those seeking to spend unlimited money about elections. she's still chose this case as our first case to argue before the court. that's as a great deal not only about her tenacity, but commitment to serving the american people. it says a great deal about her commitment to protect our fundamental rights. powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. it says a great deal about the path she has chosen. someone as gifted as elena could have settled into a comfortable life in corporate law. instead, she chose the life of service to students, country, to the law, and to all those whose lives issues. given her upbringing, it probably came naturally. she is the granddaughter of

immigrants whose mother was for 20 years a schoolteacher. her father was a housing lawyer devoted to the rights of tenants. both were the first to attend college. they instilled not only the value of a good education, but the importance of using it to serve others. as she recalled during her solicitor general confirmation hearings, but parents what her to succeed in her chosen profession, but more so, they drilled into her the importance of service, a character, and integrity. her mother grew up at a time when women had few opportunities to pursue ambitions and took great joy in watching her daughter do so. neither she nor elena's father lived to see this day, but i think her mother would relish the moment. the prospect of three women taking their seats on the nation's highest court for the

first time in history. [applause] >> a court that would be more inclusive, representative, reflective of us as people. . .

[applause] >> thank you. thank you, mr. president. i am honored and i am humbled by this nomination and by the confidence you have shown in me. during the last year, as i have served as solicitor general, my longstanding appreciation for the supreme court's rules and our constitutional democracy has become ever deeper and richer.

the accord is an extraordinary institution. the work it does in the work it can do for the american people. by inventing the tenets of our constitution, but upholding the rule of law, by enabling all americans from current list of their background or belief, to get a fair hearing and an equal to have had justice. within that extraordinary institution, justice stevens has played a particularly distinguished an exemplary role. it is there for a special honor to be nominated to fill his seat. i have felt blessed to represent the united states before the supreme court, to walk into the highest court into thin the couy deciding some of the most important cases.

to represent the united states there is the most thrilling and most humbling task a lawyer can perform. i have been fortunate to have been supported in all the work i have done as solicitor general by the remarkable group of lawyers and staff, many of whom are here today. they identify professionalism, public service, and integrity, and i am grateful for all they have taught me. my professional life has been marked by great good fortune, a clerk for judge after -- who represents the best in public service. and for a justice, thurgood marshall, who did more to promote justice over the course of his legal career than any lawyer in his lifetime. i have had the opportunity to serve under two remarkable president's who have devoted

themselves to lifting others up. i have had the privilege of meeting one of the world's latest -- greatest law schools, and working to bring people together, making sure that day, and the school, or making the largest contribution to the we were making the largest possible contribution to the world. i am proud of what we all accomplished there. and through most of my professional life, i had the simple joy of teaching, of trying to communicate to students why i still love the law. not just because it is challenging and endlessly interesting, although it is certainly that, but because law matters. it keeps us safe, it protect our most fundamental rights and

freedoms, and because it is the foundation of our democracy. i am thankful to my brothers and other family and friends for coming to washington to be with me in here today. and much more, i am thankful for their support, loyalty, and love, not just on this day, but always. if this day has just a touch of sadness in it for me, it is because my parents are not here to share it. they were both children of immigrants and the first in their families to go to college. my father was the kind of lawyer who used his skills and training to represent every gay people and to improve a community. -- every day people and to improve a community. my mother and brothers are teachers.

my parents' lives and their memory remind me every day of the impact public service can have, and i pray every day that i live up to the example they set. mr. president, i look forward to working with the senate in the next page of this process. thank you again, mr. president, for this honor of a lifetime. thank you so much. [applause]

guest] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> a graduate of princeton, oxford, and the harvard law school. >> president got on the phone and said to me, judge, i would like to announce you as my selection to be the next

associate justice of the united states supreme court. i said to him, i caught my breath and started to cry, and said, thank you, mr. president. >> learn more about the nation's highest court from those who served there. "the supreme court" from c-span. available now in hardcover and also has an e-book. >> elena kagan recently appeared at an event with the just as she is tapped to replace, john paul stevens. this is about half an hour. >> what do you say about a man who has been coming to these

events for about 50 years? everything has been said. likely, everything that is not interesting has been set, too. i will be brief. john paul stevens was born and raised in hyde park. he attended the university of chicago laboratory schools. he attended in 1932 world series, which the cubs lost. in fact, no one in this room was alive when the cubs won their last world series. john paul stevens attended college in chicago, law school, practiced in chicago, answer for five years on the seventh circuit. even after he was dragged off to washington in 1975, he remained our circuit justice. this year, he became the second justice to reach age of 90 while

in active service. the other was oliver wendell holmes. [applause] >> his predecessors were the louis brandeis and william douglas. for 16 years, he has been the senior associate justice. you may have read about him in the last few weeks. i give you justice stevens. [applause]

>> thank you very much. fellow judges, friends, members of the seventh circuit bar, and friends again, i am going to play my normal role tonight, talking briefly while you are waiting to hear the principal speaker. on her behalf, she very kindly offered to let me go last and i

pulled rank on her and said, no, i am going to do what i have done for many years. just a few comments that are not very profound. it occurred to me, out of the blue, i attended the 100th anniversary of the illinois bar association 25, 30 years ago. i remember the president of the association, because of the anniversary, said it was a nostological vacation. i am going to make two on profound comment. -- unprofound comments.

the first is from a moot court in notre dame, which i meant to tell you about, and i think it was my second or third year. there were a four women participants. they gave the best oral arguments that i have ever heard in a moot court. on the pan with me was just as kennedy who was then on the sixth circuit. we had been friends for many years. during an argument, that advocates repeatedly addressed her as madame justice. obviously, she responded to that warmly.

at the end of the third argument, one of the women lawyers refer to her as madame justice, and she referred very vigorously, justice is as good a title. you do not need to use a sexist term to describe a dog in the court. the applicant responded. after the argument, when we were discussing who should win, i said, you feel pretty strongly about this matter of justice issue? she affirmed that she did. there should not be a sexist term associated with the term "justice." in the following conference, i told my colleagues about this incident. potter stewart responded by saying, we have to get rid of this mr. justice business. at that time, on the chambers of

all the justices, it would say mr. justice so and so. after that, we just started using the term justice. that was done a couple of years before justice o'connor joined the court. i think a lot of people assumed she was responsible for the change. let me straighten out the record for you. [applause] my second major historical the event that i wanted to describe refers to the chicago cubs. [laughter] as i know, i was never witness

to that home run by babe ruth. last year at the sixth circuit conquerconference, i got one ofe questions about whether or not i wasn't really there. i responded, yes i was. i remember sitting behind third base and babe ruth responding, pointing to center field. and then following up with the famous called shot over the scoreboard. after the discussion, everyone had left. a young man came up to me, he said he did not want to embarrass me in front of the crowd, but his grandfather had been in the bleachers that day,

and a home run had landed in the left field bleachers next to where his grandfather had been sitting. he saved the ball and they had is that -- family souvenir. the implication was that i was wrong, that the ball had gone over the center field scoreboard. my lesson from that is maybe senior citizens' memory is not quite as good as they think it is. well, earlier this year, a reporter from "the new yorker" interviewed me and asked me about this event. i told him just as i told you. apparently, he had to be careful about trusting the number of senior citizens. so he wrote that up in the article and indicated that perhaps what i had to say was not entirely reliable. after i had read the article, a

thought came to me. it was this -- dave ruth hit two home runs that day. [laughter] [applause] so i gave one of my law clerks had the assignment to find out what happened to the home run that he called his shot on. so we got a newspaper article that made a prickly clear that it went out in center field. so i made a mistake in assuming that i had not correctly remembered. other than congratulating jim and dan for their well earned

trophies, i will wait to see what our solicitor general has to say. thank you for your attendance. [applause] >> may i have a moment? your honor, we knew you were a cubs fan. now that you are retired, you will have the chance to go to more games. we got you -- [applause] [applause]

>> alani taken in less of a chicago fixture and justice stevens and was not at the 1932 world series. but she, too, has roots in the seventh circuit. shakshe clerked for third marsh. she then began her academic career at the university of chicago, and joining its faculty in 1991. i got to know her on strolls between the law school and quadrangle club, where the faculty exchanged ideas. she specialized in administrative law.

in 1995, she joined the administration as one of president clinton policy numbers. she was up further into administration when she became dean of the harvard law school, which was a disaster for chicago, because she knew just which members of the faculty to recruit and which lures would best temp than the east. harvard is so much bigger than chicago, it would seem that elena would call her faculty a wholly owned subsidiary. fortunately, before that, she'd return to washington as solicitor general. that is something i can approve, having spent five years in office myself in the 1970's. i think being solicitor general is the second-best lawyer's job in the world right after being

deputy solicitor general. [laughter] what is the difference you may wonder? the deputy solicitor general spend 100% of their time doing interesting legal work, while the solicitor general not only has administrative tasks, but is also expected to give speeches. not as many as a dean, but more than any deputy. so she is doing the speech thing. this audience has been treated to several of her predecessors. she is sure to have an interesting perspective to add. elena kagan, 46 solicitor general of the united states. [applause] >> thank you so much.

thank you, michael. thank you all for your hospitality. when judge easterbrook first asked me to speak, i thought, how terrific, i love the seventh circuit. it would be my honor to do so. i thought i would speak about my job as solicitor general can tell you about what is like to have the second-best jump in the united states. in light of recent events, i thought that would not be the right thing to talk about. the only appropriate subject tonight is justice stevens and his extraordinary career. [applause] really, all you need to know about justice stevens is what he

told you about my exchange with him. earlier today, when i looked at the program and i saw "remarks by justice stevens" and "address by elena kainandkagan" by elenae none of it. he said that he was just a humble supreme court justice who was retiring after 35 years. the solicitor general should give the speech. we are going to try to turn the tables a little bit and make sure that the focus remained on justice stevens tonight. the justice stevens, i think this will embarrass you greatly

-- i hope it will -- but that is what we will do. if you read the newspapers, justice stevens has been in there quite a lot. you may have noticed that not only did justice stephen to announce his record -- resignation, but also that he turned 90 in april. justice stevens has himself said that he was born in april 1920, but i personally do not believe it. [laughter] it is not just that justice stevens looks so good. i said to someone last year, when that movie came out, justice stevens is starring in his own movie "the curious case of benjamin bought an." [laughter]

it is not just between games of tennis, round of golf, justice stevens continues to do more work than just about any other justice. justice stevens drafts all of his own opinions, reviews thousands of petitions by himself. some of his clerks are very good and dear friend of mine, but i hope it will not annoy them to say that i have never understood what they do, really. [laughter] now i know. he gives them assignments about home runs. [laughter] [applause] and is not just that justice stevens' mind continues to have all the qualities of this steel trap, which we have heard again

tonight, but anyone who watches the case at the supreme court -- it could be about the first amendment or some arcane principles -- anyone who watches a case at the supreme court knows that justice stevens can cut through glass. but the real reason for my skepticism about his age has nothing to do with any of those things. it is an age where a person can be forgiven for thinking, he knows what he knows, and what he knows is enough. in an age when a person could be forgiven for thinking that, justice stevens instead approaches every day of his life, and surely, every case on the supreme court docket, with both hope and expectation that

he will learn something from them. justice stevens said a few years ago, "learning on the job is essential to the process of judging." today, no less than he did 35 years ago when he began his service, justice stevens is curious, engaged, his mind is open, and his essential steps, notwithstanding his awesome talent and intellect, his essential stance is one of modesty and humility. anyone who has had the privilege of arguing before justice stevens, as i have had this past year will know what i am talking about. i thought i would give you a

sense tonight of what an advocate -- what justice stevens looks like through a solicitor general's eyes. justice stevens is surely the only justice on the supreme court who asks your permission to ask a question. halfway through an argument, sometimes more than halfway, sometimes when the red light is just going on, from justice stevens -- may i ask you a question? could you help me on this? or i have been wondering about the basic thing? i looked at some of my transcripts from this past year, and he said once to me,

"how can you say that?" i thought, wow, if i could get him to say that, i must have done something terrible. [laughter] but mostly, justice stevens has this extraordinary courtesy that emanate from him. if you ever argue before the supreme court -- the wherbeware. underneath discourtesy, danger to wait. his questions almost invariably cut to the heart of a legal case and leave no room for the invasion and no room for escape.

so here, i am going to quote carter phillips, who has argued before justice stevens probably more than 50 times. i think what distinguishes justice stevens from the other justices are his hypothetical. they forced the advocates to understand the limits of his or her theory of the case. my favorite was n.c.a.a. vs tarkanian. when he asked tarkanian's lawyer -- it is not important that you get this exactly. when he asked whether united airlines would be a state actor for purposes of section 1983, if it told o'hare airport, a government entity manager, that united would move its airplanes to midway airport if they did

not fire the employee who was in charge at the terminal that united operated from. the lawyer stood there for more than 30 seconds saying nothing until the justice scalia leaned forward and said, the answer your are looking for is no. [laughter] you can always count on justice scalia for some good lines like that. in my judgment, carter phillips continues, justice stevens always asks the heart is hypothetical, and he did so so gently, that the effect was particularly devastating. and often, these gentle,

unassuming questions, point the way to resolution. i mentioned before that justice stevens' questions frequently come late in an argument. that he buys his time before actively engaging council. this is, i think, because justice stevens is simply the best listener on the court. in another way, the person who most understands listening's values. he listens to learn himself, and he listens to understand what is on the mind of his colleagues. so that when he does step in, he does so with a real understanding of what matters in the case, of what may move his colleagues, and what approaches may reach differences and

attract a majority. that aspect of his questioning might be viewed as strategic in nature, and indeed, ever since the justice stevens announced his resignation, we have heard a good deal about how he has served as the strategic leader of one part of the court. but i think, this misunderstands his essential nature and quality spin iies. if he is influential, and we know that he is so. and if he has forged alliances, and we know that he has. even in circumstances where none would have expected tit. it is because his colleagues recognize him as a person of

sterling integrity and independence, constant and clear in his convictions, and ever- faithful to his principles. it is because his colleagues rightly see him as a truth- seekers. it is because his colleagues know that each and every day he had done the job, for 35 years, he has sought to learn in in and from it. so i will close in good supreme court style, with a question and answer. question -- may i ask, could you help me with just a single point? how fortunate was this country to have had justice stevens' service these last 35 years? answer -- justice stevens, this

country was fortunate beyond all measure. thank you, justice stevens. [applause] >> the president said to me, judge, i would like to announce

to you as my selection to be the next associate justice of the united states supreme court. and i said to him, i caught my breath and started to cry. i said, thank you, mr. president. >> learn more about the nation's highest court in c-span's latest book "the supreme court." interviews with the justices active and retired. available in hardcover and also asked an e-book. >> a day-long form on china-u.s. relations is taking place at the brookings institution. coming up, a speech by james steinberg. we will have that for you. the ap reports that british prime minister gordon brown says he wants his labour party to

govern in coalition with the liberal democrats, and that he will step down in month if that happens. ap reports that he offered to quit if they formed an alliance. more on that story as it develops. earlier today, president obama announced the selection of solicitor general elena kagan to replace retiring supreme court justice john paul stevens. patrick leahy remarked on the president's selection. we are going to show you as much of his news conference as we can until we hear from the deputy of state steinberg. >> good morning.

i hope you had a good morning. for those of corporate, and i hope you had a good mother's day. i had a nice mother's day. her mother, brother, a granddaughter, two children. that is not what you're here for. today, president obama announced his nomination of solicitor general elena came in to succeed justice john paul stevens on the supreme court. the president chose from an impressive list of superbly qualified candidates. and i know, in talking to him, as he is making this decision, talking about the candidates before him, that it must an amazing list of people he was considering. he consulted with members on both sides of the aisle, as well as those outside the senate. as a scholar of the constitution himself, he brought a wealth of

knowledge to the selection process. he wanted someone who was familiar with the constitution. just over a year ago, the senate confirmed elena kagan as the solicitor general. i have said before, i would like to see someone from outside of the judicial monastery. ironically, it was just a few decades ago when most supreme court justices were from outside the judicial monastery, did not come in there as former judges. in fact, with this nomination, she will fall in the footsteps of her mentor, thurgood

marshall, who was also nominated to the supreme court's from the position of solicitor general. her nomination brings to the supreme court a diversity of experience. i told the presiden[inaudible] again, you look at the history of the country, and you will see that justice stevens' background played a big role in deciding the history of the court. sandra day o'connor had been in the arizona legislature. louis brandeis, others were good

for fresheners, practitioners. justice hugo black had a great knowledge of the first amendment, had been a u.s. senator. all of them were not judges before being nominated to the supreme court. chief justice william rehnquist had never been a federal judge before he was first nominated to the supreme court. chief of justice earl warren came as a state attorney general in government, recognized the power of a unanimous decision in the supreme court's rejection of racial discrimination and inequality in brown versus board of education. you see the history and see how he worked over two years, for such an court decision, that it was a unanimous decision.

