 Good afternoon. I'm Rebecca Blank, the Joan and Sanford Wild Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. I want to welcome you to our City Group lecture series, which was established by a gift in honor of President Gerald Ford from the City Group Foundation to bring distinguished leaders, thought leaders and lecturers here to campus. I am really pleased today to have Dr. Kamal Davis with us, and he is going to be speaking in a few minutes, but I just want to welcome him for being here. He will be formally introduced in just a minute. At the Ford School, we are committed to fostering interaction among those within the community who have a real interest in discussion of public affairs. The City Group lecture provides an important opportunity to ask questions and to explore ideas with distinguished individuals who have worked at the highest levels of national and international policy. We welcome everyone who has joined us today for this lecture and for the discussions that are going to ensue after it. We are particularly grateful to City Group for making this type of opportunity available. With us today on behalf of City Group is Jamie Mystery of Smith Barney, which is the local representation for City Group here in Catown, and I'm going to ask Jamie to say a few words. Thank you for coming, Jamie. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome. What a great honor on behalf of City Group to be joining you this afternoon, and a great honor, of course, to be welcoming our distinguished guest, Kamal Dervis, to Ann Arbor and to the University. This event marks the first of the City Group lectures to be held in the new home of the Ford School of Public Policy. Most of you are probably already aware of the very generous personal gift from City Group's now former Chairman Sandy Weil and his wife, Joan, to the Ford School. So there is a special sort of a significance to today's event as we now begin to present the City Group lecture series here in Weil Hall, and what a beautiful facility you have here. The City Group foundation in endowing this remarkable lecture series continues a long tradition of supporting education, interaction, and open dialogue around the globe. This type of lecture series is one of many events that makes life on the Michigan campus so enriching and unique, and thank you for your participation today. We hope you'll be able to join us for future lectures in the series. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jamie. I'd now like to introduce the Director of the International Policy Center, Professor Jan Svanar, who will in turn introduce today's speaker, Dr. Kamal Dervis. Dr. Dervis, as you know, is the Director of the United Nations Development Program. The International Policy Center was established here in the Ford School in 2005 to bring together students, faculty, and researchers from across campus with events, speakers, and research activities focused on a range of issues relating to international economics, institutions, political economy, and global health, and Jan has just been an excellent initial director and leader to this whole effort. So Jan, I'll turn things over to you. Well, it's a real pleasure to introduce Kamal Dervis to you. Kamal and I go back a long, long way. Well, I should first say he is a remarkable person in many respects. He's a product of the, Frenchly say, London School of Economics as an undergraduate, PhD from Princeton, and that's where I had the opportunity to meet him. He was actually subsequently on the faculty as a professor at Princeton when I was a graduate student there. And I've always thought whatever I don't know, it's because I didn't pay enough attention in Kamal's classes. He was a great, great teacher. Well, Kamal went on from Princeton, had a really stellar rising career in the World Bank. I had an opportunity to work with him. He was kind enough to bring me in on some of the fun stuff that was being done at the World Bank at that time. He became vice president, was in charge of Europe, Middle East, North Africa, as well as other activities in the bank, and then went back to save his own country. He was what the economist called the economic supremo of Turkey. He held position as the minister of the economy, as well as treasury, and led Turkey out of one of the major crises, a real modern day sort of economic feat of applied economic policy. He then was a member of the Turkish parliament, representing Istanbul, and actually was one of the key negotiators of the European constitution, the one that failed to be approved on the first round, but many people are working on it, hopefully getting it approved on the second round. And Kamal was there representing Turkey, a potential incoming member in the future into the European Union. Subsequent to that, he was drafted to serve now as the administrator of the United Nations Development Program. Sounds modest, but the administrator is like the president. It's the equivalent of the president of the World Bank, so you have the head of the UNDP, and that's Kamal. And he is in that capacity actually overseeing all the activities that the UN has in terms of economic development. And it's a pleasure to have him here today to speak about the challenges of multilateralism. I should add that we had two choices here. One was to have a formal, on-the-record discussion, in which case he would have to hold himself back. I said, let's go off the record. That way he can be loose and talk to us as if he had no constraints. And then if you would like to quote him on the record or something like that, you'll have a chance afterwards to talk to him and get your quote. So this is the rules, it's the Chatham House rules. You can ask any questions, he'll answer them as well as he can, given his personal constraints. And it's a real pleasure to have you here, Kamal. Well, it is my great pleasure and privilege to be here really with all of you. Dean Bang, thank you very much for inviting me, Jan, Jamie. It's great and I have other friends in the audience that I can see. It is always very good to be in an academic setting. I did start very early in my career as an academic, both in Turkey and then teaching at Princeton. And then Jan gave a summary. But it feels very good to be in an academic setting. I think you're lucky to be in this beautiful building with all the minds here, the discussions. It's a very special time of life and I think one has to enjoy it fully. I will talk, you know, I've learned in politics that there's no such thing as off the record. But I will, of course, try to be as free as possible. But, you know, when something then gets published, we'll go over it for some of the details. Choosing a topic is very difficult, of course, for always. And one can't fit into 40 minutes everything one wants to say and one wants to share with such a wonderful audience. I want to talk about multilateralism really today and really make a plea for multilateralism, both in the political and in the economic area. And try to share with you some of the arguments that I've accumulated