 This is our final session and here to four we have had some very powerful and very personal presentations about the scale and the depth of the humanitarian crisis and the failure of the world actually to respond in kind. Now having asserted the problem I'm hoping that in this session we can move on to possible solutions to the problem. And to do that we have four wonderful and extremely qualified commentators. We're going to start with Ann Marie because as we've all been told her family is waiting for her in Princeton so we don't want her to miss her 330 train but I also would like to welcome Ambassador Wittig of the Federal Republic of Germany and who has a very important role to play in the refugee crisis, Germany being the most responsible civic citizen in the world right now. I don't think that's an exaggeration. And Gregory Maniatis who is an expert on the European end of the refugee crisis but also works for the Secretary General as well as for open society so we're very fortunate to have you Gregory and Leon Wieseltier who needs no introduction whatsoever who will take the discussion to an even higher intellectual level than what we have reached so far which is pretty high so the challenge is yours. So Ann Marie let's start with you. What now? No one is disputing the scale of the problem both humanitarian and national security. So Katzis asked us to focus on solutions and my designated job often is to try to provide ideas that are not on the current table and in my opening remarks the last one I said is we need to start thinking about refugees as an opportunity. And actually my 19-year-old son texted me early this morning and he said mom you know why aren't refugees the answer to Greece's problems? And only a 19-year-old who is not sufficiently steeped in the cynicism of politics although my husband has done his level best to counteract that or to ensure that he is sufficiently steeped in the cynical politics. But his point was here you have Greece, you have a country that has all sorts of economic problems many of those demographic in the sense of not having the kind of economy that is needed. Indeed that's true throughout Europe. If we had a panel on demography we would be looking at a rapidly aging population and not nearly enough young people to support the older generation. And from that perspective admitting hundreds of thousands, millions of refugees is exactly what Europe needs. So he's looking at that without the politics or anything else but honestly that is right. But that's not taking account of is of course religious differences, language differences, cultural differences, general suspicion. Still that is the way the United States has built itself, regular waves of migrants but including refugees. So I guess what I would say is are we focusing enough and we heard a little bit about this in the last panel on actually creating incentives to admit people rather than protecting, rather than providing help to the refugees themselves. So imagine if you're told you're in Greece, you're in Italy, you're in Germany, you're in France. If you take in refugees you get money from the UN to build a new school. You get money from the UN to build a new clinic. You get money from the UN to improve your infrastructure in countless ways. Now in fact the spending on refugees at least in Germany, perhaps we'll hear from the Ambassador is going to jump start the economy. In fact I was just at a dinner where a noted French economist was essentially saying that the spending on refugees and security is part of what Europe's going to need to get its economies going. But my point is rather instead of thinking of this as desperate people whom we must help, if there are ways both in terms of the public narrative but also how we deliver assistance so that it is in fact people who take these others in get direct benefits and the economy as a whole actually gets a new generation of young people that is a very different frame than these are desperate people who have terrorists among them. Yet the loudest voices heard here before have been the fearmongers voices, the ones who identify refugees with ISIS. And Ambassador Wittig, I don't hear enough from the other side. It started with the Prime Minister of my former country, Hungary, Viktor Orban, but the virus has now spread throughout the continent and to our shores as well. How much longer the virus of anti-refugees because they're bringing with them the threat of ISIS? How much longer can your country sustain this really exemplary role that you're playing here before in opening your gates to refugees? Well this refugee movement is one of the most serious challenges for Europe and also for my country since the Second World War, since the inception of the European Union. It's an epic movement of people of almost Biblical proportions and it's the first digital movement of people in the history. So we have a new phenomenon here. My own country as you know took in a million this year until a couple of days ago we got, we received 10,000 a day just to show you the proportion sort of in comparison with the discussion here where the American discussion revolved around taking 10,000 within a time span of a year and a half. So we got that 10,000 on a daily basis. Now it's subsided a little bit through to the Unclement weather. But the challenge is huge. My country decided to, and the chancellor at the helm, to try to live up to our humanitarian standard to keep up our liberal asylum law that we designed as also as a lesson of the Nazi regime and we have a no refusal policy for asylum seekers so far. But of course there are huge challenges, there are back lashes, there are political problems, there are practical problems of coping with that number. The infrastructure is in parts sort of overwhelmed and there are political, and this is what you refer to, there are political fault lines that are emerging. In the countries there is a resurgence of xenophobic elements, there are people who are probably the losers of globalization, who are driven by fear, who don't see the opportunities but rather risks. And there are fault lines within Europe. You refer to the Greek crisis, we went through a difficult period where the fault line between rich and poor and in North and South and we have the danger at least of a new fault line now between East and West in Europe where Western, Eastern countries at the Eastern rim of the European Union are much more hesitant to have a liberal asylum policy. So that is a huge challenge and it strengthens the centrifugal forces within Europe and that's dangerous. It needs strong leadership, it needs a commonality of values, also a coalition of leaders to fight that movement to