screeria -- nigeria. -

114 congress. later a look at president obama's use of executive orders and the impact on states. wednesday the council on foreign relations hosted a discussion on global conflicts and instability.

scholars and former federal officials examined threats posed by the situations in the south china sea, the middle east, and the conflict between russia and ukraine. this is just over an hour. >> welcome. hello, everyone. hi. my name's jeanine davidson, thank you all for coming today for what promises to be a fascinating conversation i can tell just by the looks an your faces and also by the people that we have here today. this has become a bit of an annual event where we sort of take stock on the last year, and look forward to the new year thinking about all the crises in the world, and looking at the potential horrible things that can happen or not, and debate a little bit. and also kind of think about what it means for the united states and for the rest of the

world, before we get started, let me just say this is on the record. we do have some media here, so for those of you who need to make sure of what you're saying, especially government folks are on the record. also could you please turn your cell phoninges off not just on vibrate, because the sound system gets a little bit of interference there. okay, it's my pleasure to interview three panelists today. first we have mark snyder. he's ceo of control risks do we have any other risk map here? we have recently published the risk map, which is a pretty interactive piece online as well. jim is not just the ceo of control risk. he has great experience as an operator.

he's had many positions in government, you can read all their bios in the handouts. he is also the director of the peace corps it's great to have him here to have him here to talk about the handout for his organization is the ten wars to watch, he'll talk a little bit about what's wrong with that and what's right with that particular assessment. and finally, we have our own cfr's paul astairs, who's the director for the center for preventative action and they have published the preventive priorities survey. paul is the author of about ten books, soon to be is11, i think. >> hopefully. >> and experience at u.s. institute of peace, brookings and a number of other places as well. so what i would like to do actually, i would like to have a vibrant discussion with the entire group in the room, but we'll start off with each of our

panelists, giving a very brief sort of overview of the work that the organization has been doing to think about the crises in the world. and also if you could talk a little bit about the criteria that you use, and the way in which you think through u how to rank order things and your methodology, but do all that really really briefly. we'll start with you, jim. >> jane thank you very much it's really great to be here, one weekend of january, i considered quite a bit how to frame such a broad topic for what to expect in 2015. and i initially thought, well, i might lead off and expect question can expect deflating optimism, deflating conflict. 6 each year we attempt to take a

look on a global basis, of what we expect to see principally from a security operational risk and integrity risk standpoint occurring around the world, both on a country level and on a thematic level, so what are those things that are underlying the global governance system around the world itself. and i think what i'm going to focus on today, is probably three principal themes. the first one is really looking at politics without power in a resurgent nationalism really occurring around the globe itself.

that really is what gave them their political mandate. and since the financial crisis we have really scene a weakening of their power. we have seen the rise of the middle class where they moved beyond basic needs and start looking at things like transparency, and accountability and wanting to improve their lives and wanting to become more restless and having more demands on their government. the government's performance legitimacy has really waned over the last five or six years. we are starting to see a huge resurgence in nationalism. so government's moving to very short-term political agendas moving to nationalists or populous behaviors. in order to reassert their political legitimacy itself and appeal to their public. and the who gets caught in the

crosshairs of that is multinational business. we see it in terms of certainly increased regulatory frame works targeting international business campaigns to shore up the national identity and we have seen that across china certainly in 2014, quite heavily. we also see issues like we saw in vietnam with the anti chinese riots going after the manufacturing industry. and obviously as they assert this power the trick is how do they get the political bark without having the economic bite that comes beyond it behind it which exacerbates the problems for them. we're going to see in 2015, increasing the nationalism driving really increasing bureaucratic red tape within a lot of countries around the world. more honerous competition, favoring the domestic players, who will have greater access to

contracts, who won't be delayed with the bureaucratic hurdles with visas and moving -- we see it in western countries from canada to france enacting more domestic policies really to protect their domestic policies the crown jewels of them and we see it in emerging markets around the world where we see increased constraints around international investment agreements. really becoming constrictive as compared to the past where they were quite open. and willing to let international foreign investment flow quite freely. we're seeing a large increase in tension between business, mully national corporations, predominantly and politics. as we have seen over the last decade, most international businesses have significantly

reengineered for rebuilt themselves, redesigned themselves as global companies that no longer operate and define themselves by geographies and state borders but increasingly by regions, whether it's middle east or north africa and asia pacific but spanning multiple markets. in businesses to thriver, we need the ability to move talent and traffic to move cross borders. as we see nationalism on many fronts around the world we see at odds of my multinational businesses of dealing with localized politics.

we're trading a lot more with higher political risk environments around the world. the political outlook around the world is going towards those environments. if we look at the last year, we see the political risks increasing in a variety of ways we see it in a series of coup d'etats in thailand, we see it in significant security crisis around the world. ukraine and yemen are great examples, we see it as a possible ending of a political dynasty in cuba and we see it in what used to be very stable and predibltable environments becoming less predictable poe land, cleveland and spain, all great examples of what were very

stable. this is really creating an environment where historically safe areas around the world are less stable les predictable and much more complex. for businesses operating in those environments. and i think the final point that i would add is sort of a global theme is with the proliferation of technology around the world and weaker state powers of governments being less powerful than they have historically been. we're seeing this change the way that organized criminal groups around the world and terrorists are doing business. if we look at technology itself, it's really changing how the nonstate actors, so take the islamic state, is able hold and project power around the world and the competition between the old jihad, the al qaeda network and the new jihad, the islamic state is increasinging and

technology is really i'ding the ability of the islamic state to proliferate it's power around the world itself. we're seeing obviously we can't read a newspaper on any day without reading about the cyber attacks that are occurring around the world. we think 2015 is really going to increase the proo live ration of stiber attacks. so we're going to see if you will cyber jihadists begin to learn from organized crime and use retail mall ware that was produced by organized criminal networks for their purposes. we're going to see certainly criminals use mall wear that was created for state sponsored espionage for their purposes. we're going to see the proliferation of nationalist

