'79, early '80 to the east asia bureau back to the east asia bureau, and i remember us debating about what are we going to import from this economy? we now -- we recognized china we lifted the embargo. and we were all scratching our heads, what are we going to buy from china? i think the question is from 150 years of weakness, i think they consider humiliation and in many different kinds of situations whether the opium wars or whatever example you choose to cite, sperm concessions for the european powers in china, it's a country now is that's come back to its own. i think if you read dr. kissinger's book on china, which is a very thorough history of china from a u.s. perspective, he makes the point that back in

the 17th and 1th century china's economy was perhaps the largest in the world. so in a way, for them they're going back to what they may have considered a normal situation 200 or 300 years ago, whereas i think we sometimes still have a certain amount of difficulty, both intellectually and motionally adjusting to the fact that china is almost a peer of ours. it's going to be a long time if ever before china can match our economy or many others in terms of per capita income. the other rising power -- i say rising, but, of course, it was

an important power before, but i cite russia. because with the collapse of the soviet union that we talked about earlier russia went through a period in the 1990s where it was -- it felt very weaken weakened. it felt like we treated, not only us, but the west in general treated russia as a defeated power. they very often use that terminology when talking to us. and there was a point in the 1990s when the russian economy, its gdp added up to something along the level of the netherlands. i mean that's how weakened their economy was. and, of course, now under president putin's leadership, but also with the good fortune of greater oil discoveries and gas discoveries in russia, and secondly higher prices, not taking into account what's happened in recent times, but compared to the 190s higher

prices, the russian economy is on a stronger footing than it was. and i think you have to also think of it as a rising power. so these are countries. they're not allies. they're not part of the free trade networks either, but they're countries among others that we have to take into account as we form late foreign policies and strategies in the years ahead. so where does this leave us today? we were a fledgling republic in the first half, in the early 19th sefrmry. we were the leader, i think, undisputed leader of the free world, pretty much through the entirety of the 20th century. so we're coming off a pretty good record. and the question is, what will

be our role and what will be our place in the 21st century. i don't presume to be able to answer that question with any degree of certainty temperature but i think i would try to answer it with a certain degree of confidence. it seems to me that we still have a lot of things going for this society. and i want to mention one of the more intangible ones first because it's important. we are very resilient and we have a very creative and inventive and innovative economy economy. this is something that is the envy of just about any other country in the world. i teach part time up at yale as owen mentioned, and whenever we're trying to organize

exchanges with other countries. or even ngos working on exchanges between students over there and over here one of the first things people ask for especially if they're entrepreneurs is, well how do i instill the sot of silicon valley mentality into our students? how do i -- how do you teach entrepreneurship. how do you teach innovation? i'm sure it can be taught up to a certain point but i'm not certain that it also doesn't have to do with the very conditions in which our society operates through human freedom and the ability of everybody -- the greater opportunity for people to maximize their potential. i think that's one important factor. the second we still are, and i'm sure we'll continue to be for quite a while the stockest economy in the world. and our recovery from the financial crisis of 2008, 2009

has been as good if not better than any other country. and we have a military capacity that is unequal edled around the world. even though we're now at 20% of the global economy if you actually -- i was thinking about it the other day. if you take the -- just our allies basically europe, japan and korea, and add the strength of their economies to ours you're back up to that 50% i was talking about in 1945. we built sthoez countries, helped build them back to the situation in which we are. so we just got a slightly different distribution of this overall wealth. but it's something that we share with friends.

