thomas pickering served as u.s. ambassador to the united states, russia, india and israel. he spoke at george washington university last month about u.s russia, india and israel. he spoke at george washington university last month about ua, russia, india and israel. he spoke at george washington university last month about ut, russia, india and israel. he spoke at george washington university last month about uio russia, india and israel. he spoke at george washington university last month about u . nations, russia, india and israel. he spoke at george washington university last month about u.s. efforts to promote democracy. this is about an hour and ten minutes. >> thank you all for coming to this event. we're all very excited to hear from the honorable thomas pickering. the panel -- the conversation is going to be moderated by chris kojam who is a visiting professor of the practice of international affairs after serving as the chairman of the national intelligence council at the elliot school he was previously the director of the mid career mipp program and director of the summer foreign policy program.

in government, chris served as a staffer on the house foreign affairs committee, under representative lee h. hamilton as the deputy assistant secretary of state in the bureau of intelligence and research and as deputy director of the 9/11 commission. he was also the president of the 9/11 public discourse project, the commission's follow on public education organization. he served as a senior adviser to the iraq study group. please welcome professor chris kojam. >> it's a real honor to be here tonight, and this is in the very best traditions of this school. a very erudite, accomplished policymakers into the academy, and so that both can benefit. and i'm deeply dedicated to this continuing interaction between scholarship and practice.

so it's a real honor tonight to introduce ambassador thomas pickering. he is a career ambassador. and that is the designation that very few ever receive. only a few in a generation. and ambassador pickering really is a phenomenon. the most accomplished ambassador of his generation. and he joined the foreign service in 1960 and retired for a second time in 2001. and during that period of time, oh, the assignments he had. it's just stunning for me to contemplate him having served as ambassador of the united states of america seven times. in important countries and positions around the world. he was not limited to any single area of expertise. so he served as ambassador in jordan, from '74 to '78.

ambassador in nigeria, '81 to '83. ambassador in el salvador, '83 to '85. israel, '85 to '88. and then he was the ambassador of the united states to the united nations from '89 to '92. in the lead-up to, during and then the aftermath of the gulf war. a hugely important position for the united states, and he represented our government so very well. followed by his service as ambassador to india, and then during the clinton administration, as ambassador to russia. as the first ambassador to russia. his predecessor, of course, had been ambassador to the soviet union. he also served as the undersecretary for political

affairs from 1997 until the last day of 2000. again, a position of exceeding importance in the formulation and implementation of american foreign policy. just on a personal note, i have never seen an individual with more energy and more creativity and more ideas working tirelessly to figure out ways to advance the diplomacy of this great country. he has served with enormous distinction. i can't tell you how fortunate all of you are, as am i, standing here to have the opportunity to hear from ambassador pickering, and he will speak for approximately half an hour, and then he'll take questions and we'll have a bit of a conversation here. so ambassador pickering. [ applause ]

>> thank you. thank you all very much. and chris, thank you for that very elegant, very hyperbolic, wonderful introduction. i'm sure i'm going to have to put that on paper somewhere and keep it. it's a pleasure to be with you, and thank you very much for the invitation to come by tonight. i want to talk about three things. i want to talk a little bit about the changing world situation in terms of some of the key influences on foreign policy. that are new or different or more challenging. and then i'd like to talk about seven major issues, problem areas, challenges, difficulties, that we face with the opportunity perhaps on two or three of those to talk about some policy directions for the future that i think are interesting and possible and

useful and perhaps not yet being fully pursued. then i look forward to your questions and comments, criticisms, ideas, thoughts, whatever. everything but tomatoes. thank you. the world is perhaps going through the most rapid change in the human environment that we have ever seen. one wonders whether, in fact, with the geometric speed with which things are proceeding there is an end point at some time. one also used to look years ago at the roman empire. and when the barbarians came in, everything froze. we're all related to both romans and barbarians, so we can be proud of the roman achievements, and a little bit sorry that some of our ancestors threw spears. but that is obviously a question that none of us is prepared to

answer, seemingly we can move on from strength to strength, and deal with change. the most fascinating change that i think we are all facing, and that you see, know and master well beyond what i have to deal with, is the electronic information related revolutionary changes that we all see. much of this has changed the way in which we do diplomacy. it's changed the way in which we understand the world. it's changed the way in which the people of the world absorb it, know about it, and understand a bit about it. and i think one of the major contributions, not the only one, to something like the arab spring, or the arab transition as i think we all prefer to call it now, was, in fact, the notion of a rapid movement of information, people taking in ideas and thoughts that they had. the notion that dictatorships and autocracy were not a

successful way of treating people in terms of the governments and the need to change that, and the fact that you could mobilize people through electronics in the main and bring them out and use public demonstrations to make a serious change this governmental organization was very, very interesting. in egypt it was fascinating thai governmental organization was very, very interesting. in egypt it was fascinating tn t governmental organization was very, very interesting. in egypt it was fascinating that one of the things that people seemed to have forgotten in the plethora of changes was that there already were established political forces at work and had been at work in society. some of them a little bit underground. certainly the muslim brotherhood was one. another, perhaps, was the notion that ordinary people ought to be able to gain an opportunity to participate in their own governance in a serious way. there were no leaders of that movement strikingly, and one of the interesting things is that with no leaders you can't win elections. and if elections are the preferred method of choice, then

you become absent from the future in an unusual way, even though you have, perhaps, been instrumental in causing it. but these are examples of things that are happening around us and all the time. but the pace of change, i think, the breadth of change in the world, is very much due to this. closer to home, and i think more interesting, if i can sort of swivel around in a different way, is the fact that over the last decade we found not to the surprise of a lot of people but to the surprise of some in the leadership of the country, that military force is not a very good way of solving diplomatic problems. and that diplomatic problems can be usefully solved at the conference table, often because you have a first-rate military course.

and if you begin using military force to try to resolve problems, that don't -- that -- where it doesn't work very well, then you undermine in a serious way the capacity to have, in fact, the value of a first-rate military force behind your diplomacy, and behind your actions, and so if used and abused, if i could put it that way, it tends to be less persuasive. less useful. less important. as an american diplomat i was always grateful that we had a first-rate military force behind us. i was grateful, too, that we had a first-rate economy. and even with some of the change that came about in 2008, and in 2009, from which we're still recovering, i think that our ability as an economy to perform, and to show leadership, and to deal with issues, great and small, is very significant. i think that there is another set of questions that's very important that we tend, when we add up what is it that's behind our diplomacy that makes us have

a great chance to be more successful, is in the political realm, interestingly enough. and interestingly enough, it happens to be, i think, our values and principles. if there was one thing around the world that people admired about this country, was its freedom, its prosperity, its commitment to doing things correctly, its valuing ethical principles and its ability to act in accordance with them. some of that has gone away. and we've lost some of that. there's nothing written in stone that says we cannot come back to it. and i think we are. i think it's -- we're moving perhaps more slowly than we should be, but it's a significant and important part of what underpins our diplomacy in a changing world. i think that there's several other things that are happening. diplomats normally used to work on a country by country basis. now we work much more significantly multilaterally.

we used to be very much consumed by political questions and they were always treated by american diplomats as the top priority and the top of the heap. now that has shifted remarkably. and questions that are both multilateral, and heavily economically based are equally as significant, if not more significant, in the concentration of our effort, and the focus of our diplomacy. and that's important. i'd like to say two or three other things. in at questions, it is important for us to begin to move out of the traditional stovepipes of consideration, particularly if we want to look at questions from a strategic point of view. from a point of view of strategic impact and strategic importance. and i've come to believe that there are now clusters or packages or groupings of issues

that need to be taken together, as we consider them a foreign policy importance. one example is obviously the intimate relationship between energy policy, environmental issues and policies, and climate change. they're not uniquely clustered, and all alone. but they form the center focus of i think one of the important clusters of questions we have to deal with. i'll talk in a minute about seven of these. they vary. some are clusters of issues that we would call worldwide, and functional. and others happen to do with regional areas of the world, where, in fact, regional problems and major country competitions are important to us. but looking at them this way, at least from a strategic perspective, is helpful from two directions. one of those directions is that

it helps us avoid the unanticipated consequences that sometimes happen when we make a move on a set of issues and intimately related questions in one way or another affected. so the broader sweep of the cluster gives us an opportunity, at least, to understand those are interrelationships that we need to pay attention to. i think the second question is maybe more technical, more useful for the diplomat, but it gives us an opportunity when we're negotiating in a set of questions, to understand that if we need a broader scope to get the negotiations moving, to offer either concessions or to seek concessions on a broader basis, looking at questions through the cluster focus is helpful and important in being able to gain those advantages in a negotiating scenario. let me now turn to the questions, and perhaps some of

