principal that it's difficult to say when is it being violated. the subsyd areaity principal means you should only deal with issues at a higher level of governance when this cannot be done at the lower level of governance. you should deal with issues on the local level. only if you can't do it there. you go to the region and then you go to the national level and you go to the european level. that can only achieve the full potential. how do you decide this? this cost of non-europe is one possibility to quantify the subsidiary principal. here the argument is being made that what is being dealt with in

28 national systems would produce important benefit if we wouldn't deal with it in 28 different jurisdictions, but together in the european union you could argue if it can be made that there is potential benefit in having one set of rules on one rather than 28. then it's being met. the other way around is of course also correct. then the question is are we still respecting the principal which with the proportionality is one of the principals that should guide legislation in the european union level. the fourth reason is why it can be beneficial. it provides again an

understandable narrative about why are we integrating in the european union. we had these in the past. we had the enlargement and these stories. we had a story in the last five years. it's a precondition for everything else. we have been able to survive. this is a number of positive stories like digital europe and energy union. like the internal market and like corporations in defense and many others. they will w"émore into detail on

the content of those. so for the ordinary citizen for whom it may be very, very difficult to understand with so many different rules being suggested not only tens, but hundreds in the legislature to understand there two, three, five major initiatives that the european union would like to achieve is increasing the readability and understandability of the whole process for everybody. all is based on parliamentary reports. a member propertied to the committee and has been voted so all has been legitimized by

members. but of course we are not happy just in passing the report. we want to say european commission if you would go there, they have very important benefits. that's what we are doing with the individual reports. we are also enabling parliament to be an equal partner in setting the agenda because it's not so easy for a parliament to have a view. if you take the ininitiatives together, that's an agenda that has been there. that in exchange is a precondition to enter in and

have to define the benefits to be convincing and to be an equal partner with the number states and the commission in discussing the agenda for the next five years and that is something that of course right now is very topical. so this was published in an updated version in july. you might ask yourself, it's now around for sometime. is it working? the different candidates of parties for the post of commission president have been making very active use of this. a lot of figures presented here have been used by the different candidates in the debate about the future of the european

union. it's true that they have been voted and supported by the european parliament. he is making a lot of points and a lot of activity which is quite in parallel to what the parliament elaborated. building up the defense and also defense. we can see that between the different institutions, this is also providing a possibility to come to a common idea. between the commission, the parliament and equally the concert and the member states. that's one still of the

unfulfilled promises in the lisbon treaty. in article 17 of the lisbon treaty, you have an important sentence that reads that the european commission initiates the annual programming of the union. the commission should initiate what should be done in the year to come and in the years to come, but it continues with the view to reach interinstitutional agreement. we have that and the european commission to come to a common understanding about the legislative agenda. that is something where this product could be very helpful.

there is an opportunity because in the next months they will have to define what they want to do and what should be the major projects in the years to come. the interest is increasing. for the simple reason that very often at the beginning of the legislature, there is very little legislative work. if we have a consensus, we should have a more meaningful agenda. it will remain to be seen whether such a process where the different institutions develop clear views of what should be the key pieces and whether it will lead to a common agenda in the legislative field for the next years to come.

that would very much increase for citizens to understand what the european citizens are about and why is it beneficial for their own personal life. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much, klaus for the extremely useful context for the study and the potential impact. and now to put the meat on the bones. >> thank you very much for hosting the event and giving us the opportunity to express the thoughts and we very much appreciate that. klaus set the scene with the back ground, but the picture he painted is not always to a u.s.

audience. the power to propose legislation in the eu system lies with the european commission. there was a struggle over who controls the right of the initiative in the eu political system. increasingly it has been in practice sharing this right of initiative with other institutions with the heads of government. they have been instructing or inviting to come forward with initiatives of various sorts. that can have a positive effect. in terms of the treaties, they offer the parliament to propose to the commission that it come forward with legislation in certain fields. article 225 state that is it can request the commission to submit any proposal matter that is it considers the union act as a piece of legislation that is

required for the purpose of the treaties. and clearly the ounce il would work together. they have been more active in suggesting for future legislation. it's important to take the starting point for how and why they were born. they were not born when somebody said why don't we analyze 25 different areas. that's how it could be generated or whether it could be a rationalization of public spending. that has been the effect if you like, but it started in a lot of individual committees, we have 22 committees and subcommittees

and they were doing work where they felt it was a particular cease of legislation that should report forward. coupleatively this has built up into the type of product you see covering these different areas. we decided that it was important for the ability of the committees to undertake this work. this was for impact assessment and designed to strengthen and support in their ability to do this kind of work. so routinely when a committee in the european parliament decided to do the report, it has an analysis of the potential benefit and potentials of the cost if that's appropriate of such an initiative and the cost

benefit analysis that enables them to better understand the implications of the work it will be doing. and policy with how resources are allocated between the layers and the effectiveness of getting action. let me give you an example of this. in the european union, we have in effect three different layers of third world development policy. that is based on the budget and the commission. we have arrangements for the pooling in the form of the development fund that come from 28 different streams and whether european commission is a service provider to coordinate it. then you have 28 or not in every case, but national development

policies. calculations vary as to how much misallocation follows from this. we have done our own analysis from the layers, the pooling of sovereignty, but the coordination would result in savings of about 800 million euros per year. but if there were to be a pooling towards 10 billion euros. this kind of work brought together from a different committee. sometimes in general areas where there could be an improved allocation was the figures into end. it reflects the debate going on in the think tank and different

benefits and the efficiency gains. they have done a lot of work in this. they attempted to calculate the precise benefit of the member states with the market between 1992. they tried to analyze what the cost would be or if they never existed. they calculated that at about 23 billion euros a year. the potential benefits would be of having a single diplomatic service in the eu. they calculated savings between 140 and 3 billion euros a year.

what the advantages would be in having common european land forces which is the reduction from 900,000 to around 600,000 in the number of troops. it would be between 3 and 9 billion you'ros. it's not only the parliament being engaged, but the think tanks and academic attracted publicity in april of this year. it calculated that they benefitted by as much as 20% of gdp from their membership since 1963 and over 20% and spending by 10%.

