it is possible to know everything about the stores. i read them all. but it is hard to make a decision that i want to know more. and there are more places to go for that now than there ever has been. i would read newspapers when i grew up and watched three news programs and night. that was all the information. it had great power being concentrated. but who knows the stories they did not tell? but now, you can choose. my fear is that you go with some place that really affirms what you believe. you can go to the discovery channel or the history channel. not to mention the world wide web. i believe that we're not going back to where we were. these are commercial

enterprises, but there are places to go. the burden is now for the consumer of the news as the person giving the knees. >> i grow up with walter cronkite. and i was always offended by the program where he said, "that's the way it is." no one of them can say that is the way it is. and the other opportunities that we have today to put our voices all word. it is a cacophony, pretty noisy out there, but a lot of different voices making that noise. i think the burden is much more on us to interpret and to analyze and to extract, and in a democracy i think that is the role we should play.

>> just like the "new york times," all the news that is fit to print. >> that is why our political debate is so impoverished today. failure of our -- one reason our political debate is so impoverished is because of our failure. it is a place where we as educated citizens and educators can play a critical role in helping our students become good citizens. we often fail at that. >> good, bad, or indifferent -- technology is constantly changing. there is an entire network of people who do not watch television, they go to the web. it is huge. i think about the fact that --

one of the conflicts that occurred a few years ago in louisiana largely became undergirded by the internet. it was not until after a large number of persons knew about the because of the internet that the major networks -- cnn, fox, others -- began to talk about it. the reality is that people are going to different places to get their information. what we see -- even if you look at how our news is presented to us, is about entertainment. some of the things are not necessarily the most important things that we would all want to hear or need to hear. it may make us feel good. if you look at our networks, there is a different slant of how information is presented.

it depends on who we are as to where we go to get our information source. there will be some watching fox. some will watch cnn. some will watch pbs. it is interesting. it is a smorgasbord. we want them all. >> ladies and gentlemen, here in our audience and on the web, two years ago obama gave an important speech right here at the center. we followed it up with this discussion. how did we do? [applause] let's thank our panelists, dr. lomax, professor sugrue, dr. king, gwen ifill. by the way, you can stay and gwen will sign copies of her

book. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] cable satellite corp. 2010] >> coming up, cut -- several experts in nuclear security talk about president obama as upcoming trip to prague. and the irs commissioner on his role in collecting tax revenues. after that, a discussion on conservatism and the global economy.

tomorrow on "washington journal," a discussion on how massachusetts was used as a model for national health care legislation with the massachusetts health and human services secretary. a look at anti-government militias in the u.s. with marked potok third we will also check with joe and lublin of the "wall street journal" about a survey taken nuncio's about pay and perks. tuesday, a discussion on federal oversight of car safety standards with former administrators of the national highway traffic safety administration. along with the president and ceo of the alliance of automobile manufacturers. viewers can also call in or tweaked their questions. that is why 8:00 p.m. eastern

here on c-span, c-span.org, and c-span radio. >> c-span -- our public affairs content is available on television, radio, and online. you can also connect with us on twitter, facebook, and youtube. sign up for schedule alert e- mails at c-span.org. >> several experts in u.s. security talk about president obama's trip to prague later this week to sign an arms reduction treaty. that will also discuss the summit here in washington. this is hosted by the center for strategic and international studies and is about 55 minutes.

>> this will be on the itunes university. my colleagues are some of the top experts in the world in this region. they have got a lot to say about various things that are associated with this visit. in addition, you will find before you an example of our critical questions. this is on the nuclear security summit and also will be at our web site. i like to introduce our colleague who directs our russia program. >> a great pleasure to be here and thank you for joining us here for our briefing. i promise i will not talk about

my personal over/under on tiger woods this week. the start i replacement treaty that will be signed on prague this thursday, i want to beware of overselling the importance of this agreement. but is really significant for the u.s.-russian relationship, and also president obama is an ambitious goal for nuclear security and further reductions in nuclear weapons. i do not want to oversell it, but if you did not have this for step, then both of those agendas would be severely hampered. it was extremely important that this agreement be reached before the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in may, as well as the nuclear summit coming up in washington next week, which i am sure my colleagues here will

talk more about. about a month ago -- this is also important for obama's political capital, domestically and internationally. i knew that he had a chance to be one of the greatest presidents in american history because of the circumstances or an unsuccessful one-term president. about a month ago, it was looking more like the former than the latter. and with the combination of the health-care bill passing and the start i replacement treaty, he is looking considerably more successful. it is not only important here at home but abroad and how he is viewed by other international leaders. for the u.s.-russia relationship which i will talk about in my few minutes, for the reset, there have been three key issues on security relations that have been driving the obama administration's desire to improve relations with moscow appeared the first and most