throughout my life, whether it's in academia, at the World Bank, in my own country, at the European Convention and now at the United Nations. So it will be points rather than a fully integrated presentation, but I think that's all we really have time for and I do want to try to put it all together. The first point I'd like to make is that globalization, you know, much used and often abused term is really an important part of modern times, that we are increasingly living in a world which is more connected, more interdependent than anything we've seen in the past. There was always interdependence. Even 2000 years ago, diseases did spread across borders. The world was always linked to some degree, but the degree of linkage we have today is by nature or is not just quantitative, there's a qualitative change, both in the economic and in the political sphere. Take the economy, for example. It is true that at the end of the 19th century, the share of trade in global GDP was already quite high and it caught up, then there was a period after the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War where it fell. It caught up in the early 70s with the level it was at the end of the 19th century. Now it is 50% higher than that, but it's not just the volume of trade. It's the degree to which global production systems are integrated. The degree to which any product we buy today has components coming from all over the world. So it's not just the volume, it's the way multinationals organize their production, plan their production. It's the way small firms fit into that whole system. That's one angle, if you like, on the economic side. The financial system. Of course there was direct foreign investment in the past. In fact, as opposed to British GDP, foreign direct investment from the UK at the time of the British Empire was even larger than it is today. But what's happening today is that the gross flows are much, much larger than net flows. It's not just money moving from one place to another. It's money moving sometimes within 24 hours, thanks to Citibank and others, three or four times in and out of one place. So financial integration is much, much more advanced. And indeed with the modern technologies, derivatives and so on, we're even having a hard time keeping up with the degree of financial integration there is. On the political side, of course these are the biggest of all topics. The danger in terms of security, human survival that we faced ever since the nuclear age is much larger than anything that we ever faced before and it's continuing. So from a security point of view, whether it's the nuclear threat, which we are again rediscovering these days, we somehow had forgotten about it. But now with nuclear proliferation, the North Korean problem and all that, we say wait a minute, we actually still have nuclear issues to face and I think they're going to become bigger as the oil and gas price will probably remain quite high. It may go down, up and down, but fundamentally I think all forces tend to say that hydrocarbon will be very scarce, so the price will be very high. I think nuclear energy technology is again going to be a priority for many countries and of course once a country develops nuclear energy technology, then the step from there to nuclear weapons is not that big a step given the advances in know-how and technology. So I think the interdependence of the world on the security side is as great as ever and greater. And of course terrorism, the whole threat perceived, it may not be of massive destruction, but it is true that when we board a plane today, the threat is palpable, it's present. So I think there's a tremendous degree of interdependence of human security also on that side. Climate change, I'm not a specialist of the issue. I want to find the time to read more carefully about it, and many of my friends who really do know more about it have really convinced me that this is a serious issue. It's not just a scare. It may take a long time, but we do have a major, major environmental challenge here. And again, I think one has to stress the interdependence. One example I think which is telling is the role the Brazilian rainforest plays on this issue of climate change and environment. I don't know whether the exact numbers are right or wrong, but it doesn't matter. Give or take 20%. Some experts say that the Brazilian rainforest has a carbon retention capacity worth about $5 trillion. So that's what it's worth as a stock in terms of carbon retention. Now, therefore, if Brazil diminished that by 1%, that's $50 billion worth, right? So in a sense, it's the Brazilian forest. Nobody should dispute the fact that the forest is owned by Brazil. On the other hand, it's also a human asset, a humanities asset, an asset of the international community. So one could argue that, well, if it's a public good that everybody benefits from, why not help the Brazilians preserve it? Why not make available from the international community $50 billion to Brazil to finance the preservation of the rainforest? Well, when you compare that to the total number of foreign aid available in the world of about $100 billion, obviously you see that that's not going to happen tomorrow. But I think it's a very vivid example of how national and international issues interact, global public goods or global public beds. I did read two weeks ago the United States actually did conclude a debt for environment swap with Guatemala at a very small scale. So the whole idea of swapping resources against environmental assets is not outlandish, in fact, it's happening. But at the scale of the Brazilian rainforest, of course, it would be very difficult. So all these are examples, I think, of interdependence, of why many issues in the world have to be handled with a global public policy perspective by the international community acting and behaving as a community rather than just individual nation-states. Comparing all these issues to the role a nation-state plays in the traditional sense, the traditional Westphalian nation-state, I think one can distinguish three dimensions always. There's the regulatory dimension. There is need for some kind of regulation at the global level. There is the public goods provision dimension and the two things are often related because you can provide public goods by regulation rather than necessarily by providing the service yourself. The private sector can be active, but if you regulate it the right way, then you can fulfill your public goods requirements. And then finally, there is the redistribution aspect of a nation-state nationally. Most nation-states, all nation-states, find that the market mechanism does not produce the income distribution or the social welfare distribution that is considered politically acceptable by society. So the state does engage more or less, but always engages in some redistributive activity. And I think on all these three dimensions, we increasingly need something at the regional and global level. And this is becoming stronger and stronger and stronger. And I think