so what they have been doing is not in a vacuum. it's on a rising curve about the economic potential with appropriate policies of further deepening integration. if you take the areas, more than half of them is in the analysis. currently doing research in 17 out of the 25 areas with the list on page five. the current figures which are

fairly conservative and 340 billion and 300 billion helpively. that's large amounts of money and together around 5% of gdp. if you go back to the report, the 1980s, if you go back to what preceded it, that was another european commission initiative back as far as 1983, the calculation at that time specifically was that the potential gdp gain from somewhere between 4.5% and 6.5%. the analysis among academics and

added it was 1.25%. recently in itself analysis the gain at the higher gain was 2.3% and the lower end was minus 2.3% in greece. we have tried to err on the sides of caution, but what has been striking is when you build these up, the figures are so high. 7.5% of gdp is a large number. 1% which is 130 billion euros, half the gdps and that suggests

impact on the european economy. this is an ongoing project. our own research is getting more sophisticated on it. between the first edition in march and the second edition that came out in july, we were able to upwardly adjust it from 386 billion to 1984 billion. that was another work that had been done on the single market. and the more general of goods and services and capital.

we have done quite a bit of work and they alluded to it. what the opportunity cost is like of averting a future financial crisis either by existing measures or future measures that have been taken and gained. we had a conservative analysis on this, but it builds up i would say to over 100 billion. we have different headings. number five, a common minimum unemployment keem for the area. six, improved coordination of fiscal policy and 7 a common deposit guarantee keem. those are ambitious projects and supported by the majority of all the others in the parliament. the potential gain could be considerable. number nine, we have taken the view expressed in the impact

study done in the european commission of other minor ones. we have energy markets where it could be considerable. so that gives you a flavor of the work that is being done. it will be deepened and widened. progressively. it's only part of a more general support given to the committees. they are interested in how it affects their particular area. that can be in terms of the gdp gain, but very, very important to people concerned. we put a gain of 7 billion, but for the people concerned it is

incal you can labl. >> people might be involved in a cross borter divorce to get only 100 billion. it's a life-changing event. not all of what the eu does and it is quite an important part of making the case for why european solutions can bring benefits to people. they can also result in the economy becoming more efficient. thank you. >> now we will open it up for your comments and questions. state your name and affiliation

and wait for the microphone. i will calling on you. who is first? the lady up front there. >> thank you. leandra bernstein, reporter. this question is about european relations with russia currently and the impact that the product bands and the sanctions had on the european union. it's tough to say the economy because of the different states. i would like to get your analysis of how that relationship with russia is playing out how it might play out.

on the economic field. >> we will go way towards the back of the room with a couple of them in the center. >> i'm mindy riser, vice president of the global peace service usa. i don't need to tell you that there is a backlash in certain quarters against what is seen as overreaching government regulation. i wonder if you can talk about public opinion to a world where there might be greater coordination and consolidation and how you think your report might be seen by the various publics and the member states. >> go ahead and pass it to your

neighbor. >> i'm nicholas break at the national democratic institute where we work in candidate countries and potential candidate countries. my question is obviously the resources of the parliament on analysis like this. it is limited to the existing number states, but has there been an effort to calculate the benefits of non-europe to potential countries where the referendums might be forth coming by this type of analysis? thank you. >> klaus? do you want to start? >> i start with the question on public opinion on regulation and on legislation. my view is we should be

unideological about regulation or legislation. because if you have a general view that less is better or that more is better, therefore we try to introduce a mechanism to judge on the individual case and see whether there is benefit or legislation or not. if you hold the view that less is better, you might victim not use important benefits that are out there. equally if you believe that more is better, you might permit that. that's to make the debate less ideological and have a look whether a proposed set of legislation or regulation is bringing benefits. it is not very useful to hold to

view that always legislation or regulation is a burden. if you replace them by one, this might be something positive or not. to be seen on the individual case. on the calculations of the sanction specifically and i'm not aware of that, nevertheless you find, for example, a very interesting product not produced by the unit that calculates the effects of russia and had to be replaced by other source, what are the costs for the member states or the citizens and what

are the losses for russia. are these available or not? such a document is available on our website and that's something that can be interesting and helpful in that situation. i surprise myself that we had produced this. they had relatively little cost. not only on the services, independently what is then your position on the issue, it allows members to make a more informed

choice on policy. >> specifically in response to the question on the sanctions, we have not in the research service done analysis yet of the financial implications. we work in this area in response to requests from committees of the european parliament. the committees have not been meeting for the last three or four months because we have been having elections and the parliament is only reconvened. if we requested to do such work, we would do it. i think the atmosphere is mixed at the moment. this is a very lively debate about the benefits and the costs of intication. they have to do with the

identity questions and the tone if you like of the elections in may. what we are trying to do is to encourage policy making and to try to have a discussion of the issues. to get away from that and drill down into the likely detail. that is of course against the grain of the way the public conversation is being conducted. we consider that's an important public service that should be available to our members and committees. that's of the research service modelled on the congressional purchase service. our clients are essentially members of the european parliament and the committees they serve on.

that say difference to the approach, but we are responsive and they are the ones if you like to reflect the views of the public. >> we will be looking into that. the debate about membership does have dimension and other things being equal, a new member state might expect to share proportionately profile from the existing advantages of eu membership. that is occurring in scotland about whether or not it would be advantageous or not, but if it had to reapply to the european union and a lot of figures have

been banded around in that context. we tend to be careful about getting involved in debates. >> did i understand that the parliament has really dealt with the issue? it would trigger research on your part. it's a big debate. >> i think what he said was the parliament stopped at the beginning of april and we had the elections in may. in july we reconsidered it parliament, but the normal daily work of parliament has not restarted. it will restart for the next five years.

he has not done that because it has been containing and reconstituted. of course a lot of the general reflection work in the services have continued and you will find interesting pieces that i have from russia. requests can only come when they are working and they are restarting to work next week. >> you are reacting to committee and members and rather than proactively looking for parliament. >> the cost of studies that have been mentioned here, they are in fact commissioned by individual committees sec teariates.

