and i think he's going to have to make those tough decisions. but i think the republicans in the house of representatives are also going up to make a tough decision, and that is would've e reform the tax code which everybody wants us to do. but also we have used a small percentage of that money to reduce the deficit. so it doesn't place too much burden on the operating structure of the country. >> so who is the one person in the white house and one person and the republican leadership who is most committed to making the tough choice because i think the one person in the white house is most authentically -- authentically committed to making is the president. i've met with him several times. i believe that he's willing to make these cuts in the entitlement programs that we have to make. that doesn't mean i don't want to continue to push them outside of his comfort zone to go a little further than you might want to go otherwise, but i think we're going to have to if we get a deal with republicans

but again we'll have to push the republicans in order to do the tax reform, allows us to reduce the deficit in the same manner. >> how do you push a president? >> you know, the way i've done it is always candidly, open with him, not agree but tell them exactly what you think and why. this is a smart guy. i think you will understand and i think he will make the decisions at the end of the day. >> or i could turn joe biden loose on him. because he came to the senate when joe was there as a senior member, and joe took them under his wing and he listens to joe, as he would a colleague, a senior colleague, and joe, you will notice, has always pulled out of the hat, he is the rabbit and had to do something. and that's the role joe will have. but joe has a remarkable ability to communicate with him. >> what are you referring to? >> joe has his ear, and canseco

menino, if you're going to do something, do this and clean up the room, get rid of the political guys and say let's do some policy now. let's do something for america. the political guys hopefully have all gone home now, and they were there for a purpose, and at work. get him reelected and we will work out the details later. well, they're gone. and so maybe, maybe, just maybe they will sit down and you policy for the best interests of the country without the howling, shrieking, the wail of the coyotes using emotion, fear, guilt and racism to beat your brains in. >> how optimistic are you that that will occur is your? >> i hope so. i mean, especially young people like you. >> i said do you believe it will happen is your? >> i don't know when it will happen but it will happen in his four years or he has no legacy at all. if he can't cut the mustard with

solvency of social security under on his appraisals of the trustees, and he can't get a handle on an automatic pilot of health care he'll have a failed presidency. >> talking backstage we're talking about this a question which i think most people in this room believe will happen on march 1, automatic cuts. mr. bowles, you refer to them as dumb a -- >> stupid spent three times you use that word. they are stupid, stupid stupid. because first of all, you couldn't, look, there's no business in the country that makes its cuts across the border to go in there and you try to surgically cut those things that have the least adverse effect on productivity. second, they're cutting those areas where we need to invest in education and research, research. and third they don't make any cuts to those things that are growing faster than the economy.

that's stupid, stupid stupid. >> and yet sounds like you think when the sequester kicks in, that may be a window to do something big. tell us what's going to happen march 1 when the sequester cuts taking and why you think that might be a chance to do something big. >> when you guys go here to reagan airport and wait in line for three hours to get through security, you're going to be test. and so is everybody else. and you can use lots of different stories just like that. and when that happens to come back to congress and say, we are sick of this, let's get together, let's do something smart, let's put the partisanship aside, let's go together and let's fix this de debt. >> senator simpson, many people in this room have seen online the video of you gangnam style, a little harlem shake for us?

pay for it? >> i didn't hear the last -- >> a little harlem shake for us? >> these young people, you've got to admire them. they handed me the script and it said stop instagram your breakfast. i said what the hell is that? and then it said and stop tweet a ring your worlds worst problem. i said, what the hell is that? then they said stop watching gangnam style. look like a guy riding a horse with a lasso. i said hello, i can do that. [laughter] so i did. we figured we made more hits with young people if we had done a national bus tour. [laughter] because they are a great group. >> do you think you will do it again and? >> not if my knee continues to irritate me. [laughter] won't do any of that.

>> mr. bowles, you can get more into social media. you're on the board and on facebook. spent yeah, yeah. for safety at your god i am really with it now. but look, i'm old. eyeballed. i have nine grandchildren under seven. but, you know, you've got to say as current as you can -- you got to stay as current as you can. with alan and i first got in the steel we we are doing it for our grandkids. but the more we look at the numbers and the more we looked at the countries financial condition, we realize we're not doing it for our grandkids. we are not even doing it for our kids. we're doing it for us, for the country. we've got to put our fiscal house in order. we can't be the first generation of americans to leave the country worse off than we found it. >> a point you make today is it gets more expensive by the day,

because we get more into the baby boomers because more debt we are paying interest on, because of inflation, because of growth. it's probably getting much more expensive to fix benefits in 2010, it was 4 trillion, over nine, now it's 5 trillion. over 10. how fast is it going to get too expensive to fix the? >> there's nothing more powerful than compound interest. lots of smart people have said that. and we are spending $250 billion a year on interest today. we will be spending, if interest rates were at their normal level they were in the 1990s, $650 billion. it will be long before we're spending a trillion dollars a year on interest. think about that, that's a trillion dollars we can't stand in this country to educate our kids, to build our infrastructure, to do the high value added research. unfortunately, since we are borrowing so much of that money, principally from places like

asia, it's a trillion dollars that will be spent over there to educate their kids, to build their infrastructure, to do the high value added research in those countries so the next great thing is created there so the jobs of the future are there, not here. that's crazy. that's what we have to stop. that's why we need to do something now. >> we are about to get the hook, so my penultimate question for you, did you read bob woodward's book? >> i did. there were some quotes in there that i would have loved to have snatched back, but yes. >> did you participate with the book's? >> this speedup what's it like to be interviewed by bob woodward's? >> well, you want to be alerted. [laughter] >> and every time he came to my office, i was alert, and we would have lunch, and he never misquoted me at all. he has an amazing, i don't agree with him obviously in all respects, but he has an amazing

journalistic acumen, which is startling. and the book has stuff in it that is all real. >> mr. bowles, did you participate? >> you know, i don't remember. i probably would have if he told me, but i don't ever talking to him but i may have. you know, i do a lot of that. as you know it's not my favorite thing to do,. >> how close to think we were to -- >> i think we could've had a grand bargain but i really think it was realistic. you know, both sides really were prepared to make a move. if you look at the end of last year, you know, they were prepared to do more revenue. they agreed to do more revenue that was in the fiscal cliff do. they agreed to do more health care cuts than certainly have been done to date, but it was on both the beneficiary on on the provider side.

they had agreed to other mandatory cuts that were coming in a, everything from agriculture to federal retirees. they agreed to do cuts in defense and nondefense beyond what's in the budget control act. and they agreed to do a change to cbi. so i thought it was, that would've been a very, very, very positive step forward. and, unfortunately, it's broken but it would not solve the problem because it only got the debt down to around 73% of gdp and it didn't keep it on the downward path. it began to go up after that, and we've got to quit focusing on this next 10 years and really focus on the out years. that's what we need structural change. that's what we need to make social security sustainable as all the. that's why we need to slow the rate of health care spent but watching that happen, erskine and i felt impelled to do this. we said if these guys are this close back in december, then we will pick it up from there and try to move it along.

that's what this is. not simpson-bowles or bowles-simpson, do something. >> my last question is right on the. if not president obama, who? there's a short window here for a reelected president. if the guys are just to doug and this year, can't be done, three years from now there will be a whole new window to get something done. what do you think it will take if not president obama speak with my experience in negotiating the balanced budget agreement in 1996 at the beginning of the president's first term, president clinton's first term, is now is the opportune time. so what we need to do as americans is to quit complaining and push these guys to make a compromise they have to make in order to get something real done that put our fiscal house in order spent as erskine said, he spent hours, and days, in his work as the last person to balance the budget in the united states by working with newt

gingrich and dick armey. he often says you only one, but i don't -- but he's that kind of savvy, mr. steady. and if he can't, if you can't, and i admire him deeply, watched him, he's a tremendous man, he's the best of the best, if he with his skill and negotiating skills can't get us there, it won't get there. and the markets will do the shot. and they don't care a whit about who is president or they don't care a whit about democrats or a whit about republicans. they care about their money. and if anybody can't figure that out, you know, you have a rock for brains. >> you have the last word here. >> i don't want it to. [laughter] >> when you say the markets will do the shot, tell us what will happen to the markets if this is they can keeps getting kicked. >> what is the word you use? you money guys, the word when

you want your money and you're not out the. panic, we don't want to use that word. that, that tipping point, i don't know what it is but i do know that the longer we stumble and look as common as unbelievably unable to function to even talk with each other, to visit with each other, to sit down, as i used to do with ted kennedy or tip o'neill, that's what i did eric that's how i was successful. i was a legislator. i didn't come here to be king or leader. i came to legislate. and until we see this open up again, and it will open up again from the markets call the shots and inflation kicks in and interest rates go up, and the people of america say, who did this on his watch, you are here and you didn't do a lick and you're out of here next time,

that will be the beginning of the solution. >> thank you those in live stream land for watching. we thank bank of america making these conversations possible. we thank all of you who came out early for this, and we think senator simpson, mr. bowles, cofounders of fix the debt for fantastic conversation. thank you all very much. >> thank you very much. [applause] spent we apologize again for the technical issues with the coverage of this discussion. we have record the program. we will have it in our entirety later honor c-span networks or you can watch it anytime online at c-span.org. president obama expected to make marks urgent action to avoid the sequestered, automatic budget cuts set to happen next by. we will have live coverage from the white house at 10:45 a.m. eastern. it will be online at c-span.org. live coverage continues on c-span2 at 10 each with a discussion on iran's nuclear program and international

response were ambassador thomas pickering will join brookings institution senior fellow kenneth pollack again, that will be live at 10 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. at 6:30 p.m. will be live with michael hayden with remarks on how digital technology is transform national security and intelligence gathering. he may also touch on preventing cyber attacks on the u.s. like the one over the weekend blamed on china and threats from terrorists and rogue nations. he will be speaking at george washington university, and that starts at 6:30 p.m. with the u.s. in the unbreakable is week we're featuring some of booktv's we can programs on prime time here on c-span2. tonight former iraq and afghanistan general begins at 8 p.m. eastern with stanley mcchrystal and then fred kaplan, david petraeus, also jeffrey engel discusses a collection of essays on the goal for. >> the economy is at china basin

is communism in name only these days. it's to preserve the power of the members of the communist party. but they basically threw most of the ideology aside when deng xiaoping opened the country up and is now a capitalist haven. the communism in china, they talk the talk at great length of these party congresses about marxism, leninism, to do. it's all about preserving the party power economic as a country continues to grow because they threw aside the most vestiges of common is alongside the in north korea it's all about preserving the power of the military and the kim dynasty as you have there. and again, it really has nothing to do with i think what karl marx envisioned as communism way back. someone to do a thousand bucks a model on how communism when it moved into a should diverge into something different in vietnam, cambodia, laos, china and north korea than the communism that appear in europe and eastern european countries. that's a faceting split that

occurred. >> corresponded keith richburg on 34 years of reporting, and insights from around the world. sunday at 8 p.m. on c-span's q&a. >> we have a habit in this country if i may say this now of glossing over president. we decided some people if they're bald eagles. they all have to be treated as if they are symbols of the country. what that means the is you have a comedy of a smoothing over of the rough edges. and there's a feeling among modern presidents that they have a right to certain the federation, and that veneration relocated in the presidential library. and even after they're gone, they're children in some cases and their former allies, their lieutenants who live longer than president because they are younger, they continue this but, in fact, in many ways they are

even more ferociously committed to the lexicon that on because it involves them but because the old man is gone and they want to show their loyalty. the problem is what does the government do because it's responsible for these libraries when you have a thought president? >> in part two of the conversation with timothy naftali from he details challenges he faced as the first federal director of the nixon presidential library and newseum sunday night at eight on c-span's q&a. >> up next a former senior immigration official with the mexican government discusses the latest migration trend between u.s. and mexico. he will be joined by george and universities migration policy studies director lindsay lowell at this event is by the center for strategic and international studies. >> good morning, everybody.

