Cohen-Nunn Dialogues: America’s Role in the World

It is my pleasure and my privilege to welcome you this evening to the first in a series of programs that together will constitute the Cohen-Nunn Dialogues. This bipartisan series is the brainchild of former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen, a Republican, and former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat who served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Together they saw a need to step back from the heated arena of electoral politics. They wanted to move the conversation about the challenges facing America and its place in the world to a somewhat higher plain than is customary in the blogosphere or even in the theatre of formal debate. Tonight, as evidenced by the distinguished panel on this stage, we’ll set the tone for the series, as Secretary Cohen and Senator Nunn will invite these outstanding men and women to share their thoughts in three areas. How can we renew our commitment to community? How do we enable those whom we elect to lead us? How do remind the world at large that, once again, we are all in this together? I can think of no better venue for such a discussion than a vibrant university campus in the heart of the nation’s capital. Over its 187-year history, GW has hosted countless symposia on issues of global importance that reflect our commitment to public service and to teaching and research in the fields of international relations and public policy. It is truly an honor to hold this first Cohen-Nunn Dialogue focusing on the topic, America’s Role in the World, here on our campus. Programs like tonight’s dialogue depend on partnerships between distinguished institutions. It is my privilege to introduce representatives of the two organizations that are cosponsoring this initiative. Dr. John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Doug Wilson, member of the board of directors of the Howard Gilman Foundation and coordinator of the Cohen-Nunn Dialogue series. Welcome, once again, to what I know will be a lively and productive discussion. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is John Hamre. I am the president at CSIS. My role here is entirely ornamental, and I just wanted to say five little thank yous. First, President Knapp, thank you for this wonderful facility. I would say for a little think tank to be invited into the bosom of the mighty GW University is a little frightening. We are delighted to be here, though. Thank you very much. This is really great to have a chance to be with you. Second thank you, I’d like very much to say thank you to Doug Wilson. Doug is going to be joining me just shortly. He is the president of the Gilman Foundation – has made this possible. And of course this depends on foundations that have this deep sense of civic responsibility to bring this debate. So we are grateful for that. Also, for Senator Nunn and Secretary Cohen. They are both my bosses. They are on my board of trustees, so I have to – this is the greatest idea I ever heard of when they came up with this. (Laughter) But of course, I also think it is a very good thing for America. We need this. Thank you also to these wonderful panelists who are going to be with them tonight. And you will hear three – these are important terrain features on the intellectual landscape of America. We need to hear them, and I am delighted that they are here. Thank you for them. And then finally thanks to all of you. You know, the quality of a discussion like this really depends on the quality of the audience and how you engage with them. So please be very engaged. They will know this from your reaction. And we are thankful that all of you have come today. Thank you very much, and let me bring on Doug Wilson. Thank you to President Knapp and to my good friend, John Hamre, especially for promoting me. I am a member of the board of directors of the Howard Gilman Foundation. And on behalf of all of us at the Howard Gilman Foundation where we are dedicated to the promotion of new networks and new thinking on issues of current and continuing concern in the arts, in conservation, and in public policy, we are delighted to be partnering with CSIS on this nationwide series. I am pleased now, and if you will join me in welcoming our co-hosts and the panel for tonight first, the former Senior Senator from Maine and the former Secretary of Defense of the United States, William Cohen, (Applause) the President of the Pew Research Center, Andrew Kohut, (Applause) the Chief International Correspondent for Cable News Network, Christiane Amanpour, (Applause) the former Commander-in-Chief of the United States Central Command, General Anthony Zinni (Applause) and the former Senior Senator from Georgia and former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Sam Nunn. (Applause) At this point, I am going to offer just a couple of words for an opening statement as such. First, President Knapp, thank you very much for making this wonderful facility available to us. And as you pointed out, it is in the heart of the nation’s capital, and it is one of the reasons we wanted to be here this afternoon. Secondly, Dr. Hamre, thank you for your many years of service, not only on Capitol Hill, but at the Defense Department, and now at CSIS. And of course, I’ll even promote Dr. Wilson, who has been given a promotion here tonight, who has worked with me from many years ago on Capitol Hill and also at the Defense Department. As I sat here, I was thinking of three questions. Why us? Why here? And why now? And President Knapp has pretty much taken and answered those questions. We are concerned about the state of our country, and it started late last fall. I had a phone call from Senator Nunn. He was in a state of mild distress, and it is always mild with Senator Nunn. (Laughter) And he was watching what was taking place with the political process, how we were focused on trivia, how the questions were being raised about the price of the authenticity of a smile but we weren’t really dealing with the issues and we were seeing the parties pulling further and further apart. He and I have a long experience together. We began back in 1972, and we both entered the Congress in 1972, he in the Senate and me in the House. And then I went to the Senate to 1978 and joined forces with him on the Armed Services Committee. And we spent basically 18 years together on that committee. And he is a Democrat from the South, and I am a Republican from the North. And yet, we work together very closely. We are determined that when it came to national security issues, intelligence issues, the welfare of our country, that we were going to join forces wherever we could. And we worked together; we were able to pass the Goldwater-Nichols Bill. We were able to pass the creation of the Special Operations Command, over the objection of the Pentagon, as I recall at that time. But we worked in every which way we could, even though we disagreed from time to time, to say that we have to work together on behalf of this country. We both left public service on Capitol Hill back in 1996. And I think all of us – there were 13 of us who retired then – all of us had our reasons, but I think there was a core central feeling that the system wasn’t working. It was too much paralysis, too much partisanship. And we thought perhaps new voices, new people coming in, we might see some progress that are being made where people were willing to reach across the aisle and work together. Regrettably, that has not happened. In fact, since 1996, things in my judgment – I think Senator Nunn shares this view – things have only gotten worse with all of the problems that we have – and Andrew Kohut is going to outline some of the polling that shows where the American people are today and what the level of discontent that they feel but more than 70% of the American people feel we are on the wrong track. They look at the highest price of fuel that we have seen in history, the low value of our dollar, the fact that we have bridges and levies that are collapsing, that we don’t have an adequate healthcare system for all Americans, that we are losing our competitiveness internationally. With all of the host of the problems that we have, you would think that our parties would be determined to try and deal with them. Yet, we find just the opposite of the case. They seem to be more interested in scoring political points, taking partisan advantage. And so our goal, frankly, is quite modest. Senator Nunn and I hope through these dialogues that we can start a conversation with the country that hopefully will serve as a light along the pathway to bring the country back to the center. That is the only place you can govern in this country is from the center. You cannot govern from the extreme. So we are hoping that through a series of dialogues – and Senator Nunn will talk about those during the course of the evening – we hope that we can bring the American people back to the center because we believe that that is where they live. And that we hope that we can provide a basis for our future leaders, the next president, whoever that might be, the next congress, whatever its composition. That as President Knapp has indicated, we are all in this together. And that is what we are seeking to bring about. Senator Nunn? Thank you very much, Bill. And I, too, would like to thank President Knapp, George Washington University, for hosting us today. And also, particularly thank John Hamre and Andrew Sullivan and Craig Cohen from CSIS, and Doug Wilson from Gilman, for hosting and sponsoring this series. And thank all of you for being here. Echoing what Bill said, when I retired from the United States Senate, Bill Perry was Secretary of Defense, and he was kind enough to have a ceremony for me at the Pentagon. And in my remarks, brief remarks at the Pentagon, I made a statement that I think was absolutely true and indicates, I think, both where we have been and I think where we have got to return to, as Bill Cohen mentioned. And I said that I had never been successful in passing a major piece of legislation in my 24 years in the United States Senate without a Republican partner. And a number of those times on very important legislation, Bill Cohen was my partner. So Bill, it is great to partner with you on this series. You know, when you look back after World War II, our leaders at that time, basically, had learned a lot of lessons from history. And they understood that we had to have a world ruled by the rule of law. They understood that we had to help Germany and Japan recover and be a part of the world, even though they had been our most bitter foes during World War II. They were able to create the UN. They were able to create NATO. They were able to create the Marshall Plan, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and also the G-7, and a number of other institutions that were supported by both political parties from the time of 1946, 47 until the end of the Cold War. That was the institutional framework that our leaders set down after World War II. And it has stood the test of time. Today, dramatic changes. No more Soviet Union. The security and economic interest, at least as I view it, of the major powers including the United States, Russian, Japan, Europe, China, the great powers, plus other countries, in my view, have never been more aligned in terms of economic and security interests, at least in the last 100 years. But we are not recognizing that and most of the other leaders in the world are not recognizing that. We have the challenge of catastrophic terrorism, not simply nuclear, but also increasingly, we will be talking about biological challenges and the security implications of that. And of course we had 9/11, the terrible tragedy, the terrible atrocities that were committed against our own people here. And then we launched the war on terror, which continues today. Today, we are engaged in two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We also have big challenges in Iran, Pakistan, the Middle East Peace Process, which has eroded. We have energy security challenges. We have global climate challenges. We have today, as we read every day in the headlines, global credit liquidity and the solvency crisis. We have also – and we will hear about that from Andrew Kohut – to begin as General Zinni would say, to lay the ground or prepare the ground for our discussion. We have broad unhappiness around the globe in terms of U.S. leadership. So we are going to talk about those issues. Obviously, we can’t solve them all today. But we have got to, I think, at least begin to understand in this country that the issues that we face cannot be solved by one country alone. Even though we are the most powerful country in the world, without any doubt, we can’t solve these problems alone. We are in a race in many of these areas between cooperation and catastrophe. And I hope we can get a lot of good views from our outstanding panel today. So Andrew is going to lay the groundwork in terms of where we stand in the world today and then we will have a great discussion. Again, thank you all for being here and Bill, it is a pleasure partnering with you again. Andrew? Thank you. I am delighted to be here. (Laughs) Sorry for that. I am delighted to be here and tell you about what we have learned in the Pew Global Attitudes Project about anti- Americanism, rising anti-Americanism. We have interviewed 157,000 people in 54 countries since 2002. When we first did the survey, our headline in 2002 was that the image of the United States was slipping all around the world but there was a reserve of goodwill toward the U.S. The slipping made quite a series of headlines but when we came back nine months later in May of 2003 after the invasion of Iraq, the headline was quite different. It was that the image of the United States had plummeted all around the world, or at least in the 20 countries in which we conducted our survey. Over the course of our surveys each year, the U.S. image has got a little bit better in some countries, a little bit worse in other countries. But then the fact of the matter has been that anti-Americanism has been persistent and the words we began to use in 2004, ’05, and ’06, is “entrenched.