thank you so much again for joining our symposium sponsored about it religious freedom project of georgetown's berkeley center for religion, peace, and world affairs. i am timothy shaw and associate

director of the religious freedom project. it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce the second of our three panels today. the panel that we are calling our keynote conversation on the policy implications and the policy lessons that can be drawn from the connection between religious freedom and religious extremism, especially for those countries of north africa and the middle east that have been affected by the arab spring. the idea that religious freedom may be an effective policy strategy for addressing religious extremism is not new. consider the policies that thomas moore designed for the island of utopia about 500 years ago. in utopia, he writes, "there have been constant quarrels about religion and the various warring religious groups had refused to cooperate with each

other. so then a new leader came along who made a new law by which everyone was free to practice what religion he liked and to try to convert people to his own faith provided he did it quietly and politely by rational argument. but if he failed to convince them, he was not allowed to employ violence or personal abuse." so in thomas moore's utopia, a policy of religious freedom was the effective solution to the problem of religious extremism, religious con friflict and relis violence. well, that was utopia. what about the real world? to discuss that question, we are delighted that we have an all star panel of experienced policymakers who between them in my rough calculation have

something like 50 or so years of experience making policy, not for utopia but for the united states government. and to lead us in the discussion of this crucial issue, we are thrilled that we have william boden who is himself a foreign policy all star and also who we're proud to say is a fellow with our religious freedom project. so let me introduce will. he is assistant professor at the lbj school of public affairs and distinguished scholar at the strauss center for international security and law at the university of texas austin. he is also a nonresident fellow at the german marshal fund of the united states, previously he served as senior vice president of the lagatum institute and senior director for strategic planning on the national security council at the white house. will has also worked at the

department of state as a member of the policy planning staff and as a special adviser in the office of international and religious freedom. and also, i have significant experience on capitol hill. so it's our great mature to have will, he'll be moderating the discussion right now. >> thank you for turning out on this lunch time on a friday. what we hope will be a very stimulating and provocative and insightful question. as the moderator, i'm humbled to be in the presence of these three. i won't go through their lengthy bios. any one of them would be more than capable of delivering a keynote address on his own. so the fact that they have agreed to come together for a conversation, i think, is all the more enriching. there is a tremendous amount of state craft experience represented on this panel. by my calculation, our members together have served in seven presidential administrations, everyone since literally since

the ford administration. and during that time, they presided over some tremendously significant geopolitical events and also relevant to our purposes today, worked on some profound democratic transitions whether the democratic transitions in asia, latin america, certainly in eastern europe at the end of the cold war. and now more recently the arab spring. now lest that make it sound like the panelists are long in the tooth, they are still young and have many of their best years ahead of them. anyway, i think they'll start in the ford administration when they were 8 years old. anyway. so what we'll be doing is a structured conversation here. i'll be putting a number of questions to our panelists as a whole as well as to individual ones. then after a suitable amount of time, we'll turn it over to the audience for questions from the audience as well. first question is for steve

hadley. steve, during his presidency, president bush spoke often of his belief that the people's of arab world both desired and deserved democracy. i want to know, would you view the events of the arab spring as a vindication or perhaps a cautionary tale for some of the vision that president bush laid out which you were very involved in as well? >> well, i think the place we have to start is that the revolutions and the middle east are being made by the people of the middle east. this is their revolution. this is not made in america. this is not made by george bush. the one thing i think we can claim for president bush is that he, looking at 9/11, was willing to say and articulated very clearly publicly that u.s. policy had been wrong for about 50 years. that it was premised on the notion that you could support tyrants and authoritarians in

the middle east and get stability. and we thought we needed that stability over 50 years for oil and to keep out the soviets and all kinds of reasons. and he, one of the lessons he drew from 9/11 was that was a bad deal. that supporting authoritarians instead of getting a stability really got terrorism. because it created a culture of despair and lack of hope that made the middle east a recruiting ground for extremism. he came out and said that very clearly and the united states had to have a different policy. they had to have a policy that supported freedom, democracy, human dignity, the right to people to take control of their own future. and that was not only the right of people, but also would over time lead to a real kind of stability.

