the next direction to go because we are not cured of the curse of this century, which harold put on the table very well, the group and ethnic violence that's now churning and will, i think, continue to churn, unfortunately. we see syria is now -- >> i was going to ask you about syria. let's go to -- right. i would like you to apply the tools you've all been talking about. how do they apply to syria today? look at the news this morning. look at the news in the past two weeks. massacre after massacre of children. we know the stories. how do these tools apply? >> my sense is that we have not yet exhausted the tools short of the use of military force. in part because the russians and the chinese have blocked it. in part, the secretary brilliantly last week tried to turn that into responsibility and accountability on the part of the russians for a big share of the disaster and i think that needs to be done. it's made the russians very

uncomfortable. they rushed to damascus two days after the veto to see whether, in fact, they could put in a fix that would cover over. they support the a nan plan. they need to go there. but i think one of the things we need to think about, with or without the u.n., is whether something like a quarantine can put more pressure on the syrians. i don't know. a quarantine is very difficult because you then have to deal with questions, do you let food and medicine through? how much dependence is there? i think that syrian financial dependence on oil exports is not trivial. it's something that i think we should look at even though harold knows that a blockade is an act of war, a quarantine is an act of heroism. we have to somehow bridge the gap there if we're going to do something like that. i think further pressure is in

order and further efforts to separate assad from the rest of the international community has to be done before we get into the cataclysmic of a civil war or a massive international intervention and you know the popularity of another boots on the ground war in the middle east is pretty low. happily. >> dean koh, did you want -- >> for those of us who had to live through all of these, one of the things that starts to emerge is certain kinds of patterns of violence which start to make each episode distinctive even though they're common and they're horror. bosnia was ethnic cleansing. east tea more was a scorched earth policy. we're now seeing in syria house to house, one to one killing of children and civilians that

personalizes and makes it more clear the nature of the violation. the legal response and tom framed one, the notion of a quarantine as opposed to a blockade was a legal concept developed during the cuban missile crisis, now being applied in various human rights setting. that the nascent concept began to arise as a notion of responsibility to protect, which i think has three faces. when the country whose citizens are being killed, that government has abandoned its responsibility

the kosovo episode remains a highly controversial one. those of whous participated in it felt it was the right thing to do. i think now we're in a complicated situation because the libya action which was done through a security council resolution, that said explicitly that libya had failed to exercise its responsibility to protect is now in a frame where in syria, we have repeated efforts where we cannot get security council resolution. and what tom has pointed to is then who has a responsibility and the fact is that those who block the resolution have a responsibility. that doesn't alleviate our responsibility to address humanitarian issues and to use other tools.

sanctions, diplomatic devices, et cetera. but this is part of the testing of the toolbox that has happened in this period after the notion of responsibility started to arrive. >> go ahead. >> harold has raised a critical problem for which there's no answer. i phrase the question, the problem this way. what constitutes international legitimacy for action? what's the quorum you need? in kosovo there was no kurt council resolution because the russians made clear they would block it. yet, nato went in any way. in libya, you had a security council resolution, the russians appeared to feel they were burnt and they made clear they're not going to do anything like that for syria. can we act according to the kosovo model? what constitutes a quorum of international legitimacy. there were times during the first bush administration where

united states thought that acting alone or with a coalition of the willing itself constituted a quorum of international legitimacy. i posit that that was proven insufficient. does nato as an organization itself constitute a quorum of international legitimacy. if nato decides to act by consensus and by invitation of a regional organization, the arab league, someplace else, does that constitute a quorum of international legitimacy. how much weight do you give to the chinese and russian security council? i'm not here to suggest an answer. but the issue of international legitimacy for these kinds of actions is an unsolved question and much debated. would we really have been happy with the consequences of not doing what we did in kosovo? we reversed ethnic cleansing.