now we see in too many recent cases and they're a majority of five justices joining together to undercut protections for millions of americans, kowtowing for their livelihood. i hope we can see a more detailed impact of the decision of the nation's highest court on all our lives. there is no better time to consider these important decisions as we look at the confirmation of the next justice. that process should be an opportunity for all americans to learn about the courts' decisions on our lives, not as a venue for partisan political attacks on the president's nominee. members of the senate judiciary committee will be reviewing ms.

kagan's nomination. we have recently reviewed her as she received bipartisan support to become the solicitor general, and in some ways, makes our jobs easier. it was such a short time ago when we had those hearings. really, this is the same issue, to confirm her as a justice of the supreme court. we have the opportunity in the confirmation hearings to ask her about the important role that the supreme court plays in dollars of every american. she will no doubt be questioned about her legal record and how she will approach the law from a different record as a member of the supreme court, rather than as an african on the supreme court.

i look forward to an open court. we will give her the opportunity to respond to those critics who have responded to her even before she was nominated. there are 300 million americans who will be affected by this nomination. there are only 100 americans who get a chance to vote on this nomination. 100 u.s. senators. we have to represent all 300 million americans in making a decision on a lifetime nomination. the senate is and should be the conscience of the nation. no more so when it considers the nominations to the supreme court. decisions made at the highest court affect all 300 million

americans. we 100 have a duty to the other 300 million to make a wise decision. our constitution to serve a civil and thoughtful debate on this nomination. thank you very much. any questions? >> a number of republicans have already said that confirmation for the solicitor general is far different from this. she has no judicial background. what is your response? >> i am glad to see someone from outside the judicial monastery. it was only in recent decades that justices were all from the federal court. some of our most dynamic courts

had members from different backgrounds. i worry within the judicial monastery, and that you do not have the kind of real world. that you might have otherwise. she brings a breath of experience. of course, is a little ironic if any were to complain that she was not a judge. she was nominated to be a member of the d.c. circuit court. the republicans pocket-a filibustefilibustered her nomin. you cannot do that and then said that she should have been a judge. let us deal with what we have right now. we have a superb nominee who should be seen by the american

people as the best that this country can offer. we ought to confirm her. >> some of senator leahy's news conference this morning on the elena kagan nomination. we are going to leave this to go to the brookings institution. there forum on u.s.-china relations. coming up to the podium, deputy secretary of state james steinberg. >> so many familiar faces, it is a pleasure to be back. one feels like they can never quite run away. you especially feel that because i have the pleasure of having so many of my former and current colleagues, now in government, including the former leader here. it is nice to see the former

administration officials. i am particularly grateful to talk about the issues that you raised, ken. your observations are quite right. the change in our relationship has been the centrality of these groups and answering the questions that you post, are essential to understanding where we are and where we can go in the bilateral relationship which has enormous consequences, not only for the u.s. and china, but also given the central role that both of our country's play in being part of the problem and solution of some many of these issues, like the economy, climate. i also want to express appreciation for my good friend richard busch. i am glad to see that things remain in good hands here.

i think it is important to begin the discussion of our collaboration on global issues by reiterating cover basic approach under which president obama has led our engagement with china. we welcome a china that is strong, prosperous, and a successful member of the international community. now is the time for our nation to join hands and to commit to creating a prosperous future for our children. a four-positive looking commitment that understands that we have to look at our relationship and a broader context. this goes to the point that secretary clinton gave last year, which is, given the nature of the challenges that we face, the changing global agenda, we face a world where collective

actions are coming in and no effort by any country on its own can be the only solution. for us, the great challenge is to build the structures of operation, which include building on a multilateral basis institutions and mechanisms for the 21st century, but also to have bilateral relationships with key players, beginning with our traditional allies. but also, to emerging tower -- powers such as india, turkey, south africa. all of which places chemical to the global challenges of our time. i think the press tends to focus on the day to day up and down to of our bilateral relationship with china, from time to time, claims near or virtual crises in the relationship. i think it is fair to say if you

look back over the last 18 months, it has been a very strong and productive time in u.s.-china relations, and demonstrates that the two countries are able to work together to deal with these big structural challenges. that is not to say that everything is always smooth sailing. any of us who have dealt with china relations would never expect this to be without its difficulties, but i think that where we have difficulties, we can work through them. where there are differences, particularly among means, that we can work through them through dialogue by building trust and finding common ground by recognizing, on most of these big issues, core interests is common between our two countries, and while we may have differences on the best way to achieve them, that strong conviction about the common goal

gives us a framework in which to work through these differences. i will talk through a number of those issues in just a moment. i think if you look at our strategy, going forward, it has been to build a strong and comprehensive relationship that deals with a full range of issues. we do not have the luxury of narrowing it down to a handful, but also looking at a broader range of issues which gives us context to solve individual issues that we face. i think it is particularly timely to look at this cooperation. in our administration, and i'm confident that our counterparts in china, are focused on working on a second to do the dialogue which will take place in beijing in a few weeks. when we think about some of the

areas of cooperation, on her first trip to china, which is now a year and half ago, secretary clinton highlighted three areas which she anticipated at the outside of her time as secretary of state, would be areas where there would be great opportunity for increased collaboration. the first was international and regional security issues. especially iran and north korea. energy and climate. the third one to response to the substantial global economic crisis, and the building a new foundation for sustainable growth. on all three of those, they have proved to be the core issues of our relationship. i think we can see we have made important progress on all three of those. that is what i will spend the remainder of my time talking about. security issues, something that we are focused on -- i think you can see there are a number of

areas where we have made to the in progress. beginning with global security challenges like counterterrorism, counter piracy, the attempt to build a more sustained military to military relationship, and most importantly, dealing with iran and north korea. if you look at issues like counter piracy, for example, the deed the engagement in china for supporting global efforts to deal with this demonstrates the degree to which china increasingly sees its part as having to do its share and be part of the global solution, learning to work effectively with other nations to deal with a common challenge. i think this is a welcome the element. as we understand this as a common thread, to commerce and safe shipping, the fact that we

have so many countries working together that have not historical done so, it is a strong example of how china can play an important country carry role. on the military to military front, we have progress, although it is not as sustained as we would like. we believe military to military cooperation the there. it is important to maintain the dialogue between our military. upon iran, -- on iran, the strategy that the obama administration has had, which is to reach out to iran and demonstrate our willingness and to seek a diplomatic solution to cover differences, particularly on the nuclear question, has proven successful in not

inducing iran to agree to the steps we think it needs to take, that at least we are serious about demonstrating looking for diplomatic situations. putting the onus on iran to make their updates. we are also seeking cooperation in sending a message to iran that its actions are not supported by the international community and needs to work effectively with us or will subject themselves to significant new costs. we saw that last fall in the important decisions taken by the iaea board of governors. now as we move forward in the security council, following up on the p5 +1 process. while we have not fully digested our systems to precisely the action of the security council should take, we have seen

meetings and that a growing list -- willingness of our partners of their recognition that the time has come to take submitted in action. it is clear from their statements and engagement that china understands, and iran seeking nuclear weapons is not in its interest. there is a need for a clear international message to go along with that. we are working hard to reach common ground in the security council to send that message to iran. diplomacy remains open. we believe that is the best way forward.

i think that has paid off a very substantially that we interpret with other members of the security council and the response to north korea's missile count last year and its announced nuclear test last year. that led to a swift and unprecedented degree of -- in a large the security council to move forward on new sanctions which we believe are having a significant impact. we face a very challenging situation and it really underscores the precariousness of the situation on the korean peninsula.

i think we all recognize we need a thorough and complete investigation. we are determined to pursue this thoroughly and to follow the facts where they may. s. this will have an impact on how we proceed in dealing with the challenge of north korea and its actions and not only on the nuclear front and other provocative measures they take in go how we perceive will depend on clarity go career and must live up to its obligations on the nuclear weapons program, of fighting with the u.n. security council resolutions, and will end its belligerent behavior towards its neighbors. from this process, i say china has played an important constructive role through the six party talks and in engagements bilaterally and in new york. we are engaged in an intense

discussion with all parties in the region including china with how to deal with this latest incident. we very much hope that during this recent visit with kim douville kim jbng il to make clear-- kim jong il that we made clear. that is the first basket on security. the second identified was on clean energy and climate. i do not think i need to tell this audience or any and why is that the u.s. and china have a significant role to play in dealing with the challenge of energy and climate change we are the two largest energy consumers, greenhouse gas in matters, and there is no imaginable solution for dealing with the problems of dealing with greenhouse gases without significant engagement and

contribution by both the united states and china. it is now up to us to be the vanguard's, as it were, to a salary to transition to a low carbon economy if we have any hope to meet the objectives for limiting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the risk of increased global temperatures. i think the evidence here suggests, and i know the people here at brookings are looking at this, but we are seeing a real change in the way the chinese approach this question from its historical position which suggests that it either was a problem but if it was it was someone else's problem and therefore not irresponsibility for china. it was something that could perhaps impede their economic development.

we have seen in china's national plan and its actions in copenhagen that we are beginning to see china undress when we think are the key challenges which is to see them reduce their emissions as they go forward with economic development and put themselves on a long-term path to meet the global needs for what climate science has told us is a sustainable level of greenhouse gas emissions with lower concentrations in the atmosphere. all this can judge the extent to which the kinds of the to ms. china is making on its own national level which is -- to which kind of emissions china is making. i think we saw in the final outcome in copenhagen a clear recommendation of china taking

positive steps on each of those elements. we have heard a lot about those negotiations for those involved in kyoto. and should come as no surprise like any fine meals, the test is not how it looks while being made but how it looks coming out of the oven vigo -- out of the oven. with some significance steps forward in copenhagen. all major economies, including china, or making commitments to carbon emissions and to report on mitigation efforts which is critical to give a recognition. we all need to work together with balance commitments by all major economies. that international engagement has been complemented by our bilateral work on energy and climate. we signed a memorandum of understanding to work and clean

energy and environment at the last to teach again economic dialogue when the president visited beijing last year. we have new clean energy research centers, electric vehicle incentives, and renewed partnerships. we agreed on public-private energy programs and clean coal development. these will have benefits to both countries and our private sector partners who are part of these efforts in go by we have in a substantial way to go forward and we have things we need to do at home, we are very much committed coming the president -- we are very much committed, the president is moving forward and committed to move legislation forward in the united states. we understand we need to do our part, but this is something we can do hand in hand with china to make a clean and predictable

environment. the third topic that the secretary identified in her initial remarks was the challenge of the economic crisis and global growth. i think here you said the potential the partnership between the united states and china. this is not a g-2. however important our two countries are, we need the cooperation of all of the systemic international players. the prospects for dealing, both with the short-term challenges in the crisis as well as the long-term challenge of sustainable global economic growth, they simply cannot meet. both countries did step up and do their part. china was a clear player in the financial crisis. this was the occasion of the president's first meeting with president hu was in london for the g-20 meeting.

now we needed to turn to the elements that will make the best recovery sustainable over the long term. there requires china to recognize the shift to more consumption in a service based economy. that is in china's interest as well as the interest of the global economy. and the greasy some signs that the chinese leadership understands that in sight. -- i think we see some signs that the chinese leadership understands me to resolve long term debt. that connects to the question of domestic consumption in china and other emerging economies as we try to sustain more balanced economic growth. one importance is the china moving to a market-based exchange rate. i think this is a principle that

have embraced and has been reiterated by prime -- by president hu. it is not done as a favor to anyone country but it is a part of china's national interest. their economic leaders recognize this needs to be done that recognizes that these are changes that take place over time but we need to move in the right direction if we want to give the global markets confidence that we are going in the right direction. moving towards a market based exchange rate is a win-win. all economies will be stronger. there will be a more sustained basis for china's on economic industries if we have balanced growth. at the same time, we recognize that countries like china and other emergency emerging economies play a role in this economy and we need their significant participation.

we have seen the role of the emerging economies and the evolution of the g-20. china has the third largest share of voting in the world banks. we support giving them a larger role in the imf. all these issues are very much on our agenda. the all demonstrate a lot of the key global issues that there have that -- that there has been progress. we have a vision of where we want to go. even if you do not entirely agree on the means. this underscores the importance of the strategic and economic dialogue building on our very successful first meeting here in washington and in this upcoming meeting we will have even more leadership participation than we had here in washington with 15

cabinet members and agency heads traveling to beijing. we use this meeting both to deal with long-term challenges and an action forcing event to help us move forward on some issues to crystallize the intention and get things sticking out of the bureaucratic level to the leadership decision level. it is a great opportunity to sustain the dialogue between policy makers in both governments, for them to understand our thinking and vice versa. the ability to do this across such a set of issues that intersect between the strategic, political, economic, environmental sectors. we think in a more systematic and integrated way. this set out an opportunity of us to give long-term priorities

for engagement but also to have concrete tasks. as with last year, they will have two tracks, the economic track that will be focusing on economic growth including the importance of sustaining employment here in the united states, building and strengthening exports, and thus the opportunities for american firms as well as to encourage china to move forward to contribute to global economic rebalancing. on the strategic track, there are three pillars. the first is counterterrorism, military ties, the second is the security issues in addition to the two i talked about, and ron and north korea northiran and north -- iran and north korea. we're working together on common objectives. the third is working together

for multilateral institutions on things like climate change, pandemic disease. needless to say, every one of these dialogues will raise issues and concerns and we will have an opportunity, as always do, to make issues important to the united states such as the need to protect intellectual property, religious freedom, concerns a lot aspects of the military modernization in china, as well as the issue of the overall economic balance and exchange rates. we will undoubtedly be discussed these core issues like peace and security in taiwan and the need for china to have a deeper engagement with the dalai lama within the framework of the one china policy. on the economic and trade fronts, we will discuss

concerns about aspects of chinese policies which we think have protectionist case -- castes. this could undermine market basket -- access to key sectors. this is an opportunity in formal and informal sessions for us to have a sustained dialogue, exchange views in a friendly but forceful way about each side's perspective which allows us to move forward and deal with these issues in a strategic way on a whole, the balance is -- in a strategic way. on a hold the balance is there. i think the answers to most of the questions is that we are heading in a positive direction. the nature of these problems are such that our interests are shared in terms of the fact that we sink or swim together on issues ranging from global economic growth, health,

terrorism, proliferation, protecting sea lanes, and other allies -- and other challenges in our common interest. we need to maturity continue support for china's growing role in the growing political structure. china's growth is a positive contribution to the security and economic growth of the world and its growth and prosperity to not come of the expense of others. i think that is a challenge that can be met. and is one we are committed to try and work with china to achieve. we're looking forward to this sustained engagement. we will be in beijing in two weeks' time. i look forward to your questions. [applause] >> the floor is open to

questions. please identify yourself and given the number of people who will want to ask questions. we have less than 30 minutes. make it a question and not an extended comment, please. we have some microphones. can get the sucker please fax -- can we get this up here, please? >> i am with taiwan. talking about the tie 1 straight, how do you see the president's recent remarks that in an interview with cnn he says, "we will never ask the united states to fight with taiwan." are you encouraged by his determination to defend tie one on its own strength or are you relieved that the united states will never be dragged into a potentially bloody war? for you concerned that they may be distancing taiwan from the united states? thank you sir.