[inaudible] i'm actually a psychologist. i discovered to discerning features. i spent most of my time working in special development with teachers and principals and so on. one is that the anti-when you greet them and the others they are addicted to twizzlers. [laughter] and they always have bags of them on their table. that's how i know there are really educators out there. the title may throw you a little bit, and i tend to be one of these folks that's out there running around telling the emperor that he's naked. i came into education, i came to educate full-time about 14 years ago when i got this current job. and i've been laboring in the field of social science for much of my life doing basic research and applied research and so on.

and a walk around schools and i'm in schools all the time, and working with principals and teachers all the time. and i'm the guy walks around going, why do you do that? and they do them do what? that. oh, i didn't know we did it. i don't know. i don't know why we do that. there's some flyers for my center and the journal we publish and so on, and flyers that came out recently, a book of what i call the tiffany's for educators to get them to go oh, my gosh, i never thought about that workers are probably going to ignore you a lot during the next 20 minutes doing the same kind of thing. and the title is one of them. i am so tired of the anti-bullying movement. why am i saying that? on a couple of years ago i was at a partnership conference come to like many other after that, the were bullying was all over. first of all, for those of you who don't know, bullying is not

new. i answered one of the questions on your clicker. i'm sorry. now is it an american phenomena. so it's not historically situated and it's not geographically situated. i do a lot of international work, and bullying happens all over the world. it's been happening for a long time. this is always out there and it's always something we need to struggle against and try to end. and that's really important. but this notion of redefining education as a target strategy simply to reduce a dysfunctional behavior is a perversion of education, and what works. and so i want us to rethink, to flip it a little bit it's not going to be that much different than what you've heard. some of the panels are resilience one. listen to i don't know why, i just put my business card on this. they will post this.

i want to put into context. okay, bullying and other behaviors related to bullying, of the kind of violence behavior and so on are part of a bigger picture of how people treat each other. it shouldn't be treated as an isolated phenomenon. our mission as educators is to engage with all the other players in the process, the eternal process of socializing the next generation. no society can endure if it doesn't take seriously the responsibilities to socialize each subsequent generation. and every institution that impacts children in any way, shape, or form, schools are obvious and one of them, have to take that responsibility seriously. so the big picture is what can we do with the leverage we have to help foster the positive socialization of the next generation of youth in our society? there's no moral world without

moral people. and unless we engage in that process we won't live in a moral world. so that's the bigger picture of how we have to think about this. these are sort three lenses i like to use this sort of reveal the nakedness of the emperor -- sorry, my new york is coming out. this is an aside but it's fun. i came to missouri and they can talk about the time of -- the town of washington. and they were talking to and realized they're sticking and all are into washington. so i came up with a new theory of continent conservation. that we new yorkers have done a great service to the world, particularly in missouri, by jettisoning the letter r. so they can take and stick it in a divorce. there's nothing else, i just thought i would mention it. three lenses. wellness prevention versus

anthology remediation. we have focused too much in the bullying skills on remediating pathological behavior. so we have narrowed down the turf. and i want us instead use the language of our rhetoric of promoting flourishing. others talk about, promoting wellness as you just heard a. no, and not stopping this bullying. it's such a narrow way to think about it. of course, we don't want bullying. but we don't want bullying because we want everybody to be prosocial. or that's the way we want to go about it. it's also the primary version, prevention with a second or tertiary prevention. you just saw the public health model and so on. remember that's like 80, 85% of that model is primary prevention, promoting positive develop and. and that's where the bulk of our focus from our rhetoric and the resources needed to. think about it in terms of promoting flourishing in that

primary prevention peace. and also like to use the western and eastern medicine metaphor. and remember, many, many, many years ago when my cousin was graduating from medical school sitting there, because i was so proud go into his graduation at the university of rochester, and -- oh, no, not university of rochester. wayne state. wayne state university. and the head, i don't member the name of the speaker, i'm sorry. a keynote speaker who was a nobel prize winner in medicine and so on, and the way it was situated, the medical faculty of sitting in the back behind the speaker, undergraduates and families are out in the audience. he got up there and trashed western -- it was great to watch the ugly of this medical school have to sit there and put on false smiles behind him while he was just pulling the rug out

from under all of them. and the message was, we are of reactive, narrow, remediating approach to wellness. we wait until someone gets sick and then cut it out or stick medicine on or do something else to remediate it. i spent a lot of time working over in taiwan and china and japan and so on, and every time they say this is good for your liver. these are good for your eyes. i look at them and i said to them, nobody must ever get sick in your society. because everything you eat is good for you. but that's to see the world differently. the world out there is to promote wellness. we have to think that same way about education. okay, so how do we do that? keep the eastern metaphor going. we can focus on deviance, the bullying and so on, are we can focus on the other hand on wellness and promoting it. it may seem semantic but i don't think it is.

because it leads to difference in the way we leverage our resources, use of resources, and the methodologies that we select. saw want to talk about character education because i think that's why they invited me. so that's what i will do. but i have to tell you up front i've written extensive -- repeatedly, about little snippets and lots of things i've written. i've written repeatedly about the minefield that is this field. and i've gotten to the point where i don't care if people are going for people are care to education or positive psychology or service learning or whatever you want to call this, if you're doing research-based practices that window will promote the development of social, emotional and moral competencies, and proclivities in children. i don't care what you call it. i'm going to call it character and because i have a title that's his character and but i've worked under the tiles of moral education, values education, character education,

even morality when i was in japan. you can change the name as you want. it's more than a focus but character education is more than he valued. that's what a lot of people think i will have the time to dissuade you of all the stereotypes of what people think character education is because more than just going out with a litany and a list of virtues and trying to get kids to the respective -- respectful and responsible. it's about promoting holistic positive development. helping kids -- one of my good friends in college says bringing out the best in children. that's what it's about. trying to bring up the best in children. it's more than a strategy. it's not partly teachers but it's more than teachers your its focus on school climate performance and national school climate, a movement that john cohen and others and i, i'm involved in, one way to focus this on climate. you heard that from shelley. your that from a lot of other people today.

this is, just so i am sure i pay homage to the partnership. this was traced back in the 18th 18th century switch on. we think it goes back to classic greek philosophy. we're not sure because we haven't found the quote anyway. but this could character consists of -- it's important to those of you who may be working the citizenship education, they talk about knowledge, skills and dispositions. so the language of just skills, shalit talked about skills. that's a piece of this. skills is a peace. we have to know what this stuff is but where does the competency to act that way. we have to have the disposition to be inclined to act the way which means we have to internal i said this. i will come back to that. for me, character education is not what we teach, not a curriculum. it's a way of being. and i'll tell you i've been

working for 14 years extensively training or 600 schools administrators and god knows how many teachers and others and so on. it is not easy to get them to get this. it's not easy to get people to understand what it means transforming the way we be with each other. and for me that's the bottom line. if i can change the way people be with each other in school, i have a chance to fundamentally impact of child development. and it is rocket science. since i spent a year at air force academy i to put a picture of a rocket up there. i'm usually proud i put a picture on a slide. i think that school. [laughter] -- that's cool. but, sorry, i'm sorry about that. pull houston once said, and i love this quote. schools are perfectly designed for the results we are getting. if we don't like the results, we

need to redesign schools. every teacher, every administrator needs to understand the greater their getting, the behavior their getting, they are getting because their schools are perfectly designed to get those results. and it's like the old definition of insanity. doing the same things over and over expecting different results, keep try keep doing them harder and expecting something different. it's kind of like when you walk up to somebody, you know, and they don't understand english or -- and you say, around the corner but it's around the corner that way. they say no combined. so your strategy is to say it's around the corner. not going to help a lot. the key piece with this also is that if you want to redesign your schools or your classroom, the first place at the start is in the near. because you to redesign yourself

to that's some scary stuff for you, me, and anybody else. so this is a model i put together a while ago. and i did in sort of a -- so asked me to walk right a chapter for book. i listed a few things that all educators and parents need to do. i'm going to keep using it. this prime model. when i go over to asia this doesn't work because they don't have an alphabet. [laughter] so they translate -- i have no idea how they do this. i have to say to them, trust me, in english this is brilliant. but in mandarin or japanese or whatever, forget it. but it will help you. these are, the t. stands for prioritization. which means it has to be an authentic priority of the school. and for those the poor and the administrative the administrative side of education, i have seen too much -- where somebody says this is

our new big initiative. i'm assigning you to be in charge of the. it's important to me. and this is unique resources or didn't have your back, they are not there because something else is more important. and if this isn't authentically important, boy, it's not got a great chance of going really deep and being successful. r. is the relationships. they key thing is educators weekly don't understand that this has to be a strategic and intentional and systematic part of your curriculum. you have to use methods that actually are designed to build relationships. think if we all of everybody and their buddies happy there will be great relationships. it's pretty murky and doesn't work so we have these structures. class meetings that helped build relationships. just think of the surface issue. so much of the service kids do, a note goes home to their parents sang were having a canned fruit drive, we are in

stock if the pentagon every nice thing to do. the kid takes the note home. the mom puts the old can't have something in a backpack that's been in the back of the cabinet for the. the kid comes to school with his huge backpack on his back getting scoliosis from it, dumps it into a barrel summer, has no idea why this happens. and we are not creating activism. we are creating pack meals. and still we need to transform our service activities so there's a relational peace. these kids are developing relationships with the people that they are serving. and they're learning to have -- that's just one small example. the trend 13 -- the i. is in transit -- i could go off on this one. i apologize already because i'm bout to take on tbi is because it's one of my pet peeves. tbi this is basically a behaviorist orientation that treats children like pat animals that rewards them with jimmy's

and disempowers them. i've got principals and superintendents after telling me, calling me from all over saying it's killing my school. how can i fight a tidal wave? we need methods that promote the internalization of valley. i've had too many kids -- [applause] thank you. i've had to make it up to the teachers and principals and go, what do i get for it? where's my reward it? one of my favorite educators who was ahead of letters he for 5000 years in the province of ontario says he want to a school lunch, which is a superintendent or something and get said oh, you look lovely today. and she said thank you. that's very nice. she went off to her meeting. and the kid was traipsing behind. she looke look at this kid and e said yes? he said you look lovely today. [laughter] and she says thank you. he said where's my reward?

i had a high school that i do a focus group with, they use a program where the ethics character words and the kids get these little colored trinkets for each character word. the end of the idiot all six of them you can edit into a drawing for some substantive price. i don't member what was the as the kids, this is high school, is this mickey mouse to? no, we love. in fact, we love it so much we steal them from each other last night at a total principle and i said barber, you don't know half of the. i've got to shut this down. not only are they stealing them, there's an entire black market in this school for this. this was to teach character, okay? [laughter] we've got to think about our message, folks. modeling. every teacher has to model this stuff. you have to be the character. gandhi said if want to see change in the world you have to be the character you want to see in your kids. you can't be a hypocrite.

we know kids learn more from what you do than what you say. and empowerment, i worked with larry kohlberg way back then, a radical experiment in schools. the kind of flattening of government, empowerment and democracy. from my vantage point is pretty trivial. to them, it's a huge sea change your but when schools are hierarchical, go look at self-determination theory in d.c., and lots of other things. we are to rethink government structures and classes and schools. so, i'm not going to go through most of the. i just wanted to show you some evidence. karen smith was a principal, it goes from right to left. she said in 2003-five is when she started this journey. here's where she is now the the white one is bullying. you can see bullying dropping

but you can do all these behaviors drop as she did character education. still a blue ribbon school. i'm not giving you the academic data. every one of these schools has these ridiculous increases in academic discourse. france's middle school, one of my favorites the these are detention. went any johnson, the principal start in 2003 at 1153 detentions. in 2008 it was down to 143. in-school suspensions, you can see the same kind of things going on. this is her tempe compared to tt of the district the there were four other middle schools interdistrict the these are their numbers. those are her numbers. same population after seven or eight years of this. remember being in this school, about two or three years into the journey to do some professional the government and it just gotten there latest state test scores back and they show this huge increase in the

state test scores. the principal brought out is not at all a mock champagne toast. 850 kids, they are also excited to see this big jump in and this continued year after year after the. chillicothe have on us and said, this is a wonderful, desk audit question. which are question marks she said why did it go up? we didn't change anything with our curriculum, anything. they all looked are her and said, it's the character edge. doing this stuff, or classify so much more civil. they like being there. they are working to they are engaged. of course, they are going more. i got high schools in your, too. this middle school is one of the best stories. i would say that in three years they went from the percentage of kids being advanced and proficient in state test scores, up 25 language arts and 6.9% in math in the school to over 70 in

three years by doing character education, not changing anything. i've got the numbers but i've got a couple of high schools. number two in the state academically. so in closing, i'd get more data, but i want to go back to the prime model and close out with a summary. what did these schools do? one, they had shared pro-social norms. rather than norms that don't do a bad thing. these are norms of what we should do. that's part organization. they communally generated nor. the norm. they are not top than mandated. they are in the school on the people themselves create the norm. they are shared, co-authored norms. they feel empowered, internalized. they have high expectations.

they expect more than just no bully. mental health is more than absolute -- physical health is more than the absence of physical pathology. helping schools is more. and lastly, they strategically intentionally promote the positive relationships. they model them and they structured promote them. they use these, they give academics, they get the behavior, and you should come sometime to st. louis. we will take you to host of these schools. they are remarkable and willful places where the kids rule and the kids flourish. thank you. [applause] >> that was good. and now, thank you so very much for your thoughtful conservation to the discussion that we are having today. at this time i'd like to in addition to our next speaker. our next speaker is doctor

allison dymnicki. dr. kim the key is a researcher at the american institute for research. our work focuses on understanding how school and community environment and fosters students social and competencies and prevents engagement in risky behavior. thank you very much. let's bring her on. [applause] >> good morning. i had the pleasure of being the last presentation before lunch some going to probably are growling stomachs but i will try to get dressed assess again and i'm delighted to be here today. the title of my talk is the impact of social and emotional learning. i want to start twice thanking several colleagues, a number of whom are here today, including eric gordon, pamela bennett, who are collaboratively working with me on a large study of implement social, emotional learning districtwide in a school districts as well as several other colleagues from castle and

the american institute of research and work with me on both of these studies. i want to start by defining what social and emotional learning is. we heard a lot about this concept, and i agree with marvin in the situation of them all about promoting positive competencies and preventing negative behaviors. so i really do believe in the idea of promotion. however, social and emotional learning does have a fairly well-defined definition and background. that are these five core competencies that we talk about. children and adults provide -- i think adult is important to emphasize. always been thought of as this child focus but it's too. we need to model what we teach and we need to embrace and learn new skills ourselves as educators, as schoolers, as researchers. so self awareness speech to the ability to know what one is feeling and to accurately assess one capabilities interests and values.