the things that we should do about them. i always am a little bit stymied at this point as to which priority is important. absolutely fascinating. i've been talking about this for a few years. and almost every time i come before an audience to talk about it, the priority has shifted a little bit. so tonight i want to begin with what i call the extended middle east as a cluster of questions. it's self-evident, it's obvious, the importance is perhaps, if anything, been overstressed in the press recently. but we can look at that. and so, from the straits of gibraltar to the hindu kush, the extent of the middle east is a fertile field to continue to present us with new, interesting, challenging, and sometimes very destructive problems. and, in fact, the middle east fertility in this sense has probably outstripped our capacity in any real way to continue to deal with them. certainly new questions have

emerged since the beginning of 2013, or even 2012, with a kind of rapidity that has left us all breathless, left our government masters, if i can call them that, certainly stymied often at the starting post, as to how to get at them. and looking now at the complications of their interrelationship. no one set of questions, i think, in the middle east has the silver bullet embedded in it, that will solve the others. but it is interesting that as things get worse in one area, they tend to affect others. so that as we fail, and indeed, as the process fails to find a way to deal with the problem between israel and the palestinians, it tends in the main to affect arab attitudes toward the united states that runs across the full gamut of the middle east. and while it wasn't the

centerpiece of change in egypt or in yemen or in libya, it is certainly there in the minds of many people who think about that problem. similarly, in an interesting way, and i'll talk about this in a minute, if we are able to break through in the negotiations with iran over a nuclear arrangement, there are opportunities to follow on, because we in iran share some common interests in afghanistan, in iraq, and maybe eventually even in syria. although that looks like a long shot at this point. but it is interesting to see that interrelationship, and we should keep it in mind. it doesn't mean finally that all of these issues have to be treated in a broader context. we can deal with them in stovepipes. but we should keep our mind on the strategic interrelationships as we go ahead, and understand some of that, rather than to fence ourselves off in a narrow

corner and treat with the policy merely as the policy as we are the press, or as our own inventions about the region, tend to catalog it. often people in the region don't see it the same way and we should be cautious about that. i would say that the number one problem at the moment is probably what our arabic speaking friends called daish, it is arabic for isil or isis or i.s. the islamic state in iraq and in greater syria. and this is a serious problem, and we've addressed it as a serious problem. perhaps in my view we've overmilitarized it. but it has great military connotations. and if anybody wants to undertake a really unpopular cause, just go out here and raise up a banner and say, let's negotiate with isil. you can understand why, in effect, this has a bigger military character. but there are political and economic issues that are

important here. and i think they need to be looked at. political questions of what kind of a coalition can we build. and those are important. political questions that have to do with how and in what way in iraq, in which the maliki government spent a good bit of its time either ignoring or tormenting sunni, a new iraqi government can pick up its socks and understand that it has to deal with minority from the point of view of their rights, as well as obviously the significant value of majority rule, and that happens to be at the moment the shia. but those are significant. and economic questions are very important. where is some of our oil coming from? well right out of isil-land. do we continue to take that oil, and do we continue to feed the money into isis that that oil is being paid to -- paid for to receive.

a very interesting question, particularly at a time when oil prices are going down. of course, if it were isil, it couldn't happen to nicer guys but there are still real problems about a resistance to a fundamental terrorist movement that is now hecavily funded by the oil enterprise and we need to think about that. so those are significant. on the military side i think it's very interesting. there are now clear indications, whether we like it or not, that while our aerial attack has been quite successful, both in northern syria, and in northern iraq in supporting the forces opposing isis, it is also now become an isis rallying cry to try to bring more recruits to the flag, more folks to the kalashnikov. and this is something we need to keep our eye on. it is also useful to begin to think about whether isis in its own galloping mistreatment of

the sunni population of northern iraq has opened an opportunity for us politically and militarily to begin to deal with the sunni tribal leaders that we worked with in 2005 and 2006. is that door going to open? well the problem with that door is, having opened it once years ago, and then walked away when they had a feeling that somehow we were going to be around to protect their interests, and left them cold in the hands of a new shia government, are they going to move to our side as rapidly as they did before. are they going to be useful. and then the final piece, who are the ground troops who are going to help us deal with isil if we are limiting ourselves now to air, to training, to intelligence support, and to equipment. i don't know. it's interesting. the shia forces in iraq have

shown up until now they can protect baghdad. but can they help retake the region. which is an important objective. general allen who is leading the effort, i believe, is now focused on a two-year plan, that some time by 2017, he hopes to see the kind of results that we would like to see as soon as possible but aren't going to be possible, in part, because much training is required and much equipment is required, and that's not ready at hand. i always ask the kind of question myself, in looking at this sort of issue, why is it that the afghan taliban, with almost no training, are so effective as military operators, when, in fact, the afghan national security forces, with all of our training, doesn't seem to be nearly up to the grade. why is it that isil, a kind of ragtag bunch, a combination of islamic fundamentalists,

ex-baathist officers of the iraqi army and some real banditis, and why are they doing so well? we have to look at that a little bit and see, in fact, whether we have an answer to that particular problem or not. that takes me to syria. i'll only say the following. syria is a real conundrum for us. we declared war on 2 of the 3 major elements in syria. isis, and assad. assad is happy to fight isis. isis is happy to fight assad. we've picked the moderates who are arguably, perhaps, the most timid of the military forces. maybe the most divided of the military forces, to put our chips on for all the obvious reasons. they're politically the kind of people that we should support. but that raises real difficulties. do we, in fact, go slow on assad while we try to go fast on isil? that seems to be some way in which we're leaning.

on the other hand, the turks are very upset by assad. don't want to join us if, in fact, we go slow there. the final political piece is interesting. because, in dealing with isil, we have this unusual combination of people who all find it in their interest to oppose isil, but with whom we have wide variety of varying differences. iran, russia, saudi arabia, turkey, the gulf states, certainly the sunni gulf states. if we could figure out a way to unify them against their other divisive interests, we would certainly have a better coalition than if we kind of move in with support from our traditional friends. that's a challenge. it's not yet fixed. it's a real problem. in syria, this problem is forcing taking hold, as well. because we have serious

differences in our interests in syria, between us and iran and russia, among others, and saudi arabia and turkey. the syrian problem has been going on for three years. 200,000 people have been killed. 9 million people have been displaced in one way or another. a human tragedy of the first dimensions, bordering on genocide in many ways. a situation in which we saw almost no attention in the papers except when it comes to a problem on the turkish border. we know little about what's going on, in many ways. and some of the more despicable inhuman acts are regular fare, unfortunately. and the principle sufferers are probably women and children. the people who least deserve to suffer for any reason at all. and so this is a huge problem. there's no question at all in my mind that a cease-fire is an imperative. and increased humanitarian assistance. on the other hand, there is no way at this point that we know

of to generate the leverage to do that. i think in some ways, perhaps, further consideration of things like a no-fly zone might help to generate the pressure that might bring us closer to the table. but that's an arguable proposition but an important one. i think it is also significant that beyond a cease-fire, if you can get there, then the challenge is to negotiate a transitional government, with or without some electoral arrangements. and then, obviously, to ease out mr. assad, and put him on his way to whatever hotel or villa arrangements he's chosen. and then see, in fact, whether syria can be held together with all of the terror and turmoil. and that's a huge job. it's a very big challenge, and one that i don't see on the near horizon, as well. so we're looking at two-year time frames or worse.

