whether or not these should replace the mgds, these should be a parallel track alongside the mgds, if you have sustainable development goals, are they universal and not just focused on, as mgds have been, the poor countries? you know, do you have, again, or should you have parallel processes, should they be binding and voluntarily? there's a lot of unanswered questions about what those would look like and how it would tilt the balance between what sees as the economic, social, and environmental aspects of what we consider developments to be. >> quick answer to lindsey. you know, lindsey, i think that there's been pretty good progress, actually, in the big international institutions. maybe the u.n. is more mixed. but i think even the the trend is very positive at making them more of what bob zoellick calmed if not networked institutions, at least networkable institutions.

you know, the openness around data, the willingness to engage. these are not going to be cool, hip, 21st century institutions. i'm sorry. you know, they are what they are. they tend to look at new problems from the perspective of, you know, if what you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. and, you know, there's still -- that's still the kind of process, and there is strength to that because there is strength of expertise and focus and seriousness rather than, you know, a butterfly quality. and i think one should not understood value that. but i think these are institutions that are now much more harnessable to what the world needs, much more open to influence, much more open to being focused around things that a broader community thinks are important and should be -- you know, should be worked on and sustained, indeed. and i think the mgds -- i was actually, i would say, rather skeptical about the mgds at the outset when i was kind of in the

bank and involved in that. i have to say i would now -- what i'm now concerned about is their replacement with the cool new sgds, you know, bert model, a shinier car, and we'll lose some of that focus and effectiveness. and i think this community also needs to help with that. >> suzanne, did -- >> i think the reason why there's so much more interest and will be so much larger progress is because of the success. you know, people have seen you can achieve something. >> you can. >> i was at the u.n. -- at the u.s. mission in the u.n. and what was negotiated. there was a lot of skepticism. a real question about whether people were going to be even talking about this at all ten years hence. so, you know, i think in a way you kind of think it's a bit of a stick but a bit of success. >> if i may, one i think lesson from that is you've got to keep

it simple. i mean, the mgds were already at the edge of complexity. there were seven of us. not all of us could remember all seven. and my worry about the current proce process, because you have so many players and so many interests, the risk of having an 18-point plan with 32 subclauses and then you will lose the public resonance, which is why the mgds, why debt relief were so successful, because they were simple and people could get around them and you could mobilize communities. so i think that's my only lesson from that. >> we still have time for a few more questions. oh. i'm sorry. don't be shy now. oh, yes. there's a question at that table. >> thank you.

hi. thank you. i'm with birth for the world. you've touched on trade and how it would change. both of these areas i think are areas where we've somewhat failed in terms of making progress. what would you say needs to change in terms of the evolution of multilateral institutions to move that forward? what has to happen? >> trade and -- >> trade. >> well, those are -- let me start with trade. i think that, you know, there is -- you know, the doha development round and its failure or the only thing that has not happened is nobody's put

a stake through the heart of the doha development round. people keep giving lip service to it. i think the g-20 communique was only noteworthy in saying we can't just keep giving lip service to it. we have to actually in a sense either kill it and move on or actually move forward with it. my sense is there may be different aspects of that round that can be taken along in a global framework. but it's going to have to be parcelled out piecemeal, i think. i think the notion -- i mean, i think what we are seeing, and it's particularly true in the trade round -- realm and particularly true that a lot of countries are facing major elections and at a time of economic difficulty, just getting public support and getting that sort of two-level game, that bargaining between the domestic politics and the solution set that also works at the international level for trade liberalization is

extremely hard. i also think that there's -- and this works for climate change as well as we saw in copenhagen and in cancun is absolute exhaustion with the notion of trying to negotiate amongst 193 countries at these u.n. megaconferences with 193 state representatives and sort of hangers-on like much of us. but i think that -- so i think that what you're going to see, frankly, on the trade front is a greater move towards regional or bilateral ftas, at least for the time being. the obama administration is putting a lot of stock in its notion of the trans-pacific partnership, for instance, which is an interesting experiment to try to define standards up as opposed to defining deviances down. we'll see whether or not they have domestic support for that if the president wins the election in november. on the climate front, again, my sense is that what's happened is that you've gotten a mixture of