so i think with those kinds of friends, plus the network of free trading relationships that we have undertaken during the past 20 years there's really no reason why we cannot continue to play a significant leadership role in world affairs. but perhaps even more importantly is that i think we have an obligation to do that. i don't think we can shirk our responsibilities. having that kind of strength of military, it's an obligation on our part, we continue to strive to play a leadership role in world affairs. can we do it alone? no, absolutely not. we don't have that power

commensurate with what we talked about in world war ii. but we shouldn't want to either we're only 4 or 5% of the global population. for many of these issues to be dealt with effectively whether it's various issues of transnational crime or international terrorism or global warming there's no possible way that you're going to be able to deal with them except in partnership with other countries. so i would say we're entering into anner a of mutuality of interests with other countries. an era of interdependence, and i think it behooves us to take this new era very seriously and with great responsibility. and i'm confident really that you should the circumstances that we face today and provided we continue our best to keep perfecting our society that we

can continue to play the kind of strong leadership role that we played in the last century. whether we'll be the absolutely predominant power or not, i don't necessarily think so. but will we have a big part in the situation? i would say the answer is emphatically yes. so thank you for listening to me. and be happy to do some questions. thank you . >> i was told there's some water here. >> thank you ambassador. thank you for everybody who came today. i'm the founder of the center of human rights center. you referenced some of the

rising rising terrorist movements seen in the world today. they led to a decade of setbacks for human rights internationally. and we all need to be concerned about that because they're not getting better. we found the it to advance human rights that we think are the ultimate ant dote to those trends. i will focus on the intersection between human rights and foreign policy. after we asked him a few questions we will take questions from the floor. so the first question for you, and it's a big one, there are some who regard human rights as being intention the with the principles of real foreign policy. there were others -- and i would be in this camp -- who don't see such attention. we actuallily the promotion worldwide advances u.s. national security interests properly

understood. can you comment on this issue of whether there is attention between the promotion of human rights and foreign poll sni. >> i would be happy to. oh there's the bottle of water. i didn't see it. it's buried under there. be happy to. i was laughing at myself because in some administrations, there really were great argument and tensions between those after kating human rights. there's quite some fireworks that i was able to observe. and so i guess there's alwaystension amongst the policymaker, those who have a unique focus on maybe one functional area or one entente i issue versus those who have an overall responsibility

for the policy. but i think to the fundamental question, i don't think there's any incompatibility whatsoever between the pursuit of vigorous human rights policy and our overall foreign policy. but if i could try to broaden your point a little bit, we talked about alliances in our remarks. we do not have any alliance ss with countries that we do not consider democratic. i mean i'm talking about former political alliances, which have treaty, which obligate us to through our constitutional mechanisms come to those countries' defense in the event they get attacked. and essentially, these are alliances with democracies.

at one point the philippines was under a dictatorship .but by far, australia south korea these are all allied countries. and they're all democratic. and i think they' in a way demonstrated the truth of your proposition proposition. because very often, we came to the relationship of those countries for security reasons, but we saw the wiz some of helping, like japan like germany, like south korea. but we saw the wisdom of helping them develop democratic countries that respect human rights.

where you'll find disagreements around this town and around our country which for example what do you do about human rights violations with a country where you have other extremely significant interests, whether it's the purchase whether it's the largest oil producing country in the world or china about to become possibly the largest economy in the world? so you have to find a balance to make sure you support human rights in those countries. but at the same time we're sometimes limited by the real possibilities as defined by two thing, one by our interests. but the other is simply by our capacity. we've learned that just because you jor throw an unpopular government, that doesn't

necessarily mean a democratic country is automatically going to sprout up. and we further learned that the chaos that can sometimes be created by the fact of having overthrown or helped to overthrow that government is suddenly beyond our material capacity to be of assistance. the iraq war and the afghanistan war cost hundreds of millions if not trillions of dollars. and i don't think we want to see that experience replicated in syria. i don't think we want to send 100,000 troops there nor to yemen or any ore place for that matter.

but we can help nurture democracy around the question. >> related question. do you believe in countering movements like isis, there's more that could be done to promote human rights as a right to stop these movements from gaining recruits and winning the battle for hearts and minds?

just as in the cold war we kept raising the human rights issue with the soviet union and not just negotiating at the arms table, but we kept bringing up their gulag system and the oppression of their own people. he need to continue to mount an educational effort around the importance of human right, even in these parts of the world where -- absolutely. but i think we have to do it real listedly. we have to do it patiently, it seems to me. there are some situations where

the pry mord yal concern is just plain old security it's safety from the gun fights going on around them and the violence and disturbances. there's certain situations where people will most assuredly value security of themselves, their person more than anything else. until a government has succeeded in having adequate police forces and adequate military forces and whatever else it takes to establish requisite conditions of security, it's sometimes not that easy to promote the human rights agenda. >> are we too slow to sometimes criticize human rights violations by countries that are perceived as allies?

