as we have in libya? guest: that is a question that only the military officials know for sure. it is clear that we have degraded muammar gaddafi's forces considerably, but he still has tanks and attacking a major civilian forces. opposition is still fighting with meager weapons. there is up 450 mile road that separates tripoli from bengahzi and there is fighting taking place. as long as he has the money, he may be able to keep fighting. finally, the question is whether there will be other revolutions, watch syria. watch what is taking place in yemen. i daresay algeria has been in

huge turmoil. host: the last question. please go ahead. >> do you think american intervention in libya is necessary, or should we allow the rebels to continue the revolution in removing muammar gaddafi and abstaining the confidence that they overthrew him without 04 and 8 guest:? the fact of the matter is that there is no doubt that the libyan opposition does not have the military means itself to accomplish that goal. they are desperate for outside support, outside intervention. that includes everything from weapons to ammunition to coroneted ground assault, assistance from the u.s. and other air forces. i am against it. i think, again, if the french and other allies feel they have a strategic interest in taking this battle on behalf of

opposition all the way to tripoli, then let them land of the foreign legion in tripoli and let them take on this fight. this is what the french government wants. they have a greater stake in the outcome than we do come and they do not think the united states has a core strategic interests getting involved any more than the military has done so, despite the clamoring of the opposition. this is something that is really of no great consequence to the united states, and that our allies want to take on the responsibility for this fight, we should let them do so. host: let's conclude with this question. what do you think will happen in libya, and if or when he leaves, who is his successor? guest: unless he continues to get hammered by other air forces, other than ourselves, he will continue to hold on. there is some hope on the part of the secretary of defense

gates that there would be divisions within his own family. he has eight children, all of them who have responsibility for military aspects of this campaign. he is of the finance individual by every stretch of the edmonton nation -- imagination. the worst thing i can see happening is there would be a bitter stalemate that exists while we enforce a no-fly zone in each party recruits, and that will inflict only further humanitarian concerns and catastrophe on the people of libya. who will take over is anyone's guess. this opposition is not led by any one individual, other than the former justice minister who heads the provisional council, and yet in libya it is a tribal society. there are 140 tribes in libya. six more or less dominant. it will have nothing to do with the provisional council.

it will either be a member of muammar gaddafi's own tribe or one of the other tribes or from the eastern part of the country will emerge, because the one thing he tried to do is break down the power of these tribal leaders by creating this very crazy society in order to stop the power of these tribes. these tribes will record -- resurrect themselves, and i dare say someone will emerge as leader. host: marc ginsberg joining us. to each one of honor students, excellent questions. thank you for your participation. to the folks at the national archives, we thank you for hosting us. we are back tomorrow morning at 7:00 eastern time. thank you for being with us on this thursday. enjoy the rest of your day. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

♪ >> coming up today on c-span, our focus stays on the middle east with political demographer richard cincota on his prediction of a liberal democracy and the arab world. he will talk about his reasoning and provide historical insight on democratization live at noon eastern from the woodrow wilson center. at 3:45, a roundtable discussion with a number of mayors from around the country discussing economic development and budget pressures facing their cities. it is hosted by the local initiatives support corp. -- corp. live at 3:45. >> night on c-span, a look at education reform with michelle rate. sacramento mayor and former nba player kevin johnson will be

here and they will discuss adam denmark disparities. they will talk about why they think student achievement has worsened despite a doubling of federal spending over the last several years. >> it -- it is all this doing our part whether you have kids or not. there are too many kids that are languishing in schools that are not doing well. there is also kids that live in nice neighborhoods and our schools are not serving them to the degree they need to, as well. >> i concur with him. we are in a position right now in this country where if you were to tell me the zip code that a child lives in and the race of that child, we could, with pretty good accuracy, tell you what their academic achievement levels are. that is one of the most un- american things that i can possibly imagine. it betrays the ideals by which we live as americans.

>> watch this event from the university of arkansas tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> the president of the american university in cairo predicted wednesday that moammar khaddafi would die as a mortar before giving up power in libya. lisa anderson predicted the outcome to the political outcome. she spoke at an end bent posted by the carnegie endowment for international peace. it is one-and-a-half hours. >> thank you all for coming. this is another one of our series of covering what is happening in the region in general but what is happening in egypt in particular. the last week was a venture -- a van full in egypt with the

referendum and the start of a process towards a gradual change in that country. beyond, we are witnessing what is happening in libya. we have seen what has happened in tunisia and indeed, there is a wave that seems to be moving across the arab world that promises to be quite transformational. i am very delighted to have with us today someone who is known to all of you. lisa anderson was appointed president of the american university of cairo in january of this year. i was supposed to attend her inauguration but of course, other events stood in the way. even before dr. anderson went to cairo, she has been especially strong in the middle east for a very, very long time. she served, of course, as the

provost from 2008-2010. prior to that, she was the dean of international and public affairs at columbia. = 410 years. she is the author of many books and articles. she was the editor of " transitions to democracy." dr. anderson will talk to us today about the event not just in egypt but also indonesia and libya. as you all know, auc is right on tahrir square. we are getting a unique perspective on events in that country as well as in the region. please join me in welcoming dr. anderson. [applause]

>> this is the first time i have been out of egypt since the beginning of january. i thought i would talk a little bit about the sort of larger picture of how we think about the authoritarian legacies of the regimes against which these rebellions were made. the tendency to see all of this is understandable but also potentially a significant mistake if you're thinking about policy approaches in the various countries. i want to give a brief overview

of that kind. then i will entertain questions including questions about what auc has been doing and life on the square was like during the protests there about prospects for change, particularly in egypt. i want to set the stage, if you will, in a more abstract and broader way. i think it's clear that certainly, in the early days of the uprising, at the beginning of this calendar year, people tended to see these are uprisings as all about peace. it is certainly true that they were largely unexpected, spontaneous protests against aged authoritarian rulers in tunisia and egypt and in libya and now, as we are seeing increasingly elsewhere as well. many of us had for a long time wondered how the next generation

would take power in these countries. in a few places, we seem to have the answer. it is through these popular uprisings. the contempt for their own citizens that had been conveyed by many of these governments for decades, they had seemed indifferent to the well-being of their own citizens. they seemed to have lost touch with the populations or that they were putatively responsible for. in all of that respect, this is a set of protests about dignity, about citizens who lost their fear and wanted to demand the respect that they thought they deserved from their own governments. i think it is important to understand that that is the framing of this. this is not particularly

ideological. it is not that italy about socialism or nationalism or -- it is not initially about socialism and nationalism or one another type of government. one of the playing is that i think was notable over the last decade or so in a number of countries about the decay of the relationship between government and their citizens in many of these countries was the accumulation of garbage in the streets. i was astonished when i was last in libya which was in 2007 by the extent to which this oil- rich country was filthy, absolutely felt it. it was not about poverty. it was not about how one could manage public services and so forth. this was a country in which the

citizens themselves, the people were expressing contempt for their government and dissatisfaction with their own situation by throwing garbage in the streets. they openly acknowledged that. when you visit a country and you see a particularly wealthy country with garbage all over the place, you can hardly resist inquiring about how that has come to be. people say they don't care and they throw it in the streets. the government did not pick it up. it was a mutual contempt. it was that kind of demoralization that ultimately animated these sorts of protests. you can see the other side of it when you have seen what has happened in the aftermath of the protests in egypt where the place is spotless. every single young person has been cleaning and painting the bridges and painting sidewalks.

i don't know whether you have seen these pictures but across the country, there is a clean-up campaign. it is once again emblematic of being tired of living in a circumstance in which it did not feel clean and whether you mean that literally or whether you mean that metaphorically, there was too much corruption, there is a sense that part of what this is about is citizens wanting to live in a circumstance in which they are respected by their governments and their rights are acknowledged as citizens and where they have responsibilities that are also acknowledged including things like keeping things claim. these are simple things that most people in other societies including the one we are in now sort of take for granted. i wanted to paint that word picture because i think it is important for those of us who are analysts here to keep in

mind that when we say these are not particularly illogical, they are in the logical in the sense that -- when we say these are not particularly ideological, they are ideological in the sense they should be respected by those governments and think those governments should be accountable to them but are not swept up in ideological movement of any kind. i think there is a generational change in the region in that respect as well as in how they organize themselves and the importance of facebook and social media. their parents were ideologues in the way they are not. i think we will see that there for over the course of the coming years. that said, the patterns of how these protests developed and the kinds of things that were the specific targets of protests are actually quite different in the three countries i want to talk about, tunisia, egypt, and libya.

it is important to note that because i think some of the policy prescriptions that we will see developing in the countries themselves as well as outside will reflect these sorts of differences. indonesia, -- indonesia, the protests started in the hinterlands. in tunisia the protests started in the hinterlands which were neglected by a government that was extraordinarily good at painting a picture of a successful middle income country that had welcomed the tourism. it was a picture that really was a gov. tim kaine village behind which there was quite a bit of misery -- it was a picture there really was a potemkin village behind which there was a bit of misery. the ruler was unconscionably corrupt.

that suggests there's a way to be unconscionably corrupt. in this case it was predatory. it was deeply insulting and offensive to many of the people who were actually in the hinterlands outside what part of the country was enjoying any prosperity at all. there was a sense that the government, the b people,en ali had taken dishonesty to an art form. there was very little discussion and debate. we think of all of these regimes as having been repressive of free expression. indonesia, despite their image as a modern country and one -- in tunisia, it was actually a very tightly controlled country. there was a facade that everyone understood to be no more than eight the side of this sort of modern western

facing, you know, middle-income developing country. the corruption indonesia -- the corruption in tunisia was organized from the top. the president and his family were routinely described as the family and of the family got a cut of any significant economic transaction in the country including any foreign investment. there are multiple stories of foreign companies after a considerably long negotiation deciding not to do business there because they simply could not get through the family. it was a quality of corruption and equality of predatoryness that was not only inhibiting the kind of development that the

regime claimed they were promoting but it was also deeply humiliating. as a result, there was a family at the top. when you talk about that family, ben ali himself had seven brothers and sisters and his wife had 10. they said heavily on this kind of economy. there was very little genuine sense of economic development for a sense this was a set of policies that were designed to foster the prosperity of the country as a whole. it felt like it was designed to foster prosperity of a particular family. as i say, as a result of that, the revolt started in the hinterlands the furthest away from the family and the furthest away from the beneficiaries of the system and spiraled toward the center, ultimately joined and supported by the labor

unions. you see a movement starting at the periphery and moving toward the center both economically, geographically, politically, in all respects. the interesting thing about the quality of corruption in tunisia and for some of us making distinctions among different kinds of corruption may be a fine point, but it is not insignificant, the quality of the middle to low level administration in tunisia was retained -- has retained a fair amount of technocratic expertise. the corruption in he did was of a different quality. -- the corruption in egypt was of a different quality.

