in it be end i think we're capable of learning those lessons and doing that. we're working very hard to do so. >> johanna, in some of the countries that have come up in this conversation so far, you have people in charge who hope to be in charge for a long time. and they are taking a view of their country as it is and how it may be that involves getting people help so they may be associated with it down the road. but a frightening and i think quite disturbing aspect of the current state of play is that there are people in charge of places that are ready to see widespread civilian death. it's not in their interest to make sure things are turned around quickly. and we see that in the horrifying level of civilian death in somalia. there's aspects of that in afghanistan where people who want to be in charge are yesterdayy to see people they want to be in charge of die in

large numbers and don't see it in their interest to turn it around. it must be just maddening to try to create alliances on the ground that deliver development when there's a sort of neolichl at work in some of these local leaders that it's hard to get around. >> well, i always get the tough questions, ray. >> i was saving that one for you. >> i know. it's good to have a friend on the panel. i think what you're referring to is i like to think about how we've approached the entire area of this post cold war period in three generations. what you're describing is this third generation where the global leadership is really in a state of flux. we certainly have the leadership of the united states in terms of our strength, our strategy and our vision. but we also have many new actors. that makes it much more difficult to try and resolve those conflicts in the

multilateral forum which are president endorsed and which we work in to get a resolution. i think our colleague from yemen is a good example of the civil society role which is increasingly getting a voice through the twitter map that you said the expansion and the ability to express dissent is so much greater than when he started in this field. the ability to reach out technologically with other people, create something that i don't think even these individuals who want to stay in power can relate to. i think that is the hope in many of these things. we also have come full circle. we started out thinking conflict prevention was a nice idea. we've now developed tools which really work. when the development agencies, the u.s. a.i.d., the millennium challenge are working in ways which prevent conflict to deal not only with wars, but these kind of dramatic constitutional crises that we face that are not

armed conflicts, but are political conflicts of which we have less ability to move, but where we need to deal with people. >> can i add something there, i hate to be old nufr to be able to look over a period of many years, but i can. i think ray, you're absolutely. those situations exist all over the world. i think there's been some unbelievable changes. one is as was just suggested, these crises don't exist in the dark anymore. i cut my teeth to a large extent during the 84, 85 famine in ethiopia with no one would talk about the famine behind the lines. they would talk about the government help side. i used to break into u.n. meetings and be very disruptive and say there's another fam inbehind the lines because there wasn't twitter. there wasn't email, there wasn't internet. that's a huge change.

i think the second is again we're not where we need to be. but these issues are discussed and out there in the international affairs forum in a way they didn't use to be. it used to be lonely work to get people to pay attention to those. now a combination of the internet, i think a huge factor has been activism and advocacy in this whole set of issues. the third is i think for as many as people as there are who want to suppress and oppress and deny people even their survival we're seeing a huge uptick in the people that want to push in the other direction. whether it's in yemen or elsewhere, you've got governments speaking up about this that 20 years ago would have just casually let it happen on their borders. now none of that is new, but i think the trajectory is one that over time it will be more and more difficult to be able to

perpetrate the kind of abuse that we've seen. again, i don't want to overstate it. i think we're not out of the woods. i think the trajectory is quite exciting, potentially. >> can you do everything right and still end up not making the kind of progress you hoped for? when i look at yemen, it's one of the most water short places on earth. so you could do your governance right, you could do your creation of local links right, you could do your planning, all your relationships, and if it doesn't rain, and there's nothing in the aquafor all of that is not going to matter that much. >> yes, working in conflict environments you don't see the change quickly. it's sometimes frustrating. but then when you work with the communities and you work with individual structures, and you invest in individual systems, you also see a lot of

opportunities. yes, countries yemen is one of seven, i think seven countries that are water stressed. most water stressed in the world. but we also have resources that are not invested mainly because of the problems we have in security. we have mining sector is definitely underdeveloped in yemen. tourism sector, yemen is a beautiful country. it's an ancient civiluation. we have over 2,000 kilometers of coastlines in addition to islands. and i mean, i think what we're doing is also it's creating some change at the community level. it's creating some demand for good governance. demand to make the government accountable to the people. and in my opinion, it's anything could end yemen's problem it