but -- >> dan is 100% right. it's been a torturing problem. if you're a strict constructionist for the u.n. charter, then you're stuck with the veto. the veto in cases of genocide or actions that border on genocide is a curse, we have never or if we ever have, never should have been in favor of not taking action in the security council to deal with cases of genocide. i don't see any plausible politically viable effort to change the veto. but we need to take our thinking a step beyond the notion that anybody who discusses the veto as the unmitigated and total pro techter of united states interests above everything else needs to take a look at this conundrum that dan has so beautifully set forward and which is now there. years ago, i said we should use

the post cold war period to see whether we could get a voting convention in the united nations that in the cases of a veto, unless three people objected to a text of a resolution, they would have stayed. that's totally beyond reamount. i understood it at the time. even though there may have been a fleeting meemt moment when we could have persuaded people to do something like that. but this is the case that we face because the charter itself is kind of rules out. regional organization that is don't have the approval of the security council from doing what we did and r 2 p has not suggested another alternative, although we ought to begin to look at whether in fact there are international arrangements that we could arrive at where coalitions of the willing have some legitimacy in the international framework to deal with questions of genocide and

other things, whether it is a new treaty or a new set of arrangements, it's a very hard course to run. but dan is right. i've been troubled by there for a long time. i've spoken about it. but we need to begin to think about how to deal with this because this is a big unsolved problem. not just for human rights but for u.s. national interests and i have to say security interests if in fact human rights violations of a gross sort are going to destabilize the international community cause conflict and internal strife, then it is clearly a security question for us. >> this is something i heard brought up in the last conversation. she talked about the compact with the people of another land as opposed to with the leaders. you've all talked about the paradigm shift, particularly since the end of the cold war in terms of seeing human rights as part of our national interest. can you name a particular

turning point or specific turning points or moments when it could have been made even more central to the national security interests in a way that people would have appreciated it more? have we missed that opportunity to link human rights to our national interest more clearly in previous incidences? you're smiling dean, koh. >> i would pick 1977, 35 years ago. but by the way, i was very struck by this. because when i attended the funeral of gerald ford, henry kissinger got up and told the following story. that about two weeks after gerald ford became president and everyone remembers the doubts about ford's capacities at that time, he recounts kissinger recounted that a russian seaman jumped off a boat in baltimore harbor and sought political

asylum and kissinger recounted a meeting he attended in which they went around the table and all the foreign policy experts all realists, including kissinger, advised ford to return him to the russians. and then when they got to ford, the president, he said, are you kidding me? this is america. this is america. we're not going to do that. now -- by the way, kissinger told this as proof of what a great president ford was for rejecting his advice. [ laughter ] now, i take this as a pivot moment because it also coincided with legislative activity and what led to drl, et cetera. but i think this continues to be very much on the forefront much our thinking. we mentioned the chen case. there's a question, what do we do with this person seeking our support? this is america.

this is what we do. it is a core part of a nation that conceives itself -- sees itself as conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all persons are created equal. [ applause ] >> you want to say something? >> i think we've got -- >> i'm sorry. your time is up. ambassador pickering has to leave early. thank you. [ applause ] i was supposed to tell ambassador pickering had an important engagement and had to leave early. go ahead. >> here's another episode from the ford administration. the famous dissident writer in exile in the united states, forced out. wanted a meeting with the

president and we went into an agony of indecision dithering and -- agonizing whether or not it could cause offense to bresh nef and the soviet union by receiving such a controversial anti-communist writer. that was the opposite of the russian sailor story. i thought reading about carol's handling of the chen episode as the opposite. the realist view, the traditional american foreign policy view of such incidence was to hustle the guy out of sight, out of the embassy. make the problem go away. we should never make something like that our problem. the problem is for the government that represses human rights to such a degree that an individual constitutes a

national security problem. here's another story. from 1980s poland, friend of mine in the underground gets on a -- smuggles himself on a freighter across the baltic to sweden. in the middle of the baltic, the ship starts to turn around and he figures, are they on to me? yeah, they were on to him. starts to come back, and then it turns back and goes north and it lands in sweden. he finds out later that the polish bureau is debating his fate and whether they should turn back this ferry that's going across the baltic and he said at that moment, i realized communism in poland is doomed. if they're deciding my miserable fate, they're toast. they're finished. and i'm sitting -- he's telling me this story as we're having a drink to celebrate the nato's excess to nato and he was the minister of defense of poland.