i think he was right. i know i think he takes some celebrates with the people of the middle east that freedom and democracy are finally coming to the middle east. now there are going to be -- you know, people talked about arab spring and someone said thnt arab spring. this is an asia wakening and we'll have spring, fall, winter, summer, ups, downs, it's going to take a long time. but at least we can say that freedom and democracy are beginning to be on the march in the middle east and that's a very good thing. >> for dennis, it appeared like the obama administration from the outside was caught by surprise by the initial advent of the asia wakening or arab spring. i don't mean that in an accusatory way. i think we were all caught by surprise. can you reflect from your time there on the inside how this played out within the obama administration. what do you think the

administration got right? what do you think they maybe got wrong in responding to these events in real time? >> first, i think you're right about the fact that everybody was caught by surprise. the truth is that nobody predicted what would happen. i'll tell a little story because it tends to validate this point. in the summer of 2010, the president signed out a decision memorandum that was to launch a whole of government review of our approach to the middle east on the question of reform. and it was based on the premise basically that steve you were describing that president bush had articulated that the kind of reform -- the reality of the region was creating maybe an illusion of stability but not the fact of stability. and that you couldn't -- the formula that existed is not one that was sustainable over time.

and that in a sense, our relationship with some of our arab friends that were authoritarian regimes that were rooted in traditional strategic sets of interests were understandable one level but the cost of association with them was going to go up because their ability to sustain themselves in power was going to become increasingly more problematic. now i tell you this not simply to create a backdrop but in the course of doing this review and taking a hard look at a lot of questions associated with our relations, we not only had a lot of internal discussions, we brought in some people from the think tanks around the country and we also add one point brought in three activists from the region. and i met with them and this was six weeks before he set himself on fire and effectively set the region on fire. and they were from everywhere in the region. and when i say activists, they

were -- almost all of them were arrested. they all had a huge stake and belief and commitment to transforming the realities of the region and to changing what was the authoritarian situation they found themselves in. and at one point i asked the question, how soon do you think change could come? and 30 of them -- and they were from more 5:acco, tune eesh isif them thought change could come. this is six weeks before mohammed sets himself on fire. it is not a criticism of them. they looked at the situation like many of us did and said as we look at this in the abstract, we stha is not a sustainable reality. when they look at trying to change the governments as a monopoly on a means of violence, no his tenhis tan hesitancy to

change and they drew the conclusion that you wouldn't see change happen very quickly. so people who had the greatest stake in change themselves, by the way, it wasn't just that they represented geographically the breadth of the region, they represented demographically different age groups. they didn't see it coming. and we can go through all the reasons why it eventually erupted. so the fact they didn't see it coming is not -- doesn't then become a huge surprise that we didn't see it coming when it came. when it came, the administration was confronted with a lot of very media dilemmas. there were debates within the inside between those that said, look, this is not only the right thing from a value standpoint, it's also represents kind of the sweep of history and we should be on the right side of history.

there were those who felt that particularly when you looked at egypt and saw the relationship with mubarak, their focus is okay. we see that, you know, change is coming. but you can't simply sweep away 30 years of friendship and how would it be seen by the rest of the region? what about our other friends? how will they interpret this? it won't surprise you that many of our friends from different parts of the region were at the highest level and calling in and saying if you're going to do this to him, what does that mean about us? the real world of policy making, you have to make choices between options, many of which are not all that desirable and sometimes you choose the ones that you think are least bad. in this particular case, a judgment was made as it related to egypt to try to convince mubarak that his own desire to preserve a kind of egypt that he

himself, you know, put a premium on which was stability the only answer to that was to create a transition. and there was a transition where he would leave. and where his son wouldn't replace him. and so, you know, even i have to say even within the context of what i just described, there was a zeeb about how hadebate about that and how to manage this. the basic decision that was made was a decision that would have us -- actually had the president speak to mubarak in addition to the fact that the decision was made to send an emissary, frank wisner, to try to manage a transition. and, again, when you look at the debates, you can imagine that the debates between those who were saying it's not oem the strategic interests some of our friends in the region that are going to be highly unsettled if it looks like you're walking away from a friend of 30 years,