there are debates today about a successor regime that continue apace. there was a fair amount of uncertainty and instability in the transition of the two nations having gone first with the most surprising were the least equipped to think about what kind of government would be an appropriate transition. the army did not support the government but neither did agree to rule. what is interesting about the role of different armies is that the only army we are talking about in these cases that actually saw combat experience was the egyptian army. as a result of that, they are reluctant to get into what they would call mission creep. they are not interested in sustaining their role in the

political realm. the prospect of a loyal opposition in tunisia is fairly high. i think the labor movement can begin to represent a loyal opposition and one thing that has been characteristic of these authoritarian regimes was that there was never any space for the idea or the appearance of a loyal opposition. either you support the government or you were be trading the country. what we need to see in most of these countries is the existence in building up and the stability of a loyal opposition where you can debate policy without necessarily being seen as a traitor to the country as a whole. i think tunisia has some aspects. . the fact that they face relatively straight

circumstances is going to mean that they collect information more effectively and budget more effectively than they might if they were less constrained in financial terms. we can return to those propositions later, if you want. egypt, then, saw the next of the really significant uprisings. as you all know, these were very urban in contrast to the tunisian case. the uprisings and protests were not only in cairo and not only downtown cairo, there were significant uprisings in alexandria and suez. these are large provincial cities. this was an urban phenomenon. one of the things that is a consequence of that is that the outcome of a referendum on the constitutional amendment. the only people lead voted no or the people who were in tahrir

square which is very urban. if you look at the patterns of the support for the constitutional amendments in the rural areas, it was practically 100%. the people who were prepared to be politically active and challenge the military or almost entirely what you might call the intelligentsia in the urban areas. what you also sought in addition to the fact that it was urban was an extremely highly disciplined protest movement. there was and remains a reluctance on the people who organize these movements to surface as its leaders. in that respect, that is not an ideological position. that is a principled position that they are part of the people. they are not leaders. they don't want to surface at this juncture. it is important that this serves them well as protest organizers. it does not necessarily serve

them well after the protest has succeeded. i think it is fair to say that the people who organized the protest, as they got going in the beginning of january and as they organized the january 25 police day protest, they did not expect to prevail. they have organized protests in the past that had fizzled out and learn lessons in that and learn a lot about civil disobedience, non-violent protests but they did not expect that they would be confronted with success in the way they had. they were extremely good of the protesting and now are finding themselves ill-equipped and unprepared for actually managing their political position in the new egypt. they were prepared for the opportunity when it presented itself and very well networked and very sophisticated in getting -- we debate this in

egypt. it was quite a lot of people in tahrir square for quite a long time. in a context where they were sufficiently well organized and not provoked by the saboteurs who were trying to make a violent, we can talk more about what happened in tahrir square, but it was a very sophisticated capacity to rally the troops and keep them there and keep them engaged and peaceful. hence, you saw almost a festival atmosphere developed over the course of time. some of that was a deliberate effort to insure that it was peaceful and possible to sustain it for what turned out to be several weeks. the authoritarian as some that this protest actually rebuild was not the kind of predatory regime that we saw in tunisia.

it was separatism -- it was authoritarian his unborn more out of of neglect. the regime just got out of touch and stop thinking about a lot of the kinds of things that ordinary people care about. over the course of time, things in egypt, whether it is education or basic social services or salaries or anything are formally very cheap. the formal wages are very low for the police. teachers get paid a pittance. but everybody supplements to their salary. with something that could be described as corrupt. the small kelp bribes to the police, the private lessons that all the teachers give in order to help students be preparing

for exams, everybody has a second job. and a second source of income. in fact, things in egypt are kind of expensive. it is hard to get a lot of the social services that you are putatively have as a matter of right. there is no such thing as free education even though education is free. you have to pay for the private lessons. there is a kind of pervasive, small-scale corruption that is born of a failure to keep pace with inflation and wage rates for teachers or police or the huge 6 million civil servants that there are in egypt. they are all underpaid and all have some other source of income. one of the real challenges for egypt is not so much removing a predatory family although there are accusations largely unfounded against a loss in the

dark family, the real challenge is to reform a 6 million-person public bureaucracy so that people are paid enough, that they don't need to supplement that and they stop supplementing. that will be very complicated. it is not probably impossible but it is a very different challenge than tunisia. i think the effects of neglect and egypt will be harder to reverse than removing the predatory family. in tunisia. the debate on the future and the extent to which is this is organized around a very simple safe and clean neighborhood campaign is in many respects very appealing and there is an enormous amount of enthusiasm

and mobilization about taking responsibility. people are cleaning up their neighborhoods. neighborhoods that had not been claimed by anyone cause the government was not doing it and the local residents were not doing it. suddenly, people are cleaning up there never was and of these neighborhood watches appeared when the police disappeared, local citizens taking responsibility for their own security. that impulse of saying that they are declaring themselves citizen of the never but in the country and want to be held responsible , that change in the way egyptians are seeing their interactions with each other and with the public authorities is quite remarkable and does bode well over the long run for a transition that does capture a sense and reinforce a sense of

responsibility on the part of many of the citizens. it is fairly clear that the military that did step in and manage the transition does not want to stay. a lot of the vote for yes for the constitutional amendment was not about the constitutional amendments but it was before the military's timeline that they get out quickly. there is a lot of strategic movement. i think a lot of people did not know what the constitutional amendments were. they were voting because they could vote and they did not know what the outcome was going to be and that in itself was exciting. they thought that if they voted yes, this was a way of not consulting the military and ensuring that they did leave promptly as they had promised to do. we can talk more about the

prospects of the character of transition if you want. there is ample reason and i am very optimistic about the prospects of the choppy and complicated but successful transition in egypt. libya, i could not be more pessimistic about. the ragtag band of rebels that appeared in the eastern province animated by the enthusiasm and a lack of fear demonstrated by the young people indonesia and egypt -- in tunisia and egypt was completely on coordinated. --un coordinated. there has been for decades, virtually no free information available in libya about what is going on in libya or the rest of the world. most of what libyans know about

each other is unreliable and incomplete. there is very little capacity to coordinate. the discipline and organization you saw among the egyptians is not something you see among the libyans because for the last 30 years, the regime in libya has deliberately and relatively successfully presented the growth of bureaucracy and the professional middle class and of nationwide networks of economic ties and civic organizations and political institutions. you hear these reports all the time about tribalism in libya. this is a sort of renewed war in dues to tribalism. one of the few reliable sources of solace and support in a context like libya was family.

tribal ties had begun to attenuate 50 or 60 years ago and had become less important as people had professional identities. they were robbed of any capacity to have those kind of identities in an effective way and people resorted to family because the only way you could get access to the social services you needed for education or other kinds of provisions to do things in libya was through those kind of connections. it demonstrates there has to be something public which is turned to private sources in libya for private purposes. that is the definition of corruption. in this instance, there is no public. gaddafi and his revolution and his ideological supporters and his family and that is it. it is hard to argue that the way people have the aid and the extent to which they have relied on their own families for access

to the kind of daily needs that we all have constitutes corruption when there wasn't any alternative to that at all. all of this means, in my estimation, that the post- gaddafi reconstruction will be more about state formation than democratic transition. i think we are starting z hinesero in terms of the -- but clear starting behind zero one talking about a state organization that would be recognized by libyans. that will be real challenge. there are regional tensions that are long standing and have grown over the course of time. the east was always a relatively solid under gaddafi and it is no surprise that is where the protests started. it is also true that you have seen a lot of fairly opportunistic tribes moving

toward the rebels and when the rebels looked bad, they moved toward the government. there is a lot of -- there's a lot of opportunism because there is no ideological commitment of any time except opposition to gaddafi among the people who think they can get away with it. i think that is really the question mark is whether that opposition can get away with being in opposition. one thing that gaddafi has said and i think he is a man of his word is that he will die a martyr to the revolution. b unlikeen ali who was exiled -- all on like ben ali who was exiled or hospital bark was not required to leave the country -- or hosni mubarak who was not required to leave the country, gaddafi will be killed and his body will be dragged through the

streets. there is that quality to the attention. nobody will give up this fight because they know that if they surrender, they will be killed so that mothers will die in battle. nobody on -- so they might as well die in battle. nobody believes on either side that there is any value or prospects in surrender. it is going to be a bloodbath in many ways. i think that remains the challenge for people who look in for the outside and say this is, in part, a case of the new united nations doctor on the responsibility to protect civilians. at the same time, it is also like these other protests against authoritarian rules, not simply an issue of civilians. this is what could be described as a civil war. if you put your thumb on the

scale in trying to protect civilians, you are actually taking sides. in a war. that was part of the calculus of the arab league. they knew what they were doing. those are the kind of calculations that the international community will have to live with as this results itself however it does. there are very different kinds of non-democratic settings and therefore very different kinds of protests against those non- democratic regimes. it behooves us to disaggregate them one from the other and start thinking about what the prospects for various kinds of policy regimes in the aftermath of the fall of authoritarian -- authoritarian regime may be.

i then we have two cases where we have reasonable cause for optimism. i'm a totally optimistic about egypt but that is because i live there, i think. if i was living in tunis, i would probably be optimistic about them. i think it will be hard in egypt but it has a good shot at being a much more open and dynamic society that has been in recent years. i will stop here entertain your observations, i think we need to be concerned about the cost that libya may represent to tunisia and egypt. it would be very much too bad if those countries preoccupied as they should be with sorting out their internal issues and being asked to be much less and doing anything in libya. the temptation from the rest of the world, you can see.

on the other hand, they are very, very busy. if they succeed in any way to develop something that approximates democracy, it would be hugely valuable to the region as a whole. that makes it worth being abstemious to ask them to do anything in or for libya. on that note perhaps i can stop and we can talk about tahrir square if you like, thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, dr. anderson. i'm going to use my privilege as the moderator and asked the first question. is there any emerging trend that we can see in egypt of a new system or egyptians thinking of a parliamentary system? is it too premature to talk trends?uch a transfer ta