we'll in fact increase dramatically in the next 10 to 20 years, particularly because of issues such as climate change, but also security issues, which I think are very, very critical. And I remember growing up, the nuclear danger was very... We felt it. We came very close to massive human destruction during the Cuban missile crisis. I remember those days, particularly not because I was that old, don't get me wrong in 1960, but as a kid I was living in Turkey and we found out, we didn't even know about it, that the equivalent of the Soviet missiles that were installed in Cuba, the U.S. had installed in Turkey, pointing at the Soviet Union. And so the deal was, it was a deal between Khrushchev and President Kennedy, although it wasn't advertised at the time that the U.S. would quietly dismantle the missiles in Turkey in exchange for the Soviets dismantling the missiles in Cuba. And some of you must have read the book on the Cuba and the missile crisis, how close we came to utter destruction worldwide at that time. So I think after the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the disappearance of the Berlin Wall, we came a little bit complacent that somehow that danger had passed. And I think now we're discovering that the destructive capacity is still there and if that whole issue is managed multilaterally or managed in some form, arguing that it has to be so multilaterally, we're again facing the same kinds of dangers. Now when we look at the institutions, the kind of world architecture of multilateralism, we discover a bewildering variety, a very complex system. Institutions were created and grew over time somewhat haphazardly. There was a grand design at the end of Second World War with the creation of the United Nations, the San Francisco Declaration and all that, but then many things were added, both in the political and the economic field. And we now have almost hundreds of institutions within the United Nations itself. We have 38 United Nations organizations and then you have to add others. And I think if you ask a kind of citizen of the world in any country to explain that or even to tell you a little bit what they know about it, it's very little. It's not easy to understand, it's not easy to explain. It reminds me a little bit of a computer program. Now of course you guys all have the students have all these packages, but when Yan and I were students, I actually programmed my own PhD thesis in Fortran, the solution algorithm to a general equilibrium model and I know that with those programs after a year of adding this and adding that they become so complicated you have to throw them away and start from scratch basically. And the international architecture is a little bit like that. It's so complex that because it's been added and added at Hock that it has reached I think this point. I don't think we can do the same as we do with a computer program, but really a holistic look at what we're trying to achieve with this architecture I think is needed because otherwise also in terms of just explaining it and getting backing for it, it's very, very difficult. So when we look at it what we find is there is the overarching kind of United Nations framework and even the World Bank and the IMF are part of that framework and then there are the very many specialized organizations and each sector, each global issue in a way has created an organization and that's not necessarily a bad thing. In a very empiric empiricist approach to life you could even say that's the best way to do it. You have an issue, don't try to create some grand design. Just focus on that particular issue see who can deal with that issue get the people together and try to deal with it. And that's an approach to global public goods which is quite reasonable in many ways and works to some degree and you don't need an overall grand design to solve everything. So that's what we have. We have the World Health Organization that deals with health problems. We have the International Labor Office that tries to elaborate on labor standards and labor policies. You have of course some things which we don't even think about like the International Postal Union but think about it, letters, I mean now of course emails don't have basically abolished letters but letter for decades we used to write letters and they came and they had stamps and everybody knew how much they had to pay and so on but this is an example of an international organization that actually provided a service for the whole international community not a very controversial service in this case but that worked. So I certainly don't want to argue against but I do want to argue that we do need something more than that on the big issues, on the much more controversial issues and here what we have is blocked is kind of doesn't doesn't advance. Within the United Nations we have the Security Council which is a product of the Second World War the way it was created. The victors gave themselves the permanent veto and permanent membership and then their elected members the size was increased at some point but essentially it reflects what was the case after the Second World War and when you think of the Security Council it has its legitimacy it is part of the United Nations machinery I think the recent years have shown that despite its failings and despite the fact that it represents the world of 50 years ago it still has a certain amount of legitimacy but it is very contested and easily blocked. One permanent member's veto can stop any action and we see it today in parts of conflicts like in Sudan and elsewhere that there is always this question of can the UN act for as a UN staff member or on the staff side of the UN there is this big confusion of course in public opinion between UN as an organization and the UN as a family of nations and it is always very disturbing to us not a nice event when somebody says the UN is inactive can't do anything, isn't moving we can't move on these issues unless the Security Council actually makes a decision that decision we are totally blocked so there is that side of the UN and then there is the General Assembly and the General Assembly it is a fantastic institution the whole world is there, all the countries are there I think it has a tremendous degree of legitimacy because of the universality because of the fact that everybody is there but it does have the feature that a very, very tiny country vote counts the same as the vote of China in India or the US and or France or Brazil and of course there is debate, is that functional I mean is that really workable is that a reasonable way of making decisions now the General Assembly does have power of the purse in the UN it does have some influence on how the organization is run it elects ECOSOC which then elects boards of the funds and programs and so on but in terms of real decision making power it is very limited of course so you have this duality within the United Nations of a Security Council which has decision making power but it counts that can be easily blocked by a single permanent