in general, totalitarian and other regimes -- [inaudible] on the specific issues, there

are things like the wto membership. with the russian opposition is trying to do is to make clear that this mission does not overhang our country. entire russian opposition [inaudible] the great propaganda was for vladimir putin, by the way. we all support the lifting of that amendment. the basic international record to demonstrate at arms.

>> in terms of the initiatives of vladimir putin, you wouldn't want to be proposed [inaudible]

>> i don't think we would be voicing what is going on here. and there is absolutely no contradiction between discussion country issues and not losing ground and face and reputation of human rights. just the last point on the point of pragmatism, it was a couple of months ago when lead america and won the election. when it comes to the american argument about human rights, and perhaps, the more arguments and that we should stick with principles -- and to have a really brilliant, very pragmatic point. it doesn't matter which party.

any administration should not put all the eggs in its relations with russia in the basket when an authoritarian leader, who has thousands of people demonstrating against him, despite the oppression and the pepper spraying, is that really a stable regime to be putting all eggs in that basket? and to condition it, the very important strategic relations between the united states and russia, nobody knows how long it is going to stay there. so i think that there is no contradiction at all between taking strategic regime and hushing up the issue is of the oppression of the freedoms and human rights. both should be done at the same time. >> a quick follow-up to very closely related issue, which is our ambassador during the election campaign. i hear, and mike talks with the

russians and their opinions on this, the opposition movement. what is the u.s. to do in terms of iraq's support for the ngo's opposition movement, there are days when we had very extensive set of assistance efforts for that. in fact, what is your view about what should the u.s. be doing in terms of helping these groups? >> i think first and foremost, the u.s. should not be helping the vladimir putin regime. the russian opposition is never asking for any direct support or money support. that would be the best gift for putin and the regime. when the u.s. state department announces a few days after the march 4, so-called election, we congratulated the russian people

on holding this election. and people take it at best is a joke and at worst as an insult. and you just have a vote when no opposition candidates were present, and television was censored, and the major democratic power in the world congratulates them on the election. that doesn't hold water. that is why this bill is so important. it doesn't do anything for the russian opposition. it doesn't do anything for anybody else. no outside forces. not for anybody else. stop supporting the regime. these people still the money and keep them in western banks and buy property here and spend their vacations here and send their children to study here. that is a means of supporting that corruption and those crimes against the russian people and the russian state.

that is what they are afraid of, by the way. if you look at one of the first decrees that putin signed, it was a decree requesting and ordering the foreign ministry to make it a priority to stop the [inaudible] in the united states congress. it was called extraterritorial sanctions in the united states against russian physical and entities. or something like that. he cited two hours after he was elected. that is what he is sensitive to. he violated the basic standards in the international community. naked people who are just does peacefully protesting.

>> the event counsel. my question relates to foreign policy, but i will start with when president putin became president his team was very large. remember, and he went through the [inaudible] -- there were some military activities -- the republic at that time. [inaudible] looking at this experience today, and looking at some of the tense relationships that russia has some of its neighbors, do you see that card may be played for internal purposes?

president putin has resourced to use that card in the same way that he used it in 1999, to make you more popular today. thank you. >> i think that last point is precisely it. it was also the terrorism card. that is what made him the president in 1999. he basically had a chilling effect and mass hysteria, and he came to power on that way. a couple of years ago when there was a terrorist attack in a station underneath the building, you can remember the reaction then. he has been there 10 years. he is taken away all the rights and freedoms and court stability and port security, and there is

a station blown up a hundred yards from the [inaudible name] building? the occurrence was the same. the reaction was drastically different. if you are asking can you do it, sure he can. another war, of course he can, he can do it tomorrow. but in 2008 when he did georgia, it was not the same reaction as in 1999. many people actually are still staying today, it is the best gift to the separatists and the separatist entities, the president himself, how can you do same thing? he did it himself. if your renumber all the main opposition leaders, -- if you remember all of the main opposition leaders, -- no, it

doesn't work with the terrorism card. he lost that card. as we talked about before, putin is handling countries very differently. society is very different. whatever he did in 1999 or 2008, just look at this operation. nobody said anything. they pointed at him and said this guy will be president. when he tried to do the same, they were thousands of peoplein the city streets. so he won't try to work as a mark. >> hi, i'm katie fox. thank you very much for your very interesting remarks. i wanted to ask you more about the future activities of the opposition. assuming that there is this new constituency of people who are

now consumers that want to be citizens, what does the opposition due to keep them involved? a lot of people are saying the rallies are getting smaller, money in the elections is great, but they will be rigged elections. and candidates may be not allowed to register. i'm not sure what will happen with that pool of discontent. can you talk about that? >> we are talking about the local elections. the opposition does shift the strategy a little bit. it is very important and effective. it is not completely no-no on. it is planned for the 12 of june, the russian national day. the anniversary. a similar symbolic day. the elections -- what we have