for some of these problems. i spent a lot of time on this, because i think it's important to demonstrate how difficult diplomacy is these days. how intertwined it is with military, political and economic considerations, and how complicated the interrelationship is just between these two issues in the middle east. i won't spend a lot of time on arab palestine. i think that there are several things that are important here. we almost know what the solution could be. we also know that the parties are not ready to negotiate on both sides, despite their professions of interest in doing so. we also know that the status quo is not defensible. and it is not permanent. and it is pushing the parties, once again, toward violence and conflict. whether we like it or not. the bicycle principle applies. if you're not riding forward, you're falling down. and this is important to keep in mind because too many american

administrations have kited their arab/israeli check on the basis of the theory that peace has to mean to the parties than it does to us is the overwhelming judgmental basis for our proceeding. the truth is that if our national security is intimately involved in the middle east, and i believe it is, then it has to mean as much to us as it does to the parties. the truth also is that the parties have shown themselves almost congenitally now unable to cross enough of the divide to get themselves started, much less to move down the path to negotiations. the tragedy is that i still think majorities in both camps, palestinians and israelis, with any kind of a reasonable leader, would move in the direction of the risks that have to be taken for a two-state solution. and while academics write wonderful papers on the demise of the two-state solution, i

don't see anybody who's ready to accept a one-state solution where there is equal vote, equal political rights, equal citizenship, equal civil rights. at the moment, the situation is that the palestinians are under a kind of virtual occupation, and i don't believe that will continue to be the case forever. they won't accept it. we are a key, perhaps the most important key, even though we have continued to fail. and that's a significant issue. i will mention as well iran, because i followed the negotiations for a long time. let me just say this -- i said that the negotiations if successful could produce real progress in the middle east. i think if they're not successful, watch out, because i don't think the absence of progress there will do anything but lead us on the road to conflict again, a conflict we can ill afford and a conflict

which will solve little. and the opportunities are great at the present time. we have some gaps to cross, but it was interesting to read on a back page of the paper today that on the critical question of enrichment, the western side has increased the offer, if i can put it that way, of how many centrifuges the iranians can operate. so i think we're beginning to see a little movement even before the election day in the united states. but that's one of the questions that obviously is at the moment containing in my view real progress. the other two issues are how rapidly the sanctions come off and what duration the agreement should be. i think they're all bridgeable, but i'm a consummate optimist. nevertheless, i think that the next three weeks will be critically important in where we go. i don't expect to see a full treaty, but i expect to see either 1 of 2 things, and that's

what i'm optimistic about. either agreement on the major questions that have to be resolved with the treaty to be drafted later, or a set of arrangements that is close enough to that particular goal to justify a further continuation of negotiations. and i believe that both of those are better results than nothing at all. i believe that we can get a good agreement, and i believe that it's now in sight. i'll only mention one other area of the middle east -- what to do about afghanistan and pakistan. i happen to believe that there are opportunities there that some of them can come out of the potential for india and pakistan to find a way through some of their deep problems that underlie if not overburden some of pakistan's preoccupation with afghanistan. the new president of afghanistan has gotten himself off to a good start.

he's a very intelligent man. he understands some of the difficulties. he's take an real swipe at corruption, something that was not in the lexicon of the former president. it will be interesting to see where that goes. in the meantime, pakistan is still a state that has an army or an army that has a state but not at the moment a democracy in which the army is, in fact, part and parcel of political decisionmaking made by the civilians. that i think will continue for some time. i'm not sure that the army is ready to move to take back governance in pakistan, but it's always a danger, particularly when the governance gets as weak as the present civilian government is now. well, we spent a lot of time on my number-one priority so, let me go through some of the others so you don't get the idea that the world is simply the middle east. the world is even more complex in other areas.

the one i would choose to discuss next is probably the one that i like to call rivals and partners. our relations as a country with china, with russia, with india, with the european union, which is not a state yet, and not in some cases not a state yet, japan, brazil, if you want to add others perhaps continental countries where the real sweep with strong economies are growing economies with real potential for the future, a potential to be rivals or partners. and our challenge, obviously, is in our foreign policy whether we can work to make one and not the other be the outcome of that relationship. it's not all diplomacy, but diplomacy has a lot to do with it and, in fact, can help in an important way. china is slowing down in its economic advancement.

that should please some. it certainly isn't pleasing to the chinese. china is shifting some of its economic focus from export-driven growth to domestic demand-driven growth, and we should be grateful for that. we're concerned about chinese expansionism as we're concerned about russian expansionism. new elements perhaps on the scene and how and in what way we deal with them. it's critical in my view that with major countries that are part of what now is a multipolar set of directions if i can put it that way from the major countries of the world, that we seek several things, that we seek to find those win-wins which can buttress a relationship and make sure that there are on both sides real

investments in that relationship rather than major competition for leadership. and that's significant. much of those relationships relates to personal relationships between leaders. when it sours, things don't go well. when the relationships get defined by negatives as our relationship with russia has been defined, i think unfortunately on both sides from time to time, it takes on a kind of version and diplomacy of ankle kicking. but then it gets worse. and i can answer questions and talk further about some of those issues, but we have real opportunities with friends and partners. we have opportunities to use diplomacy, to seek a better sense of where countries are going and where they would like to see themselves, what they see as their role in a major world in which we are still looked to for leadership despite some of the declines. another set of questions

intimately connected with the rivals and partners question because they all seem to play in it in one way or another is the issue of weapons of mass destruction. they've been around for 60 or 70 years. we have had evidence of use, happily not nuclear use in wartime, since august of 1945, and that's a fire break that we should work hard to keep and perpetuate. we're concerned about proliferation. we talked a moment ago about iran and how and in what way they can provide a problem for us as they could. even worse, i think in north korea, we have some capacity to contain, but the question of whether we can roll back a north korean program or not is a highly contentious one and a very difficult one. there is potential for serious instability and a potential for

obviously as we saw when the world began to wring its hands with the one-month absence of kim jong-un, that raises the specter of difficulty for us. and it won't be easy. i think that beyond that we owe it to four quite serious cold war warriors. henry kissinger, george schultz, sam nunn and bill perry. none of them wimps. to come out of the closet four years ago and say, you know, we really have to take a serious look at whether we can get rid of these things and if so how. a lot of people were taken up short by that. there was a theory that in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, if somebody develops in their back garage a nuclear weapon and threatens a denuclearized world with it, will that be the end-all and be-all of danger? happily, we see conventional force playing some role in that.

happily, we see the potential for some serious interest in moving in that direction. and it will be a challenge, obviously, if we can make any progress there, but we've made progress in other fields as well. a third and important issue -- or a fourth and important issue for us is perhaps also connected with the larger players. it's 2008 and 2009. the cluster of questions that runs from basically the failure of our home mortgage system to report honestly on what it was that was being marketed as clusters of home mortgages all the way through to a macroeconomic crisis, potential failures of major banks, in some cases the failure, major involvement by the governments in stabilizing the economies and propping them up, a real crisis in europe, certainly great potential for a country like

greece more or less to drop out of the world economy for a while, and significant challenges in how and in what way we institutionalize a little better, the operation of the world financial system and the world banking system, how we bring it in in a way that accords with some of the institutional attentions we have paid to trade and the regulation and indeed the international role played in evening up the trade picture, removing unfair practices and seeking new ways to move. we are now challenging the world with two major trade agreements east and west. they can provide an important and i think very significant addition to multilateral trade arrangements, which have fallen on hard times. they're an important complement to the many bilateral trade agreements we have around the world. we are recovering.

the rest of the world is not doing as well, particularly in europe. it's important, obviously, for world stability that we continue to move ahead, and it's important that we not produce once again the kind of behavior in the united states which helped to unhinge a great deal more of the world's economies than we ever anticipated. the next question that i think is important for us, it's been around for a long time, is countries on the path of development and change. i call it poverty, growth, and development. i look at food, water, and health as major ways of dealing with a cluster of questions. i look at many issues that come out of this set of problems. not all economically determined but in many cases they are. everything from failed and

failing states to crime and narcotics to migration, again, to effects on trade. a whole series of intimately related issues that have to do with how and in what way we continue to address the developing world and the issues that are there. it would be surprising tonight if i were never to mention ebola. it is clearly just an example in effect of how closely we are now linked in the world to even the most disadvantaged states at the farthest removed and how much what happens there affects us in many ways. again, the crisis may have been overdramatized. we won't know until we see it recede. again, it's required a particular determination on the part of people who are well trained and able to protect

themselves. it's involved self-sacrifice in an enormous way. i spent two years in nigeria. nigeria, the spread was stopped by a wise doctor with two assistants who found the victim, went out and found all of those people the victim was associated with, the doctor did that at the expense of his life. it stopped it so far in nigeria, a country that is slightly better provided for than liberia, sierra leone and guinea, but one that not necessarily is so and one that has the largest metropolises in africa, because you don't understand what that might have been. we do need constantly to think about how and in what way we deal with that part of the world, whether it is for reasons

of the best sort, or self-interest reasons of the best sort. they're remarkably combined in what we see out there now. and i think that no one has had an entirely successful foreign aid program, and i suppose the opposite is also true -- no foreign aid program has so colossally failed that it hasn't helped somebody. but we do need to think about it. we have jumped from pillar to post too often in my view, from focus on agriculture to a focus on health, to a focus on education. when the reality is that most countries need all of the help in all of the regions in whatever way they can. we have struggled with the issue of good governance and how important that is to make progress in dealing with that issue and how we cannot produce that. that has to come from the state itself, from their own people and from the leadership.