>> one of the interesting aspects about egypt is that people did not expect to be in this position. if you ask any egyptian on january 25 whether two months later they would have to be thinking about whether a presidential system was better than a parliamentary system, they would say to get through the protests. this is a moment where egyptians across the country are absolutely starved for information. they love thinking about this. they don't know anything about parliamentary systems or presidential systems. these are not debates that had taken place in the country. we are at a point where people simply want to know what the choices are. there is enormous activity. we are running public programming night after night about how you reform the constitution or what these amendments may be or what electoral system looks like or

how parties organized and how they may organize in different ways depending on your electoral system and whether you have a presidential system. all of this is all new. the answer is, no, nobody has much of a conviction about what kind of system would serve them best. they are trying to figure out what systems there are and given with systems there are, what interests they have and whether those interests would be better served by a systema or system a or a hybrid. the two groups that are believed to be the best organized are the remnant of thendp, the ruling party and nobody knows what will happen to that and whether the remnants will reorganize and reconstitute in something like non-communists communist party in eastern european terms. will it be alive or taken apart?

the tunisian decision was to completely and a life of the ruling party. that does not seem to be on the horizon in egypt at this point. nobody knows what will happen to that. it clearly has the strongest network grass-roots support in the rural areas among the people who voted for the constitutional amendments. that is on the docket. --. for the people in the protests, they don't have organizations. they are not great enthusiast for the political parties that or the formal opposition parties. they are trying to figure out whether they form a party and if they form a single party, what is it about? can the form of many little parties? what cost is there to them? that may be why they wanted a parliamentary system because that system is better for lots of little parties. all that is completely open and

completely up for grabs. people are staying up all night to try to figure this out. i remind my egyptian colleagues of oscar wilde's crack that the trouble with socialism is it takes too many evenings. the trouble with democratic transitions is they take too many evenings. that is the situation people are in. the interesting thing about the moslem brotherhood is they are the group to be the best organized. with around n since of thedp. it is obvious that there are not ideological cleavages within the brotherhood so much as i would say there are significant generational cleavages. those are not simply about the older brothers having past their prime. it is about what the role of the brotherhood should they. this becomes an intra-

brotherhoods debate. it is about their aspirations. it is easy from the outside to say they are a coherent, well organized group. when you look inside, they are not so coherent or well organized. as a patronage network. if you were doing competing patronage networks that have no real purpose in life, you have these two groups and they are still fairly strongthe ndp has been decapitated and the muslim brotherhood does not know who should be the head of it. there is a lot of debate in there. even what we think of as the best organized are not particularly well organized. they were not prepared for this either. the brotherhood was accustomed to being cranky and claiming

that everyone would vote for them. presented with these opportunities, they are not boys. poised. nobody was ready for this and they are scrambling how to best take advantage of opportunities they never expected to have. it is a be careful what you wish for a moment in egypt for everybody. >> let's maybe take a group of questions at a time. state who you are and who you represent. >> i'm a documentary film maker. with respect to egypt, your comment that they are searching for alternatives and they cannot figure out which system they want, amendments to the constitution seems to be premature. a constitution would follow this

decision. is there a movement or discussion towards a constituent assembly where they would then form a constitution based on the decision of what system they want? >> ok, yes, please. you. >> i am from the brookings institution. i would be interested in your opinion of what the perceptions of the u.s. in egypt currently are and whether they are based on how the u.s. might help in these delicate political transition especially related to the choice of political systems. >> in the back, yes, please. >over here? >> thank you for joining us.

the youth movements and egypt have been described as power of the youth. is there something about this that talent is cultural norms of respect for the elderly and the community? have these events in the arab world inspired the scholarship on the region? >> i will go backwards on this. those are very interesting questions. on scholarship, most of the scholars were not prepared for this either. everybody is trying to get their other book finished before they deal with [laughter] this. a lot of other books were about the resistance of authoritarianism. no one was prepared. the cultural norms and the youth, this is a very interesting question -- dynamic.

one thing i think people don't quite appreciate here is the extent to which the parents of egypt are proud of their children. it is astonishing. this is not seen in this country as something that was a revolution against the parents. this was a revolution on behalf of the family, if you will. everybody i know went down to tahrir square to see their kids. everybody. it really is a sense that the only thing that parents will say is we are a little guilt ridden because they did not do it. we had to ask them to do it. we had to put it on our children to accomplish this. they argued the proud. -- they are hugely proud. there is no free education so everybody pays for it.

in a sense, this is the redemption of that. that investment has paid off. it has not paid off in the sense that these kids have jobs for which there were educated. as you know, the mismatch between skills and jobs is still what it was on january 24. the sense that the kids did lose their fear and did represent taking control again of their destiny is something that all of egypt is proud of. all the families are proud of that. it does not seem that you should be respectful to the hierarchy. that is quite significant dynamic. you are right about that. that may resurface. one thing that is interesting and i remarked on this facetiously even in the united states about "kids to, day" is

that this is the generation that fought their parents how to program the vcr. this is the generation that fought their parents things for decades. the parents are used to it. the kids are used to it and the parents are used to it. the sense that a parent knows more and they are -- the kids are supposed to listen, that dynamic is changed everywhere in the world. you are even seeing it in a context where there was much more deference to the father of the family then is the case in the united states. you still see that dynamic. i think this is something that this generation will be different all the way through. it is not just that they are the youth bulge and lots of testosterone, this is a different set of responsibilities.

you often hear the stories of migrants in the united states and the children translated for the parents and that created a different dynamic. in a sense, this entire generation around the world has translated to their parents. it is a very interesting dynamic. in all of these places, this is part of the reason why it is happening and part of the reason why it will be interesting to see how it develops. that relationship between authority and age is different. one of the most becoming things about this is the extent to which the parents think their kids are the cat's whiskers. it is adorable. the perception to the united states is less adorable. the united states has seen the -- has seemed to be behind every

single time, not having caught on to what is going on in tunisia or egypt and not having caught on to libya. it was different each time so in fairness, you would not want to extrapolate from one to the next automatically. there are other reasons why from the perspective of the region the american policy statements did not seem like they were very agile or quick or informed or knowledgeable. that may not be fair but that is what it looks like from the region. in terms of what kinds of things the united states could be doing now, particularly in tunisia and egypt, this hunger for information about how politics works is quite genuine. there are ways to address that

and answer that which is to send in people who know things like that. get those debates going. one thing we have been due in atauc -- doing at auc is what happened in latin america and she let? -- and chile? how did that work? they do not think they are like that but there are learned lessons or best practices. they know we are around. the more the kind of discussion and debate -- polite -- particularly if it is not american political scientist coming in, it is that people actually active in writing those constitutions and thinking about who knew the difference between albanians and poland and would be able to say what works here

by not work in libya. that is what is really important right now. there is an enormous desire for that. that is the trouble with the evenings. they are already filled up with talking about what to do and you have seminars that bring in people h fromungary and it is very busy and hectic. saying that there are ways that people have thought about these kind of issues and may or may not apply here but it is worthwhile knowing about them, that is already productive. in some respects, that sort of democracy promotion work that has been done in the past, done properly and by bringing in people who have had that sort of experience, people are hungry and interested and invigorated by that. that sort of thing would be useful. obviously, that will not be adequate in libya.

it would be very helpful and instructive in tunisia and egypt, for example. as far as constitutional amendments, there was a lot of discussion about whether we should have a constituent assembly. everybody i knew was reading the federalist papers for about a week and a half. everybody in egypt is a political scientist right now. it is very gratifying. i think people will fall off after a while because it gets tiresome. the part of the way the military, a, i thinkadroitly frame this is that after the president is elected -- you have the constitution allowing the change in the presidential term and who can run for office,

relatively modest changes, opens the system for candidates who would not have been permitted under the existing constitution. then you have those elections and you have a new parliament. the parliament was produced by recollections. you need a new parliament. you need a new president and a new presidential elections. at that point, the military withdraws and go back to the barracks and if you want to talk about the coster's again, go ahead it was framed that way. nobody has said that the constitution with these amendments is necessarily be permanent constitution. it was a modest reform to permit getting to the next six months or so. there may be a revisiting of all that. there are apropos models, lively discussions about why it is that the american constitution is only six pages long and the

egyptian constitution is dozens of pages. do you what a cop -- constitution that outlines all the rights or says it is not mentioned here it is a right? i would not be surprised of those things did not come up again. people want to get through this transition and that was the plan. >> jessica? >> i am with the carnegie endowment. thank you for a wonderful talker. we still learn some much new. listen to your description of libya, it was hard on two different grounds for me to imagine a happy outcome of the intervention. it was either on the grounds of the fight to the deaths on both sides and the expectation or on the grounds of when can libyans had manage themselves and the western forces leave.

is that a fair set of conclusions? can you see a happier future? >> david to? ? >> could you think i had a year -- ahead a year? let's say we have had political transitions knowledge of the smoothly, they've had elections, they've formed a government. what will be top the agenda in public debate in egypt at point? will it be governance issues, like corruption, bread-and- butter issues, jobs, prices? or will it be a foreign policy issues, which usually comes down to being palestine? >> david?