seen, you know, in terms of this new law and lot and the elections of regional governors, is so much conditions and limits and hurdles for people to come over to be able to run. with all that said, even elections like that are still a big headache for this regime. we have seen in the municipal elections in moscow, one of the conditions -- [inaudible] all this, the opposition succeeds in the opposition legislator. we have seen the opposition win a myriad of elections. we have talked about 70% to 28 of the score of the opposition candidate reading the president putin candidate. and the governors elections will come back. that will be a major opportunity for the opposition. as we discussed in the

predictions, some of the major regions will elect them as the governors. all you need to look at is how the kremlin is waiting for this and how it is expecting it. in the last couple of months since this concession was forced from them by mass protests, the reinstatement was given further actions, they have made, i think as of today, may 11, 17 gubernatorial appointments. they are trying to the last-minute use that power. they are supposed to elections this year or next. they are accretive even those kinds of elections, which they have control over. because it is 70% against putin's candidate. this is what we are afraid of in the regional votes as well they

may disqualify 80% of the opposition candidates, even a guy that nobody heard of, if he can get 70 to 55%. the elections comes on june 1. we still have, what? two or three weeks of this power of appointment. i think we should expect to see some more of those desperate appointments in the last timeframe. but it's not going to save them. they can't do it forever. there were some suggestions that have been made. after the initial rise of the protest. march -- february or march, they might try to roll it back, but then they decided they can't do it because they want to have 200 people in central moscow the next day. that's what we talked about before. putin is the same, but russia is not. the impunity is gone. the public apathy is gone. he can try to do the same things

that he's done for the last 10 years, but the reaction will be the same. imagine, for instance, running -- [inaudible] -- now it is a symbol of trash and used to be the most popular independent television. if you try to do that now, imagine the numbers of people you would see on the streets of central moscow. it is nothing like 2000 or 2001. he may do things the same, but it will not lead to the same results. >> the atlantic council. what is the timing of these regional elections, and if they have just been appointed, do they have a fixed number of years? how soon will this kind of wave takes effect on election dates? >> initially, it was supposed to

be a dozen races this year. october 14, that if the election day this year. a dozen regions. we are down to five because they have made all those opponents in the last few weeks. and they still have two weeks more of that time until june 1. so they will still makes more of those appointments. and you can see where they are making them. for instance, one region. putin's region about 30%. and that region was supposed to hold the goober -- gubernatorial elections. those people who are pointed, they are now going to serve out until 2016 or 2017. and no elections will take place. everybody understands they are just making appointments in those regions that are supposed to hold the elections this year.

which basically is a -- they are going to lose, as they just lost a state across the country. that would be an equivalent of the [inaudible] elections again. and then there will be mass protests. going back to the question of limits, they have all these caveats in the lock, to register a gubernatorial candidate, you have to collect from local it is later said many of those promises -- those elections are completely rigged, [inaudible] there is an analyst in moscow. he said that it is even more dangerous for the regime. imagine that there is a local popular leader, who has real genuine support. and suddenly, the kremlin removes them.

imagine what is going to happen on the streets and squares? what they will do is emancipate a process. they are going to give people local not just national ones. in 2009 and 2010, it was local issues that broke into the streets initially, like the rise in the car-tax in leningrad. near moscow, the import car tax -- all these local grievances, they were initial and they became against putin and the humiliation of this regime. if the regime is going to provide more local grievances and reasons for people to protest and engage in protest, that it's going to be bad for them, above all. even these limited and

conditioned elections may become a great opportunity for the opposition. the precise number, there was a recent link in a newspaper that said you should expect to have between three and five gubernatorial races this year in october. that was when it was still supposed to be eight or nine. people understand that they're going to be more appointments coming. they did come yesterday in the leningrad region and another region. they will have an election in october. we are down to five. the leak was between three and five. we may see a couple more. there will be some, in any case. for october the 14th. >> [inaudible question] >> every year. they will be every yeastion] >> every year. they will be every year. this law was forced out of the kremlin in december. this is coming out on the first of june. any governor for any reason

ceases his or her functions, resigns or whatever, after june 1, 2000 welcome the replacement can only be elected in the election. they can no longer be reappointed like they are now. they have to do it now. they have two weeks to do it. if they don't do before june 1, that is it. they will have to have elections for governor after that. >> and there's a chart of the replacements and the percentage of putin -- they targeted it with a low turnout. >> absolutely. >> let me ask you a question. the opposition -- [inaudible question]

>> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> the question is for the next reelection campaign. the ukrainians in 2004, a question of what the tax rate will be. it is a question of getting people out of prison, and a question of having a free vote instead of a rigged and prearranged vote like we do. it is a question of having public debate on national tv, including between proponents of different economic issues. it is a great and legitimate question you are asking, but it's not the states. we are not having an election campaign. we are having a civic movement against oteri and unelected regime. the position is that is the right coalition when we do have the next reelection. you will not see people

