captioning performed by vitac >> we're in this fluid moment of int international fluidity and where does the transatlantic relationship fit into this moving pattern. i think it was a very critical challenge. and where does alliance and

partnership fit in to that? and i think in some ways that wasn't answered for quite some time. and i think fatally this was a challenge of managing unrealistic expectations on both sides of the atlantic when president obama was first inaugurated. europe had very unrealistic expectations of what the president could and could not do. i think the administration was very eager to see europe make a huge contribution it wasn't making, that didn't turn out to exactly be the case. so it was managing, managing through these unrealistic expectations. for a moment to be a little critical, and i say this having served at the state department, knowing how incredibly difficult this job is, i think in some ways there was some self-inflicted wounds that the

administration committed. and in part focusing on two, the u.s.-russia reset, the reset itself in creating a positive u.s.-russian relationship was critical to helping europe and particularly our central european friends create a positive environment and like a polish-russian reconciliation. this was an important thing. but in some way that reset was a little oversold. and it caused anxiety with our baltic friends, our central european friends. at the moment we're resetting, we need to be redoubling our concentration and transparency for those states that have the most direct knowledge and most direct impact on our policy changes. and, you know, clearly and secretary tauscher, i welcome your thoughts as well, the roll out of the state's adaptive approach, a really important and

strong policy but how it was communicated on the day it was communicated. it just left a huge challenge for the region and i think the administration has worked extremely hard to overcome that initial challenge and i think we're seeing a stronger u.s. central european relationship but i think we can do more. again, that's a self-inflicted problem. i think another example would be the pivot to asia. i think in some ways the selection of the word is a loaded word, what is the fiscal manifestation of pivot. well, you turn your back. so did we turn our back to, as we're moving to asia, did that cause concern to our european friends and how do we message that to europe? the interesting part is europe is pivoting to asia. thera they're pivoting in trade, investment. how are we managing this together? right now it feels as though

we're managing it separately but i think we need to do more. sometimes it is that word use. it is communicating such a new policy direction so this actually causes some confusion or some uncertainty about what that all means. but moving forward, i think -- and i'm going to steal something that kurt volker told me a couple of months ago that i thought was really important, when president obama made his nine-day tour through asia, he gave a very important speech in australia and it really encapsulated our strategy toward the asia-pacific region. kurt said if you just took out the word asia in that strategy and put europe in that strategy, that would be a really forward looking strategy for the transatlantic relationship that had a securities component, an economic component, a cultural, social, a futuristic look. i would argue it's time for us

to create a 21st century transatlantic european strategy. we're a bit trapped in some very old talking points that no longer match the reality on the ground. it's different now. and in fact in a bipartisan way we're guilty of this. we need to reflect the new and challenging circumstances that are facing europe. but ultimately even if we have the most perfect strategy, we have to make the decision whether this relationship, this alliance, is worth the time and the energy and the enthusiasm it tax to sustain it. i look at my other colleagues, i'll use our asia program and i look at them, wow, one country, i'm so envious, you concentrate on one country. i concentrate on 30 countries plus institutions. it's a -- i do it poorly. it's a daunting task.

it takes an enormous amount of energy and a commitment that you're going to spend the time to invest in leaders, to get to know those leaders and the bureaucracies and everything and listen to them and understand them. we have to see if that's worth it. and i've never heard the term summit itsis bu, but yes, that how we communicate with europe. we have to agree that it's worth the investment and then we have to see it through. i think that's the decision, again, about american leadership. we have to make that decision whether that investment is worth it. and finally, i'll end on what i think are some future challenges and many of these you've discussed this afternoon. when i look at europe for the next 20 to 25 years, and my apologies to people who have heard me say this before, i see