the right and that movement to populism that we see in almost all the countries. Gregory, what does the EU even stand for in light of this current challenge which it does not seem to be living up to its original values and core message for? What is the EU? You strike right at the heart of what is wrong now, if we're going to come up with solutions we have to have the right analysis of what's happening in Europe. This is a humanitarian crisis and we've been talking about it as such but we have to pull back and understand that it's a political crisis and an existential political crisis for the EU and let me explain why that is. Europe over the past decade has experienced three major crises, the financial crisis which morphed into the Greek debt crisis, the Russian invasion of Georgia followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and now this. The cumulative effect of those three crises has brought the European Union to its knees. It has strained relations among the states to the breaking point. The hero of the story in this migration crisis is Chancellor Merkel. She is now distrusted by her fellow leaders for having done something that we recognize as being quite heroic but that they recognize as having been politically reckless and done without collaboration. I think it was the right thing to do and I'll explain why I think it was the right thing to do but we have interstate relations that are strained as a result of those three crises. We have the politics on the ground being quite toxic at this point. Europe advanced because it was able to pick the low hanging fruits of integration among states. These three crises show that when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to financial policy, when it comes to identity, Europeans aren't there yet. This crisis is by far the most dangerous because it strikes at identity. People might have had opinions earlier about Russia and invading Ukraine and Georgia. They might have had opinions about the Greeks. I'm Greek. We're lazy. We're not lazy. You had all of that. But everyone has an opinion about the refugee crisis and I like to remind people that there's not a pro-refugee or an anti-refugee camp, pro-migration, anti-migration camps. There's a little bit of each of them in everyone and it's really easy as a demagogic politician to try to tap into that and that's what we've seen and it's not just the east-west divide. Here are the parties, the far-right parties are on the rise in Sweden, one or two, number one or number two. Number one in the Netherlands, number one in Denmark, in the governing coalition in Denmark. It is a pan-European problem, not to mention France, right? So the strategic priority for the United States for the world, I think, has to be to help Europe and to help Germany. That is the number one strategic priority. It is no one else's strategic priority. I can assure you it's not the Russian strategic priority, it's not the Chinese strategic priority, it has to be our strategic priority. There are ways now to mitigate the crisis, right? It is not hard, and I'll end with this, it's not hard to look at what the European response was this year and scratch your head and ask yourself, why did they promote a Mediterranean military mission on the theory for months that this was about the failure of Libya? It was a failed state. They were bringing governors and mayors to Brussels to negotiate with them in order to be able to have a military mission in the Mediterranean, by the time they looked up from their desks in June, the flows had switched to Greece. So that was one really bad analysis. The second bad analysis was, well, what we're going to have to do is be able to take people from Greece and Italy and bring them to the rest of Europe, and they came up with a relocation plan that had not been properly prepared and had not been politically prepared. Today, there's been a total of 130 people relocated from Greece and Italy. Out of a commitment of 160,000, out of a need of several hundred thousand. That's like our Syria policy for training. So you have to now build a European response. You have to support Germany first and foremost. If you lose Chancellor Merkel, you have lost the engine of Europe and European integration. It cannot go forward without Germany and without Chancellor Merkel. So you have to support her. You have to support Europe, and the international community has to now play its role. It's not a European problem. It is a global problem. It was framed as a European problem, including by the Europeans, unfortunately. This is a global responsibility to protect the refugees who are coming out of Syria. The capacity to do that isn't there. We have to build that. Why Leon does the United States not identify this as the problem that it is and that it's in its self-interest? To support Europe, to support Germany in more than a rhetorical way? Well, because we're not internationalists the way we used to be anymore. And because, yeah, we're not internationalists the way we used to be. And because the humanitarian dimension of our foreign policy, the notion that our values are a pillar of our foreign policy, the foreign policy that was deeply exercised by questions of relief and rescue, has fallen away in the Obama years. Simply fallen away. You can, we'll argue about that another time, but as an empirical matter. We can argue that. No, no, no. But there's more to say about it's fallen away. I think that, you know, since, as of three weeks ago, since the beginning of the Syrian war, we've taken in 2,138 Syrian refugees. And since October 1, as of three weeks ago, the United States took in 351 Syrian refugees. So the first thing to be said is shame on us. But it's important to understand that when we speak of the West, there's the American West and there's the European West. And they're very different in their political cultures. So the American failure to do anything for the refugees, and it's already a failure because, you know, this is one of the things we have to really talk about when it comes to questions like refugees, is whether the United States government or any Western government is any longer capable of meaningful emergency action. You know, these are, there are some problems in which time is of the essence. And it's going to start to snow in Europe on these people, and they're going to have their first winter. And I mean, and the flows, you know, there's still 2,000 people coming a day through Greece. You know, so there's rescue, there's relief, there's rescue. There are many stages to what has to be done. We're doing what, we're doing nothing. And what's, but the Europeans, I guess what I want to say is this. The refugees, what they