member and then you have the large General Assembly where nobody can block you kind of have a culture of consensus which reflects the fact that an actual vote of the General Assembly is something that many would perceive as a strange thing so the best thing is to have consensus because if you have consensus you don't face the vote thing you have the same problem at the WTO in the World Trade Organization I think there are now 150 members there strictly speaking all members are equal and you have to move by consensus which makes it sometimes extremely hard to move as we saw in the recent Doha talks when you go to the economics sphere of the international system the financial sphere you have the IMF and the World Bank with a very different governance structure which is based on weighted voting where actually there are constituencies groups of countries that form group blocks or constituencies and the vote at the board reflects certain measurements such as the weight in the international economy of these countries you can debate the weights there's a lot of debate on the weights but the system does function in a somewhat more flexible way although of course there is the facto veto also because for some decisions you need 85% of the vote and for example the US that has 17% of the vote can block certain decisions but it is true that in the Bretton Woods system because of the weighted voting you do get somewhat more flexibility in the whole governance mechanism however the Bretton Woods system is very much dominated of course by the richest countries it is very much perceived as being a G7 dominated system G7 being the major industrial rich countries which have now become the G8 with Russia but it really does lack the legitimacy in the kind of political psychological sense particularly in developing countries that the UN does have despite all the limitations of the UN there is this legitimacy which is we can debate exactly where it comes from but it really does exist and the same degree of legitimacy is not really an asset for the Bretton Woods Institution they are considered in a much more antagonistic way by public opinions than most developing countries we also have regional organizations of course I don't want to go too much into that just to say that we have to think not only globally but also in terms of regionally my basic feeling is that the regional and global should interact and reinforce each other I don't think it's either or build regional institutions or global I think we need both and we need both in a way that they help each other so in this overall picture what has been proposed for change what are the avenues of change that are being explored and debated well one as you know was the Secretary General's proposal last year for reform of the actual secretariat part of the United Nations including the Security Council I must say that when I came to the UN a year ago and I was all excited about the Security Council I had written the book for Brookings before I joined the UN thank God I wrote there therefore was not due to the fact that I joined friends told me friends who had been in the UN for a while said Kemal don't get too excited because you know we've been working on Security Council reform for 30 years so you know it will take some time but anyway it is interesting to look at the proposals for change of the Security Council that the Secretary General tabled and many of you I'm sure are somewhat familiar but let me just remind you there were two plans plan A and plan B plan A was to bring selected countries into the Security Council as permanent members without veto right but still as permanent members okay and you know the Secretary General didn't particularly pick on this country or that country but the leading candidates were Japan Germany, India and Brazil and then there was obvious need for one or two African countries as specific countries joining and then there would be countries that would be non-permanent members elected the veto remains the veto so the P5 still maintain their veto but you do have others joining in a permanent way so once Brazil joined it's a permanent member and then there was plan B I don't go into all the details but plan B was different because in plan B what you had was something a little more like the Bretton Woods system but not no weighted voting opportunities group of countries electing representatives for very long terms two times four years so instead of Brazil joining Brazil might be elected by the Latin American group and might be a member for four years or eight years but Mexico was or any other Latin country Ecuador or whatever Uruguay was not forever excluded from the permanent status so it was more flexible the one which gathered a lot of steam was actually plan A plan B was a little bit shelved not by the UN itself but by the member states there was a lot of support by some countries for example making Japan a permanent member but it never happened the whole year passed no final decision was made and I think a lot of opposition to this plan came from the fact that some countries said look in a sense things worse the whole idea of having some countries as permanent members and others as not introduces a fundamental inequality and all you're doing is adding another four or five, six countries to that group forever instead let's have it more constituency based but then the constituency based plan didn't gather much steam either so that's where we are at this point I don't know what will happen in the next year or two I do believe some change is necessary I mean you know I once asked the advisor to a permanent member with a veto right do you think that 20 years from now your country will still be a permanent member with a veto right and the advisor said no and then I said well what about discussing you know some changes he said no we have this funny situation that everybody kind of agrees that the present system doesn't make much sense and probably will not be around 20, 30 years from now but when you then say okay well then let's do something about it then no we can't because it's just too ingrained so we have a very tough situation here on the economic side I also believe it may not be as dramatic because at the end of the day economic crisis very bad economic crisis doesn't have the same urge I mean how should I put it the same devastating effect as for example nuclear war could have but there are some major problems whether it's in trade, whether it's in environment whether it's in financial systems, global stability and so on many issues on the economic side need also a multilateral framework and here we are stuck with this situation where the IMF and the World Bank kind of do their thing one system is on the other side and does their thing they don't really meet very much and there's a general feeling of the system is dominated by the rich countries and it generates a lot of resentment on the part of the developing countries and also among the emerging developing countries both the very poor ones in Africa and elsewhere who feel