>> they are the committees asking for it they demand a lot of work. that's also very important for the legitimacy issue because the parliament consists of members and the members basically should express where they would like to as the initiative. >> we will take a few more questions. >> my first question will be about the security. you are the area and the

computer varies from country to country. what do you think can be done on the european level? my second question would be that you mentioned further integration was here. what can be done? >> could you repeat the last part of the question? >> yeah. it's about further integration and what can actually be done. >> i'm an independent business consultant and many countries, the last several years they had

many successes and total failures. how they helped them recover. a few more specific things. thank you. >> i will take one more question on the right side. kent hughes in the back? >> kent hughes at the wilson center. thank you for the report and the entering presentation. two quick questions. i noticed in the comment security and defense policy you have significant efficiency gains, but there was no mention of nato or the potential for transatlantic commonality that might add to the efficiency gains and second as impressive as the efficiency games are, one wonders with an even improved common market and the added competition, if this won't drive added innovation that overtime might swamp the efficiency

gains. >> in the process of preparing the component of this report, a special custom on europe report done on common foreign security policy to give the official title, we went to nato and had quite an indepth discussion about that. there is a growing convergence on these issues. this was a very short sisnopsis here. 2 1/2 pages long. there is a much longer report of about 60 pages that goes into greater depth. that's available on the footnote. the author of that report is here in the audience, something

that can be followed up afterwards. there is a rapid son vergence in europe among nato and there has to be deeper moves towards pooling and sharing. the defense budgets have declined in the european union is overtaking if you like the potential gains from that goes to what they mean about the citizens and practical benefits if we are going to be an environment where the security is more what we have enjoyed in recent decades, making sure we

get maximum bang for the buck. that's critically important. it seems that nato and the eu are on the same page here. the question is how quickly they can move. you have u that him inity that makes it difficult to overcome the barriers. that raises a more general question which is where you have qualified the voting in the minsters in the eu. it is easier to get agreement on the removal of the barriers to free movement and the progress that has been made over the last 20 years or so. it has been dependent on the fact that it was possible to overcome protectionist vetoes that have stymied the situation running up to the mid-to late 1980s.

it's important where the voting applies. there would be a regression to the battle ways of the 70s and the decision making. those are my comments if you like on defense. this raises the question on terrorism. these are one of the founding principals and something they attached a lot of experience to. the balance between free movement on one hant and security on the other is partly resolved by having ex-personnel frontier to the european union. that's not always easy where you have a normal frontier. that balance is at the core of decision making and the fact

that more and more decision making that qualified voting in respect of the external frontier, not all, but much of it made it easier for the union to come up with coherent response in how will that help the member states to recover? the figure is on the front and if we were able to move overtime, the gains would respect render the economy more efficient and hopefully less prone to the kind of financial crisis that we have had in the past. if they are flanking the policies and would specifically pp safeguard the position against another recurrence of europo zone debt crisis. this raises a much more general

set of questions about the nature of cycles and monetary union which we don't deal with. this is a target and specific set of particular tell uses and the whole range of areas to assess the benefit. it is not at all in competition to anybody else. surprisingly these are issues in the committee rather than in the subcommittee of security and defense. the question is should we develop helicopters? or could this be done together? i think increasingly member states are so much under pressure financially that these

have to be tackled if let's say a positive out come can be expected? there is no known or contradiction between the different elements and all the budgets are so much under pressure that we cannot afford to be inefficient in the sector development or we pay with enormous cuts in capacity. economics is not an exact science, but you would have three ways to recreate growth. the one is tiskal stimulus, but

that's not very much available. they reached their debt limits. that's very difficult. you have two possibilities still available. one i would say is this and that's create additional efficiencies through european corporations. that can be very painful. if it is true that it is available on the european level, at least something that could make that burden more acceptable or could ease the adaptation process that needs otherwise to be conducted on the national level. there was also the question about the integration for the

union. let's say these are suggests for integration the question is, is there benefit and if there is important benefit and if it can be proven, probably that's an area where we can work more closely and taking it out of the ideological discussion which from my point of view is very penitentiary. major steps are only happening by necessity. you could see it in the financial services area. everybody was with it back to the wall before they agreed to take major steps. basically looking into the others. so we are not in the face of

ideology driven, but by necessity or precise benefits. >> thank you. >> we will call in a couple more folks. just a minute. i wanted to ask you for the next round if you can break down this staggering number of digical benefits of 340 billion you'ros. that you have really dwarfed many of the other components or lawyers that you looked at including the transatlantic trade agreement. i wonder if on that you can compare your findings or put those into context of other assessments which of course has become increasingly politically contested in europe as well as here. let's get a couple of other questions. irene, i think you had a question in the back there.

>> i'm looking forward. is it live? >> to reading your study and detail. >> introduce yourself, police. >> irene. >> the 6,000 pages. >> the shorter version. i wanted to pick up on the comment you made about the absence of ideology and really the need to examine these initiatives from a more let's say not democratic, but scientific viewpoint. still, even if we agree they should not play a and it's debatable, but even if we did, the uniyon elections happen every so often. i wanted to ask you if you could

comment from your standpoint, what kind of a message do you think the technocrats and economists, and i'm one, so i empathize. what kind of a message did the may elections send to the european parliament members who had this very wonderful idea here. who could possibly take issue with the efficiency gains. no one. how do you see the peoples of europe. they voted and tried to send a message. ideology decides how do you think the how do you perceive these innish can i haves and

what are they telling the representatives all be it the representatives have limited powers. what is your sense? >> about your own product here. go for a couple more questions. right there. >> your argument numbers are very interesting. somewhere in your 6,000 pages do you sort those numbers by groups and nations? >> very interesting study. my question is for each block of the map on page eight, is there a timeline we're looking at for the specific area of integration to be completed? >> maybe in front of you there. >> thank you. american university.

thank you very much for a retrospective because this is picking up something from 25 years ago. . my two questions would be 25 years ago, the eu was smaller. we now have a lot more regulatory. how are you going to really put this on the table given that there are legal traditions in europe, a civil war with different expectations about insurance, unemployment insurance, welfare states. they really do vary historically. my second comment relates to the one behind, which would be this is all about efficiency gains, which goes back to the point of innovation, but more interestingly there's nothing here about the losers. 25 years ago the losers had structural funds. money spent, what will happen now? >> thanks a lot. very good questions.

you have some of the leading europeanists in the room here. we'll take those questions. >> on the first one, how do we interpret this? i think this was a clear request for delivery. and outcome and sometimes we are good on process and not so good on outcomes. this tries not to focus on process. this tries to focus on outcomes. of course, it depends afterwards how it's going to be done. a specific piece of legislation can look very differently and also in the process of the negotiation a lot of the benefits can get lost. but it tries to put a focus on outcomes rather than process.