would be a legitimate state. a state that's seen by the people as responding to their needs. that's accountable, that's transparent. that's not -- >> this is a pretty complicated time right now, though, isn't it? i mean, one regime leaves, another one not quite set up and large parts of the country under the control of anti-state forces. >> well, i mean, i think we're one step forward. we yemenis think we elected the right person. there are huge challenges. it's not going to be an easy transition. we are aware of that. but yemen has been throw a lot of similar problems in the past. and most of the areas of the country are outside the state control, but they are under the control of tribes. and i personally see from my experience and believe that that

the tribes can be -- can be a force that's very supportive of change. the tribal systems are resolving in the country. there are studies that show that 90% of tribal conflicts over resources, over land, over development are committed by the indigenous system. i think there are resources in yemen that are not realized. i think once you realized these row sources and work with them rar than bringing, i don't know ready made formulas from somewhere else, i think there is a big chance that you can make the change that we desire. we yemenis are very hopeful. we think that we're going to come out of this transition -- come out of this transition and

be, you know, on the -- on the way to be a strong country. >> i'm glad you brought up ready made solutions from somewhere else. on one level they get a bad wrap. they are ready made because they've worked in other places. and they are fast. but they don't necessarily have longitudinal power because unless you want to stay and do them forever, they end up as constitutional orphans in the places where you've been worked. when i've done reporting in the developing world i've seen that conflict over and over between creating local capacity and perhaps doing something a lot slower than you would want to. and seeing the results a lot more slowly than you would want to, but also knowing that unless you do it this way if you came back in two years there would be nothing left of your work. i want to hear more from the panel on this. >> if you haven't gone back and

read this 1950's classic "the ugly american", i highly recommend it. it's a.i.d. done upside down. it's everything wrong and it's exactly your point, ray. and there's a wonderful vignette in there about creating a local solution to the ability to move water using bicycles and locally manufactured panels to move the water et cetera, et cetera. first point is that idea of local solutions. i think she brings that up. i think we heard that from our heads of state a little earlier. secondly, i would not underestimate the power of technology, democracy, and the social networks when you put these three things together. water, for example. george, the exprize founder has pun lished a new book called

"abundance, the sub title is why things are not as bad as you think." it's a very counterintuitive book that looks at the impact technology will have on salinization of water. it looks at vertical farming. it looks at the sad vent of social net works and their impact on moving democracy. there's a lot of good that's happening. i wouldn't underestimate that piece of it. >> i was going to add another point. we don't have a lot of patience as a society. our historically memory is very short. most of the examples we've cited go back 20 to o30 years. the time line to implement these is not short. the five-year planning cycles with the budgetary cycles make it seem as if they're not succeeding. that's the first thing. the second point is metrics. we measure how we do, but we don't measure how people on the ground are implementing things.

this is not the one size fits all. but many people on the ground may feel that they're making progress and we don't necessarily capture that in our reporting back. i think there are three things we need in the united states to really move forward. and one is we certainly need additional capacity to help. the world is going to have more crises they're not going to be fewer. we need to be legitimate. that means listening to the people on the grown and their solutions so that when after if there is a military action that legitimacy is helped. we have to be willing to burden share in the sense of letting others both the private sector, the humanitarian sector as well as other intergovernmental organizations work with us. i think we've done that pretty well in many theaters, but we have to do more. those things make us successful. and i finally see a lot of them coming together. but patience not only is a virt virtue, but it is something that we often lack when we're trying

to get things done. >> i think somebody somewhere concluded that post conflict, post crisis transitions are supposed to last two years. i don't know what that person was. seriously. i was in rwanda where in 95 and 96 people were already saying why can't everybody just reconcile and get on with it. it was kind of dramatic. but i think there are a couple other things development isn't something that doesn't happen unless we're there. people tend to seek solutions to the shortcomings in their lives regardless of whether we show up. i think one of the changes we've seen i don't think we can get away with the ready made one size fits all anymore. i find myself very, very few circumstances whether it's that you have a government that's putting political skin in the game and has a view and you might shape or influence it. you've got community leaders. if you look at the changes in