cyber hackers or freelance cyber recruits acting on behalf of the nationals government in order to project their power and their will. to enable those environments to be breeding grounds for cyber-terrorism, et cetera. and finally i would just add that we will probably see a large increase in the amount of cyber attacks within supply chains around the world. as those supply chains are largely operated by multinational companies, which would become easy targets again, back to that same nationalism, that we're seeing emerge across the world, so i think without taking too much time, i'll save perhaps for question and answers

what we might see from russia, what we might see from iraq and syria and other places around the world, china or elsewhere, for an open panel discussion and back to you. >> great, thanks. go ahead. >> first happy new year to everyone. and i'm hoping that as we talk about what to worry about in 2015, that as a result of the actions that you all take, at the end of the year, we can talk about the wars that were prevented in 2015. let me thank paul and jeanine and jim to allow me to participate in this panel. i think it's important to recognize that we start each yeareach -- that we start with the past history of national and personal interests now and unfortunately the realities of history power, and ideological fervor. we have seen crises break out in

every corner of the -- secretary general for peacekeeping at the u.n. for kofi has put out, indicates ten of the key conflicts we see likely in 2015. i have added a couple where i think there's a greater likely hood of direct impact if you don't unfortunately if they occur for the u.s. and u.s. national security. there a series of crises waiting to happen, that will be triggered -- succession issues or a comebination of the above in sri lanka, nigeria later this month. zimbabwe, tie land central asia. and there are additional terrifics in all of the west africa ebola affected countries who are out of conflict and are

attempting to recover from civil conflicts that went across all their borders. the only good news that i see coming up in 2015, very quickly, colombia, i believe there will be a peace agreement, the last couple of days you had farc announce an immediate an indefinite cease fire and president santos announced an end to offensive military actions against farc. i think there will be an agreement and ref republican july approved before the end of the year. second cuba, normalizations of relations with cuba has -- open of political space in cuba, but we have 50 years of isolation policy that clearly failed in that regard. and third and probably the most important in terms of impact on the united states and the rest of the world is thc possibility of a nuclear arms agreement request iran. from an analytic point of view,

it's in the interest of both countries, and the region. on iran however, there's a darker side which is why you'll see it listed as one of the potential conflicts in 2015. so what are the four trends that unfortunately we see likely to produce more conflict in this coming year? and first as we have already heard, it's the return of -- leading to a less controlled and less predictable world. the most obvious expression is between russia and the west. it's upset the post-cold war paradime in dangerous ways. beyond that rivalry, we have also seen unsettling risk taking, this is one of the areas where i have added between china and japan, and china and the southeast asia countries, particularly the philippines. and we can go into what, but no

one really knows whether there's any kind of effective early warn system as a result of military clashes, as a result of china's more aggressive deployments. and the second trend is the jihad jihadi group glossary is -- often re-enforceing one another and producing brutal acts of terrorism and producing real-time national security threats. i think it's important to recognize that we have not been able to deal with one of the scariest aspects of their continuing ability to recruit new members from large disenfranchised, prime disenfranchised, presumably disenchanted -- that partly affects government's failure to provide an adequate sense of opportunity for that population. third, the international

community, and here's where we have much more of an opportunity to do something and we failed. the international community -- and to be accessories to failed transitions in which the u.s. and western ball warts on what should be an effective international peace and security and justice arrived too lathe, offer too little and depart too fast and we saw that in iraq and we saw that in many of the active conflicts as well. you can look at carr, how many agreements mali, sudan and south sudan. the u.n. secretary general mandated an examination of u.n. peacekeeping peacekeeping will do that, is whether those case -- whose security council votes established those peacekeeping operations should do more of the contributing to financing in the future.

and finally as in the past weak corrupt states continue to set the stage for internal wars usually with external neighbors. and where this is also portrayed and partably accurately as a lack of capacity is much more frequently a question of political will, you have the list in front of you, i'm just going to talk about one because i think it's crucial and the u.s. national security and international stability. and that's ukraine and russia. from the standpoint of the obama administration, and for the european union, it's one of the most dangerous situations in the world, and it's coming to a head this spring. and you'll see that, and we saw a report published a few weeks ago on the makeup of the eastern ukraine separatists, how they think what they think and the relationship with russia and the

report describes hopefully a way forward to avoid that claush. but the reality is that since the beginning of this year, you have had 5000 deaths, thousands since the cease fire agreement in september you have more than 40,000 addition placed persons and this winter a very cold winter, you see increasingly vulnerable large scale human suffering in the eastern ukraine. and while no one can easily pre predict russia's next steps, even if there's less than a 10% chance of a new russian military action, the west must plan u how it will respond and we don't see that. we also don't see enough action taken to discourage some of the voices in kiev about the possibility of a military action by the ukrainians in the spring against the eastern obelisk

which will undoubtly offer an excuse to president putin, that's the one area that i would single out, obviously we talked in the report, syria iraq, lebanon, isis, the serious problems that are faced there china and japan, china and philippines particularly pakistan and i would emphasize the concern in pakistan is about the still -- the failure to see any kind of strategic change in the way they view the relationship with certain jihadi groups, they obviously are going after in a very serious way much of the ttp, but we have yet to see them take much effective action against -- in relation to the situation in afghanistan. and why don't i end there?