three fundamental challenges. number one, it's the profound transformation that europe is undergoing due to the debt crisis. it is a political transformation that we're seeing, certainly an economic transformation and a cultural and social transformation that will have a generational impact. when you see the numbers of youth unemployment in spain and greece, the emigration of youth going outside of europe, what are they taking from this crisis? what in 20 years when they become the future leaders of europe, how will they internalize this crisis? this is what we have to understand and get into the -- thunder and lightning -- get into the challenges of the political dimension of the crisis. the second fundamental challenge to europe and this transatlantic relationship is managing the rise of turkey as a regional power whose reach and stretch goes to the western balkans, the

caucuses, central asia, north africa, middle east. and recognizing that the turkish eu process has fundamentally stalled for the last 18 months, no new chapters have been opened. for the first time in my memory secretary clinton said publicly it's understandable that we put this on the back burner, we've got a lot of issues on our plate right now in the region. when america doesn't push for turkey's accession or continue to push for turk eeb's european orientation, that's a challenge to the evolution. it's democratic evolution, its economic evolution. that is going to be a fundamental challenge that quite frankly will span the next generation, a decade. how are we going to work on

those issues? we have a decision to make about american leadership. i believe america is a critical european power and we have to be involved and engaged sometimes in the very messiness that is institution building and policy building. but we tend to get right in there and direct traffic or we say you've got it, we're busy, we have some other things to do. we have to find that middle path that allows europe to lead but with strong american engagement and action. that's that middle road. that's the new american leadership that i think we have to bring to the transatlantic relationship and not just commit or recommit to our values but operationalize those values, particularly in the enlargement agenda, whether that's the western balkans and the eastern partnership countries and beyond. that's our fundamental challenge. it is a bipartisan purpose. i want to underscore because

high lie the differences perhaps of democrat and republican. our policy is best when it's bipartisan. and enlargement, the nato enlargement point has been successful because it's been bipartisan. it has to be bipartisan. so with that thank you so much. >> thank you, miss conley. secretary tauscher, the floor is yours. >> i'm not here as a member of congress for seven years nor the secretary or the special envoy for strategic defense. i'm here for the scowcroft center. kurt and i have known each other for a long time and heather, i've read many of your pieces and appreciate a lot of what you've said.

since i'm the only person in the room that has practiced the dark art of politics and actually been elected. when the obama administration came into office, we fond ourselves with a number of significant situations that immediately caused a pause to prioritize and decide where to go first. every administration has to do a number reviews. there are about 11. and the administration was set up to do that and in this case many of them were done for the first time with both the state department and the defense department, including the nuclear posture review and with the state department as part of the team, not just reviewing it after it was done hoping to get something changed. and that was clearly a decision that president obama, secretary of state gates and secretary clinton had made and i think it reflected a sense of power for the first time and those were very good. we fond ourselves with two situations vis-a-vis europe.

number one, that we had not a lot of work done by the previous administration to deal with the fact that we had a treaty that was going to expire on december 5th, 2009. and secondly, we had a missile defense proposal by the bush administration, hated by the russians and almost hated by the european because they i think understood it was not meant to protect them, it was mant to protect the united states from europe and that they were basically inconveniently in the wrong place at the wrong time. subsequently during these reviews, immediately the secretary put together a team to look at, beginning to negotiate a new start treaty. and at the same a decision was

made to use the treaty to reset the relationship, a relationship characterized by mutual destruction, which is no longer the posture we have between ourselves and the former soviet union, russia toward mutual responsibility. that and deescalating tensions was very, very important. it got as you relationship with russia that enables us to work closely on things like iran. but certainly the iran and north korea situation. we have a much more, i think, respectful and successful relationship in getting things done. we also were able to announce in september the political initial defense review, which included because the president was very insistent that we were changing the characteristic of what exactly was going to happen and that review, as many of you

know, cull money eighted in the announcement of the european phase adapted approach, which was based on a different system, a much more tested system called the sm3rocket, that we were going to deploy much faster, actually last year in 2011 and to protect europe. we were going to go to nato and get a change in the mission, so it was not just point defense. the difference between having an umbrella for person and a catalyst. it was a commitment to article 5 by having u.s. atst assets deploy immediately into the mediterranean, then first monterey and sullivan and other ships falling on. to get four agreements done with one year. and with spain to take more and

to deploy the radar by the end of 2011. that is an enormous, enormous set of sixes, to get nato to chang its mission the lisbon summit in 2010. nand our spare time we got a couple other things done. but i would say on the political side i spend a lot of time both in russia and with my european colleagues and i think that the turbulence in the channel of the relationship has very little to do, i think, in my opinion, with questions as to whether we're still in love and whether we still want to stay together or not. i think the real issue is how do we manage together in a time of shrinking resources and a time of other distractions.