for me also an important message of the elections is, and i think that's relevant for this, that of course, the benefits o of integration are sometimes very unevenly distributed in society. and where some might profit more, others might profit less or not profiting at all. i think part of this has been expressed in the new come to sgs of parliament and the extreme sides of policy. so i think those more better educated and more internationalist whereas not such a good education and who fear that the competition

globally is difficult for them fear that those benefits are not arriving. so i think your question is correct, which is also why we need to, let's say as outlined here, a need for modernizing agenda, but there's also clearly a need for protection of those which are less able to compete and for me this is one of the messages of the european elections, which could be relevant in very different policy areas. from immigration to other questions. the average european does not exist. which is exactly now my answer because the average european does not exist. we have very different europeans because they are different

capacities to compete in such a more open system. how to cope with different traditions. in parliament we are specialized in this very difference. working 24 languages, 28 nationalities. i think we have about 160 national parties that are working together in eight different groups. so we can bring these different tradition together. it's maybe more a difficulty, but i don't have the impression that the new members are especially adding these difficulties because sometimes the imgregs is that the world was 15 and still be complicated with 28. i u don't have this impression.

especially in the more recent member states the idea of the benefit of integration is much more present. it i read a figure that 20 years ago basically living standards in ukraine and in poland on average per person was the same. n nowadays, average income of policy according to the figure i read is five times the amount of ukrainians. so obviously integration is accompanied with a positive experience. and that's maybe also part of the story of why in ukraine suddenly people are no longer accepting to not be part of that experience. demonstrating this european flex for association agreement. i mean have we ever heard of

something like this that people are risking their lives in order to be associated with the european union but that's what's been happening in ukraine because it's the practical effects when looking at their neighbors as seeing we're only extremely physical. >> in respect to the single market, in effect the analysis has provided in the document itself if you look at page 32 in the footnote, you'll see a listing of all the various, many various analysis that have been done about the potential economic gains that might flow from a successful conclusion with various think tanks,

consultant sis and other bodies that have contributed to this. we decided to take the cpr, the center for economic policy in the baseline, which was a specific and comprehensive piece of research done at the request of the european commission which comes with a figure of 68.2 billion. we adjusted them to around $60 billion a year. t tip covers a variety of component components. s that projection of a successful outcome as we can see it, so we can be cautious in the way that we have approached this. on the single market like wise,

you can see and we have adjust ed that figure down to around 340 billion because we think in practice it would take a long time to realize these gains and involve enormous transformation of national law in various ways which brings the time scale here. the characteristic is it's used as 5 or ten years. but ts the and the consensus

that the benefit is more in the region of about 2% so that's one of the reasons why we have multiply down figures which come out from simpling a gra gags. that's a judgment that's made on that. and it's based on. a practical appreciation of european law which legal systems, legal differences. here i rather agree with what clous said in respect of the ease r or difficulty of the legislation. it's easier to pass law over time. even though the eu has widened.

partly because of the qualified voting in the council of ministers but partly to do with the fact that there's culture of people not wanting to be defeated. it seems to be defeated in the decision making process. one of the results of that is although there's been an increase in the number of objections with contested votes and all those contested votes in some states to withdraw their objections and permit the thing to be if possible adopted by consensus. the difficulty you also see this in the length of decision making. if you look at the more recent statistics in the last five years of the relationship between the council of

ministering and european parliame parliament, the average time it's taking to adopt european union law is declining rather than extending. partly because more is prenegotiated in effect. partly because the european commission is more cautious in the proposals it makes. and partly because i think the two partners in the process have got better at the negotiating process. the difficulty therefore, is not so much in terms of getting law passed. most by the european commission is adopted around -- it's adopted with a wide degree of consensus between the plit cat groups over two-thirds. and the time scale is declining. the problem is rather to do with implementation and enforcement. it's to do with what happens when legislation which the members states have agreed to

actually hits when the rubber hits the road in terms of the difficulties and the logistics of implementing things on the ground. and that's one of the reasons why the european parliament we also wanted to strengthen administrative support on implementation issues to assist committees in scrutinizing to which the legislation is being effectively applied or applied at all. and draw attention to weaknesses and successes in that field. however, the union of law and that the culture particularly the new member states is a culture of wanting to make a success of the application of that law. and so it's easy from a distance to assume that there will be irreconcilable differences. most law gets adopted and most european law sooner or later

once adopted is applied and part of the role of the european parliament is to ensure for whatever reason proper attention is drawn to that and a process can occur around it. >> good, let's take a final round of questions. we're quickly running out of time so i will ask for brief questions and even more brief responses. >> i'm from germany and currently a fellow at the american institute of contemporary german studies at johns hopkins. i had the privilege to be in westminster in january and to participate in one of those conferences run on. now when you briefly mentioned that this material, which i consider very valuable could be used by -- was used by

parliament, was there a specific request from britain for a larger order or did you make a special effort in supporting your british colleagues? >> thank you. >> i'm retired from brookings. part one is the european parliament have a liaison office here in washington. i think it's the only office you have in the world and it's the only example of the parliament having an embassy overseas. my first part question, what has been the biggest success of your cooperation with this office in congress? second part question, what's currently the biggest challenge? >> thank you. all the way in the back.

>> last friday at jackson haul, a speech was concluded with the following sentence, quote, the long-term cohesion of the euro area depends on each country, each country in the union achieving a sustain bli high level of employment, unquote. do you know how each country in the union would achieve a sustainablely high level of unemployment? if not, don't we have to contemplate the possible breakup of the eurozone? >> i think there was one more question right there had in the center that we'll take. >> i have two questions. my first question is with more europe or the road to a more integrated europe cost more for

european taxpayers. i'm asking about monetary cost. and also can you e elaborate on the digital market given that the u.s. and china are at the forefront of the market now. >> great questions. let me conclude all of that with a question of why is this report of interest to an american public to an american audience. who will start? >> we didn't receive during the course of the election campaign any requests as far as i'm aware to do any particular analysis from a member of the european parliament. remember our constituency or members of the european parliament and committees to do a particular piece of work on the benefits of uk exit from the european union. i alluded in my previous remarks to some academic work done in

this and i think we're going to e see growth in such work and the fact that various organizations, various think tanks, notably the confederation has done work on this and has tried to influence the debate. so that's the situation as it were in terms of the work that we have been doing, which the answer is none so far. why should the work that we're doing be of interest to an american audience? i think because many of the issues that we're dealing with here are about the issue of how far it makes sense to do things on a continental scale. in other words, the debate that you have in washington or perhaps more widely outside washington about the relationship between d.c. and the individual states is mirrored in the debate that we have an about where responsibility should lie for