self-management is regulate one's emotions to handle stress, to control impulses and to set and monitor progress towards achieving goals. social awareness species billy outtakes respective of others to recognize and appreciate similarities and differences. this speaks a lot to the idea of cultural respect and cultural competency and a lot of what sonya was speaking about. relationshirelationship skills l to stop jamaican healthy relationships. also to resist peer pressure which is important and that drug prevention and a lot of standing up for yourselves and a lot of advocacy work. also appreciating and managing interpersonal conflicts. and lastly responsible decision-making speak to the ability to make decisions based on considerations of others, on ethical standards and social norms. this gets a lot of what marvin is speaking about, this idea of not just your own actions, but

really taking collective responsibility of having a shared responsibility for your own successes of the school success. .. >> and we know there's a lot of different types of initiatives being put in place, and we see sel as a way to coordinate and unify these. so the first question educators usually ask when i talk to a school is, well, how can i do this given everything else i'm already doing. >>? and the answer i come um with

is -- come up with let's look at what you're currently doing. what isn't still relevant and useful based on the current needs of your schools? so there are some things that you might -- i don't want to say you might get rid of, but that might not become priorities, that might no longer be the current thing to focus on. so i don't see sel as replacing everything else, i see it as being a way to organize the thinking about promoting positive social, emotional development and preventing risky behaviors. there's a lot of different frameworks that are used, and this is a pretty common one. this is the framework that's used in the two studies i'm going to talk about today. the first is teaching and modeling specific sel skills instruction. so we believe in the importance of educators modeling these things and teaching these things. we also believe in specifically targeting the learning environment and improving the school climate within which children learn. by focusing on these two areas, we believe that this type of programming will promote

positive outcomes for children. so i'm now going to talk about the first study, and this is where i think on the first researcher, real research focused part of the day where i'm going to be presenting some quantitative analyses and some results, but i'm going to say the first thing is anyone interest inside additional quantitative analyses, methodology, please refer to this very long and peer-reviewed article in child development. it has a lot of the background, a lot more of the implications. so i'm not going to go into the details or the specific analyses that were done. what do i mean by metaanalysis? we review the current literature, and we identify a set of studies that might our inclusion criteria. based on that, we code each study for a number of characteristics including when they were published, what kind of sample they included, what kinds of programs they implemented. then we do some fancy magic poof

quantitative analyses, a lot of rigorous methods or were used in this approach, and we belief that findings -- believe that findings really speak to the current state of research in the field. so we believe what we see here today speaks to what is happening in sel, and this study, um, probably since 2010 is when the last study was published. so since 2010. by universal, i'm referring again to that public health model that eric gordon referred to and also marvin before, that primary approach, that 80-85% of students, so these are not done with a select group of students that are presenting early signs of problems. so to describe the set of studies that were included in this metaanalysis, there were 213 studies with over 2 p -- 270,000 students. most of them were published since 1990. half of them include a randomized control design and 56% were done with elementary school studies, that remaining group of studies were done with

middle and high school students. and it's important to recognize here to these are not just done in the affluent, suburban districts, these are done in urban, rural and suburban settings. there's three primary research questions, and the first asks about the impacts of this type of programming on student outcomes. the field is shifting to focus also on adult outcomes, but we're not including adult outcomes in this analysis. the second asks if existing school staff can effectively conduct these programs. so it's important not just to hire a researcher, have them come in, leave and have the program die, but to be able to effectively train and have teachers deliver these types of programs. and the third ask is that quality implementation matters. you're going to see yeses to all of these, so so i'm going to provide some quantitative evidence here, but the take-home message is, yes. these programs positively impact a range of attitudes, skills and behaves. again, that's the three-pronged

approach that marvin's talking about. we're not just thinking about skills here, we're thinking about the way they interact with others, their academic test scores and their grades, and school staff can do these, existing teachers in the school can do these, and the quality of implementation makes a big difference. so here's where the numbers come up. so we looked at six different outcomes in this metaanalysis, and the first speaks to social-emotional skills. the second focuses on students' attitudes towards self, their schools and others. the third looks at their ability to get along with others, to make friends, to exhibit positive social behaviors. the fourth looks at content problems, and this is probably where a lot of the bullying outcomes, acting out fits in. and the fifth looks at signs of stress, anxiety, and the last is this academic performance outcome, and this is standardized test scores and grades only. not teacher-developed tests, not

final tests for a class. this is standardized test scores and grades. so you see an 11 percentile-point gain for students participating in sel programs in test scores and grades. first number, the percentile gain, and the second number in the brent cease is the effect -- parentheses is the effect size. so when we look at how effective our teachers are at conducting these programs, we see real strong evidence that teachers can do these things successfully. so we see on the programs that were done by teachers six outcomes were positively impacted in programs done by researchers, two outcomes positively impacted. similarly, when we looked at implementation, we compare findings for studies that actually monitored implementation and recorded no problems versus studies that monitored implementation and reported problems. and we see here a difference such that programs that reported problems with implementation only saw positive outcomes, only

saw positive improvements on two outcomes while other studies that reported no problems with implementation saw a positive impact on all six outcomes. so now i'm going to turn to a second study which was done more recently. this metaanalysis was actually done with a group of indicated studies, so in that public health model, the second tier, the students that are demonstrating early signs of problems, it looks at the impacts of those types of studies. this is a field that's less known about, so the questions are more fundamental in nature. and, again, i'm going to say that all of the researchers in the room, please, refer to this rather long and detailed peer-rereview article for interpretation. it really asks about what types of programs who are they done with and what do they look like, and the second looks at the same six outcomes as the first

metaanalysis did. they did positively impact across all six outcome, and we see similar, if not larger effect sizes here. so to describe the set of studies, there are 52 studies in total with over 26,000 students, so you do see a much smaller group of students per study, 86 on average, which makes sense because a lot of these are done in a small group format. and we see a larger number using a randomized control design. again, it's easier be you're taking kids out of a classroom to do a randomized control design, and we see two-thirds were done with middle school students and one-third with high school students. in the metaanalysis only included middle and high school students. these programs are actually relatively short in nature, 12 weeks on average, 78% being less than three months. um, and i also wanted to speak a little bit about the types of problems students are demonstrating so you have a sense of what types of students are included in these programs. about a third have internalizing problems or depression, anxiety symptoms, um, about another 10%

have externalizing, disruptive, acting-out behaviors, 4% have problems with, um, learning and 2% have problems with peer relationships. that leads a huge chunk of studies. and it's interesting to see the majority of studies actually included students that have multiple problems or problems in different categories. so the same program is used for a student that could demonstrate depression or anxiety as well as externalizing behaviors. we also see that 92% were done with small group formats, only five studies actually did the program to all students in the classroom even though they were targeting a select group. the other remaining 47 studies did the curriculum outside of the classroom or to a small group within the classroom. we see 48% were done by nonschool personnel, 26% done by school personnel, 10% by a combination, the rest not reporting. and we see here a large number that actually monitor implementation and report no problems.

62%. 26 -- or 20% reported problems and, um, 10% did not monitor. and then he see the majority of programs included just explicit school-wide sel instruction. but ten programs in addition to including school wide sel or school-based sel instruction also included a parent training component, and this is important because you'll see in my implications and recommendations it's really critical to include families in this approach. here again you see the numbers associated with each outcome, and the first number is different. the first number is the effect size here, and the second number is the number of studies in parentheses. this is a smaller group of studies, so the number in prept seize is the actual set of studies that included that specified outcome, and that's important to get a sense of how much studies included. you see a lot larger performance based on a small number of studies, but strong evidence that there's impacts on a range

of outcomes including attitudes, behaviors and, um, different types of skills that students are demonstrating. so from these findings of these two studies we developed a set of best practices, and these are really the things we hope you leave here today with. the first is that we found programs that included four elements; sequenced, active, focused and explicit programming produced stronger impacts. so we really encourage people to think about including these types of elements when they design and implement sel programs. we also strongly believe in the importance of modeling sel skills outside of a structured curriculum. so a lot of times we're talking about some type of program that maybe is done once a week for half an hour, and we know that that's not going to be efficient at delivering this type of curriculum, and it's not going to be efficient at really changing students and the way they interact with others and the way they, um, really see the school community. so like so many other people are saying here today, we really believe in this idea of, um,

reinforcing this at the school level, at the family level, at the community level and trying to make sure that these types of interactions and these types of qualities are reinforced by the school environment. um, we also strongly believe just like sonya said in the importance of developmentally and culturally competent instruction. we know with the increasing diversity of the students that it's important to make this curriculum relevant to them. so we encourage practitioners looking at programs to make sure the program makes sense for your student population and speaks to the cultural backgrounds, um, and the beliefs that your students have. and lastly, we believe in the importance of meaningful use engagement. so this isn't just narrowly defined as service learning, but really speaks to the idea of incorporating students in classroom and school, developing classroom and school rules and expectations and having them be a real, active voice. and especially at the middle and high school level. we believe in the importance of having students be meaningful

members of their local community and that, you know, obviously, through giving back and service learning, but also in being on local boards and being on school boards. that kind of idea of actual meaningful use engagement versus just token youth engagement. and i see from people laughing about the idea, we have seen successful students on school boards and across districts. not many, i'm not saying it's easy. this work is never easy. but, um, we're seeing that real need to move to that direction. and lastly, implications for policy and practice. um, first we see that sel works, it impacts a range of outcomes including some that are really important in this era of increased accountability like test scores and grades. we see that it works across elementary, middle and high school levels and in urban, rural and suburban school districts. we see that it's doable, so it's doable not just by researchers, but also by school staff, by existing teachers, by school support staff. and we see that it needs support. we know that implementation

matters from the first study, but we also know that we need support from federal and state policies. we need the support of school leaders, practitioners, we need adequate professional development. we don't need just that one-time professional development training, and we need coaching when people are doing these types of programs. and so to summarize, um, oh, i think i'm going to skip that one for you guys. we really believe in the idea of the six ps that involves effective policy, supportive principles, long-term and thoughtful planning, sustained professional development, continuous program evaluation -- not just a one-time program evaluation, formative and sumtive value walkingses -- and meaningful, thoughtful partnerships with school, family and community parterer ins. i want to highlight a lot of the work that's being done at air and one thing is this preventing

violence and bullying behaviors. and we actually look at lgbt youths and a lot of types of discrimination and bullying that are happening as well, so cyberbullying is a big focus as well as types of bullying that have been touched on today, um, a lot of the bullying about physical appearance. and so it's important to broadly conceptualize this field and to not think of it in a narrow way of really physical fighting happening among students. i'm happy to speak with anyone about afterwards, and this is my contact information. thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> a live picture from the brookings institution here in washington this morning as they host a discussion on the state of iran's nuclear program and how the u.s. and the international community plan to deal with it. we'll hear from brookings' senior fellow kenneth pollack and also the former ambassador,

thomas pickering. he's the co-founder of the iran project. brookings' middle east policy center director will introduce the speakers and moderate this discussion. this is live coverage on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> again, we're live from the brookings institution here in washington, hosting a discussion this morning on the state of iran's nuclear program, how the u.s. and the international community plan to deal with it. we expect this to get under way in just a moment. president obama today expected to make remarks urging action to avoid the sequester, automatic budget cuts set to happen on friday. live coverage from the white house this morning gets underway at 10:45 eastern. we'll have it for you on our -- online, actually, at c-span.org. again, the president at 10:45 eastern online at c-span.org. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> again, waiting for the start

of this brookings institution discussion on the state of iran's nuclear program. "the washington post" reported last week that iran had recently sought to order magnets used in centrifuges that could further refine uranium that the country already has and claims is for peaceful purposes. we expect that to be one of the topics of discussion this morning when it gets under way here on c-span2. while we have a moment, coming up at 6:30 eastern tonight, we'll be live with former cia director michael hayden, he'll have remarks on how digital technology has transformed national security and intelligence gathering, could also discuss preventing cyber attacks on the u.s. like the one that happened over the weekend blamed on china. also some of the threats from terrorists and rogue nations. he'll be speaking at george washington university here in washington d.c. that'll get under way at 6:30 this evening. and with the senate on break this week, we are featuring some of booktv's programs on prime time here on c-span2. tonight former iraq and afghanistan generals.

that'll start at 8 eastern with retired general stanley mcchrystal and then fred kaplan will discuss required general david petraeus and jeffrey ending el on a collection of essays on the gulf war. again, that gets under way at 8 eastern here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[laughter] >> okay. [inaudible conversations] >> okay. good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for join us. at the end of the holiday weekend. we are here this morning to discuss an issue that is -- [inaudible] a great deal of attention here in washington and around the world in the coming year. this is been so much discussion -- there has been so much discussion about the desire of the u.s. electorate, as

reflected in the vote last november, to reduce its engagement in foreign affairs broadly, to shy away from new entanglements and also to turn its attention perhaps a bit more away from the middle east and toward other parts of the world. and we've seen the intentions of the administration in that regard. but, of course, here in the say ban center, we know the middle east doesn't wait quietly for the u.s. administration to devote attention there, it tends to demand such attention. and i think on no issue is that more clear this year than on the issue of the brewing confrontation with iran over its nuclear program. there have been a number of recent developments on this topic that make it worthy of a

renewed discussion, and i can't think of anyone i would rather have on our dais to help us think through the u.s. approach to this very challenging issue than ambassador tom pickering. >> thank you, tamara, that's very nice. you don't always get that on a tuesday morning. [laughter] >> tom is among his many other accomplishments a distinguished fellow in the foreign policy program here at brookings, and we're delighted to have the opportunity to bring him here to the stage. he's also, of course, vice chairman of hills and co., an international consulting firm, and a retired u.s. diplomat with a very distinguished record including service in the middle east, um, but also to major global powers like russia and india who are playing a very interesting role in the evolving diplomacy over iran. so, tom, welcome. >> thank you, tamara.