oh, my. >> that's a story. we should never put ourselves in a position where we agonize about the chens of this world. make them agonize about the chens of this world. [ applause ] >> i think if you were to identify a pivot, it would be between '75 and '82, which is where you have the helsinki process, the legislation 502b. you have the end of the role of congressman frazier and the members of congress where you have the creation of drl, the founding of human rights ngos. mike posner founded the lawyers committee in 1976 and the period that ends in '82 is the start of the democracy movement. we have here colleagues from ndi, iri, which started with the

westminster speech in '82. i think that that was the pivot. >> why don't i -- i'd love to hear more from you because you were inside central europe when this -- this great glorious revolution occurs. they are experiencing what it means to experience free expression and not be put away for it. my question for you is, what was the -- can you translate what was happening with our policy to insert human rights more in foreign policy, was that something, for example, you knew these people in poland, you were talking about having drinks with them. is this something that's tangible to them or -- go ahead and talk about this. >> it's very real. another cabinet minister in poland told me that in the '80s when he was in prison, the only

people to ever see his family, i mean, the only foreigners were american journalists and american embassy officers. and he said there are a lot of european countries that shunned my family because they didn't want to irritate the government. and then he starts to laugh. so whose call do you think i returned first? it meant a lot for that generation. where our interests and our values coincided and that doesn't happen as neatly all the time. there are tradeoffs. there are conflicts. but we did get it right in central europe. both in the '80s and the '90s and it was bipartisan. we accomplished that. the result of our success was profound, but it was also -- you know, it was a generational

issue. >> right. >> what we succeeded in doing in central europe was making it possible for a younger generation to grow up without that special feeling about the united states because they are normal europeans. and that's okay too. but for the generation of liberation, the united states really came through and that's a proud moment for all of us. it won't always be as easy. i mentioned earlier bill taylor's task and the job of responding to the so-called arab spring, the arab awakening. some people compared it to 1989. that's not really the right analogy. maybe it's 1848. it will take a long time to straighten -- to get this straight. and these countries will go through a very difficult period.

but it's important that we be there. and that we never again fall into an -- in what was called in the first panel, the arab exceptionalist trap. that democracy and human rights doesn't apply to those people. that awe tok rah si is good enough for them. we have to mean it. we have to mean human rights. it doesn't mean that we goat avoid the problems. it doesn't mean that -- the fact that we did kosovo and it turned out reasonably well doesn't mean we have the answers for syria. >> or might i add, north korea, day in, day out? >> anyplace. june 4, 1989, two things happened. one was the square, the other was the polish elections. >> i was going to say -- >> it doesn't make the problems any easier. but the fact of a human rights and democracy component to our foreign policy means that at

least we were wrestle with these issues instead of brushing them away. i joined the foreign service in 1977. when this bureau was a few months old. i remember the enormous condescension, these kind of sneering dismissal that the for those days, almost exclusively, regarded human rights. it wasn't serious. it wasn't -- it was an irritant, or a distraction. and it turned out to be the pivot around which the world changed in 1989, and that's a good lesson. we will always wrestle with these problems. you know, guantanamo, all right, to go back. it is not easy to deal with the problem of people you pick up on the battlefield. we've made a lot of mistakes. we as a government.

but it's not easy. human rights and rule of law guide an orientation, won't make the problems easier. but at least you'll be able to frame up the questions right. >> go ahead. [ applause ] >> i really want to stress the role of leadership, because i do think that the pivot period that we have been talking about, a central element was the way in which these issues became bipartisan. and there is a continuity between what jimmy carter did and ronald reagan saying tear down this wall. and i also think that american leaders have the capacity to put things onto the agenda by saying

the unsayable. just remember september '95 which is right in this period is when hillary clinton, then the first lady, went to the beijing women's conference, which was supposed to be an event to basically -- where the ngos were stuck out in some remote location. and it was hillary clinton's, you know, speech, women's rights are human rights, and her link to aung san suu kyi that made the beijing women's conference this pivotal moment. so when the secretary of state last year goes to geneva to the human rights council with mike posner and says, lgbg rights human rights, it has an enormous resonance. the thing was it made it very difficult for people in the room who had successfully kept that message from being said allowed by a very prominent leader, to