>> well, i'm in the category of those who prefer to work these issues through quieter diplomacy. i'm not sure you gain much -- particularly in it's an ally gain much in terms of retaining their confidence if you publicly embarrass them somehow. you may even undermine them. there are times you'll have to be public about these things. going public on human rights that seem unusual i entered the foreign service in 1960. we didn't have a legal requirement to write annual human rights reports about those

countries. that was passed in the 1970s. i found it quite shocking to my sense of what the conduct of diplomacy was about. what are we doing calling out all these countries for everything we think they're doing wrong. i got used to the fact. and after a while, it seemed to me that it was -- it wasn't so bad to have these reports, but it was important that they be drafted carefully, that they be careful about nuance and completeness and that they not be done with too much fanfare. you can find the state department's annual human rights report on every single country in the world. i don't think that has an effect of creating a huge uproar in our relations with other countries. so it seems to me part of it is

the fact that it's become a more recognized part of international discourse, both for us and for others. and that ultimately is probably to the good. >> the president in his cairo speech talked about human rights and our policy in the middle east. many people have viewed that as more rhetoric than reality. do you think we've done enough in our middle eastern foreign policy and with respect to human rights? >> well, i'm a little concerned about the way we've gone about it, but that's sort of one of the takeaways of my overall career. i don't think that because you think someone is a dictator, or you shi the shah is not a good guy and you don't like sanastasio samosa and you don't like saddam hussein that it

automatically follows you should go overthrow these people. or that you don't like mr. mubarak. every one of those situations that i have mentioned has brought on more -- maz created more problems than it sof solved. so i ask those who are advocates for human right ss perhaps to consider the possibility that focusing on regime change may not necessarily be the answer and it may be we need a longer and more patient approach. i would cite the catholic church. it would sometimes adopt a policy of long suffering, patient continuation in its mission in whatever country it was, but never allowing the hope for freedom to die.

the but not necessarily saying well, we've just got to get rid of these guys. i think we've done a bit too much of that. i think it's brought more problems than it's solved. >> it's been 14 years since the passage of the patriot act. do you think the patriot act has in any way endangered fundamental freedoms in the u.s.? or in balance do you think it's done well without endangering people's fundamental rights? >> well, it's a great question. you're asking someone who's not a scholar of this issue, but who has been a practitioner. and as the director of national intelligence intelligence, i had a certain amount of visibility. i was apprised to the

surveillance program being conducted by the nsa. maybe not as familiar with some of the work that the fbi did. but just because i didn't have as much of a role in approving those activities. but i did with respect to the nsa. that came under my purview. i think they were quarterly letters to the judges of the fisa court to recommend extension of those activities for another quarter. honestly, i never saw any behaviors that seemed so me to impinge upon the human rights of our freedoms of oour citizens. i visited nsa. they showed me out there in different rooms where they were carrying out these different activities with many computers and so forth.

and they were fbi agents, lawyers, all kinds of people overseeing the way in which these programs would carry out. and i was certainly satisfied that adequate safeguards were being taken to protect the rights of individual citizens. so frankly i just -- when the uproar occurred after the revelation of this nsa surveillance program i just didn't -- it didn't resonate with me. i just didn't connect with it at all. >> is so one of the themes we encounter when doing our civil rights work is the blanket surveillance our government is engaged in undermines to some extent our credibility when we seek to expand human rights abroad. do you feel like there's been