and just to note that if you think that the secretary of state, and secretary of defense and the president don't have anything to worry about in 2015, you're wrong. >> excellent. paul? go ahead. >> thanks jeanine let me echo my appreciation of the co-panelists and all of you for coming out here today always good to see you, and this is i think at least the third or fourth year that mark and i have done in this briefing at the beginning of january and it's always a lot of fun. what i thought i would do in to the short time i have is just give you a brief overview of the findings if you will of our annual preventative priority stir va, many of you actually participate in this each year. essentially at the end of each year, we poll 2,000 experts within the u.s. government and outside. and ask them to rank 30 contingencies that we consider plausible, in fact we do a kind of crowd sources exercise

earlier in the year to take suggestions of what those 30 contingencies will be. and it's essentially a risk assessment it's not just asking people what they think is the likelihood of these particular crises happening or conflicts escalating but also, and this is i think an important distinction from many other exercises in this, we ask them to rank them in terms of their importance to u.s. national interests, and we give some criteria for people to make that judgment. on the basis of that, we distilled these results and we put them into three tiers of relative priority. i'm not going to go through the whole list obviously, but what i thought i would do is focus on i think, the three concerns that i take to be of most concern to the respondents to the survey and i think there's sort of three clusters.

i think to the first is the intensification of the conflict in syria and iraq. and concurrently the potential for a major deterioration of the situation in afghanistan, and i think the concern here is the fear that the u.s. will be pulled back into both theaters and we're seeing some aspects of this the mission in afghanistan has been extended, advisors have gone back into iraq and with the likely hood of senseintensified operations in iraq in the coming months, there's the possibility of u.s. more direct involvement of u.s., in addition of course to the air operations. so i would say that's the sort of the first cluster of concern. the second is, i think as mark says concern over both the intensification or deterioration of the situation in eastern

ukraine, and concurrently, the possibility of another flare up or flash point in south china sea. and both obviously raise the risk of the u.s. developing a more adversarial relationship with russia and china. obviously it has profound implications for security but on a whole range of those implications and that came through very much in the same survey. the third is this hearty per republican yals. and there are sort of signs that obviously in the case of iran, that the agreement to the temporary agreement, provisional agreement will not last and that might sort of unravel. there's always an abiding

concern about the inpredictability of north korea we have seen this in recent weeks with the allegations of the hacking activity. and so here again of course is the concern that the u.s. will be directly involved in any escalation of those two conflicts. so they are i think the three main themes. i just want to add that there are now some outlier concerns that also came through in the survey and i also think worthy of us paying attention to in no particular order deterioration of the situation in the west bank i think there are signs that we could be on the cushionp p of major -- there are all kinds of indicators of that, the upcoming elections in nigeria i think could be extremely violent and have profound implications for the stability of that

country. thirdly, the power transition under way in zimbabwe could also unravel in ways that are unpredictable and also violent. yemen, the situation there has deteriorated in recent weeks. major bombing fact today 35 people were killed in an attack today, right? and finally, tie land there's always concerns about how the royal succession will play out there and the instability in sort of lightened in that country. so there are the kinds of other areas that i would be mindful of in the coming year. thank you. >> great. >> readpy through some of the work that you all have done and listening to you here, it strikes me as there are just so many different ways to thinkthrough what may happen and what that means, i mean what i think is interesting about

paul's work is that they -- you really try to say, these are most likely moderately likely not very likely and then also this is the most consequential versus the least consequential, through primarily the united states. >> through a u.s. lens. >> it's very tightly scoped, it's sorry of the so what, because lots of bad things are going to happen in the world. so you've got this most likely lens, but i'm not always clear about most dangerous to who. if you really want to figure out most dangerous and most violent. there are a lot of mosts we can talk about most dangerous and violent to regular people. nobody's really mentioned central america, which i think is one of the most dangerous places in the world is it because -- why? because we can't do anything about it? because it doesn't affect us that much, because that leeds to other most mostism pactful. which is a word i hate, most

disruptive? disruptive to who? to the united states system? most destabilizing to the international system. and i think also jim, your lens is more towards just sort of global business and would be so things that are disruptive as opposed to violence. so you can have places that are inconsequential, that really pull at our heart strings from a human rights perspective or really gross us out in other ways and it wouldn't necessarily be at the top of your list. so i just seeing the different ways in which you can look at these, i think as we ask questions and try to tease out some more of these issues, i think it's important to sort of present what lens you're looking at this with first.

none of these lenses really do take on this issue of horrendous violence that could potentially spin out of control in places like central america because they're not normal conflicts necessarily. or how do you see that in the context of bad stuff happening in 2015? >> in the past, central america dropped out this year only because the other countries are those where the likelihood of deadly violence actually is greater in terms both of numbers and in terms of something new. there is violence in central america, as national crime continues to produce a huge number. it actually has decreased in the last year. so that was one of the reasons why we didn't include it, and it was one of the reasons why we did include it this year both libya and south sudan and sudan as a link. because the conflict in south sudan, is directly linked to sudan's supporting the rebels in

south sudan and sudan's own internal violence against in darfur and blue nile and we see that level of violence increasing during the year, unfortunately. so it is a matter of looking at this coming year, where do we see the likely hood of greater deadly violence, greater impact on, in this case, my looking at it was u.s. national interests and in the case of the crisis group as a whole, was the focus on overall instability and deadly violence globally. >> great clarification. >> we i think the potential from spillover from mexico was classified as a tier 2, second level priority in our survey and i think what, as you alluded to jeanine, ath thlot of people have a hard time grouping what is essentially criminal violence that we see related to organized

crime in central america and mexico, with more political violence and sort of more identifiable type conflict and where does that fit? i think the number of people affected and killed and so on, criminal violence is extremely costly. and the numbers are horrific from central america, and if they were occurring anywhere else, it would be classified as a war, probably. >> politically driven. >> we also recognize the political violence has a criminal element too. and so does this sort of blurring of the two, and -- but it always leads to the problem of highway you classify it and therefore how you rank it and what does one deserve more attention than the other and so on. >> as you look at it, you race the point, whether it's the humanitarian side in that aspect of the crisis or for business certainly from a controlled risk