pose to Europe is a threat to the traditional European understanding of the nation-state. According to the traditional European understanding of the nation-state, every nation should be incarnated in a state, and every state should exemplify or personify a nation. That is to say, ideally, the political boundaries and the cultural boundaries should coincide. But of course, they never do. And so they're developed this thing called the problem of minorities, which Europe was dealing with. Now, what this means is that what Europe has always lacked in its conception of its national identities is any conception of a naturally multi-ethnic society. And one of the things that has been happening in Europe in recent, and now the refugee crisis will exacerbate this, is that pressure is being put on that old theory of the perfect fit of the nation and the state. And Europe is being pushed towards some sort of multi-ethnicity for which European culture, since time immemorial, is singularly ill-equipped. Is singularly ill-equipped, because we all know the history of Europe's attitudes towards the other and the stranger and so on. The United States, by contrast, is, with the terrible example of the Native American society, we are a naturally multi-ethnic society. We were multi-ethnic before we became multicultural, or rather we were multicultural empirically before we became multicultural ideologically. And so when we fail to do anything about the refugees, we are actually betraying the nature of our own society. So we are no longer in a position to lead, because the example that we present is not one we can point to. Well, we should, our society, it's natural multi-ethnicity, the peaceable coexistence in our society of people with hyphens, all of whom come from somewhere else, should make us a model in an age of globalization, whatever that means. For societies that are going to include many groups, many, now so, but for other, as I say, owing to the fact that we are no longer interested, Bush and Obama together, they were like the two nails in the coffin of interventionism and internationalism for a generation. They each played their part brilliantly. And we are not internationalists the way we were. Gregory, do you- I just wanted to say that I said earlier that I wanted to talk a little bit about why Chancellor Merkel did what she did at the end of August. And the interpretation of it can be simply that it was a humanitarian gesture, but I think it was much more than that. And it speaks exactly to what Leon is saying, that she recognized that Europe was at an inflection point. That there was this wave of anti-refugee sentiment or bomb the others. We don't want Muslims. And she felt, I think, I don't know this, that she had to stand up for European values as they've been embodied in the European Union since the end of the, essentially, since the end of the Second World War. Europe was going in a certain direction. It's stalling because of this crisis, above all. And she felt that she had to take a stand, even if the burden was going to fall on Germany. And now she has to try to get that burden to fall on the rest of Europe. And I think that there's another reason, as an East German, that she also recognized the inequality that led to this crisis. And that drove people to come to Europe as well as conflict. And she wanted to address that. But her example, Ambassador, does not seem to be spreading quite the reverse. It's the counter example. It's the Orban example that seems to be gaining traction. So Germany is now virtually alone. How long can that position be sustained? Can I, before answering that, defend the US here on tour town? Somebody needs to. My only need is to come back to attack it again, but go ahead. Number one, we might wish that the US would take in more Syrian refugees. That's very difficult in the current environment. But what it does, it's the most generous donors for refugees in the region. And this is one of the important clusters when we talk about solutions. Keep the refugees in the region, in the adjacent country of Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and help the IDPs, the internal displaced persons within Syria. There are 7 million. So all in all, this is about 11 million. And the US is there, by far, the most generous donor for catering for the refugees there. And the second thing is, of course, that goes to the root cause of this movement of people. That's the war in Syria. And here, in the end, we need the military combat against ISIL. But also, we need a political process. And here, just one more sentence. And here, we are grateful to Secretary Kerry for leading this initiative to establish a political process. So, two good points here for the US. We're going to go to Ann Marie, so hold that thought. So you wanted to jump in, Ann Marie. And I will leave on a more optimistic note with respect to ultimately stopping the source, which is to end the Syrian Civil War. We will not do it for the reasons that both Leon and I think we should have done it from the beginning. But even from the beginning, the internationalist argument about why we should have intervened much earlier was both, in my case anyway, a strategic one. If we do not, things are going to get worse and worse and worse. And it is obvious that is so. But the other was standing up for our values is a part of our power. And the internationalist impulse in the United States has been both. It's been a strategic calculation and a, this is not just good works. This is part of our identity. That's part of our power. We didn't go in for those reasons. We will now go in because of ISIS. That's not the right reason to go in, as we just heard. It's not ISIS that is driving most of these refugees. It is Assad, but that doesn't matter. The public now sees this as we must stop ISIS, because that is the origin of the fear we're feeling domestically. And because of that and because we're in an election year, I do predict we will do whatever it takes to get the various folks to the table. And I will predict we are going to get a political settlement within the next year. And that will not solve everything, but it will at least then let some people go home and take the immediate pressure off. And with that optimistic prediction, I have to leave you. Yes, don't wait to be refuted at that point, because I think you're about to be. No, no, no, I wanted to say two things, but I just hope you make the trade. No, I would say two things. One, I think it's very important that the discussion of the refugee crisis should not be incorporated either into the discussion of intervention or into the discussion of immigration, which is what's happening. I think if you incorporate