too much in the way of blanket surveillance surveillance, that perhaps it should be more targeted and focused on people who are actual suspects? >> first of all, you ear making some assumptions there that i'm not fully qualified anymore to comment on. i guess i probably wouldn't anyway, even if i knew what the current situation was. but i think it's fair to assume that we have collection priorities and we know what we want to collect against. and these are targets of where we think some threat will imnate. it seems to me that anytime somebody in the intelligence community is thinking about collecting against a friendly foreign leader that kind of activity or proposed activity needs to be reviewed by people

at a high political level. and it's not clear to me that that was done in the case to which ms. merkel was so upset about. two things -- priorities number one. real care with respect to collecting against national leaders. and i guess the third thing, reverting back to the issues of priorities is really you and i know what the threats are out there. it's international terrorism it's al qaeda, it's isis it's isil it's transnational crime. we don't have to go looking for things to collect about. and even if we have this massive computer capability remember that the limitation is our

analytical capability. it's not the physical collection capability. you've got to be able to digest and make sense of the material of the information you require. good analysts are a relatively squars resource. it's also an important area of work. i hope some of you will welcome analysts in the future. it's probably the most important part of intelligence is the analytic function. and we need to have an analytically-driven approach to intelligence. >> last question. to what extent do you think digital and social media have sort of changed the rules of the game? and are we doing enough to harness their power to promote freedom? >> you're going to have to ask somebody 50 years younger than me. i don't really know. everybody says it has. and i'm sure that's true. but i haven't really been able

to fully understand it myself except to understand what i think we all know the speed with which everything moves around. and the speed with which events and reactions to events -- i think that's the point we're all marveling at the way the reaction/interaction part of this just happens so quickly today. peter hickman and i were in vietnam 50 years ago. i was a political reporting officer. i would go out to the field for a week i would collect information about the political and military and economic situation in whatever province i went to. then i came back to saigon. and i would write a long telegram or a message of some kind. and then it would be typed up by a selk tear. and then it would be brought down to the code room and the code room would again, type that classified message on to a

teletype tape. then the teletype tape would be fed into a machine that would absorb it. and the telegram would come out in the other end in the state department and go through the same process in reverse until a typed telegram would appear on the desk of various addressees in washington. i would sent those reports 5:00 or 6:00 at night saigon time which was about 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning in washington. and then we had a chance to go home, have a quiet evening, go to bed. and then we would wake up in the morning, go to the office and we had gotten the reactions from impeachment in washington if there was something they needed to react to. but you sort of had one turn around in 24 hours. think about it compared to what we do today. and i think just that question alone in turn relates to the amount of time you really have to think about the problems you

face. and how do you n this digital world of today carve out that time of tranquility where you can think a problem through, rather than constantly answering the last person's question. so i think our thought processes have been affected by this. in this kind of work, at least. >> so we're going to open it up to questions from the floor. i'm going to repeat the questions in the mike and the ambassador will answer. >> [ inaudible ] now i'm teaching here. my question is victory day may 9. what is the nature of the

american hate towards russia and what is your view? >> so this was a question about american/russian relations and the may 9 anniversary. >> and you said something about the united states? about the hate? i think so, i think so. >> i don't know whether it was a particularly deliberate act by our government. as i was saying earlier, we made a huge -- russia was an ally during the war. every conversation -- >> [ inaudible ]. >> i understand, i understand. it was a huge victory. >> what happened? >> i don't know, i'm not in the government anymore. i honestly don't know what went into the decision. i think you're saying why didn't we participate in the may 9 activities? right? >> you just hate, hate. >> i don't think it's hate. i really don't. i don't think it's hate.

and i think america appreciates -- and i remember hearing that many, many times even during the cold war, we understood the losses russia experienced during world war ii. things went in a different direction in 1947, but i think the opportunities for the otwo countries to get along in the future are still there. i think we're going through difficult times right now because of what happened in the ukraine. i think that's problematic. but i don't think we should rule out the hope and the possibility of better relations between russia and the united states in the future. i don't think it serves either side's interests for the two countries to be antagonistic for a prolonged period of time.