powerless within that whole system but also the bigger guys who feel they need a place at the table now the table of course outside that whole system where people meet and try to make decisions are the G8 is the G8 that's where leaders meet regularly I have to keep thinking that everything is kind of on the record even if it's off the record but you know that's where somehow seven countries plus one now plus Russia have given themselves the right to meet and kind of decide the future of the world okay and when you think about it China isn't there India isn't there Latin America isn't there it's not a framework that one can qualify as very legitimate it may be useful to get some things going and I think the G8 has made some very good decisions in the past on Glen Eagles for example the decision to really increase development aid or at least the commitment, the promise and other things but when you think of the G8 as the only kind of framework for actually making decisions on the economic and social side worldwide it really lacks representativeity and lacks legitimacy so what is now being put forward increasingly in various ways is based on two or three principles I would say one is that you need a framework a forum which is less than 191 countries meeting around the table which is too unwieldy and doesn't generate decisions you need something where you have representatives of various regional groupings and some individual countries the largest countries that come together to actually look at these global public good issues and actually make naturalism work the second and I think most people kind of agree with that the second principle I think is that it should be you know it should reflect the contributions, the weight the real weight of countries in the international system but should not totally exclude the smaller countries either one proposal that the former prime minister of Canada Paul Martin had put forward was the L20 the G20 is the group of large countries in the world on the finance side and he said why don't we make that group evolve into a group of leaders at the prime minister's level and call it the L20 I think the problem with taking only the large countries is that there are numerous small countries that absolutely have to have a place in that whole debate you cannot exclude the small countries from this kind of higher level international architecture so I think we need a mix and the third principle I'd like to propose is that it has to be at the leaders level I mean that is the value for all its limitations of the G8 that people meet at heads of state or government level I think the problem we have when we meet only at the sectoral level that some of the intersectional issues and priorities don't get even discussed or let alone solved so we have to have some forum some mechanism where we don't have just the finance ministers meeting finance ministers and central bank governors as we do for the World Bank IMF meetings or the labor ministers meet I mean these meetings will go on but I do believe that we do need an overarching framework which pulls it all together doesn't deal with all the details but gives some basic direction to the international system and to multilateralism there are two actual proposals out now one came out about a month ago by the global task force for public goods global public goods presided by the former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo which proposes what is called the G25 which is the G20 and for those of you who don't remember the G20 is the G7 augmented with the major emerging market countries such as India, Brazil Mexico and so on Turkey is also a member but augment that G20 with five representatives from a group of smaller countries and formally call this the G instead of the G8 the G25 and give it certain powers, certain attributes to try to give impulses to the international system of course nobody is saying that this group becomes a pure decision maker they couldn't but do what the G8 does but in a much more inclusive and global way the other proposal is going to come out in a few days and therefore I mean you know it's no longer a secret the secretary general did create a second panel to deal more with the economic and social side panel on coherence in development environment and humanitarian affairs and that group of people which included three prime ministers Gordon Brown from the UK and others comes up with a proposal for an L27 very similar to Ernesto Zedillo's and his groups G25 but where it doesn't start from the G20 but actually starts from ECOSOC being the 54 members of the General Assembly of the UN family elected by the General Assembly to deal with economic and social matters but these are 54 countries coming by regional groupings from all over the world and the L27 proposal would be to ask this ECOSOC group to come together once a year at leader's level but half of them only, 27 and they would rotate maybe two years would be one group and then two other years would be another group of 27 which reflects I think the reasonable concern that once you get a group like that that's too large in terms of decision making even having a good discussion it becomes very difficult at most 30 is what you can deal with in a forum like that where if you want to have real decision making or at least real proposals for decision making so a lot of that is floating around these proposals are being made now I think the reaction can be there probably is going to be a range of reaction but to take extremes some people will say all this is irrelevant these are people making gymnastics of ideas in the international community in the UN and elsewhere but the fact of the matter is nation states is what counts power politics, real politics is what counts you can create whatever group you like but at the end of the day it won't really matter and you know it's the old game of nation states that continues and all this is not really very relevant the other extreme of course is to be very optimistic and say that in the face of these huge challenges of international decision making architecture that can deal with the global public bads and goods in a much more forceful way than in the past nobody is talking of going above the nation state mind you here it's not like in the European constitution or in Europe where some European federalists really viewed you know really going completely beyond the nation state still taking the nation state as the fundamental element of the international system but trying to create a structure and an architecture of cooperation that will allow nation states to share some sovereignty to solve particular problems now I think we really need to think very hard about these things I really do believe that the threats that are facing us are so big, so huge that just business as usual is not is just not acceptable and in that sense I do want to share this conviction with you today it reminds me a little bit of Paul Krugman's book I think it was The Rise of I forgot the name The Age of Diminishing Expectations and in