and along with tom, of course, we have our own kenneth pollack, senior fellow in the saban center, and ken is finishing a book right now on the challenge of iran which you will be able to look for in bookstores later this year. so we're very happy to have ken with us to provide some comments on this topic as well. what we'll do is have a little bit of a conversation up here, and then we'll open it up for questions from the floor, and why don't we jump right in with, with some of these recent developments. there's now a date set for the next round of international negotiations to be held inial matty, that distinguished diplomatic capital.

one wonders if perhaps that quieter location will allow a little bit of distance from the glare of the cameras. do you expect much progress? what do you expect from these long-delayed, long-awaited talks? >> thanks, tamara, very much. it's a pleasure to be with you all. i can't think of a more wonderful crowd to bring in out of the rain. [laughter] for what has been the longest-running nonevent discussions about iran. [laughter] in this town for some time. i wish i could say i thought that almaty would produce something. i live in fervent hope, but i think the reality is that it seems to me to be pretty unlikely at the moment. you have pending internal processes, i think, in iran leading to the selection of a new president in the summer, an inauguration sometime in the autumn. and so that might well be a period of stasis. on the other hand, because you can get any point of view from

any iranian you talk about talk to, some are also talking about an opportunity. and we'll have to wait and see. the rocket that shot up in munich on bilateral conversations launched by vice president biden and seemingly supported by foreign myster so leahy, at least for a few seconds, fell on unfertile ground somewhere. and that doesn't look like it's a good omen of good things to to come. there are opportunities in almaty. my own sense is that all of the talk about a grand bargain is probably a massive amount of overreach given the extent of mistrust and misunderstanding. but this is typical diplomatic thinking, and it could be overturned. but we see very little signs of what one might call a kind of miraculous henry kissinger secret trip to beijing in the

offing here. you know, one could stand that kind of surprise, but i don't think that's in the offing. i think that the other side of the equation is something very small could come out that might even help to strengthen the mistrust that is so severe. the supreme leader, on one hand, seems to be saying it's perfectly okay to talk at p5+1, but sitting down separately with the devil is not yet in the cards. the devil somehow has to change his outlook on life, and as we all know, preconditions are not a very good way to set the stage for moving towards something successful. although these preconditions seem to be separate and isolated, apparently, from the bigger set of talks. the problem with the bigger set of talks is probably at the moment too many moving parts, too many people in the room, too

much difficulty in getting even a kind of interallied point of view on the table in this a way that -- in a way that might even be encouraging to the supreme leader as opposed to the other way around. so i would say chances are very small, but i'd be very happy and very grateful to be surprised. the small chances, in my view, have more to do with the possibility of a small agreement, even a minor one, i think, would help. and so one could say that the best expectations at the moment are that they will set another date and even another place, and that in itself will be encouraging because we all know that the rounds of negotiations that took place before 2012 always ended in one day with pretty much wide disagreement and with the task of the negotiators to spend the next year figuring out where and when to meet again. and if we could get over the procedural hurdle, that would be some small but not very

gratifying dividend. >> tom, as you look at how the united states has prepared the ground for this set of talks, you noted that the notion of bilateral talks fell on unfertile ground. of course, one reason that that trial balloon was put forward is because there were those arguing that that's what the iranians really need to feel reassured, they need the direct engagement with the united states and to probe on whether the u.s. is truly interested in a deal or is really just interested in changing the regime in tehran. and they need the reassurance that direct bibarrel talks provide. that responds to iranian concerns and that can solicit a meaningful response. >> i think they've tried hard, in all honesty. and i think they've tried at any

number of times to reach out. and it's hard to see how one could overcome this except perhaps for some actions that we might take that would be demonstrably difficult for u.s. domestic relationships and, indeed, for a process as a significant down payment without any sense of return. so i find that particularly hard. i think that is iranians in their own view have reason at least to argue that we're not serious, and all we want to do is remove their regime. i mean, we have reasonable reason to argue on our side that they're not serious, and all they want to do is go into a giant schlepp until, in fact, they're ready to make a nuclear weapon and presumably decide to do so and go very quickly to slip that past the goalpost. i think that's a very stupid thing to be thinking about. and as ken reminded me this

morning, there was a reiteration of the fatwa over the weekend with the challenge that if we really wanted to do it, ken, we can do it, nobody can stop us. but that's not what we want to do. >> the fatwa against nuclear weapons. >> i don't pay attention to those other ones. [laughter] and to some extent, interestingly enough, a year ago secretary clinton said we ought to sit down and see if we can make the fatwa into a prevailing reality. and i think that that's an important part of the approach. so -- >> what would that look like? >> well, i mean, it would look like the kind of agreement that many people have written and thought about. in my view, essentially, four points at the end game would be very important to establish and to swallow on both sides. one would be, basically, accepting the fatwa but making it a reality by building in to the iranian civil program what i

would call a significant, even slavish adherence to civil objectives so that, in fact, you would have some idea in quantity and quality how much enriched uranium they really thought they needed and we could agree with either to fuel the trr, the 20%-using reactor, or to provide the only logical reason why they would need fuel is in case the russians renege on bushier. they have a 20-reactor plan, it was the shah's 20-reactor plan, but we don't see any money being put into any new reactor built or any contracts moving, so that part is fairly. >> marichal. and i hope the supreme leader understands what our doubts are about a program that is zooming ahead, producing a lot of low-enriched uranium with nos tense bl purpose other than, that happens, legitimate to guard against russian mall piece

sans -- malfeasance. so, first, we need to build in to an iranian program something that provides us the best of all possible guarantees against breakout. secondly, i believe that the iaea ought to be commissioned to say what do they need to inspect that program. certainly, the additional protocol, but i don't think the additional protocol is the end of all inspection technology. we've had experience with iraq. they have developed new technologies as things -- ask the iaea what is it they need. the iranians keep coming to us saying we only want a civil program, and we're perfectly happy to let the iaea inspect it filly. on our -- fully. on our side those sanctions related to the nuclear program should come off gradually as the kind of program i've talked about on the iranian side gets implemented, and secondly, we would accept but it would be de

facto in accepting a civilian program their right to enrich. but the two go together in some ways. that kind of spellout, at the end of the day, would seem to me possible. getting there is a much harder problem. i believe it has to go by steps and stages. you have to be sure, in fact, that it's going to work even if you can sit down and describe what it might be. and, you know, i may not have all the ideas, but those, in my view, seem to be the central ideas that you should have on the table and the way to proceed is any number of choices about significant steps that they would move to lock in their civil program, and we would move to take sanctions away. >> you know, i can't help but feel the more we talk about this issue and what a deal could look like that the iranian nuclear issue is becoming like the israeli very palestinian -- israeli/palestinian issue where we all say we know what the deal looks like, it's just a question of whether and how we can get

there. do you think it's possible taking the incremental approach that tom's talking about the to get to that kind of deal, ken? >> yeah. i think you're focusing on exactly the right thing. and to kind of build on some of the points that tom, i think has very cogently made, i think this is actually a moment as we're kind of thinking about reengaging with the iranians to start to think big picture. i agree completely with tom, i don't see breakthroughs coming out of almaty. i think it's a moment when we need to put down some very important markers to the iranians. i agree with tom, i think that we need to say to the iranians we are serious about a deal. and we truly would be willing to lift the sanctions, and i'd go beyond that. i'd like to see the united states saying we're willing to provide even more meaningful benefits to the iranians in return for their or willingness to make the kind of compromises that we immediate from them exactly along the lines of what tom is suggesting. but i think what you're getting at points to some bigger picture

issues. on the iranian side, again, as tom has already suggested, i think the iranians need to ask themselves whether they are willing to strike a deal and live by it. i agree with tom, i think the iranians have been hinting broadly at it. i think the iranians have kind of put out there the fact that they would be willing to stop at the 19.75 willful of enrichment -- level of enrichment. and i think that, you know, you can kind of broadly see the outlines of that deal. and i think that the united states, for its part, has kind of, sort of hinted at that as well. but i think on our side we've also got a lot of work to do. and i think in particular while it's certainly the case that the incremental approach that tom has laid out i think can get us there, it's only going to get us there if the united states -- and that means the whole u.s. government -- is actually willing to accept the end state, okay? and the end state is going to be an iran that is limited, that is bound by inspections backed by the threat of renewed sanctions,

but ultimately is going to have some enrichment capability. and one of the things that i worry about is whether the u.s. government, the whole u.s. government, is going to be willing to actually live with that. >> and by that you mean within the executive branch, or are you referring to congress? >> i think certainly within the congress, but i think there's some within the executive branch as well. and, you know, i think that we're going to have to sit down and say can we live with this? because if we keep saying no to the rain cans are not allowed to have any enrichment capability, i see it as making perfect the enemy of good enough. and, unfortunately, it is a perfect that i do not think we will ever achieve. >> well, ken, you know, i totally agree, and jim walsh and i wrote a piece four years ago, but we were only following on other people who had been writing pieces. so it seems to me you have to crack through this barrier. i can remember in 1994 writing cable from moscow after i had spent weeks beating the hell to out of the russians on no

nuclear program in iran, and you've got to be with us. and they said, why? they're npt members, they haven't done anything wrong, and, you know, in the end, we could sell a reactor here. this is good stuff for us, they are very poor. so i went back to washington and said maybe it's time for us rather than to do the right thing two years too late go after an iranian program, make sure they do not get into sensitive facilities, enrichment and reprocessing. i never got an answer to that cable, one of the many that i never got an answer to, but that's okay. [laughter] we live with that. >> [inaudible] >> but the notion is that we have, essentially, been right about how to deal with the iranian program but usually four years too late when they've already had what it is they want, and we are coming back and asking for rollback. so i think that's right. and i think that, look, to enrichment is splendid if you could get it, but i don't think you can get it. but i think you can get limitations and firewall them with the iaea, and that's probably the best you're going to be able to get.

but just diddling around means, in fact, that their present effort -- which i think is sincerely where they want to go. they keep talking about being like japan, having in hand all the technologies that are necessary to go should they decide to go. it's something that we need to take into account. now, i think they're there or practically there, and we can argue about a little bit of this, a little bit of that. i would like to see, however, the amount of enriched material bear some real relationship to a sufl program and its needs -- civil program and its needs which, in my view, would put it below the danger point rather than above the danger point that they have a whole lot of it, and they can move very quickly, and it'll be done deep underground, and we have all of those concerns. we keep hearing from them that's what they want to do, but we can't seem to get out of what i would call the low gear of four or five years ago where we were totally convinced that the lowest common denominate of western opinion had to be no

enrichment. and i suspect we're still there because there are enough people out there, and the president and others aren't willing to break the tie. although i have to admire secretary clinton. as you remember, she said about a year ago that she felt it would be possible to get toward a percentage where there was some enrichment, but it had to be bound, or at least there was a hint in that direction. and i think she was putting on the table what it is that you're talking about, but we haven't done it concretely enough. and to some extent, a proposal that was either inherently or explicitly in that direction, and i laid out for you what my end state goals would be if we could lay out end state goals, we would hopefully get over that hurdle. i would, because i think it's very important, like to see us engaged in negotiations for two reasons. one, because i want them to succeed. but, two, if they're going to fail, i want to know sooner rather than later. >> uh-huh. can i just probe for a minute on the international dimensions here, and particularly as it

relates to the question of enrichment and the question of sanctions. because you both seem to emphasize the idea that getting the iranians where we would be comfortable with them being on enrichment means putting forward the real prospect of sanctions relief and, ken, even more carrots than that. these sanctions were so painstakingly constructed, and they are in their implementation and enforcement so carefully balanced, the u.s. and others have subcosts here. is it possible to wield this lever with that kind of fine control given how difficult it's been to put this, to put this package together. >> >> let me, let me just try to -- i wanted to intrude a word from my sponsor because -- [laughter] this happens to be a book on the costs and benefits of military action against iran which a

small group of us put together but a lot of distinguished signers commented and helped us improve and change it. that came out in the summer. and then in december we did a similar one, the cost and benefits of sanctions. and we attempted to try to avoid recommendations and tried to let the book speak for itself. it's an unusual book in washington. but the notion in the sanctions book was very clearly that the sanctions have been in place, some of them, 30 years. they involved things other than nuclear; deep concerns over support for terrorist groups, deep concerns over the treatment of their own citizens in human rights terms and so on. so there are multiple purposes. >> yep. >> they come in multiple ways. some of them have been done through the u.n. security council, and, indeed, as you know, ken, you and i are speaking heresy because the security council resolution says no enrichment. happily, having worked on the security council, they can pass another resolution supporting