but also there is the question of all right, what's going to replace him? and what is the -- what's the reality about trying to manage the transition? and, frankly, to take the point that steve made earlier, we're not the ones who are driving this. we're not ones who are creating this. we're not the people that put the two million people in the street. how much influence do we have? and what's the best way to try to exercise it? and, you know, there was a conversation that president had with mubarak that can only be described as a dialogue of the deaf because the president was saying to mubarak, you know, you're a child abuser. you're a patriot. you've sought to do a great deal for your country and now with the greatest thing can you do

for your country is to help to manage that transition. and mubarak said, and i have to say this with words that echo in my ears because over the years when i served in different administrations and i had dealt with mubarak, even though my main responsibility when dealing with mubarak is on the peace issue, there were a number of times when i would raise the issue of reform with him and even i would raise the issue of what was in his media with him and he would tell me i was naive. i didn't understand. and that i didn't understand his people. he did. and, you know, if he wasn't there to preserve stability, chaos would emerge. you know, the muslim brotherhood would take over. and he would paint these scary scenarios. you know, i would explain to him, you know, it's hard to see how if things didn't change that he wouldn't face that anyway. well in, this particular case in this conversation, you know, the president was trying to persuade him. and he came back to the

president and said you don't understand my people. you will see this will all blow away in a few days. and the president literally said, was saying to him, you know, what if you're wrong? you know, you could be wrong. he said -- and mubarak said, no, no, you don't understand. the president said let's talk gh again in 24 hours. let's just see. he said, no, let's do several days. and, you know, there was just -- he was living in a world of complete denial. i will say this -- after he made his initial speech, we got a lot of feedback from a lot of the people in the opposition that that night after he made the initial speech where he talked about leaving, he talked about waiting until september, he made it clear his son would not -- the family wouldn't succeed him. we had a lot of feedback that indicated that actually the mood was, all right, let's not humiliate him. and, you know, in effect, we

have, you know, we succeeded. he is actually going to leave and there is going to be a transition and the like. and everything changed the next day whether, you know, suddenly those identified with him descended on the square and descended on the demonstrators and wielded violence. everything switched and the game was over. but he still didn't understand it. he was still living in denial. so, look, what i think is as a broad principle, i think the administration got right the fact that you had to manage transitions. but you also had to realize the limits of how much we would be able to manage the transitions. the effort to identify with the spirit of what was in the street was i think right. you know, one can debate the question of should we have done more sooner? there's the question of what it is exactly we could have done. you know, there was an effort

made that i think was right to realize that we ourselves were unlikely to have the kind of credibility that others there -- people on the street basically would look to us as being a symbol of change. we were too associated for too long with the mubarak regime to have that kind of credibility. i can also tell you that i had -- i spoke to a number of egyptians who basically were saying what does the united states know about transitions? you know, hungary knows something about transitions. chile knows something about transitions. indonesia knows something about transitions the but whether did you have your trance snigs one thing we did try to focus on is not just working with the eu but working with a number of those countries that had transitions to see if we could develop what were a common set of themes that we would all be using because that would have a greater likelihood of reseptemberbeing .

could we do more to try to help the force that's needed i think greater greater identity and organization? we certainly could have tried appear and i think we did to some extent. i think in retrospect, i'm not sure that -- i think on the issue of what we could have been doing and saying public i think we were basically right. i think on the issue of how we could have tried to orchestrate with others more sooner, maybe we could have done more. on the issue of how we dealt with the and have dealt with the -- how the obama dealt with them here again there were a lot of high level entreaties to them, the question was maybe more could have been done with them sooner to impress upon them the

need to adopt not just the words of civilian transition but much more credibility when it came to how they were responding to real freedom of speech. some of what they did and the people they put in prison early on, undercult their o-- undercu their own credibility, they were creatures of habit and it was hard to break. the short answer is getting this exactly right is maybe easy to describe theoretically and hard to do practically. >> thanks. question for elliott, elliott, during a good part of the bush administration you were -- you had the unique dual roles on the point man on middle east policy and we heard steve reflect on some of the president bush vision and new calculations for the order in the region. as you look back now on your time in the bush administration, if you could engage in a little bit of reflection and