perspective, but the world is open for business everywhere. it's a matter say, potentially north korea, but it's what do you need to do to operate and mitigate the risk in those environments and then succeed and what's the cost of doing so. and so while you know if you look in central america as a great example, not a lot of direct foreign investment, not in central america you see the risk from criminal activity organized crime, certainly the risk of violence in guatemala and el salvador particularly increasing in organized crime. it doesn't get a lot of attention in the national media or elsewhere. on the other hand you see mexico and mexico is very well covered from a security of risk stand point, but you see high levels of direct investment, you see a very close tie with the united states, with the dollar itself you see an influx of manufacturing, into mexico, particularly in aerospace and

the heavy industrial aerospace because the risks are manageable, if you understand them and you put them in the right context it's going through labor sector reform, as well as the hide droe carbon reforms, that's opening up for the first time in recent constitutional history in mexico and the ability for foreign concessions in the oil and gas industry, so a huge change within that environment, which is driving a lot more attention. >> i'm going to ask one more question. you made a very interesting comment, mark, you said somethinglike like, the international community, they arrive too late they do too little and they leave too fast. i'm thinking about these teetering conflicts for the next two years you think of colombia myanmar, libya, where we're going but the degree to which the norms associated with the

international community's intervention into peace and conflict resolution associated with human rights, and i think it was one of the other reports where u you said, we need to skort of moderate that a little bit. i meaning are the international community standards for human rights and the idea about war crimes tribunals and retribution after the fact undermining in any way -- where you have to get to both sides that have pretty bad track records, all wonderering what's going to happen five years from now, or ten years from now how do u you get beyond that? how do you manage both this very important set of values and human rights reforms that we have in the international community. >> actually, we focused directly on what we call transitional justice in columbia with a report that looked at how you move forward in terms of dealing with the question of impunity for mass atrocities.

at the same time, then you enable a peace agreement to take place. and we're -- we believe that in fact that the colombia and the farc negotiators are conscious of the need to deal with that issue in an effect tiff way because if you don't deal with that issue of accountability, if you don't deal with the issue of somebody being held accountable at the very least to tell the truth about those mass atrocities, it's unlikely that a peace agreement is going to hold. so what we have argued is that there is a way to deal with this issue that holds some accountable, at the same time recognizes the need to view the political consequences of continuing to to the conflict which would be more victims, we're reaching an agreement u now that puts an end to it. and we think they're pretty much down the path of finding the right balance. the other point that you mentioned at the outset i think is important to refocus on. which is that when we go into a

post conflict situation, we, the international community and the u.s. have to recognize that this is not a three-years and you're out situation. that you're not going to rebuild -- help countries rebuild institutions that are going to sustain peace in a short time period. the world bank development report about three years ago basically said it takes 17 years on average to get from war with a peace agreement to sustainable institutions and peace. and that the idea after three or four or five years that you have done it is simply mistaken. that's also what paul collier found in his studies. my point is that if we have to recognize that if we're going to assist countries in reaching a peace agreement and sustaining one, that we have to be there a lot longer and we should know it now in the case of iraq, leaving iraq in the way that we did cereal did not produce in its wake stable government

institutions and a stable security force. and i suspect that's the reason why in afghanistan now we're basically saying, well, maybe we better rethink whether we should pull all of the troops out on the same timeline, or at least with respect to combat enablers. to where stand what islikely to be, and we have already seen excessive taliban attacks over the course of the next four years. >> i just making some general point that most of these conflicts with very few exceptions are internal conflicts and you're constantly grappling with these yuan form. can sposz there's no good formula -- the real challenges that as --

almost by definition, the international community will come to those conflicts late. and find it very difficult to do, and we all know that -- have

all been significantly degraded over the last decade a lot through foreign assistance u.s. funding, et cetera to the point where there is a real ability to get that agreement. i think it's being handled very well and we'll come to a good conclusion. i think if we draw back to the global governance system i think one of the challenges we're seeing on the global stage itself is as governments around the world have refocused on domestic politics and we saw sort of really the push to the g-20, to start being a larger global governance group we're seeing that it doesn't have the maturity and the diplomatic space actually to handle global crises, and we have certainly seen over the last year, real weakness, globally and hard power, and certainly the limits to it. if we put that to a back drop to what's going on, the global crises diminish on a global

stage, there's no will to act, which is quite a difficult position to be in. >> i want to open it up for questions, remember, we're on the record, there are microphones, so if you could race your hand and also state your name and affiliation and also talk into the microphone, that would be great. right here in the front. >> capital trust group, one country that is critical to the global economy and the crises of 2015 is saudi arabia yet none of you mentioned saudi arabia, saudi arabia surrounded by -- jihadist terrorist threat and i would like your assess mjt on that subject. also there could be a succession issue in 2015. >> because we're kept to seven minutes, saudi arabia is definitely there. it's definitely there, when i mentioned one of the trends in terms of geo political -- the

rivalry between saudi arabia and iran is a fundamental driver of the conflict in the region. and what we -- i think what we're concerned about is trying to see whether there's a way to diminish that conflict in order to help deal with the role that each are playing in syria with respect to in yemen, and at the same time, one of the concerns that we have about saudi arabia, which is a partner in many ways in a counter terrorism effort is what saudi arabia can do to help diminish the legal of financing of jihadi medrassas in pakistan, force for the pakistan taliban. so when you talk about saudi arabia, it is a fundamental concern both in the region and elsewhere.