thank you, sir. >> we are quite encouraged by the direction of relations between taiwan and the people's republic of china. we believe a strategy of engagement and looking for a resolution is important to the common future. this is something that, in the end, we have always believed that this is something best resolved through dialogue. we have encouraged beijing to make clear to respond to these through the leadership to find common ground and build trust across the straits. that provides a foundation for the two sides to deal with each other. this is a situation where conflict is in no one's interest. it is not useful to speculate what would happen in the event that conflict comes about. the goal is to avoid it. we need to look for a peaceful

resolution of differences that takes into account the wishes of both parties. >> you mentioned sea lane security. with respect to maritime corp., it seems to me there is a window of things like humanitarian relief exercises with the chinese, anti-piracy, and that folds into energy security. that me ask a question that i posed with respect to the global climate change issue in the first panel. the chinese have increasing interest in building trust and confidence or rather in demonstrating they are pretty confident? >> is -- as i alluded to, one of

the great challenges we face is how do we understand and how do we intend to turn a proxy growing military power? we understand -- how do we understand china's growing military power? because china's approach lacks the transparency women like, we do have questions about long- term intentions. that is why we want to strengthen the opportunity for military to military dialogue so we have a better idea of what is driving their decisions over military modernization in terms of equipment, doctrine, and other operations. we want the assurance that what they're seeking to achieve is in line with the broader economic interests of others. to the extent that china has a

greater maritime capacity to contribute for humanitarian efforts is welcome. because there are other aspects of their modernization program that are less clear, which would like to get the clarity about what their goals and intentions are to build the kind of trust between our military's and leaders. we want to understand what that is about. who want to persuade the chinese of the world we live in requires more competition -- and more cooperation not competition. this is a situation where we have learned from experience that the risks associated with those competitions are severe and no one wins the long term.

that is why a dialogue is so critical. we'll try to persuade them to try and insulate that dialogue on subsequent issues so we do not use the opportunity to discuss areas where we have concerns as well as wary -- we have common interests. miss >> great talker. -- >> great talk. on the recently completed north korean meeting, are you getting a sense that the chinese are getting closer seeing the u.s. argument that north korea as it is a is a strategic threat to china or are they still trying to keep it going? in that regard, as that incident has shown, regardless of who is at fault, it seems to have started a more considered

discussion about the level of u.s.-south korean intelligence sharing and all of that sort of thing. do you think it is correct to be thinking about enhanced u.s. relationship with south korea in the military and strategic sphere of leveraging that on chinese progress and to see our point of view on north korea or is that -- and i mixing apples and oranges? thank you. >> let me begin with a few general observations. first, i will let the chinese speak for themselves in terms of their own opinion on the matter. i am sure the bill have their own opinions. there is a strong understanding that stability in the region is in the interest of all of the neighbors. aspects of north korea's

behavior, particularly their nuclear activities, is a threat to that stability. we have a common interest that binds these talks together to address that as well as other risks of instability coming out of north korea. they're talking about that in twos, threes, force in the region. -- fours in the region. no one can feel at ease about what is going on in north korea. it enhances the common security of all of north korea's nabors. in terms of our engagement with south korea, it is hard to imagine a much more enhanced fasten the than the unique relationship we have with south korea on a political and a security level. the combined command is a unique example of the two militaries

that are deeply entwined. we work together in a remarkably united way as two militaries to address those challenges. with the many specific adjustments is something we will take a look at. go in the terms of the need to get closer, it is hard to imagine -- and that extends to operational, but on the political level, the level of cooperation and consultation between the united states and south korea is unprecedented in my experience. my experience goes back a ways. i am encouraged and heartens by the degree of we are working so closely together. they are making a strong contribution to our efforts in afghanistan, piracy, and other

issues. it is a remarkably strong and bilateral relationship. that is why we work so closely together. it is why we are consulted closely on all aspects of the challenges on the peninsula and that collaboration will continue moving forward. >> i am with the associated press. do seem willing to link the incident to the future of nuclear talks. is there any other gun into can give on what does the u.s. is prepared to do if there is some linkage to north korea with this attack? >> and there are all of those "if's" in your question. we will do this thoroughly, objectively, and with close cooperation. this is a broad based and

objective effort. i do not pose to speculate on how this will turn out because we do not know. i really want the facts to lead us. at the same time, we will follow the facts were they go and draw conclusions from them. i do need to say that we cannot be indifferent to this event. this was a deep tragedy for south korea. they are entitled to a full explanation as to what caused it. we will work with them to do that. until we have clarity about this, i think it is important for us to be careful about how we move forward leaving open any of the possibilities without pre-judging about this investigation. i think right now is a time to be prudent in terms of our actions going forward.

>> i was recalling back when i joined the security council jim explained to me that as an academic average like to deal with hypothetical questions. as a member of an administration, never answer a hypothetical question from a member of the media. [laughter] john? >> of china just announced last month that they went to supply two nuclear reactors to pakistan under an agreement that is probably not grandfathered by the nsg. but the conversations you have with the chinese on this subject? >> as you suggested from your question, i sank i think, the

status is with a the iaea. it is under discussion. it is important from our perspective that all countries live up to their commitments. the chinese have argued that it is grandfathered and we're looking at injury carefully. we went to continue to engage on the question with the understanding of the iaea. >> i am from the national defense university of bingo i hoped you could expand and your comments on -- national defense university. i have to expand and your comments on the u.s.-chinese relationship that in figures into the security dialogue.

i did not quite here with the use of the dialogue was on common objectives or interests. i wonder if there is, in fact, in meaningful distinction. to dig a little deeper, is a chinese commercial activity of its efficient with our greater coordination with our greater security affairs? >> we had an intensified conversation with china on these issues. we have been to beijing several times and have had discussions with them several times in multilateral meetings involving afghanistan. i think our objectives are largely coincidental in afghanistan. i think we all seek a stable afghanistan and has an inclusive government, responsible to its people, and that it does not harbor violent extremists that

could pose a threat to the united states, afghanistan's nabors, or the international community. -- afghanistan's neighbors, for the international community. we do share some interests. we welcome their investment in afghanistan. creating economic opportunity is part of the long term strategy. it creates alternatives to the illicit production of narcotics and other sources of income for the afghan people investment is important. as long as the investment is transparent, we welcome it. we have had a dialogue with the chinese about this. similarly, up with respect to pakistan, we can try to play an important role with helping to strengthen the government to help me -- help meet the needs of the people and fight extremism which threatensi the

which state. -- which threatens the pakistan the state. it is important that all the neighbors work together. we have been encouraged by china willing to be a part of that effort. >> all right. just a minute. mr. secretary, gering mitchell from the mitchell report. earlier today, we had a panel talking about the clean energy environment. it was an interesting factoid at the tail end of the conversation between obama and he's chinese character part that reflected, i think it is fair to say, a

significant difference within the chinese policy elites on questions related to clean energy and climate. that leads me to ask a question that has different components. are you seeing that kind of dissension on the other two components that you identified in secretary clinton's speech, security, global financial crisis, are you seeing that kind of division or dissension? if so, could you describe it? second, is a growing or static? to the extent it could be done, is there a way to characterize what the nature of political differences of opinion in china are like in the way it would be easier for to do -- to talk

about right versus left? >> i do not know if there is a chinese equivalent of the tea party. climate and energy issues, because there are so deeply caught up, obviously they have different impacts in different sectors of society. different sectors are impacted to a different degree by climate change and climate destruction. the cost of adaptation fall on different sectors. that is true in any society. i am confident there is as lively debate by the various stakeholders as there is in the united states. it is the role of the leadership to provide an overarching framework. i think one of the positive signs that we have seen is that there seems to be growing recognition in china than when you put this all together that

china's future depends on china taking significant measures to address this challenge. there are lots of reasons why it is in the chinese interest and probably lot -- a lot of political interests why it moves in that direction. i think it is a significant that, as they think about the contending voices and perspectives within china, there seems to be a growing way within the leadership to recognize the need to get out in front. it is an their interest to adapt and have an economy that will reflect the inevitable transition to low carbon and i think there leadership recognizes that china could benefit from being part of the solutton rather than part of the problem. i think it is important to remember like so many of these issues, the effort is deeply tied up with more localized forms of environmental damage in china which gives them a strong

incentive think we are talking about black carbon, particulates, lots of other aspects. the leading edge was clean air and clean water. they come together and it gives a strong natural constituency. people are increasingly tired of polluted air, polluted water, and the like. there is a recognition that there is a cost to china by being seen as not helping to contribute to the solution. i think that was an important part of what took place in copenhagen, a recognition that china will be viewed in the court of public opinion just like we will. whatever the containing forces are, i think when we are seeing is that whoever is something this up seems to be willing to move forward, not as much as some would like to see, but at least in the right direction.

>> at the end of president obama. -- at the end of president obama 's trip to china, since that time the united states has been engaged in a review of its own investment 3d model. it was reported to have come out in the end of last year and there are still working on it. could you give us a status report? it will there be further acceleration or are we still stuck in the technical level? >> we are still working on it. >> how about talking about the indigenous [unintelligible] >> this is a considerable concern to us. it has a huge impact on the united states, our firms, and

our investment. in the long term, it is counter productive. the long history shows that this kind of industry protectionism for these tools in the long run tended to distort even the country who is trying to put its own interests first. we think they could benefit from a free and open playing field that global firms, including the u.s., could come compete on an even basis. clearly we would like to see china extend that into the procurement field. i will leave that to secretary geithner to elaborate on that. i think the chinese certainly understand our concerns and we would hope they would be responsive. we think that in the long term, the system in china is one that will permit a troop level playing field in china bringing

world-class investment to china from around the world. >> thank you for your remarks today. in interviews in beijing across the last two weeks as well as in shanghai, it was always highly praised and almost immediately followed by, we need this by our side, the chinese side, as are opening to give the room for policy innovation and relationships to be built at the working level. the follow-up would go, we would then like a secondary track where are working level officials could talk with your working level officials to build the kind of ideas that can push up into that space which has been opening up. i do not to put you on the spot. is this something the u.s. side has thought about, is open to, or would be willing to propose it.

>> we think we are doing some of that. i would not call it a tract 1.5. we all recognize that for these things to be effective we have to do the work in between these sessions. many of my colleagues would say that that is with the engagement is. we need to do more. certainly, in one of the meetings between the secretary and a state councilor, we talked about strengthening these ongoing mechanisms so that these are not episodic engagements and we really do produce sustained work. we clearly could do more and welcome the opportunity to engage on a more systematic basis.

>> i am a correspondent for south korea. i will try not to use the termi thef -- term "if." was the report about china finalized? can this be rearranged in your opinion? >> the only thing i want to say on that issue is that i do not see any linkage between the two issues. we have had a long discussion and we will continue to discuss the relationship on the korean peninsula. that is something that we think this promotes [inaudible] >> jim, thank you much for this

interview. [applause] we will reconvene in 15 minutes for a panel focusing on the nuclear issues in iran and north korea. look forward to seeing you then. >> if i could have your attention please, can i ask you to stay in jazz -- stay in? >> we will be back to brookings with more live coverage at 2:00 p.m. eastern when the session will talk about nuclear arms in north korea. that is expected to get underway

about 2:00 p.m. eastern. we will continue to have live coverage here. earlier today, president obama announced that elena kagan is his choice to replace john paul stevens on the supreme court. she just turned 50 years old. she is a graduate of preferred, oxford, and harvard university law school. -- she is a graduate of princeton. she clerked for justice thurgood marshall. she served as harvard law school dean and now is the u.s. solicitor general. from this morning, obama's announcement. this runs about 15 minutes.

[no audio] [no audio]

[no audio] she applied the core values of our founding to the cases and controversies of our time. she has done so with restraint, respect understanding that a judge's job is to interpret and not make the law. she has done so with fidelity to the constitutional ideal of equal justice for all been down she has brought to each case and not just a mastery of the letter of the law but an understanding of its impact on people's lives. he has emerged as a consistent voice of reason helping colleagues find common ground on some of the most controversial and contentious issues the court has ever faced. while we cannot presume to replace justice stevens's wisdom or experience, i have selected a

nominee who i think embodies the same excellence, independence, integrity, and passion for the law. she can ultimately provide that same kind of leadership on the court. our solicitor general and my friend, elena kagan. [applause] yeah. [applause] elena is widely regarded as one of the nation's for most legal minds. she is an acclaimed legal scholar with their rich understanding of constitutional law. she is a former white house aide with a lifelong commitment to public service and a firm grasp of the nexus and

boundaries between our three branches of government. she is a trail blazing later, the first woman to serve as dean of harvard law school. she is one of the most successful and beloved deans in its history. she is a superb solicitor general. that is our nation's chief lawyer representing the american people's interest before the supreme court. she is the first woman in that position, as well. she is -- she has won accolades from those across the ideological spectrum for who well reasoned arguments and commanding presence. she is admire not just for her intellect and record of achievement but also her temperament, her openness to a broad array of a viewpoints. her have it, to borrow a phrase, of understanding before disagreeing -- her habit of understanding. the streets were particularly

evident during her tenure as dean. this was a time when many believe the harvard faculty had gotten one-sided, she sought to recruit prominent conservative scholars and spur healthy debate on campus. she encouraged students from all backgrounds to respectfully exchange ideas to seek common ground. she believes, as i do, that exposure to a broad array of perspectives is the foundation not just for a sound legal education but for a successful life in the law. this appreciation for diversities may also come in handy as a die-hard mets fan serving alongside her new colleague, yankees fan justice sotomayor who has ordered a pin- striped robots for the occasion. [laughter] -- pinstriped robe for the occasion. her passion is anything but academic. she is referred -- she has

referred to third marshall as her hero. he was known forsho calling knownrty." -- he was known for calling her "shorty." behind the law there are stories. these are stories of people's lives who might be changed by the law. that understanding of law, not as an intellectual exercise or words on page, but as it affects ordinary people has animated every step of her career including her service as solicitor general today. during her time in this office, she has defended the rights of shareholders and ordinary citizens against unscrupulous corporations. last year in the citizens united case, she defended bipartisan campaign finance reform against the so interests seeking to spend unlimited money to influence our election. most analysts believe the

government was unlikely to prevail in this case, she chose it as her very first case to argue before the court. i think that's a great deal about her tenacity and her commitment to serving the american people. i did it says a great deal about her protecting our fundamental rights. in a democracy, interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. i think it's as a great deal about the path that she has chosen. someone as gifted as elena kagan could have settled into a comfortable life in a corporate law practice. instead she chose the life of service to her students, her country, to the law, and to all those whose life insurance. given her upbringing -- given her upbringing, it probably came naturally. she is the granddaughter of immigrants. her father was a housing lawyer

devoted to the rights of tenants. both were first in their families to attend college and go from an early age, they instilled in her majesty value of education but the importance of using it to serve others. she said, both of my parents wanted me to succeed. they drilled into me the importance of service, character, and integrity. she has spoken movingly about her mother had grown up in a time where women had few opportunities to pursue their ambitions and took great delight in watching her daughter do something go either she or elena's father lived to see this day but i think they would relish this moment. i think she would relish the prospect of three women taking their seat on the highest court for the first time in history. [applause]

it is an accord that would be more inclusive coming -- inclusive, and rep at us as a people than ever before. i think they would be tremendously proud of their daughter, a great lawyer, a teacher, and a devoted public servant whom i am confident will make an outstanding supreme court justice. i hope the senate will act in a bipartisan fashion as they did in confirming her to be our celestial solicitor general last year. i hope they do it as quickly as possible so she can get busy before this fall. with that, i'd like to invite the person who i believe will be the next supreme court justice of the united states, elena kagan, to say a few words. [applause]

[applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, mr. president. i am honored and i am humbled by this nomination and by the confidence you have shown in me. during the last year as i have served as solicitor general, my long standing appreciation for the supreme court's role in our constitutional democracy has become ever deeper and richer. the court is an extraordinary institution and the work it does

and in the work it can do for the american people by advancing the tenants of our constitution, by upholding the rule of law, and by enabling all americans regardless of their background or beliefs to get a fair hearing and an equal chance at justice. within that extraordinary institution, justice stevens has played a particularly distinguished and exemplary role. it is therefore a special honor to be nominated to fill his seat. i haven't felt blessed to represent the united states before the supreme court. -- i have felt blessed thing go when they're deciding their most important cases, cases that have an impact on so many people's lives and to represent the united states is the most thrilling and the most humbling

task in lawyer can perform. i have been fortunate to be supported in all the work i have done as solicitor general by a remarkable group of lawyers and staff, many of whom are here today. they exemplify professionalism, public service, and integrity. i am grateful for all the have taught me. my professional life has been marked by great good fortune. i clerked for a judge who represents the best in public service. i clerked for a justice, thurgood marshall, who did more to promote justice over the course of his legal career than did any lawyer in their lifetime. i have had the opportunity to serve under two remarkable president's who have devoted themselves to lifting the lives of others of and who have inspired a great many more to do

the same. i had the privilege of leaving one of the world's great law schools and of working there to bring people together to help ensure that they and the school for making the largest possible contribution to the public good. i am proud of what we have accomplished there. for most of my professional life, i have had the simple joy of teaching, of trying to communicate to students why i still love the law now because it is challenging and endlessly interesting, although it certainly is, but because law matters. it keeps us safe. it protect our most fundamental rights, freedoms, and it is the foundation of our democracy.