and leadership has been very differential, and we see across the board serious problems. but we have no opportunity to re-create the colonial world. that's gone. and in many ways we have to operate in a situation where we have fully to respect not only leaders but publics while at the same time seek to work with them to persuade them that their future can be better and that we're in a position to help. i just talked some time ago about energy, the environment, and climate change. i won't say a lot about that. i do think that, as we move ahead, climate change is a hugely befuddling and very challenging problem. it's one of the few problems now whose life span is a great deal longer than ours and therefore those who are comfortable and

have reached advanced age but are still in charge of decisionmaking feel less imperative and less imperative about venturing large amounts of money to deal with something that they find very hard to detect. but we are seeing this gradually year by year, increasingly bringing difficult news to us. the best scientists tell us that indeed it's a real phenomenon an we have now seen a significant disappearance of traditionally iced-over areas. the argument is of course that normal variations in climate are producing this, none of it is man made. those particular challenges are real. i believe in fact now it has gone on so far and so fast that we have to look at the mad-man possibilities and we have to deal with it. and i suppose you can say for

those of us who have children and grandchildren and beyond we ought to look at it from their perspective as much as our own, and i hope we do. but it is a very difficult problem. we have done a pretty good job in part because we've learned how to get gas out of shale in moving away from putting excessive amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but we are a long way from being there, and that challenge will remain. let me wind up now very briefly, as i've already overstayed my time i'm sure much too much, with one other question. our government is not well prepared in my view or organized to deal with the problems of the 21st century, and that was before we saw the standoff at the okay corral, which takes place on a daily basis on capitol hill. i think that it is significant that we need to move in the

direction, particularly in the executive branch, of how we can deal with problems worldwide and domestic on a much stronger whole of government basis. we are still too stove piped. we are still, in many ways, too separated in our ability to bring the full concentration of the government across a broad spectrum to deal with issues as they come up. mobilization times are slow. our military have shown the way in being able to put the four services together to be able to deal with their problems. but their showing the way has now opened the door for the civilian side of the government to move that way. and finally, internationally, our institutions, we have many, maybe too many, they are all spread out. some of them lack what i would call the commitment to deal with the problem. other areas i think lack better institutions. i mentioned banking and finance

a while ago. and so there are even if we are able to get our domestic government in shape, significant challenges out there in the world, whether it is at the united nations or at nato or all the other institutions that are out there. i won't dwell at length on that. you've been kind to listen to me for so long. and let me now open the floor to your questions. [ applause ] >> i will start here by saying we have 'til a little after 8:10. >> we can go to 8:15. >> 8:15. so we have some 20 minutes for questions. really in the interest of getting as much student participation as possible, i

will -- i'll forego the first question and let's just go right to the audience. right here. can you wait for the microphone? it's coming to you. >> so at this point in time the united states is probably, like, the largest superpower in the world, but at the same time we're living in an increasingly multipolar world, but there are a lot of other countries or blocs like the eu that have significant power. how do you perceive ideally the united states playing into all these problems that you've touched on? like, should we be leading the charge on all of them? should we purposely be stepping back and trying to get other countries to take primary responsibility for a lot of them? how do you see that playing out? >> i think it's a great question, and i think that there are a couple of ideas here. i think we consulted more with our friends during the cold war than we have since. that's my experience. we learned a lot, and our leadership was very effective

because they played a role, even though they were going to follow us, in supporting the direction in which we chose to go, which was often in many ways informed so i think participatory, consultative ways of proceeding, even with people that were that we're estranged from, a are significant. it's very interesting that russia, for all our problems on ukraine, is still playing a very major positive role in the iranian negotiations and seems to be continuing, if anything, maybe more positive. why? i don't know yet, except i guess they don't want iran with a nuclear weapon either. i also mentioned that with many of these countries and with many of these problems we have common interests. we don't want the world run by islamic fundamentalists. we don't want people with

nuclear weapons all over the place. there are things that we can do to strengthen the international financial system if we're prepared each to ante up. and in many ways one of the great tricks of leadership is getting everybody to believe that your best idea was really their best idea. and so i think that's where we should be in the diplomacy. i think that the notion -- final point -- that we were a unilateral superpower, if you define it as we could do anything we wanted when we were in that state without the help of anyone else, i don't think that ever existed. and we never operated that way. we may have operated pretty per emt orly at some times and that was a mistake but i don't think we operated in a way that totally disregarded everybody else and just went out, hell for leather, doing what we wanted. >> okay.

please, here. yes. don't turn around. you're the one. okay. you've got the dot. >> in your talk you mentioned some of the challenges facing global institutions today. specifically, i wanted to know -- and this has been discussed a lot -- whether or not there has to be or should be structural reform to the united nations security council and specifically, is it time for the world to consider elimination of the veto power? >> well, i'm glad you asked that question, because i was lunatic enough when i was the u.s. representative to the u.n. without asking washington to give a speech every once in a while to say we should really take another look at the veto power. it wasn't working in our interest. happily, nobody heard that or if they did they were kind enough not to come down on my head. look, i have thought for years that if you chalked up the veto

power and those who exercised it, most of it was for ephemeral or rather silly reasons. china exercised a veto in guatemala case over taiwan, something silly. we did often in the middle east, i think when we really didn't need to, but it was an easy way out. i also think that a proposal which said let's take genocide. and let's make that a particular case for reform, and while there are disputes about it, we pretty much can define it. it's easier to define than terrorism. and let's say now -- and i thought there was a time when we could convince the five permanent member, not now, but let's say there is a time when you could convince the five permanent members, unless three of them said they were prepared to vote against a draft, that they would all agree to abstain

or vote in favor. and that would do several things. that would crystallize the negotiations on a draft and it would give us a better chance to get a tougher draft on genocide questions, which in my view is very important. i think you could take out of the mix right away things that states, as they -- has a clause in the nuclear test ban treaty that if it's in your vital interest to go back to testing you have an out. but i would, you know, limit that as much as you possibly could. but i think moving it away from those kinds of things would be important for us. i think you could maybe extend it to nonproliferation and maybe to state-to-state aggression all over international boundaries. and that's a way forward. it may not be the only way forward. another structural change is obviously to put states on as permanent members who, in fact, are now very large, prepared to

play a major role in the world scene. i won't say nuclear powers because if it happens by circumstance that all five permanent members are nuclear pourer powers but i don't want to make that a hurdle that somebody has to jump through to become a permanent member. it's time then to cut down the veto. it's a perfect opportunity so that it isn't overused. i think it would help transform the security council a great deal if there were constructive thought given to that. do i think there's a chance in hell that will happen? no. >> all right. let's move over to this side for a question. yes, please. >> so regarding the arab spring, how effective do you think it has been given that egypt had horrible experience after only a year, libya is eventually a failed state, and syria is still in the midst of a civil war?

>> and iraq isn't doing so good and yemen is a mess. >> isis is on the rise. >> everything's okay. it seems like the monarchies have escaped pretty well, although in some ways i think they paid their way, if i could put it that way, and made sure that their people got advantages consistent with the kind of autocratic rule that they have and maybe are beginning to think that they have to open up. do i think the arab spring was a howling success? no. do i think it brought about changes that in one way or another were engendered by popular opposition? yes. did popular opposition channel itself into the right course in one way or another or could we help it? probably we couldn't help it much, and probably in one way or

another significant forces that were at work in the country were more significant than the people who opened the door to tahrir square, unfortunately. will it change again? i don't know. i think president sisi has to know that he's not being judged against the mubarak standard. he's also not being judged against the morsi standard. he's being judged against a little bit less choate but i think slightly more liberal standard than we saw before. will that, in fact, engender change? will the military in egypt give up power? will we see something moving on to political parties and political competition in the near future? i'm afraid not. i wish i could see it, but i don't think it's going to happen. >> okay. >> i think tunisia is a happy example, but even tunisia's got problems.