addressing concrete questions. in most of the areas that are listed in these 25 fields, policy competence lies at eu level. in some areas it's shared and some is the preserve of the individual member states. but you have a lively discussion of what was referred to about subsidiary of the appropriate level to resolve a problem. this debate here that's set out through these 25 different areas is analysis of where it may make sense to do more at european level. there may also be areas of less european level or makes no difference whether a solution is found at national or european level. but the discussion that's been o occurring in public discourse in recent years has been hugely slanted back to the member states. there are certain areas where it

makes sense for europe to coordinate together and in some cases it can best be done or may need to be done by the force of supernational law adopted by the institutions at union level. >> this document could be interesting for britain because it's a kind of update for the eternal market. and when a special situation here because in agriculture, we are completely integrated but it's 1% of the economy. we are quite integrated in industry but in industry is 25% of the economy is shrinking. there are new services and digital is definitely a part of this where we are not very

integrated. so we are currently in danger of losing the internal market unless we updated to to new areas. and i think that's what's at stake. there are i think it is of special interest for britain because britain has focused on the internal market. on our parliament law office, i see what has brought to us many things especially i see a much better understanding and knowledge of regulatory agencies that might come as a surprise. but when you compare the two systems, then in many cases where we are legislating in the european parliament, the congress is not legislating. but in fact, these are decisions of the regulatory agencies. so we have covered new partners. we were maybe not fully aware before chrks are highly

competent, which are present, which are interested. and that's something which was not available to us. i think we have mutually developed over the last years that we are relevant. sometimes in this system, you only get some attention if you have some nuisance capacity and that's even rational because why should you devote time on something or somebody who is not a a problem? so the votes in parliament and the new role of parliament in international trade has clearly put parliament here on the agenda. it's relatively quickly understood because of the role congress is playing in the washington system. so people in the u.s. know that they are an independent system

in the european union system and has to be taken care of. i think it's also maybe that we have been a little bit ahead of our time with this initiative because when you have a close look, we like to call it a free trade agreement, but 80% of the benefits of ttip are not in duti duties. they are in other burdens to trade, which are very often regulatory. might call it regulatory, might call it legislative. so in fact we are finding out and we have let's say maybe understood this a little bit earlier, this relationship which in the past could be run by

executives, regular taters and legislators are now moving to the center stage. you cannot address those issues without congress and you cannot successfully address them without the european parliament. so this is a very operational investment, which we have made over here and we are also learning a lot because we try to build up continental democracy in the european union. that's what's successfully and sometimes less successfully been done in the united states. on the question of every country in fact has to deal with its own unemployment, in fact, the fiscal capacity on the european union level is very much limited. that's true. so redistributions through this

is also therefore limited. so it's true that every country has to assure its own competitiveness. we knew this from the beginning, but we knew it much better and i may be leave it there. on the final issue, and competitiveness and digital, why is it so important and why is it also so beneficial? because probably we have fallen a bit behind. when you look 15 years ago, these were european companies, which were dominating the market. but the situation has very much moved on. and therefore it's important in the digital area also all the legislative preconditions are created. my conviction is we're not speaking about the digital

economy. we're speaking about the economy. it is not a separate sector. step by step, different sectors of the economy are digital liezed. so it's disappearing because it's digital liezed. my$íp nobody has to check my b pressure because it's done automatically and digitally. record shops do not exist and cds are reduced. so what we're seeing is not the economy is becoming different. it's crucial that also the european legislative framework is modernized in this regard. >> thank you. with that, we are at the end of

our session. i think we are indebted to our panel. for a very thoughtful discussion and a really rich report that i recommend to all of you. it's available on the website as a resource. i thank you for staying with us for an hour and a half. and now you can go out back into this wonderful washington afternoon and warm up again. it's a little freezing in here. apologies for the temperatures. thank you for joining us. we're adjourned. thank you. [ applause ] tonight at 8:00 mm on "american history tv," how presidents make decisions with former white house chiefs of staff and advisers to presidents reagan, clinton, bush and president obama.

and just before 10:00 p.m., the presidents and the cia with author and intelligence expert melvin goodman as he describes the relationship between the white house and the cia from the truman years to today. that's coming up tonight on "american history tv" on c-span 3. the center for the study of islam and democracy recently held a discussion on the islamic militant group known as isis. foreign policy specialists look at the rise of radicalism in iraq and syria and the u.s. responds to the islamic state in the region. >> good afternoon, i'm the president of the study of islam

and democracy. it's a great pleasure to welcome all of you to this event today. of course, to welcome our panel to this very important debate. as we all know, politics and democracy are the art of resolving political conflicts through peaceful means. however, when there is no democracy and when politics fades, then people resort to violence to resolve those conflicts. it was established exactly 15 years ago in 1999 and those of you who remember in the '90s we had a similar civil war in algeria which resulted in the death of our over 250,000 people who are killed in nigeria in the '90s. that was one of the main reason

we established to in 1999 to try to promote the idea of democracy, the idea of political resolving political conflicts through peaceful means through elections, through dialogue, through consensus building rather than through violence. so today we have a similar crisis in iraq, syria. certainly also in egypt where we had a military coup that removed an elected president, the first ever elected president in egypt was removed a year ago by the military. a similar crisis is also looming in libya where we have a lot of of violence and conflict also in libya. the only solution, the only alternative to violence is democracy. that is our main message. that's what we have been trying

to do and trying to work on for the last 15 years since 1999. it's the only alternative to violence, to extremism is dialogue, is peaceful coexistence, consensus building and the art of negotiating until a solution can be found. today we invited some of the main experts on this topic and in the region so inform us and enlighten us about what's going on and what is the main reason for the rise of isis and extremism in general and what are the best ways to promote peace and dialogue and coexistence. with that, i'd like to turn it over to dr. bill lawrence, who will moderate this panel. thank you very much, and welcome and we hope you have a good afternoon or a good couple of hours with us today.