any agreement we could reach and deal with that particular case. [laughter] hike the british parliament, there are no rules about revising your position in the security council. [laughter] the third thing is our domestic sanctions implemented by legislation, and some by regulation under the legislation, and then we have e.u. sanctions. >> right. >> and, indeed, sanctions that other people follow that are mandated by the security council. the e.u. seems to be, on this issue, potentially more flexible than we are. and so there is operating room there. there is operating room in not putting more sanctions on that could be helpful as an initial step. and, obviously, that would be important. each one of these the president would have to explain that he's getting value. that the europeans could take sanctions off central banks and petroleum, for example. that we could do things that i think are absolutely necessary. we have had a longstanding policy of not sanctioning food

and medicine for good reasons. and when i was in the security council, the first sanctions on iraq after their invasion of kuwait we made it scrupulously careful. that got all screwed up in oil for food. and i don't want to spend time here talking about that, but -- >> many. [inaudible] >> that was a perfect example of how things could go wrong. but the fundamental basis was the right basis, that even in the worst of all possible situations you don't punish the population particularly for the sins of their leaders, particularly if they don't choose the leaders. but we have now got a situation where we have browbeaten the banking community to the point where they are deeply concerned even about allowing finance for food and medicine purposes if the iranians were prepared to do that, and they have been doing that, to let that go through. so we have, in fact, have given licenses over at ofac and treasury for food and medicine sail -- sales, but we should very clearly find some banks we

trust in iran who are prepared to finance that. we have to find more than one because we don't throw all the business one place and say we're prepared to license you banks to do the food and medicine purchases. we get over this hurdle. we could put that on the table. i, for a long time, have thought that while it was important for us politically to punish iran by keeping it out of the energy business with pakistan and india, at some point early in the game the permission for that pipeline would be extremely important. why? because two firm, important, not necessarily totally-agreed u.s. allies are prepared to open an energy window -- not the only one -- but i am convinced that good pipelines make reasonably good neighbors. and to some extent this would, in my view, bring stability to south asia rather than instability. and while iran might benefit a little bit, i think there are multiple benefits for us to realize we're in this shooting

ourselves in many our own foot mode. so that could come. so there are a lot of things that one could do creatively here in the early stages, and that would be the testing time. once things work i think it's going to be easier to convince people to take them off. but, look, i'm a realist. look how long it took to take sanctions off russia even though they weren't implemented over jewish immigration. and look how long it has taken us in some other venues. to take them off iraq even after we invaded the country and created the government, we still had theoretically sanctions against iraq for a long period of time. so the congress doesn't move with the speed of light, there are a lot of doubters there. that would take a large effort. but it's the reason why i think we should move. one final point on ken's very important pieces that i totally agree with. there isn't a question of what to do beyond nuclear. and to some extent the complexities are large.

but we, in my view, should not close the window in any serious way to dealing with other questions on the agenda provided, obviously, nuclear gets a hearing. and it's in part because there may be things we could do which are the equivalent of taking off sanctions in the benefits in other areas that could be helpful, that would be a positive offwith set even if you -- offset even if you couldn't pull the sanctions off that could help you make a nuclear deal work and vice versa. so i wouldn't do that. i would not, however, go in with the table, with every issue littered with confusing ideas and with all kinds of things. but if the iranians are prepared and interested, then we ought to take a look at it and see how we can get. because over a period of time finding a way slightly to expand the envelope and include other benefits in a negotiation as difficult as this one is an option that we have, and we

shouldn't lose sight of it. it's what one would call the nonsanction sanction possible positive effort that could complement this. and i thought you were heading there, and you almost were, but let yes just -- >> absolutely. >> you know, i think there's an issue here as we talk about expanding the arena for negotiations so that one can find other incentives to bring to the process, we have to look at iran in the region. and the u.s. in the region. and the way these other regional dynamics, the turmoil of the arab awakening and particularly the conflict in syria is shaping the environment within which these talks will take place. i wonder, ken, if you can speak to that a little bit from an iranian perspective and from an american perspective. how do these regional developments play? are these things that could be leveraged for one side or the other in a negotiation?

>> i think potentially both sides can imagine that they would be. i think the reality is that they really can't. these regional events are taking place largely based on dynamics of their own. and our ability, iran's ability to shape what's happening in syria, what's happening in egypt, what's happening in yemen or bahrain is extremely limited. i think that there is a strong temptation on both of our parts to try to do so or to claim -- and i think that's particularly the case on the iranian part. but i think that the reality is that we all know that these countries are being driven by forces internal and inherent to themselves. and i actually think that it's one of these -- and it goes back to a point that, i think, tom was making earlier on which is that what's going on in the region actually ought to give both of us more of an incentive to actually come to an agreement. what concerns me is that if we're not able to reach an

agreement, it's going to drive us to a place that's going to be actually much harder for both iranians and americans. on the american side, the choice has become fairly obvious which is if we don't get a deal with iran that we're comfortable with, that they can live with as well, we're going to face the worst choice of all, the choice between going to war with iran or living with a nuclear iran. i have my preference between those two options, but both of them are terrible options. and the truth is that the greatest incentive for actually coming to this kind of agreement is so that we don't have to face that. and is my fear is that the kind of the very incremental -- not the incremental approach, but the incremental thinking of i don't like this concession, i don't like that concession is going to drive us to that ultimate choice. that is my great fear. on the iranian side as well, i think that they, too, will have some terrible choices to make. do they go ahead and weaponize and say, basically, to hell with

the entire world, we want these weapons, and we're willing to pay the price. and for them that price might mean becoming north korea which is actually something i don't think that the iranians want to become. a state that has nothing going for it but its nuclear arsenal. or the alternative, of course, is going to be making some very significant concessions that they don't seem to want to make. so for both of us if we're not willing to make that deal, it drives us to make choices that ultimately are awful, much worse than what we could do right now. and i think at the end of the day what's going on, the turmoil in the region simply contributes to those points of, you know, when you think about either living with a nuclear iran or going to war with iran in the context of the turmoil of the region, those choices are always terrible. they're much worse in the current context. for the iranians as well. given the turmoil in the region, given what is going on, the choice between nuclearizing and becoming north korea or making these kind of concessions that they don't want to make also

even more awful than they would be even under other circumstances. >> let me just make two comments, ken. i think that, obviously, we haven't talked extensively about it, and i agree with you on the military option. on the other hand, it's not off the table. so it might be north korea on what is the negative of steroids. i don't know. i mean, the iranians do not have massive artillery zeroed in on some nearby friendly city. we need to take that into account. on the other hand, i totally agree with you that iranians have a long tradition and a great interest, and they want to be a power in the region. and one of the questions we have to resolve, while we can't dictate it, is what our role in the region will be in the future, what their role, what our arab friends' role will be and where it will go. and the best of all possible

worlds, this is walking hand in hand into the sunset at the end of a hollywood movie. that's pretty far down the road. the second question is that while it would be nice to say there is going to be a line in our discussions with iran if they ever get engaged, if we get into any kind of gear between the regional developments and the iranian bilateral issue, number one nuclear but perhaps others, i think it's going to be hard to do that if the iranians themselves think there is traction to be gained. >> right. >> in dealing with the process. and so one of our problems is not being able to expand the nuclear question s.ny moving pad does that, in fact, lead to a set of negotiations which are engaged but inconclusive as opposed to finding --

>> [inaudible] >> finding an alternative to not being engaged at all and we face that dilemma. i'd rather, frankly start by being engaged. i would rather start small than big. i think it's important, however, to be open to reasonable add-ons but to guard against having, in fact, everything have to be discussed before anything can be agreed. >>hey engage in the process. and to some extent, one of the things you can do as a diplomat is make clear to the other side very early on how you will judge negotiations. another question you have to to resolve is the fundamentals. we totally distrust their commitment on not making a nuclear weapon. they totally distrust the myriad numbers of times we have said we are not interested in regime change. there are things that we could do including, for example, either being willing to discuss any single event that they

interpret as regime change or set up a hotline or begin in some ways to take a set of actions. maybe not with respect to the nuclear program, but maybe as alleged with respect to other activities that would take ease their mind a little bit and tell them we're prepared to do this as a way of conditioning the negotiations. but how about on your side, a few things on your side that would make some sense? finally on sir -- syria, i couldn't agree more that trying to solve syria in parallel with the iranian nuclear program -- and why not throw in arab/israeli peace to begin with -- is such a horrendous mountain to cross and such a difficult set of problems that i don't think anybody except in their worst nightmare would postulate that kind of scenario. but it is true that iran has equities and assets in the assad regime.

apparently, they have not yet concluded that the assad regime has something of a half-life, whatever it might be. to some extent, i believe that one of the things we can do less for iran but maybe more for russia, which seems to be at least aware of the fact that they may have, that assad may have a short half-life, is beginning to move over on the other side of the fence with ibrahim and what he's trying to do. my own view is that we need on our side -- and this is not a popular view -- but to join mr. hatib who began to drop preconditions to negotiation and drop them all. there is no good negotiation, in my view, that can start with one side requiring that the other give up its primary preoccupation as a price of the process of beginning to negotiate. and i think that's unrealistic, and i don't know why we jumped on it in the first place except

it may have been seen as the one element necessary to keep the syrian opposition together even while we tried to move in the other direction. but now that mr. hatib has made this point of view, we have something of an open door. i would very early like to see -- and i don't think the iranians would support it, but they may not object to it -- a humanitarian cease fire based on a commitment to negotiations. i also have my own doubts as to whether a transitional government makes so much sense and whether we ought not to try to move to elections. that syrian election commission and a u.n. election commission, a very robust one, given four months to have an election might be a better way. because we could argue for a year and a half about a transitional government, and then we would argue about elections. but even after elections i recognize you've got to look at the annan plan someplace in this

mix. and to some extent, that is facilitated, in my view, by elections but not resolved. so those elements, in my view, seem important. i don't think you could get iran on our side on those issues. i think you could possibly get the russians and the chinese. i think it's worth looking at. and it's a different approach, but it involves all the elements that are out there, and it is going to be a very hard approach because nobody for a while will sit still for a ceasefire and how to deal with that is a very hard question. but it seems to me worth looking at. and iran is there, and if you could find a way maybe with russian and chinese pressure to begin to defuse some of their ability to throw hand grenades into the midst of this thing, it would be helpful, but i don't hold out a lot of hope. but i think that's a different track and a different way of proceeding. >> you know, it's a very interesting set of points, and that was such a thorough proposal that i think you need

to worry now about a call from the secretary general. but, but if we would look to iran softening its approach to the syrian conflict as something it could do to reassure the u.s. and the international community, we also, it seems to me, another clear implication of what you're saying is if the u.s. takes further step to support the syrian opposition, that will be read by the iranians as strengthening their view that we're out to get them. >> yes, i mean, we're out to gets a sad. >> uh-huh. >> are we ipso facto out to get iran? are we going to, in effect, offer them an opportunity -- whatever that might be worth, it's probably worth very little -- protect thal to whites which is something -- al whites which is something we need to do, but i think we also need to give them an opportunity to say, okay, there's a new syria forming. do they want to be engaged or not engaged?

you know, what are the relationships there? i think that's all very hard stuff. and as i said, i'm not very, i'm not very optimistic that you could get the iranians onboard. but maybe you could find a way to help make them increasingly less relevant, and that in itself would have its own view. now, do the iranians equate that with regime change? maybe. we have to be aware of that. i think that's a stretch. but i think the iranians could see what i would call increasing value in the opportunity to talk if, in fact, they begin to understand that the region is not all moving totally in their direction all of the time, which i think, indeed, is the case. >> it's a particular challenge, of course, given our domestic politics and the fact that there are those in our own system arguing for greater support for the syrian rebels because they believe it would weaken iran. so a complicated picture. why don't we open it up at this

point for questions from the audience. we've, we've got a lot of folks in the room. i'm going to try and get to as many be of you as i can -- many of you as i can. two rules that are fundamental to questions at brookings events. number one, please, identify yourself before you ask your question. and number two, make it, a -- that's singular -- question. which means it has a question mark at the end. and why don't we start with barbara slavin here in the second row. >> thanks. um, barbara slavin from the atlantic council. a question to both our distinguished speakers. what is it going to take to get the iranians, specifically the ayatollah khamenei, the supreme leader, to degree to one-on-one talks? is there some magic formula? i mean, if you read his recent remarks, he doesn't really rule it out. he conditions it, he hedge that is the u.s. has to be logical,

has to show respect, etc. um, is there some magic solution to overcome this, or are we just going to have to wait until after iranian presidential elections for a better offer to be put on the table? thanks. >> thank you. >> why don't you try, ken. [laughter] barb is always very good. >> yeah, exactly. it's a great question. i'm going to answer it this way. first, i will answer your specific question with, you know, i always have this line that i like to use that if you want to be an iran expert, it's actually very easy because you only need to knoll two phrases: i don't know and it depends, because that's the answer of 99% of the questions you'll ever be asked. we don't really know what's in khamenei's head, whether theoretically he has some threshold which if we crossed, he would be willing to do it. i just don't know. it may be that there is no threshold, or it may be that the

threshold exists but it's not realistic for us to ever cross that. what i think is more important, though, is in my mind i'm not convinced that the direct bilateral negotiations are necessary, okay? i think that there are a variety of different ways to skin this cat, and i don't think that we should make the modalities the be all and end all. i don't think that we should get into arguments over the size and the shape of the table. if the iranians are comfortable in the p5+1 setting, i'm comfortable in the p5+1 setting. if they would like to move beyond it to bilateral negotiations, i'm comfortable with that too. but my feeling is it is going to be hard enough to get a, to get -- as tom was pointing out -- to get an agreement that we can both agree on and to make the negotiations fruitful and have them proceed to the point where we can get that agreement. and so i wouldn't want to say, look, we have to have the bilateral to make this work, or we can't have the bilateral to make this work.