†Anti- Americanism is an entrenched set of attitudes around the world. In 2007, we did the largest survey we ever took on. We interviewed 45 countries, and our headline was that anti-Americanism had deepened but not widened. And I would like to tell you a little bit about that. What we found was that the image of the United States in countries that had been critical of the U.S. had become even more critical among our allies and certainly the image of the U.S. is abysmal among the publics of Muslim countries. For example, in Turkey in 2000, 52% of the Turks had a favorable view of the U.S. In the survey that we conducted last year, it had fallen to 9%. In Germany, 78% favorable in 2000, 30% favorable in 2007. And Germany wasn’t even the lowest number in Western Europe, Spain was. The long list of countries – there is a long list of countries with some very, very unfavorable numbers. The good news in this survey is that we didn’t see a widespread of anti-Americanism into Africa. Largely, African countries, especially those that didn’t contain significant numbers of Muslims, continued to have a favorable view of the U.S. But by and large, anti-Americanism is a real problem in many, if not most of the countries, in which we conducted our survey. I would like to tell you a couple of things. First, I would like to tell you something about the nature of this anti-Americanism and then the causes of the anti-Americanism. First, with respect to the nature, as I said, it is worldwide, but it is particularly intense in the Muslim countries. Anti-Americanism certainly went global in terms of Muslim attitudes after the invasion of Iraq. We saw it not just in the Middle East or in Central Asia, but also in Africa and in Southern Asia, Indonesia, in particular. Our second characteristic of it is it is an intense opinion. And that is one of the reasons it really hasn’t changed. I remember a survey that the EU commissioned in 2003, late 2003, which found that as many Europeans saw the United States as a threat to peace as saw the Iranians and the North Koreans as a threat to peace. The bosses of the EU were so upset by this survey they took it off their website. I don’t know if they would do that now. It was more shocking then. A third characteristic of anti-Americanism and it is not only related to the country, it is also related to the people. Now, Americans aren’t hated around the world. But the image of the American people has slipped in two thirds of the countries for which we have trends, 22 or 33 countries over this period. And that is quite different from what we had seen about anti-Americanism in the 1980s. I would like to just briefly talk about some of the causes. The surveys that we have done have been in- depth surveys. We have learned a lot about the image of the United States. And you have to make a distinction between Muslim countries and the rest of the world. Certainly, in the Muslim countries, three factors stand out. The view that the United States is unfair in the way it deals with Israel and Palestine. It is the 800-pound gorilla of opinions about the United States. Secondly, the war on terrorism is seen as illegitimate. It is not real; it is America trying to control the Mid-East, trying to control oil, picking on unfriendly Muslim countries. And third, Iraq, as I indicated earlier has made all of that worse. Now, looking more broadly, not only in the Muslim world, but in the other 47 or 54 countries, in which we have conducted our surveys, the number one correlate of having an unfavorable view of the United States in every one of these surveys is a perception of unilateralism. The United States goes about its policies without respect to the views of our country, without respect to how international institutions view it. A second factor is that the United States is seen as doing too little to deal with global problems. This is a issue that the American public broadly rejects. Americans, by and large, think if anything, we do too much, not too little. But a third issue that is central to anti-Americanism is that the U.S. policies are seen as adding to the gap between rich people and poor people. We even get some agreement among the American public on that. A very important component of the discontent with America among our traditional allies has to do with opinions about the use of force. Majorities of Brits, French, Germans, and others in Western Europe think their country should first get U.N. approval to use force when faced with an international threat. Majorities of Americans do not hold that view, even in the era of discontent with Iraq. A final factor is globalization. All around the world, every one of these surveys have shown that people in most countries, even some of the countries who are very much disliked, if not hated, accept our pop culture. They like our music. They like our songs. They like our movies. They certainly respect our culture. But in every one of these countries, we also hear there is too much of America in our country. Anti-globalization and anti-Americanism is intertwined in the minds of people all around the world. It is an issue – it is an element of this that runs apart from some of the policy questions. Many people early on when we talked to them said that they thought that their views about the United States were really reflected on attitudes toward President Bush, not America. Fewer people say that these days. And really, it is not a matter of views about President Bush at this point or views about particular policies; it is views about policies that in concert are so negative that there is now a problem with American power. There is discomfort and suspicion of America’s unrivaled power. We have asked a number of questions about how – which would show strong majorities of people in many countries, even many traditional allies saying, they wish there were another country that was as powerful as the United States to rival the U.S. Shocking answer. The only good thing about the follow-up questions is all of the nominees, particularly China, are rejected by even huger majorities than the percentage of people who say they are uncomfortable with our power. Looking forward, there are little signs that the Western Europeans want the close relationship they once had with us on foreign affairs and national security. The percentages who say they want that old-time kind of relationship gets smaller and smaller. And there is increasingly disapproval all around the world with many of the fundamental elements of our foreign policy. Not only is there a worldwide call for America to get out of Iraq, the publics of Western Europe now are divided, at best, about keeping troops in Afghanistan. Every one of our surveys show less and less support for the U.S.-led global war on terrorism. And now the United States is being blamed for the problem that is emerging as one of the top international problems and that is environmental concerns. In 34 of the 47 countries, the United States was the country that was singled out as the most important cause of environmental degradation around the world. On that note, I think I am going to leave it. And thank you very much. Well, where do we begin? Christiane, let me turn to you. Of all the issues of what Andrew has just laid out, we have anti-Americanism that is deeper, more entrenched, and now more personal, directed against the American people per se, as opposed to an administration. And laying out all of the questions about that, how would you prioritize them? In other words, when you talk about unilateralism, Dennis Ross has just written a book called “Statecraft.