it into the discussion of immigration, which is essentially what's happened in our coming up with these feeble numbers of 10,000, which of course are 10,000, etc., in the global, our global refugee policy, we don't understand the urgency. A refugee is an immigrant, but a refugee is a special kind of immigrant with a special kind of urgent problem. And you don't understand, and we cannot absorb it into the discussion of intervention, and here's where, I mean, I agree with Anne-Marie theoretically as it were, but if in fact the solution to the refugee crisis is going to await a political solution in Syria, this crisis is going to last a very long time. I see no reason to believe that a political solution in Syria is remotely imminent. Not remotely, I have no reason to believe even if the numbers supporting a more robust American policy in Syria are going up, that this White House is going to authorize any sort of meaningful military action that would change the battlefield dynamic sufficiently to bring everyone to a meaningful negotiation. So I think that it's a council of despair, actually, to tie the hostage crisis to the resolution of the Syrian problem. The second thing I wanted to say to Peter is that I think it's actually, I see no reason to think that the economic situation in this country will not allow us to take in large numbers of refugees. I think that, I think there is a lack of political courage in this country right now. I mean, so I guess I want to go back to attack my country. I think that right now the American debate about the refugees is basically a debate between xenophobes and nativists and Islamophobes who will do nothing for the refugees. And noble, liberal, bleeding heart, good soul who will do nothing for the refugees. I think that if you look at the numbers that are being contemplated, nobody, for example, no Democrat, never mind the White House, not in the Senate that I have heard, is prepared to get up and speak candidly to the American people about why their panic about security is absurd. No one is prepared to do this. Reid wanted a table, Schumer wanted the discussion, table after Paris precisely because nobody wants to tell the truth. And it's a problem that's very easy to discuss. For example, nobody will get up and tell the American people that between 1880 and 1924, we took in four million immigrants from Italy. Among those immigrants from Italy, we got Enrico Fermi, Joe Di Maggio, Frank Sinatra, Antonin Scalia, who might be a deal breaker, but Antonin Scalia, and Al Capone. And Al Capone. And nobody in their right mind is gonna sit here and say that the mafia and all the violence that it brought in the decades followed in any way vitiated our admittance of four million Italian immigrants who became part of the foundation of the modern history of this country. But no politician on the Democratic side, the Republicans, we all know how sickening they are. But on the Democratic side, nobody is prepared to get up and actually tell the American people that there is no economic or political or security basis for a panic. I mean their fears have to be understood and so on. But this requires, as you said, I think leadership. And we don't have it. Of the 800,000 refugees who have been admitted since 9-11, three have been implicated in terrorist activity, only implicated, not convicted. So there's no basis. In fact, I'm just wondering why it is that our president, who is not running for office, is unable to voice these things. And that, in fact, the most effective, from a national security perspective, the most effective counter-narrative to the extremely efficient mastery of the web that the ISIS is displaying would be to allow thousands of Muslims save passage to America, which is precisely what ISIS doesn't want. So Gregory, why is that not happening? And do you have a way that the U.S. could partner with Europe in a more effective way? Because right now, they are, in fact, a European problem, because they haven't yet reached our shores. I go back to the motivation that the administration has to have has to be the right one. So if the motivation, the humanitarian motivation isn't going to be enough, you have to see it as this is critical for helping Europe, our greatest ally. And Europe is, as I said, on its knees right now in terms of its ability to stay together. So if that's your political motivation, I think that's a very strong motivator for this administration. It hasn't been. I also want to just rebut since she's not here, something Anne-Marie said, which is we're going down this path of seeing ISIS as the main problem. And it's obviously a huge problem, a big one, but it's driving us into bed with Russia now. And Russia, I don't know. Not sure it has the same interests in the Middle East as we do. I'm not sure it has the same interests in Syria. And yet, many European countries are now saying we have to ally ourselves with Russia. I don't think that you're going to have a solution to Syria with Russia playing the role it is now. So it's not going to quell the refugee crisis. And it's going to damage Europe because Russia's interest is to see Europe weakened. So we're abetting that problem. So Ambassador Wittig, for the first time, Germany is now engaged in a war against ISIS. What has that done to public support for Chancellor Merkel? Strengthened, weakened, are the German people still solidly behind her? I was told by President Obama's chief of staff that her support was solid at 70%. Now that was a few weeks ago. Is that still true? Well, it's the second time that we decided to engage militarily against ISIL. The first time was last year when we decided it was for our standards a big leap forward to train and equip with lethal weapons the Kurdish Peshmerga in the north of Iraq. And it turned out to be quite an effective support for the Iraqi in the north, for the Kurdish security forces. Now, again, we mandated 1,200 German soldiers to be part of that military anti-ISIL coalition. And that was a difficult decision for us again. You know, Germans have, for historical reasons, deeply ingrained skepticism towards military solutions. But it had the support of the majority, not only of parliament, but of the population. Now, the support of the Chancellor, I think, is still strong. She has decreased in the polls somewhat. But I think she has managed to convince many citizens that her policy is the right thing to do. But I would not exclude a backlash also in my country. There is a party on the right that is rising. It's sort of, it's called itself an anti-Islam immigration party. But so far, I think the mainly welcoming attitude of a large segment of the population is prevailing. And a source