by the same token, i wouldn't say it has to be a grand bargain or it has to be just about the nuclear issue. i think we need to show a lot of flexibility. and, again, for me, this is why that focus on that end state, on thinking big picture is so important. because we have to have in our mind what is it that we want, what is it that we are willing to accept and also, of course, what is unacceptable to us, okay? and i'm willing to pursue a whole variety of pasts as long as they get us to that end state. and the paths that we take are much less interesting to me than getting to that end state, because that end state is going to be hard enough. >> just maybe one or two other points, and i think ken's done a superb job and, certainly, not much i can do to polish it up. my feeling is he's entirely right, that we ought not to let process be the sole determinant. on the other hand, the process on the other side, the p5+1 is, in the view of many, not very

good. and it has problems of personality, it has problems of internal differences, as ken pointed out early on, which are only reflected in the usg but maybe easier to resolve in the usg than they are in the p5+1 at the moment. but i think that can be done. secondly, i think we have to stick with what we have got and try to make the best use of it and see where we can go. the notion that the bilaterals are going to be millennial, i think, is wrong. i think they're necessary but probably not sufficient in the end. and even at the end of a very successful bilaterals, you'd want to go back to the p5+1 and then maybe to the security council for some ratification and reinforcement process because they're all engaged in this. and i think that that's important. but i think we ought to be open minded about the scope of negotiations. i think we should be single-minded about a determination to keep the negotiating process going, even if it involves a few extra hours in almaty to try to set another

time in another place if we can or a commitment if you can't get the other that we will come together again fairly soon to move it ahead. we have to respect internal iranian processes, however much we may disparage them. and if they want to have a new president in place before they undertake difficult negotiations and that's a significant sign that maybe if that process is passed we could get on a little further, okay. we've got to accept that. i don't think the time is pushing us as rapidly as that. i certainly hope it's not. i think it's a good sign that the iranians continue to convert 20% material to metallic powder as opposed to keeping it in gaseous form, and that's minor technical stuff. it can be reversed, but it gives us a little extra window of time, and i'm not a physicist, so i can't tell you how much,

but it gives you extra time, and i think that's helpful. the time, openness, ken's principles are all right in trying to deal with this, and we ought to try to manage process to suit our needs, but that ought not to become the end all and be all of the problem. it's a little bit like if i could take a shot at the turkey/brazil deal where the process of get withing sanctions seemed to be -- of getting sanctions seemed to be more important than the process of getting even a preliminary agreement on what to do about some of iran's leu. and i think that was too bad. i think that was a missed opportunity. >> tom, you raised the issue of calendars and schedule, and i think it might be useful for this audience to talk a little bit about what the window time wise for diplomacy looks like this year. pause, certainly, if we -- because, certainly, if we look at what we knew or what we think we know about rates of enrichment, there were a lot of people saying that by the summer

iran would be at a dangerous point in testimonies of how much -- in terms of how much more highly-enriched uranium it had acquired. and, of course, you noted that the presidential transition will not be over until the fall. so do we need to worry about some of these international actors creating too much pressure on the process? is there a window that's fairly narrow? or beyond iranian unilateral decisions to convert uranium to powdered form, are there other ways to keep that window open? >> it's a very interesting question. first, if i were prime minister of israel, i'd suspect i'd want a deal as soon as i could, and i'd want the u.s. to attack if i couldn't get a deal as rapidly as possible, and i would want to stay as far out of it as i could. but i think that's a moving set of timelines. my own sense is that, um, the more low-enriched uranium and the more 20% they have the more

we have the right to be concerned because it provides for a larger, more rapid breakout possibility. on the other hand, i don't know, it's like plumbing the supreme leader's mind on what red lines we have to cross to disabuse him of the regime change idea. i don't know the answer to that particular question. i can see four separate pieces of time somehow bounded by the uncertainties of when we get to a critical amount of material. my own view is the much more critical question is if they take steps that indicate they're moving beyond 20%. and since this is all happifully underiae finish happily under iaea supervision, i wouldn't mind slightly strengthening that, but i would also be worried if they began to see with old or new centrifuges more material coming off above 20%. i would be very worried if they dismissed the iaea, even more

worried if they decided to get out of the treaty allah north korea. within the time lines are interior, the runup to the election, the time when they reveal which candidates are in and which candidates are out. i guess the guardian council. i always get this screwed up because there's so many councils that i can't keep track of them. the second is during the electoral period which i think will be a harder period if they are aware of internal politics, it'll be tougher. then the period after the election and before the inauguration, some argue, might prevent a window was there is, in effect, no president or a de facto president. and then after the new president is in, on the other hand, we have seen over the last two years what i would call the very clear, not complete but very clear of the supreme leader and his decisions even with respect

to ahmadinejad. and i think ahmadinejad has been a powerful force in driving the supreme leader in that direction, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you want to see the kind of unipersonal government operating in iran. >> okay. we'll take a few more down in front, if we can get the mic down in front here in the first row and then we'll go to the third row. >> thanks very much. i'm garrett mitchell, and i write "the mitchell report," and i want to follow on a comment that tamara made at the opening of the session about how this has sort of, it may not rhyme, but it sort of echoes the israeli/palestinian situation. from my standpoint, it does that because in the final analysis, um, it's not clear to me there's anyone who can do a deal on the iranian side who's willing to do

a deal. is the ayatollah khamenei arafat on steroids? and related to that, when we talk about doing a deal with the iranians, are we -- do we kid ourselves by making that a plural? >> right. so who is, who is our interlo cue to have and are they arafat? >> maybe, you know, the search for an interlocutor begins and ends with who the iranians put forward. that's what you're stuck with unless you have more mighty powers to operate inside iran than i can foresee. and so picking your negotiator on the other side has always been a very nice thought and, indeed, has informed governments from time to time who believe that one way or another they could very cleverly maneuver that. i don't think that's proved to be very useful. i think the second question is you've got to live with the government on the other side of the table that you've got. if you feel in the end that that government will make a deal it

cannot deliver, you've got to be care -- careful about that. on the other hand, if they can make a deal with you that you want, then you have to decide between those two very stark alternatives what you're prepared to accept. i never saw a government come to the negotiating table and make a deal with the other side that in the end it turned down because it didn't think the other side could deliver. it has always carried itself through to that next stage of making things happen. so i think we're stuck with that kind of a format, and with that set of arrangements. >> yeah. i'll -- i'm sorry. >> [inaudible] what i was really driving at is something that comes, that comes out of ken's small volume that ken wrote nine years ago called "the persian puzzle" in which he said that, i think, he determined there is absolutely no interest in iran in having a relationship of any sort with the united states. that may be overstating it. so if, if -- it's interesting

who's around the table, but in the final analysis the only guy who can say yes or no is the ayatollah and he's not apt to say yes, that's what i meant by the question. .. >> i'm not convinced that is necessary to getting a deal. you know, he doesn't have to like us to recognize that it is in his interests to begin to roll back the sanctions and begin to have a better relationship with the rest of the world, if not with us, and

if he's willing to do what we need him to do, and it's basically the deal or some version of a deal that tom and i have been outlining, i'm perfectly content to live with that, and in terms whether they live up to that, my sense of the iranians is that they are not going to agree to something if they are not actually willing to go ahead with it. they don't seem to be the north koreans who will make a deal and then immediately renag on it. i'm struck by the fact that, for whatever reason, the iranians continue to just stiff the iaea opposed to the north koreans who would have told the iaea whatever the heck they wanted to, the moment they left, gone and did whatever they wanted to do. that says something different about the iranians. at the end of the day, the last piece is critical, which tom and i both focused on, that what has to happen in order for the deal to work for us is very extensive, very intrusive monitoring and inspection. we will see, if the iranians

don't go with that, the deal comes apart immediately. if they are, that tells us they are willing to abide by the deal. it's one of these where we actually don't have to trust the iranians to do the right thing. this goes way beyond what we agree to with the north koreans. >> three quick points. we have a lot of pressure on them to get a deal. that's not without its own effect. we know, in fact, the drinking poisen statement at the end of the iran war. secondly, they don't have to become our best friends as a result of the deal. obviously, that's a more difficult problem as the question goes ahead, but it's something that i think we don't have to count on in many ways is nice, but i don't think that's necessarily the way in which things have to develop. i think that those two pieces

are important here. the third is that we have had deals in the past. i think more or less stuck with, so, in fact, there have been occasions under which, despite tense conclusion, but i don't necessarily support, but i have to read his book again to make sure i'm correct in the non-supportive of his ideas, that this is not something that's so completely strange, and, finally, the point about north korea and iran is interesting. the comparison to the ish-israeli question is interesting. the major point of the comparison is we all know what the deal could look like, and we all believe since we're not iranians that it's perfectly splendid deal because it's a win-win for both sides, but -- and, secondly, we all believe it's the personalities and their differences and their internal arguments and their internal concerns that keep them from

making the deals, but the third point, i think, is an interesting one. i still sometimes make the point that there's a third issue about the arab-israeli peace process. the only thing that's harder than getting an agreement between the arabs and the israelis is to figure out a way for the process to go away completely and finally and never to return. >> uh-huh, a very good point. okay. i think what we'll do, since there are a lot of hands up still, is we'll take a couple questions at a time, and then we'll come back up. start right here. >> dodged a hard one. >> yeah. please do keep questions as brief as you can so we can get to as much people as possible. >> you talked about the iranians need to trust the u.s. that the u.s. is not going to overthrow or help overthrow the iranian government, but holding meetings at the leadership of the muk and

members of the congress, meetings with them recently and talking about overthrowing the regime. would that convince the iranians' regime that this is also going to be to their benefit or not? especially in this period of time. thanks. >> okay. again, how does our own divided government affect the equation? let's go right here. >> thank you. in my dealing with iranians, i think that -- i think we shall learn more so if you want to have a deal, you have to acknowledge their rights, and acknowledging their rights means a member of the institute being able to do whatever is admitted by them.

i would claim that if you want to have a deal, you have to acknowledge at the beginning that the idea they have the right, and then my understanding is that lots of things can happen. >> hold that closer to your mouth. >> sorry. >> yeah. >> the last thing interesting in teheran was we are ready to spend one hour, meaning there is a possibility of medduation, but you have to give them the right, the acknowledgement. i would like to ask the question -- the question is to, i think, first of all, what can you do here in the u.s. to promote this idea that somehow you have to acknowledge their rights, and this can be perceived as a defeat, and ideologically ideas, but i think it's a necessary defeat, and

then the point is how can you or readdress the issue of the sanction in a way that's progressive step-by-step? i think if you do this, then the issue of rigid change would be, in a sense, would have visible proof, and then this will include you idea that regime change is not such a top priority. that would say quite a bit. how can you americans make the political system here to acknowledge their formative basic rights? >> okay. for those of you who were not able to hear, it was another question about how american domestic politics relate to the negotiations and is it possible to form sufficient con consensus here in the u.s. on what the iranians view as their clear rights under the npt and their

right to enrich which we had in the discussion earlier, but the domestic politics here in the united states are not simple so how do we tackle this? >> sure. >> of course, this is something that -- this is one of the reasons why you and bill have been doing a lot of this work; right? >> no, leapt me begin with the mek. it was a dumb decision, a dumb idea, but in effect, it's done presumably for extraneous reasons to iran, but, on the other hand, we have another barrier to the supreme leader, and i think there that only took conversations and then actions and conversations to get there, and it was the same problem about having vice president biden talk at munich as we tightened up sanctions. to some extent, we need more appreciation of the

interrelationships. on the right to enrich -- i mean, i'm perfectly happy to do it, not that i think the u.s., by any stretch of the imagination is there, and it's an exercise that's a grandiosity. on the other hand, if that's what they want, i think we should be able to say it? our problem is that they are not in good standing with the iaea yet, and while i think that's a diversion their problem, what they did in 2003, i hope they don't do again, and one would like to have a truth commission kind of exercise with the iae arks -- iaea on that, and it's not a primary question to be resolved for the future as much as it is to clean up the past a little bit like sweeping up after the horses in the memorial day parade, and it ought to be done, but there is a cloud over the right to enrich in terms of

standing. the second question is how do we deal with the security council? the notion that iran can pick and choose its security council resolutions is not a happy notion. it is not of the -- it's not of the character, i suppose, of the threat of regime change, but it has some of the same kind of nonchai lant about what mine is mine and what yours is negotiate l. the iranians have to realize going into a negotiation there's two sides to the issue, and that one side, all satisfactory results by enshrining great morale and moral principles as a kowtow to them is costly, but we have to the the right on our side to accept something equal, reciprocal, and opposite. to me, the prethesis statements don't make sense, but i'm happy