two different alternatives to the u.n. fccc process notwithstanding a very big pledge to koum up with something that's a successor to kyoto. those on the one hand are many-lateral cooperation with does hold some prospect of moving together at the margins. and then the other is, as early fragmenting the problem into a number of different parts, and rather than going with a full-fledged multilateral treaty, binding treaty, what you goat are, you know, pledge and review situation, which countries come up to the multilateral table and say, well, this is what we're going do, and this is what we're going to do on technology, on mitigation, on adaptation, et cetera, on financing. and it's not a particularly aesthetically pleasing way of moving forward. it's uncertain whether or not it's going to be good enough. it places a huge degree of faith

in technology on climate change, but it may be the best that can be done right now, particularly at a time when, you know, a little overstated but in brehm brerms' new book, we live in a g-0 world with no clear leader and no clear aspirant ready to step up to the plate, i think that may be the world that we live in. >> the final thought on -- >> well, i think the obvious point, which i guess underlies -- underlies the question is it's much harder to get global deals when people are thinking of the world as a zero-sum place than it is when there's economic expansion, there's energy behind trade, there's energy behind -- there's a sense of possibility, and this is just right now at least for some of the -- whether it's some of the key trading nations or some of the key et e mitters

that have to be an important part of the deal, that's just not where they think the world is at. i agree with stewart that we're into a much more piecemeal kind of world in which we hope these things will be we hope additive. i think there's still a big debate about regional and bilateral trade agreements, whether they're actually adding to trade expansion or constraining it. but i think that's right. that's the world we're going to be in. and i think for civil society organizations that are active in this space or concerned about this, it's much more a serious of local battles and local campaigns than the big global compact that's going to produce the win. >> any -- >> just -- maybe i'm sensing the same thing in a different way, but when there are successes in the multilateral arena, the country's presidents take great credit, and when there are failures, they blame them for them. i think what we see here -- i

mean my sense is it's not a failure of the forum or the structure. it's a failure of political will and political leadership and, you know, far lot of reasons. that doesn't make it any easier to surmount, but i think you're looking at where is the breakthrough going to come from, you know, if that leadership isn't there, you know, you won't see it and no reconfiguration of the seats around the table is going to generate it. >> okay. we have time for one last question. way in the back there. i think there's somebody trying to -- >> thank you. thank you, and thank you to all the panelists for leading excellent discussion. i'm david wynder. i represent water aid here in the united states. and we've been involved in putting together a partnership called the summitation for water

which met here last weekend in washingt washington. in the partnership we've been together, multilateral, bilateral organizations, civil society organizations, national governments to really think conservatively of how you can get more resources into the sector but also how you can improve the use and management of those resources. it's only been going for three or four years. the united states government only joined at the last meeting, but we've been very encouraged by this example of how to bring together a multicultural partnership. i'd like the panelis to comment on this. is there an example of these that can be replicated in other sectors? and what do you see as the value? thank you. >> glad to be able to be at the ministerial meeting in washington that talked about that partnership.

and we're trying to take you to the gates foundation, especially on the sanitation side. i think what is intriguing about it -- i'm not sure i have the answer to your point about applicability to other sectors, but the thing about water and sanitation is they are absolutely local and family and -- excuse me -- and community relevant in just a very direct way in everybody's life every day. and at the same time at the other end there are big pipes and big systems and big investments. and i think part of the intriguing thing, and i suspect that's more going to be the case with the development process, is that you have to find ways of marrying those. you have to find -- it's not that we have any number of attempted solutions to big development problems that are about taking the big pipe model and saying we just take that right down to the village and then we're done, and as bob was

saying, it doesn't work. so this seemed to me to be an example of at least in principle trying to think about incentives, behavior, priorities, families, how they -- what they need, how they get access, what the connections are to health and so on, and then try and build that up. and it might be that if that works and if the resources are sustained and the political energy around it that i saw around that table is sustained there might be a great month model, i hope will be. >> yeah. just very briefly. it sounds a little bit remini e reminiscent of secretary-general's affordable energy for all proposals which the u.n. has had a lot of high-level panels over the years, but at least that one is one of the most recent actually seemed to have significant private is sector presence as well as nongovernmental presence

as well as official presence. and i think what you're pointing to in this initiative, too, the water for all partnership, is that -- is that you have to include the variety of stakeholders and create -- because what's coming out of this, i would imagine, that's most important are the networks and the familiarity and the relationships. and to actually get business people understanding what the relevant policy decisions are and also what the local needs of the community are and then perhaps governments or intergovernmental organizations showing what some of the financing options are going to be that they could actually participate in. i'm only speculating since i wasn't involved in it. but it does seem like the wave of the future that you would have, you know, a little bit more of a messy multilateralism might be the way to go here. >> one last thought for this community in relations to multilateral organization? what you want to leave them