>> how did we do it in a way that's reflective that there's been an imbalance in the relationship for a very long time. president obama isn't the first president to face the fact that our european and nato allies aren't contributing at the 2% that we hope. i think of president since, mmm, kennedy has been dealing with that. no president has been successful to get anybody to do things in a way that they are declining budget. i want to know why the heck we're decreasing the state department budget. that's the biggest threat to us right now. we're going to have decreases in the defense department budget, of course we are. for lots of reasons, including the fact we've been operating two wars on a credit card for the last ten years but why are

we decreasing the budget of the state department and why aren't people levitating about that? that's the problem. the problem is -- whether you call it smart power, soft power, hard power, i don't care what you call it, you still have to pay for it. and we have a decreasing ability in the congress to understand that a sign of patriotism isn't to have a ribbon on the back of your car, begin every speech by talking about how much you praise our fabulous military. we all do and that's not a default position, that should be sincere, but that we have to have a balanced foreign policy that include as real stick but also a real megaphone. and soap we had a crisis last year and we are going to have a crisis again in the state department budget. and i don't know of many people that have written about it in a way that compels people people to understand that we're taking people off the field.

we're taking prize diplomats, we're taking the ability for us to fund consuls, taking the ability for us to do anything other than sit behind big wired fences out of town because we're so worried about protecting ourselves. it a crisis of the relationship where we can't be in town where people can get to us. we've decided fewer is better when it comes to diplomacy. that's not a sustainable situation. i believe foreign policy should be nonpartisan and that is a crisis our situation, too. we've got too many people on both sides of the aisle but in a political campaign clearly that will use any reason they can

find and all they do is turn anybody off. you don't have anybody paying attention enough to pay attention. i told even my former constituents, i'm blessed to think -- or i've been told that my constituents in california would still elect me. the nice news is that nobody can afford me. but in many places in this country, i don't know who would want to work for the american people. talk about an absentee landlord. i was lucky in my congressional district in california, i had 70%, 80% of the vote. i have colleagues that come to congress with 30, 35% of their voters showing up. they get the same vote i get. i don't know if that's very good. the american people would rather watch "entertainment tonight" by and large than watch the "newshour." for too many years and for too

long we've had partisanship leaking into foreign policy and national security affairs to the detriment of everyone. kurt and i have known for a very long time, we were concerned we were going to be on a panel today and it was going to be very boring. i find now that i absolutely agree with heather, too. so you may have to take your no doze any moment now. it should be nonpartisan national security, we should be increasing the state department budget new york city cutting it, we have to have a balanced approach of hough we work with or friends but we also have to work with our friends that are relevant. thousand we may have looked busy in 2010 and 2010, we are taking wep does and down to keep our commitments, we are actually working on many, many different things.

we use that to reset the relationship to get their help on iran and north korea. maybe not on syria, maybe not libya. we believe we need to move from mutually sure stability. we are never going to agree 100% of the time, we're human. but we're going to identify a sweet spot on a number of issues where we have a view, kplon platforms where we can deescalate a tension driven, arms controlled race karkt us-- characters. our taking down two wars, we're trying to figure out how to deal with increasing problems on the financial side of things. we're trying to work together to

get economies balanced and to get people back to work in a very big world where the europeans are our number one trading partners and we are inextricably intertwined. but domestic clip here at home i would say as a recovering politician, people better start paying attention because this is a democracy that is not a sideline game. it is a representative democracy, which means people have to sit up, show up and vote and we're losing that battle and we're losing that battle unfortunately, i think, because if there's more cynicism because it appears to be chic than there is really an imperative for people to show up. but part of it is, you know, the sense of partisanship. if we can get to where heather wants to be which is bipartisan national security and foreign policy, that would be great. my vote is for nonpartisan and getting ourselves to a place where we do agree very often,