>> just if i could have, you know, it comes up every year, this year it was not mentioned as a particular concern -- i think in retrospect there's been some fear that with the prices falling balance of payment issues becoming a bigger problem in the kingdom, there could be more unrest. we keep sort of probing experts on the kingdom to get their assessment. and they feel that it's still fundamentally stable place. that the king and others have essentially through various payments bought up dissent, and they have the resources to do this indefinitely and it will remain a stable place. i'm not an expert on saudi arabia, i'm always nervous when people make those pronouncements, because the next day you read on the front pages

that there's been a coup or something else. and so i'm always worried about that, but we you know, this is continuely the dog that doesn't seem to bark when it comes to global instability. >> barry blakeman, stimson center. it's no doubt true that these conflicts would be greatly helped if the international community could go sooner, stay longer and understand that you can't get in and out in a short time. but i don't know who is going to do that. i mean we all here can recognize that, but it's certainly not the europeans entering a period of deflation and rising

nationalism, with a zenophobic element to it and it's not the united states. and, you know, john mccain and lindsey graham can hold their breath until they turn blue, but the united states and the congress are not going to support ground forces in iraq. no matter what happens. so i don't know if you have any suggestions about what happens to these conflicts if they are forced to resolve them more or less on their own, or to continue to persist in conflict. >> i think first i'm not willing to accept that it's not the united states to engage more actively and over a longer period of time in some of these areas, not all. but i think that -- let's just take into question syria, the u.s. now has said there's a need to more effectively support the moderate rebel. and that that is one element in

dealing effectively with the threat of isis. i suspect that that means that there's going to be more even beyond what's already been discussed in support of those moderate forces. and three years ago that wouldn't have been even within the realm of possibility. i think there's a -- currently, there is a beginning to have some u.s. military involved with some of the u.n. peacekeeping forces in africa in south sudan, in carr in providing let's say planning and i suspect that that might be possible to increase. because the one thing that the u.s. clearly has said is that mass atrocities and seeing another rwanda is not acceptable. and i suspect that there's a broader range of political support for trying to ensure that that doesn't happen. now how you manage it and how you put it together i grant

you, there's no clear road map. but i suspect that it may be possible to see more u.s. direct involvement in supporting effective peacekeeping. >> lack of political will to convene and things flip very quickly, and just because there is this very h -- ride to the rescue, that we will see

coalitions within the reiding organizations, regional organizations, maybe being more active, whether it's the au, gcc, i'm not sure about afghanistan afghanistan, but serge some of these where they will take matter into their own hands, and you can see that. >> i mean, i think as we look as different environments i think the u.s. has always been very good at planning military assistance in the form of planning training and assistance of foreign governments around the world. either overtly or through proxy and i think that will long continue and expand and ebb and flow in different directions, i think we need a stronger punish in countries around the world also taking stronger ownership if you look at the islam eck state in iraq it's not -- the issues are not going to be involved by an air campaign, and it's not going to be necessarily be solved by bootsless on the

ground. iraq needs to take control of its own political system and allow inclusive vomt across the spectrum in order to get dpur rabble change that's going to support a defeat of the islamist state in iraq and it's not likely. in fact it's more likely drifting towards full sectarian violence right now and will likely look more like syria in the months ahead than it does the old iraq. >> i think also i'm going to add something to this because it seems like the conversation is sort of focussed on boots on the ground intervention military things. and in this 17-year thing you're talking about, there are so many other things that need to be done. and i think you saw this in libya, right didn't necessarily mean we had to have a robust american, a military intervention and presence over a long period of time, but we needed to do other things to

help the libyans or in this case the afghans to sort of take control of the peace that they potentially could have. and it's that teetering middle right there that i think there is probably more of an appetite for those kinds of things even though they're not sexy and big and don't get a lot of news, they may actually be helpful. there's more appetite for that or more ability to do it if you have the political will than big interventions like i think is driving that lack of appetite that you may be talking about. in the back there. >> tom dine with the middle east broadcasting. i want to follow up on the saudi arabia question with a question about egypt. it is obviously potentially an explosive place and mark it's been that way for 2,000 years so i don't think the 17-year rule

applies there. so, could all of you or some of you comment on the egyptian economy, the lack of reform in egypt, and the egyptian -- the egyptian effort against terrorism and that includes egyptian/israeli relations which i think are warming up strangely. >> who wants to take that one? >> tom thank you as always. i think that the reason that it's not on the list is not because it's a problem in egypt for the region or for the united states. it's that we don't see an explosion of deadly violence likely. unfortunately there's likely to be a continuation of the same, obviously ek domic problems an unfortunate continued political closing space within the country.

that's not going to move in the direction that we would like and democratic opening that we would like. but it's also unlikely to result in major civil conflict internally over the next year. and at the point that you just made, is relative to the relationship of conflict in israel and palestine that egypt appears to be a stabilizing force in that regard at the moment. that's the reason. >> i would just point three things. one is the economy is as you point out, quite precarious. it's essentially being heavily subsidized by the gulf countries. and if that were to end, i'm not sure -- i think egypt would go into insullivansy if that were to happen. it's a very ugly and burgeoning insurgency in the sighny. the government has done a very poor job or good job in ill

nating the tribe there and that has sort of cross-national problems and that group is now i think formally affiliated with isis. so that's a concern. and i think thirdly i think many of us worry about the strong support for the brotherhood and how that might manifest itself in the long-term if there's no real reform politically inside egypt. >> a question over here. >> i'm perry kmack with state department. to para phrase yogi berra prediction is hard especially about the future. thinking about some of the most important gio strategic events the last couple years, the annexation of cry mere ya fall of mosul, these aren't things any of us predicted.