thank you. [ applause ] >> my name is william lawrence. i'm the director for csid. a couple of administrative matters first. i'd like to remind everyone that this is being live streamed and broadcast on c-span 1 so we'd like everyone to speak in a microphone so that everyone can hear you. we will also be accepting questions from the q&a on twitter. so we hope to e get to as many of those as we can. but we will privilege the questions in the room. the topic for today is clear. and we have assembled one of the best panels that i could imagine on this topic. not specifically experts on iraq and syria, but on the regional

ne normal nonthat are creating the regional crisis that we were living in today. i'm going to just mention that isis has many names. we chose isis because it's the one used these days. it's also referred to as isil by the president and others. the it calls itself the islamic state, an attribution many don't want to give it. so we settled on isis today. and it's one phenomenon. it has over 40 nationalities of flowers as we have heard today. the full bios are available online. so i will only summarize certain

s aspects of them. one of the leading voices on islam in the world. he's a university professor at georgetown. former head of the middle east studies organization and many organizations. he's published 45 books translated into languages including weaker. institution. he's the former research director so he's been in the field and will help us with that perspective. he has a new book out entitled temptations of power, islamists and democracy in a new middle east. this is one of the reasons we invited him. if you follow him on twitter, you quickly realize as some publications have named that his twitter account is one of the few dozen most important in the region for understanding what's going on just from last night there were several solutions for fixing syria.

he's got quite a stream there. it's very good to follow him. michelle dunn is an associate, the founding director of atlantic council. and a former specialist on middle east affairs at the u.s. state department and at the white house. her recent article on the politics of alienation in egypt was the inspiration for this the title of this conference and writes pieces on the region just to name two she's written, "the baby, the bath water in the middle east." a senior fellow for the intelligence. research for the foreign policy forum. he's also visiting lecturer at

princeton. and is a member of strategic studies. his most recent book co-written with james stein burg is reassurance and resolve relations in the 21st century. he just flew in from beijing yesterday. he has a previous recent book on foreign policy and has made over 3,000 appearances on radio and tv since 9/11. so you have seen him before even if you don't remember. with that, i will turn over the floor to professor john and thank you for coming today. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. i'm delighted to be here. the chinese government approved the translation of the book in question, but the weegers did the translation and the chinese never approved it, which tells you something about theí there. i would also note that there were three georgetown people on the panel.

if i can arrange for an honorary doctorate we would make a sweep. the challenge is in addressing isis. i would sometimes put the word defeating, but i don't think we'll see that for quite some time. it will be short and long-term responses. probably be talking on the short, but i will also talk about the long-term. except that the long-term people have been talking about that who do analysis for the last 20 to 25 years. some of those factors and for a variety of reasons, they don't get addressed. bashar al assad's military response to the threat of democracy wave in the arab spring, both radicalized the situation and heightened sectarian sunni, shia divisions as well as we should include

christian in there too. the inability or reluctance of the u.s. and the eu inability very strong to respond early on with significant assistance to the moderate syrian opposition forces and the oppositions failure to unite to work together. in iraq maliki's installing of a d dominated government, political marginalization increased a polarized situation and sectarian violence that would result in alienated sunnis welcoming isis. gulf funding of jihadists to fight proxy wars against assad and one would also talk about refer to the overthrow of the democrat democratically elected government in egypt. made the situation much worse.

at the same time, the failure early on in syria of the u.s. and the eu to become significantly engaged and work closely with regional allies like turkey and qatar to support m moderate forces had a ripple effect. the u.s. and eu underestimated the threat from syria in 2011, so too it did so in iraq more recently. what about isis islamic pedigree? like al qaeda and other militants, isis offers a militant warped and distorted ideology, or religious rational to recruit and motivate many of the fighters. much of what they do violates islamic law, but that's typical what terrorist will say is the usual laws are fine, but these are unusual times.

see see that argument during the bush administration with regard to the war on global terrorism and discussions about whether or not just war. whether or not regulations that have to do with torture or how we approach water boarding. one needs to think about the fact that the laws were made for wartimes. that's the way terrorist groups attempt to spin and say how they can get to do acts of terrorism, laugter civilians, beheadings, killing of innocent muslims and christians. but there are similarities -- while there are similarities between isis and other groups in their ideological world view, there are also distinctive differences. isis seeks to create a state to govern. not just to dream of or speak

of, but to create and impose their version of a transnational call fate. with its pash bed version of law and order. they are more ruthless in driving out suppressing and executing shia and kurds. religious leaders and others who disagree with them as well as minorities as we know. and imposing in many ways their extraordinarily violent brand of islam. they also force populations to pledge their allegiance. but is religion the primary driver of the so-called and also a primary driver with regard to the domestic, if you will, populations that come from europe or from the u.s. or even other countries to fight with isis.

since this is going to be on c-span, i won't thank you for the bombay sapphire. while religion and islam here is an important factor and plays a role to legit mate, recruit and motivate, studies in most movements like isis show that the primary drivers ought to be found elsewhere. as in the recent past, so too today this has remained true for europeans and americans, for example, who joined isis. studies by the european network of experts on violent radicalization of which the americans on that as well as those by terrorism experts show that in most cases, religion is not the primary source but rather a long list of grievances. and grievances that are seen

across society. even by those who may not be radicalized, but will be anti-american. so they go for grievances that are not specific and peculiar to just a segment of the population or just to terrorists themselves. the drivers include moral outrage, disaffection, peer pressure, search for new identity, sense of meaning, purpose and belonging. and these drivers and conclusions come out of studies from five european countries as well as some studies done on the u.s. living in a hostile society and also seeing a hostile world as saying, what are their governments like, but also what role does the u.s. does the eu play in its support or in its

not choosing choosing not to put pressure on its authoritarian allies and the things they do. and so there issues o of disenfranchisement, a heightened political consciousness, social justice and the notion of emancipation since many see countries as occupied. either occupied by foreigners or occupied by regimes and elites who are kept in place and hold back the majority in the country. in a recent blog cited a briefing report going back to 2008. which noted far from the religious, a large number of those involved do not practice their faith regularly. many lack literacy and could be regarded as novemberists. analysts concluded that a

religious identity protects against violent radicalization. this is interesting because if you look at data in the u.s., you'll see for a significant number of americans, they regard islam -- they regard muslims as more prone to violence and they haven't even worse opinion of the religion of islam, which they see is being the prime source for that easy acceptance. we know that some of the islam phobic groups make that kind of statement. they will be more susceptible or prone to that attraction. i can remember being at a briefing -- a closed briefing for a senior military and there was somebody born and raised in the region and who commented that even secular turks, it

somehow vibrates in their historical genes. especially when you tile it into the appeal. but it's also a ludicrous statement. what also -- next he makes the point going from 2008 to o 2014 and talks about the use of two jihadi wanna bees. before they set out to fight, they order ed two books on amazon. he goes into what books do you think? islam for dummies and koran for dummies. the anecdote underscores an important point. many have little actual knowledge of islam and have not been primarily -- and that the