important is that iran and the urgency of their nuclear weapons program. the second has been afghanistan, the higher priority of boot -- the obama administration has placed on winning the war in afghanistan, and therefore the role the russians play in providing supplies in transit. of materials both lethal and non-lethal to our troops in theater. in the third is of course the nuclear security agenda, which without making progress with russia, is impossible to move forward on. i think that there is no question as will cat the 15 months or 14 months the obama administration has taken power that the u.s.-russian relationship has improved considerably. it has improved from a very low point, a very low bar. if the relationship had not improved, if we had frozen the end of the bush administration after the war with georgia,

there was the danger is literally of a new cold war. and among the achievements, one that is not talked about so much and maybe i should knock on wood when i talk about this, is the fact that there has not been another war in georgia in the last year and a half since the war in august 2008. and i know that my colleagues in the defense department and the national security council and the state department, they spend a lot of time on this issue in insuring that this does not happen. i think when i got a call in the middle of the week -- in the middle of the night about the bombing in the moscow metro, a year -- their first thoughts must've been that another war had started in georgia. it is an achievement but not often talk about. with the establishment of the commission between the secretary of state clinton and the foreign minister lavrov, they have working groups, and that is

important. but most importantly aside from the war in georgia is that there has been progress on the three security drivers, iran, afghanistan, and nuclear security relationships. as long as we have modest expectations out of their relationship, we are less likely to be disappointed and that has been my lai and consistently for the last 15 months. when you look at these three issues, our interests are not fully align. and i'm not one to talk about iran and afghanistan so much. the lustrous look at the treaty. when we look at the reset button 15 months ago, this was talked is a low-lying for it. this would be the easy achievement. while the agreement got more complicated to reach than expected and there was danger of a month ago. i felt that the low lying for it may become the poisoned fruit of the reset, but that has not been the case. why the negotiations?

first of all come up with the president to agree on this in april 2009 and tried to reach that deadline of december 5, 2009, at the expiration of the old treaty, that is not very ambitious in the first place. i also think the russians viewed that they have leverage with the obama administration. they viewed that the agreement was more important for it obama than for moscow, and that led them to press hard in the negotiations, and they never quite got beyond 97%. number three, and maybe the most important, this agreement like any other agreement between moscow and washington, it brings into the debate the whole relationship itself. i want to remind you that for the russians, they are still operating under a military doctrine which identifies that

principally the united states and nato is the number one risk or a threat to their security. our strategic outlook are quite different. the united states -- i think that we have really moved on from the cold war and we're looking at a different threat environment. the russians are not quite the same and that is a problem. it is clear that some political forces and military forces were obstructing the agreement at the tail end. but we got it. the other point i would make is that the role of nuclear weapons is asymmetry for washington and moscow appeared for the russian, because of the deterioration of their capabilities, nuclear weapons are more important than our military doctrine 3 for the -- for us, the reverse is true. i think they gets to the question of all possible or how difficult future agreements are going to be in the next round of

reductions with the russians, which are going to be considerably tougher and we can talk about that more. let me talk about the product representative. it is my understanding that the meeting between president obama and president -- president medvedev -- it will be important for them to work out something closer to an agreement on language about areas on sanctions before negotiating on what the chinese -- who will be in town next week for the nuclear summit -- broadly speaking, to have a minute left? the strategy has been to try to convince the russians that it is in your interest to have a better relationship with us, washington, then won with tehran. think about your interests differently. if we're not able to reach a meeting of the mines on sanctions compass -- meeting of

the minds on sanctions, even the ratification of s.t.a.r.t., all of those things will be jeopardized on capitol hill if there is now shifting towards the russians -- no shifting towards the russians. the russian strategy on iranian nuclear sanctions has been to try to find a way to appear that they are cooperating with the united states and our allies, while not making a hard decision about tehran down the road. there is a big hullabaloo in the fall where he said they were not categorically opposed to sanctions on tehran. they're already opposed to that in the un. lastly, the administration would like to -- from a strategic

sense -- tried to regain some leverage in the u.s.-russia- china relationship. it is worth -- i will leave you with this thought. it is appropriate to have modest expectations about the reset with the russians. when i look at three key security issues driving the relationship -- iran, afghanistan, and nuclear security, moscow is conditional on all of those. the conditions are closer to us than our beijing. it is something to think about. i would like to introduce sharon squassoni -- >> i would like to introduce sharon squassoni. she has just joined us from carnegie. we're happy to have her. this is her first appearance at csis. >> thank you. i am the functional specialists here. i will talk a little bit about nuclear security -- the nuclear

security summit that will take place in washington next monday. andrew mentioned the three- pronged agenda that president obama laid out last april in prague. nuclear arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, and nuclear security. this summit next week takes place just one month before the review conference of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which happens every five years. president obama needs a big win. he needs something to gain more cooperation and collaboration. i think the nuclear security summit was designed with that in mind. to get something that would be splashy and have style, but also have substance just one month before this important review conference. one is going to have been --