of pride, I imagine, and a custom source of pride. It is a source of pride. And sometimes people are surprised how many volunteers, thousands, almost hundreds of thousands are helping the refugees. That's a good sign. And I hope it stays that way. But, you know, along the road further down, of course, we will have an integration issue here. And maybe we come back to what Anne-Marie said at the beginning. There are, of course, opportunities in this. You know, if we look at it from an economic, from a social, from a demographic point of view, there is an opportunity in this. We are an aging society. The German business community is trying to point that out. You know, the CEOs of the big German companies, they have offered internships and special apprenticeships for the refugees, and they say we need the workforce in the long run. And therefore I think we should also, while being generous with the refugees, think about our lessons learned for a long-term integration. And that means bringing them into work as soon as possible and offering them language courses and also enlighten them about our values. Those are mostly refugees and migrants from Islamic countries. And we may have to make sure that they are part of our liberal values, and that includes, for instance, our attitude toward the Holocaust. And that should be part and parcel of their values as well. We have the challenges for Europe in the long term to have a Euro-Islam, if you will, in Islam that is compatible with all the European values. That's down the road, a big challenge. I think it's very important that Western leaders, and not just political leaders, but intellectuals, writers, and so on, understand that it now is the time to refresh and renew and remind people of the values that you're discussing. In other words, these societies have to be prepared intellectually for the right-wing populist fascist challenge that is already upon us. It is not going to receive. It's only going to get greater. And my real worry is that many of our values are assumed. In other words, you have a very vigorous intellectual energy, however coarse it is, but you have real intellectual elan on the right right now. These people have spirit, and the liberals, let's call them most generally, seem a little bit exhausted and not prepared to actually go back to first principles and without being condescending here, educate their populations or remind their populations about the kinds of societies that they aspire to be. Because finally, if the refugee, if integration is to work, and if right-wing populists or even fascist parties are to be defeated, it will depend in democracies upon the opinions of the citizens in these societies. And the education of those opinions seems to me to be a matter of real urgency right now. But are thought leaders performing that role? I don't really see that. I don't see it. Are American intellectuals rallying a counter movement to what we're hearing? We need the refugee crisis requires us to refresh ourselves morally, really to refresh ourselves morally. Not just to do the lip service about our values, but to actually remember what those values are, why they exist, why we support them. I mean, it's about the character of our societies. Nothing less is being tested either by the refugee crisis or by the politicians on the right who are exploiting the refugee crisis. And unless there is some formidable answer to that exploitation at the level of political discussion and political culture, I fear that it's going to be a debate between energetic populists and lethargic liberals. And that's not going to have a good outcome. Aren't populists always more energetic than liberals? Not if you, you know, they're not hard to refute. Populism is not a highly intelligent doctrine. And it's really not that hard to deal with, but you have to bring some passion to the ideas in the debate. I want to add to that because you asked for solutions, so let's get to some solutions. One of the most troubling aspects of this for me is in working with my colleagues who have focused on migration and refugee issues is how even the more liberal ones tend to be quieter and tend to speak out about the security issues or the obviously, you know, the obvious concerns that exist. Those people are the ones who should be leading on the moral argument. And that is an issue that I think should really trouble us. I think the response from governments, from civil society and from the private sector should go to supporting the grassroots that have been backing the refugees. I mean, we hear Orban, he's loud, he gets the headlines, but in Greece, in Germany, in Sweden, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who are there supporting, taking care of housing, feeding, playing music for teaching refugees. They need to be supported in a massive way, in a massive way. That's where the energy comes from to counter the right, the far right. But I don't think anybody disputes that. How do we do that, since there's such an absence of moral or any other leadership? I mean, who can we... Walk out of this room and give money to one of the groups that was here at the beginning. Walk out of this room and participate at Christmas and the Hanukkah during the holidays and reaching out to refugees. Those stories of what happens when you first get to a country are ones that get passed down through generations. We have a chance right now. It's a very formative period of how we're going to be perceived. So act is the first answer. I also want to say that the issue of refugees, we talk about the demographic argument. We need refugees. That doesn't work in most places when there's 25% unemployment or 50% unemployment. It hasn't worked in good times. It's certainly not going to work now. But think about refugees as the next form of nation building. Make the case that these are the people who are going to go back eventually to Syria and to other countries. We have to educate them and make them become believers in our values. We have to educate them and make them skilled. They will be able to go back and become the engineers and the politicians and the journalists in Syria. That's how you nation build, not by sending in your armies. And many of them already do believe in our values. Right, absolutely. I mean, we are when you, we're talking about, Aleppo was a secular bourgeois city. Absolutely, yeah, I'm sorry, I was secular. And it's, we're not talking about people who need to be introduced to these things for the first time. Absolutely, but the kids who are going to be educated here can go back. Or they can stay here and build their lives here and send remittances back, send knowledge back, create networks that will help