to say if we have a deal, and the civilian program is going ahead, we, of necessity, of course, recognize your light under the npt to have a civil nuclear program. all we need to do now is define that program, and i think once we're over the no -- hurdle of enrichment, no enrichment, but as ken points out, we may not yet be over that particular hurdle, and people on the u.s. say, well, i'm happy to be over the hurdle, but i want to sell it for something useful. we have all the negotiating pieces. >> first, i just want to be clear, i think you have me confused with somebody else, maybe the other pollack writing on this, i never said anything on the npt. my thinking on regime is the following, different than what you express. i'm not sure they will trust us we're not trying regime change. it goes back to the answer to

barbara's question, and if that's the case, one of two things will happen. i'm willing to do some things to convince them of that, although, as tom keeps suggesting, it's an important one. the problems are not all on the u.s. side. there's problems on the u.s. side. there's equal or greater problems on the iran side. i don't think we need to be concentrating ourselves and expecting the iranians to do nothing. if we can't get them to trust us, one of two things happen. either we don't get a deal. okay, that would be a shame, awful in many ways, but there's clarity that. that clarity is important and sorely lacking now. the case may be that the supreme leader realizes if he's afraid of regime change, the smartest thing he can do is make a deal because the sanctions are crippling iran. they are breeding enormous internal discontent? okay? they are creeding an atmosphere where there's a lot of groups who are unhappy, and there's a

lot of groups outside iran saying the sanctions have not succeeded in convincing the iranians. what's the next thing we can do? regime change is the next thing. in fact, you can argue iranians are not willing to accept a deal, and it seems they are hell bent to get this capability, then, by god, we got to get rid of the regime. that's the only alternative. i think if alalmaty would be, and i think the united states has to recognize if we get the deal with iran, we're going to have to let the iranians crow about it. they're going to have to be able to declare victory, an important element with principle, and i'd hate to get into some kind of a fight where american politicians and iranian politicians suffer

the deal because both sides want to claim victory and that the other side lost. we're going to have to present if any americaned administration is going to say, you know, we both won. tom's point, it has to be win-win, and we're going to have to let them announce to the world that they did succeed in defending their rights. you know what? if that's what they need, fine. i want to make sure we have limits on that program so that they can't move beyond what they have. >> thank you. okay. let's take a question in the very back corner there. and then right in front of him, there's another question. >> the question is why do we care so much about iran and not about north korea, for instance? [laughter] >> okay. just pass the mic to the gentleman in front of you. >> edward levine, retired from the staff of the senate foreign

relations committee. i wonder what implications are, if any, for iran and for the process of secretary general's comments on iran to the "washington post" last week? >> okay. two good modeled questions in terms of their brevity. the question, also, i think raises the issue of proliferation around the region. one of the reasons why the obama administration says that iranian nuclear capability is such a threat is because it would lead to a cascade of proliferation around the middle east so i'd love it if you could address that as well. >> sure. first, i'll answer the question as posed very quickly, which is i'm just a dumb middle east expert, okay? [laughter] there's a session on iran, i'm talking about iran, but i have a great deal of sympathy for the sentiment which i think north korea is a big problem. in fact, we often had the debate

is iran rationale, how would they behave? what i understand of north korea, you can barely fill a thimble what i know about north korea, but my sense is they are not entirely rational either or there's things in that regime that lead them to do things that are not rational to other people. that worries me enormously. taking it to the issue of proliferation. i think proliferation is a very big concern about iran's nuclearization. it's one of the reasons, as i suggested before, it's better that we don't continue going down the road if iran never crosses the weaponnization threshold because i think it could drive countries. that said, there's a hysteria around proliferation on both sides. yes, proliferation is a very real problem. by the same token, i don't expect the entire region goes

nuclear the day after iran proliferates. i think saudi arabia is, by dpar, the biggest problem. i think the saudis are fearful of the iranians, and they have a whole variety offal -- of rationales why it make sense to have nuclear weapons the day after. in saudi arabia, there's disincentives and clever things they can do. they have an arrangement with the pakistanis. deliver opaquely or do things that make people wonder if they acquired the capability without passing the threshold. what we've seen from the saudis is they are clever about these kinds of things. we don't give them enough credit. tom remembers this clearly. in the 1980 #s durn the iran-iraq war, the missile wars twine iran and iraq. they had active nuclear programs. the saudis go out quietly, buy nuclear capable chinese css2

#'s. nobody knows whether they have a nuclear warhead. most of us believe they probably didn't, but the saudis never answered the question. they assuredded us, made all warm and fuzzy noises, but they never said categorically they were going to do so leaving an ambiguity that's important. beyond the saudis, uae has their own reasons, but who know if saudis are interested in the uae on that path. turkey is there, the nato membership is big, they may not go in that direction. egypt is the worse case with a lot of other problems on the plate, and if they don't proliferate in the case of israel, it's unlikely to do so in the case of iran. just to come back to the first point, proliferation is absolutely an issue, a very big issue, one of the reasons it's much better that the iranians never acquire this capacity. by the same token, we shouldn't push that point too far, and suddenly assume that the entire

region explodes into nuclear proliferation and nuclear crisis and nuclear war thereafter. president kennedy predicted we'd live in a world of 25 nuclear states in 15-20 years. that still has not come to pass. there's strong disincentives, but there's also no question to go back to the starting point that proliferation is a problem, especially when it goes to countries like north korea. >> okay. on the north korea, iran question, i'm concerned about the economy of dealings, but north korea has a different set of relationships. as i mentioned earlier, they have the enormous capability to do very serious damage without the use of nuclear weapons to south korea. that would be a huge mess. it lives next to a very large country that looks very much at north korea as a buffer

arrangement which keeps, for the moment, hostile or semihostile or potentially antagonistic or even just friendly military forces away from its borders. that is interesting. my own feeling is we do not have enough conversation, at least that i know about, with the chinese over the future of the peninsula. i think there are important steps to be made. we are not yet where we are in syria, maybe thank god, but we are not yet where we are in syria in terms of the conversations that may have to do with some inevitably change in the future. however, if that happens, i can't see the supreme leader being radically comfortable with the notion that they -- the wonderful regime in pyongyang is no more, and that there is some new, perhaps more benign, more

helpful, more united helpful for the future which i think we are all pledged to without being specific how to get there or what the overall formulation might be like so be careful what you wish for. it has unintended potential consequences that need to be looked at very carefully. the second point on proliferation, i agree with ken. i, perhaps, am a little more concerned that where iran could go. the impulse would increase. one only has to see in the last two years the sudden interest in civil nuclear power programs in some of the oil rich and nonoil rich states of the region to be a little concerned, but it's a great opportunity for us to get the right kind of 123 agreement with them to try to nail it down. i also think there is a very interesting question out there that has pros and cons of

significance. should we begin to find a way to strengthen the kind of security assistance, assurances we're prepared to provide under the npt to states that might in the future be threatened, but aren't now exactly, and how and in what way should we deploy that? it would have, in my view, for the right agreement with with i, some potential, even if it is seemingly millennial now, but we have to be careful. we have seen in the neighborhood a problem for iran, at least with respect to other nuclear steps, and is iran, in fact, responding? well, a country that doesn't admits they have interest in creating weapons is a hard country to pin down on why if might like to have weapons. on the other side, is there a role for the united states, as i said, in strengthening those

assurances, or are we now so close to the new idea of containment, which is basically, seemingly to percent iran to go nuclear and deal with the aftermath through deterrence and other relationships that we are now blocked from adopting, elements that might otherwise be useful, but could be seen or misinterpreted as swinging, pivoting, rebalancing towards contain. i don't know. those are questions that are out there that i think need to be part of the dialogue and about which i think there are no really rapidly available happy endings. >> and then u.n. secretary general has had an interesting time of it. of course, he went to teheran and met with the supreme leader during the non-align movement conference, but then made critical comments so how is he trying to position himself here? >> i think he's hopefully trying to position himself strongly in favor of nonproliferation

regardless of the need, in his parts, to stay in touch with all member states, and he's got to find a way to step over the bridge without having one foot stuck, and so far, okay. >> so this is just a balancing act? >> i think has to be a serious part of the balancing act, and he can disagree with member states who are seemingly acting against what the -- how many members of the npt? 190 some? only 194 members of the u.n. so, in fact, it is a very universal agreement. >> okay, time for one more very quick round in the center here gentleman in the tan jacket and then the woman behind you, be brief.

>> professor of israeli poll sick -- politics as george washington university. strangely enough, i have a question of how israel fits into this. president obama visits israel soon. we both can say 20% enrichment feel. the conversation hinges on the other side to that, the credibility of the united states if a deal does not go along those lines of using military force, and the big question is to do with the trigger. what would trigger that? i want to hear your opinions on the visit and what you think about that whole debate. >> thank you very much. please. >> christine vargas, recent graduate from johns hopkins. thank you for being here. i have a million questions for you guys, but i'll stick with one. >> thank you. >> it has to do with power players. the government in iran is right wing because it was built that way over the past two decades, but every government has hawks and doves. are these factions and any

others that exist unified in the vision of a future iran that's either engaged in the region with nuclear energy or isolated with nuclear weapons, and what does the next possible generation of power players feel about this if we assume that regime change doesn't happen, and that includes the opinion, if we get one, of a new ioatla. thank you so much. >> even brutal democracies have politics. >> let me take the questions in reverse order. huge wonderful questions, and i wish we had more time to deal with them. to answer the question about iran-iranian politics moving forward. i'm left with i don't know and it depends. i think that we have to -- it's important to remember that because we have such limits on our understanding of iran, and what's more, iran -- iranian politics are such that it's very hard to know which direction they are going to develop in,

especially when you start projecting into the future beyond this supreme leader. i come back to a point that tom made that i've also echoed which is i don't know what the answer toe that is, but i think that we have to find out, and i think the part of what we need to be doing is trying to show the iranians that there is a path whereby they can attain at least their minimal objectives as long as the minimal objectives don't include things like destroying the united states of america, israel, saudi arabia, and other friends of ours, as long as that's not part of the agenda, which i don't think is, they have have minimal objectives and compromise the settlements in the disputes. i don't know it's possible, but it's critical the united states explore that and put on the table a deal that the iranians ought to be willing to accept because it is consistent with at least their declared statement. that will at least give us some insight. pleasure to meet you, great

admirer of your work, and, again, this is -- i wish, as an old military analyst, i wire i had a lot of time -- wesh i had a lot of time to explain this, but i can't. i'll talk offline with you if you want. they had a right, israel has entered that zone of immunity. it's not that say they have a military option, but the operation, which was going to be difficult, has become much more so. that military option is going to persist in its current state until iran -- actually feels an arsenal. as far as i'm concerned, as long as iran doesn't field an arsenal, the israeli trigger is now completely elastic, okay? they can go tomorrow, they can go two years tomorrow as long as iran does not declare arsenal. it does not affect their ability to do what damage they can. ultimately, to do the damage is limited, but same thing for the united states. you know, as long as -- pardon

me, as long as they clean up, then -- as long as -- we got until iran fields a weapon. that means we have quite a bit of time, that that's not to say that i have a problem with what the israeli government is doing. while i don't always like the israeli government does it, i recognize that israel has played a very important role in keeping international focus on iran. had the israeli government not done that over the last ten years, i think the world would have forgot about iran a long time ago, and i think we would be living with a nuclear iran. >> tom, it does suggest, though, that one trigger might be the removal of material from fordo. >> well, look, let me just do the two questions in the same order. i think that ken is right in simple terms. a proposal on the table to iran, which essentially does what iran

continues to claim it wants is not in my view, but something we can live with. particularly, as ken and i agree as we do on the value of the inspections, and, indeed, the strengthening of the inspection system so let me leave it there. defining hawks and doves in iran and following various courses of action and trying to decide who is on top of where is an imminently respectable and, indeed, extremely valuable profession. the real problem is that it has not begin us scintillating moments of deep insight that help us in the negotiating process in a way to get it through, but it is, i think, moverred us in the direction in which i think ken and i agree is that we put something on the table that we believe has reasonable chance of succeeding, which protects our important interests, which, in fact, gets as close as we can to meet what

they continually say they want, and if they don't take what they want, then we have a different problem. we need to look at it quickly, and we have ways to deal with that. that takes us to israel. this little book came to the conclusion that as of the summer, zones of impunity, immunity, whatever aside, israel had a capacity probable in the [audience boos] -- probably in the delay of the u.s., four years, maybe a little bit more, and they related to different styles of the attack, different times for the duration of an attack and everything else. none of them in any book i've ever read short of a permanent occupation on the ground of iran, has the capacity to stop forever so the first thing we have is the military is a

temporary solution, and the notion that maybe something will turn up. there's a temporary solution with a lot of serious drawbacks, one of the reasons why it's on the table, but not rapidly being used. i would think that from what the president has said without his accepting bb's challenge to draw his red lines in specific time bound times, he's basically said that if iran is going ahead to make a nuclear weapon, and we think we know about it, and there's reasons to believe that, he would be believed to use military force, but he didn't say he'd use military force either. there may well be things he would want to do before using military force depending on judgments about time, and they all relate to the questions of what you know, when you know it, and how you are prepared to take advantage of it. i think he has rejected pretty well the notion that as israel

essentially loses capability to achieve the two years or begins to lose capability to get to two years, from his point of view, that is not the reasonable, rational trigger for military action on the part of the united states, an i think he's made that very clear, and i think the prime minister accepted that in the u.n. speech where he put the delay this. in we're facing, again, the end of the some kind of nominal delay period. are we, again, going to argue about time and military force and when to use it? i have no idea. a lot will depend on the visit. i'm delighted the visit is taking place. as you know, i was ambassador to israel, and i would, if i was there, fought for it in the first year. it was a logical and important step to take and something that i believe was missing from the equation which should have been

there early, but i'm delighted it's taking place now, and it presents another opportunity, not to resolve all problems and difficulties, but, clearly, to see, in fact, that the kind of tenuousvendi we have, can it be continued because on the time side there's one clear commitment against the weapon. on the other side, there's no clear commitment that this has to take place by a date certain, and that seems to be the essence of the deal at the present time. my feeling is that's helpful. that will continue to hold things. i think frequent into aggressive military stances without producing a result is like frequent predictions that the bomb will be in their hands next year, and each one of these has been right only insofaras it's been repeated on a regular

basis. i'll leave it there. >> all rightment ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking thomas pickering and kenneth pollack for this fantastic discussion. thank you so much, and we'll see you next time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> president obama spoke to the media a short time ago to pressure lawmakers to reach agreement to avoid the looming sequester cuts that happen on

friday, next friday. surrounded by first responders, the associated press reports president obama is not -- is warning, excuse me, that people will, quote, lose their jobs if across the board budget cuts take effect next week. the president says the $85 billion in cuts known as the sequester are severe and says they will not help the economy and will not create jobs. he's calling on republicans to back a plan proposed by senate democrats that would offset the sequester through a combination of increased tax revenue and targeted budget cuts. in the meantime, house speaker john boehner issued a statement that says in part washington democrats newfound concern about the president's sequester is appreciated, but words alone will not avert it. replacing the president's sequester requires a plan to cut spending to put us on the path to a budget that's balanced in ten years. keep these first responders on the job, what other spending is the president willing to cut? by the way, see the president's remarks online. go to our website, c-span.org.