unless we don't take or medication on type, we are really capable of doing that. if we started to project that face and that voice to the rest of the world, they would take a huge sigh of relief. and i think then we would actually be doing everything we can to preserve our democracy. >> thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> so does your message then mean that there are not genuine differences that are being put forth to the american voters who will, after all, have to enter a booth and choose one of the party, right? i mean, there are budgets being proposed and counterbudgets, ambassador volker -- i don't think he had no one in mind when he said that. >> the american voter is not voting on foreign policy and national security in november,

unless something really cataclysmic happens. they are oblivious to it. and they are going to vote it's the economy stupid all over again. it's going to be about jobs. it's going to be about the sense of their own well being. there is going to be a piece of it that is going to be about appealing to people's sense of aspiration. there is going to -- people that are upset and are going to be turned off by different parts of the rhetorical battle that we're going to be hearing will stay home. the enthusiasm gap is my biggest concern for what we have going forward in november. and i think that, you know, in many ways there is a laziness about the facts. so the same people that my former colleagues that have pitched a fit about the debt ceiling and created a big

problem that, that degraded in the financial markets a few months ago, they're preaching from a bar stool tem programs. they didn't care at all from the bush administration. but nobody's called them on it. and that's what -- the test of a good politics is can you do it and again getaway with it. and apparently the answer is yes. >> let me just chime in. i agree. i don't think foreign policy will push a single vote in the election. no one is going to vote on that. and i -- while you may see people make an effort to use foreign policy in the election -- >> it's weak. >> you may see that. it's not serious. it's trying to calculate where can i get a little bit of political advantage by saying something this way or that way.

it's not really serious. i'd also say on the difference that i drew between those who that an are looking to have a strong american role in the world resourced appropriately across the full spectrum of things, there's dennisons of both party that want to see that. and i'm not disparaging the second view, even though i don't share it. that's a legitimate point of view, by the way, too that, people are really worried about where we are and how to pull back. i just think that we can't april ford to do that because of the costs that will then follow for our country abroad. but that's really the intellectual debate that's out there. it really isn't a partisan debate in that respect. and i would just say so i didn't see anything in terms of individuals that way. when you do think about foreign

policy and the election, the thing that i would really expect both parties or both candidates to lay out during the course of the campaign is the strategic fantasy they see for the world. that may offer a breadth of choice between the candidates on that, there might be difference in tone and style about that but i think you're going to see in both cases a fairly traditional, engaged, robust american foreign policy well articulated from both sides. >> now, heather conley, there may be more difference than in just tone and style, right? if governor romney proposing resetting the reset, does this have any consequence? is this really the subject of nonpartisan or bipartisan consensus? if the budget cuts are going to be walked back, if we're talking

about capacity in missile defense and the limitation fund on america's ability to project power, is this really just about style and tone? >> well, i think in part it will be. i agree that foreign policy during the campaign will be opportunistic. and it will be headline driven. think the foreign issues that impact the economy, and this is where the sovereign debt crisis will, i believe, you know, we pray not about a worst case scenario, that, my friend, will have a direct impact on the election and that is europe. in fact, i was briefing a parliament tearian group and someone said wouldn't it be

ironic if that's why president obama doesn't get re-elected. we do not have the luxury of saying that's europe's problem, europe fixes it or that's your problem, you fix it. we are so in this together. iran is another example. whether that's price of oil instability in the middle east will have a direct impact potentially on the american economy. so where foreign policy intersects with economic issues i think will have real and p application. clearly russia has become a touch point in the election with governor romney noting that russia was the greatest geopolitical soul and i think even people saw secretary powell's interview, lots of head scratching on that one. i think it speaks to again, that is a different of opinion from the bush administration to the