one of the problems i believe which gives rise to some of the issues between the united states and russia is that other than natural gas and oil, there are not many economic factors that link the russian economy with the rest of the world. i think the level of trade between the united states and russia is something like $40 million or $45 billion a year. with china, it's $500 billion. so our engagement and our integration with the chinese economy is much greater. it's 10 times greater than it is with russia. i think we need more of that kind of engagement to develop a greater stake in each other's well being. >> next question? >> my name is ed fox, former government official. had the pleasure of working with the ambassador in the past. you outlined a whole series of challenges.

but there's one that's sort of right in the face at the moment. in fact, the congress is dealing with it, and that's a subject of what to do with iran and its nuclear ambitions. could you perhaps -- you've had several jobs in that area. perhaps you could give us your insights into how we might look at this and what recommendations you might make for the country? >> this is a question for the purposes of the mike on iran and the nuclear situation there. >> how did i get away with not mentioning that? >> in iran, it was very much in my mind when i was ambassador to iraq. their behavior was definitely problematic in iraq. >> the irgc iran, revolutionary guard core. they were all active in iraq and

causing lots of problems. when i was deputy national security adviser under colin powell powell, we were helping iraq. sending agricultural credits to the country of iraq. we have a history of involvement in that part of the world.

it seems as though there's going to be some kind of a deal if it gets completed which would limit the nature sof some of the equipment that they have. their numbers, their quality. what level of refinement that material is at. the uranium the enrichment of their uranium. it would allow for inspection for at least ten years with a variety of facilities of iran.

my impression from what i've been able to hear from the administration and others is that the key issue is really going to be inspection. they can assure themselves that the commitments iran has made have been and will be carried out. i think we're just going to have to wait and see how this plays out. whatever agreement is reached is going to have to be submitted to the congress for approval.

i think i reserve judgment as to whether i think this is a good deal or a bad one. >> we've seen in crimea, instability in the middle east. do you feel like border changes are sometimes necessary? and if so, what kind of frame work should be used to implement it. >> so border control and managing them. >> i think it would be a can of worms. i think it would be very risky.

whether in this post cold war the seizure of crimea it should -- we should countenance the possibility of border changes. it seems to me, once you start down that path you're on your way down the slippery slope. it's not only the political dangers, but it's the threat of the whole concept of the west

westphalean system of the states. it was established back in 1648, but it's the best system we've come up with yet. i think as long as we don't have an adequate substitute -- and i don't think we're going development one niemt soon, i think we have to remain faithful to that principle of sovereign vulnerability and so forth. that can happen from time to time, but that will usually be a minor border at judgment or a swap.

>> unfortunately that doesn't apply to congressional district, right? next question. >> [ inaudible ] it's been said that africa is the future. a lot of african countries are reposturing away from the u.s. on to china. my question to you, is how can the u.s. engage africa in an effort to try to woo africa. >> a question about u.s. engagement in africa versus efforts to engage china the region region. >> that's a very important question. i thought in the bush administration, we made a

significant effort to engage africa. we dealt with aids, hiv/aids and malaria. and very well received program. and it ended up being something on the order of $15 billion a year. it was also during a period when they chose to double the amount of assistance. which generally surprised me for a republican but the president did it. i think there's so many different reasons for the united states to engage africa, the historical affinity, the fact that it's some of the fastest growing economies in the world that probably has the greatest upside economic potential.