>> washington institute. i thank you very much, lisa. some people argue, including a lot of the tahrir square revolutionaries, that by handing over power as quickly as it wants to do in a way that is democratic, it may also mean that the remnants of the ndp and the muslim brotherhood will be the ones that the military will end up working with. they have a head start, so to speak. do you see the military's role in egypt as one of hanging onto its economic privileges, opposing worker rights, opposing serious economic reform, and so on? in other words, something that would be not that different from what we have seen up until now,

despite the revolution? >> one more question. we have another round, but one more question in this round. >> middle east institute. i would like to encourage you to go back and think big. 10 years ago, he wrote an article called ". barack -- you wrote an article called "arab democracy -- dismal prospects." what is changed since? you have answered on the social implications of technology, but can you take on the broader question? >> ok, but i won't go back -- [laughter] the intervention in libya, i do think -- the international community, not just the united states, was in a difficult

position, because as the tide turned against the rebels, you increase in late -- increasingly confronted the possibility that they would actually be defeated by the gaddafi regime. that would have been a huge fleet demoralizing across the region. -- hugely demoralizing across the region. it was palpable in egypt, not that the libyans particularly care about egypt or the prospects of protests in libya, but they did not want the prospects of protest to be destroyed. the protest movement in the region, and in a sort of strange bedfellows way, the governments that make up the arab league, all wanted to take this opportunity to say no, we don't

want gaddafi to prevail. we just don't. perhaps for different reasons, partly because people thought protests might succeed in libya, and some because they were just sick and tired of gaddafi, as everybody is. again, the international community was confronted by a choice of staying, "we are not intervening," and the prospect that gaddafi would have prevailed is quite high, or we are, knowing that that is going to get us into a difficult set up a dilemmas of how we get out and what happens. since gaddafi himself knows and has known for a long time that this was as likely an end to his regime as any other, he will be literally personally hard to find and people will not finish until they find him. it could go on for a long time in that kind of stalemated

house-to-house, so forth and so on. nobody wants to have anything to there. they are willing to drop a bombs, but beyond that, nobody wants to do anything more. i don't think there was any choice, honestly. i don't think that the prospect that gaddafi and all of its supporters -- gaddafi was unable to destroy the rebellion and all of its supporters -- he couldn't do that. the problem is we have a situation that could also lead us to unpalatable prospects, and i think that is a significant problem. i had hoped, speaking of things i'd written before, that we would be able to intervene with the sort of what we hope will happen later than we did. i understand we are all busy and

we don't have time to do that kind of thing, but to talk a little bit about who we think will be responsible for assisting libyans when they start their construction would have been becoming a. but to say something that we did not expect -- we the united nations, we the united states, we anybody -- that there was a sense that we are going to return responsibility to the libyans, whoever they are, and provide some kind of assistance to them as they gathered around a table and as people who have literally not talked face-to- face in years. that is what it will be, people from tripoli and people from benghazi to of not talked to each other for years and years and years, people from inside and outside who have not talk to each other for years and years and years. somebody will have to be a facilitator. but if we had been able to talk a little bit more about how we imagine that happening, it would

have permitted us to say that from the beginning, in good faith, we did not intend this to be anything but an effort to ensure at gaddafi did not win at. unfortunately, right now it is not clear what it is. everybody is wondering about why we bought it when we are not doing it in other places, so forth and so on. there was a legitimate rationale for what we did when we did it. that will get lost, because we did not describe what we anticipated to happen afterwards. egypt in a year -- egypt in a year will be about economic issues. i mean, at that point, there will be some kind of call lessons of the political landscape, -- coalescence of the political landscape, left and right -- there will be a political landscape.

those parties will be advocating policies which will mostly be a domestic, economic issues. everybody anticipates substantial inflation. we know the stock exchange is a complete mess at this point. tourism has disappeared entirely, so you have a huge sector with millions of people who are employed, as opposed to the unemployed, who are now unemployed. there is a lot to do on the domestic, economic front, and there will be a lot of that. that will play a little bit into the military, which i will get to a in a bid. i just don't think foreign policy is going to be the principal issue, unless we are somebody decides to make it the issue. this wasn't about foreign- policy, it's still not about foreign-policy. it really is about accountable government and fairness. a lot of the labor protests going on out egypt right now are as much -- they are partly about money, but they are partly about

dignity. you, employer, are not paying me a living wage, which is probably true. is as much about the right to a living wage as it is to a certain number of pounds. that will continue, and there will be lots of debates about the policies like what should be the minimum wage, how to accommodate the fact -- what do you do about you're unemployed, what will be the minister of social solidarity doing, welfare, so forth and so on. keep in mind that the current minister of finance is a labor economist. that should tell you something, but about the kind of priorities that the military has. they are not interested in washington consensus economic reform. they are not. one of the problems of egypt, in my estimation, and wet and charged with corruption -- is if you look at the people who have been charged with corruption, ministers and so forth, some of

them were corrupt, but some of them were advocates of economic privatization. not personally corrupt at all, taking a policy position which is now unpopular. that it got caught up that it is somehow all crop, and that it is impossible to be a big businessman without being corrupt, and it is impossible to be a minister who was supporting business without being corrupt. that needs to get pulled apart, and we need to take the people who were actually corrupt, of whom there were some, and disaggregate that. but it is an early signal of the kinds of policies that the military or likely to be advocating insofar as they advocate for a successor regime. it is going to be about economic policy, but a much more statist, mubarak era setle

of policies. much more about equity than growth. that serves the military purposes. they are big owners of state enterprises. why should they be interested in privatization? they are not. going beyond that a little bit, i think that the military wants to be behind the curtain. they want what they were before. that worked very well. and they don't really care, as long as there is an implicit deal that they can stay behind the curtain and state what they were before. they don't care who the government is, as long as those prerogatives are not challenge. the vast majority of people are perfectly content with that. even the people in tahrir square realize that the embrace of the military was pretty much all they had.

those are the ones climbing on the tanks and kissing everybody. they are willing to say, get back behind the curtain, let us to be everything else, there is plenty to debate, and sometime in the future of the question of military prerogatives may come off, but not for now. that would be a perfectly reasonable resolution for most people. obviously, there are a few intellectuals will push this, but by and large people will be content with that, because there are lots of other issues. free expression, issues of the labor rights, wages, there is lots to discuss and egypt before you start saying that the military has a big chunk of the economy. i think that's what they want, and if they get it, they are pretty liberal. >> gentlemen in the back of their -- gentleman in the back there. >> my question on what's

changed. >> oh. i skipped it, didn't i. a freudian slow if ever there was one -- freudian slip if ever there was one. [laughter] i thing it is the maturation of this generation. when we were thinking that these regimes were getting along in the tooth, and we were thinking it 10 years ago, so it's very long in the tooth now, we were speculating about the next generation. that was when gamal mubarak, all these people, so forth and so on, and we used to talk about how ben ali did not have a son who would serve the same purpose -- that seem to to be in at google -- the inevitable

transfer of power. it was only through this quasi- monarchical way, which nobody found satisfy, but did not seem to be a way to get to the next generation. across all of these three countries, and i would argue across the region as a whole, there is the lost generation of the parents. they are going to have to concede in a sense, and it gets to "is it my turn because i'm old enough to do it," or do i say "the kids can do it for us"? that generation between 82 and 32 is just stuck. they did not figure out how to do it themselves, and they are probably, in a surprising way, going to have to concede to their kids.

>> something like prince charles. >> yes, like prince charles. exactly. [laughter] >> i live in washington, d.c. i am an egyptian-american, and wanhat i'm giving up to my children and grandchildren, the future it -- i am so delighted by what they have done. i have a question about possible hijacking. we are not done. there is a lot of groups have been mentioned. is it possible that we will get drifted from true democracy to some hijacking? you feel optimistic about the future of egypt and i'm glad to hear that. the other question -- as an egyptian-american, what can we do to help? thank you. >> couple of questions.

first of all, why the latest referenda, the participation was so low? i believe it was mid-forties. could you please elaborate on that after this excitement? second, secretary of state clinton was there just last week. one of the group of the youth movement rejected meeting with her. was a reflection of a deeper sentiment among egyptian youth? is there a deep grudge against the u.s. but the last three decades or five decades, or was it just temporary? the last question -- you talk about latin american models and other models. whether turkey could be modeled -- muslim majority country,

democracy -- was a topic entertained in washington and turkey. would you please touch on that, if it was a realist approach? >> thank you. >> i am with the american- kurdish information network. in 2003, a document was discovered in the headquarters of saddam hussein's baghdad that 13 kurdish women were sent to egypt's brothels. the parents of these women appealed to the first lady of egypt, and unfortunately, their appeals fell to deaf ears. how transparent is the new egypt? do you think something could be discovered about these women? >> one last question. >> arab league.

thank you, lisa, for sharing with us. in your capacity as head of the american university in cairo and the kind of change that most of the people who carry the revolution, the young people -- do you see the anti-american sentiment, and what you see is the role of american university in the coming years regarding change in egypt? >> i will start with the last one. i will give you my inaugural address -- no. [laughter] auc -- first of all, i do not think, despite the fact that the youth group did not meet with secretary clinton and so forth and so on, i did not see a lot of anti-american sentiment in this. this is intra-egyptian, about

relationships between governments and citizens. over the course of time, as policy positions begin to congeal in a little bit, just as with economic policy, we will see foreign policy positions and so forth and so on. but it is not really about that. i don't think in any of these countries at this point that is what the principal question is. i do think that one of the -- i will brag a minute about auc, because i am paid to, but because i would anyway -- i think we as an institution have played a hugely important role in promoting education for citizenship, which is what animates these kinds of movements. so without saying that other kinds of education are also important, i think the idea that a liberal arts education which encourages a critical thinking, which encourages people to ask questions and think nimbly and so forth

creates better citizens, and that sentiment and in polls and spirit was evident in not only the protests but in the effective management and relationship between many of the leaders of the movement with the wise men, if you will, who negotiated with the government. i think there is enormous opportunity for us to continue playing that kind of role in eight new egypt. i think it is actually going to be easier to do that than it had been in the past. it will be amplified through free expression and so forth in a way that it was not before. from my vantage point, the kinds of values that auc represents a should be even more deeply appreciated and embedded in society. as you can tell, i am very

optimistic. won a small gesture we have made to this end in the short run -- auc is governed by a protocol signed in the early 1970's between the egyptian government and american government, and one of its provisions is that auc calledrposition university counselor who is the liaison to the egyptian government. we have had a counselor who watched the university to its search for a new president and has seen how an american university routinely operates. he is now on public service leave, an idea that is new to egypt, as the minister of higher education. we hope that the experience of seeing from the inside workings of a genuinely not-for-profit, a private institution and so forth will have some utility to him as he thinks about the fact that all the national universities are now in an uproar because of

the students what all the presidents and deans removed because they were all appointed by the president, mubarak. how you design a mechanism for selection of presidents and deans? it will probably not be a board at that runs a search for the president, but something different from having the president named to these people is likely to come out of that. in lights of ways -- in lots of boys like that, large and small, we will be -- lots of ways like that, large and small, we will be contributing to the capacity to do things. we can bring experts on parliamentary and presidential systems on the way we operate and run our own affairs -- might be useful examples to consider as we go forward. i think auc represents an opportunity, a resources, for

egypt now even more than it did in the past, those expectations -- and i hope we fulfill those expectations. the kurdish women's question -- obviously, i don't know about that case, i had not heard about it before, but the larger issue of transparency is an interesting one. the intent to be much more transparent government, even in this transition period, then had been the case before. but note that all the files of the interior ministry had been burned. there have been fires in the interior ministry and in the local state and security offices across the country, and the reason we know it is the interior ministry is that it is a plaque and a half away from our downtown campus. -- a block and a half away from our downtown campus. the upshot is that there has clearly been an effort on a number of parties -- parts to

destroy evidence. some of the tahrir protesters did put out some of those buyers ended try to get some of that evidence and so forth. but it is not clear altogether who has been letting the fires, because there are disaffected police who were fired and went back in and started the fires, and there are probably security people in the employ of the interior ministry who were destroying evidence. that is what many of the protesters think. in any event, this is part of one of those transitions questions, the extent to which you have a capacity for documenting a truth and reconciliation and so forth and so on. part of a point of a burning all that evidence is making it harder to do that. it may be that going forward, you have a much more transparent, bureaucratic, ordinary kind of administrative

apparatus, but it is not clear that that kind of administrative apparatus will be able to recoup the past. the question of the past, who should be brought to justice, is in fact a very complicated, murky one. as i say, that particular case may have been lost in the fires. others like that may have been lost identifiers -- lost in the fires. but we will never know. there was some recuperation of some of this material, and some had been shredded, and we were kind of facetiously talking about has happened in the aftermath of the iranian revolution, there were a lot of unemployed students who can piece together the shredded material. that may happen in some circumstances, but the stuff that is burned is burned, so i don't know what will happen.