i am thankful to my brothers, family, and friends for coming to washington to be with me here today. much more, i am thankful for all of their support, loyalty, and love not just on this day but always. if this they has just a touch of sadness in it for me, it is because my parents are not here to share this. they were both, as the president said, the children of immigrants and the first in their families to go to college. my father was the kind of lawyer who used his skills and training to represent every day people and to improve the community. my mother was a broad public schoolteacher as are my two brothers. they are the kind of teachers, students remember for the rest of their lives. my parents' lives and their memory remind me every day of

the impact public service can have. i pray every day that i live up to the example they set. mr. president, i look forward to working with the senate in the next stage of this process. i think you again, mr. president, for this honor of a lifetime. thank you so much. [applause] >> congratulations. [applause] [applause]

>> the new york city native elena kagan, solicitor general nominated to the supreme court today. she just turned 50 years old. she was educated at princeton, oxford, and got her law degree from harvard law school. in the 1980's she clerked for supreme court justice thurgood marshall. she served as an assistant counsel in the clinton administration. she was the harvard law school dean. now she is the solicitor general. for more about her career, c- span.org, and we have more video and in the c-span video library. >> the president got on the phone and said to me, "judge, i would like to announce you as my selection to be the next assess it justice of the united states supreme court."

i caught my breath and started to cry and said, "think you,." mr. "learn more about the nation's highest court for the eyes of those who serve there in c-span's latest book, "the supreme court" with interviews of all the judges active and retired. it is available in hardcover and e-book. . . john garver, george attack

university, and ken, a fellow here at brookings. -- at georgia tech university that is garver. let's begin with north korea, and jack will talk first about the issue in toto. and it jonathan will talk about how well the u.s. and china are working together on that subject. >> thank you very much. i did a program last week at brookings, and was remarking how there really appreciated the opportunity to go last in a two- day conference. i have tried to figure out what is going worse, that is following im.

by my calculation we have lost nearly half the audience. that means we are about 18 the drop aw of jim -- 1/8 the draw. is a pleasure to be on this panel. i'm going to start off by stealing jonathan's thunder. if you have not read his latest paper, it is the north korea nuclear weapons out of london, an implication for future policy. it is a terrific overview, and suggestions on what to do. i don't know if you will speak about that. i found it absolutely worthwhile. i commend you all to take a look at it.

the first thing i would like to do is focus on what the u.s. concern is about north korea. it helps to answer the question. throughout my dealings with north korea that the no would tell people even as we dealt with the developments of their nuclear weapons program, is i do not wake up in the middle of the night thinking that north korea is just on the verge of [unintelligible] one of their missiles and therefore san francisco is soon to disappear. it is the question of proliferation. we have to be most concerned about what the north koreans are doing and why. and what they have, and the potential for it to become <

accountable on their part. richard has asked a question i will not reveal now. it is a pertinent question. the answer has to do a lot with this particular issue. so, we have dealt with the north korean problem for a number of years. we have had fleeting glimpses of success in the agreed framework of 1994 that froze the issue for some time, but not completely. it had flaws with respect to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. it postponed the reckoning of what north korea was supposed to do to a later date, which we never got to. so, rather than suggesting the

six-party talks of a panacea, i would like to take a different tack. we need to stabilize the size of the north korean problem immediately. minimize future risks. when we have that opportunity, we then should remove as quickly as possible the material they have. it suggests that once we get back to active negotiations with them, we ought to be doing something different. something we have not in the past. we should negotiate the end game the first. control the material, dispose of it, then clean up the game afterwards. the piecemeal approach we have seen for several years it did

not work. it opened the door in periods of time for north korea to expand a limited amount of fissile material. we started behind with north korea having possession of some small amount of fissile material, in the range of one to two weapons' worth of plutonium. that opened up dramatically. in 2003 the second crisis got under way. it was furthered in 2005. each time they expanded their possession of materials to the point where the program matured in october 2006 to their having detonated the first nuclear device. it was followed this past year

towards the end of may almost one year ago were they detonated a second device. what has happened in the last 18 months, has been an unfortunate relaxation of concern. we have settled into the maintenance, the management of north korea's nuclear weapons program. we have not been actively seeking to get rid of the stuff. there are many reasons, not all the problem of the obama administration. there are many things on track. we're not moving in an effort now to get rid of this material. i suggest it is the main problem.

i don't want to spend too much time on that. compounding that is this incident. the secretary indicated there was an indication of connection between the movement and incident. i suggest there is a domestic political connection that we can explore offline. it has suggested we cannot be indifferent. the indifference puts us back into the management. we're postponing active resolution. will we do in the meantime? lacking the active resolution, then must make sure that we

don't end up with the inadvertent movement of the fissile material from north korea elsewhere. one of the things that probably needs to be done is the emphasis on the consequences should that occur. when i was in government i told the north koreans directly in 2002, 2003, that proliferation was the red line the u.s. could not tolerate. 10 years before that the reprocessing was supposed to have been the red line according to the former secretary of defense was prepared to use military force on. the red line has been passed a couple of times recently. i was convinced in the post-9/11

environment that the u.s. would not tolerate the transfer of material to a third party. we saw clearly that the north koreans did that. we found out in september 2007 as the israeli air force bomb, the syrian nuclear facility, that the north koreans had been involved. the problem was, if you look back, there was no consequence. the u.s. did not do anything to reinforce that this was not acceptable behavior. we have to make sure it even in this time of an activity that the message goes back to the

north koreans that proliferation does matter to this administration. that once we began the active resumption of the six-party talks, one of the agenda items must come back onto the plate -- a resolution of what happened with syria. it should be done in a way to send a signal that we will not tolerate the proliferation of fissile or technical information there. we have missed the boat a couple of times. once was in january 2003 as the north koreans were breaking out of the agreed framework. one of the things they did was to withdraw from the npt.

i find this somewhat amusing, the manner in which they did it. and the 1993 time, they announced their withdrawal from the npt. they're supposed to give 90 days notification. they gave notification, 89 days and some hours before they suspended their withdrawal based upon progress being made. in january 2003 after a confrontation with the u.s. over concern about highly enriched uranium, the north koreans that we will withdraw from the npt. by the way, that becomes effective in about 10 hours. we're combining the notification we gave you nine years ago to" we're doing today. that sense to me -- sends to me

-- the u.s. response was not to formally protest, and that was unfortunate. one of the things we need to take advantage of it is fully understanding north korean motivations. i commend the reading of this paper on this. he does a wonderful job of tracing the development of the north koreans'nuclear program, and gives us a much better understanding of where they are and have come from and are likely to go. for the north koreans, there has been an added factor that most of you are aware of. the events of the last nearly two years. in august 2008 you are aware of a stroke by kim jong-il.

at the end of the bush administration and beginning of the obama administration, the inability to come to conclusion for about a verification regime. what was perceived by the obama administration to be provocative actions. preparing for and launching a long-range missile on april 5, 2009, followed short weeks later by their second nuclear device. it suggests the north koreans then and now are in a position where they cannot show weakness. nationalism is the priority. they are in no position to compromise.

as we look at the ground and solicit assistance from others, there are couple of things. the situation is not the same as it was towards the last active phase of the six-party talks. the situation in china with regard to their own national security interests i don't think has changed much. accept their full understanding of what is going on in the north korea today. -- except that. the regime itself is under stress. their attempts and a belated manner to find a route to succession that has always been understood as their preferred manner from transitioning from their leader to a later leader has been extraordinary late coming. i would go into those details other than to say that the north

koreans, as they are positioning themselves for the next couple of years with 2012 an important date for number of reasons, they are now in a position to walk back on a voluntary basis their nuclear weapons program. where does that leave us? to me it suggests we ought to take a vantage of the vulnerabilities of the north korean regime, of the things they hold dearest in terms of the regime's survival, successful transfer of power, and the aiming towards 2012. what happens if we resolve the incident to a satisfactory conclusion to allow the six- party talks to be resumed, and

what is the probability the north koreans will in the near- term give up their nuclear weapons? in my opinion, very little. the situation does not now currently ripe for north korea to move forward on its own initiative. so what is incumbent on the u.s. and its partners to help shape the environment. i want to spend one sentence about what north korea is doing in its attempt to shape the environment. kim jong-il has just returned from his trip to china. we don't have full reports. but one of the things we have seen come of that is the

suggestion that the north koreans said they will help with the chinese to create a more favorable condition in which they can then participate in a six-party talks. what are they? from the recent past when the other would like to have a peaceful regime ballot with the u.s., the sanctions withdrawn. with their relationship with the chinese they are attempting to shape the environment to their advantage. what we need to do is to move rapidly to pick up the momentum i think has been lost. i will end on this particular point. surely after the second nuclear test in may last year, the following month, there was a consensus. it resulted in the development of the un security council resolution for which the chinese

were part of the authorship of that. even knowing their national security interests, not including bringing down the north korean government, the chinese, in my opinion, started off on much of the right foot in the implementation, at least verbally, of 1874. one of the things the obama administration did to its credit was to create a sanctions coordinator who won two locations visited beijing among several countries and kept the focus on the actual implementation and effectiveness of 1874. something i would remind you of with this resolution that is different from other resolutions and sanctions in general, while directed that north korea, the responsibility was universal on

each member of the un. they were required to do a number of things. to identify, search, to report, to dispose of. on a number of occasions we have seen, this was successfully done. faugh in my opinion there was a very small window of opportunity last summer when the north koreans, but they certainly did not believe the sanctions were adversely affecting them daily, they did not like the path or directions of where it was headed. for a moment in time it created a charm offensive by the north koreans to improved relationship with south koreans, the u.s., and to try their best to get out from under the future application of the sanctions. this is an important part of what we need to be doing.

it is a vulnerability that -- and i'm not going into much in terms of the chinese rule. there is a positive role to be played based on their own commitments there. if we could get back to the moment of time, which hopefully is not asking too much, giving our full understanding of their interests, we might have a chance at beginning to shape the environment so that the north koreans understand they're headed in the wrong direction. once we do that, we will begin to open the potential for resolution of their nuclear weapons program. >> thanks very much veryjack for laying the foundation. we now turn to jonathan. >> thank you, richard.

these are my own views. i am an employee of the u.s. government. fortunately, i can express my own opinions. jack has tried to set some of the larger context for some questions. there is no need for me to go over that same ground. my focus will be more on chinese policy calculations towards north korea, and helen turn these could advance warning of it -- how in turn, they could inhibit or dance u.s./china collaboration and how those could restrain or reverse the weapons development of north korea. i have been asked to place this in context. this is part of the new u.s./china agenda. it has a global dimension.

it has a local and historical dimension. especially for the chinese. we are meeting in the immediate aftermath of kim jong-il's visit to china -- this was his fifth visit since 2000. of course, it was his first visit to china since north korea conducted its initial test in 2006. his visit now coincides with a number of urgent issues. it is more than the question of north korean nuclear issue, but of north korea itself. where it perceives as a political and military system. what the dangers and risks are of this extraordinary, and very

self-referential entity. it occurs in the aftermath of the investigation. we will await word on findings. we also have kim jong-il's and certain health, the leadership succession, the key to economic needs, and not least it's determined pursuit of the nuclear weapons capability -- ones reinforced and not undermined by its most recent statements, especially on april 21. if i can give their quotation " the nuclear task, by this at the state of nuclear and balance in northeast asia where nuclear weapons and umbrellas were packed, and where only the dorj

remained as a nuclear backings and was brought to an end. the nuclear deterrence provided by the position, the danger of outbreak of war has noticeably been reduced. this is precisely the effort made on the crest is to remove the nuclear states not through words only, but by deterring the u.s. nuclear weapons with our nuclear-weapons." there are other statements in this which i commend to your attention. i suspect china looks at this question in a much longer historical context. its history with the regime over the decades, the fact that china helped frankly to save, rescue the north koreans during the korean war, that china has been

a protector, not consistently, but over time. when meets with meets with

>> over time, there must inevitably be interchange with the north, and therefore china has incentives to play for time which over and some longer-term sense will lead to a more normal north korea that does not see its security depending on the possession of nuclear weapons. early in the reagan administration, there were initiatives made by the korean leader on behalf of the north koreans to establish a trilateral context for negotiations. dong was carrying some of north korea's water. it is

discussed with the secretary when he visited beijing in september 1993, followed in a matter of weeks by the bombing in burma. intended to bring is more hopeful expectation to an end. the story has been repeated in one version or another many times. so, i don't want to dwell on this history, too much, but it does suggest to me that history and geography -- the understanding between the u.s. and china continue to limit possibilities for more meaningful movement, a least in the near to midterm, in pursuit of shared goals. there is to be sure cigna began debate in china. it comes and goes. it is certainly the atmosphere

in which barry sharp views of north korea can be expressed contents to be a function partly of north korean behavior. in the the immediate aftermath of both tests, the political environment that beijing is more conducive to openly express anger and frustration at the north, but with china ultimately reverting more to a policy mean. this has been evident, for example -- we saw significant cooperation between the u.s. and tunnel in the aftermath of the second nuclear test, but then last year we saw, as north korea sought to make some more flexible gestures, the prime minister wen jiabao and the

prime minister of defense but traveled to the north. even as the chinese and the size they were holding, adhering to the spirit of the un sanctions, it would appear to many that china had decided to make, if not a fundamental commitment to north korea, at least a deeper commitment focused much on economics, but more broadly keeping things in check and begging the issue of whether the u.s. and china were relief on parallel paths. the aftermath of the second test is that the obama administrato administration and the size and still does that we were at a critical inflection point on the question of nuclear proliferation and could not tolerate a situation to simply acquiesce to north korean actions. we certainly did not want to

compensate north korea for its actions. does chinese support for north korea it in effect give them the support necessary, that they require, in order to dodge the pressure? bottom line, it seems to me, the chinese leadership as distinct from chinese analysts and scholars, has yet to be fully persuaded that non- proliferation compared to some of china's other competing interests, calculations, and needs, trump's these other concerns. china would do what is necessary to uphold the letter, and perhaps the spirit of 1847, beijing has yet to demonstrate

that it is prepared to put this wider array of its interests at risk of. this leaves us and the situation where although there are areas of cooperation between the u.s. and china, there are also areas that are problematic. what do we do about it? the administration including our speaker has emphasized at times that the u.s. needs to offer a strategic assurance to beijing. perhaps we want the same from china. beyond that, the question is whether we can get to strategic clarification. are we walking from a comparable set of policy priority stackshow compelling a mutual interest is there in the goal? or does'

s larger set of interest as the immediate neighbor trump coordination? are the means by which we can move to a more complementary discussion? because absent that frameworks, north korea may find itself with some increased room for maneuver. what we should be asking beijing about is to reinforce whether there are are ought to be shared national interest that emphasize the risks to both countries opposed by the nuclear weapons development? i worried there's a tendency to give north korea to much of the past. jack has alluded to some of this because there fissile material, among other things, are totally

unconstrained, subject only to their technical and industrial limitations. the potential costs including for china in terms of regional stability, seems to me quite self-evident. it has the potential for a longer-term undermining affect on the u.s./china relations not to mention those with the rok for china. it also creates an unhealthy precedent over the long term for the non-proliferation regime. jack asked before whether the u.s. had a true the done. we might want to ask the same of china. their words are appropriate. china says it wants to work actively for the de-nuclear reservation of the korean peninsula. that is good, but there is a larger strategic context year

and a set of actions that may be needed to advance that. that we need to import more coolly to the chinese. so, i see china like the u.s., confronting some unpleasant policy choices. on one hand, we could say china could in 1 context make some kind of commitment it will protect and defend north korea. i don't think china seeks that today. it does seek to preserve and provide, and sustain for north korea. heightened political and economic support this seems at first to be independent of north korean behavior. alternatively, we might want to see china move more towards an active prodding of north korea.