we knew we had a very unstable situation. obviously people were waiting for the spillover iraq -- the syrian civil war to have a spillover effect in iraq but i think the question is how -- as you think through your presentations, how do we structurally prepare ourselves for these black swans? we can't make contingencies if we don't have the creativity to think about them but maybe there are structural things that we can do that are more adept that when these black swans do arrive that we're a little more nimble on our feet can be more proactive as opposed to being stuck in a reactionary mode. thanks. >> let me start. i took a look at all of the countries that our organization had listed as likely conflicts from 2011 until now and there's only two that we missed. one was ukraine. and the other one was isis as a

separate conflict, if you will. it wasn't iraq. we all saw the failure to establish inclusive institutions including the sunnis in iraq as a precipitator of likely violence and civil conflict. that we saw. what we didn't see was isis. and in the case of ukraine, we really -- we saw the internal conflict. we did not see the russian likelihood of russian military action that went across international borders and put together the results in terms of crimea. in terms of trends goes back to ja neen's point. what all of us recognize but haven't been able to figure out how to do it perfectly is the need to strengthen institutions

in these countries, in these fragile countries. economic institutions, political institutions and civilian law enforcement institutions that protect citizens and give citizens a feeling that they are protected and that it's not power structure for its own interest to use as security forces as its own interest and the wide-spread population simply is left out of it. >> i would just add to that i think certainly if we look across the last let's just pick decade, we can go any period of time, but the world has moved increasingly away from being able to come up with multilateral agreements. over the last couple years, we've seen more unilateral agreements and i think we're seeing as people really begin -- countries really begin to focus on domestic politics, we're seeing anti-lat earlism globally. we do need to strengthen institutions. we do need to strengthen the law

enforcement apparatus and criminal justice system, et cetera, all the institution building things within environments around the world because we're never going to see the black swans and we shouldn't be in the business of trying to predict everything that's going to happen. we need to actually refocus on the global governance system in bringing together the parties to actually get back to multilateral cooperation to solve acute crises that emerge that we don't see in advance. >> just make a general point. i think we're enamored with the idea that if we could just tweak or improve our early warning we will see these things coming and then be able to do something about it. i think this is just a false idea. and instead of trying to improve early warning or at least in putting everything on early warning as your trigger for action, for early preventive action, that we should move more to this sort of what i call kind

of foresight risk assessment process in which we try to anticipate areas of risk without necessarily trying to be precise about how a potential crisis might evolve. and on the basis of that, start taking early preventive and preparatory measures. we also missed ukraine in last year's survey. but we've had it before. we've done what we do these regular contingency planning exercises here and we did ukraine several years ago. we did egypt. we've done saudi arabia. this is not rocket science to see where certain places are at risk of instability and more over have real consequences. and that's the key. it's combining not only the risk of something happening but also an appreciation that if it were to happen that there would be serious implications.

and that should drive early action rather than waiting for these precise definite signals because by the time you get that certainty, it's too late. it's already happening by definition. so, we got to get away from this early warning para dime in my view and move to sort of this strategic fore site approach. >> even then we don't necessarily know what to do about it. >> that's a whole other issue. >> it's a problem, though because you can have these little shocks to the system like what happened in ukraine even though we saw lots of bad things simmering. even when there's a long simmering crisis and see it happening, we still ring our hands and wag our fingers and aren't quite sure what to do. that's part of the work that you do. how do you think through how to prevent what is potentially likely to happen. that stymies a lot of our ability not to only act in

advance but act at all. that's part of the problem as well. in the back. i think we have time for this may be the last question. >> jim lobe interpress service. just to go back on what mr. brooks said. global governance should be the focus. what are the implications, if any, of a increasingly republican u.s. congress. >> do i give that to paul? >> be my guest. >> you know i'm optimistic actually that certainly with time we're going to realize and i think we're probably already there or nearing on the verge of a breakthrough that american politics is about inclusiveness and working on both sides of the isle and we're going to move away from being bitterly opposed on two sides of the isle and get back to actually having conversations, substantive

conversations that will move us back into a position to reassert ourselves in a global leadership role that's positive to support the development and diplomatic maturity of smaller governments around the world and to really do what we wanted to do for the last couple of years is push the cost of their security back on to them as their burden and not shoulder that so much within the u.s. economy itself. >> my comment is from your lips to god's ears. but -- and i do hope that that in fact, occurs. i will say, though, that it does seem to me the one test will be the degree to which there is a bipartisan response on the series of the issues that we've been talking about. on ukraine that needs to be a really thoughtful effort to help that country move towards and in a sense push them towards the reforms that everybody knows

need to take place internally. on libya, when i talked about two too little, too late and departing too soon dealing with those illegal armed militias in libya early on was the major reason we are where we are today. and it seems to me that there's a way to have a bipartisan recognition of that and a greater degree of active, positive support for making that happen. i will just say that this same kind of issue about getting in early and doing something on african republic before it exploded was also available and hopefully in the future we'll see greater bipartisan willingness to deal with those issues. >> i'll seed my time to one last question. >> right here in the middle.

>> thank you. i'm amy hawthorne from the atlantic council. we saw today the terrible attack in paris. and obviously we don't know exactly what took place or who was behind it but assuming that it was a jihadist group acting in some fashion against not just civilian targets but civilian targets for a very specific political reason using a level of sophistication, this seems to me to be a potential game changer. i'm wondering if we wor to see other attacks like this in the west, first of all, do you think that's possible? and secondly if that did happen, what would the impact be in the international system on u.s. foreign policy, european foreign policy and so forth? thank you. >> i'm happy to start with that. while i'm not going to speculate on the details surrounding today's incident in paris, i will say that certainly if we look at from a european perspective, i see no possibility of a sustained

terrorist campaign across europe in any way. i think we will continue to see sporadic localized incidents that occur. you know same thing we see within africa itself. i think certainly the counterterrorism campaign going on globally which is frankly a concerted international effort, is going to keep at bay any large-scale global networks, sustained attacks on a global basis itself, so i think that is the good news. i think the home-grown terrorist, the lone actor those sorts of things we're probably going to see more frequent, localized attacks occurring in europe in africa depending west and east africa perhaps spreading down to tanzania next year as well. >> i agree. i think actually i would also say that it's unlikely that you're not going to see some