[inaudible name] on the same list. no way. what you see is the opposition coalition. it will be rebranding, presumably. there will be 10 or 12 different parties on that time comes. the economic solutions that you asked about will range from there to here. they will be completely different. that is not the question now and that is not the point now. >> may be to call up that question, i think a number of people would argue, westerners would argue, that the sources of putin's power has to do with the fact -- with the image that he has established with security and stability and prosperity. as president, as head of the government, he retains a lot of ways to influence their prosperity in the prosperity of the country. russia faces some pretty heavy

economic headwinds. to what extent -- to what extent can putin -- and nothing for your comments, the answer is obvious, but i'd like you to answer anyway. to what extent can rising prosperity, if putin is able to deliver it, moderate the kind of domestic political problems for him that you have described? >> in 2004, it took $27 a barrel of oil prices to balance the russian budget. in 2011, it took $115 a barrel just to make it. any kind of reforms, massive -- [inaudible name] [inaudible] 25% is the monetary value of corruption. capital has more than doubled in the last year, especially after putin's announcement. in 2010, it was $30 billion.

in 2011, it was more than $80 billion. the figures are to that extent. the prosperity -- they became billionaires in the last several years. they have prosperity. but it doesn't affect the country. that is why -- [inaudible] if a fiscal crisis hits in 2014, as many people expect, there will be a whole new constituency of protesters. those economic grievances. now, for those that putin is able to pay off with high tensions and high hands out, for the time being, he is able to pay them off. but the money runs out. they will then join the protesters. according to the csi, that is

expected. on your second point, and i think that is why it is significant. of course, the totalitarian system, but also the economic misery that socialism route with it. this movement was seen since december, there are no economic or social slogans. you can't buy these people are. they're not asking for increased salaries. they're not asking for better cars. these people have a pretty good standard of living. they just ought to be treated as people, not as cattle. they don't want to be told by some guy that he is going to be president for another 12 years. they want to elect a president, and who they want to be president. that is one of the reasons -- this is, of course, a classic argument of balanced morals, once the middle-class -- the prosperous, the prosperous population -- demanding

democracy and political rights. it does seem to fit. the percentage of the [inaudible name] region in russia -- [inaudible] that phrase we use before that we have used many times, it is like economic grievances they have, they want to become citizens and have a voice in the future. >> it seems to me that president clinton does have a program command if you look at the documents, he gave a series of 10 beaches, including some basic speeches on the issues of economics. if you look at the programs that he has emphasizing and the papers that are coming out from the council on productive forces in russia, with the development of the arctic, it is an expensive infrastructure program

in which they will use, of course, the oil and gas is in port, but now there is an orientation towards metal resources -- mineral resources, china and india need mineral resources. those resources are there in the arctic and parties. putin is going to develop this stuff. it also includes a bit conditions of life of people in these regions, because it is a very difficult region to live in, and they have to have incentives. they are going to do that. it seems to me that he is talking about programs, where as all the opposition is talking about is let's get putin. no programmatic ideas. now, if i were interested in the future of russia, which is in pretty bad shape. you have the middle-class, which is fairly well off. but the majority of russians are not -- they are suffering a lot. because of the economic conditions, because of the population, the decrease in population -- all of these things exist, and it seems to me that this is a program oriented towards improving the situation

of russia. if i were a patriotic russian, whether i like putin or not, and i look at what the opposition is saying, which is get rid of putin, i would say okay, i will go with putin. this is the way to do it. it is funny to see that. you know, do you expect people to buy a ticket to both of the opposition where they don't have an economic program? i think that is pretty far-fetched. with regard to putin's extent in office, he will be there 18 years, not 24 years. i don't think he has decided that he may not decide -- to run again. but i want to point out that franklin roosevelt had lived, he would've served seniors. i, myself, think of that would've been better than having harry truman come in. but that is a matter of course. but it isn't unprecedented, this extension office as a president. >> not to make a moral accordance between fdr and

putin. >> you have that phrase, people don't vote for the opposition. people don't vote for the opposition because it's not allowed on the ballot. i wanted to vote for it [inaudible name]. i couldn't because they took them off. if you change the vote -- you can't vote for the opposition. let's forget that phrase. there are no elections. you can't vote for whoever you want. let's forget about voting and nonvoting. >> [inaudible question] >> well, sure, they had [inaudible name] for 20 years, could we talk about earlier? [inaudible name] he didn't say a single thing against putin during the whole campaign. >> [inaudible question] >> they run against putin because you have to have several names on the ballot. i'm surprised, i'm surprised you

ask obvious questions. in 2008 you had [inaudible name] which no one had ever heard of before putin. when you talk about putin's programs, it's all very nice if we talk about diction and theory. but if you, for instance, consider that 50% of all oil imports from russia, -- and you look at the levels of corruption and how it has risen, and how it is slicing the economy, i just don't want to discuss fiction of what he says or what he will develop. read those white papers that are published regarding the putin corruption. read about his [inaudible name] on the black sea coast. that is his action. that is not what he says, that's what he does. people know that he does it. that is why so many people are coming from the streets against him. it is because -- just because of