turkey as a model is this something you hear a lot in the and it states -- in the united states. you don't hear a lot in egypt, because i don't think they want to have any single model. this is going to be an egyptian project, so they want to take a little bit from chile, turkey, somewhere else, and construct something that is egyptian. it may borrow disproportionately from one country or another, but people are starting to say, what happened in indonesia? what happened in other places? being a muslim majority would clearly matter, and that is why people are asking about indonesia. but at this point, there is no sense of it, "ok, this country shows as our future," and that is delivered on the part of the people -- deliver it on the part the people who try to sort out what policies and procedures that they want advocate. mrs.ssue of youth and

clinton, i do not put much import on that. it is clear that mrs. clinton's visit was not particularly will organize, so figuring out before hand would be able to visit her -- they left themselves open to being disrespected, if you will, that at this juncture -- but i don't think there's anything deeper to read into that at this juncture. turnout in the 40's may not mean a lot of for you, but in the fall elections, mid-forties was pretty high, and it was viewed as pretty high. people were very, very happy, all these people say, "i have not voted in 40 years," "i have not voted before," so forth and so on. it may not have been 100%, but

in many rural areas, get out the vote mechanisms did not operated, and most of the people wanted to vote were able to vote. they said that one of the things that was fun about voting is that they did not know how it was going to come out. [laughter] i think everybody believes that turnout was very high and it was a satisfying experience for those who enjoyed it. as far as what egyptian- americans can do now, i think there is a very important egyptian diaspora, particularly in the united states, but elsewhere as well. i think this is the time which is a valuable to people in egypt to see the reaction, to see people making investments -- the reconnection, to see people

making investments. it can be in essence of time. it does not have to be investment of money at this juncture . i'm sort of a value investor, and warren buffett is right -- boy, are their values in egypt right now. if i were an investor, i would be picking up these properties, because give me five or 10 years, i would be a millionaire. that is true literally economically about business, but also in general. this is such a good time to make investments, of time, expertise, commitment, will support -- moral support. whatever kind of resources you have, this is a great moment to say that this community of what is estimated to be 8 million egyptians overseas -- who knows -- to have that be part of this conversation and in these networks and so forth and so on, people in egypt love that. they love to know that people

are paying attention and are caring and so forth. whenever your particular resources are, they would be welcome in egypt at this juncture. >> on this very upbeat note, you will all agree that we have just heard a very engaging and insightful presentation, so please join me in thanking her for this lovely -- [applause]

>> coming up in about half an hour on c-span, a political demographer will discuss his predictions on the rise of liberal democracy in the arab world before the start of the recent conflicts in the region. he will talk about his reason and provide a historical insight

on democratization. that is live at noon at the woodrow wilson center. it out table discussion -- about table discussion with the mayors around the country discussing economic development in their cities. 3: 45 on c-span. we will hear from a former ambassador to morocco and look at the current military campaign in libya. host: midway between the u.s. capitol and the white house is the national archives located on constitution and pennsylvania avenue. america's most important documents are housed here. this morning we have a group of students from four states. they are all a.p. honor students.

we are pleased marc ginsberg d to welcome marc ginsberg. what is the situation in libya and what is the end game? guest: it depends on who you ask. if you ask president carter, it is a humanitarian mission to present -- prevent forces from harming innocent civilians. if u.s. the pentagon come it is to enforce a no-fly zone. if you ask susan rice and others, it is to join a coalition of countries that are willing to take this battle all the way to force muammar gaddafi to give up power and perhaps leave libya. you have an unfortunate in consistency to exactly what the goals and objectives are. and host: among the questions

asked is what is the mission and how long will we be there? even if it is a limited focus, is still has potential up costing americans blood and treasure. guest: it is clear that from the congressional perspective and the argumentation of whether or not the president should have consulted more widely with congress before authorizing the united states military forces to participate in the enforcement of the no-fly zone, the president has declared that the united states is going to take a backseat role in the coming days, but there has been enormous confusion among our other allies. arab league, britain and france, over who was going to be responsible for the commanding control of the operation, the military operation going forward. the french do not want nato. wants nato.s no

the united states is largely the 800 pound elephant in the room when it comes to the capacity we can bring to bear in libya, at least in the air. host: why go forth with a mission that does not have a clear understanding for who was responsible for what? guest: i think in some respects the president had hoped that while he acted belatedly, stopping the slaughter of what would have occurred at the united nations security council not voted to impose a no-fly zone on the country would have resulted in the human catastrophe. they have 1 million people. it would have resulted in thousands of people probably being killed. in some respects the president can declare mission accomplished and leave, because we did stop the slaughter. if the french want to take the fight all the way to the shores of tripoli, i say let them play.

president sarkozy, wants to lead the fight, let him lead the fight. host: you spent some time in the white house. what questions do you think he is asking today about this operation? guest: i think first and foremost is who was going to take the front and center responsibility for the commanding control of a coalition of forces that will enforce the no-fly zone number one? number two, are the french pushing us beyond our responsible role in libya beyond the coalition wishes and perhaps the other countries which is better participating in this? number three, how do we prevent

americans being harmed as a result of the confusion over who will be responsible? it is a complicated mission. it will take time. but we sort of backed our way into this military involvement, and now the president wants to step back, but he also has to take responsibility for answering the hard questions. is our responsible role to merely help coronate from 30,000 feet a no-fly zone? or is the mission of this engagement, a military engagement in libya under perhaps french direction going to take this fight that would lead in the end to having to place ground forces on the ground in libya to prevail against muammar gaddafi? host: we have high school students here. where did you go to high school? guest: i went to high school in egypt, libya, in west hartford

connecticut. >> i am from alexander, a virginia. through what history we have seen patterns of being inspired by other revolutions. i think it is pretty clear we're seeing this in the northeast. what do you envision the ultimate scope of these revolutions being? do you envision them growing to an even larger expansion? guest: it is a great question. i dare say those that i read who write about this cannot accurately predict this. obviously the constitutional referendum that occurred in egypt was a major step forward in giving them a major sense of participation. basically in libya this is civil war. theis largely tribal in natio

nation that is confusing to those in the country and confusing to those outside of the country. bahrain is filled with violence, as it is in yemen. there is a wave of desire among young people to have a federal life and overthrow the order that is preventing them from obtaining that. these young people like you wish to have the same things that you have, opportunity, opportunity to be educated and get a job. and hope the government would be responsive to them. that is why in some ways why this is so duty, and yet it will play its all in so many ways. host: in the 1970's marc ginsberg serve as an adviser to ted kennedy and an adviser to jimmy carter. he served as u.s. ambassador to morocco. sean joining us from san diego.

good morning to you. caller: good morning. i want to first say congratulations to all those students. they are our future of america, and bless each and everyone of you. i just want to say that president obama i believe is doing a little bit too late. i think there are a lot of people that would agree with me that he should have jumped on this little band wagon that the french have started just too late. we have the student uprising they're going, and it was very strong, and we should have been there for them right then and there. how many other countries are we

going to start -- it seems like the united states is taking the police state role in the world. how many other countries are we going to step into and start this where we are cord to take care of the people who we want their idealism working and not the previous regime? host: thank you for the call. why the delay? guest: i think in the end, in retrospect there are a lot of people responsible looking and asking why did we not ask sooner? now this rebel army does not have the capacity to fight its way all the way across the desert from bengahzi. we do not really know. we do not really know what it

would take. we know that from the perspective of these forces fighting, the opposition forces, that they will not prevail without additional military support. that is what the military says. why did the obama administration ultimately wait? i think because while the president publicly declared it was time for muammar gaddafi to go, his administration had no effective strategy to declare that objective. frankly, his administration needs to keep that i on the core strategic objectives in the united states. our involvement in libya should have been correctly -- should have been strictly humanitarian. our core interests are outside of libya, not inside. host: during your time in the region, did you ever have any interactions with muammar gaddafi?

guest: not directly. i was asked by the libyan government when i was no longer in the united states government to travel to tripoli and spend time with the foreign minister, as well as their minister of intelligence come before he give up nuclear weapons to explain how the united states foreign policy would act in the wake of that type of decision on the part of the libyan government. there had been a careful, collaborated effort to begin that process. like anything else in libya, it is a tribal society, and what muammar gaddafi has done is turn this into a dictatorship for no one was able to make decisions without his own personal approval. >> i go also to thomas jefferson high school. i wanted to talk about historically american responses to foreign civil wars. in response to the civil war

that occurred in spain. basically the american government was mutual, but groups of americans go over on their own, dying voluntarily to help out the conflict. as you say, we do not have any direct threat to the national security of libya, but perhaps we and your opinions -- the europeans have interests in oil reserves. maybe the oil companies could help out there. guest: it is an excellent question. throughout history americans have voluntarily picked up and go and fight on behalf of peoples around the world who were seeking to be free. some of them fought on behalf of the communists against the government when you have the russian revolution. the same held true in the french revolution. i do not think there are too

many americans that would want to pack up and invade the shores of tripoli in order to involve themselves in the civil war in libya. i think part of this is there is an unfit to be -- infinity factor at work. this has somewhat been undermined by what has become a military struggle between two sides inside libya. unlike the uprising in egypt that generated enormous interest around the world, and young people using non-filing means attracted the interest of the media and the american people, and we commend those young people for engaging in non- violence, but this has transformed itself from an uprising that occurred in tripoli into a full-fledged civil war between two sides, where in some respect the ideals

of the revolution has been lost and what has become a military more or less stalemate. host: it seems the primary mission is to educate americans about politics, which is why we are pleased to have a group of students from four states. we are at the national archives complex. our guest is marc ginsberg, as we discussed the military situation in libya and more broadly in the middle east. another question right up front. >> i am from thomas jefferson as well. i was wondering what your opinion was and how the middle east problems could be affected in the long run? guest: this is a very unsettling dangerous time for the united states in the middle east.