that book in one chapter he says the following about human nature he says look all of us have big problems in our life our health our marriage love life if you like and our job, our career and once in a while we think about these things but in many of my friends he says decide that these are two big issues to deal with I can't change my habits dramatically in my genes and all that I may have to change my lifestyle dramatically but I really can't my health is more or less set in the way it is in terms of career long ago we studied something we set ourselves on a certain path maybe it was a mistake maybe it wasn't the right thing maybe we would love to be a doctor rather than an architect or whatever but it's just we can't all of a sudden go back to school and learn a new trade and love love is a complicated topic but many of my friends are in some of them let's say are in relationships which maybe don't have enough passion but there is habit there is changing everything now it's just too complicated too nerve wrecking so they say okay this Sunday I'm going to go and fix my basement and I mean I think he the message is it is true that in life when you some of the really big questions are very difficult to face and then it's very natural human reaction that you look for something that you can actually deal with and you try to deal with it and it's very I mean there's nothing wrong with that and indeed we should do that and that's often the way you make progress but I do believe that given the threats we face now you know given the fact that we are independent and yet we live with a nation state machinery you know that reflects the world of 50 or maybe 150 years ago I think really carefully thinking through on how we are going to manage the global system whether it's the ecosystem the ecology, whether it's human security terrorism, nuclear threats disease these things really need global approaches and management not to supplant the local governments to deal with many many things but we need that global level and if we don't make a real effort to get there we will face increasing problems. Networks civil society, private sector NGOs can contribute a lot to that but they can't really solve the big problem you still need state machinery and public policy to deal with the really big problems the Middle East disaster situation is not going to be solved by NGOs NGOs can do a lot of good there but somehow you need statecraft and you need the international community to see the extent of the mess and to try to do something about it and I think the same goes through for environmental issues and so on so we need the political the public policy side of dimension to complete the very positive actions I think that civil society can do and indeed civil society can push for these decisions without civil society pushing for them I don't think much much will happen so let me end then this this plea or this you know this presentation on the role of the U.S. in all that because I think when we look at the world you know half the world's armament budget is U.S. one trillion is spent on armaments half of it is U.S. the U.S. is tremendously powerful economically and certainly in terms of defense ideas in terms of science in terms of university wonderful universities like this one it's a huge huge power in the world of a kind perhaps that didn't exist for a very long time maybe since the Roman times and so on at the same time I would submit that you know the last few years if anything have shown that the tremendous limits to what the country like the U.S. can achieve on its own and it's becoming increasingly clear so you know in a way it's it's a huge challenge now because we are for the U.S. because we are in a multilateral system or in international architecture where certainly it's not possible to advance without the U.S. okay it's too big too large too powerful too influential too rich the international community will not get organized without positive U.S. contribution U.S. support U.S. can certainly change stop any possible change in any direction it's powerful enough and large enough to play that role on the other hand the U.S. is also feeling that many initiatives are running into dead allies many things are blocked many things are not moving ahead and there are clear limits we now in the next years or maybe five years, decade or so we face this the situation where either in the U.S. there's gonna be a change and there will be a much more active support for multilateralism and international policy solutions to global problems or we will face huge huge international problems and I'm optimistic actually because when you look at the history of the United States when you look at the U.S. and I'm Turkish I'm not an American citizen so I'd say it as somebody who has lived in the U.S. who likes the U.S. who is very fond of of America but I think when you look at it actually it has three interesting things one it's very global it's a society where you're from the Czech Republic you're from Turkey teaching it's one of the most global societies so in a sense for the U.S. to kind of relate to the global world and in a sense take a leadership in a governance system that would be appropriate to a global world I think from a cultural, psychological perspective shouldn't be that difficult it's more difficult in societies that are much more homogenous which are which are less open or it's not open to the world in a sense perhaps travel as much as maybe a Czech citizen does but in terms of the basic relationships whether it's to East Asia whether it's to Africa as African Americans whether it's to the Middle East through the connection with the Jewish community in Israel or to the connection to the Arab community it's all there in the U.S. so in a sense all the ingredients are there for the U.S. to actually be committed to a global solution or global approach to the world's key challenges the second thing is when one looks back at history of course as I said early on during the presentation I mean it was actually the U.S. leadership that led to the United Nations in the first place I mean the San Francisco declaration all the very strong commitment of the U.S. to multilaterals and multilateral institutions a beautiful speech is President Kennedy's address at the commencement of American University I think in 1962 or something like that where you have a beautiful statement about multilateralism the rule of law in the world the need for nation state to submit to the rule of law internationally President Kennedy U.S. President and the need to organize in a multilateral way and I can I mean whether you go back to Jefferson or even President Reagan coming from a different side of the political spectrum a lot of multilateralism and commitment to the world actually in U.S. leadership in the past and finally third point the resource side I mean this is a whole different topic much more technical economic the twin deficits and global imbalances the $700 billion deficit and you know current account deficit in U.S. but I think if you