individual actions like that that hit the united states. we were successful at the u.n. in getting the resolution adopted to go essentially to work to prevent foreign fighters from coming back, but it's impossible to stop everyone. but it does go again to what i said earlier which is we need to do a better job to focus on those pools of disenchanted young people and figure out how we can encourage governments around the world to offer greater opportunities to them. and otherwise strengthen civilian law enforcement in the process, not to take actions which reduce civil rights and civil liberties here or anywhere else. >> fine line. >> i think this is going to play out in three ways in europe. one is in terms of the debate in europe at the moment about immigration and as you know,

there's surprising anti-immigrant sentiment in many countries and i think again, we don't know the details of what happened here, i think this could sort of resonate in that debate. it's going to, secondly, have an impact on this whole question of surveillance public surveillance, of communications media and so on. and i think it could affect how people, what they are prepared to accept in that area. and i think thirdly in terms of certainly again in european context internal border controls and checks, is anyone who travels in europe knows once you're in that region in europe you can travel right across europe without any kind of check on who you are what you're doing and so on. and it's a nice thing but i think that's going to possibly change certainly if there's another incident of this kind.

>> very good. >> well, we're out of time. any wrapup comments very briefly. >> thank you all for coming here again and keep answering the survey each year. >> go on each of their websites our on cfr, control risk and get more on this topic. thank you very much for coming. have a great day. [ applause ]. on our next washington journal, connecticut ronk nan jim himes discusses the democratic agenda for the 114th congress and some of the issues facing the republican-led house. after that, former congressional budget office director douglas holtz-eakin discusses cost of obama regulations in 2014. plus your e-mails phone

calls and tweets. washington journal is live each morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. thursday the defense department holds a briefing on the u.s. military in europe and the consolidation of bases. see it live starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. this sunday, on "q&a" we talk about the ground-breaking 1915 film "the birth of a nation" its depiction of former slaves after the civil war and william row and trotter. >> part two of the mu scli is after the war reconstruction is really the heart of the protest in the sense that this is where the blacks are just appalled by the portrayal of freed slaves. and this is a scene showing what happens when you give former

slaves the right to vote, the right to be elected, the right to govern. it's a scene in south carolina legislature where their first and primary order of business is to pass a bill allowing for interracial marriage because again, in griffin ice hands, black men are solely interested in pursuing and having white women. ♪ ♪ author dick lehr on the controversial story behind "the birth of a nation" sunday night at 8:00 p.m. and c-span's "q&a".

next the annual state of state's address. nga chair of colorado and vice chair of utah discuss current conditions and challenges facing states and efforts to create better partnerships with the federal government. this is just over an hour. [ applause ]. thank you and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. thank you for coming to the third annual national governor's state of the state's address. as my -- boy it's going to be a tough one, i can tell. must be the snow. it's my privilege to serve as

the governor of colorado and as the chair of the nga. joining me today is my good friend nga vice chair and governor of the great state of utah gary herbert. i would like to take a moment to acknowledge the chief of the national bureau who is here today, general frank grass who is also a member of the joint chiefs of staff. we are welcoming many new colleagues this year as governors, already four new governors have been sworn in, alaska arizona, hawaii and the virgin islands. as of today governor ramundo will be sworn in as the first female governor of rhode island. over the next few weeks another seven new governors will take the oath of office. many of these colleagues are relatively new to politics. they entered the realm of elected office after many successful years in the privet sector. tom wolf the governor elect of pennsylvania, spent years running a family business specializing in kitchen

cabinets. arizona's new governor doug duesy was his state's first treasurer but before that he was the founder and chief executive cold stone creamery. governor didn't step into office until four years ago like governor duesy she was her state's treasurer, but before that, she launched one of rhode island's first venture capital firms. for the last three decades, larry hogan, governor elect of maryland has been an entrepreneur running the real estate company he founded decades ago. pete rickers will nebraska's governor thursday. he held several leadership positions in his family business including president and coo as mare trade. these are only a few of the new governors who come to public service after years in the private sector. these new perspectives will be of great benefit not only to the individual states but to the whole country. public service and political experience is critical to creating an effective government, but so is private

sector experience. knowing what it's like to take a risk and start a business. having had to meet a payroll and not only keep the lights on but turn a profit and succeed. this experience can help state governments empathize with the business community and with its employees. all of which helps cultivate responsible, economic growth. today, also marks the swearing in of the 114th congress and our former colleague mike rounds of south dakota. he joins nine other former governors who realize that having been a governor will help make them a better senator. i tell you all of this because we have a clean slate a fresh start. as the house and senate and the administration put their agendas together, we are asking them to look to the states. gridlocked too often may be the norm here in washington, d.c., but that does not hold true in the states. later this afternoon, governor herbert and i along with members of the executive committee of

nga will meet with the president to talk about the upcoming year and areas of mutual yal concern and interest. identifying challenges and finding solutions that work for everyone are the hallmarks of state capitals. it's worth noting also the hallmarks of successful business leaders. we have demonstrated we can work together to solve our nation's most pressing problems, indeed, is this is has it should be as our founding fathers intended states to function as laboratories of democracy. i would like to highlight a few of the things happening in states and how we are delivering results for the people of our states. then governor herbert will outline how the federal government can partner with us going forward. let's start with education. every governor i know wants to be the education governor. research has shown repeatedly that to have a strong, competitive education system early learning needs to come first. already most states have invested more state dollars in early care on education and those states are creating policies to increase the