even distance itself somewhat. but i don't see that coming anytime soon. i believe we have a set of overlapping interests better self evident. but getting there and finding the effective means and understanding continues to believe us. and it remains uppermost on the agenda that both beijing and washington need to confront. >> thank you, jonathan. [applause] let's now shift the geographic focus to the persian gulf with ken pollack. >> thank you very much. i'm going to give my top backwards today.

i'm not going to speak back words. some day if i could pull that off, you will all be invited. i was taught you should start with your interests, and then the threats to the interests, then lay out different policy options to address the threats to security interests. then choose the best policy option and make a recommendation. i will start in reverse order. i will lay out the options. talk about which best. then return to the threats and interest. unfortunately, when you are talking about iran, the options all stink. there are no good options on iran. the only things we are arguing about these days its which is worst, and which is least bad.

when you deal with a bunch of really bad options, there's a tendency to push the thinker and argue were towards inertia. you want to walk away. maybe focus on an easier problem to solve, like north korea. that is not a very good option for talking about iran. the potential downside, threats to our interests are the reason. it is useful to begin with the options. then think a little about the threats we face, which can then be seen as potential repercussions, consequences of inaction. at some novel it is well known

to the group the preferred option to the u.s., a process of increasing the harsh sanctions to put pressure on the iranian regime. this is not a policy the u.s. government or establishment came to quickly are easily. it was the product of a long process of debate and trial and error. but with the iranians and with other allies. over 31 years of the existence of the republic existenceiran we have tried a bunch of different policies. we have tried everything from unilateral concessions to undeclared warfare. none of them have worked. today when we look at iran and

what we in the rest of the world are so concerned about, we place hope and the idea that harsh international sanctions can succeed. frankly, nothing else has so far. there is no question that this will be very much along shot. the iranian regime has resisted other actionsanctions in the pat the kinds the u.s. and allies are pushing for. we have had a very important change in the nature of the iranian regime. on june 12, 2009, about a year ago, iran held presidential elections. there were many who were unhappy with the course of those elections. they believe the elections were rigged, stolen, and the man supposed to lose, president

ahmadinejad, who was supposed to lose instead won. there is a lot of evidence to show the elections were raped. whether there were big enough to make him win, who knows? it may be true that the elections were rigged and he did win. all that matters is that after the elections there was a wide spread revolt by a large segment. that was the single greatest threat to the iranian regime and is 31 years of existence. an important event happened in response. it contracted within itself. the groups we intend to call moderates and pragmatists, even some mainstream conservatives, and some reformists, recommended making concessions to the

opposition. the hard-liners all said no. the supreme leader sided with the hard-liners. his reading of his own coming to power of the islamist republic of the revolution that overcame the shah -- what doomed the shah was making concessions. therefore, there would be no concessions. in doing so, the leader systematically went about excluding all the voices of moderation that had been prominent voices. today we have seen a significant narrowing of the base of the decision-making apparatus. frankly, we have the hardest line group of people we have seen in iran since 1981.

they're not interested or concerned by sanctions. they want the nuclear program. in many cases, they want nuclear weapons. they want enmity with the u.s. and believe that the u.s. and west are their enemies. they all believe that iran is more important to the rest of the world, then the world is to iran. in fact, many of them even believe that sanctions will be good for iran because it will encourage greater autocracy. it is all nonsense. the problem is that some point in time that it could be proven wrong -- it could take a long time. it is worth bearing in mind that

in the 1990's the international community embarked on a similar program with libya. we imposed comprehensive sanctions. the response was hah! we cannot last recensions. they were proven wronn. not surprisingly. it took between eight and 10 years. let's remember that iran is more powerful than libya. it could take a very long time. we tend to focus on the sanctions. honestly, all other options are much worse. first, there is engagement. to its great credit the obama administration tried very hard to implement engagement during its first 10 months in office. long after outside observers,

myself included, said to them, it was great you tried, but you have to realize is done. this regime is not interested. they clung to engagement, wanted to believe they could come to deal, find a way through peaceful negotiations to resolve differences with the writings. by the fall last year they finally figured out that it would just not work. the iranians were not interested. they came to that after many other, even most other countries around world recognized this. it is probably true that the chinese took even longer. even beijing has realized that iran is not interested. we saw a senior delegation from china go to take ron -- tehran

and try to convince them that the world means business. there were badly disappointed by the obnoxiousness of the iranian interlocutors. so, engagement is highly unlikely for some time. we can hope that the wrong man's will mellow, realize they're in too deep. that isolation is bad for them. we can hope engagement will be realistic again, but it is not today. at the other end of the spectrum, there are people in the u.s. pushing different options. i suspect the voices will become louder in coming months. there is a group out there who wants to bomb iran. i am an old military analyst. i'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to the use

of force. if i thought there were good military options available, i would be glad to explain under what conditions. but i cannot come up with a good scenario for the use of force. i will simply say in summary, it is highly unlikely wood stopped the run and nuclear program. the best estimates thaare that t would only set back the running program by a year or two. it would create the perfect opera should be for iran to withdraw from the npt, to bury its programs deeper, embark on a massive program with the support of its own people. it would likely rally the iranian people around the regime. what is more, the run-ins' would

likely retaliate and the variety of painful venues to the u.s. it is true that iran is much weaker than we are, but the running scandal lot of damage in the middle east. it is not a region that needs more damage. certainly not to american interests and western interests there. the other option of their proposed by those on the right is regime change. to help the iranian opposition overthrow. it's a wonderful idea in theory. i think it is something to look hard at. for the first time we do have a large, legitimate popular opposition to the government. we ought to look at ways to help the opposition.

the truth is, the regime has demonstrated it will not go gently. if scholars have taught us anything about revolutionsm and they have taught us only one thing -- it is that revolutions occur only when the regime loses the will or capacity to use violence. unfortunately, this regime has lost me there. it is not likely to do so any time soon. we can hold out hope that at some time there will be regime change in tehran, but not any time since. so, if you don't like the harsh sanctions option, the alternatives are worse. i hope you don't simply say this is too hard and we should walk away. that is not a good answer

either. then you must consider the consequences. that brings me to the threats and interest. i will go into too much detail. there are two broad set of problems that the u.s., its allies, and china will all face if iran is not convinced to give up its nuclear program. the first is the iranian threat to the middle east. some repair work is to be done here. many people are screaming about how the country's acquisition of nuclear capability means the entire world will explode the next day. it is not accurate. iran is ruled by a group of people who are aggressive, and two-american, but they're not irrational. we have seen a derecognized deterrents.

they're subject to the force of them. they do comply with its various structures. it suggests it is highly unlikely that the rains would get in a clear weapon and simply throw it at tel aviv or the saudi arabian oil fields. it is also not likely that the iranians would give a nuclear weapon to terrorists. they have had weapons of mass destruction for about 22 years. they have supported terrorist groups for 31 years. they have never seen fit to mix the two. beth had very good reasons not to. it does not mean there's not a threat to the stability of the least fromiran's nuclear capability. there is the potential for israel to go to war with iran. i think it is not likely.

i think it is an overblown, but not irrelevant fear. the bigger problem is that iran is an anti-status quo power. one the sees the current status quo in the region as one inherently to its disadvantage. one is six constantly in with all the means at its disposal to overturn. it means iran 6 instability. whenever it sees it, it does all it can to stop it. its arms violent groups whenever it can find them, that's terrorists of all kinds. they are non-denominational. anyone looking to overturn the status quo, preferably by violence, typically can find some help from erroneous.

the middle east does not need any more help on that issue. it has plenty of instability. when we think about american and chinese mutual interests in the middle east, to ensure a free flow of in expensive oil is at the very top of that list. everything else is a distant second. the jig of inexpensive oil. the runyon actions have been among the most threatening to that. iran with nuclear weapons and with capability of any kind, and iran which believes it is no longer vulnerable to american retaliation will feel emboldened. not just in love and on or palestine, but in the iraq and

saudi arabia. -- not just in irawq, or palestine. it has tried to overthrow every one of those countries including egypt, except the uae. it is not an idle fear. it is very real and significant over the long term. the last thread will mention is the water one of non- proliferation. right now for many countries around the world, non- proliferation has a very mixed record. there are countries out there that the international community has punished severely for pursuit of nuclear capability. i put libya in that category, iraq, and even north korea.

north korea paid a price that no other country on earth would be willing to pay. it actually did help to reinforce the non-proliferation norm. set against those three good cases are three bad ones. israel, india, pakistan. they acquired weapons not scot- free, but at a price many others would consider acceptable. iran will be the decider. it is and put them because the entire world, including all five members from a permanent members of the u.n. security council have stated clearly and repeatedly that iran cannot be allowed to acquire this capability. we now have four resolutions and the security council under chapter 7 of the charter that makes them binding on all members. stipulating iran cannot be allowed to have this capability.

if iran acquires it nonetheless and does not feel it has paid too high a price to do so -- which is why the obama administration has tried to demonstrate there is a real price to be paid -- if iran is allowed to acquire it anyway was see the non-proliferation norm began to erode, if not collapse. it is highly likely that the saudi arabia and the uae will acquire capabilities of their own. they're making it clear to iran that this is meant to match their capability if the iranians don't cease and desist. the saudi arabian officials have told u.s. officials that if iran

acquires a nuclear weapon, they will acquire 12. people talk about turkey, egypt, others. and less convinced about them -- you will see other states follow in the suit. beyond that, if iran can get nuclear weapons, a country that everyone else realizes is a tremendous threat to international peace and stability, and prosperity, why should others stopped? do brazil and argentina really believe the world will treat the moors? . .

>> out of about chinese policy, not u.s. policy. -- i will talk about chinese policy not u.s. policy. " i would talk about the extent to which chinese and u.s. interest overlap regarding tv u.s. -- of the iran -- regarding the iran issue.

the logic is easy to understand. one of five members of the permanent -- one of the five nuclear weapons states under the regime, china's interest isn't year and other -- china's interests is in having fewer capabilities. it is the same logic as the united states. we have converging interest. -- we of convergent interests.

the united states has a lot of problems with these countries -- iraq, iran -- but not china. china, unlike the united states, has never compensate -- has never contemplated war with these countries. united states has. we had two wars with iraq. we had the war with iran in the 1970's. we're now debating whether there will be another one. we continually confront this question of war or peace with

these countries that we think nuclear program. china does not. china has had fine and cordial relations with iran and iraq. the second cut is that, although we share brought interest in non-proliferation, on closer inspection, there is a series of very significant, divergent interests regarding the importance of nonproliferation in the middle east. why is china so unenthusiastic about u.s. push for abiding sanctions -- for tough sanctions? this is not new. they have opposed u.s. sanctions since 1980. that was when iran seized american diplomats and held them hostage. the u.s. administration and the carter administration responded with sanctions. china said they thought it was a bad idea. on the one hand, opposed the violation of diplomatic

privileges involved in the seizure of the hostages. . >> to characterize china's policy toward this, i would say that china has delayed the process and sought to limit the scope of the sanctions so that the sanctions would not really interfere with the substance of china's economic or political relations with iran. maybe to delay and water down,

you set the terms of the sanctions. if you look at china's statements at the iaea board of governors, you see a lot of objections in this direction. not only currently, but going back to 2003. and china would say that they are standing on principles. and china has a number of principles that it feels are -- for example, the principles of insisting that this question be solved by dialogue and negotiation.

that any use of military force or threatened military force would make the situation more complex, would be antithetical to a resolution, and all reference to the use of force, the possibility of force, should be ruled out, and all parties should resolve this through negotiation and dialogue. or the resort to sanctions, making the matter more complex or more difficult, and does not move the situation forward. instead, it moves it back. and another level of the same objection, the united states is far too willing to resort to sanctions and presumes to bully countries around the world, especially in developing countries, through the frequent resort to sanctions, and this is not a good way to rumba world -- around the world.

a lot of chinese things that the doctor just mentioned, a lot of chinese analysts suspect that the real u.s. objective is regime change in iran. even if the regime changes not one factor, then u.s. interference into the internal affairs of iran is one factor for the current u.s. cry for sanctions. principles -- a couple of observations about china's stands on principle. its protection of principle, its use of principle to oppose u.s. policy. the first observation is that china stands on principle as a

way of protecting china's economic and political relations with iran. china receives about 12% of its imported oil from iran. iran has a lot of very rich copper deposits, undeveloped copper deposits. 80 something% of china's imports are crude oil. another 12% our mineral deposits -- are mineral deposits. china needs that and iran has a lot of them. iran is also a big market for chinese exports. capital goods. prior to the revolution, in 1978, one year before the iranian revolution, china's trade with iran accounted for 1%.

in 2009, china became iran's major trading partner. iran is a big and important market. they have very ambitious development objections. iranian engineers and manufactures wood often prefer german equipment or french equipment because of technological capabilities. they really do not like the chinese stuff because it is not as good. those factors are set aside. in effect, u.s. sanctions have opened the door and allowed china to shoehorn itself into a very lucrative and big and important market. export promotion is the -- china needs export markets and iran is a big export market.

the first cut on china's stance in defense of principles is that the stance serves china's interest in developing friendly, cooperative relations between the peoples of two countries in accordance with the five principles of peaceful coexistence. a second observation about the role of principles in chinese foreign policy is that principles served interest. i question the chinese leaders. when they decide to stand firm on chinese principles, or to be flexible on the application of those principles, is whether defensive principles or flexibility of principles * china's interest. -- serves china's interests.

what chinese interest would be served by flexibility on these principles? the main chinese interests that are served is protecting the favorable macro climate for china's development drive, which began in 1978. through protection in the global capitalist system, which for better or worse, was dominated by the united states. since then, china has desperately tried to maintain amicable relations with the united states. the problem is, from the chinese view, the middle east is the

lowest for american drive for world domination. during the cold war, the middle east was a center of contention between the superpowers with both of the two superpowers wanted to control the oil of the middle east. we need gasoline. there you go. the two superpowers sought to control the middle east during the cold war. the disappearance of the soviet union has created a very unbalanced situation. the crux of that is in the middle east. in this unbalanced situation, the united states has seized the opportunity to push forward aggressively with the drive to bring the oil of the middle east under american control so that the americans will have their hand on the oil spigot of the middle east and say you can have some and you cannot have

some. the countries of the world who need oil will need to get from the americans. the unbalanced situation of the middle east released the united states to which the first hegemonism war against iraq and 1991. china's view is that both sides are head chemigemonist. and then the 2003 war, and so forth. some believe that in the american heart of hearts, in a secret blueprint in some office in washington is the -- iran is next on the agenda. the problem is, from china's perspective, you have got to

have good relations with the americans. the middle east is the center of the american drive for hegemony. the americans are doing a lot of bad things in the middle east, but that is a region of the world that is pretty hard from china's strategic interests, which are in the eastern pacific and southeast asia. americans are doing bad things, but at least they're not doing it in an area of crucial concern to china. by the way, the americans might exhaust themselves and wear out their national will, leaving us in a better situation. what this takes us back to is flexibility on the application of principle. of course, if china is going to be flexible on the application of its principal, opposition to the use of sanctions and

interference in internal affairs, if china is going to go along with the americans, it needs to get a good pro quo. mr. steinberg said this morning that china does not seek a quid pro quo. that might be the situation. china's interactions with the united states in earlier per iods, for example, in 1990 during the first iraq war, or in 1997 when the u.s. pushed for chinese disengagement from nuclear cooperation with iran. in both of those junctures, china sought and received from the united states a quid pro quo. china will be flexible, but i suspect will need some kind of satisfaction from the united states. there are several other areas in which china's interests are not

conversant with american interest in the middle east. let me go further and be provocative. perhaps -- there are other ways that chinese interests may be served by the failure of american policies toward iran. china's objective is multi clarity. the long-term objective, there's been a long term the day and china. the broader idea is that china should seek to move the world's in the direction of multi polarity. and the failure of the u.s. policy directive, i think, would diminish american prestige and influence in the world, and put china in a better position.