we're going to have 44 heads of state, hu jintao from china, medvedev, manmohan singh, and the prime minister from pakistan, benjamin netanyahu. iran and north korea will not show up and that is probably for the best. there will be a state dinner -- and heads of state dinner on april 12. there will be to plenary sessions on the 13th focusing on both national measures and international cooperation. more importantly, this is a big opportunity. not since 1949 has there been such a big gathering of heads of state. as andrew mentioned, this is an opportunity to discuss sanctions on iran, other pressing

bilateral issues, and of course some of the nuclear nonproliferation issues, just one month before the conference. on substance, it is a little tricky. one question i get is, what is nuclear security? what will this include? not everyone agrees on which material poses the biggest threat or how big the threat is. one of the functions of this conference will be to gain greater agreement. let's start with a couple of facts and then i will leave a lot of time for questions. since 1993, there have been more than 1600 illicit nuclear- trapping incidents reported to the i e a e to the iaea. not all of them have involved weapons-usable material. it demonstrates that there is a market out there. there is interest in trafficking

in this material. this summit -- when you look at the kinds of material, things in weapons stockpiles, weapons- usable material, which is not just stop in weapons and stockpiles, but also in the civilian nuclear energy sector and research reactors, the third category being radioactive materials that you find everywhere. in hospitals. sources used for cancer treatments, those kinds of things. some are particularly -- some of our european allies believe we should focus on those radioactive materials, because they're not well-guarded. they are a target of opportunity for terrorists who cannot make a nuclear weapon with them. you can make what we call a dirty bomb -- are radioactive weapons. many experts agree that is what terrorists would probably seek.

nonetheless, the security summit next week will focus on the weapons-usable material. there is enough material, depending on who you talk to, for between 120 -- 120,000 weapons or 300,000 weapons. that range demonstrates that we need to do more. we need to exchange more information. there needs to be a lot more transparency. this is a job that is for all countries. it is not just nuclear weapon states nor nuclear weapon holders like india, pakistan, and israel, but for all. going back to the agreement on what the threat is, one of the assumptions of the summit will be to -- one of the functions of the summit will be to get a greater agreement on the fact that there is a threat -- to get all countries to agree that this

is a problem. the white house hopes that -- hopes for four things -- that countries will be engaged, more aware, pledged to do something about this, adopt best practices, and they will provide assistance to other countries. the non-governmental organizations hope for a little bit more. they do not just focus on the existing regime. do more. actually consolidate, maybe eliminate these global stockpiles of material. i am going to leave your specific questions about what countries can do for the q&a section. even if -- i just want to close with -- even if and there is a communique that is full of flowers early in -- all of

floury language, even that would be helpful in this effort against nuclear terrorism, primarily because we all know what to do, but we're lacking the political will to do it and get it done. thank you. >> thank you, sharon. i would like to introduce janusz bugajski. he is the director of our new european democracy project and a senior fellow in our europe program. he is going to talk about this aspect of the trip. >> thank you very much. good morning and welcome. i'm going to be exceptionally brief and focus onu president obama is meeting with the central european leaders in prague on thursday evening. i would say this to begin with. paradoxically, his planned meeting with 11 leaders from the new democracy and allies is

intended to demonstrate that relations with central and eastern europe have not been reset or have not been downgraded, which is the way it is perceived in some parts of the region. in other words, despite attempts to upgrade relations with russia primarily through the s.t.a.r.t. treaty, the u.s. will not, according to the obama administration, let me make by points here -- weaken its commitment to nato, with from military from europe, agree to any revision of the continent's into blocks or spears and influence, four, close the door to further nato enlargements, and five, make any grand bargains with moscow over the heads of former soviet satellites in central eastern europe. .

about u.s. and nato policy toward russia. for this reason, there's several landmark developments ahead that will prove significant to the new allies, and i think these will be discussed at the dinner. countries that are seeking not only reassurance but an upgrade of nato's security commitments -- let me mention to read. the framing of nato's new security concept which is being worked out as we speak. and how russia is depicted in the documents. secondly, naidas summit in lisbon in november and what commitments were made to an enlargement, mutual defense, and there's a huge debate over what role the nato is playing, is it a global nato, or how can they

be combined? there are tw -- two different views on how this be structured. and the new missile defense system -- remember, president obama canceled the bush version but now is proposing his own version to which several countries have already quickly sawn off, and the czechs are interested. the question there is exactly how this will be an integrated system or how will russia and if russia will be included in the system, as the nato's security general has been offering. it is worth remembering in this context that one of the reasons warsaw and prague started on this version of the defense was not so much defense against iran but to try and establish a closer bilateral link with the united states had a time when doubt over nato solidarity was growing, as several west

european countries had reset their relations with russia to warm if not quite warm, which troubled countries in the region. people are concerned about russia's ambitions in countries such as ukraine, and georgia, and you mentioned the possibility of another war in georgia which cannot be discounted. and the pressure that moscow can exert even on their own security, dealing with the much more vulnerable states. ruinate truce -- the push the alliance to prepare all contingency plans for the defense, which is evidently taking place in the three baltic states. the