we have core, a strategic interest that are being undermined while these revolutions proceed. what are those interests? the cornerstone is the bending and in forcing the egyptian is really peace treaty, camp david accords, and building a peace between israel and its neighbors. all of this is being made more difficult as a result of the revolutions in the region. we're watching 11 on slowly being annexed by hezbollah -- lebanon slowly being annexed by his belovhezbollah. and the price of oil is affecting everyone in this room and their parents, because the instability in the middle east creates instability in the oil markets. as long as there is instability in the middle east and countries are wary about what is going to happen, then it will drive up

the price of oil. at every step of the way, while we are certainly interested in these revolutions, we need to keep sight of what the core strategic interests are in the middle east. i am afraid the president obama administration has taken eyes off of what the core interests are. it is a 24/7 job, and i am afraid they are only spending 12 hours on it. host: i want by show of hands, how many of you think we have a responsibility to be in those three countries? how many say yes, and how many say no? joining us from port washington, maryland. caller: mary joe. why is it whenever president obama does anything it is scrutinized in a really bad way? i also want to say president

obama choice to take human life over protocol. everyone else seems to be worried about what the constitution says. i applaud the president for taking life over paperwork in words. thank you. host: thank you for the call. we had a discussion about the constitution earlier. guest: i respect the fact that this is a difficult time for the president in the middle east. while i want to see him get it right without having to further undermine the understanding of what we should or should not do in the middle east, again, my reminder to this white house is that it needs to focus on the humanitarian mission and to encourage the french and others to step further up to the plate. the worst thing that can happen here is that we want to say that

muammar gaddafi needs to go, and at the same time, if he still stays in power, is cents an enormously challenging message to other revolutions in the middle east, and it makes the united states look even weaker. host: let's go back to the boehner.rom john vad he said it is my hope you will provide the american people in congress with a clear and robust assessment of the scope, objected, and purpose of our mission. guest: i think the speaker was initially supporting the president. if i were in congress, and back advising senator kennedy, i think i would be asking the very same questions. the administration has not held the corps obligation to the american people to define the mission in libya when it itself is confused over what the

mission really is. it is speaking out of so many different voices right now, and it is inconsistent with our ally's goals that there is a rightful part on the part of congress over what this mission is. the president owes it to the american people to say we're not going to engage on boots on the ground, supporting redeem change. our job is to merely support the no-fly zone, and to not continue attacks or support a tax that seem to be supporting the rebels and their efforts to drive all the way to tripoli, unless the united states decides otherwise, and then he has to go to congress in seeking a member of the security council resolution. that is why i said he owes it, and this administration owes it to the congress to explain exactly what this mission is. i hope when he explained it to the congress it will result

itself. >> good morning. i am from thomas jefferson high school. my question is when i think about these kinds of events, i draw parallels to even its in history, and i believe this is more parallel to the nato strikes in yugoslavia. how would you say that this campaign has stopped this humanitarian crisis? how far do you think it should go to prevent the crimes muammar gaddafi is committing against humans? guest: remember, we were establishing and having diplomatic relationships with muammar gaddafi. we knew he had an oppressive regime. yet american diplomats throughout the bush administration and obama administration for going to muammar gaddafi and dealing with

him as if all of these issues in which he was repressing that government engaging in massive corruption were largely irrelevant. let's keep that in perspective. there is an uprising against him. the uprising is largely undertaken by young people and lawyers and other educated people inside tripoli. it then spread across the desert. our responsibility at this point in time should be very limited, to provide humanitarian support, and to provide -- help to fill a security resolution in the strict four corners of the resolution to support a no-fly zone that keeps his air force from being able to attack civilians. we have accomplished that goal. so i commend the president. he can say that he has accomplished that to the american people. if the french and others want to

support the opposition and the battle on the ground, as i said, let them do it. let them take the lead. they have much greater strategic interests in what takes place and the be at the of the united states. host: stacey joining us from new york city. caller: i would like to thank you for c-span. you are not just educating the student in front of you, but educating lots of us as well. my question is this, and i respect marc ginsberg's opinions greatly. correct me if i am wrong, but what i think i'm hearing you say is that our strategic interest should take place. let's say for example in hindsight we have no strategic interest in ivory coast and did nothing. in hindsight we guessecond-guess whether we should have done something.

strategic interests over human rights violations should guide our foreign policy. guest: as a ted kennedy democrat, i worked on his refugee subcommittee for so many years, and i have enormous respect for -- the united states should be a great voice for humanitarian concern around the world, and when we see terrible things happening, we should do what we can to be of assistance. yes, in rwanda at the people in this administration, susan rice, feels i am sure a certain sense of responsibility because of not acting in rwanda. the same thing holds true in kosovo and bosnia where we almost acted too late. i think that the administration could have acted more quickly to help impose a no-fly zone in order to protect the people that

have been killed and many of the city's in libya. we have acted almost too late to prevent that from happening, and yet we have now active. better act late than not at all. we prevented the massacre at in bengahzi. if the people inside libya who are on opposition decide to fight this fight, and they are brave and courageous for doing so against very difficult august, this becomes a military struggle, rather than an effort to support f humanitarian cause in libya. that is the big difference between providing humanitarian support for the innocent civilians forces getting involved in the military battle that is being waged by semi- regular troops that went to fight muammar gaddafi's forces. i go to -->> my name is linda

and i go to school in minnesota. if we if you would be at an emergency level, what will we do when other countries are at an emergency level? guest: that question is being debated around every congressional office, and probably in the administration. why are we so preoccupied and libya when in bahrain the royal family is shooting demonstrators in the streets? why have we been largely silent when the yemeni president has sent sharpshooters to kill innocent civilians protesting his role. in syria they are now using brute force against demonstrators in southern syria. the list goes on and on. i think it really comes down to what extent do we have greatest

strategic interests in the leadership in those countries? it is clear that at least insofar as the obama administration is concerned and the reason why we have no core strategic interest is they consider more khaddafi to be expendable. yet we do not know who will take over when he goes. -- it is clear that at least insofar as the obama administration is concerned, the reason why we have no core strategic interest is they consider muammar gaddafi to be expendable. so we are picking and choosing our fights based on america's long-term interest, and is that inconsistent with what we see across the board? you bet ya. host: our next calller is from illinois. caller: i would like to know

what percentage do you think that -- taken in your perspective, how much left to muammar gaddafi's have? should we expect other uprisings in other countries such as we have in libya? guest: that is a question that only the military officials know for sure. it is clear that we have degraded muammar gaddafi's forces considerably, but he still has tanks and attacking a major civilian forces. opposition is still fighting with meager weapons. there is up 450 mile road that separates tripoli from bengahzi and there is fighting taking

place. as long as he has the money, he may be able to keep fighting. finally, the question is whether there will be other revolutions, watch syria. watch what is taking place in yemen. i daresay algeria has been in huge turmoil. host: the last question. please go ahead. >> do you think american intervention in libya is necessary, or should we allow the rebels to continue the revolution in removing muammar gaddafi and abstaining the confidence that they overthrew him without 04 and 8 guest:? the fact of the matter is that there is no doubt that the libyan opposition does not have the military means itself to accomplish that goal. they are desperate for outside support, outside intervention.

that includes everything from weapons to ammunition to coroneted ground assault, assistance from the u.s. and other air forces. i am against it. i think, again, if the french and other allies feel they have a strategic interest in taking this battle on behalf of opposition all the way to tripoli, then let them land of the foreign legion in tripoli and let them take on this fight. this is what the french government wants. they have a greater stake in the outcome than we do come and they do not think the united states has a core strategic interests getting involved any more than the military has done so, despite the clamoring of the opposition. this is something that is really of no great consequence to the united states, and that our allies want to take on the responsibility for this fight, we should let them do so. host: let's conclude with this question.

what do you think will happen in libya, and if or when he leaves, who is his successor? guest: unless he continues to get hammered by other air forces, other than ourselves, he will continue to hold on. there is some hope on the part of the secretary of defense gates that there would be divisions within his own family. he has eight children, all of them who have responsibility for military aspects of this campaign. he is of the finance individual by every stretch of the edmonton nation -- imagination. the worst thing i can see happening is there would be a bitter stalemate that exists while we enforce a no-fly zone in each party recruits, and that will inflict only further humanitarian concerns and catastrophe on the people of libya. who will take over is anyone's guess. this opposition is not led by

any one individual, other than the former justice minister who heads the provisional council, and yet in libya it is a tribal society. there are 140 tribes in libya. six more or less dominant. it will have nothing to do with the provisional council. it will either be a member of muammar gaddafi's own tribe or one of the other tribes or from the eastern part of the country will emerge, because the one thing he tried to do is break down the power of these tribal leaders by creating this very crazy >> our focus will stay on the middle east shortly when we heard from political demographer -- when we hear from political demographer richard

cincotta. he will be talking about his reasoning and provide some historical insight on democratization from the woodrow wilson international center. it should get underway shortly. until that gets underway, part of this morning's "washington journal." think the president is handling the libyan conflict. yesterday speaker john boehner sent this letter to the president.

speaker boehner list several questions he asks the question -- president. one of them include -- since the stated u.s. policy goal is removing gaddafi from power, do you have engagement strategy for the oppositionorces? that is just a ttle bit from speaker boehner's letter from yesterday to the president. joining us on the phone is liz

from "the washington post." she is in tripoli. if you cannot get us up-to-date on what has happened the last coup of hours in libya. guest: it is pretty quiet this morning. do not have much activity until the night time. last night, we did have a lot of explosions. i counted more than we have had on any previous night. and so, it does seem that the air strikes have been said -- intensified in the capital last night. host: what is it like being in tripoli right now? where are you staying? are you able to get out of the hotel? do the american forces know where the foreign correspondent's hotel is? guest: i sincerely hope american, french, and british forces know where our hotel is. i do believe that they do. they see tv networks broadcasting live from this location. we are in a hotel kind of on t edge of the city. not outside of the city.