in terms of china's energy security, china would receive certain advantages from a nuclear iran. one of china's fundamental problems in energy security is the same lines of communication, the movement of oil across the indian ocean, and so on and so forth. china's solution to the problem is overland pipelines through kazakhstan or pakistan or me and yanmar. one of the problems is input to it in the event of some kind of u.s.-china confrontation over taiwan, where with china find some country that was willing to endure the united states by putting oil into those pipelines to pump to china.

probably not pakistan, and not myanmar. iran would probably be the best bet. a nuclear-armed iran would probably be more willing to do that. don't the united states and china have a convergent interest in the uninterrupted supply of oil from the persian gulf at safe and moderate prices? we have heard that argument again and again. that is basically an american argument that we pitched to the chinese. my sense is that the chinese have not bought that argument. a couple years ago, a colleague in washington and i spent a couple weeks in beijing in talking to chinese analysts and retired chinese diplomats. we deliberately pitched that argument to the people we met, with the exceptions of a couple of profs.

we did not get any takers. the basic response was -- you americans want we chinese to be junior partners in your hegemonism, and we are not interested in that. that was pretty much the response across the board, except for a couple of professors. there may be people in the chinese diplomatic apparatus who do not agree with that line. my sense is that they're not very influential yet. they may become influential, and i hope they do, but my sense is that they're not yet influential. bottom line, i think united states and china have convergent interests in preventing iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons capability. the interests in that regard are very asymmetrical.

there are very few american interests that would be served by iranian nuclear capabilities. unfortunately, i do not think that is the case with china. in the case of china, there are several interests which would be served by a nuclear iran. those are my views on the situation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. we have two situations, different in some very profound ways. in each, the stakes are high and the options are poor. the convergence of u.s.-china interests is not as great as the administration would like us to believe. the degree of cooperation is not as great as one might hope. now we're going to open the floor for about a half an hour of questions.

i have some for the panel, but i will defer those. we will start with the gentleman right there. >> thank you. good afternoon. i am richard harris from momentum private equity in new york. mr. pollack, it seems the thesis of your talk could be that pretty much all lobohope of a negotiated bargain with iran -- in a administration, is anyone letting the strategic ground wework for naught if iran gets nuclear devices, but when? >> it's a great question.

no. i think it is a very big mistake. it has taken the administration a lot of time to even go from preparing the american people to move from engagement to confrontation with iran. it took them a very long time. secretary clinton has been almost alone in going out there and seeaying engagement has run its course. they have a good argument that they make in private to people, including the chinese, about how engagement is not off the table and we prefer engagement. we need to turn the active phase toward pressure predicted very good line -- it is a very good line. they do not use it in public. i think you are right. we have to be very realistic about the likelihood of all of

this working and the likelihood that there will be a nuclear iran at some point in time. politically, the president backed himself into a corner by saying this would be unacceptable. he said it during the campaign, and you could understand why he said it during the campaign. in some ways, that was the minimal position he felt he could take. he has not moved away from that he has had a few other things on his plate. i do not think this has been a high priority for him. i think it's a very real problem. at some point in the next five years, we will wake up and realize of the policy has probably failed, and we are dealing with a nuclear iran. that's what we're doing a brookings. it would be helpful if the administration would get the american people ready for ait. >> scott garrelharold.

a question for the panel as a whole. it is time of the problem -- is china of the problem? from one perspective, looking to premier wen's visit to p'yongyang, and the words that were said about china and north korea having as close a relationship as they have ever had, and some large amount of money, suggests that current policy is not actively causing north korea to have to face any consequences for its actions. similarly, as you know, after the uprisings in iran, china

sent crowd control devices and political support and any number of activities that shield the iranian regime from the effects of its own actions. the other argument, jack, is that even china at its most determined, if china were to adopt every policy that even the most hawkish american president were to ask of it, the north koreans would not budge. the north koreans are very skeptical and suspicious of beijing. similarly, i expect the in runyon's, -- iranians would not necessarily bend just because beijing would acsk them to do s. it is an interesting question to if he were to have a fully committed leadership in china that really wanted to try to bring either of these two regimes "to heel" in the quest

for nonproliferation policy victory, would that really succeed? if the answer is no, it should the u.s. back off. if the answer is yes, should the u.s. pursue some kind of a policy that makes these regimes more dependent on beijing so that beijing can no longer claim they do not have the leverage. should the u.s. pursue a variant of the 1950's strategy that we had for the soviet union and china? open up slightly to moscow, put tons of pressure on beijing, and pressure beijing into becoming more dependent on moscow, so it creates dissension in that relationship. at the same time, it creates leverage that beijing at some point in the future be called upon to use by a future or current admiamerican

administration that could compel beijing to recognize that logic. >> i'm going to ask the analys panelists to give short answers. >> thank you, scott. in my opinion, beijing is not deliberately doing this, but yes, it is, by its actions, extending the problem. the visit last year reversed what i described earlier as that moment in time when p'yongyang was thinking that it was on the wrong path. after the wen visit, the north koreans reversed course and gave them a new lease on life. they did not believe the sanctions would affect them. they understood the lifeline that the chinese were providing was substantial.

i do not agree with the second part of that. if the chinese adopted all of the american hard-line positions, it would budge. i think the reverse is true. the problem is that you will not get the u.s. to do that. by saying that inteuntil the che own national security interests -- if proliferation issues trump all their other concerns, then we would be on the same page. that's not going to happen soon. >> a couple of quick comments. first of all, this $10 billion figure is a fraudulent number. the chinese actually do not have that much at risk in a purely economic sense. i would also contest that they have real defense relationships anymore. part of what wen was trying to establish was to make this --

this has been a process over a longer period of time, in effect to say to the north koreans that we are not tethered to our strategies. it does not mean that we will hang the north koreans out to dry. i think the chinese have been fairly explicit, going back to as early as the mid-1980s for where there is a defense commitment under certain circumstances under where north korea is attacked, but certainly not beyond that. i would agree with jack. to some extent, the new aid packages from china have given north korea a get out of jail free cards to an extent. again, coming back to what i said, is there something the chinese think they know? i guess the best sicase scenario is that there's still a belief in significant quarters of

china, that after a long period of time, particularly after kim jong il is gone, north korea cannot define the laws of gravity politically and economically. as you know, there have been a lot of predictions over the years that the end is at hand. we go through waves of this. we're going to another cycle of this right now. this is a brilliant, determined regime -- resilient, determined regime. china is the immediate neighbor. this does inhibit their options to some extent. there is kind of a quiet confidence -- a belief that over time, this will not be sustainable. as you know, there is a lot of

anxiety in some south korean quarters that the chinese are gobbling up what ever is there to gobble. i do not buy into the idea that north korea becomes another province of china. you could paint a picture, over time, where there are avenues that china has. if you look at what' hu jintao said to kim jong il on his visit, he was basically mapping out what a normal relationship with look-alike between china and the dprk. they do not have it. kim did not refer to this. just to see whether you could put the pieces together for a more normal relationship.

that presumes a system that besides its long-term interests are to achieve a normal for a clause in normal relationship with the outside world. one thing that really strikes me about the north is the degree of dependence on china has grown significantly. usually that's not north korea's style. they have not got the united states. they have lost south korea. they certainly do not have japan. it is a very unsettling picture. as richard said when the question was posed to mr. pollack -- again, is not to say that north korea could not be a productive society under certain circumstances, but it is a long way from here to there.

i think the chinese have decided to play a waiting game. they could be disappointed yet again, but is also a way in which they think it is the sort of a damage limitation strategy. it begs the issue of how much there is intrinsic concern about the existence of some kind of a nuclear capability in the north, some kind of a belief that the north will still be constrained from taking a major risk taking behavior. >> there is significant leverage with iran in terms of the infrastructure and development of the oil industry and so forth. china has capabilities that, say russia, does not have.

will china be able to roll that back? that's another question. no. what should be the u.s. approach? i doubt that trying to pressure china would be that effective. my hunch is that would confirm the chinese notions of america as a bullying and gymnhegeonist. more effective would be to solicit china's partnership. that appeals to maintaining the favorable macro in garment. it favors china's notion of a rising global power. china could grow into the steps

of the iranian incumbent great power. that would offer an appeal to china for genuine partnership to deal with these things. it would probably pay off better than an attempt to drive away. >> thank you, richard. i love your question, scott. i will answer a little more bluntly. china is not the problem if the problem is iran's nuclear program. the real problem is iran. they're not interested in changing their minds. it would be helpful to have the chinese on board. nobody is saying that would be enough, even if the chinese were on board. yes in this sense. i wanted to make a joke at the beginning. the answer to the question depends on your definition of

what is yes. if it is stopping the iranian nuclear problem, no, china is not the problem. if it is nonproliferation, then yes, china is part of the problem. if you're afraid of iran acquiring this capability sending a terrible message, which will then spur greater proliferation, china's unwillingness to sanction iran, to make it clear to other countries that there's a steep price to be paid, then that definitely is a big part of the problem. my third point is on a somewhat different issue, which is about stabilizing the middle east. i was so struck in your comments. listening to everything you said about how you could almost make it about american policy in the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's,

with the hegemonic power in great britain. that is almost how the united states fell to about great britain word for word. it is remarkable. in many ways, china is treading the exact history that we went through in the middle east. i was also struck by your point that the chinese do not buy it when we say we have this mutual interests. the british kept trying to make that case to us. we did not figure it out until it was too late. 1973 is when we figured it out. i completely agree with you, john, that the answers partnership. i do give obama administration credit. that is the argument they have been trying to make about being a stakeholder. a big part of it is helping the

chinese not repeat our mistakes. i will give us a little bit of credit. i think the british really work hegemonic -- were hegemonic. nonetheless, the british did have some good things that we ignored. a lot of what we need to do with the chinese is come to an understanding about those issues. yes, as partners, move forward in the middle east. >> he was talking about britispn in the past. i think -- he was talking about great britain in the past. victimization is a core part of national and state identity. that constrains what ever outsiders can do.

however strong their capacity and will is. >> chris nelson. since i do mostly asian and north korea, i am totally innocent on how to think about the proliferation implications in the middle east. it was fascinating to me the way ken talks about it. why is it in their interest to have the bomb? is iran their enemy? if you are an asian country and you get the bomb, you automatically become a first- rate target for the chinese.

you could argue that one, but it seems pretty clear. otherwise, really, you're left with one thing. we sit back and let this happen, or we have to say to ourselves -- we will take the chance and roll the dice and really use a military option. i do not mean screwing around and bombing the cave. that is what one gets from listening to you. i do not mean that in an argumentative way. it is that bad and nothing we have works and nothing we're going to do works as long as this regime is in place, what other option do we have, if it is really proliferation in all of the middle east. >> thank you. i was waiting for someone to ask that question. there is another option. it is the one we're working on very hard year, which is containment.

containing a nuclear iran will not be fun or easy. there's no reason to believe it is impossible. it's more than simply containing the soviet union and the soviet union was a lot tougher and stronger than iran. that is a fair point, but iran will be hard in other ways. we were already looking very hard. i will just give you one. i do not want to suggest containment is impossible. even if you a match in iran -- even if you imagine iran is the best -- during the cold war with the soviet union, which did not want to incinerate s, we've never the less got into some very nasty crisis with them over the cuban missile and berlin

several times. what we learned from that scenario is it takes three things to make crisis management work. it takes both sides understanding each other. having good communication between the leadership. and the two leaderships being able to signal each other. that's how we got through those crisis. we do not have any of that with iran. we do not understand the iranians. they do not understand us. i do not want to suggest containment is impossible. i believe that it absolutely is possible. it is just going to be hard. >> i would argue that the trajectory of the north korean issue is in precisely the same direction.

we end up with containment. if it is hard enough to get china and russia to go along with what we're doing now, just think about how even more difficult it will be then. ken, i will give you the last question. then we will give each panelist a chance to wrap up. >> forgive me if this question has been asked. it seemed to meet from both what john and jack said, that the u.s. should think in terms of what we can do that would be a wake-up call for north korea. reenforce red lines that we have allowed them to march across without consequence. what would you suggest that we might be able to do that would have consequence given the context of our policies? is that something that would be nice, but there are no realistic options? >> can we may be confronting an

opportunity, west with respect to the nuclear weapons capabilities, with more respect to their actual behavior. this is over the result of the investigation, which is multilateral. despite their fierce rhetoric, at a lot of levels, north korea is a diminished state that is now in possession of a minimal nuclear capability. we do not know if they can deliver a weapon or not, or even if they want to deliver or not. there have been some historical episodes where they can and have been sobered.

what we may be facing is the need, in some sense, for a containment strategy that finds us, much to china's chagrin, to be more militarily active, and compelling south korea to turn its attention toward the continuing problem that they face. to be frank, in a lot of ways, the president of the rok looks at his country as a major actor coul. would prefer to see unification. he does not have unification. there are ways they will have to make sure that north korea is inhibited from the use of any of its capabilities, lest bigger

risks do transpired. one other point, and i cannot emphasize this enough. it seems to me that the challenge for the united states and china and others is not to allow political space to be created between them such that we lose sight of a fundamentally a shared objective to prevent long-term nuclear- armed north korea. the risk right now, where there is this kind of separate track between -- on the one hand, the united states holding to not compensate the north, whereas china sees a basis for if not building up the north, at least keeping them on some sort of a lifeline. that is worrisome only because it creates room that the north koreans have shown they are only

too capable of exploiting very effectively. one last point i would make that warrants an entire separate session, and that is the degree to which iran and north korea and tracked on a variety of programs. then you are really talking about a significant more worrisome scenario. something that might even get china's attention. >> jack, why don't you start wrapping up? >> i do think that unless we do something as a wake-up call to north korea, we are headed for a containment policy. that does not get us anywhere. you have to be very lucky that that is very effective. i've suggested that we understand the vulnerability of north korea and what is important to them to for them, it is moving toward 2012 in

terms of some successful economic progress that enhances, from their perspective, the transition from current leadership to future leadership. i think we need to get inside of that decision cycle of the north koreans and begin to interrupt it to the point that it causes them great concern that the stability of their regime is at risk, the future beyond kim jong il is at risk, and then have something that may get their attention. >> jack has reminded us that although we do not have easy means of entry or influence into the north korean system, that consideration of how you doing this and what kinds of tools are at our disposal warrants much more careful consideration than we have given it to this point.

i would only conclude to say 2012 is going to be one hell of a year between north korea, south korea, taiwan, the chinese succession, and i think there will be an american presidential election, too. >> i was struck by the congruence of jonathan pollack's description of korea and my own take on chinese policy toward iran. in the case of iran, there are deep domestic routes for this. china's public opinion has been educated, at least since 1989, to be deeply suspicious of the united states. the public opinion resonates through the internet and interplays with politics so that any leader that aspires to be

the paramount leader cannot afford to be weak in dealing with the united states or be willing to play second fiddle to u.s. hegemony. there's also -- the chinese political system is fragile in many ways. it lacks the legitimacy, which leaders based upon elections have. that means the chinese leaders are very cautious because they're afraid of being embarrassed. if they undertook to be partners with the united states, they would be second fiddle. they perceive a great danger of setback, failure, and criticism. in terms of addressing the fundamental question of how to persuade china toward genuine cooperation with the united states, i think we need to be cognizant of these deep,

domestic banks. -- things. >> i'm struck once again in this conversation about how difficult it would be to have this relationship with china moving forward. also, how important it is. one of my great fears is that -- it was motivated by johns description. the experience is that everyone assumes we want to conquer their region. all we want to do is get out. united states has ever wanted to do is to leave the region to even the bush administration, the whole goal of conquering iraq was to put our guy in charge he would be good and leave us alone and we could walk away. i would be afraid of the differences between the united states and china, while simultaneously recognizing, i

would hate for that to be yet another incentive for americans to walk away from the middle east. that has been the bane of our policies in the least over the last 50 years. >> thank you very much. we will take a 10-minute break. i made a pledge to ken that the audience i delivered to him would be as large as the one that i have. please do not let me down. i would like to thank the various brookings people who have helped make this possible. the communications staff, my staff, the china center staff. i want to thank the panelists for an outstanding session. thank you very much. [applause]

>> more from the brookings institution after this break. the next and last session will be on global economic issues and u.s. china relations. british prime minister gordon brown announced that he will resign by sept. city said he accepted that labour poor performance in the election it was a judgment on him. brown is hoping his resignation will be a sense for the third party democrats to join. starting at 5:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> tonight, a discussion on broadcast frequencies and their potential use for broadband. our guests are two members of

the commerce department advisory committee on spectrum use. >> c-span, our public affairs content is available on television, radio, and on line for you can also connect with us on twitter, facebook, and youtube. >> president obama nominated solicitor general elena kagan to the supreme court today to replace john paul stevens. if confirmed, she would be the first person to join in 30 years to join the court without first serving as a judge. reaction is coming in from the senate judiciary committee, the panel that will hold her confirmation hearings. in his statement, senator leahy says elena kagan follows in the footsteps of her mentor, thurgood marshall. congressional quarterly reporting that senator sessions

said that elena kagan's lack of experience was troubling. he noted that she has only had a short time as solicitor general, only arguing six cases before the court. here is the announcement today from the white house. we will be back to the brookings institution in about 15 minutes. >> the president of the united states, accompanied by solicitor general elena kagan. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, everybody. thank you. thank you very much. please have a seat. good morning, everybody.

of the many responsibilities accorded to the president by our constitution, few are more weighty or consequential than that of appointing a supreme court justice. particularly 12 succeed a giant of them all like john paul stevens. for nearly 35 years, justice stevens has served as an impartial guardian of the law, faithfully applied in the core values of our founding to the cases and controversies of our time. he has done so with restraint and respect, understanding that a judge's job is to interpret, and not make law, but also with fidelity to the constitutional idea of equal justice for all. has brought mastery of the letter of the law to each case and a keen understanding of its impact on people's lives. he has emerged as a consistent voice of reason, helping

his colleagues find common ground on some of the most controversial and contentious issues the court has ever faced. while we cannot presume to replace justice stevens'wisdom or experience, i have saia nomie would leave the bodies that i and integrity and passion for the law, and can ultimately provide that same type of leadership on the court. our solicitor general, and my friend, elena kagan. [applause] elena is widely regarded as one

of the nation's foremost legal minds. she is a legal scholar with a rich understanding of constitutional law. she's a former white house aide with a lifelong commitment to public service and a firm grasp of the nexus and boundaries between our three branches of government. she is a trailblazer in leader. .