†And he maintains that the current administration has not been so much unilateral, it has been multilateral. But it has been ineffective. So the question, I guess I would have in terms of looking at all of these issues. Have we been acting unilaterally? Does the world see it that way? And what can we do to change it and make a start in walking back this anti-Americanism? Fascinated to listen to Andrew’s data and being in the field and in the world as my job, I sort of absorb all this angst that Andrew has quantified and his Pew polls do so well. I think the broad fact is this, that it is a perception of unilateralism, and in fact, it is a reality. It is also a deep and very worrying loss of America’s unique moral authority. And why? Because of torture, things like Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, because of the perception that the war on terror is actually a war against Islam. Because of the war in Iraq, whereby many people thought it was not a bad idea to get rid of Saddam Hussein, they also believe that it is just about occupation and trying to get natural resources. And it is also, as Andrew correctly pointed out, and has forever been in the Muslim world, and will continue to be, the continuing festering sore of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also about this perception that there is this unipolar world. People are not comfortable with that. People are not comfortable thinking that just one superpower can exert its will at will around the world with nothing to balance it. It is a perception that there isn’t a sort of a check and balance out there. And the reality of the United States over the last several years, pulling back from multilateral treaties, being perceived as saying it is my way or the highway, this whole notion of the environment crisis and the problems there as well is very deep on many, many people’s minds. In my view and in what I find from talking to people all over the world, I think there is an element of good news out there because one of the reasons people are so upset with the United States is because they feel that the United States has betrayed its unique and eternal values, which they, even though they live outside, look to and continue and have looked to for decades now, and would like to continue to look to – the perception or rather the value of self-expression, the value of religious freedom, the value of moral authority. You mentioned culture. Of course they love the culture. But when you, for instance, go to a Palestinian territories or in Egypt or wherever you want to point to right now in the Middle East, and the president and the secretary of State say that they want democracy, the old game of nodding and winking to dictators because of economic and security needs is over. We want democracy. We want people to have their God-given right to freedom. People take that seriously. People love that. People are excited that the United States is on their side when they go to cast their ballot and try to be free. But they see that if the United States doesn’t like the results of that democratic vote, then it will abandon it and try to close it down. For instance, when the Muslim Brotherhood won so many seats in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, when – obviously, we can discuss Hamas. But Hamas won a democratic vote that every observer said was fair, and that, in fact, the United States insisted the Palestinians have their vote at that time. And so those kinds of perceptions are very worrying to people outside. But I think, as I say, I believe that a change in the United States will have an effect in the world. A change of president, no matter who it is, will have an effect. People are waiting for it. People all over the world are watching this election minutely. They possibly know the details even better than Americans themselves because they are so interested in this election. I think the elites will want to work with the United States again, governments and all those kinds of people. I think the next administration will be able to reach out to its allies and try to sort of have some kind of dialogue with its adversaries. But I believe that it will take the ordinary people – it will take a generation, at least, to get back the goodwill of ordinary people. For instance, in Germany, one of the most pro-American countries since World War II, is now having to go out and hire young American students to come over to some of its towns and villages to show the German people in those towns and villages that there is another American- there is another America than the one they see that is so scary and, you know, so provoking of anxiety in the administration. Do you think that the elites – just one follow-up question – that the elites who now hold a negative opinion toward the United States would welcome the U.S. to start scaling back, to start cutting back our commitment to Iraq, to the Arabian Gulf region? Would they welcome that and see that as a first step toward sharing power? Or everything that I have seen, the European countries are unwilling to bear a larger sense of responsibility. So how would we get caught in that cross road? Well, I feel that obviously America is still the most powerful nation but as you have identified and I’m sure General Zinni will talk more about it, the military is being stretched. Your economy is stretched. Your ability to project soft power is stretched. There are a lot of problems. The Europeans don’t have the wherewithal to do everything on their own. They have had generations of being under the U.S. umbrella. But more than that as a practical matter, I don’t actually think that the world governments and leaders, whether they be European or elsewhere, want a world where they are the only purveyors of authority. I think they want to get back to this multilateral world and get back to a good relationship with the United States. One that is based on real cooperation, real multilateralism and a real sense of being the same kind of partners that they were, let’s say, eight years ago. And I think for adversaries, I do believe because many of them say this to me, whether you go to Iran or even Russia now, which is not adversarial, but not fully in the ally situation either – what I hear from those countries is we are not saying we want to have a world without America. But why are they saying they want a world without us? Why are they saying that their way is the only way, that their democracy is the only way, that their idea of security is the only way? We want relations based on mutual security, mutual interest, mutual respect, and dignity. General Zinni, let me follow up on that and on Andrew’s presentation and ask you the barbershop question. And a lot of people will ask this question. What