act as if that state of affairs could continue. and it's changed the dynamic altogether. >> could you in a very efficient way help me -- i was just in burma, actually with the ambassador. it was an amazing moment to witness what was happening in burma, and it seemed like burma was doing this, and china was doing this. but in burma, clearly something dramatic has happened in the past year. aung san suu kyi, who i met, is out. you have -- i met women who were in prison -- i remember one woman had been in prison for 17 years for handing out pamphlets. my question for you is, can you replicate the mechanisms that have -- what the state has done in burma in the past, however many months, i say it's 12 months because that's how long i've been tracking it, but can you replicate it? because those people in burma are moving forward as if they're free. i interviewed too many of them not to believe that. >> well, i think the pivot, the

geographic pivot was from the dissidents of europe to the disi departments of asia. we just heard from tex and others about kim dae-jung who was a friend of my own father's. only a few years later i'm assistant secretary for human rights. president akino is here today at the state department. you have this development. and when i would go out as assistant secretary, i would meet with asian leaders who would say to me, asians don't believe in human rights. i found it a great moment, because i just -- [ laughter ] you know, i don't think so. i don't think so. and so i think that, you know, this extraordinary development in burma, which need to be

supported with extraordinary vigor and care, you know, show to me this basic martin luther king message, which is about the arc of history turning toward justice. it takes a while, but it does. >> did you want to say something on that? you can if you wish. >> americans don't do real politic very well. we just don't. and it's not our nature. the republicans and democrats who try to be realists end up not sounding quite sincere. and our identity as americans is not true blood and soil. and our identity is through ideals. that's who we are. i mean, literally. we're not a country of -- you know, the declaration of independence doesn't say, descendents of english colonists

are created equal to british subjects. so human rights policies and american policy, it fits our deepest identity, and our aspirations for ourselves. and that's one part. and the other part is, it's hard as hell to make it work. it feels great to say that, and i mean it. it doesn't help in syria. it doesn't help figuring out how to deal with egypt. you know, the islamist parties. which way will they go. translating the ideals into daily politics involves tradeoffs. and that's why we all have to be realistic with a small "r," but

not elevated to a doctrine with a big "r." because that just degenerates into worship of power. a small "r" means we have to be realistic about what we can accomplish in any country, with any country, in any year. and events don't happen according to the timeline of a two-year tour of office, or a four or eight-year administration. it happens -- decades go by and nothing happens, and then, you know, months go by and decades happen. so we have -- and there's no answer to that. except deal every day with these problems, and be realistic about what you accomplish, about what you can accomplish, but always remember that the world can change. it's not all quick sodic. it can really happen.

>> i just found out i have a little bit more time. i'm going to make my own point right here if you forgive me. i think that we can't also deny that you mentioned kosovo, and then we talk about north korea. the other difference is the media, right? i mean, i would -- we can count on one hand how many people have gotten into north korea and told us about the north koreans inside north korea for the free world. we know what's happening there. but my point to you is the power of the media. and my point is this, actually. i am actually here to castigate the media. the american media, which in many ways is not doing a good job any more for covering foreign news for americans, keeping these things on the front burner. you all talk about you talking about congress. there has to be political will behind what we do. and all i'm here to say is having covered the news at the beginning of my career as a kid

basically, and being told more and more in my later years, you don't want to go overseas. nobody's going to pay you to go overseas to cover the news. something is happening that's very bad for our security and human rights and what's happening to other countries. north korea is a good example of it. i think far more could be done to cover these stories. it's tough for you. my point is, why doesn't the american media arise to the tougher stories and cover them. my question for you both briefly, though, is the arab spring. you mentioned it went from being not on the burner according to elliott abrams, to being on the burner. why? i mean, was it from -- is that the ground-up effect? i mean, the arab spring is where we are now. >> it happened because -- it happened in our policy because it happened in reality. we followed. now, it's true, the bush administration had a big push in the freedom agenda. and met it.