>> nonetheless, she credits him that, as she put it, behind the law, there are stories. stories of people alive as might be changed by the law. that understanding of the law, not as an intellectual exercise or words on the page, but as it affects the lives of ordinary people has animated every step of her career, including her service as solicitor general today. during her time in this office, she has defended the rights of shareholders against

unscrupulous corporations. last year, in the citizens united case, she defended reform against special interests wanting to spend unlimited money. despite long odds of success with most legal analysts believing the government was unlikely to prevail, she still chose it as our first case to argue before the court. i think that says a great deal not just about her tenacity but her commitment to serving the american people. it says a great deal about her commitment to protect our fundamental rights. in our democracy, i fundamental interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. i think it's a great deal about the path she has chosen. someone as gifted as her could have settled into a comfortable life and corporate law practice. instead, she chose the life of service -- service to students, service to country, service to the law and all those whose lives it shapes.

given her upbringing, it is probably a choice that came naturally. she is the granddaughter of emigrants his mother was, for 20 years, a beloved public school teacher as are her two brothers who are here today. her brother was a housing lawyer who worked for the rights of tenants and both were the first and their families to attend college. they instilled not only the value of a good education, but the importance of using it to serve others. as she recalled during her confirmation hearings -- both my parents wanted me to succeed in my chosen profession. but more than that, both made the importance of service and character and integrity. she has spoken about how her mother had grown up at time when women had few opportunities to pursue their ambitions and took great joy in watching her daughter do so. neither she nor her father lived to see this day, but i think her mother would relish this moment.

i think she would relish, as i did, the prospect of three women taking their seat on the nation's highest court for the first time in history. [applause] a court to would be more inclusive, rep, reflective of us as a people than ever before. i think they would be tremendously proud of their daughter, a great lawyer, a great teacher, and devoted public service why am -- public servant who i am comfortable make an outstanding supreme court justice. i hope the senate will act in a bar -- in the bipartisan fashion as they did when they confront her to be our solicitor general last year and will do so as swiftly as possible so she can get busy and take her seat in time to fully participate in the work of the court this fall. with that, i would like to

invite the person who i believe will be the next supreme court justice of the eyes states, elena kagan, to save a few -- to say a few words. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, mr. president. i am honored and i am humbled by this nomination and by the confidence you have shown in me. during the last year, as i have served as solicitor general, my

longstanding appreciation for the supreme court's role in our constitutional democracy has become ever deeper and richer. the court is an extraordinary institution and the work it does and in the work can do for the american people by advancing the tenets of our constitution, by upholding the rule of law, and by enabling all americans, regardless of their background or release to -- or beliefs, to get a fair chance at justice. within that extraordinary institutions, justice stevens has played a particularly distinguished an exemplary role. it is therefore a special honor to be nominated to fill his seat. i have felt blessed to represent the united states before the supreme court, to walk into the highest court in this country

when it is deciding its most important cases. cases that have an impact on some of the people's lives and to represent the united states there is the most thrilling and humbling task and a lawyer can perform. i have been fortunate to have been supported in all of the work i have done as solicitor general by remarkable group of lawyers and staff, many of whom are here today. they exemplify professionalism, public service, and integrity and i am grateful for all but they have taught me. my professional life has been marked by great good fortune. i clerked for a judge who represents the best in public service. and for justice, thurgood marshall, who did more to promote justice over the course of his legal career than did any

lawyer in his lifetime. i have had the opportunity to serve under to remarkable president's who have devoted themselves to lifting the lives of others and have expired a great many more to do the same period -- have inspired a great many more to do the same. i have had the privilege of leading one of the world's great law school and working to bring people together and ensure that they and the school were making a large as possible contribution to the public good both in this country and around the world. i am proud of what all less accomplished there. through most of my professional life, i have had the simple joy of teaching, of trying to communicate to students why i so love the law, not just because it is challenging and endlessly interesting, although it is certainly that.

but because law matters. because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms and because it is the foundation of our democracy. i am thankful to my brothers and other family and friends for coming to washington to be with me here today. and much more, i'm thankful for all their support and loyalty and love. not just on this day, but always. if this day has just a touch of sadness in it for me, it is because my parents are not here to share it. they were both, as the president said, the children of immigrants and the first in their families to go to college. my father was the kind of lawyer who used his skills and training to represent every day people. and to improve the community. my mother was a proud public

school teacher as are my two brothers, the kinds of teachers to students remember for the rest of their lives. my parents' lives and their memory reminds me every day of the impact public service can have. i pray every day that i live up to the example they set. mr. president, i look forward to working with the senate in the next stage of this process and i thank you again, mr. president, for this honor of a lifetime. thank you very much. [applause] >> we return now to a long form at the brookings institution on u.s.-and cooperation. this final session is on economic issues and started about five minutes ago.

>> the chinese once again are likely to react and say or believe that this is sending the u.s. is pushing on them because the u.s. is unhappy with chinese economic success. i think there are a variety of reasons why it's not the way to go. trade is not a bilateral thing. the history of economic sanctions in the world is one of failure after failure after failure. even one are two very small countries don't go along because they become that which the trade flows through and it takes a very much universal agreement before anything happens. the argument for multilateralism in trade is huge. that takes me to my first global issue which is related but not exactly the same thing as what can was talking about -- among things that have not happen in the pasture that have -- that should, is that there has been no serious definition of u.s.

trade policy going forward. most importantly in that regard, there has been since 2000 run, around a tree jig's since 2001, a trade that is under way, -- the round was held up waiting for the new administration to figure out what it wanted to do with that. there has so far been very little signal on that and at the moment, the doha round what would be the best forward is at an impasse and is leading to all sorts of things, including more protectionist reaction from a number of countries that are likely to move the entire world trading system in the wrong direction. that is independent of the current financial system -- financial situation which is making it worse but not as much as i would have expected. underneath all of what i would argue is taking the chinese current account and the u.s. deficits -- taking the issue

multilateral and of trying to handle on a bilateral basis would make economic sense and it would also have a chance of success which a bilateral deal does not. in other regards, it would be perfect but on top of that, we have an issue from about 2003 onward that was widely discussed by some at the global level which talked about global imbalances. global imbalances were the argument that the very large u.s. current-account deficit which caught up to 6% of gdp was too large and not sustainable. the current account surpluses that were the counterpart of that which first came from china with a few other countries and then with oil exporters as well, that these global imbalances were a source of major difficulty for the world economy and were unsustainable. the imf did actually spot this despite the fact nobody remembers it. but then, the managing director of the imf called for

multilateral consultations with a view to bring together the surplus and deficit countries in a multilateral forum and get a few key players and have them agree as to what the problem was and what each buzzers each would take in order to try to resolve the problem. there were meetings held and everyone agreed on the problem. there was no disagreement that it had to be resolved. this was how to resolve -- should be the deficit country or the surplus country? the u.s. but it should be the surplus country and the exporters and china fought a should be the death as a country. what happened -- let me just say that the large current- account deficit of the united states was unable or a result of very low real interest rates and in much of the rest of the western world. those low real interest rates, according to some, including me, were a very major factor in

contributing to the financial crisis. this was the way that signaled it was unsustainable -- very low interest rates encouraged housing and the carry trade and encourage or may cheaper the development of various derivatives and hedge funds and so forth that everyone is now so mad at. global imbalances were unsustainable. as it happens, the way they blew up was through the financial sector. those global imbalances were real and there were underlying causes, namely big surpluses and deficits in two major parts of the world. with all of that, we have not seen a situation where china's current account surplus went down somewhat and the u.s. account is down somewhat, but there's nothing i know of nothing anyone i know of knows of that can prevent it from happening again. as the world economy picks up, it's likely u.s. imports will rise more rapidly, especially

with the recent dollar appreciation. it is more likely that chinese exports will pick up again. with all of that, if nothing else goes wrong in the next five or 10 years, and it made before that, we are likely to see another global imbalance and another build up. this is not a china-u.s. problem, it is a global problem and it is in china's interest as much as is the u.s. but is on a bilateral problem and their allies the difficulty. when the chinese here the americans saying you should change our exchange rate, that looks bilateral. china is the biggest and china may have other problems. china's savings rate -- let me say it differently -- china's consumption as rated gdp is below 40%, which is the lowest accepted that has been heard of and human history as far as we know. 40% is a very low number. the current-account surplus is

the difference between investment origins -- investment and expenditures were in come. china is saving for domestic investment lot. even then, there's a lot of over for current account surplus. the u.s. is doing the opposite, and vesting a great deal more than we save and the financing came from china. given all of that, the question is what can be done? the answer is there needs to be some sort of global regime to work out a mechanism whereby we get realistic number so that unsustainable account surpluses and deficits cannot last. it's not an easy thing to do and for all know, china, with demographic changes coming along may not be the savior of the future. maybe some other part of the world will be saving huge amounts. the point is, the world does not have a regime right now to do this and yet the discussions did not progress because we are

focused on the wrong issues. as for the exchange rate, chinese exports are about 25% of gdp, which is large. but they are 2.5% -- chinese imports are 2.5% of u.s. gdp. 2.5% only. to the u.s.. with that -- what that tells you is even if we cut it in half, we get a change of 1.25%. that's not where the trouble is coming from. the chinese microeconomic impact insofar as there is one is glassful as -- it is their large savings and not exports to the united states perce. savings may fall -- exports to the united states per se.

need to strengthen the multilateral trading for its own sake because it's good for everybody including china, india and the united states. we define their regime silicon aback to the unstable global imbalances the way we had it. we have to do it in a multi- lateral fashion. the would argue the big issues between the u.s. and china are not the big issues between u.s. and china, there global issues. they are more important than either country alone and cannot be solved by their country alone. perform the mental experiment of 2005 were the united states said we cannot keep up these current-account deficits and we're going to change quite abruptly our fiscal policies so we cut our expenditures relative to our income quite drastically. we're going to go in the balance very quickly. if nobody in the rest of the world had done a thing, there would have been a big world wide recession. if the chinese decided to cut down without anyone else doing

so, we would have their needs to be a mechanism that can work for both sides and both sides are not the same countries overtime. one of the interesting things is much of the rhetoric about china now is on trade and exchange rates is not that to verbally heard about japan in the 1980's. in japan -- in the 1980's, japan was the new kid on the block. everything you heard about manufacturing in the u.s. going on was japan possible. they're saving too much. with their current account surplus etc. what happened to japan was not very pretty but it did not happen because of that discussion, it happened because the issues in the plot -- issues in japan or inflation that caught up with them in the 1990's. for all we know, the same kind of thing may happen to china, but that's not the issue. the issue is to find a global regime so that indeed we do not

have the kinds of imbalances that we have. let me stop there. if you want to get into the global financial crisis, it's such another topic i don't understand because i don't know when to stop. >> thank you. i think i'm going to end up repeating a lot of the same things. but want to take a more from the u.s.-china perspective. surprisingly, the economic crisis has been good for china on balance. one reason is they have not been part of the global financial crisis. the financial system so many people were so critical about was helpfully closed during this crisis and therefore largely unaffected by the disruptions in a the rest of the world. the negative shock to china was the the trade mechanism. there was a very powerful

distortion of trade, but china's response to that was a big stimulus program. the other point about the stimulus program is it was amazingly successful. china's stimulus program was much more successful than the american one, mainly because the speed which -- the speed with which it could begin to operate. as a result, china had a modest slowdown in 2009 and has come out of the recession with basically no worsening of its structural economic conditions. but the second thing that gets overlooked a little bit is that the financial crisis was very helpful in highlighting for china the risk that followed by its past economic policy. too much reliance on an export surplus economic expansion and the exposure to an unstable world economy as compared to

china's policies before 2004 or 2002, which were much more domestic-growth oriented was a warning to the chinese that they needed to back off from this excessive emphasis on export growth. looking ahead to 2010, i think you see china back on a growth path of 10% five-year period inflation is one concern, but it will stay in the range of 3% or 4%. they are worried about real- estate bubble and the are paying the consequences of accelerating world commodity prices. but china has no significant fiscal problems looking forward. its debt levels are extremely low and balanced in its budget. they need to shift their monetary policy now that the stimulus requirements are over and it relied so heavily on a big explosion of lending.

it now has to shift monetary policy back toward restraint. but what you are seeing is the emergence of an emphasis on the growth of their domestic economy, particularly an emphasis on promoting growth in the western provinces as opposed to coastal areas. second, and acceptance of urbanization as an important part of economic growth. it appears the government is going to quit resisting. i think the major domestic problem have and not getting balanced economic growth is the households, though i know other economists characterize chinese households as high savers, the data to me suggests they save about the same percentage as the japanese did in the 1960's and koreans in the 1970's and 1980's. in high-growth economies, people say lot. their income goes up so fast they can't figure out how to

spend it. the same would happen to us if it could only have that rapid growing level of income. but the problem for china is not very much of the income gets to the households. they would be perfectly willing to spend if they could get their hands of it. the trouble is that the government and enterprises or the corporate sector drains off enormous proportions of income in china away from the household sector. although we see 10% growth in the gdp, we show relatively slow rate of growth in household income. they have to figure out a way to get more money into the hands of households either through reform of dividend policies or stacks policies at the corporations. that's their big challenge. if they want a domestic restructuring, they have to find a way to promote the household sector is being more significant in the growth process. from the economic relationship of the u.s. and china as we go ahead -- and we're going to have

a meeting this month -- i think the major focus will be that the two countries have to rebalance their economies. this is something on which they should be able to cooperate closely. cooperation between the two out wires in the global system to reduce their extremes should be very helpful to world economy as a whole. china has to move toward greater emphasis on domestic demand, particularly consumption. the united states has to increase saving and move towards greater efforts to export. neither was interested in this prior to the crisis. but now the crisis is over or seeing the effects of it, we are both extremely interested. so you see china more interested in trying to promote domestic demand and reduce the alliance -- reduce the all lot -- reduce the reliance on unstable

westerners. i agree that in the process of working this out, the major risk is a replay of u.s.-japan and productive relationships from the last time we had a dialogue with another country. maybe because both of us are older, but i have strong memories of that and to me it sounds like deja vu. if i took all of these columns in the "new york times" and change the name from china to japan, it would be a replay. yet the basic problem is important and something we should find a way to get a solution to. i am not so convinced that multilaterally we will ever do anything. multilateral meetings tend not to be very productive. there is at least an opportunity to try it on a bilateral basis and see what happens.