>> okay. i'm still looking to this side for questions. yes, all the way in the back. >> touching back on russia and the potential energy crisis with russia and the eu, there is the idea floating around that the u.s. wants to export more oil and natural gas to the european union in the next few years to maybe counteract russia's share in energy there. is this going to be plausible in the next few years? is this something that's going to be more effective than the current sanctions that we have? or should we be looking at something more multilateral outside the u.n., obviously? >> another great series of question, because everybody's wrestling with this issue now. i would say the following -- i think that one of the effects that we would feel at home if we began to export gas -- and i'll talk about why that's hard -- is that european gas prices are

three times ours. so once the marginal british thermal unit of gas begins to go at higher prices, i suspect it's going to drive up domestic prices. that'll push inflation. that will not give us the advantages we have now with cheap energy, protected in some ways by our failure to export. to export gas we have to build expensive liquefied natural gas compression and freezing facilities two, three, four years at least to get them under way. one of the things we can do, i suppose, and we are doing, is take less of the world's gas, although we're heavily relied on canada and mexico, and maybe less of the world's liquids. and so, in fact, we push that surplus in the direction of people who need it. my own feeling is that the most

effective sanctions on mr. putin in the long run will be to take advantage of his strategic error of not using his oil income over the last 15 years to diversify and strengthen russia's economy outside the area of hydrocarbons. and so he's very vulnerable to market changes. interestingly enough, the present drop in the price of oil has an effect on russia. the general feeling is russia has balanced its budget at about $100 oil, and it's now down at $80, so that's having an effect. i think also russia's political fast and loose activities have had a serious effect on the russian economy, more than i think any of us expected to see at this stage. a serious increase in capital flight, many billions of dollars have left. almost no foreign direct investment. ruble exchange rate against the

dollar that's gone 10% against the ruble. almost no growth in the russian economy. oil prices down, so income is down. they may well account for at least mr. putin's temporary paying attention to the minsk agreement of early september over how to deal with the problem in ukraine, not beautifully, not perfectly, not without exception, but some of that's happening. if we could get the europeans who are now between 40% and 50% dependent on russian hydrocarbons weaned off that, that would in many ways give them the opportunity to stay to the russians, our off take is so low from you, we can temporarily suspend that or we can find other sources. to do that, we have to find other sources for the europeans.

happily, as i said earlier, iraqi oil is undisturbed and it's been growing. it's gone from a million barrels a day to almost 3.5 million or can get there. that if we have an agreement with iran, iran can get up to 3 million barrels a day, it's down to a million barrels because of sanctions. that could fill back some of the losses. it is also clear that in other places in the world they're beginning to look at exploitation of shale. not all of it is as good as ours but not all of it totally unproductive. and so that will begin to change some of the oil availability that we can see. and so maybe we can convince the europeans germany has to leave. germany so far is not ready to move. germany is getting rid of its nuclear, although that's not until 2021 or 2022, so we have some chance at least with germany to bridge the gap. but i think there are all of

these kinds of things plus new technologies. interestingly enough, solar is coming down in price and we seem to be doing better. wind has been less productive, although it's been expanded in many places in this country and europe. china has perhaps one of the greatest wind farm production capacities of anybody, even if, in fact, it's not a particularly big piece of china's production. >> okay. yes, in front here. yes. the young woman with your hand up here. >> here it comes. >> hi, ambassador. >> hi. >> i just wanted to know what your favorite part of your career was. >> oh, gosh. well, interestingly enough, i was in a lot of strange and sometimes difficult places. i liked them. i think for me the most

satisfying was the opportunity that i had in new york in 1990 when iraq invaded kuwait to work with the security council for three very intensive months of bringing it together, pushing on resolutions for sanctions, for increasingly tightening the strings on saddam hussein. it didn't produce the result we wanted, but it produced the coalition that hung together and it produced enough of a basis that even the shy members of the democratic party voted enough to support u.s. military involvement, which in itself did produce a result in large measure because we had a limited political goal in mind and stuck to it. >> okay. this will have to be our last question and -- please. yeah.

>> thank you very much. i was wondering, tying off of russia and china, you mentioned the problems with many of these relations being how they're often defined by all these negative factors -- disputes regarding territory like in ukraine and crimea or the south china sea, and we've talked about solutions regarding sanctions and pressures, but you mentioned what kind of positive aspects can we utilize to improve our situation with these characters, whose importance clearly isn't going to diminish any time? >> i think that, for people who are particularly hard to deal with, then we have to turn to leverage. and clearly, what leverage we have has to be articulated and operated in ways that are effective. sanctions, if broadly applied, have the disadvantage of

punishing the population for the sins of the leader. i used to say back when w were dealing with saddam hussein that he owns the last chicken sandwich in iraq. but he makes all the decisions. on the other hand, targeted sanctions have some interesting possibilities. it is also true that over the years the u.s. treasury was loathe to impose financial sanctions because they thought it would destroy the world banking system. so far that hasn't happened. they've been among the most effective in iran, because, in fact, they've said through the international banking system, if you want to do business in iran, you won't do business in the united states. that's a pretty harsh judgment, but it means in effect that we dry up the country's ability to trade, the country's ability to export in some things, which is very important, and that in

itself is a pretty draconian sanction and has a lot of effect. and i think one of the drivers of iranian interest in early agreement on the nuclear question is that because president rouhani wants to be able to demonstrate to his population that he can change the economic equation as well as bring iran back into the world community. so that's had some effect. threats of war play a role. inducements sometimes. we seem to always be more interested in spending trillions of dollars of war rather than billions of dollars maybe to buy off somebody. that's not a very happy circumstance. but in some cases it works. in some cases we have found financial solution to international problems, some big, some small. i had the great pleasure of going to china to explain why we bombed their embassy and how we did it in belgrade. but the end result was that each

side compensated the other because there was a lot of damage done to our buildings in china as a result of chinese encouragement of popular -- put it this way -- demonstration. so each of us -- each of us paid for the damage that was done to the other, and that's a way of settling international dispute. going to court is not a bad idea, and many countries have settled boundary disputes that way. the courts have been pretty good about it. they take into account the international legal regimes that apply to that, that are agreed by states and which states work under, and that would make sense if, in fact, we could do so. big powers don't particularly like to do that. we did go to court with nicaragua. we lost. then we decided we'd give up compulsory jurisdiction. in my view, not the right answer. >> well, i hope you will join me in thanking -- >> thank you very much. >> we certainly want to thank ambassador pickering, and i hope

you'll join me in thanking him not only for this evening but for his extraordinary career and his enormous contribution to this country. >> thank you very much. [ applause ]. health and human services secretary silva burwell will speak at the center for american progress today about the upcoming open enrollment period in the health insurance marketplace. she'll also discuss her department's efforts to ensure the readiness of healthcare.gov. our live coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. c-span veterans day coverage

begins tuesday morning at 8:30 eastern during washington journal with an interview with american legion executive director verna jones. then at 10:00, the annual uso gala featuring joint chiefs of staff chairman general martin dempsey. and we're live at 11:00 from arlington national cemetery for the traditional wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the unknowns. just after noon a discussion on veterans mental health issues and later selections from this year's white house medal of honor ceremonies. the carnegie endowment for international peace recently held an all-day forum examining the political security and humanitarian reasons that isis is thriving and expanding in the middle east. panelists looked at the threat posed by isis, the rise of extremists and the return to authoritarian rule following the arab awakening. this is 90 minutes.

>> please take your seats. we're ready to begin. welcome to our panel on complicated coalition dynamics, fighting terrorism, and other priorities. my name is michele dunne, i'm a senior associate here at the middle east program at the carnegie endowment. one announcement before we start, we understand that some participants are having trouble accessing wi-fi. our i.t. team is working on this but please be aware that if you have a smartphone and you are re on top of things than i am and you've already updated to i-owes 8 you will not be able to connect to wi-fi. there's a problem with that. so, at any way, why would you need wi-fi right now? we have a fabulous panel for you to listen to talking about the

coalition against isis. we are going to begin, as we go down the table here, our first participate is soli ozel, professor of international relations, a columnist at haber turk daily newspaper and he's been an adviser to the chair in turkey. abdulaziz sager is chairman and foundation of the gulf research center. i'm sorry, chairman and founder of the gulf research center. he is president of the cyber group holding in the kingdom of saudi arabia, which is active in the fields of information, technology, aviation services, and investment. and this time as a speaker to marwan muashes, vice president of middle east at the carnegie endowment. now, there has been a lot of discussion about the coalition partners in the dynamics among

them and the dynamics between them and the united states for example, and how all of this shapes the willingness of the coalition partners to cooperate against the islamic state. and we welcome comment on that in this panel. t we also want to go a little bit beyond that, a little bit deeper, and look at the domestic developments inside these countries. because, of course, every country has its own unique situation that it brings to this situation. we want to talk about how each of these countries, how both the governments in the public view the islamic state. what does it mean in the country in question? does it represent a threat? does it receive support? what kind of threat does it represent? security, political, cultural, religious? how did these perceptions shape what the country is willing to do in the coalition against the