these societies thrive. Taking care of refugees, educating the kids in particular, the unaccompanied minors, there's tens of thousands of them in Europe, is going to be the key to solving these problems over the long term. But you're kind of advocating that we work around our leaders, rather than through them, that basically- Through them, absolutely, because they have all the keys to the kingdom here. But I think they do- But they're a little bit hopeless. I mean, in this country right now, I mean, I speak to Democratic friends, and of course, they're all horrified by Trump. And the next thing they say is, isn't it good for Clinton? And I think to myself, well, yeah, it is God's great- What's happening in the Republican Party is God's gift to the Democratic Party. But it's a curse upon the United States. It's terrible for the country. And it's not enough to just sit there and say, great, the Democrats get the White House and the Senate, so let the cancer spread. Because this is not the sort of thing you can call back. It's not as simple as that. As you know from your own history, Mr. Ambassador, that once such a virus is released, it's very hard to put it back in the bottle. You mentioned, intriguingly, the power, the role of the internet in this whole saga, and particularly in Jihad. Why has the other side, our side, let's say, been less adept at putting our message through the same means to the malcontents and most of them homegrown malcontents? Whether in France, Belgium, San Bernardino, I fear where the next one, the next explosion will take place. But inevitably, it will take place. Well, I referred to the smart phones as part of this digital migration, not so much as a recruiting tool for ISIL. And what I wanted to say is that now, even in the remotest village in Afghanistan, people can learn how to make their way to, let's say, to Germany. And we are getting a lot of Afghans, by the way, a lot of Iraqis. The majority is still Syrians, but a lot of Iraqis and Afghans. So that shows you that there are people that have lost hope in their country, that their country will ever deliver the services or guarantee the peace, that those people that maybe 20 years ago would not have even dreamed of leaving now have sort of an instruction how to leave their country and make it to a more prosperous part of the world. That is sort of the digital dimension of this migration. But of course, it also carries opportunities. The age of internet, as we all know, it might connect people in a beneficial way and also forge a commonality of certain values. Can I come back to the solutions here? I think, you know, we all have clusters. We have to act on a national level. We have to do a lot of homework on the European level. But we also have to do something on the regional and international level. And that is basically focus our energy to stabilize those countries, be it Iraq, be it Syria, be it Afghanistan, where most of the people come from. That's of course not, you know, done with a big bang. It's not, there's no blueprint. There's no magic wand. That's a, you know, a long or medium term effort. But I think it is, it has to be our focus. Nation building has a bad name, unfortunately. Well, this is it. That's what's happened. What you're talking about quite correctly is nation building. But nation building as a consequence of the war in Iraq has been delegitimated as an objective certainly of American foreign policy. And I think if what you're saying is that it must be re-legitimated and that one cannot solve this problem without addressing its social and local roots, then in fact, whatever one thinks about the war in Iraq, it is important to understand that nation building may have to be restored as an element of American foreign policy. But again, that would take an act of courage. That will take a new election. At the very least, it will take another election. So, going back to solutions again, if you just want to stick on this. So one of the negative effects of Europe and its inaction over the course of the first part of this crisis is that it let the rest of the world off of the hook. Europe wasn't doing anything, then the US wasn't doing anything. Why should anyone else do anything in support of Syrian refugees? And that was what you were hearing a lot of. We have to break that cycle. We have Canada, which has taken 25,000 Syrian refugees. Canada is a small country if you didn't hear about it. It has signaled that it's willing to take another 100,000. At those numbers, we're talking about the equivalent of about 2 million for the United States. Canada can do it. Brazil has taken in quite a few. We have to be able to, the immediate goal has to be able to take the pressure off of Europe. You have to take the pressure off of Europe. First, as you said, by supporting Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. I'll just give you one example of how misguided the European response was. If a year ago, Europe had given 5, 7, 8 billion to these countries, the flows would have been nothing like we see today. Because people left those countries because there was no schooling and there was no access to the labor markets. This year alone, Europe will end up spending collectively on the order of 40 billion euros. Think about that political mistake. You could have spent the money a year ago on those frontline countries. Instead, you spent 40 billion this year alone to deal with this crisis. So you have to... Would you enter into that the creation of safe zones? I would. I would personally. And think about the political damage. Forget the financial damage. The political damage that's resulted from this. You can't even quantify that. So we have to understand why these mistakes are being made over and over and over again. And one of the things that has to be solved is the question of a global system of responsibility sharing for refugees. There has to be more than what exists today, which is basically 100,000 people. That's the capacity that we have at the international community to resettle people. When we're talking about a million who've reached Germany, we have to build that infrastructure. We have to build other means for people to get from dangerous places to safer places. And we're talking about 11 million refugees. 20 million globally. 