i'll just take a couple remarks before passing to the scowcroft center chair. doctor fayyad adds a much-ed meed voice to the conversation on the future of the israeli-palestinian relations and what this means for the broader middle east. over the past three weeks, renewed conflict between israel and hamas and other palestinian groups has resulted in over 1,000 casualties. more than 5,000 -- excuse me, more than 4,500 wounded and displacement of tens of thousands. efforts by secretary of state john kerry to forge a cease-fire have been insufficient thus far. as the u.s. and international leaders seem unable to bring the conflict to a halt. now more than ever, we need fresh thinking, fresh approaches and strong leadership to a solution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts. i think you'll hear a lot of that sort of thinking today. dr. fayyad has a written statement a little bit like congressional testimony which will be outside at 5:00. he'll be speaking from that statement, but in an abridged form in his opening comments before i moderate q&a with the

brent scowcroft and larry eagleburger. they were very influential in the debates that took place with larry and the deputies committee, and with brent, obviously, the national security committee, and i don't want to say they were invested in the geography in how that geography had been defined, but my perception was they didn't realize how darn tribal yugoslavia was, and yet, most of the challenges in yugoslavia at the time resulted in the tribes deciding to organize rather than the nation trying to organize. yugoslavia was held together because of a dictator. it was a country created after the world war, and it was held together by tito and how he did his job. and i -- most diplomats like the world order not to change. so they like the boundaries, the national boundaries to be as they have been, so we can deal with whatever institutions are chosen to lead within those boundaries. when yugoslavia started to implode, because the strong leader was no longer leading, they said, no, we have to maintain those boundaries, mainta

i'm sure the scowcroft center will become a leading voice an this critical issue. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming dr. salam fayyad to the podium. >> thank you so much. thank you. thank you very much, george jones. thank you for the very kind introduction. thank you. and i thank you ladies and gentlemen for the interest you have taken attending this event which i had hoped or wished would happen against different backdrop. relative to what we all are looking at. completely tragic situation in terms of the horror that has been going on for long 25 days, past 25 days. the destruction we're talking about since the event was prepared for, more than 1400 people, including many, many children. more than 8,000 wounded. many today are in life-threatening situation. made even more life threatening given the very poor conditions in the gaza strip and health care facilities. in addition to damage to infrastructure, housing, 300,000 people displaced. this is the extent of the damage and tragedy that's been unfolding for the past 25 days and counting. with unfo

brent scowcroft, he was almost a narcoleptic.eting with him and he would just go -- >> and what people didn't understand was this was serious business for the president. and there were criteria on which people were judged to be candidates for the scowcroft award. so first the president would evaluate people on duration. how long did they sleep? the second was the depth of their sleep. and snoring and whistling always got you extra points. and then the third criteria, and perhaps the most important, was the quality of recovery. did you just kind of come back up out of your snooze and open an eye and completely back in the meeting or were you one of these folks that awoke with a jerk and spilled the coffee? >> well, we loved the scowcroft award because it was classic george bush humor. and it was done in the same way as the ranking system that he made up for who got to play tennis with him. >> golly. perfect lob. >> he'll sometimes talk about imaginary things. he'll talk about a ranking committee. this is a big bush family traditio

baker sends these wonderful private communications to the white house for bush and scowcroft and their only essentially. which -- in which baker says you would not blefz howf believe how honest this guy is being with us. they are afraid, they don't know where things are going, they're afraid if reform isn't fast enough, and they're afraid of conservatives if it doesn't m-- moves too fast. >> i think it's interesting that you might say the fundamental driving force is what many people have suggested, which is soviet decline, the decline that in some sense kicked in in the late '60s, which got them going into the first d'etente, but realization that in the early '80s this was worse than the '60s, zero growth, et cetera, this is pushing this gorbachev st. take steps that become more and more radical, including do mistic reforms that is lead to what you're talking about that wasn't present in 19 5 and want even foreseen, of course. so what i hear -- i think it's a multicausal story that i'm hearing, but one of the causal factors that i see so forceful in both of your responses is without t

the department of government at georgetown university and a nonresident senior fellow of the brin scowcroft center on international security at the atlantic council. please join me in welcoming matthew kroenig. [applause] >> thank you very much for that introduction is stephanie. it's a pleasure to be back here at the world affairs council of washington d.c. and to be here tonight talking about my new book "a time to attack" the looming iranian nuclear threat. before i talk about what the book is about i'd like to talk a little bit about what the book is not. the book does not argue that we should take immediate military action. the book does not argue argue military option is her best option. it doesn't argue that it should be our first option. i think some people see the title of the book and jump to the wrong conclusion. rather i argue it should solve the nuclear challenge the diplomacy of possible. there are no serious experts who disagree with this position. everyone agrees we should try to solve the problem through diplomacy and no one saying we should take immediate military action.

we were founded by two great americans. , who isbrent scowcroft not here right now but will be here in a couple of hours and professor joe nye. i would ask you to salute joe. maybe you can stand. [applause] we are going to be discussing russia over the next 3.5 days. there is nothing to talk about, u.s.-russian relationships these days, but everything to talk about. as we await bob's arrival, we might talk about the issue that united condoleezza rice and madeleine albright. it was a shared interest in russia. it was one individual who brought them both to that shared interest. maybe the way to do this, condoleezza rice, for you to start and madeleine will finish. >> absolutely. thank you all for joining us here and thank you, nick for this conversation. i want to echo thanks to bob and walter who pull off a really extraordinary conversation. in a wonderful and civil life. -- civil way. well, i was, not to put too fine a point on it, a failed piano major in college. i was supposed to be a great pianist. i started playing at the age of three. i came here as a 17-year-old rising junior at