islamic state perhaps a little bit to say about the practical military capabilities and limitations of these countries in participating in this coalition. there is also an issue of a definitional problem against terrorism. you will notice that the word terrorism is in quotes, and that is partly because there may be some differences between the united states and some of its coalition partners, and certainly among the different coalition partners about what defines terrorism, what kind of groups are involved and so forth. and we want to ask, will that contradiction prove a serious impediment to cooperation? can we find common ground in any case? and just one brief moment of advertisement, i want to point out that my colleague at carnegie and i just authored this policy outlook called u.s. arab counterterrorism cooperation in a region ripe for

extremism. it's outside on the publications rack. let's turn first to turkey because it is obviously very much in the news now with turkey having allowed some of the kurdish peshmerga through turkey into syria. so if you could begin with brief remarks about how you see the turkish position in this conflict and how particularly the domestic situation in turkey shapes what it will and will not be willing to do. >> thank you. good morning. i will do my best. now, as the number of conferences, panels, lectures that i attend increase, i see how pacific shares collectively not just the great powers, but

everyone shares in part of the mess that we collectively find ourselves in in the middle east. not just the great powers as was connected in a previous question but also regional actors and regional states certainly. so, given that fact, although i personally am within turkey as someone fairly critical, actually critical of the government policies vis-a-vis syria, and have been that way for the last three years at least. i really think that there is a projection on turkey that is not altogether warranted about how responsible turkey is for a lot of the mess that is around. and i find a lot of the coverage quite informative, but a lot of it also really a bit, if not biased, certainly lacking nuance in determining what the issues

are, giving it the correct interpretation. now, there is no doubt that turkey is, at best, a very reluctant member of of this so-called coalition. it it certainly, in terms of what its primary purpose is not to be. and as a result of that, we have seen probably the unprecedented public falling apart of two main partners who keep on correcting one and other statements that americans say, well incirlik will be used, the turks say no, it will not be used. if the americans say something will happen, the turks say something will not happen. our prime minister -- our president, i'm sorry, can say one thing and the next day we learn that after a phone call,

conversation with president obama, things have actually changed. the united states was not supposed to be helping pyd. well the united states did help the pyd, and quite frankly in terms of alliance relations this is a very embarrassing sight. so one wonders what is going wrong in terms of communication that must exist between turkey, which again is the only country bordering both iraq and syria, where the -- where the dayish hold a big chunk of territory that is also a nato member with plenty of capabilities, not necessarily intervening militarily, and its major partner, the united states, it is inexplicable to me that they have not managed to find a common language, or nonembarrassing language in public in order to actually discuss what their problems are. that leads me to think that

there is a big difference between the way the united states looks set at what is going onnd help turkey looks at what is going on. to the best of my ability as i see it obviously turkey's priorities are very different. when you look at the resolution of the turkish parliament, that was passed, and you look especially when you read its preamble, it is quite obvious that for the turkish government the pkk, the assad regime, and daish are at best equal threats. and some can argue, based on the number of times the pkk and the assad regime are mentioned, that these two, and particularly the assad regime, are actually far more significant threats to turkish security and certainly to the -- to the conditions or to the situation in iraq and syria.

now, if there is no doubt that in the past when everybody was hot on thinking that assad would leave like everybody else in a relatively short period of time, the turkish government did in a rush commit some mistakes, made a lot of misjudgments, and it has miscalculated its toll ration of very diverse elements going in and out of syria, using turkish borders, helping perhaps, helped by certain civil society organizations within turkey. how this would actually boomerang on us. and i would argue thatever turkey's faults might have been before, i think there is now recognition in the security community of the turkish state, that daish is, indeed, a major security threat for the turkish republic. then, you may wonder why doesn't

turkey then do more, whatever more is supposed to mean. and i would argue that probably it is the domestic repercussions of taking a more openly active part against daish that is bothering or that is making the turkish government hesitant. at the end of the day what i think is happening inside the country is that this general sunni sentiment that the previous panel had actually presented to us is also being shared by not a very significant part of the turkish population, but a nonnegligible part of the turkish population. and although i have not yet seen any poll numbers indicating that we are moving in that direction, there may be a rising halo of

sympathy for those -- for the islamic state to the extent that it is being seen under attack by american bombs, by the westerners, or by the shia. therefore, i think the main concern of the turkish state in trying to find its proper strategy and proper tactics in dealing with the threat of the isis is really how to make sure that the non existing borders between the -- outside and isis inside the country, how that can be controlled, whether or not turkey would be vulnerable to terrorist activities within its borders by isis should its engagement in the coalition be interpreted as -- it could not be anything else. and of course today we have seen in the pictures, how the 160

actually have gone through turkey and we will go into syria to help the fighters. and help the fighters in kobani. quite frankly, i have no idea how this is being seen and interpreted in the west of the country. whether or not the turkish public in general is sympathetic to what is going on because people in need are going to be helped, or do they see this as an infringement on perhaps even turkish sovereignty. i'm sure -- i mean i have seen things that the government is under serious -- under serious attack. finally, you've opened, michele, by suggesting that people -- i mean, the parties, different parties' definitions of hat terrorism is are different. in that sense, as i said, the

turkish government equates the pkk with the islamic state and, indeed at one point the president even equated the pyb which is not an turkish terrorist list, with that because the pyd is an extension of the pkk within syria. that, i'm afraid -- that, i think, is the general way of view of the turkish public. and that is what the government has to take into account before it can actually reach a common vocabulary with the u.s. administration. one final note. to the extent that the u.s. position that is contradicting everything that the turkish government says, the fact that yet once more the american air force is bombing a neighboring country or a population to the extent that it is seen that way,

i really -- i really wonder what is happening to the image of the united states again in the country. which has not been very positive to begin with. secondly, whether or not this would lead to a mood change in turkey where there has been a 19-point increase, according to the german marshal transatlantic survey in favor of nato, and whether or not this would actually diminish that recently found love after a long period of decline for nato in -- among the general public. >> thank you very much, soli. we'll turn now to you, abdulaziz to discuss saudi arabia, the gulf states, i realize these are not all one bloc so we really appreciate the extent to which you can kind of disaggregate the positions of the governments and populations in the various gulf countries.

as well as saudi arabia, as they look at the daish threat. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. thank you for inviting me to be on the panel. great to be back to washington. the soviet union invasion of afghanistan has resulted in al qaeda. did the u.s. liberation, some the invasion of iraq result in daish? that's what you have to question. the unfinished job that the u.s. have left in iraq, did that result to something like this? is the policy of isolation -- is the isolation policy that maliki have adopted was fully supported by iraq have created something like daish. 2003, al zarqawi said i'm no longer a part of al qaeda, i'm

independent, my objective is different. it did not start today. 2003 was the root of al zarqawi was killed and then you had baghdadi and then in 2006 we had the announcement of the -- it was iran focused and not iraq and syria in 2006. gives us some roots before we reach to 2013 where the announcement of daish, which is the isis as you call it, shaman iraq state. so you know, getting that little bit background saying that is not today, that why today we are alert and why the creation of daish and what was the target for that one, i think a long i think long depriving isolation sunni in iraq, following too much in the hands of iran, handing over iraq to iran, having the massive iranian influence with the sectarian defamation in iraq has definitely led to the situation like what you see today in iraq.