does it matter if people don’t like us? Don’t we really want respect and fear more than we do people liking us? Is likeability a big part of foreign policy? Tell us the downside of having this kind of negative opinion around the world. Where are we paying the price for that? Well, I think clearly from my travels, there is three areas that they feel that America is the indispensable nation and that we are disappointing and frustrating in their attempts to get us to live up to it. The first is the role of constructive leader. They recognize our power. They feel that we are capable of being the glue to pull together, as Christiane mentioned, international coalitions, international agencies, regional organizations that can deal with the problems that the world has faced. They feel we have tremendous resources that we could apply. They feel we are unbalanced in the way we apply our power. We are quick on the trigger with the military. We don’t seem to have developed adeptness to integrate and really promote the kind of diplomacy, economic strength, influence, informational strength, helping develop the kinds of institutions that create a more stable world. And they really feel we are absent in that leadership role. That we are left standing to provide and we don’t seem willing or able or capable to do it. The other thing that has been strange because I have only heard it lately, but several friends of mine, former Foreign Service officers and others, remarkably, have heard the same thing. We were comparing notes. They are beginning to question American competency. You hear things like, you know, we don’t really believe you can get it done anymore, that you can manage events. I was shocked to hear that consistently throughout several of my last trips. And this is remarkable because in my time at CENTCOM and my time before that, you always had to dispel the idea that we were omnipotent, that we could do everything. If you Americans really wanted to, you could solve that peace process. And now they are saying we are not so sure. We watch you in Iraq, we watch you in Afghanistan, we watch you trying to handle issues of the environment and so on, and you are not there. You seem to bumble. The third area – and this one, maybe, worries me the most – now we have traditional allies that are saying we question your commitment. What is resonating is the Osama bin Laden line and others that – remember Vietnam. They left when their nose was bloody. Remember Beirut. Remember Somalia. Remember Aden and the Gulf bombing or Khobar Towers and now Iraq. The American people want out. They aren’t committed. I just heard today one of our ambassadors describing our commitment to Iraq and telling the Congress, oh, no, we are not committed to the defense of Iraq. My God, we broke it, we own it, and now we are not committed to its defense or its protection or worse yet, its development or reconstruction. And I think that those are the themes that should worry us the most. And I really believe – and I want to echo what Christiane said – they can’t wait for the next election. And they are going to come rushing here saying, we want you back. And I think the next president is going to have an opportunity, especially in that first year, to set the stage for reengagement and our proper constructive place in the world if we don’t screw it up. You just wrote an excellent book called “The Battle for Peace.†What would be the first two or three things that would come to your mind if the next president of the United States asked you where they should begin? What would you advocate? Well, I would first begin at home and go back to a point that was made about that remarkable era at the end of World War II where we had a Republican Congress and a Democratic administration and we produced the 1947 National Security Act, the Marshall Plan, creation of NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, several development banks. And we reached out to the world, and we demonstrated all our power, not only the hard power in terms of the military and the strength and deterrence and security that may be exemplified through NATO and other treaties but we provided and helped the development and reconstruction of our enemies and stabilized parts of the world that had been traditionally unstable. We built the relationships and partnerships, and they lasted for half a century. I would say that we need a new 1947 National Security Act. The first thing I would say is we have a bloated bureaucracy that is inefficient, ineffective (cut audio) I would go broke if my company had the structure that we have in this government. We reward political loyalty through patronage. We end up in Katrina with you’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie. We have earmarks that provide us studies on the mating habits of the sea otters and bridges to nowhere. I think we need to restructure our government, make it more viable. We need to invest in the soft power elements so that we provide for smart power when we combine it with our hard power. We need to invest more in development. We need to invest more in our diplomatic corps. And we also need to build partnerships around the world. We need to reach out. If the United Nations needs reform and reconstruction, we should be leading the way, instead of not paying our dues, and trying to blame it for everything. There are regional organizations and entities that want to do the right thing like the African Union in Darfur. Where are we in leading in the First World nations in providing the resources and wherewithal for them to help themselves? And I think that this idea of fixing first our elements of power, as President Truman and the Congress did then, and doing it from back home in the reconstruction and restructuring of our own government. And then reaching out and building remarkable partnerships internationally and regionally that can share the burden and help them do the work themselves as they want to do. Well, I just took somewhat of an issue with what you said, why should we want to be liked? It is not about wanting to be liked. I don’t think anybody thinks that the United States should go out with its hand out and just beg to be liked. It is not about that. Yes, I know. But it is very, very important. It is very important that– : Yeah, yeah. And I think that is absolutely – you have hit the nail on the head because it is about how do you get respect? Not just about brute fear because look what brute fear, the projection of brute fear and force has done for the United States. I think you can be effective when you have the respect that comes with all the things that General Zinni said and all the things that people are talking about in terms of multilateralism. Let’s go back a few years and think about, for instance, one of the crucial things which I used to cover, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. At a time when America was viewed as an honest broker and was spending so much time convincing the Israelis that their security and their democracy was paramount as an ally to the United States, convincing the Palestinians that their aspiration for a state and for