the the fever going under this regime. there is a popular political slogan. it is more popular than -- if you look at the [inaudible] that is one of the most popular slogans. >> do you know who is financing this? [inaudible conversations] >> we have about 10 minutes left. let me bunter questions together and make them brief. you and then john. >> one of the first orders that putin gave him the inauguration day was this deadline to establish the eurasian union by

january 1, 2015. which has been a product of his. there are a number of articles appearing, including this about his program. immediately after that, we see a very modest commensurate from, [inaudible name], in his state of the union address, which was almost brushed over the topic. at the same time, in the recent weeks we saw an arms deal with kazakhstan and his development on that front. what do you think? will this project ever come to light and will be something sustainable? and something that will eventually aided putin in his current term to maintain his position in the world arena? somehow, or will it be something bad but just dies out?

>> you are talking about the eurasian union? >> the eurasian union. >> when putin's superclasses in two or three or four years, it doesn't last -- what kind of transition will there be, what that will that classify? what challenges does that face the rest of the world with? >> union state of russia, -- [inaudible] this union state, since 1996, it hasn't been anything to it. the only unintended consequences, the only good one, i think, you were there a couple

of months ago. [inaudible] he was on the band of blacklist that she is not allowed to leave belarus. there is no border between them and russia. that is the only good unintended consequence of the union state. in terms of your question on the transition, it is very much up to the regime as to how this transition will be. when you saw the initial process in december and february, he saw people coming out with families and small kids, people wearing white ribbons, and it was 100% peaceful of a protest. a moral peaceful protest against this kind of regime. when you have -- basically

unleashing an army on demonstrators, that radicalize is the opposite side, too. nobody from the opposition leadership, nobody wants a violent revolution or civil war am a god for bid, or anything like that. but the regime is actually trying to do that. they are trying to completely close off and shut up all the legal avenues. now -- i mean, this [inaudible] a couple of days ago he said, once again going with the [inaudible name]. they passed a law against clapping and singing. in moscow, you are not allowed to wear white. white is a symbol of the protest. i'm not talking about sunday and monday, i'm talking about the entire week. people are -- police are

randomly arresting people and putting them into cells. there was a gentleman who was arrested for having a cup of coffee. it doesn't encourage the peaceful protest and doesn't really, you know, it doesn't give the opposition any encouragement to remain peaceful and moral. there are radicals on the other side. nobody is for that. they are actually working for that and by trying to hang on until the end until they crash. that is what this exit strategy is about. this center for strategic research -- to have putin's associate basically saying, you're either going to start looking for another strategy, because you're not going to be there much longer, maybe another three years, but not much

longer. and you better have that other strategy. otherwise, it's just all going to crash. and it will be that way for everybody. for the opposition, the regime, for russia, from the neighbors, for the outside world. the ball is in our court now. one option is protesting peacefully. [inaudible] it just shows you who is going to do a peaceful transition and who will resist it to the end. >> time for one more. i rather -- [inaudible] >> i would like to follow up and say that this generous word, it seems to me that every opposition in authoritarian systems is lacking in substantive program compared to what will be needed the day after a transition. this is always been my experience dealing with people

before transition, after, seeing what went wrong -- and so i think the question is fair to you, even if not always fairly worded. sometimes a bit harshly worded. it is fair to say that probably the opposition will need to work more on the program, because when a transition occurs, all the bills come due. i'm not just talking about economic bills. while the issues that people put under civility, they don't allow them to be put up. you have to deal with them all and you have to be ready for it. i think it is something worth considering more seriously. on the other hand, you put a challenge to the rest of it unchecked us in your article, that the bills are due for us, also, who want this change to occur. when a change occurs, we need to be ready with our share of dealing with it, not just in terms of giving money, which is what some people understand, but in terms of the relations we want to deal with and how we want to deal with those relations. that is an even more pair charged us because we were not

ready during the mikhail gorbachev and poor sales in transition. i do want to emphasize that challenge you. we at least shared equally if not more so. >> thank you for your fairness and final comment. >> we need to close out. >> i would like to thank the council again and for everyone to took part in the discussion. it is great to have these kind of exchanges and opinions. >> many thanks to all of you poor attention to good questions. i think the comment at the end was a very helpful one. i also want to thank from our own staff, [inaudible name] who did a lot of the work command our assistant director who is back for the first time in our offices after having a baby several weeks ago. please join me in thanking our two guests were outstanding presentation and leadership of this event. they do.

[applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] coming up on c-span 2, next, we would hear about u.s. efforts to assist those complications in establishing strong and stable governments. after that come a look at recovery efforts and the long-term impact of japan's nuclear power plant meltdown last year. later, sec chairman merry shapiro on the implication of dodd-frank. another possible regulation to prevent a financial crisis.

republican presidential candidate mitt romney will be in lynchburg, virginia to address liberty university graduates at their commencement semi. this is the former governor's first visit to the christian university. we will have live coverage at 10:20 a.m. eastern. this weekend on newsmakers, senator john hogan on house and senate negotiations over the transportation bill, dealing with highway and transit programs. the house version would require approval of the keystone pipeline through south dakota. newsmakers is sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span.

>> consequently, if you cut us from doing that at a point in time where much of the crime is globalized, it is a double hit in some sense. >> on wednesday from the fbi director testified on capitol hill about the negative impact of budget cuts. political correctness, and renewing the foreign intelligence surveillance act. watch it online at the c-span video library. it is one of many videos we covered this past week. all archives are searchable. c-span.org/video library. over the past year, c-span's local content vehicles city stewart has taken "book tv" and american history tv on the road from tampa, florida, to savanna, georgia. birmingham and baton rouge and last month in oklahoma city. the "book tv" crews have visited

cities that the fine literary life. june 2 and 3rd, water special programming from wichita, kansas on c-span 2 and 3. >> assistant secretary of state stabilization operations laid down several operations after it a violent conflict. he talks about operations in syria, canada, and burma. ambassador barton was the keynote speaker today at the peace building conference. this is 40 minutes. [applause] well, thank you. thank you. thank you to the panel and all of you, all friends. i do feel as if i am home. and i do feel as if this is our

home. it is a great, great pleasure to be among so many peace builders. all of you have dedicated so many wonderful years and superb efforts to eyes. as i look around the audience, i just see people that i have admired for a long time. your dedication, your professionalism, your perseverance. one of the things i am finding in the new job is that tenacity seems to be a fairly important quality. and it is not one that i would've necessarily put at the top of my personal list. but i am finding that there must be more of that new england strain that i realized before i moved into the state department in this particular job if you want to go. all of you have clearly shown that. and thank you so much. without it, we would not be making the progress we are

today. thank you to melanie and doctor and mrs. colin for the gift. obviously, there are a bunch of old friends are. he has made it possible for us to donate to the foundation. [applause] [applause] >> he is here now at the u.s. ip as well. we stand at a breakthrough moment a chance to make the u.s. government more effective and coherent in building peace. we must seize this opportunity. to do that, we will need your

continuing help and openness to change. at cso, our mission is to prevent violence, and accelerate the departure from violence. we are trying to fashion an organization that can make an impact on policy and in programming in the first 12 months of a crisis. it is a high bar. every time over the last six months that i have told people about our mission, i have heard the same two words. spoken quite differently. "good luck" and "good luck." in both cases, people want us to succeed. but i also hear concern that making an impact in some very challenging places is just to talk. we know we have a lot of work to do. all this is difficult

challenges. not only the places we work, but with the attitudes and the structures that confront us. for example, we know that almost 80% of recent conflicts stem from violence recurring within two years of a settlement or a cease-fire. why? we know that countries spending priorities in developing countries are remarkably consistent, regardless of whether a country is at peace, in civil war, or recovering from war. why? we know that an astounding 62 u.s. officers were involved in managing iraq reconstruction. why? to answer these questions, to be more effective, we see the need for some fundamental changes. the u.s. has spent significant effort and money in the last decade to address conflict. but whether we spend $3 million or $3 trillion, we haven't

gotten it right. but with your help, i believe it is possible. we also know that work like yours at the local level has contributed to the longer-term decline in conflict around the world. i believe we are in the cusp of historical change, as dick mentioned. i believe that this is changed we have worked for for a long time. i believe that your work has brought us to this tipping point moment, and for that, i thank you. making history is not easy. but i believe if we can work differently and work together, we have an excellent shot. many of you have been on this road for quite a long time. it is not hard to see a narrative arc to the work at a grassroots and international level. developmental groups to dissolve

the links and address the root causes of conflict. organizations like search for common ground and partners for democratic change began to practice this work more systematically. academics began to find the boundaries and trained practitioners. i'm speaking of this like distant history, but many of those people are in this room today. meanwhile, the field began to take shape at high levels everywhere. in the early 1990s, the u.n. began to recognize our work is a distinct discipline. in 2005, the u.n. establish the peace building commission. the peace building fund and the peace building support office. in 2008, the u.n. adopted it definition of peace building. only 121 words. of course, the qder identify conflict prevention and response is a core mission of the state

department and led to the creation of cso. secretary clinton has told me and anyone else who will listen that cso is one of the most important things to come from the qder, so i know that she is invested in our success. by the way, i don't mean to suggest that cso's crowning achievement -- in fact, the u.s. must improve. but i do think that elevating issues at stake, giving them hat, has been on many of your minds for some time, and it is a great honor to have the chance to try to bring it to light. the qder reflects the broader fact that we have reached a critical mass of people who have built a shared in which an understanding of the need to analyze conflict, plan what needs to be done, and work together to do it. we are coming to greater recognition to building a democracy, human rights, economic development, and all build peace.