also in syria, you know, we've heard so many policy from the u.s., they were reluctant in that one. we understand the importance of the chemical issue. at the same time, after all that, the moderate syrian. in saudi arabia are is 2012 when king abdullah wrote a letter to the syrian nation, why he did it and why that time because we took all the time to start the negotiations with bashar al assad to not to continue doing what he's doing. but after using massive violence, after the resentment and the resistance was much more split, after we had a united nations resolution, then the saudis tried to push more and interfere more on the issue of supporting the moderate syrian opposition. now remember, there was no syrian opposition historically. they were all under a very

strong regime that nobody can control everybody and just a year before that in 2010 i remember there was a delegation visiting washington here, trying to choose a new ambassador. so it was a relatively speaking nice relation, king abdullah visit syria, he took bashar al assad to lebanon, there was all the sort of relation. but we reach to the point where we start using massive aggression against people, spread i spreading -- i was the one who said maybe on public tv i feel sorry that have not given our condolence and clear position to our syrian friends even prior to that. now did dae skchlt h ever say anything about saudi arabia? >> back to the literature. they mefr nexted a threat to saudi arabia. why is that? because they focus on iraq and syria. this is the territorial. but did the saudi -- for

instance, have we received any operation of inside saudi arabia by daesh like what's happened to georgia in 2005 or what happened in syria or what's happened to lebanon? no. why? because the distant second now finally ultimately they will reach to the arabian peninsula. they will go to the gulf, they want to focus their operational and achieve hadn't in a specific territory there. saudi arabia being accused of supporting daesh. -- daesh is the abbreviation of the isis. this is arabic, you know, acronym of that one. so it's the arabic translation of isis. so saudi arabia issued two things. one, they tried to say look, if you want to come back to your country, we know how many saudis there have been that accuse the

government of trying to figure out how many saudi went to join them, they said well listen go back to the embassy in istanbul, hand over yourself. you will have a fair treatment. but then we issue a sort of, first the list that we have identified, the terrorist list, the second said, well you have 30 days or 60 days if you come if you deliver yourself to the embassy, then you will have a fair trial. you will not be -- and then we put up all the laws and regulations. second if you really look at the isis, there was no leadership in isis there saudi arabia. yes, there's a participation from saudi arabia. we have people also from bahrain and other gulf country there but the percentage if you look at it the majority was from north africa. you have the chinese islamic operation. the chinese are mad about it. how come? we let the team -- i mean not to be part of isis. so the chinese have a problem. the german have a problem.

the european. the american. everybody have a problem. but the big bulk number came from north africa. and there was no leadership in managing this. yes, suicide. there's soldiers on the ground but apparently, like al qaeda, they targeted saudi arabia. they targeted the gulf states. they clearly made it, they moved the operation out from saudi arabia to yemen to reenhance, and get their act together, to be able to launch whatever they can again in saudi arabia. and the, you know, the rest of the gulf states. why did we participate on the coalition? i think it's an important question. number one, there was no legitimacy of this coalition without saudi arabia and the rest of the gulf countries participating. it had to take mufti to come out clearly and issue the fatwa, islamic fatwa, saying fighting daesh is not part of islam, what they're doing is wrong and they deserve to be fought and taking all the necessary action. so we have a respect from the

mufti of saudi arabia and the saudi arabia participation to this coalition that for the first time in maybe history you have these huge number of countries acting working to the fighting a state actor that was created as a result of a failing state in iraq, as a result of an unfinished job, as a result of a sectarian government that is taking a side. and create a political platform, or a platform that allows such a thing to grow there. so the second point, on mosul, what happened in mosul. it was a big, mysterious story, how come a small united states activist group, even if they're 20,000 or 30,000 people, take over a city like mosul, and to what we are hearing today, we are hearing that we need to train, we need to spend billions of dollars before we get into the liberation of the second biggest city in iraq. i mean, you know, this is

something that in words a lot of us are looking at it. but in -- on the participation. first we have to show that this is our strong united states of america, we will participate with it and we will go into war with it as they have done before in liberating kuwait and they have done good things for us in the region, reciprocity, this is strong alliances. we both agree, in fact, so we will do that one. if we need to support this coalition by providing air space, flyover, bases, logistic, some financial contribution, i'm sure the gulf country will be more than happy to enter into this, as well. but as a result of that, we became in the list of daesh, you know, before we were not part of daesh, a targeted list. as a result of the coalition we became part of daesh wanted list. the gulf countries simply became since, you know, boys and girls flew to kill or to you know, the

facility of daesh we became wanted by the isis daesh, sorry, but it is the same word i explain. so you know, they became a target now for that. and at the same time, the threat extended now from an isolated area in the north part of iraq, to that one to the gulf countries now as a result of what we are hoping to do. where do we stand on our turkish friend opposition? i think we could have taken turkey position. not to sign to be part of the coalition. and not to send our boys and girls to fight. but at the same time we decided no, we will go full-fledged, with our american friends, we appreciate the, you know, the lead of the u.s., the coalition that they have put together. am i somebody like me, how do i look at the new national guard you know, phenomena establish in the sunni area, i think what my worry is very simple, we're going to have the shia militia, peshmerga in kurdistan, sunni

national guard in some places, if they're well equipped, then god knows what may happen. is that a description for separation? you know, call it federation, we call it separation because the united states is a federal kind of, but for us separation would take place based on sectarianism and on ethnicity. so that will be the future problem that you may anticipate on iraq. but our turkish friends, i think we agree with them on having no-fly zone, second having a safe zone for the refugees. and third, training the syrian, make sure that enough training will be given to the army of syria, and the decent, acceptable opposition to equip them and to enhance them and at the same time targeted the syrian government. because it's one of the causes with the syrian government. i mean it's so funny to look at how much the world is concerned

about, arabic, kobani, and at the same time, basher is still killing 300,000 people, millions of refugees, and the country was destroyed for many, many, many years to come, but yet nobody want to get rid of al assad. we thought all the red line was put by the u.s. administration, we were happy to see some serious engagement. i think today, with a new coalition, with a new act together, with the new working together, yes we all have agreed that we have a common threat that we need to fight and to go for it. in a simple world, yes, daesh does represent the future threat, maybe not the immediate instant threat for the saudi arabian and gulf countries but yes it is a future threat if they succeed, if they continue, if they expand, if they defined us as part of the coalition against them and definitely we become a target on that one. i think it's extremely important to have the act together, and to

fight our common enemy together. >> thank you, abdulaziz. and now marwan your turn to address how this looks from jordan. >> thank you, michele. i will try to address both aspects. how, you know, the title of the session is fighting terrorism and other priorities. and it implies that there are other priorities for countries of the region. in fact, there are not. fighting terrorism so far is limited to fighting daesh. militarily even when countries of the region acknowledge that the problem of daesh does not involve -- and there are nonmilitary reasons why daesh is today so strong. but let me focus first on jordan and its part in the coalition.r today is a willing participant in the coalition. it was not cajoled into participating. the king has made it very clear that this is a cultural war,

that this is a war within islam for the real values of islam, and as such, the jordan is going to participate full force in it. and not only that, but he actually made it clear that his preference would be that it would be led by countries of the region, and not led by the united states. and so a very forceful position when it comes to fights daesh militarily. and jordan, even though it's a small country, on the military front, can actually provide a lot of support to the coalition in three main areas, logistical support, you know the coalition is already using air bases, particularly in the north of the country. intelligence support, the jordanians have a very strong intelligence services, and they have infiltrated al qaeda, and isis and continue to do so. and i think that the

intelligence support is going to be crucial in this campaign. then the third support is going to come in terms of the network of contacts that the jordanians have with the sunni tribes in iraq in particular. you know, for iraqi prime minister was in jordan two days ago, and jordan arranged for him to meet with tribal sunni chiefs in which they pledged support. not all of them, of course, but they pledged support for the effort against isis. so in these fronts jordan can provide a lot of support to the coalition. but does the isis pose a military threat to jordan? i don't think so. i don't think so because, as many have said before me, isis has been successful where it operated in sunni areas that felt marginalized, that felt

frustrated, both i syria and in iraq, that had grievances with their government, in a failed state environment. where you have failed states in syria, and in iraq, isis has been strong. isis has not yet won a major war against sunni areas. even in arab kobani or other words it has not won one single war and i don't think that isis is going to attack jordan across desert land, both in syria and iraq, against a very strong jordanian army. i don't see that happening. and i don't think is going to be the case. but isis having said that on the military front, i think, poses other nonmilitary threats, not just to jordan, but to the whole region. it is in this area that my concern is not much is being done to address the non military

aspects of the situation. one, isis has -- i mean in terms of numbers just to give you some numbers, in terms of core support for isis in the country, most analysts that i respect estimate the core support of the group in jordan to be around 5,000 people. of these about 1500 are already participating. this is a very, you know, of course approximate number. who knows what the real number is. but i don't expect in terms of core support, die-hard ideological support i don't think extends beyond 5,000. however, having said that, isis is becoming a rallying point against the establishment. so you talk to people, and they -- anybody who has grievances, not anybody, but some people who have grievances against the government, not just in jordan, but across the arab world, is using isis as a

rallying point against the establishment. this is very clear to me in many aspects. just as an anecdote. a few weeks ago we had the problem in downtown amman where illegal vendors were setting up their shop and selling their goods and blocking traffic. illegally. and so in the municipality attempted to talk to them, offered them alternative places, and then eventually trying to remove them from these, you know, from these illegal places. they start shouting isis slogans. it is an issue that has nothing to do, okay, with isis. but if isis is becoming a sort of a counterforce to the establishment in many places in the arab world, and that is

worrisome. i talk to a lot of people since i've been back in the country, particularly from the new generation where unemployment in jordan and in many countries around the area is over 30% among the youth. you talk to them, and they clearly tell you, this is not our war. they do not see it as a cultural war. they don't see it as a war for values. they see it as an american war, you know, against a region. and if it is an american war against a region they're not going to side with the americans. and that's something that is also worrisome in my view. isis has certainly hurt the reform agenda. not just in jordan but across the arab world. you talk reform now, and many people will tell you, certainly the government will tell you, this is not the time. okay to talk about the reform. we need to worry about this military threat.