with? >> keep the faith and keep pushing. >> okay. suzanne? >> i would agree. if you look at what -- you know, the role of civil society influencing these organizations, you know, there are many dimension dimensions. but perhaps the most important is the source of pressure, pressure to get people and government delegations to do and sometimes what they don't want to do. but if that pressure isn't there the potential for stasis and frustration as we've talked about is virtually endless. i think it's badly needed. >> all right. just one thought. over the past few years we've dealt with the turbulence not only of the global financial crisis but we've also had extreme volatility in various commodity prices, not the least of fuel, food security issues, et cetera. it would seem to me that one of the goals overriding objects of

development corporation should be to help build the resilience of local communities to be able to handle these shocks. there are undoubtedly many different ways of dealing with this. but i think this is important not only for the development community but also for the humanitarian community which is also represented here. i just hosted a very interesting seminar at the council of foreign relations on the future of natural disaster assistance. and some of the scenarios pointed out with a combination of demographic growth, urbanization, and particularly urbanization in low-lying coastal areas, and just -- everybody we were talking to were saying we're going to be so much more vulnerable, particularly in the developing world but not only as we saw in fukushima two, these sort of catastrophic events that will require huge resilience on the part of local population. and just to use an example, bangladesh was thrown out as one

that, you know, in the 1970s and early ninth had such horrific problems and horrific loss of life in dealing with some of these regular cyclones and flooding that occurs but in the more recent years has developed its own indij jous capacity to be able to cope with some of these things. that's what we should be going forward with. >> okay. stewart? suzanne? and manoosh had to leave us, unfortunately, for a meeting. so please join me in thanking our wonderful panelists. the libertarian party will select its presidential nominee this weekend at the party's national convention in las vegas. our live coverage begins tonight at 9:00 eastern with the debate between the libertarian presidential candidat candidate. and we'll be live again at noon

on saturday when the conventions hear speeches from the candidates and then vote for their party's nominee. in a few moments, the israeli ambassador to the u.s. on relations between the two countries. in about an hour, a forum on u.s. policy in the middle east, from the anti-defamation league's national leadership conference. >> sunday on "q&a" -- >> i want each back to kind of exam the political power in america. i'm saying this is a kind of political power. seeing what a president can do in a moment of great -- in a time of great crisis, great crisis, how he gathers and what does he do to get legislation moving, to take command in washington? that's a way of examining power at a time of crisis. i said i want to do this in full. i suppose it takes 300 pages.

so i couldn't -- that's why i just said let's examine this. >> robert carrow on the pass j of power and the years of lyndon johnson, his biography of the president this sunday at 8:00. and look for our second hour of conversation with robert carrow sunday, may 20th. now, the israeli ambassador to the u.s., michael oren, on relations between the two countries. he spoke for an hour at george washington university. >> where am i sitting? >> you're sitting there. [ laughter ]

>> my name is ambassador edward dineen. i am director of the middle east policy forum here at the elliott school of international affairs, george washington university, and i want to welcome all of you to our forum this evening. the this evening. the middle east policy forum was established in 2007 to bring leading analysts, scholars, dim mats and policymakers to the university to discuss current and emerging issues in the middle east region. we're deeply grateful for the generous support we receive from the exxonmobil corporation to enable us to have these programs. i'll just say to you all, as you know, you all are part of a university community. a community that seeks understanding and knowledge and one path in achieving that goal toys bring knowledgeable and thoughtful experts that present an entire spectrum of views so that we become cognizant of the issues and see them from all angles. it's not a question of agreement or disagreement, but of exposure

to a variety of opinions an perspectives in our own quest for knowledge. i am pleased to extend a warm welcome to israel's ambassador to the united states, dr. michael oren. our university president, dr. steven knapp extended an stwi toigs to dr. oren to speak to our university community and i want to take just a moment to thank three organizations, gwll, the international student association and safi, student alliance for israel, three organizations that took the initiative to see dr. knapp and encourage him to extend this invitation and i thank you for that initiative. dr. oren assumed his position as israel's ambassador to the united states in 2009. and in that position, of course, he's deeply involved in maintaining and building the very strong and close relationship that exists between

the united states and israel. he travels widely throughout the united states. he regularly addresses a wide variety of groups and organizations. dr. oren is not at all a stranger to the academic world. formerly he was lady davis fellow of hebrew university, a fellow at tel aviv university and a distinguished fellow at the shalom center in jerusalem. he's been a visiting professor at harvard, yale and georgetown. and he is a graduate of princeton and columbia. ambassador oren has written extensively for a number of publications including "the new york times," "the wall street journal," and foreign affairs of the republic. he is author of several books.