20 million... I believe 11 is the figure for the region. For the region, right. About half of them are from the Middle East. And you're saying that the capacity is at 100,000. The capacity to take them from there safely to other countries, you don't have to take 11 million. Most people who are fleeing conflicts want to stay close to home. But in order to do that, they have to go to school. They have to go into the job markets. They have to have water. They have to have housing. Lebanon, Jordan did not have the resources for that. You see, this goes back to the question for me of preparedness. And like most of foreign policy these days, everything is crisis management. Everything is crisis management. A strategy is almost vanished. And so what we discover was not only were we intellectually unprepared, we're operationally unprepared. But in order to be operationally prepared, it may be that we have to have a defense budget of a certain kind. It may be that we have to have various assets, material. I mean, you've got to have stuff in place in case the weather gets bad. And certainly in anyone who's looked at Syria in the last four years didn't have to be a rocket science to predict that the weather was going to get very, very bad. But we just were not prepared. That's right. So before we all sink into total despair. Well, that's totally appropriate. OK, go ahead, sink into total despair. I think, Peter, that I should open up for some questions. Although, good. So what do safe zones look like if safe zones were to be created? I mean, how would they work and how would they be enforced? And what's the argument against them if there is one? As far as I can tell, there are questions of taking out, as tough people like to say, certain missile defense systems. Now it's much harder. But it's impossible for me to believe, impossible, for me to believe that we lacked the military capabilities to create zones that would protect refugees. Impossible. We could argue about the size of them. We could argue about the location. The Turks have views about where they would want them and not want them and so on. But as a matter of principle and as a matter of feasibility, if you look at the map, we're not even talking about large swaths of territory. We're just talking about some safe places. And a lot of the people who would have lived in those safe places got on the boats is what they did. And one of the things we needed to do was to give them reasons not to stay on the boats and even reasons to believe that the solution to their problem may even be repatriation. Now, unfortunately, given the foreign policy that the West adopted towards the Syrian war, it's now inconceivable, almost inconceivable to think of repatriation as a solution to this particular crisis. But there was a time. There was a time when, if you protected people and gave them a haven, that we could have found a different sort of solution to them, which they would have much preferred, obviously. The argument against was for Aberdeen. That would diffuse arguments in favor of it. That's what you heard in policy in circles. Yes, do we have a mic for these two gentlemen? This gentleman was first. Hi, I'm Jack Kropansky. Again, an unaffiliated private citizen. Maybe Peter could answer for Anne-Marie, but I was intrigued when she said about a political solution that she saw that that was going to happen. So I was curious what might a political solution look like. And I'm wondering if the call is for Assad to go, doesn't that essentially mean that the Alawites would have to submit to Sunni domination? And isn't that essentially an existential crisis? And how do you make that happen? Does anybody here like to take that challenging question on? It is conceivable that the Alawites themselves would desert Assad if they believed that he didn't stand a chance of survival. And it is conceivable under certain conditions that coalitions at least two or three years ago might have been formed. We let this thing fester so long that it looks increasingly impossible. The Russian move, which is the most breathtaking thing that's happened in a long time, and there's a vacuum, and they filled it, now makes things even more complicated. The fact is that the Assad regime has now and always enjoyed the support of Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran. Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadi elements have enjoyed the support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And insofar as there were or are moderate elements, they've enjoyed the support of nobody, of nobody. And so we are where we are, which is why I think that a political solution in Syria will not be possible unless the battlefield dynamic changes. That's what you know, forgive me, but when Obama keeps saying there is not a military solution, he's right. But the only way to a diplomatic solution is through a change on the battlefield. And in order to enact a change on the battlefield, you have to provide weapons to people who will do so. The same thing in Ukraine. When people like myself and others have argued for giving lethal aid to the Ukrainian army, it's not because we think they will march into Moscow or that they can defeat the Russian army. It's that the military cost of Putin's invasions may be raised to a point where a political solution may actually become possible. But these are the kinds of considerations that have not loomed very large or at all. And that's why I think that a political solution is necessary. But I mean, if the security of my own family were at stake, if I were one of those poor people, I would not wait for a political solution in Syria to look after my family. I mean, their feeling of sovkipa is it seems to me exactly the right one. Exactly the right one. I know this is heresy to say this, but we keep saying there has to be both a military and almost simultaneously a diplomatic political game on the ground. But by repeating endlessly that Assad must go, we are really foreclosing a transition from nobody is advocating that Assad be the long-term solution. But there is a... Russia, yeah. Okay, Russia. Russia, yeah. But I mean, no right thinking person. Nobody he would break bread with. Right, right. But yeah, okay. I'd just like to add something. When we say we need a political solution, I think that's a concept that cannot be imposed. We have no blueprint here. Nobody can really, from one day to the other, impose a political solution. So the effort now that's underway is to start a political process which will be cumbersome and difficult and fraught with setbacks. But the intention is to bring all the Syrian players together with the exception of terrorist groups like ISIL and some others, and back that effort by the external powers that have an influence. And now what this process that Secretary Kerry so graciously initiated has brought about is that there are all the countries at the same table, including Russia, including Iran, including Saudi Arabia, including some regional adjacent countries and Europeans, to devise how they can back and foster that Syrian political process. And