one issue for china is what is the value of their reserves going forward? they have accumulated an amazing amount and learned its not a good idea to hold them in the euro. but now they will be worried about the decline of the belly of the dollar. you see their efforts to promote some system systemsdr -- systems like sdr's. you can try to diversify risk, which china to make some process -- a mix of progress and, but as long as they have large international investments, that story about the value of them. i agree that it is a mistake for the united states did focus on the exchange rate.

what we ought to be worried that trade flows. there is probably a connection between exchange rates and trade flows. when you're talking like a country like china with all of its other distortions, there's a lot of slippage between those two. the united states is likely to get some movement on exchange rates and no progress on trade and that is not what we should be interested in. it is also important that the u.s. realize that we don't compete with china. if you look at the things we produce and we have a comparative a bandage in, china does not produce them. we compete with japan and the european union. what we ought to worry about is what happens to the exchange rate in conjunction with those regions. what we should also be interested in is part -- is improving our access to the chinese market as a market because there's a growing recognition that it is very important. in terms of the exchange rate, i

think mexico and vietnam should be fighting more over what the chinese exchange rate ought to be because they're more directly affected. not the u.s. there has been too little appreciation by how much adjustment has occurred on the chinese side. the current account surplus peaked way back in 2006. it declined sharply in 2009 and was down to about 6%. china has released its trade data through the first four quarters of 2010 and is running at one-fifth the level of the balance its running at in the first four quarters of 2009. -- first four months. the chinese exchange rate is also increased quite a bit as

opposed to the u.s. when you look at a real exchange rate adjusted for inflation, the chinese exchange rate and american exchange rate departed several years ago and are now moving in opposite directions. they have altered their relative relationship by about 25%. china is facing a rather substantial increase in its real exchange rate and the u.s. is in the midst of some depreciation. i would share the concerns that the current situation has exaggerated those adjustments and maybe it will explode in the future. but the point this, so far this year, china has made a lot of adjustments. the growth is domestically lead. we know that in 2009, over six percentage points of the growth in gdp came from consumption. that's about 60% of the total. china has moved quite a bit in the direction of relying on

domestic demand. there was a lot of instructors spending and i think the major questions with all of this is can china sustain it? but we don't know the answer to that question. if you just are with have they done a thing, the answer should be yes, they have. in contrast, you would think the united states had to restructure on the other side. what rebalancing have we undertaken as a country? the united states is that in a deep recession. the trade balance has improved, not because we're doing better, but because our imports collapsed more than our exports. and oil prices are down, although they are headed back up again. the united states for its first time in its history has a negative national savings rate. that is rather remarkable, that we now spend more than we we earn.

-- than we earn. the only reason we don't have a problem on the external balance side is that domestic investment has fallen 22% of national income. we have turned into a country that has negative savings and extremely low rates of domestic investment. the combination of those two is keeping down our foreign borrowing requirements. economic growth has accelerated in the united states in recent months of the can be more optimistic about 2010. unfortunately, it is because we return to the habits of the past. we are back on consumption binge again as the household savings rate has fallen to wear was before the crisis and basically, our economic recovery is being led by consumption. the trade balance actually worsened in the first part of 2010 and appears to be going in the wrong direction. the big interest for the united

states -- why do we want to export more? we have to. otherwise we will not be able to create enough jobs. we cannot go on as an economy anymore with strong domestic consumption where we can afford the type of trade deficits we have in the past. the u.s. has moved back toward a more balanced economic situation where exports are growing rapidly and it's closed to imports and exports being equal. in that regard, the one promising area of the world where we are doing better is china. compared to 2009, when year ago, our exports have doubled. our imports have increased about 11%. i would not be too happy about it because you should realize that our exports to china are historically only about one- fourth of our imports to china.

so we have a long ways to go. but in terms of the ability to respond on the export side, the improvement in u.s. export has been to asia and we seem to be doing better on the export side. looking ahead, what bothers me about having a discussion with china on this issue of our economic relationship is at the gets important for american negotiators and americans to keep our focus on jobs. ultimately, the objective is to increase u.s. exports. i'm a little distressed to hear the discussion of improving business conditions in china. i'm not that interested in whether or not american firms can do business in china. i mortgage did in whether or not americans can export to china and that's not the same thing. just the fact that american service companies can operate freely in china does not

translate into a lot more jobs in the u.s. lead to make sure get access for capital goods, which is the biggest area of specialization in exports. i would hope we would keep our focus on those sorts of measures and changes that would influence our access of american exports to the chinese market, not just american business and the chinese market. thank you. >> thank you, both, for raising a substantial array of significant issues and restructuring a lot of what the popular discussion has tended to focus on. the floor is now open for questions and i see a bunch of them. as with the other panels, please wait for the microphone and briefly headed the fire itself and focus on a question rather than a set of comments. >> i'm from the german

institute for international security affairs in berlin. i first question concerns how we deal with macroeconomic imbalances. you seem to be in disagreement with the rich be bilaterally or multi-laterally. my question is, if there was a multilateral mechanism, where should it be? but the world trade organization or international monetary fund? what would be the teeth of this mechanism? should there be a dispute resolution or sanctions? the second question is regarding exports. i very much see the point that exports need to be increased, but the question is how? >> on the macro and balances, getting teeth is the issue. the current status of the g 20 is that they have instructed

them to get macroeconomic projections from other countries and work out how they will be consistent. pressured is supposed to bring things into line. i believe pressure may have some chance of working, but i would not put great faith in it. are there other alternative mechanisms that could be used? one could think of them, but so far there is no agreement. my instinct is very strongly imf. they have done much better in terms of looking at macroeconomic consistency, getting the balance is right and getting projections right. the most recent evidence from that comes from your part of the world as the europeans have to call in the imf to do the macro. the imf does have enough strength there and that's what i would look for. the more important point is the

one with regard to how you get the sanctions right. that will take some more work, but it's not hard to imagine mechanisms. it's hard to get agreement on them to get enforcement. as for how to export, i'm less concerned about that. i'm more concerned with getting the state of the investment balance right. if that happens, exchange rates and other issues will live in the right direction. president obama has announced to double exports by 2015, but so far the instruments were policy tools or incentives to do that, i have not noticed. >> some disagree, but not seriously. i would love to do it by multilateral means of possible, but i don't think countries are willing to give up sovereignty over these sorts of issues like budget policy. the idea that other countries

will start to dictate your budget policy, unless it is a crisis where you are the only source of money, i don't see that happening. we should be emphasizing that for these two countries, because they are the out lyres, it is in their own self-interest to do this correction. i think china has made more progress in realizing that it is in their self-interest to get away from this overemphasis on export surplus-led growth and shift back toward the domestic economy than the u.s.. the issue is complicated for the u.s. because i normally fully agree that the issue is saving at investment. i don't think you want to say invest less, you want to have a savings surplus and any good export. i agree with that. but we are currently in a highly depressed economy. it is not true that you have to

increase saving before you can do something to expand exports. the biggest barrier to u.s. export russian at present time is, unfortunately, price. the dollar in that sense is overvalued. i wish americans were better at exporting, but a long tradition of ignoring issues like exports, we are not particularly good at and i did the leeway to effectively increase exports is to cut the price. i expect to see the u.s. exchange rate depreciate over the years and that's exactly what was happening before the financial crisis. the dollar fell and in the midst of the crisis, everyone had a rush to treasury bills and that drove the dollar back up again. this may be on an issue where we might like to have an exchange between the u.s. and germany because germany is good it exports but the u.s. is not.

i think it's mainly a late short run a question of price. i fully agree that as we go forward from that, the u.s. has to increase its national savings as a way to continue to finance this kind of recovery. but right now, we have lots of resources to export. we do not have to cut consumption to export more. a few years from now, that may be necessary. >> question as to both speakers -- you have emphasized the importance of exports, but to what extent, at the were significant modifications in the u.s. export control strategies, how much would it affect that picture? it would seem to me that intuitively, that would be one way of boosting what we saw --

boosting what we sell. >> that's a good point. i would only argue that it is really small. there is just not very many commodities anymore which the united states has that big a technological advantage. for example, what we call high- tech in the night of states in our trade statistics, we are right that is the country. it shows up as china is the big exporter of high-tech products. that's not true. apple computer and particular has and i pot, add iphone and and i pat all designed in the united states -- and i pot, and iphone, and my pad. they're all produced in asia and they're labeled as coming from china in all three cases. china is the assembler of all this stuff being made in taiwan, but principally in south

korea. it is a good example of where apple computer plugs into a global production network. unfortunately we are not part of the production network anymore because we do not seem to have a comparative advantage in the production of those products. i think what you suggest would go in the right direction but it would be a relatively minor measure. >> on the u.s.-china trade balance, if i could interject something here -- our imports from china are really imports from asia. more than two-thirds of the value, china imported itself and assembled. but our exports to china are actually exports to china. very little of that is put into it and we're comparing apples to oranges. please wait for the microphone. from momentum private

equity in new york. i believe you made the comment that no country is going to cede sovereignty when it comes to restructuring its deficit. mayor posit that has already happened with greece, even that's not germane to this discussion. -- may i posit that has already happened with greece. the markets simply do not believe that you can structure through purely internal processes and i will say what is to prevent the bond markets and people who i work with from making the same conclusion about the united states and great britain? >> i thought i followed that remark by qualifying it by saying greece was an exception if you can get money from anyplace else. i take the u.s. and the long run

-- a policy of running these external imbalances year after year is not sustainable. i think we all agree with that. it is in our own self-interest to make the correction. i think the argument is about how it. one way to do is wait until you have a crisis and that you have to. there are a lot of countries who have done a in those sorts of situations. they face a crisis, there forced to adopt, and they do. i wish the u.s. would do it before a crisis occurs, but you might be right that we might refuse to act. but it's a much different case. the u.s. is a huge economy at the center of the global economy. i don't know how that would play out. i do agree that the u.s. ultimately has to make the adjustment. the only analogy i would give that goes the other way is the children of john d. rockefeller have been living off his well

for over a hundred years. they're just fine. they have not run out of wealth yet. you could argue that it's going on in the u.s. we are an extraordinarily rich country and have been selling off assets and issuing debt to the rest of the world for about 20 years. no signs we have run out of debt. they seem perfectly willing to buy our assets. that is what they do. they buy our assets and not our debt. we're back to more characterized by farmers owning assets in the united states. china is a big exemption. china buys our debt. everyone else buys our assets. we will see you turned out to have the best deal.

>> this is a follow-up on the greek question. what are the potential impacts of the great crisis and the bailout to asia and china? particularly on the policy front. will that make china's evaluation were interest-rate easier or more difficult? >> so far, china and asia and general has had a good crisis. -- asia in general is that a good crisis. they were not involved in holding very much of the toxic assets that were part of the trouble and they were able otherwise to have the fiscal stimulus because they did not have the high levels of debt. i don't see any reason why china or east asia or asia in general will be any more affected if the greek bailout this successful. you would expect europe to grow a little faster and that is good for europe and the rest of the

world, but it's not a big deal as far as asia is concerned as far as i can see. >> a question for both of you. the reason i see for every nation is bilateral because the doha round went nowhere. would [unintelligible] to get to the doha round done? we maintain strong currency and no interest-rate.

[unintelligible] do you think so? do you think the current administration [unintelligible] for a sustainable future. [unintelligible] >> i will take a crack a couple of these things. i am more extreme than my colleague on the trade. i believe the doha round is dead, fast-track has lapsed for the united states, it's unacceptable for the rest of the world to negotiate trade when the united states does not have fast-track authority.

the probability this president can get fast-track authority out of this congress i would put close to zero. i cannot think trade negotiations on a multilateral basis are likely to move forward, even though i fully agree that every other bases has been a disaster. i think a lot of the problems with trade is precisely because people decide to do it on a bilateral basis. on the other hand, i think the international trade system is held together amazingly well. in this current crisis. i think they really did try to adhere to the g-20 prescription of minimal trade restrictions. our country faltered a couple of times, but nothing big. on the strong currency, i agree. i hope our government officials in the future will keep their mouth shut about the want a

strong currency. i think that's ridiculous to express any opinion one way or another on that. i would personally like to see a weak currency. but i also realize it doesn't have much weight. on political will, i think yes, but it's a little premature. right now, in the united states, the focus of a politician as i single event -- getting the economy growing rapidly again and getting employment up. they put off the issue of rebalancing. that's something for the future. when they get there, will they do it? i don't know. weree 1990's, we fantastically lucky. the cold war came to an end and that saves us to% to 3% of gdp on the defense budget and and we have an economic boom that raised tax revenues and the

budget deficit just disappeared overnight. then we were not content with that situation, so we brought back from a promptly. but when you say political will, at the present time, the u.s. focuses on increasing aggregate demand and i believe a cornerstone of that should be a very strong effort to promote exports. that is one of the reasons it is key -- i'm convinced we will never get back to full employment again unless we can rebalance and have a much larger share of gdp going into exports. >> does that require a lot of government action? >> only in the sense of something that would make american goods cheaper in the world market. otherwise, no. although i think some other countries do have other policies that are effective in increasing their exports. >> i'm thinking about investing in in the structure and other

policy options sometimes associated with export. >> i don't think our ability to export at time is inhibited by are in the structure system. -- by our infrastructure system. i just think countries don't care about exports. if you are going to do business overseas, they would rather just move overseas and produce abroad and sell abroad. slanted towards exporting out of the nine states and another -- a lot of other american countries just want to bother. for 25 years, they could sell everything they got their hands on in a fully employed domestic economy. i think they just did not care. we are suddenly very interested, but it's not so easy to generate an interest or skill in exporting. >> thank you. >> if i could just add one thing, i think the tendency toward bilateral and regional

trading arrangements has already caused some problems. some countries have faced a more acutely than others but i'm convinced the going forward, we will see, i don't know when or how, some major difficulties, complications, what have you from this erection of bilateral, preferential, whenever agreements. at that point, there will be a recognition that we have to get back to a multilateral discipline over trade. >> this is going to be the last question. that dropped hands like a rock. you can always count on an admiral to step forward. >> thank you. i'm from the institute of foreign policy analysis. a few months ago, i heard a chinese economist argue that since china was switching to domestic from the export market, we ought to get involved.

you seem to be arguing against that. are you simply saying we should give more attention to export or we should not get involved in trying to be part of the domestic market? i think maybe 15 years ago, a chinese interlocutor toll may china had realized it did not have the wherewithal to throw money at the north korean problem and couldn't resolve the that way. it was too big. even after what we have gone through in recent years, is that still the case? >> let me try the first one. i have some reluctance to argue in favor of government involvement because i think that usually is translated into some form of industrial policy. i think the i did states is uniquely ill-equipped to conduct a rational industrial policy. we have a system of government aimed at helping the losers, not

promoting the winners. so the moment the government gets involved, it's always in there trying to stop the normal market adjustments in some industry that has been adversely affected, like clothing or shoes or some of the other more popular ones were we have had a lot of trade restrictions. the truth is, we have to stay to the microeconomic policies from the government perspective. if you have a government that promoted reducing the and didnt's dis-saving not interfere, i think we could get a competitive environment for u.s. exporters to focus on foreign markets. on north korea, what i know about this you could stick in your ear and i have a brother involved in it, so i'm not going to say anything. >> there are some proposals for

things like shifting the incidence of corporate tax here -- it's much higher than europe and there are things that could be done to reduce distortions in the tax code that could make exporting more attractive and could enhance american economic growth more generally. obviously, if infrastructure improves and you cut imports, it helps, but it is not a matter of getting the government into the act, it's a matter of getting a level playing field and getting the incentives right. >> this wraps up not only this panel, but this conference. before i let you all go, i would like to thank the thornton center for putting this on and at stat -- think the staff of the two centers that put this on to make all of this feasible. i would also like to thank the speakers for all of the panels, many of whom flew in jus