"six days of war," june, 1967 and "the making of the modern middle east." and "power, faith and fantasy in the middle east." both of which were "new york times" best sellers. without further ado i invite him to discuss things with us. please join me in welcoming ambassador oren. [ applause ] >> thank you. good afternoon. thank you, ambassador. thank you especially for pluggi plugging my books, which by law i'm not allowed to do but they are available at famously reduced prices on amazon should you want them. two special thanks to folks on

my own staff, our academic counselor, where are you? she's disappeared on me. there you are. and jason harris, who really made this all possible. thank you, jason. and it is especially gratifying for me. i do travel around the united states to california, michigan. a couple of weeks ago in chicago and boston last week, all the time speaking on various campuses. it's a true pleasure to load up the car, pack for a week and make that long drive over to george washington university to finally get here. it only took me three years. unbelievable. so i want to begin today with three vignettes, if you will, three portraits or snapshots of a relationship between the united states and israel. the first snapshot was taken several years ago where one day out of the blue i get a call from the united states navy. the united states navy asks me would i be interested in flying

out to the uss truman aircraft carrier, at that time patrolling the eastern mediterranean, and give a lecture on the history of the u.s./israel relationship. i thought about this for maybe a quarter of a second and i said are you kidding? of course i want to do this. so one day they brought me out to an airfield outside of tel aviv. there was a prop plane, a naval prop plane there. they strapped me in, put a helmet on me. we went airborne and no one bothered to tell me that this aircraft was going to go from about 188 miles an hour to 0 in less than one second when it landed on the truman. when i landed, i thought we had crashed because i was here, my eyeballs were somewhere over there and i don't recommend you ever do this. they thought it was very funny. it wasn't. but when i emerged from this

aircraft, there was this floating american island somewhere between the island of rhodes and the coast of turkey, 5200 crew members and officers, all standing at attention to hear me give a lecture about the history of the u.s./israel alliance. extraordinary. the next snapshot took place a couple of months ago when i was invited by the assembly of the state of colorado. very nice state. there are parts of colorado which have large jewish constituencies but there are parts of colorado that have no jewish constituencies at all, and i was invited by both houses of the assembly of colorado because both of them, the congress and the senate, were passing resolutions in support of the state of israel. these resolutions in their language were completely exuberant and unequivocal in their support for israel, their love for israel, and they both passed unanimously while i stood

there. another remarkable experience. and then several weeks ago, sally and i made a visit to the fair city of cincinnati. don't laugh, it's a very nice city, cincinnati. recently voted one of the most fun cities in america. i didn't make the poll. but we -- when you usually go to a city, you visit the university and the local political leadership. but almost invariably on sunday mornings i like to go to chump and talk to various congregations. i went to the church of the new jerusalem. we're from the old jerusalem. and going to the new jerusalem was very interesting. it was an african-american baptist church. and when i walked in, i was greeted with such outstanding warmth and such unreserved love, true love, everyone coming up and embracing me as the ambassador of israel to the united states, and you're asking

yourself what is this all about? what other country in this nation's current foreign policy, what other ambassador would be greeted this way in such diverse scenarios. and i'll put a finer point on this. i am persuaded beyond any doubt that the u.s./israel relationship today is the most deeply, deeply rooted, multi-faceted alliance that this country has had with just about any foreign country in recent memory, going back perhaps to the end of world war ii. now, why is this? what are the reasons for this relationship? and to find those reasons, you've got to go back. israel is celebrating its 64th birthday this week, 64. but to find the reasons, the roots of this relationship, you'll have to go back much further. you'll have to go back 400 years. i'll wait.

it's a shame, you really should stay. i come here to talk to you. that's what universities are for, folks. truly sad. you have to go back 400 years to the time when the first buckled shoe lit on a certain shore off the state of massachusetts. you remember it well, i'm sure, from your history books. the owner of that buckled shoe was a puritan pilgrim, and the puritan pilgrims were an interesting group of people. they had suffered terribly as a protestant dissenting group at the hands of the official church of england. in an attempt to find a model that in their bible that would enable them to better cope with their suffering, they looked back to what they called the new testament and didn't find it. so theyo