look at it from a resource point of view it would seem quite clear that U.S. even though it has this huge GDP and wealth and all that doesn't have the financial means to deal alone with many of these problems it has to share the costs of human security of environmental management and of other issues so there is also a strong economic pressure that will militate in the direction of a more multilateral approach in U.S. policy and I think when that happens it will many things which seem impossible now will all of a sudden move ahead much more quickly so that's why I do believe that it is important and I am fairly optimistic that the dynamics within the U.S. society actually exist of course others have to cooperate too Europe and every country has to move in that direction but I think the role of the U.S. is critical and one comparison I sometimes make I don't know how justified it is but it struck me the other day thinking about it because when I first came to the U.S. when student at Princeton it was in 1970 at the end of the 1960s American society did something very very important in terms of race relations and race integration I think it really faced the issue in the 60s and did a lot of things and of course there are huge problems that remain and some African American communities remain disadvantaged economically and income wise and so on but I think when you compare the U.S. today to the 50s early 60s there was a very very kind of deep shift in what kind of society the U.S. was going to be and a deep commitment by leaders to integration and now you have a country where the Secretary of State is an African American the Chief of Staff an American American and you now the latest to throw in their hat into the ring Barack Obama is talking about becoming president I think in my view I don't think it would have been feasible in the 60s at all so there has been a deep transformation in the psychology extremely positive of course to a multiethnic multiracial society in a real sense where anybody from any ethnicity minority can go to the very top I compare and that needed a deep transformation of people's attitudes of people's way of thinking I compare this challenge that exists in the 60s a little bit to the challenge of multilateralism now in the U.S. I think what's needed is a kind of realization that multilateralism is absolutely necessary for human security and that the U.S. has to lead the process has to look at it very positively not as something to be afraid of and something that somehow will make things more difficult on the country as one of the only ways that we can manage the challenges of the coming century in a decent way and I think once that conversion happens which I think it will happen actually then we will have the strongest nation in the world playing this leadership role which we so much need I don't think it's the only solution there are many other things that are necessary for it to happen but I do believe that there is this psychological conversion that's needed and I do feel a deep resistance to it of course also but I think it's a resistance that in the end is superficial and that if there is some leadership and actually arguing for it without being afraid that it's a bad word then I think all of a sudden the progress may be much much faster than we think so this is something I want to share with you it is linked to the role of the United Nations because we need that support and effective United Nations cannot be there unless major countries in the world are supportive we cannot deal with a huge developmental issues and human security issues without that support so that step that needs to be taken where the United Nations meets its largest member in a positive way and wants to move forward I think is one of the big big challenges ahead of us again we need others we need support from everywhere of course but this particular support given that I'm talking about in American University I think is particularly important many thanks I think we do have some time for a few questions why don't we start there I think it's an excellent question because Europe in a sense led the way from being the origin of nation states in the good and the bad because the European nation state was able to create a much more human society greater social welfare more democracy and all that it also created two world wars and terrible destruction that nation state so the attempt of Europe to overcome that and create a multilateral a kind of supranational system I think is very very important although I would be a little bit careful because when I talk of multilateralism I don't yet I mean maybe our grandchildren the nationality that Europe involves so there are some differences I still believe that it's way too early and would be unrealistic to define a global project where Europe kind of tends to see itself to some degree as almost one country with the flag the blue flag and the blue flag is very interesting I mean you go to all kinds of places which are nowhere near Europe yet like Georgia or whatever you have so lots of people but nonetheless there are many elements that are very similar for example how to balance still the state versus the federal level I mean of course the US has that too it's a federal country how to use population weights in the voting system versus you know having one country one vote type of so many things that the Europeans are exploring I think are very relevant to the global experience I think Europe of course is now suffering a major setback and in a sense it's true the constitution was rejected I remain fairly optimistic I think these things don't work linearly Europe does have to absorb the new entrance does have to really work on the institutions before it can actually have new vigor in its project and there is one sentence which I really love by Jean Monnet one of the founders founding fathers of Europe when they asked him to define it's actually the last sentence of his memoirs where he says ladies and gentlemen don't make a mistake our European project is not an end in itself but just the first step to a better organized world so in a sense you know the founder of Europe already it wasn't just about Europe it was about the world in a sense too so there are many many relevant aspects but I do believe that in a way it all feeds on one another you know when one side blocks the other one becomes also more less cooperative so there's an interaction between what's happening in the US, what's happening in Europe what's happening in other countries whether it be positive or negative right now it's more in the negative mood than in the positive mood and then there's this thing about efficiency which is another given that you asked the Europe question which I think is an interesting point when you walk in the European parliament I don't know how many of you have walked in the European parliament some of you I'm sure you have all the interpreters all the languages I think 23 or something now given that they're 25 members I think a significant portion of the European budget