human rights and for their legitimate aims was also important. By convincing those people, by actually doing the legwork and doing the groundwork, there was a time after Oslo, it might not have been perfect, but there was a time when the United States presided over Israel and the Palestinians working together, much less violence, much less bitterness, an actual roadmap to some kind of, you know, keeping the thing without going over the cliff where it is now. And that was because of America’s projection, not of force, but of respect, of authority, of ability, and of total competence. Can I put one word in here? Certainly not likeability, we all agree about that. I think the key word is trust. What has happened as a consequence of this rising anti-Americanism, they don’t trust us. And then speaking to General Zinni’s point, they have to trust us more because they see more competence. They have to trust us more because they think we keep our word. And then in the end, I think the most important thing based upon what I have seen in all of these surveys that we have done is that they have to come to see the United States as being mindful of its power. And what so often people tell us is that America is so powerful, it just doesn’t care. And creating policies that give the appearance or the reality of being mindful of the negative consequences of power, I think is part of what you’re saying. In the administration, your judgment or the people’s judgment in the region is not serious about trying to be an honest broker at this point? I know that General Zinni has had a hand in trying to broker some – He can speak much better to it than I from direct experience but the perception is that it is a free-for-all. I mean, the perception is that the steady hand of state of the only party, the United States, which is respected and people know that it is competent, at least they did, was the United States. But General Zinni, you used to say that every time the Israelis and the Palestinians got close, there would be another effort by Hamas or Hezbollah to blow someone up and there goes the peace deal again. And so it was not a question that the Israelis and the Palestinians don’t – the majority don’t want peace. They do. But there is always, just as you get close to it, it disappears with the next bomb and the next retaliation. Is there any way to break that cycle? Is there any way to be quote “an honest broker†in the minds of the Palestinians or the Muslims? I think what we should have learned by now, we should have learned what doesn’t work. You know, envoys don’t work. A narrow linear process that can be easily broken or interdicted by an act of violence and starts you all the way back at the beginning doesn’t work. Us putting the solution on the table doesn’t work. We tried roadmaps, paths to peace, and God knows what. I would say – dealing with the political leadership and trying to put them in a position to make hard political choices when they have seen what has happened to the Sadats and Rabins of the world doesn’t work. I would take an entirely different tack. I would say to the next president, make a commitment, whether you have four years or eight years to stick with this process, no matter what. Make that declaration. Don’t try to wait til the end of your term and then hope for a legacy, you know, and a three-pointer from outside the circle because it is not going to work. I would also say, open multiple fronts. Get everybody in the tent. Work economic issues. Work political issues. Work security issues. Work the hardcore issues maybe one at a time instead of trying to eat this elephant all at once. The issue of status of Jerusalem, right of return, borders, deal with them separately. Create multi-levels of engagement so that maybe at a track two or lower level, ideas can be put forth without political risk. Test the people. Take your solutions and your surveys to the people. See what they want. A politician that has to make a hard choice has enemies in opposition that will attack him as too soft and compromising and can’t float an idea. Have a mechanism to float the ideas to the people. Most surveys – very rarely are they done between Palestinian and Israelis – say that the people would settle for most of the solutions that have been out there, the Oslo or Geneva or most of the solutions that everybody knows in the region. I think we need to bring more people to the table. The Arabs should be engaged in this process in addition to the quartet and others. We have to have a sense of international involvement and commitment. And I think incentives ought to be put on the table to make the hard decisions. When Abu Mazen took over for Arafat, we had an opportunity in my mind. We could empower him, if he could bring something home. The something cannot be money; it cannot be promises. It has to be real to the people. We should have committed to building clinics in the Palestinian territories or schools, and done it immediately in his name. He should have been able to go to the Israeli leadership and get the prisoner releases that eventually happened anyway through a negotiation that made it look like he had the ability to negotiate on a peer level. But I think we need innovation and new ideas. The same old trekking over there by envoys, the same old methods, the same old narrow path is just a repeat failure, as Annapolis is going to be in my mind. Summits don’t work either. Let me take you all to another area of the world, Darfur, where there’s been such human tragedy, such abuse of human rights, and it continues. And yet, we know that the United States, stretched thin like we are, we’re not going to be able to intervene with a very large ground force. Our allies don’t seem to be disposed that way. The forces that are willing to intervene under the auspices of the United Nations don’t have the logistics, don’t have the intelligence, don’t have the airlift and that sort of thing. What are we going to do about the atrocities being committed in the world where we really don’t have the forces or the legitimacy to intervene? Are we going to be able to or should we be building up forces from other countries in the world that can really have the capability of doing an effective job? Second question about our own civilian - lack of civilian ability to really help the military. When General Shalikashvili retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I said, “What’s the biggest problem in the military?