whether we call it peace building or stabilization or something else, we all need to work together to seize this moment. now, where will cso fit into this rather crowded space? our ambition is essentially to be more effective in an increasingly dynamic world as rob and dick described. as i mentioned, it even within the u.s. government, we haven't seen the best cohesion and coherent in our work on conflict. effectiveness also means the recognition that the u.s. is going to be a pivotal and vital player, but not always the dominant force. we need to be humble. ..

in what we do and who we -- to do other things. we must bring the new sense of focus and urgency to this work. what we're offering cso is essentially a process. it starts with determining a center much gravity for each engagement. someone with cross-cutting authority for the network of officers involved who welcomes help, and encourages invasion. so then if heaven forbid, we have 62 agencies working in a place, they know what each other are doing and they're working with each other from the start. we think of it as a board of

directors model. engage as many people have an interest in the case. being inclusive bring the ball to the policy making table. give them a chance to make their best arguments, but come to a decision on the way forward so that everyone by them and that is built from the latest local realities. in and outside of the capitol. with the secretary interviews me for the job, we talking about how when she visits the country, she ends up inevitably with the same -- of deliveries in respective of the case. it's often terrorism narcotics, aids, refugees, food security all good causes. if you tell me which office or bureau is going out do is the analysis, i can tell you what

kind of solutions they're going to come up with. we want to avoid an institutional bias, or predetermine responses and instead answer the question what is most needed. we just helped with this kind of analysis in beer ma. we worked on a seven-person team. we were trying to make sure the local voices are heard and they drive the thinking that takes shape. as you moe, cso has the only analysis tool, -- and i know yours as well. and sometimes they produce different conclusions. we want to learn from you and refine the in large part to make it more strategic and influential.

single integrated but two to three priorities that provide distribution for all. -- but the u.s. can't be the nation building mode. jump starting is still plenty --

together will be a center piece of our being effective. finally, we need to make sure that we are measuring and adjusting or work as we go, learning in real time, and not two years after the fact. with the approach, i think we in the u.s. government can greatly increase our chances of success. help us work better with all of you hopefully in a transformational way. at cso we recognize that we have the coming year to prove that we can improve the response to show change, impact. for so for this years we told the secretary we have three goals. first, we have to make an impact in two to three places of real significance to the united states. to do that, we will dedicate 80% of our effort to four major cases. right now they are syria, kenya,

north central america, birr ma. then we'll have another eight to ten places where we can test new approaches or make a welcome difference by sending the right person at the right time. so for a, i think we are gaining transaction in each of our major priority engagements. many of you are work work anything this places. and we realize we won't know best about them so we hope for your support. in syria, we are providing a nontraditional surge to power and yient a infrastructured, non-- that includes providing nonlethal assistance. we are developing with partners to set up an outpost to coordinate and communicate with the international community. in ken yab we'reing to develop plans to ensure peaceful incredible elections a year before the vote. incidentally, kenya is one place

where we have seen a model for broad cooperation and invasion. in northern central america, we have a growing homicide and governance problem that can. so we are bringing new urgency to address the violence on a region nam basis specifically to hon door raws, guatemala, and. we are supporting analysis and focusing on ways to connect with ethnic minorities at the sub national level. our second goal for this year is to build a trusted and respectedded team. we want to be the people in the u.s. government who bring everyone together to find solutions to conflict. we've brought in an entirely new leadership team. refocused or predecessor organization and restructuring the civilian response corps. and other core resources.

rereducing the size to the leadership who can lead our engagements. at the same time, we're expanding our reach to deploy experts from inside or outside the government on a pay as you use basis. instead of keeping a large-standing staff just any case of any eventuality. we are moving to the -- just in time while expanding our partnerships. for example, this is one of my favorite stories. we recently got a gall call from the u.s. ambassador in liberia seeking our help. day before the presidential runoff one person was kill and eight were injured by gunfire. some felt the police were impacted. thely beer began commission set up to investigate the commission didn't have the capacity to conduct an inquirely which put

the good will of the government at risk. in our -- who assured the investigation on track. the investigationer interviewed 70 or 80 people and found at 15 second slice of video of the demonstration that showed specific police on the crowd. had actually happened in three different ways. one of the lie beer began investigators first saw a plain clothes person in a rather exotic shirt and heavy arm band firing into a cloud. crowd. the video showed a pop, a little bit of smoke, and you could hear the noise. and still photography confirmed who that person was. it was a high-ranking member of

the president shugart. that same 15 second clip was shown to the department of justice investigator, who then saw another policeman in the same frame shooting this one in uniform shoot into the grad. she showed the same video clip to the commission members. the and one of them saw a third person in the same 15-second clip fire into the crowd. it became the critical evidence that lead to police suspensions further investigation, and the president of the country taking responsibility. in the rule of law, and who we are and how we work are as important as we're trying to do. to make quality impact of the first 2012 months of crisis -- that's different from the way