implementing agencies and local partners there are a lot more local partners. it's not just because they tend to have a better sense of what they need than somewhere from the outside, but because there's a demand there. we're seeing a turning of the tide. i think where it looks very different is when you mention things like water. i think that's the kind of development discussion where post crisis or preventing the kind of crises we're going to see out of resource scarsity where nobody has a ready made solution and it's going to take everybody to come around the table. we've spent a lot of time thinking about yemen has an acute water shortage. that affects not only yemen, that's going to affect us and the entire region. >> let me just jump in there for a second because, all right. you've made very good presentations for why local

ownership and capacity creation on the ground is important in development. i hear that enough to be willing to stipulate that it's true. if we add on conflict. if we add on humanitarian crises, where you don't have the same sort of time lines available to you, one of the most wrenching moments i've had in my life as a reporter was to sit by in one of the tent cities inside a tent outside port portauprince where everybody had fled after the quake and they were by the airport. there's the airport. 15 foot high cyclone fences topped with razor wire. you're sitting in a scooby doo tent sheet bed with someone. they can sit in the public park across the road and see palettes

piled high with water, with food, with pumps, with cans, with kitchen items and they say, you know, we could just run across the road and tear that fence down and start giving this out. we've been waiting for days. we've been waiting for weeks to get out of this camp and we really want to. why -- because i'm like an american flag to them. it's hard to explain that oh, hey, i'm a journalist. i'm not supposed to have the answers. they would say, you tell me why we're not getting that stuff. and the answer -- the real answer is i don't know. a more thoughtful answer wouldn't cut much ice. you don't have that type of time line in conflict on the disaster. >> also in haiti where you start with a country that didn't have great logistical operational cape i believities built in on

the ground to begin with, you have a crisis of that magnitude. i totally understand the frustration with the delays, but it took some time to set up the operational system to deliver to that many people. >> it won't surprise you to find out that answer didn't get me a lot of -- cut much ice in the tent. >> it doesn't. but it gets to another point, which is one of the things i think we could do more of and i think we underestimate is how much people who are the direct targets or objects of some huge humanitarian crisis can themselves manage a relief operation. i remember i was a reporter once, and being in the refugee camps in eastern sudan where there were probably in excess of 300,000 or 400,000 refugees. they sent in all the relief workers and set up clinics. refugees went on strike.

and they said we can run on our own clinks. we have people who know who how to do the basic tests. we have mid wives. we don't need you to come in and do it. people were completely grabb grabber -- flabbergasted. i think figuring out how we can rely more fully on people to organize themselves is one of the most important things of an effective humanitarian operation. i think there was some of that in haiti. i'll tell you from where i sat there was no airport one day and you guys went in and there was an airport the next morning. you know -- >> but there is a factor that i think we haven't mentioned yet, that is the discovery, although it shouldn't be a discovery of the critical role that women in these communities play. and in haiti where i spent a lot of my time or even in colombia or in african communities women organize these tent cities and women were the ones who found

they didn't break down the fence, they were the ones who organized the food chains. i know they're going to be panels later on in this program that focus on the importance of addressing women as entrepreneurs, women as development agents. we can't underestimate in many of these situations the critical role that they've played in ensuring in the most horrific humanitarian crises how they become the agents of moving things forward. the time lines are very short. but in fact, you see time and time again whether it's for zurt or for development that the women are out in the front. >> taking that point entirely, if i could add another thought of how you could prepare for this maybe two thoughts. one is to exercise. one is to practice this kind of thing. and i think we do this a lot in the military. but i think if we could do more exercising and practicing with our partners in advance of crisis, i think that would be helpful. and we have a number of small

initiatives we're working in my particular command in this regard. the second thing is it gets again to technology and how technology can help us, it's having a competent crisis cente that at a.i.d., for example, that can manage this and our technologies are so vastly better than they were ten years ago. i don't think we've driven the technology into our crisis management centers. i know we haven't done that fully in the military. exercise in practice and crisis management centers that take advantage of technologies to avoid putting you on the spot like that. >> i'm happy to be the american flag in those cases. i'm sorry. i cut you off. you were about to say? >> well, i was about to say with what gail said with regard to

development assistance, i, you know, i said this before, the most important things that have conflict in building a legitimate state and when i say a legitimate state. a legitimate state is seen by the people as a state that's wanting to address the problems that meet their needs. and so i think one important thing for development assistance and foreign assistance and foreign policy is that they have to be to go in line with each other. foreign policy should support development assistance and i'll bring the case as an example. i think foreign policy, particularly counterterrorism have to some externt undermined development assistance.