and so we are to what i call a pre-arab uprising security mode. where people are focused on thing and one thing only, which is security. of course they tend to forget that the end of that road was an arab uprising. but nobody seems to be thinking along these lines, and everybody is back to the security mode where what we need to do now is to attack isis militarily, finish them off. we then have plenty of time to worry about the other aspects. that's an argument that concerns me, as well. i mean, i agree totally that isis needs to be addressed militarily. but as many people have said, and even as governments in the region have also said, that the reason isis has evolved in such a quick manner is because of the exclusionary policies of some governments in the region. everybody talks about how

maliki, accurately so, excluded the sunnis from the political game in iraq. everybody talks about how assad excluded, you know, everybody else from the political game in syria. but while people understand that exclusion leads toadical forces such as isis, are they trying to do anything about it? in other words, are governments of the region trying to change course and adopt more inclusionist policies so that you do not reach the result of isis? none whatsoever. everybody again is in a security mode, as i said, and whereas people understand and accurately diagnose the problem, nobody yet is doing or trying to do anything about the solution. that's the real issue, and the

real concern in my view over the long-term. isis will be deated militarily. okay? they will not be able to expand beyond, i think, what they have done so far. but that's not the real threat. the real threat is to leave unaddressed a number of educational, political, and economic policies that have led to the evolution of people like isis. we talk about the educational system that has failed in teaching people about inclusn and diversity and pluralism and respect for others. is any effort being done in any arab country to have, you know, a fresh look at the education policies of these countries? none whatsoever. we talk about the loss of opportunity, of economic opportunity for people, which is leading many, particularly in the young generation, to flock

to isis, not necessarily because they agree with its ideology, but because they lack the economic opportunity and they find in isis a way to address theconomic needs. are things being done to spur growth and, you know, adopt economic policies that are -- that move away from the system that has plagued the arab world for the longest period of time? none of that is being done. certainly in the political atmosphere whereas there are clear examples, tunisia is the latest, two days ago, of what inclusionist policies can lead to in terms of stability and in terms of moving ahead in a rather smooth manner, and what exclusionist policies can lead to in syria and iraq and egypt and elsewhere, despite the clear record of the last three years or four years of arab uprisings, these huge wake-up calls burst

out of uprising, and second the evolution of isis. in my view, have not yet been internalized fully, and the region is still talking about military solutions. to be fair, neither the region nor the west, in particular the u.s., have been good at nonmilitary solutions anyway. it is easy to send armies to defeat people. it's the easiest thing in the world. but it's far more difficult to have a serious look, even over time, at the underlying causes that lead to the evolution of these forces. neither arab governments, nor the u.s., have been good at this, and i would argue not much has been done anyway in these two areas. let me stop here. >> thank you, marwan. i believe soli wanted to make a

brief follow-up remark. >> almost telegraphically spoke, i will not abuse your tolerance for me. i just wanted to add three things. one, in thethe, in the previous panel, we had four experts. mr. coin said he expected isis to basically break up. where as joseph and yazeed said it would be do abl and if experts whose daily lives are consumed studying isis, we obviously cannot make up our minds oz to what's going on and that really makes analysis, but the kind of prognosis is my one has suggested dift. to come by with the western world in deep crisis and the other two major powers, russia wanting to be a game breaker and china just not willing to do

anything positive. number one. kob kobani. it's becoming something much more important than it could be three months ago, four monlts ago, on several counts. on the turkish issue it is true ta the turkish government thought it would be a good idea for is and the forces to actually tear each other down. and ultimately, the united states did use their air power. that's what it had done when isis starts to move towards er bir brk il. that from from the regions populations perspective, if it is just a single, just one clear american policy, american policy

has been anything but clearly consistent. we will not let them be beat p up. that doesn't bother you particularly at all, but if this is the perception, then the question that he raised, well, what about 292,000 people who have been killed and that, remember, it was president obama i think in the sixth or seventh of january 2013, i'm sorry, 2009, who said to news week, could someone please explain while the live of syrians are more important than the lives of 3.5 million congolese who have been killed and if you start asking those questions and you cannot answer that these are the arab debts or kurdish debts or what you do -- that really complicates diplomacy for all concerned. that does not observe, that's my last sentence.

that's does not ab solve any of the regional actors, the turkish state included, from their responsibility in the bloodyness we find ourselves in, but if this is going to be where major issue issues, i really want to look at those not strictly american perspective, but a larger one. zpl i want to ask you a follow up question. i have one for you, too, but a different one. first of all, i want to ask whether turkey and about other gulf state, are they particip e participating because they want to use it as a bridge to get the i united states and other powers to address the problem of bashar al assad in syria? is that the primary strategy?

and i would like to ask you to say something, both of you, but particularly, you from the point of view of saudi arabia up to his point about grievances and you've got a tremendous youth bulge in the region, even in saudi arabia, there's underemployment. lack of match-up with the opportunities in the economy and so forth. to what extent do i think decision makers in saudi arabia and the gulf look at the problem? do they make the connection that marwan is making s? that maybe we need to address youth grievances so they will not be susceptible to the groups like isis?

>> the coalition amongst all the other issues of the nation, i think it was two very important, the one we were hoping that this may lead the u.s. to believe -- also make a mistake and get his plane to fire and then the u.s. would have to respond. the coalition of air strike, yes, it may help a little bit in, the faility, is it going to achieve, i think if they go back to eight or nine security, how

those 2,000 iraqi that heavily involved in trying to fight al qaeda. as a result of that, nobody would try to fight them. they were killed, abused, family was destroyed. unfortunately, a very tough job to prove himself away from maliki and away from the policies say -- going to look at issues, not going to the security and dimension. this is why he tried to send a positive signal to the region, particularly to saudi arabia, but we need his promises and more to be converted to -- with that issue, i think this, we do agree that we have problems. we have issues like many of the country, the only country an unemployment issue, but since

many, many -- one nation, we will have given, to give of their political life in reward for the economic benefit they had. today, they're asking what is the benefit? today, they want to have housin jobs, all in this country, you have 120,000 students that live here p if you go through the analysis of the people who welcomed saudi arabia, isis, you look at the age group, background. i was surprised to see from one family, 12 person have joined there, so it means not necessarily only the job issue and the some believe gave up

support if you want to find isis today at all, you need to go back to the sunni, you need to talk to them, give them a comfort, assure them even they would not be pushed out of the government. they would have equal opportunity. there are people in the prison would be released from the maliki government, the iran influence that -- the united states thanks to the policy handed to iran, so we need to make sure that iran interfering in iraq issues, the mosaic of iraq, definitely sars position is clear. we are the unity of iraq. we do not wish to see a fragmented iraq and here, by the way, it's a similar interest of iraq. iran would like to see a unified

iraq by the shia. by their own people. their own puppets they would like to have. yes, we were not happy to see germany or other countries with the in addition equivalent because they can cook and still is a big debate of that city. out of considered it's an outer city. the kurds still think there's a majority kurdish, but they would use that force, the occasion, the support to view as to make sure to do the referendum as fast as possible. to make it a kurdish city. it has oil, we understand that, but you know, i think we're playing with fire here when we use economic interest, when use the you know, a city which is considered to be an add aed city given to the kurd, not giving --

i think isis is not -- isis target is united states of america and iran. this is the two because somehow, they see strong allies between. >> there was also, there was, you know, you blamed the united states for having believed perhaps that the syria conflict was containable and it has obviously me tas sized in the region to something far larger. but now, you're speaking of the islamic state as if it is containable and not really a problem. >> it can be contain ed if you'e gained back the sunni and you give them the trust, the believe, i mean, 12,000 people, they joined the -- in the war against al qaeda. they fought with them. they were left out, no salary, no job, nothing left and all the shia