the pus. our third goal is to work in agile and innovative way. part of that is developing a model for expeditious their diplomacy in the field, and part is working as an ain't dote to the bureaucracy in washington. as we know, the bureaucracy can move like. it is powerful, but very large and you can reasonably predict where it's going and be sure not to be underfoot. our goal is to work in a nimble, speedy fashion, which means with more help from our partners. i used to ask audiences would you rather spend $500 million on the largest u.s. embarrass sei in the world in baghdad or train 500 americans 1 million per' each of them so they coup

capable of working in a place like baghdad? how many of you would favor the embarrass -- so we pretty much agree. almost unanimously. but i've got bad news for you. since i started questioning this question, they built it and it cost more than $500 million. we're trying to figure out what 20 do with it. we have to find a way to do things differently. violent conflict has unofficially dominated u.s. foreign policy for years. so we need to expand the community of people who recognize the and can address it head on. there's a lot of room for improvement, and i hope question join in doing that together. i want to take a moment now to address the tension that we sometimes feel when

nongovernmental groups and governments find themselves in the same space. the u.s. has the national interest at heart, and often strive for neutrality, and those are not always the same thing. i think the key is to be very honest about when are our interests are in sink or when we might need a space. we should feel like we can help each ore but also keep our distance when necessary. good, open, communications should make that possible. with that, i want to offer you a challenge. when i was at csis, we went out to measure progress in afghanistan for the first time, almost everyone i spoke to was telling us what they were doing was working and the larger surprise was not going well. we had a situation where we heard 100 success stories that

added up to one questionable larger effort. there's no math math mattial equation that allows them to equal a negative. of course, almost everybody had an explanation. but it completely reinforced the flaws in the approach that we gave to the places. here's some questions that i wonder if you were asking yourselves, are you working in places that really matter? even though is it possible to be transformative? is the larger situation getting any better as a result of your involvement? even if you're doing work, what's happening on the broader scale? asking these questions is part of our goal. and i hope part of yours. we're looking at the next dramatic event and how the united states can be a more intelligent responder, and anticipator and intervener, and

catalytic force. the use of the questions of our time. in this piece, we see these questions in their rawest form. people are actually killing each other because they can't figure it out. and there's nothing more profound in human life than people killing each other because they can't figure it out. so in the most fascinating, most demanding, most responsible moment imaginable. and we're trying to say, is there some way the united states can help? so it doesn't lead to something

much more tragic. we need your help. if you ever hear me say we're on top of this, we've got it under control, give me a call or send me an e-mail. because we need all the help we can get. there is plenty to be done, we need to keep the men in working congress elsewhere in the government and we're partners of all stripes. we need to expand the base of people who believe in this work, and as i said, it can't be business as usual. thank you very much. [applause]

rick has. kindly offered to take son-in-law questions if there are questions from the audience i have to ask a question myself. will somebody be handing around the microphones or do people go to the side? >> handing them out. please, raise your hand so they landers out can see you, and stand up and introduce yourself. there's a question down here. i'm bob, i'm a proud member of the board of alliance. i'm wondering, you know, in this more complicated world we're in, accompany on the journeys you have mentioned internationally. that is the questions you've

raised we'll want asked within a lot of governments. i'm whether or wondering in the initial sounders with counter parts and other governments, and nato and so forth, your questions are residence nateing well. >> thanks, bob. yes. [laughter] i've always wanted to give at least one still answer -- as you all know, i'm more likely to go on to be as succinct as he was. i admire his skill. the answer is yes, whether we're talk to the command leaders here in the u.s. government and/or the uk government or even the colleagues that i had a chance to work with when i was in new york. i think there's a great recognition that we've got to go at this in a much more creative

fashion, and think things they have noticed having worked on this twenty years or thirty or plus places now is that we tend to be most of us tend to be influenced by the most recent experience. i think that's puts us at risk in this country. our most recent experience is such a huge one in iraq and afghanistan. and i think as dick suggested that the next round of conflicts that we're looking at really have a very different flavor. and different also from what we saw in the 1980s where much us were shaped by bosnia. there were other catastrophes going on. i think that part of is it just to make sure we're accumulating this knowledge thinking we actually got it. and if there's -- for me, one of the things that been most fascinating is i don't know where i'm going to the parallel experienced. i'm surprised to find in the congo there's --

and more serve ya than i would have thought. but normally we would regional experts or so it's part of what we want to do is to have an intelligently changing enough environment that there's a creative tension within the state department. we don't end up rushing to a consensus view within the u.s. government. this is the way to do something. making it a more rigorous test. that involves a give and take with -- regional bureaux and it has to be more dynamic than it has been in time. that's one of our challenges. the other thing the counter parts in other governments kept more specifically to your question, we're still relatively small boutiques. we're all kind of finding our space within our larger bureaucracies, and so nobody -- so we have do come together.