more live coverage at 6:30 eastern today. former cia director discusses digital technology transforming national security and intelligence gathering preventing cyber attacks on the u.s. and threats from terrorists and rogue nations. that'll be live from george washington university here in washington, d.c. getting underway at 6:0 this evening. congress is out this week for the president's day holiday so we are featuring booktv programs here on prime time. former iraq and afghanistan general begins at eight eastern with the retiredded general stanley mcchrystal followed by jeffrey angle on a collection of essays on the gulf war tonight beginning at eight eastern here on c-span2. >> the communism of china is communism in name only these days, and it prereceivers -- preserving the power of the communism party, but they

basically threw ideology aside when they opened the country up and it's now a capitalist haven. you know, the economy in china, they talk at great length at party congresses for marxist and it's about preserving power economically as the country continues to grow throwing aside most of communism a long time ago. in north korea, it's about prereceiverring the -- preserving the power of the military and kim dynasty as you have there. it has nothing to do with, i think, what karl marx envisioned as communism way back. there could be a book, somehow, on communism, moving into asia diverged to something in cambodia, laos, north korea, and the communism that developed in europe. that's a fascinating split that occurred. >> senior fellow or 34 years of reporting and insights from around the world sunday at eight

on c-span's "q&a." now a group of experts on asia discuss the u.s. response to north korea which conducted its third nuclear test this month. scholars here in washington discuss shifting from defensive to offensive containment and possible pressure on china. the institute for korean american studies hosted this 90-minute event. >> thank you for assembling the best network on korea that exists for the institute of korea, american studies, winter symposium in the excellent panel discussion. let me take my center for a new american center. it's a tricky name, but the key point that for the last six years, this center founded by michelle and kirk campbell provided a sen tryst, pragmatic, strong security posture that has

had a lot of impact, i think, on recent policies, and hopefully, we'll continue to have so in the future. my comments today are personal and very much nothing more than a humble contribution to identifying what our challenges. i've been asked to focus on north korean's nuclear program and proliferation problem. there's a larger frame work for thinking about issues. united states has an inherent interest in ensuring that it plays not just the continuing role as a major security guarantor of peace in the asia pacific, but, also, the region recognizes that we bring much more to the take than that. as economic trade and investments, the rule of law, political dialogue, diplomacy, technology, and visions for innovation, people-to-people exchanges, human rights, and many other issues that are

consumed under the larger role that america plays in the important dynamic region. now, on this topic, let me start off with the headline that the successful, long range rocket launch in december coupled with the successful nuclear test this month have socially committed three dangerous actions. first, north korea jeopardized peace in northeast asia, height ping both the risk of the outbreak of conflict, but, also, the risk of a nuclear arms race. at the same time, secondly, north korea has created a thicker trail of rocket fuel and nuclear no-how between the greater middle east, including, especially, iran. they -- if not killed nonproliferation, they certainly advanced nuclearization in the middle east as well as asia. finally, north korea, as

chairman chavetz suggested is closing in on nuclear territory tipped missiles. we don't know how hair they are, but they are closer with the tests. i framed comments in five points. let me begin with the first point that trance sends, again, the question of weapons of mass destruction which is pivotal, but it's never the whole story. i've long advocated a longer, more comprehensive approach, not just the denuclearization issue, but nonetheless the wmd issue is the focus of my talk today, but the first point is that we have to see how north korea is trying to shape the rhythm of diplomacy and security in northeast asia. that's the first point. north korea is trying to upset everybody else's diplomacy and security and put everybody on the defensive through its own offensive actions as an

a-symmetrical tactic so this is part of a pattern of practice that is well worn and well known, a provocation is met with an international sanction, met with international threats about seas of fire or war breaking out, and, eventually, the cycle repeats itself starting out with another north korean provocation. recently, in 2009, we saw this cycle begun with a rocket launch and the subsequent nuclear test followed by the u.n. security resolution, the second major u.n. security resolution sanction. north korea in 2009 said we'll go to war if you sanction us. saying the same thing again, it's not the first time, and that was followed, eventually, by new provocations, especially thinking of island shelling, the

2010, two lethal uses of force that wratchets up force to lethal use of force. there's a cycle, of course, we take a dip diplomatic detour, ad the sanctions are met with some kind of engagement where we -- you can read about the extensive back dhanl dialogue between both government with kim jong il, and there's stories in the press in japan this week about what the obama administration also did in terms of planes from gaum to deal with the koreans under kim jong il. the -- this cycle was repeated, obviously, recently with the december 12, 2012, three rocket

launch that was successful, and it showed, demonstrated for the first time critical technology for long range missiles. the importance of it military was it demonstrated long range missile capacity. eight months earlier, of course, a similar rocket shattered over the loc. this was a significant stride forward from a north korean military perspective. that was met with a unanimous resolution, 2087 with the u.n. security council, that undertook a proportioned response of targeted sanctions on the space agency and scientists, but it was met with disproportioned a-symmetric threats from north korea, and even though there was a road map to get back to 640 talks, they were ignored, and north korea has gone ahead with a third nuclear test this month.

the -- this new provocation begins a new cycle, back in the same vicious circle. it does seem evident that the february 12 nuclear test of the 67kiloton nuclear device was intended to commit diplomatic preemption as i suggested, to catch the incoming president of the north korea, the iran lady of north korea, if you will, her policy now has been significantly narrowed on how far and what she can do as she enters the blue house later this month. similarly, if they try to consolidate leadership authority in china and try to think about a host of internal challenges including the putting off the major economic and political reform questions, now has to deal with a much more provocative ally than he had hoped to gain.

obviously, president obama, as he begins a second administration and you see the new secretary of defense has not yet arrived and secretary of state is still trying to build his team and the administration's trying to get their agency review undertaken, all of this, in the midst of a readiness crisis is budget induced. these are -- this is a very ten ewous time. kim jong-un chose timing well, knows what he's doing in working the scene, the scene of politics, u.s. politics, and setting the chess board so that he now thinks he is on the offensive, so this leads me to the second point is that jong-un is unfortunately fiscal collating about the dangers that will be perceived outside of carerra, that is, he's not just increasing chances of

proliferationed in region and out of the region, but he's increasing the chances of con floict. the security risk, in other words, is not stable, but rather, it's a concept of the author of "black swan" that risk is not in the past. risk is in the dpiewch. -- risk is in the future. it's important to look back, and larry knows history so well, we have to look at history, but it's not enough. it can't predict the future. at some point, there's a tipping point here in security that's growing with danger. the world is getting dangerous in the region because of the north korean actions. chairman says we need a new strategy, absolutely. what the new strategy is, what works, i think we're all bedeviled by trying to answer that tough question. i'll try to offer my advice on it, but i offer it with great humility. north korea's been on a long march to achieve a nuclear

intercontinental ballistic missile. it's hard to see this otherwise. it's been a steady course, go back to the 70s, and see this steady path. they got an equally long, not equally long, but a long track record of cooperating with outsiders, especially recently with tehran. the difference now in this stage of their provocation in wmd program is that north korea can see the finishing line of some of the long sought goals. the program is now within region of pee -- pyongyang. it's got to be a cengted circle inside korea. they demonstrated the technology to build one that reaches los angeles, which is just under 10,000 kilometers. they mastered reentry technology already.

those who say this is a satellite launch, i'm sorry, they know how to do reentry. they -- for those who say it was a space launch, they should look at the use of storable ox oxidizer, red fuming nitrid missile, you want a missile planned for any time, not one planned for a certain date. they may well have in this nuclear test blown up a highly enriched nuclear device. they have to reveal the facts. we hope the chinese is successful in helping us to pin down, but we should be working together, internationally, to figure out whether they went beyond the limited plutonium stockpile because that stockpile is -- was produced with reactive, no longer limited, if

they shoot off plutonium, fine, run it to zero, the problem is we highly suspect it's highly enriched uranium, two shafts for tests, and if that's the case, it suggests a potentially gee geometric increase in the arsenal they could produce in theory in the coming years. i invite you to look at the open analysis of david albright and other analysts who talk about qaw quadrupling the arsenal from 11 to 12 weapons to maybe as 48 by 2015 based on limited information, but it's a scientifically based argument. denuclearization may not be dead, but nuclearization in the middle east and asia is gaining momentum, leading me to the third point that the concern is not just proliferation, but, also, the fact this could be emboldening north korea, and, especially, a very inexperienced

statesman, if i can call him that, kim jong-un, not even 30 years of age, thinks now with impunity rip up an agreement as he did with the leap day moratorium deal last year, conduct two long range nuclear tests, conduct a nuclear test. remember, his father waited, trying to build and consolidate power by showing republic for kim il's founder of north carerra, but jong-un is dashing to show credentials in a wreckless way, and it's dangerous for us to let him think that's acceptable behavior. this may be changing north korea's tolerance for risk, and, in fact, kim jong-un could be under the assumption we're becoming more risk intolerant, that -- we will be risk adverse

and cost averse. .. >> its collaborative, and it is, it is very dangerous. now, the danger here is that, my fourth point, is that we need resolute action that we can take

in concert with allies beginning obviously with the south korean ally who is on the frontline of this issue and needs to be in the leading role. with other partners, including the major powers, china has a key role to play here. japan, we would like to see russia for a more helpful role. the united nations security council still has a role to play in many issues a as a deliberats the next set of actions. but we have to, together, find a way to make sure that the kim family regime doesn't feel invulnerable when it improves its marks denuclearized -- when it improves its capabilities through provocations to the region. we need, in other words, an offense not just a defense. to put in a different way. we have to share from what is meant defensive containment

that's been very likely because of the cooperation with iran proliferation off the peninsula with the fact we cannot stop this long march to a capability, to an offensive containment strategy where the united states, especially key allies, south korea and japan, augment in the first instance a defensive posture through improved and more integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance through ballistic missiles capabilities to a readiness to deal with provocations across the spectrum. to show both north korea and, frankly, china that there is a price to be paid by accelerating these kind of capabilities in this region. i want to reinforce a basic point. there's a basic principle that we have to kind of try to work to achieve over the next several years. the principle is that provocations will be an excel of an album ability for kim jong-un, not an excedrin of security. that has to be the paradigm

change. that's what we have to be trying to achieve, and that's -- it's a fundamental change. the system right now in north korea is totally stacked in favor of a military first policy and, indeed, of a nuclearized extent of it. there's little downside in north korea so far from propagation, not least because china's main economic partner and political partner has been unwilling on unable to do more. the chinese are very frustrated as well but at the same time they have a bigger responsibility than others, given the close role they played in working with north korea. especially economically. the exemption -- the assumption in north korea is also that opening up the country, this closed system, really in the 21st century, a system that doesn't belong on the internet in a way. we can all look in through google earth and north korea

still can't see its own country the way we can look at their military sites even on google earth now. at the assumption is opening up is a bigger threat than not opening up. and standing up is a threat and showing the outside powers to be a threat. we need to reverse this thinking to make it clear that actions not near words make the kim family regime more vulnerable not impregnable with provocations. so i mentioned military and defense measures have a role, unilateral, u.s. forces. right now we're running in the wrong direction with a readiness process -- crisis and a budget crisis. south korean military, park geun-hye's administration while the key opportunity to strengthen the south korean military role. we can talk about adapting deterrence, about improving readiness across the dmz, the northern limit line and cyberspace and elsewhere. obviously,