but on the edge. ansometimes we are allowed out, sometimes we are not. on sundays, inexplicably they will post guards and tell us we cannot go out at all and other days they did not stop us. we are not absolutely free to mo around because of we go to a sensitive area or do something security forces. the suspicious -- if you just walk around and central areas and keep a low profile on up -- profile and talk to people, you can do that. host: what is the mood? are you getting a slice of the mood in tripoli? guest: what you have are these noisy and boisterous gaddafi supporters who gathered in the central square and chant gaddafi slogans and they pick up trucks and they go through the streets at night, during the day, chanting gaddafi slogans. a very noisy. you can't avoid them.

it gives the superficial impression that this is a city showing its loyalty for gaddafi. but you do go around the streets and have conversations with people you do find an awful lot of people saying they welcome the air strikes, that they hope that means the end of gaddafi. to a poll of where opinion lies and who is an majority -- it is impossible, of course. but certainly this is a deeply divided city. host: your story in "the washington post" -- fears of a humanitarian crisis in libyan city growth. tell us about this story. guest: all the intention has been focused really on benghazi where the armed rebels are fighting a frontline war. but there is another situation developing about 130 miles from here, much closer to the capital, the city of misrata,

where rebels have been in control of the city for the past months but gaddafi forces have encircle them. they managed to penetrate the town in the day since the no-fly zone was declared, which called into question how effective it really is to go up with the airplanes when you are dealing with forces that are using tanks and guns to go after people. people in the city are telling us that conditions are quite dire. with a hospital overflowing with injured people and medication running out. host: you said you heard of the bombings. how close are the air raids? where you are? guest: nothing has happened to particularly. we know there have been strikes on their faces but they are along the coast and we are quite far from the coast. the closest would have been the

gaddafi compound that was hit the other night, about a mile and a half away. we did hear some reasonably close strike last night but i must say from where we are we have only had very distant explosions and anti-aircraft fire. host: liz sly from "the washingtonost." we appreciate you joining us from libya. from yahoo news -- a.p. story. obama rules out land invasion in libya. now we want to hear from you this morning. how do you think the presidents of our has haned the libya conflict. we will put the numbers on the screen. brenda, democrat, from pearl land, texas. guest: -- caller: i think our president

has done a fantastic job. he has not committed as long term. you know, peter -- wouldn't it have been wonderful had we challenged or question the -- questionedhat everything previous administration bush did? we would not be in nearly the condition we would be and if we had done that. is that correct? host: this article from "politico." welcome home, mr. president. some questions about libya.

now, this article goes on to say that --

this is a bit of a policy analysis in the politico this morning. bob, westminster, maryland. republican line. you are on the air. caller: good morning. thanks for being here because at least we get it unfiltered through c-span. what i would say first is, while i very much did not aee that many -- with many of the things george bush did, at least he went to the congress and he did so as the founding fathers tended because we elect our congress people, and they have a vote on it. in this particular instance, we did not. that is point one. point two, we continue to say that we are not going to commit ground troops, yet, i don't believe that we did not have ground troops in position now because they have to be in the forward positions to direct the -- to their targets. the third thing is, it seems to be a thorough lack of focus, if

yo will, because we on the one hand here that we are not there to take out muammar gaddafi, yet the secretary of state is calling for him to leave, a this grand coalition, it seem as if we assual are spending all the money and doing all of the heavy lifting. so, it appears to be a u.s. operation and not one of coalition as it is being sold to us. host: kentucky. milton. caller: i don't know. the last time we got into a conflict for 10 years we forgot to pay for it. this time we are in the middle of another situation where there is no money for it. i think he has done a great job. the president is trying to help some people trying to go toward democracy, and that is a new thing for our government. usually we align ourselves with

dictators and try to get the benefits of their dictatorship. where is the money to pay for it? you just can't go and spend money in a situation we are in, where we forgot to pay for a war for 10 years, and now we are going to cut domestic programs and continue to give money to other countries and go around trying to police the world. i think the world needs a policeman, but i did not think it is fair r the american people to sacrifice domestic programs and things that actually work and have proven to work to police the world. we simply do not have the money. that is all there is to it. host: got this tweet from bill beatty -- this article, also from

politico. top senate democrats came to president barack obama's defense wednesday -- that is in the politico this morning. in 2007, then senator joe biden talked about foreign conflicts. this is joe biden from 2007. >> some may have been -- either police or upset when the news came out that t president of

the united states was lying to us about the intelligence information on iran. some of you may have seen me on stephanopoulos or "meet the press" or the shows i have been on on a weekly basis. i want to make it clear with you. i drafted with that out of t 17 years i was chairman of the judiciary committee, ranking member -- ladies and gentlemen, i drafted an outline of what i think the constitutional limits of the war clause. went to five leading constitutional scholars and they drafted a treaties for me. i want to make it clear -- and i made it clear to the president -- that if he takes the nation to war in iran without congressional approval, i will make it my business to impeach him. host: that was joe biden from

2007. this article from "the washington post." >> we will leave this now and take you live to the woodrow wilson center in washington for a discussion on the political demographics of the arab world and some of the recent political unrest. it is just getting underway. >> -- and firemen, health, issues and trying to understand them. in this context of demography,

it fits right in that tradition, a tradition of the wilson center as a non-advocacy forum reflecting woodrow wilson as the president with a ph.d., bringing together folks to debate these key issues that are very policy-relevant and benefiting to inside of the world of research. today, we will be hearing from richard cincotta. he is at the simpson center right now. we are pleased to have him working with us here at the wilson center. he has also served as a demographer in residence in terms of long-term trnends work. that ties into our second speaker, matt burrows.

matt is somebody who has been really looking at the large trends including demography and environmental issues, technology issues, and try to understand what they mean for the world future and a national security of the country. he has been the leader in offering the global trends report which is a very significant report for the incoming administration. he and his colleagues have exhibited a tremendous leadership in doing the hard work of thinking through how these complex set of issues are connected. we often are in our silos, but matt is really really doing the hard work and trying to understand how they connect. in this case, understanding demography, stability, security, and then as richard will walk us

through, understanding what that means for prospects for democracy. we are able to do this meeting under our health project, a new five-year program that we are engaged in here at the center. it is tremendous that there are helping to make this possible yet again for us to have this discussion. we are webcasting the event live with c-span and others. when it comes time for the question and answer, if you could just wait for what my colleagues to come to you with a microphone. i would like to turn the floor over to rich to make his presentation. i will come upon the stage and have the questions and answers. richard, the floor is yours. >> good afternoon.

my principal objective today is to get you to try to believe me that i was not lucky. i was in the very fortunate. -- indeed a very fortunate. the work could only been produced if i had three excellent influence organizations that were in my corner and three people who were in those organizations. the first is the national intelligence council. for three years, i was fortunate to serve as a member of the long-range analysis unit, a small group set up in 2006 to locate or produce conceptual models that would anticipate

global trends over the next two decades. it was an unconventional unit that produced unconventional products. if one goes to the national intelligence council's web site, you can find the 2025 trends published from 2009. a reference of north africa appears in there on page 64. i thank matt for educating me and allowing me to work there. the second organization i would like to thank is the wilson center program. three years ago, they published this work. you can find that people outside, i think.

it is in volume 13. that was published in 2008 and 2009 or on the cusp of those two years. a big thank you to jeff and the magazine that published a similar article. finally, i am fortunate to reside at the stimson center which continues to educate me in many ways. the ceo there, i thank you as well. to set the record straight about this presentation, it is not about me and a prediction that i made. it is about political demography and its potential, how we can understand some aspects of political history, current events, and even some aspects of the geopolitical future through demography and using the population estimates and projections.

they are available to everyone on the web, and they are an enormous resource that will be published in a few months. the presentation is also not about a pending or displacing political science. it is about questioning the conventional wisdom that comes from theories and methods of political science, offering an alternative in setting up a situation where one forces another look at predictions made it through political science. listening to the news, you know that very few, if anyone, really anticipated this kind of change. originally, the conventional wisdom that i sent this model up to confront was a recent

information about the tren democratization. the third wave of democratization began in southern europe in 1974. it ultimately spread to latin america and east asia. it had washed up on the beach. basically, it was over, the third wave was finished. i concluded in this paper that i did, that using a different methodology, i came to the opposite conclusion, that it was taking a demographic lunch break. there should of been a sign "out to lunch." of course, neither tunisia or egypt are close to liberal democracy as of yet. but the regime changes which had to happen in order to get their

are already in place. this is basically the foundation of my claim. particularly for tunisia. that is where i rest a lot of hope in for a future liberal democracy. what have analysts at been saying the following the demonstrations in tahrir square? it became obvious that it was spreading to other parts of north africa and then to the middle east. the analysis game began with the phrase "the pattern is broken." my message today is of the global pattern is still the same. nothing has changed. political scientists have been looking at the wrong pattern. to communicate this message to

you, i will be rehashing a paper that is 3 years old that made that prediction, that between 2010 and 2020, one or two states in north africa would attain liberal democracy. in other words, one or two would be assessed as, as i have said, no north african country is there yet. a survey shows that over the past four decades is taken between three years and eight years for a new liberal democracy to rise from freedom house's lowest goal. while this prediction has

attracted attention to the model, it is all about demography and the structure of the distribution of populations by age, i do not feel that the most exciting part of this is the prediction actually. i am more excited about the way this changes the way i think about the evolution, the timing, and the stability of liberal democracy. it does this by addressing four questions that have been nagging democracy specialists for quite some time. the first is why are some states on ready for liberal democracy? why are some states that try to restore liberties, elections, likely to experience violence or a coup de,?

second, why is it that some groups of states have so easily maintained liberal democracy? why are they so stable? third, why has there been a decade-long break and liberalization? the third wave is dead question. finally, what are reasonable expectations? do we want them all to be democracies? do we want them to do it now? at the end of the presentation, this approach may change your understanding of political the nation as well. i hope so. let's go through the long story, and i hope jeff will keep me within time because there could be some good questions.