when i was -- i always used to say it's nice for us to be doing what we're doing. but we can't be a professional team that practices all the time. we have to be in the league. there's got -- you have to have people you can go out and so, competition and creative should be part of this model and. so that's why you almost never here me use the word coordination. i believe we have to work together as a fine textile. imrea. i can see that. anything for that matter. let me go back here by the microphone. the gentleman back there. >> thank you. i'm from american university and the center for international relations. i am from greece, actually, and i found myself working on

support i've been expecting in my lifetime to do. it has to do with the greece as a failed state, and the liability regional -- and regional security in case greece becomes a failed state. the question that i have is, how many -- can u.s.a. be. around the world in days cases like greece and others i know they aren't yet. but they are close to becoming so. so the limited capacities in terms of money and resources how many -- can be before things get bad? >> well, fortunately -- i can answer for cso and say we have partners like usip that can probably get ahead of us even farther in some of these cases.

i i would hope that many of you would be well ahead of us. that would give me some greater sense of confidence that we're on top of this. one of the things that worries me. i'm quite sure that in some cases and places, i don't think it's true in the case of greece. the u.s. military has war plans for are matter of places on earth. and it strikes me as a minimum requirement that we should have come rabble civilian thins. and the fact that we don't, i think would shock many taxpayers. so we all of us need to do that kind of forward thinking. it doesn't matter who gets the right piece. or draw our attention to it. for any of us who spent -- who spent any time in bosnia, the trip from zuric to --

that's one and a half hour flight seemed like a sudden way to go from europe herch what preventing disaster. prevention business. , i mean, you recognize this that. it's not a great feeling. worrying about stuff doesn't make you great. it's better to be worried about it than to see the eventuality. places like greece we should be alert to. probably for cso, our focus is going to be in three kinds of cases. hot spots, too big to fail, and long standing conflicteds that seem -- don't seem to be breaking lose. you can see what kinds of places fall into each of those.

what we do with each of those might be very different. they have a full-scale operation and really be trying to push the u.s. government to make sure that the assistance there is focused and another place we might be doing advanced strategic planning ored a vying an ambassador. that's certainly the model we've been building upon. >> this one right here. >> thank you very much. my name is mindy riser. i'm representing global p services u.s.a. a question about the richness of the u.s. government that may not have been involved in collaboration. the peace corps. has the own identity, and at the distance from intelligence gathering, but certain the people on the ground have such insight and commitment to the well-being of their countries. there any their insights can be

fed into the process. and the programs there are now many people from all parts of the world who are in the united states, and americans overseas they have insights, they have rules, they have knowledge of that others don't. is there a way to tap into the extraordinary intelligent yule resource? >> sure. i think a lot of the process is that i've seen that cso are invite that kind of broader participation. the part of is to differentiate between sort of formal sharing of information, and informal. my feeling always when i was there everything we were doing was basically in an overt space. and being an overt space meant that we were transparent about the information we were collecting. we should be sharing it with anybody. if the intelligence community or whatever else wanted to know

what we were thinking, it was fine, it was public information. i feel that that's one way to get around the sort of worry that people have about their insights being misused by the official world is what i do is open, and so i'm sharing it with anybody who has an interest in promoting peace. i think that's the easier formula for people like the peace corps. rather than being seen as information gathering for the u.s. policy apparatus. on the other hand, one of my favorite says is a retired intelligence office was living in princeton when i was teaching there, he stood up one day and said, i found after i retired i had an advantage that none of my former colleagues i had. i had open and free access to open information. [laughter] so and i think actually now, we get some analysis data from the

intelligence community, that's actually based on totally available information. so they saw that has a weakness in their own work. and it's actually -- it's quite helpful to collect it. this one right here. >> i have one more question. >> this woman right here. >> sorry to you but -- >> thank you, my name is bee tries. i'm a state department foreign service office on detail to the smith sonia. >> on what? >> details to the smith sonya. i wanted to ask whether there is any part of your office that is working on cultural recovery issues? smith sonya did a lot of work with haiti after the earthquake. in addition i was thinking we a briefings discussion yesterday with ambassador derrick michelle about what they are doing in burr ma. kind of environmental conservation research there which is from the last 120 years have been building a foundation

that can be helpful. particularly on the sort of cultural art facts the baghdad museum issue. there is there anybody in the office looking at the issue. >> the answer is not specifically, no. but i would like that be able to say, i think we're working on is, to really understand these cases. better not approach them from a political or economic or anthropologist optic. i met more in haiti than any other place in on the earth. or as a psychologist, it's when you get the convergence of violence to the society, it breaks down this badly, it's usually rich's brew. to understand it, you've got have all of those disciplines at play. that's part of what we're trying to build at cso, i hope that our talent to be respected and trusted.