primary drivers are the grievances. how about beheadings? we know they have been used by many. it was estimated if you look at states that post resolution nar france beheaded some 40,000 people. it's used in certain countries, but we know it's been used to terrorize. so we know that mexican cartels have used it as well as in the past. that the actual beheading because of the nature of it and even putting the head on a spike, et cetera. that's been seen as an act that's particularly will cause -- will terrorize people. that's been there. but it's interesting when you look at videos that were put out by isis between 2006 and 2013, a lot of times you have citations of the koran. what you see in far more

predominantly are -- this is a problem when you read from a paper. are basically grievances being articulated as the main reason. the main reason for killing civilians, grievances against individuals and groups, iraq soldier, government workers who are seen as as part of the problem. moreover, the use of the text and slaughter of military and civilians and other policies fly in the face, as i said earlier, of prescriptions. they talk about the killing civilians, et cetera. or a lot of the the other things that they choose to do. stated intelligen ed intenses, e

activity in places like northwest syria, southern iraq, jordan, lebanon, southern turkey. i was talking with a couple people today from indonesia about some of my friends writing a month ago very concerned about isis and its ideology and also its presence and its recruitment in indonesia. isis will be tested on its ability to hold areas now under its control while attempting to also expand its territory. at the end of the day, the peoples of the region, syria, iraq, turkey, jordan, the gulf states do have the primary challenge and responsibility to deal with what are primarily their problems. however, a substantial international commitment and involvement by the u.s. in consort with allies is also needed. at president obama considers new strikes, the white house has

begun a diplomatic campaign to enlist allies and neighbors in the region to increase the support for syria's moderate opposition. one would say rather late. but to provide and support for mi military operations. but in the long run if we wish to break the cycle, whether it's isis or other movements in the future, that have existed in recent decades as a former cia expert and an excellent and well-published scholar on the middle east and politics, notes in a piece on avenging james foley, the conditions and enduring grievances in muslim countries that terrorists movements have exploited must also be addressed.6nmgv foreign boots on the ground, dictators supported by the u.s. out of convenience, a failure to end a half century of israeli occupation of pal still yan

lan lands, the treatment of palestinians as a paradigm for treatment of other muslims seen that way. the u.s. employment of the region as an eternal cockpit for proxy wars. isn't that a great phrase. you have the gulf states, or some of them, involved in supporting proxy wars. and then the characterization of the u.s. i would end with this note. recent events continue the trajectory of u.s. and eu failure to take a strong principle stand. for example, in egypt on the military coup, massive violation of human rights of slaughter of civilians and the the restoration of authoritarian rule. and the recognition in calling it a democracy in a country well on the road to democracy. and at the same time, the issue of the war in gaza and not speaking out and condemning it in the way that it needed to be condemned. not simply saying at times that we're very upset by this action,

but the massive slaughter of gazaens compared to the israeli side and the attempt to not only wiping out all those people but destr destroying the infrastructure of the country violates international law and human rights. and rather you have a situation where in public media we're told that benjamin netanyahu approaches our administration about supporting him in avoiding having to go to an international court. i think all of those things create conditions that remain strong in the future. massive killing of civilians in destruction of gaza's infrastructure alienates sectors of democrats, it doesn't mean they are going to turn to violence. also at#>hñ the same time contre

to the radicalization and recruitment of disaffected youth in others. thank you. [ applause ] >> hello, everyone. thank you, bill and thank you to csid for having me. csid is a great organization. they were talking about democracy in the arab world before it was cool. and have done some incredible work in tunisia. so i'm going to start off in a different way than i originally intended. this has been bothering me for a little while now. this whole kind of with the rise of isis and its savagery, this kind of response that, oh, well,

isis has nothing to do with islam and islam is a peaceful religion. this islamist piece narrative is starting to grade on me a little bit. and i think that, yes, the majority of muslims don't share -- the vast majority of muslimss don't share isis's ideology, but at the end of the day, islam doesn't exist as god intended because we don't have access to that. we can only interpret. so ultimately islam is a construct. and construct aren't peaceful. they aren't violent. they are what muslims will them to be. the fact of the matter is even though they are a minority, there are muslims who do believe this is the correct interpretation of islam. but the reason i bring this up is i feel white-collar when we bring up this islamist peace narrative, we're trying to say this is inexplicable, it's evil,

these are fringe terrorists and i feel that that leads us to underestimate the nature of the threat we're facing. i think we have to take isis very, very seriously for a number of reasons. this was also, i think, something we saw in john kerry's statements recently. isis is evil, but he sadistist is inexplicably evil. we have to try to under the origin of isis. it came out of a particular context. it was not inevitable. and sometimes i think obama administration officials suggest that there's nothing we could have done to stop this. no, this was not only had these conversations in early 2012. i remember them. meeting with senior administration officials telling them expolicely the longer we

wait if we don't do more now, it's going to come to haunt us and the extremists are going to gain ground and specifically isis will gain ground. so what's unique about isis? they are a fascinating group because unlike al qaeda central and other runners, they take governance pretty seriously. and they dispense justice. they run local administrations, they take care of the water and electricity. they distribute funds to help the poor. they also have on the more brutal side, they have the kind of religious morality police that go around and make sure that women are covered and other things like that. so it is brutal.

they are vicious. but they actually hold territory and they run territory. and in many ways, they are more effective than other rebel groups in running the territories that they control. and this is especially the case when you have a total vacuum and when you have various rebel groups that are fighting with each other over the control of local government in a lot of parts of syria. there was a fascinating piece in the website jihadology. where talking about the experience of isis rule in a city in syria. they go in detail about how the residents of the city view isis rule and how many of them may not agree, most of them may not agree with isis's ideology. they see it preferable to the

alternative precisely because isis has been able to restore law and order, crime has gone down, and things actually run. so as long as you follow the very harsh rules and don't oppose them, there might actually be a better situation than the alternative, which in a lot of parts of syria is chaos. we have to understand the governance of isis and not just see them as r your traditional terrorist group. that is why they have been able to retain some local support in the territory that they control. and now they control in a territory that they control we're talking about around 4 million iraqis and syrians live under isis rule. just think about that for a second. that's remarkable. and it's a piece of territory as larm as the uk. so there have been -- the other

thing is there aren't a lot of models of islamic governance. and the bar is quite low too. so we have had the taliban, we have had sudan, but what isis has been able to do in a short amount of time actually is presenting a different model of islamic governance when the other models have failed. i'll get into that when i talk about mainstream islam and the reallytive failure. let me just say one more thing about the kind of governance here. this was in the jihadology isis is more brutal than pretty much anyone else in the region, but they are less arbitrary. so it's more predictable. when we're trying to understand why authoritarianism is so alienating and can push people towards the isis model, for

example, egypt, syria, any of the countries we want to go through the list on, are less brutal and oppressive. but you never know where the reds lines are. it's arbitrary. in some ways, that is the most terrifying thing. not the repression, but the fear and uncertainty. and again, in this article, a point was made that there is something consistent about isis rule. they aren't arbitrary. citizens know what to expect. which is, i think, a very important point. all of this leads me to kind of say that this is actually what makes isis so frightening and so scary. and not easily defeated. that is why we have to complicate the simplistic narrative of terrorism, evil. if we want to confront the enemy, we have to understand what they are providing and what they are offering.