i think the administration has done quite a bit. we had the conference with african leaders with president obama last year. we've had power africa and various other initiatives designed to help africa come to grips and deal with the vast infrastructure issues they confront. and of course, importantly, you have to get the america private sector interested. and some of it is. i mean, the infrastructure part the engineering companies, the countries that -- the companies that manufacture turbines and things like that that i ear very interested in africa. we need to get others interested in it as well. walmart has gone into africa. they acquired a group of south african stores a few years ago to use as a platform to spread

into the rest of africa. i think you're seeing it happen. i think it just needs to happen faster. china, i don't begrudge them making investments they want to make wherever they wish to in the world. they tend -- their policy tends to be more one of investing to assure access to particular natural resources. i'm not sure their approach is holistic as ours. but i think there's plenty of room for investment from many different countries in this big continent of africa. next question? in the back. >> ambassador, thank you very much for coming. i'm also a state department employee for most of my adult career. i'm kind of curious what your thoughts are at the end of your talk, you discussed how you're

optimistic about our future and what opportunities may be ahead of us. i'm curious if you have any thoughts on negative trend lines that are concerns to you not necessarily in term of conflict weers already seeing, but trends in world affairs you think may pose problems in the future. and also perhaps trends in how we're conducting foreign policy that may be concerning to you down the line. >> this is a question about negative trends that may adversely affect our foreign policy in the future. we talked a little bit about transnational threats. so certainly one of the areas to be concerned about is transnational criminality of various kinds, whether it's trafficking in persons or whether it's trafficking in drugs, or heaven for bid trafficking in nuclear materials, things of that sort.

so those are problems that need to be guarded against. and related to that, perhaps i should have mentioned that in my original remarks, the threat of state failure. when you have ungoverned spaces or completely inadequately governed spaces, there's a much greater chance that these different problems will arise. if you have a huge gap in governance, in libya, for example. serious economic conditions, does that create the circumstances for the export of more trouble to not only the neighbors states, but far afield as well.

in the 1990s and right through 9/11 that permitted mr. bin laden to develop the capabilities he had. that needs to be guarded against. then if you want to talk about ourselves and what's happening in our own country, i think we always have to be on guard about our own economic and social development. there are still some imbalances and issues. we've got to keep working on our fis fiscal in order and our budget closer to balance. although fortunately it would appear that the level of the deficits has started to go down as compared to five, six years ago. and obviously the events in baltimore in recent days remind us that we still have some very

serious social and economic conditions here at home that we need to deal with. and i think that we need to deal with those successfully, that just makes us that much of a better country and a stronger country to deal with issues that arise in the rest of the world. i think it's been very distressing to see what's happening in baltimore in recent days. and for somebody who was here in washington in march of 1968 it brings back sort of the bad memories of that period in the wake of the assassination of martin luther king. >> next question. >> just a quick question about the resources you seem to put towards diplomacy versus the resources we like to add to our military. you know, the trend has been over the years even though diplomacy has helped us and the

trend has been if i'm a hammer, i want to nail something down. we' tried to use our military power too often i think. my question is about the proper -- you know, how do we strike a balance between using diplomacy versus too quickly deciding that using our military assets is the way to go. >> this is a question about diplomacy as a strategy as opposed to an overreliance on military power. >> what do you do? are you a student? >> i graduated in 2012. >> i was going to say i look forward to your paper on this subject. but it's too late to ask you to do that. it's a very good question. it's an excellent question. and i mean, sometimes it gets a little bit oversimplified. you know, one of my colleagues used to like to point out that there are -- you know there are

more bands music bands in the u.s. military than there are officer in the united states foreign service. but i wouldn't want to deprive our army, navy, air force and marines of their bands and their musical capabilities. and it's probably not a fair -- an apt comparison. because if you have a battalion or a division you're talking about hundreds if not thousands of people, many of whom are doing, you know -- have very similar functions and it relates to warfare and that's a completely different situation than diplomacy. be are our priorities out of whack? the defense budget -- the defense department budget -- rough numbers, back of the envelope stuff, 500, 600 billion a year. and our diplomatic budget is 50

billion, 10%. is that the right proportion or not? that's what you've got to ask yourself. and you know, i guess my answer to that is -- i mean, i'm being sincere here $50 billion is a lot of money. you ought to be able to do something with that. so i mean, i'd rather just focus on getting good performance out of our diplomats than worry about you know be envious of the agency next door. and besides, they do have i think, you know substantially different responsibility. we need small numbers but highly trained and experienced people. i mean when you think about the heroes of our profession you know the charles bowlen or people from that era after world war ii george f. kennen, these