there's- But wait, wait, we've gotta be, but we've gotta tell the full, we've gotta have the full picture here. Iran is not just sitting at the table. Iran is also arming Assad. I mean, the battle for Aleppo is going to be fought on behalf of Assad by Iraqi Shia, Lebanese soldiers from Hezbollah, Iranian soldiers under the command of an Iranian general, covered by Russian air power. That's what, so we have to be clear about what, it's not just that there is a table in Vienna or wherever. These very actors who are sitting there are busy doing the opposite of diplomatic work on the ground. Also if you wanna have a litmus test for whether it's gonna work, ask yourself whether the refugees, the reason Europe is involved now is because there's a million refugees. So think about a political solution to the prism whether refugees will go back to Syria. Well, I mean, the starting point is that we don't want to let the fighting going on and maybe in 10 years, like the Lebanese civil war who lasted 15 years, then all Syria will be depleted and nobody will be there anymore and there will just be victims. So we don't want that. So we try a very complicated thing and that is this political process. Again, here the Alawites have a role. They are part and parcel of Syria and they are minority but they have a place there. So the Assad question is of course a very important one. Now everybody knows there will be no sustainable peaceful future of Syria in the long run with Assad but it would be wrong to say Assad has to go before we start a political post. But we've been saying that for four years that Assad has to go before any negotiation thereby guaranteeing that Assad would fight to the last Syrian to keep himself in office. I mean, that would have been. If we had, we don't have to go into this anymore. If we had three or four years ago denied Assad control of the skies and destroyed his helicopters, Assad must go would not have turned into the fantastical proposition that it was. We are not talking either in the case of Assad or in the case of ISIS about military superpowers. This is not what we're talking about. These are objectives that can be accomplished but we have to be willing to use the means to accomplish certain ends. But we should talk about the refugees. Yeah. We wanna leave you with a little bit of hope. Yes, sir. Chris Davis, retired Foreign Service Officer. Returning to the context of Europe. There is a quid pro quo now with Turkey in terms of its eventual membership to the European Union or closer association with the European Union. What are the implications of that with respect to the issues that the EU are having to face right now? Gregory, do you wanna take that on? Turks have been seen and continue to be seen as the key to solving the crisis part of the problem at least of the large flows of several thousand people every day. I said earlier that the European Union focused on the wrong problem initially. Initially it was Libya and it turned out that the situation in Turkey was more dire. Turkey has used that to its advantage and it has been negotiating pretty fiercely in terms of what it wants. From a solution to the Cyprus problem that's favorable to it, to visa liberalization so that Turkish citizens can travel to Europe freely to the opening up of these negotiations, new chapters in the negotiation for EU membership. It's still not clear what Turkey can deliver in the end in terms of being able to mitigate these flows. And I think that in order for that to be realized that that goal of slowing down the flows, there has to be a commitment from Europe to take hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region into Europe without having to risk the Mediterranean crossing. And there has to be a commitment from the rest of the world to take several hundred thousand more from the region. And then I think that's the key issue there. Then Turkey will obviously want to see the funding that it wants. It will want to see the status that it craves. There was an EU-Turkey summit for the first time on November 29th and I think there's now a commitment to biannual EU-Turkey summits. Can I ask you a heretical question? Both of you. You were correct in pointing out that in each of the recent European crises, the EU was exposed as being very weak. And after these crises, and when I look now at the refugee crisis, what's no longer clear to me, I guess my question to you, and as I say it's heretical or it's coarse, but the question is, why is the EU necessary for the solution of these crises and why given all the threats that the various European states are facing and all that must be done, why must the preservation of the EU loom large in terms of their priorities? I mean, one of the things we keep seeing is that in crisis, that nation-states tend to behave like themselves, right? And you know, I'm not gonna get into questions of national character but they're pursuing their own interests, they have their own constituencies and so on. And this strikes me as one form of normal, as one kind of normal international order. And so I'm asking you, why should I not give up on the EU? Why is it necessary for a solution? Do you have a short answer? I have an answer, because the EU is one of the most important peace projects in the history of Europe. I mean, internal European peace. Over, over the last centuries. We have managed to forge a union of 28 still sovereign nations that devolved some of their sovereignty to the union but it brought peace to Europe and brought an absence, not only the absence of military conflict but a commonality of values and projects. I mean, we have a transfer union. The Eastern European countries are now far better off than they used to be. Far better. And Bosnia is not part of the European Union but what the danger, the challenge is that there is now a tendency to re-nationalization and that can be toxic. I think, and there we have to have a coalition of strong leaders in Europe in the European Union that can contain that tendency to re-nationalize. And my chancellor is certainly someone who would be willing also to sacrifice a lot of things if we can preserve this great peace project of the European Union. And now, of course, one of the EU's proudest achievements, which is a border-free Europe, is in jeopardy as one after the other, countries are building walls around themselves. So it really is a perilous moment. And I would like to thank Ambassador Widdig and you, Gregory Maneatis and Leon Wieseltier. And above all, I'd like to thank the New America for hosting this conference on what is obviously a very urgent and troubling moment for all of us and urge all of you to stay engaged. Thank you very much.