self-criticism perhaps, what do you think the administration got right and what do you think the administration could have done better on these issues of democracy reform, human rights, religious freedom in the broader middle east? >> self-criticism is very chinese. you sit in a hard chair. >> this is a maoist panel. >> then head out to the country side and dig ditches. >> they may look like undergrads but they are peasants. >> well, i think after 9-11, president bush began an effort to understand what happened, why did it happen? why this hatred and hatred of what? and why from saudi arabia, in particular. so many of the bombers. and i think he came to a view

which steve described, that is that it was -- it was a view that was beginning to be more broadly e lly expressed. the 2002 arab human development report from undp, a freedom deficit in the region. that is that what the -- what the bin laden for example was most against in the whole world was against the saudi regime. and that you could -- you could -- you could see this as a problem in the political especially political organization of these regimes. and he -- we saw this term freedom deficit. and i think that analysis was correct. and it led the president to the view these regimes were not actually stable.

now, he said the change is the work of generations. he did not say you mark my words in a year this is all going to be gone. we thought it would take a lot longer. but i think the fundamental analysis these were not stable regimes, because they relied exclusively on force was correct and i would make an exception to some extent for the monarchies which have some legitimacy, varying degrees of legitimacy but not zero. but in these what i would call the fake republic, what did they have to say for themselves? they didn't have monarch legitimacy, they were repressive and violent, they weren't producing if you want to compare to china. look over a generation the number of people moved out of poverty. inertia worked, i remember in discussions of this you could talk about why in theory they were all going to fall but we

had been hearing about that for a long time. in the arab world the only regime that had fallen was the one we brought down in iraq. the others, decade after decade after decade. now, i think the resident began to act on this, the ned speech, 2003, i think, and his second inaugural, and for egypt, condi rice's speech in cairo in 2005. could we have done more? yes. the pressures against doing more, dennis has referred to some, they were very great. the united states government is not an ngo. an ngo, which has the luxury of having one interest, religious freedom, political free many do, anti-slavery, whatever it is,

the united states government has a number of interests. dennis mentioned a number of his conversations with president mubarak in the were in the context of seeking arab-israeli peace. we had the same problem which is that once in 2007 and '08 the administration was pushing hard again at and after annapolis for an israeli-palestinian peace treaty. the view of president mubarak softened, he was useful, the egyptians are useful. now it's the skaff in the context. i would say in the long run this was a mistake. someone who saw -- who was in cairo recently and met with secularists, liberals, and muslim brotherhood officials said to me all of them said we

remember very fondly 2004, '06 when you were pushing mubarak because he opened the political space some. i think had we pursued a policy over 35, 40 years, of greater pressure on these regimes, more political space would have been created which would have benefitted us in the sense that people would not just remember 2004, '05, '06 and it would benefit them because what's happened now, regime where there was no politics, tunisia, libya, egypt, are open for politics and have no practice, they haven't moved slowly and steadily in greater debrises of political activity. they go from zero to 100 miles per hour and maybe if the united

states had over five or six presidents go back to ford or general grant, maybe had we been pushing harder all along maybe there would have been greater political space and the shock of trying to develop it from nothing would be less and i guess i would make one more point and that is it would be especially i don't feel to the people who the united states tends to view as the most -- closest to us, which is to say liberals in the general sense. people who want a kind of secular liberal state, because they're the ones who have zero experience, whereas the brotherhoods in various countries seem to.

when i argue with friends who bemoan the passing politically of president mubarak, one of the things i point out we are where we are in egypt, they are where they are in large part due to mubarak, who did not crush the muslim brotherhood, he played fo footsy, he crushed the center. and then that's one of the reasons admittedly not the reason, but one of the reasons the center is quite weak and got what, 20% in the recent election. >> we've heard each of our panelists reflect on his own experiences and assessment of his time in office. one thing i have been struck by is the existential sympathy policy makers have for each other even if there are significant differences usually for the man or