remember people whose careers were cultivated. they were advisers to roosevelt and atchison and george marshall. we didn't create these people by the hundreds. they were created by the dozens. and i think that's still true. i can name for you even now, when i was deputy secretary of state i had a pretty good idea who were the best signologists and who were the latin american experts and you get to know who they are. and you know who the best analysts are. why? because their analysis bubbles up to the president in the daily brief and they get to come and brief the president themselves on their issue. so it's somewhat of a qualitative difference in terms

of turning out people in those kinds of highly professional analytic situations as distinct from a larger scale military organization although i would be the first to acknowledge that the military has become a much more more intellectualized institution than it used to be. it has moved up the educational scale substantially. if i'm envious of anything in the military establishment it's their training budget. if you would just give -- we don't have a training float in the state department. there's no such thing as every so many years you take a year off and get trained.

the conventional wisdom in the state department is on-the-job training. that's the conventional wisdom. phil habib one of the great diplomats of his generation 40 years ago i told him i was going off to a training assignment and he said what's the matter you sick? i mean, we have to -- we have to "a," change our attitude towards training and i think that's happening and secondly, we need more money for that. >> so we have sometime for one or two more questions. [ inaudible question ]time for one or two more questions. [ inaudible question ]time for one or two more questions. [ inaudible question ]time for one or two more questions. [ inaudible question ]time for one or two more questions. [ inaudible question ] >> income and wealth inequality in the united states. do you see this as a potential future threat to the stability of the united states? and how could we address the problem? >> question about income inequality and the u.s. and its

implications for our future. >> i'm -- you know, you're really way beyond now my area of expertise. like you i see the issue. and i am a bit perplexed by it. when i joined the foreign service in 1960, the salaries of a starting trainee at the state department -- entering officer like a first lieutenant in the army, right? and a young trainee at national citi bank now citi bank, were roughly the same. everybody -- i started out at $5,280 a year in 1960. and that's not that different than what people in the private sector earned. the discrepancies today are huge even at the beginning not to

mention where they go from there. a business school graduate or a law school graduate basically starts out if they go to wall street or something like that with the same salary that an ambassador ends up with. so there's something wrong with that. and it makes you wonder whether you can, you know retain the kind of talent you want to retain in some of these professions if there are such discrepancies. but i think i'm going to have to leave that one for somebody else to answer, you know, what you do about it. >> final question? anyone? >> very interesting and -- thank you for the speech. it was very interesting. i'm yuri from the russian embassy. you mentioned that we know that the united states has strong

relations with the ukrainian government and what do you think can the american government help ukraine to overcome the current crisis political and economic crisis? thank you. >> a question about the ukraine and our engagement there. >> and what do i think we can do to help overcome the crisis? i think, first of all, we need to support the government in kiev. i think they need economic help. we can't afford to give them all the economic help they need all by themselves. i think that's got to come from europe, ourselves, and from elsewhere. i think we need to work on the minsk process, which -- and the cease-fire and the agreement that was reached in february, which hasn't gotten very far so far. we won't go into all the reasons but it's proven to be difficult to implement but i think that's

a good starting point would be for ourselves, for russia and the countries of europe to try to accomplish the fulfillment of that agreement that was signed, i believe in february of this year. >> we're out of time. i want to thank everyone for your patients questions and thank you, ambassador, very much. [ applause ] now the supreme court hears oral argument on a deal program that requires raisin handlers to turn over parts of their crop to the government. they set up a business arrangement to avoid the program and were fined $700,000 by the agricultural department. they argue that the program is

unconstitutional under the fifth amendments takings clause. looking at argument this morning in case 14275 horne versus department of agricultural. >> mr. chief justice and may it please the court. this case does involve some important principles in the lives of marvin and lauren horne and hundreds of mall california raisin growers will be profoundly effective. this is an administrative enforcement proceeding brought by the department of agricultural against my clients demanding the relinquishment of funds.