†He said the biggest problem the U.S. military has is because nobody else in government can do anything except the military, so we have to do it all. So double question: What can we do about helping other parts of the world get ready to intervene where there are human atrocities, and what can we do about our own civilian capacity where we are head over heels involved in nation building whether we intended to or not? Well, to the first part of the question, you know, what I’ve seen in my time is organizations – let’s take Africa, the African Union, many of the sub-regional political entities there, the East African Community, EGAD, ECOWAS, ECOMAG. They’re all willing to take on the hard requirements. What they need – and you brought out several of these things – they need obviously the strategic lift, the logistics, the communications, the intelligence, which can be provided. More importantly, they need the training and the education. They’re not militaries that are used to having that sort of humanitarian touch in these missions. They worry about their interaction with the people because it’s not the way they’re trained or used. And I think we have to make a commitment to build capacity. And it’s not just military capacity – and this goes to the second question and General Shali’s point. The military can’t do it alone. We deploy our brigades and battalions and squadrons and we can create a secure environment. But that isn’t a solution. General Petraeus said there is no military solution to Iraq. He’s right. When we arrive on the scene, where is the entity that matches up with our battalions that does political reconstruction, economic reconstruction, social reconstruction? Where are the people that work development projects? You know where are the people that have the cultural understanding, the almost anthropological depth of understanding of the culture and how to do business in that culture? They’re absent. We’re alone on that battlefield. Secretary Cohen, when he was secretary of Defense, when he wrote the Quadrennial Defense Review, which gave us our charter, he put an interesting verb in there that we had never seen before. He told us unified commanders to shape our environment. And when we asked him what shape meant – because, you know, our military minds, you mean shape this militarily. He said, no, there’s no bounds to it. Shape it in the way you see fit. And we got caught by Dana Priest when she wrote her book, “The Mission,†that we were doing more than our military mission. But we were acting in terms of the environment, in terms of diplomacy, in terms of the economic development and relationships. I would just say one other thing. I’ve just co-chaired a council of 52 retired admirals and generals, 44 of which are four stars. And we have come up and joined this council and we have testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And the purpose of this is to say we need to invest more in our soft power. Our partners, diplomats, those that provide aid and development, economic support, societal and cultural relations, are not with us on the battlefield. And here’s 52 admirals and generals saying this is where you need to put your money and you need to invest in so we have equal partners in these areas, or we can’t succeed in what we do. General Zinni, you picked up an interesting point about shaping, because indeed – and Senator Nunn may recall this – when I was in the Senate and working with you on the Special Operations Command, it was our thought that we would create Special Forces to be forward-deployed into regions all over the world. But they would study language and culture and history and understand that they were going to be deployed to countries to be able to make an assessment of what we were doing right and wrong and help actually shape the environment. So when I got over to the Pentagon and was working with General Zinni and others, it was the same concept. We need to be forward-deployed in a way to help shape the environment in all of its context in ways that are advantageous to the United States. And that means the application of what CIS has called Smart Power. And that means taking advantage of all of the levers at are disposal from economic, diplomatic, humanitarian and military in some cases. But that’s shaping the environment. And we have gotten away from shaping the environment. But the question I had to come back to, Andrew’s talk about trust. Can you have an effective foreign policy if you got a weak economy? In other words, let’s go back to the barbershop question that Senator Nunn raised. People out in the barbershop are saying, wait a minute. That’s all well and good in Darfur and I’m sorry about that, but the dollar is the lowest it’s been. Barrel of oil is what, $110? Our gas is going to be four, maybe five by the end of next year or this year? How do we persuade the American people that it matters out there, what Senator Nunn is talking about? Why should we care about what’s going on out there when we haven’t dealt with the dollar, the environment, health care, all of the issues that afflict us, the maladies that afflict us? How do we do that and build trust here before we start talking about building trust abroad? Well, clearly, you have to take care – every country has to take care of itself first. But, you know, this broken system was happening before oil was at $110 a barrel and while the economy was doing quite well. I think the real question is, as everybody’s said, when you say shaping the environment, you mean building hospitals, making the electricity work. You mean giving the education, the security, the real stuff that when America goes forth, stays behind as the legacy and lets the people out there know – the mother, the student, the father, the son – all those people who are looking to see. America has come to my country; what is it going to do for me? That is what they have to see. Those promises have to be kept. And there were promises made in Afghanistan and Iraq, the two latest ones. And I think that is the most vital thing that you can do, as well as your – other hard power. That soft power has to be, as you say, a real partner and go hand in hand because I’ve seen, you know – I’ve seen people who wanted to believe and then who were disappointed and felt that, you know, same old story. They’re coming into my country and not doing anything for us. And I think that again, one of the hopeful things that I see around the world is how much people actually do want to engage with the United States. They do – individual people, they want to come here. They want to come to university. They want to come and be part of the great scientific and technological prowess that the United States has, to be part of the economic and business opportunities that the United States pioneers here and around the world. When polls are taken about what people admire about this country, it is freedom, democracy, religion, you know, all the technology, economy. But then, they say we want to also be part of that. We want to be able to have that in our countries as well and we want to learn about that. So paradoxically, after 9/11, a lot of the borders were closed here, so a lot of the people-to-people contacts that really build this trust between the United States and the outside world were closed down. Fewer students are coming – fewer foreign students. Fewer people are coming to engage here. And I think that’s a big problem for the United States. They’re going elsewhere so that trust is not being built. I think on that also that we’ve got a real leadership challenge and educational challenge. I think it’s important for the American people to understand that failed states like Afghanistan are a threat to American security. I think it’s important - and Andy, your surveys show this pretty clearly – for us to understand this country that