so over ten years the counterterrorism assistance, they've strengthened the grip of fatah, and the military and resources and only made him a stronger dictator and they continue to do great work in terms of helping to improve health and no matter how much development work you do, if your government is helping a dictator it isn't going to work. it will work probably in the medium term, but in the long term it's not going to work, and so i think, and i'm not judging intention intentions i think the lessons learned and the biggest lesson

learned from this is that dictators are not good agents for change. dictators create problems and create wars and they're not a good investment. >> some people wanted to apply, but they're looking around toy to who is nearby. that brings us to a terrific juncture. i think we want to hear from everyone before we close the program. you know, there's a tremendous amount of value put on collaboration and there's a tremendous amount of talk between finding partners both from coming in alongside from with you and on the ground because no one wants to do anything by themselves anymore and that's great and that makes a lot of sense and the reason why you're doing a lot of things are often very different. some are doing this could be

willing to bring up bibles and cool. we'll feed you first and then give you the bible. some want it to be a place of instability and state failure and otherwise, we're not really that worried about how people are getting by day to day. sure. would we rather have people dying less? sure, but beyond those very simple met rishgs the only reason we're in there so that the place doesn't become a source of potential problems down the road. yet here you are, a religious group over here, a secular group over there and a governmental group over there and an ngo over there and what we're doing for slightly different reasons and perhaps sharing many goals and you have to create many

partnerships right there in the heat of battle. is it as easy as i am told. i'm told that it's actually pretty easy on the times when suddenly the tensions between those different agendas become quite apparent and you have to constantly re-engage the terms of the relationship. gail? >> i feel like i should have an answer that says it should be impossible and it is a complex nest, but i don't think it is. i think there are three ingredients that have made it less complicated, but i think there are three ingredients that are necessary. one that's been mention side transparency. if these programs and interventions and activities aren't transparent and then you get into conflicting intent and you run into a number of

proble problems. the second is data and fact and it's quite extraordinary and it's a very good thing and facts in both the relief and development spheres have gained increasing currency so that having data which shows them, and you made a reference to 90% of internal tensions or conflicts being in indigenous, so the strength of opinion while still potent is not the driving force as well as it once was. i think the third thing and this is insurance is the demand from the bottom. that could be uneen because you can have constituents who are on unside or the other, but i think it's been my experience that there is a demand for accountability that is growing, made easier by twitter and everything else, made easier by

the people than used to be that pushed up against this and the place that i've seen a lot of incredible transformation is in is global health. there are motivations that people have systems so you can manage biosecurity. there are faith-based perspectives across the spectrums. there are disease, and this and that, this and that and it's transparency, data and demand that have transformed that feel in such a way that you've got extraordinary constellations of actors working together in the same direction. is that quite that neat and tied up in a bow? absolutely not, but it's a lot less difficult than your question i think suggests it might be and that's certainly been my experience. >> i think i've been in and around this type of operation

for 35 years and it is much better than it was, and i think you need only look at, to pick one of many examples, the war in vietnam and to look at the battles between a.i.d. and the military and the embassy. it was extremely conflict all, and i think you can find other examples and today when i look at the direction between secretary panetta and secretary gates and it was one to be totally supportive and it's instinctive integration of diplomacy and defense development that is real and is happening and thirdly ranked why it's better and technology helps us because that gives us the transparency gale was talking

about and in haiti, one of my favorite pictures is broadshaw, hillary clinton and ken keen who is the three-star general and sean penn. they talked about the private sector and brought a different look to the whole thing, but that was real and on the ground and it happened relatively quickly despite the failures and the missteps. i'm with gail. it's way from perfect, but it's always better than it was. >> i also think that the world hasn't stood still over these years, that many of the countries that are not the major players are contributing to development as well. the bricks, the brazils and turkeys and indias. they contribute to peace keeping and they send the troops in, and they have not only our own armed forces in the theaters, but side by side with others and there's a new