likelihood that money is spent on high quality learning opportunities. governor malloy has led efforts in connecticut to expand high quality early care in education, make sure those opportunities are rampant. last year he established a new office of early childhood new office of early childhood to build a cohesive high quality system of care and education for young children in his state. he also worked with the legislature to expand their voluntary preschool program. states are also elevating the quality of their education by raising their expectations of stubts and moving the quality of the assessments used to measure student's progress. with testing it's about quality, not quantity. when done well students are better prepared for post secondary education, avoid remedial classes are on the path to enter the work force and ultimately the middle class ensuring that students leave

high school ready for college or a career is a top prior to for governors everywhere. govern haslem has led tennessee with this approach producing the largest gains in student achievement nationwide over the last four years. as states set higher standards what students learn and how they will learn will not change much unless we improve the quality of teaching and leadership within all our schools. states are revamping the preparation of teachers and principles and are significantly changing how educators are evaluated. in colorado we passed legislation several years ago -- excuse me -- to elevate the quality of our teachers and our principals principals. today, teachers and principals are evaluated according to a system based on rigorous standards. they receive feedback based on multiple observations of their practice as well as their contribution to student learning. along with this feedback,

teachers and principals are given the necessary professional development opportunities to improve their performance. but as we all know, education is not stopped in the classroom. it continues throughout their careers. the work force is constantly evolving and learning which is absolutely necessary, which is absolutely necessary in our modern economy. where we can create opportunities, that means well-paying jobs. and well-paying jobs mean upward mobility. upward mobility, economic growth and job creation depend on a well-educated and well-trained work force. there is a growing recognition that the united states will benefit from more advanced on the job training opportunities to develop a skilled work force for businesses and for well-paying careers for workers. that is one reason states have focussed on creating apprenticeships. governor bullocks main-strait montana project elevates the role of apprenticeship as a work

force solution for the state's key industries. several states are offering task credits to employers who hire apprentices. others are offering tuition benefits and reimbursements when workers take relevant courses. some states provide support to state-wide and regional agencies to help businesses develop apprenticeship models. this year governor bran stad signed the iowa apprenticeship tripled it to over $3 million to support classroom-based instruction for apprentices in high-demand sectors. governor herbert continued commitment to aligning utah's education and work force training systems with the needs of its employers in the state is paying great dividends. utah's unemployment rate is one of the very best in the nation additionally, his support for reforms that emphasize science technology engineering and

math, the so-called stem careers, it's helping utah realize its goal of 66% of all adults obtaining a degree or post-second certificate by the year 2020. while also preparing today's students for modern technology-driven economy. we governors are occasionally competitive but it's always good having one governor standing out so it pushes the rest of us. but we also must look at the talent pool when creating economic development strategies. among that pool of talent are our returning veterans. after returning from the armed forces, many veterans find that they cannot transfer easily their skills to a civilian job without the additional burden of -- without the added burden of additional certificates or licenses. because of this, 20 states already have enacted legislation just in the past year to assist veterans and their spouses in transferring and obtaining occupational licenses. six states illinois iowa minnesota, nevada virginia and

wisconsin are participating in an nga project to ease veterans' transition -- to ease the transition of veterans from military service to civilian employment by accelerating the occupational licensing and certification process. in minnesota governor dayton signed the legislation reducing the number of years of military experience necessary to take the police officer reciprocity exam and in wisconsin governor walker created an accelerated program that bridges the gap between military training and civilian credentials, especially in high-demand nursing and health care occupations. in every state, education and health care remain the top two expenditures. all states continue to focus on improving health care, raising quality and containing costs. increasingly, governors are aligning economic incentives across public and private payers, moving away from

traditional fee for service models and toward value and quality. many governors are starting the transformation with medicaid. for example, governor bentley proposed a demonstration waiver in alabama to implement regional care organizations to provide care to almost all of the medicaid beneficiaries within the next few years. governor in washington has a demonstration waiver proposal to provide statewide health care transformationings by consolidating and maximizing their value. for its part, nga is woing with governors to create and medicaid transformation framework in concept with the federal government around common state-wide transformation themes. that's flexible federalism. oregon transformed its medicaid program by delivering the --

dividing the state into 15 regional coordinated care organizations that emphasize prevention and chronic disease treatment to reduce the need for emergency room visits and hospitalizations. arkansas has implemented a novel system of bundle payments for select procedures and conditions. these payments cover the entirety of services needed. physician hospital pharmaceutical post care post acute care for each episode or treatment thereby establishing incentives for the most efficient care. governors are leading the way improving the health of the people of their states by focussing on the wellness of the whole person and optimizing individual health outcomes. a key aspect of these efforts includes integrating medical and behavior health care systems. missouri is a pioneer in this effort. governor jay nickson places a

premium on evidence-based practices such as support of housing and employment for people with the most serious needs. the missouri model shows promising evidence of significant reductions in hospitalizations and improved outcomes for serious chronic conditions such as diabetes high blood pressure and cholesterol. as states drive towards high quality and more efficient health care, governors are also developing an accessible, well-trained and flexible health care work force to meet both the current need and that of a transformed health care delivery system. many states report -- many states report provider shortages across diverse practice areas including adult primary care oral health behavioral health and a range of other specialties. more over, delivery system efforts are creating new work force needs that significantly changing the composition of the health care work force, along

with how individual providers are expected to practice. governors are carrying out a number of efforts to support that new health work force including addressing prestrixs, creating incentives for providers to practice in rural and underserved areas, partnering with economic development and labor agencies to collect work force data and funding education and training programs to recruit, retain new types of professionals. in maryland they established a loan repayment program funded by both public and private stake holders which includes an advisory council that scores potential applicants according to the likelihood they will continue serving the underserved once their term ends. in north carolina the governor has created a program linking emergency rooms to behavioral health providers who are able to initiate treatment throug