infectious disease that may start in Africa or Asia can be in America the next day. And so, the fight against infectious disease is a security problem for America here at home. I think we have to understand the same thing about the climate and the burning of coal without clean coal technology and without carbon sequestration and what that’s going to do to our environment and to our health. And the lack of water in the world and the world poverty – all of those things really directly connect to America’s security and well-being at home. And I think General Zinni, you made a heck of a point in your book where you basically said our security depends on the well-being of the world. And that wasn’t the case 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago, at least we didn’t perceive it to be. But then the world has fundamentally changed in that respect. But I think we’ve got a real challenge in terms of education. Could I just add one thing? I think that the vast majority of the American people still have an early-20th century mindset in that they believe we can become self sufficient, that we can build fences around our borders, and that nothing else in the world has to or can affect us. Just to follow Senator Nunn’s point, everything is affecting us now. If somebody is burning down the rainforest or practicing manufacturing practices that are damaging the environment, it’s going to wash on our borders. If there is a poor farmer that is growing cocoa leaves and poppies, it’s going to come back here. If there are major societies that can’t make it where they are, they’re going to pick up and migrate and move. If there is a failed state that can’t provide for its own security, it will become a sanctuary to warlords, to drug cartels, to terrorist organizations. You know, if the Chinese stock market wobbles, we’re going to see it reflected the next morning right here on our own stock market. Unlike what happened with George Marshall who had to give 84 speeches, I believe, to convince the American people that the Marshall plan was the right thing to do, when only about 19% supported it initially if my facts are right. And he was able, and the bully pulpit was able to be used to convince and inform the American people – to use Tom Friedman’s term, the world is now flat. Actually it has shrunk. It is miniature and it is interconnected and interdependent. There is nothing you can do here that doesn’t reverberate around the world and vice-versa. You could not pass the Marshall plan in today’s political environment. You would not be able to get people to say we’re going to tax ourselves to rebuild the economies of Japan and Germany in today’s political atmosphere. That is the problem that we face. We had that ability back at the end of World War II. We had the kind of people who would come together. We have not seen that kind of bipartisanship in recent years. And that’s what Senator Nunn and I are trying to get back to say, yes, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China any more than it stays in Vegas and we’ve got to understand, there are no borderless problems anymore, as Kofi Annan has said. Everything now is a - a microbe is but a plane ride away. And so, we have this problem – infectious diseases that can be here tomorrow, even though it might start in a faraway place. The question really is, do we have the political will in this country? And I was going to raise the question, because General Zinni, you said, they can’t wait for a new administration to come in. Andrew, if you were to take a poll, would you say that all of those people are looking to us can take heart in what they’re seeing and reading in terms of the positions taken by our candidates? Well, I don’t know about whether they can take heart. They are certainly very energized because they’re discontented. And political participation is predicated on discontent. You’re going to have some heavy participation unless I missed my guess. But I think the central issue to the point that we’re talking about here is 1947 and 1948 were exceptional times. Americans have a history of being very soft internationalists. They’re on again, off again multilateralists. And political leaders who have achieved multilateralism, very often, more often than not, have taken the American public kicking and screaming with them. And it’s political leadership that moves the needle on multilateralism. Americans don’t come to it naturally. I disagree with you. It’s not early 20th century; it’s late 19th century. I think it is such – because it goes to the heart of what I do as a journalist and what my profession is about too, and also what your profession is about, politics as well. I feel strongly that the American people are not fully prepared. The groundwork is not prepared here. We don’t give people enough information and enough knowledge, either from the political level or even from the media level, about the world and about your place in it. And you know, Americans are a moral people, and they certainly like to think of themselves as a moral and compassionate and good people. And I think that that is good raw material to try to do what you said, prepare the groundwork for some of these tough decisions that leadership needs to do. I mean, look, President Bush talked about a Marshall Plan or something similar when they talked about rebuilding Iraq. So the leader of the country spoke about that very important thing but no groundwork, no preparation and no follow-through. Could I follow up by asking the two senators a question? Where are the Marshalls and the Kennans and the Vandenburgs and the Trumans today? What I believe is missing is leadership, but more specifically, strategic leadership. They were able to explain to the American people the why behind the investment and the sacrifice they were asking them to make. And we understood it. And we had a strategy of deterrence and containment that I think every American at the barbershop could articulate. We have no strategy now. We have no strategic leadership. We live in a sound bite society. The debates are determined by who has the snappiest bumper sticker line for the next morning. And so, what do we need to do to change our political leadership and get back to that kind of strategic level leadership, that sense of confidence in those that sit in the White House and Congress? I say we have a Zinni that is on the scene today. And we have a Senator Nunn who is on the scene today. There are people who are out there. The difficulty is that we have watched our political process appeal to the core constituencies when the vast majority of the American people are waiting for leadership to come forward and to present the kind of issues and the solutions to these issues which need to be addressed. And frankly, that’s why we’re here. Well, we’re nearing - I have a red sign that says we are nearing our close, as Lady Godiva once said. We are going to bring this to a close because we are now going to open up this living room chat to the audience. We have several individuals who have indicated they would like to pose questions to the panel and raise your hand, please, who has a question.