i am happy that my colleague, professor esposito, mentioned egypt. this is one of the reasons i was very concerned about the coup in egypt last year. and we knew this. we cannot pretend that we did not know this was coming. we cannot pretend that we would not know the facts. the coup in egypt, for all their faults and no one has to like the muslim brotherhood, but they were democratically elected. they were ousted -- strengthened the narrative of groups like isis. they were able to say and this is what they do say -- they say that the islamic state is not possible through democracy. it is not possible through elections. it is only possible through the force of arms. that is their narrative. you know what? that is a more compelling narrative because of what happened in places like egypt and because of what is happening now in places like libya.

there is essentially a war being waged now against mainstream political islam. mainstream political islam is not good or moderate, necessarily, but it is an alternative to what extremist groups like isis offer. in essence, one of the great failures of the arab spring when we are looking back and doing this postmortem, yes, islamist groups failed. the muslim brotherhood did not govern inclusively. the list goes on. i think the greater failure of the arab spring was a failure of existing regional order. of existing state systems to accommodate islamist participation in the democratic process. islamists were willing to test it out. nowhere in the region have they been allowed to fully govern in the normal, democratic sense.

tunisia is a partial exception. that is going to be an interesting test. if we look at it regionally, that is the basic trend we are talking about. islamists who believe in a democratic process were not given a real opportunity. not to govern, even, just to be part of the political process. that is a bigger story and something i discussed at length in my book. so i will not go into too much detail, but that contrast between mainstream islamists and extremist islamists is very important. as i close up here, i want to make a couple of final points and then a word about u.s. policy. i think this is a very important

point that professor esposito just raised. there is something about the notion of a caliphate, and islamic state, that has a sort of resonance. i do not know to what extent people grasp this. even for someone like me, who grew up in an americanized community, even i would absorb this growing up, this sense that we had been the greatest civilization world had ever seen and then we encountered this precipitous fall from grace. and i use fall from grace for a reason, because it is almost like god had forsaken us. this is something that you hear and it is so much imbued in political discourse in the middle east and among muslims more generally, even among people who are not religious or practicing or whatever else. this kind of sense of humiliation, this gap between what muslims believe they should be and what they are, i think that is at the root of the

conflict that we are seeing. the fact that they are blocked from expressing their grievances through a normal political process -- so the islamic state or isis were very smart in their marketing because they used the term -- think about that, the brand. islam and state. that is compelling. caliphate, that is compelling. al qaeda was not serious about that. they were -- they would talk about it in theory, but were not serious about doing it in practice. the muslim brotherhood talks about it all the time, but it was not seriously going to happen anytime soon. now, for the first time, in a more coherent, compelling way, there is something called the islamic state. again, this kind of precedent is very dangerous because, for the foreseeable future, we are going to see copycats. we have seen them already in nigeria. now, whenever there is a

political vacuum and this is where the failure of governance becomes very important. when you do not have governance or state authority, you have that vacuum. the instant that a lot of extremist people who are less extreme think, maybe we can start our own state in this territory -- so that kind of mental block that groups like the muslim brotherhood and al on u.s. policy. so what can we do? if we take it seriously, we understand the origins of isis' rise. we understand the syrian civil war and what we failed to do their in 2012. what can we do now? i am worried that we are moving into this narrow counterterrorism approach and we do not want to look more broadly at the context.

the fact that kerry has said things like ices will be crushed and obama has said isis is a cancer, that suggests they want to defeat isis. there's a total mismatch between means and ends. if it is our goal to defeat isis what this administration is offering does not even come close. we have to be honest about that. it is remarkable to me that we are talking about air strikes -- there is some talk about boosting the so-called moderate rebels, but it does not sound serious so far. there are no details. this has been announced time and time again over the past two years. we will do more to support the mainstream rebel's. it does not happen in a serious way. perhaps this can be obama's moment where he realizes that if he does not change in a fundamental way, his legacy is not looking good. i hope this can be one of those moments where something clicks

and you will realize that something serious has to be undertaken here. i am skeptical because i think this administration, instinctively, intellectually, sees the middle east in a very different way than i do. so i am not optimistic in that regard. just to kind of close here, what about our allies? because we want to work with them to build this coalition against isis. i think it is very instructive that two of our closest allies, egypt and the uae, have been launching air strikes. not in syria, not in iraq, not against isis, but in libya. that tells you something about priorities. maybe it is obvious, maybe it is not. many of these countries see mainstream political islam, whether you want to call it moderate or not, but groups like the muslim brotherhood, as being more of a fundamental threat than groups like isis.

they have acted accordingly. this means that, assuming the obama administration does not do what i think they should do, and i really hope they prove me wrong, i think we have to accept that the islamic state will be with us for the foreseeable future. three years, five years, 10 years, i do not know how long. it will be more entrenched in the territory it holds. i do not know what the after effects of that are going to be. al qaeda, it is often said, was originally born in the 1950's and 1960's and no one would have dreamed then that those events would reverberate for the coming decades and god knows how long. so i worry that isis looks very bad now, but there are things that we cannot even imagine that might happen in the future because of isis' rise and because we are not willing or able to do enough to stop them.

thank you. [ applause ] . >> good afternoon and thank you to csid for inviting me to be part of the panel. there was a "new york times" editorial today discussing whether the united states should strike isis in syria. the editorial decried the lack of a comprehensive u.s. strategy, saying, "as in iraq, military action alone is not enough to defeat the extremists who gained followers by exploiting oppression against the sunnis." that is part of what we are here to discuss. shadi already opened this question. what is the political and diplomatic western that would have to compleny