i am anxiously waiting for that discussion. the method that i will take you through is based on population age structure, the distribution by age. you can see four distributions here. this is it tunisia over on the left-hand corner. that is tunisia, 1965. pyramidal in 1990. younger than the median age of 25. 2010, the present age structure down in the left-hand corner, you can see a bulge. as opposed to above where it might be called a political scientist youth bulge, where fertility has declined on the

bottom left. the cohorts in the younger years are smaller. you can read these graphs. they are basically the proportion of five-year groups in the age structure in a population. there are two bar graphs turned on their side. on a left is males, on the right, females. both economic and political demography believes that this is a shape of political and economic changes and conditions occurring through population. the middle east and north africa have been going through a

fertility declines. the fertility rate is the vertical axis. on the graph are tunisia, algeria, egypt, jordan, and syria. tunisia and went through a fertility declined the fastest and first. algeria waited a while but came down very rapidly. egypt's fertility declined steadily but lagged behind both tunisia and algeria. syria and jordan are up above and started the latest. what has this done? it has created a transition. the demographic transition of which fertility decline is one

component forced this decline, this change in the age structure. take a look at this point. each one is a country. the pictures are appended to some of the countries along the distribution. along the bottom of the graph is a proportion of people who are 60 years and older. along the vertical axis are people that are under 30 years of age. that arrow shows the direction of movement countries are travelling in that transition. upon the left-hand corner, the youngest countries. you can see them listed, some of them with very pure metal age distributions. as you move down, mexico undergoing dramatic changes. china, south korea, and then you end up with a cluster of countries which are japan,

pictured, but also italy and germany. eventually, we hope that countries like afghanistan and countries in sub-saharan africa will move down this transition toward the middle and later parts. right now, they are suspended up the the top. that has political significance. here is looking at them more closely, afghanistan on the left. lots of young people. a very rapid for work-force growth -- very rapid work force grows. no place to employ those people. tunisia has moved along the right in 2010. the united states, almost a cylindrical shape.

a few bulges. there are the baby boomers and then an echo of a generation that is actually in their early 20s right now. to the right is germany in 2025, not now but 15 years down the road. a mature age structure where there is a board in the retired people. an age structure that is going to undoubtedly challenge their welfare systems. here is the middle east. north africa is across the top. .emen, younger than egypt's then the united kingdom as a comparison, showing you, again, that typically at cylindrical

age structure that one finds in most of the industrial countries to date. so much for the background. what does this have to do with the rise of stability and democracy? i am going to argue that it has everything to do with it. they already have some of the pieces to this puzzle. these are the two pieces. the authoritarian bargain is something that each of us have experienced. thomas talked about it in the 17th century and described it as the relationship that was fundamental for creating a state. citizens were willing to give up some of their basic freedoms to

a sovereign state that would protect them. of course, with property, they are even more sensitive to this bargain. think of the bargain in the phrase, "i give you my rights, you give me my protection." do not forget the other side of the park and. we do not need your production anymore. you are too costly. give us back our civil liberties and political rights that we would like to enjoy. that is essentially what we saw when general -- when the general decided to protect his demonstrators rather than the president. the other piece of this puzzle is the youth bulge and it can be easily expressed by looking at these graphs. from left to right, -- actually

it is a graph of afghanistan. the other one is similar to tunisia. the third one, south korea. the youth bulge expresses how the propensity for civil violence -- in other words, the effort needed to recruit for political violence is lower on the left side where age structures are very young. as age structures mature, the hypothesis is that political violence becomes more difficult to pull off, to recruit for, so

violence is very difficult. why is that? first of all, it could be answered in perhaps two words. young men, lots of them, moving into their early working years. it is typical in those age structures that they are difficult to employ. they are easier, therefore, to recruit. that rate of growth those age structures like in afghanistan, iraq, palestinian authorities, and many others, that rate is often two or three times faster than the work growth is in the united states. in can't imagine the trouble those countries. or perhaps it is the vibrant politicized society is that young people create, called "the

st." by newscasters, but probably it is both of those. when you put these two together, a structural theory of democratization. on the bottom of the axis is the median age. from left to right, we have the age structures maturing. you can see the images on the top. the benefits of authoritarianism should be higher when age structures are very young and politically all the tile. this is when citizens should be willing to trade their political rights and liberties for security. for themselves, for their families, and for their property. on the other hand, net benefits should increase as age

structures mature, when political violence becomes less likely and more people are educated and when the social modod calms. the question for military defeats becomes why should we maintain this or about the intrusion into our businesses? why should we allow them to siphon off money from customs and taxes? what is he protecting us from? his time is over and it is time for him to go. i think you saw that was already in north africa. at least in the to asia. -- at least in tunisia. as the country becomes a younger, it becomes a more difficult question. some split apart like perhaps in libya.

what we should see is a decrease in political violence within the states as populations mature and an increase in the proportion of political democracies. that is exactly what we see it. taking you back to this big graf where we saw the countries of the world moving down through the transition, this section over here is a zone of vulnerability, in which about 80% of conflicts arise every decade. from the 1970's through the early 2000's, this is what we have seen. we have also seen liberal democracies are rise in this section of the age structure, but they do not stay there for that long. they are transient, the move out, others move in, they are in

stable. what do we see from liberal democracies? we see virtually what we should expect. useful liberal democracies are youthful liberal democracies are rare. about half of them in that section are liberal democracies. and then, in a mature populations, almost all of them are. there are exceptions. there is china. there is russia, singapore, cuba. they have been able to retain authoritarianism despite this onslaught of changing age structure. the relationship between age structure and liberal democracy

works best when we look at related groups of countries. when i graft the proportion of liberal democracies in the world until 2005 -- i looked at them every five years. they virtually have the same relationship, and there it is upon that graf. the youngest liberal democracies that are within the african group have bounced back and forth, but in europe, of the proportion has consistently remained well above 80%. have stayed reasonably in between. the asia-pacific countries. what i did it was i took a look at a benchmark.

where is it the countries have a 50 percent sign likelihood of being a liberal democracy? even though the areas are huge, it is better to look at the region's. i picked that point and found out where it was in terms of the age structure measure. at n i took a look at wher happens in individual cases. across the bottom are the years. those bars represent the proportion of young adults and the working age population, so that is an expression of usefulnesyouthfulness. the lines -- the thin lines with

the little boxes are the democracy or freedom scores. where there is a dark spot it is worth a have reached liberal democracy. i think you can see some agreement from coincidence between the decline in youthfulness and the height of the freedom house scores. the occurrences of those black spots. countries did not always make it. some countries like albania and turkey got very close but are not there quite yet. one country, thailand, got there and fell off.

by and large, countries that experienced this decline in youthfulness made it to the pro- democracy and stayed there. the later they did it, the better off they were. now, using this measure -- political demographers are at an advantage because they have the projections at their disposal. once you see where this point is, you can look forward and see when you can expect a country to come into liberal democracy. that does not mean that they will do it on the nose or that does not mean even that they will do it right around that spot. it is a statistical guess. there is error involved.

it is an indication, to take a look at where these countries are expected to come in. i am very fortunate -- to an 2011 which is impressive nonetheless. yemen, 2045. that does not mean one should not work for liberal democracy or try to improve those institutions in the society. it means that we should have lower expectations and gauge accordingly. morocco, 2015. algeria, 2014. turkey, 2009, and it is very close. iraq, 2035. iran, 2014. i will talk about that in a little while.

syria, 2025, still a long way off. now, the countries that move through this region and do not become liberal democracies are of two basic types. one of them is the china type, where the political elite or the party is synonymous with the state. that may be the case in iran as well. the other type is where the leader is a charismatic individual. fidel castro.

a founder of a country. perhaps something that chavez has tried to cultivate but has not been successful in doing. military caretaker governments, flavorless authoritarians, have not last very long once a the age structures have hit this point. why is it that? i do not think it is all demography. and a lot of things happen when tomography changes. it tracks changes in education, fertility and mortality. there are things that we cannot measure about populations and the countries.

things about women, how they interact in society, the value of children, how vacation changes the way people communicate and how they addressed each other. but the point is that this was an easy bet, and it still is. if north africa backs like any other region did, east asia before it, latin america, then there is a 97% chance i am right. the revolution in tunisia was unpredictable? i do not think so. the method is different for them. but it makes some very easy conclusions based upon grouping

countries together and the history of the rise of democracy. let's go back to quickly answer these questions that i posed at the beginning. states are too young. why are some groups of liberal democracy is so stable? because they are demographically mature and they have all the institutions, the education, all the things that go along with demographic maturity. why has there been a decade-long break in political liberalization? largely because there is a birth of countries going through this transition. when countries are not coming in, when there are a lot that are very young as they are in africa and south asia, the

arabian peninsula, then you are not going to see anything. you are just going to see a slight movements in the very young countries and the very old countries. it is only when they moved through this section is when we seem to have some changes occurring. if you go back to the early part of the third wave, 1974, portugal and spain were in this window of opportunity. portugal was a military coup. spain was an easy transition that franco decided to make. fourth, what are reasonable expectations for developing countries in terms of democratization? i think i have been over that. do not have expectations for very young countries.

look at where they are in the demographicthe transition and have expectations that are in accordance. you have to remember back that many people have big expectations for iraq and those expectations are not being met either for the international community or for the iraqi people. this is one clue of it. i am going to end by looking back at the tunisian age structure and making a few brief statements about it.

let's wonder here for a second. why were political scientists surprised by north africa's revolutions in the last several months? i argue if it is because they had missed north africa's more quiet revolution that preceded them, a revolution that also began in tunisia with policies put in place. the change in household composition from large families to small numbers of children is a revolutionary change, not only for women and children, but also for the societies and states in which they live. the first president of tunisia demonstrated he understood how revolutionary this change would be when, at independence at 1956, he introduced reforms to

guarantee a second package of rights for women and proceeded to uphold them threw out his rule. it seems that we in the west are just starting to understand the volume of his intentions. they are very deep. i think this is the legacy of him playing out. so thank you. [applause] >> thanks, jeff, for inviting me, and it is a privilege and an honor to be back here. this is a second home when we

want to come forth and talk about some of the ideas that we have. we usually call on it jeff because he is the first one to offer us a place to trot out some of our ideas. as richard mentioned and also not an unbiased supporter of richard's research and work in this area. i wanted -- i can explain a little bit more of the scholarly interests that i have in his ideas. what i thought i would do here is focus on the value that we see within a government context for this kind of research. i went to first talk a little bit about the context of the

government work. i am thinking here about strategic foresight, the work that we do on global trends which is really looking out 15 years or 20 years. i think it is fair to say that while there is a general understanding, and think it was in the policy and analytic community about rapid change, it is still very hard for analysts to really think about continuities and. -- and predict discontinuities. it is particularly the case, too, with regional analysts who all believe their country or region is very unique. with this tunisian