is actually spent on interpretation so one thought I had walking around the European parliament is what a waste of resources all these interpreters and all that but then immediately I stopped myself and I said look if that's what it takes to avoid wars between these countries to lower military budgets to create a zone of peace I mean let's spend the money there's no problem of a trade-off between the rub between trying to be super efficient versus creating the mechanism whereby you may have to talk a lot and waste some time and pay interpreters but it's a little bit the same at the General Assembly in the United Nations you come in there and one reaction could be well let's get something done and of course that is a correct request but on the other hand having all these people interacting in all the languages what would be feeling as an outsider has tremendous benefits also yes and then there are farming communities who really do not want to lead the farm and go to the city even though agricultural policies in many places and internationally policies are forcing farm families off their farms because of the low prices for commodities internationally traded and because of the government policies which see a demunition of the number of farms as a more of the goal and then the third group are indigenous communities who live for instance in the Brazilian rainforest and who feel that their whole way of life is tied up with particular sites particular habitats and they all regard on the international for preserving those habitats and letting them preserve their own communities so I'm not concerned about the international framework you're talking about maybe we'll take one or two questions more and then I can make my last because that way Jan you had a question or comment very strong so it's able to block but not strong enough to proceed without limits and therefore to be multilateral and I was going to push you a little bit so we can think in recent memory let's say the Clinton administration will be regarded as being much more multilateral than the current administration if you were to take them as the base in which direction one, two or three things should be pushed to achieve the goal of becoming more multilateral okay and then if okay if there's any what else then yeah why don't we take one there and there are some issues that's complex internationally that can be dealt with in a more narrow and focused big way like and the bilateral deal between the U.S. to make one amount well my question is like this approach applies to another area of globalization that is the connection trade we all know about the issues about what happened and what is happening and we see the proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements it's like do you see that these bilateral agreements as thumbing blocks or are they like building blocks or legal framework all right well I mean we're kind of out about it, I'll very telegraphically say a few words maybe on the last one you know I think some amount of regional cooperation is clearly can be a building block but it depends a lot what type of agreement they are and I definitely don't think that what's called the spaghetti ball you know the kind of all kinds of very complicated regional agreements can replace a good multilateral legally binding trading system so I'm concerned about the bilateral deals and the other thing the developing countries of course should always realize that when they're in bilateral negotiation with the EU or the U.S. you know the power balance is totally against them whereas in a multilateral framework when all the developing countries participate in that framework they can of course bring much more weight to the table and the deal they will reach overall will probably be more in their favor than if Bangladesh negotiates directly with let's say the European Union so in that sense it's to the developing countries advantage I think to have a multilateral framework in terms of the voices of many groups I think the UN their voices but whether these voices translate into action which I think is the real question that's much more difficult I must say that the UN is trying a lot within the United Nations there was a decade for indigenous people on gender issues we really hope to push much harder there will be a new organization that is now being proposed it's UNIFEM but UNIFEM strengthened world women's and gender organization so but for decisions to be made on all these things again you need the political level advocacy can only take you so far on the 90s versus afterwards President Clinton is an advisor to the UNDP on tsunami so therefore once in a while we have the privilege of hosting him and he comes by and I think I think the 90s he very much realizes that it's his view also the 90s so much could have been done during the 90s because the Berlin Wall collapsed the Soviet the Cold War ended the history ended Fukuyama and there was this tremendous opportunity in a way to build the new world with new print with new institutions overcoming the Cold War blockages security council reform all the things I mentioned the ideal time was actually the 90s to do that because the whole thing on terrorism 9-11 hadn't happened there was a kind of positive outlook on the world and it wasn't taken there was no action against it it wasn't considered a major priority and let's face it it's always in our personal lives too if there's no major challenge ahead of you if you have a heart attack you really start a diet if you don't have a heart attack so I think the 90s were a little bit a decade where there wasn't that much of a challenge in a sense so while the administration in the US even the first Bush administration and then Clinton in a sense much more multilateralist and much more inclined to work in a multilateral framework than what came afterwards is I think the challenge wasn't so immediate and actually President Clinton has shared with me once that he really felt that so much more could have been done at that time and of course he's doing a lot now in his more private capacity when came this period the terrible crime of 9-11 and all that and then the reaction coupled with this well I should go back one more step and of course also in the 90s I think there was an unrealistic view of US power it was the Soviet Union was gone no more competition that's it I think what we're seeing now it's not that easy there are lots of it's different threats it's no longer like the Soviet Union another superpower but there are many many socio-economic and security threats and I think we're now getting to the point where many are realizing that in fact I mean that's my thesis that one should move towards that multilateralism I don't think some of the proposals like enlarging the Security Council or creating are practical proposals but I think what's more important than any one particular action is really the outlook the approach we have these problems how are we going to solve them and here last point I think it needs to be a combination of people who share certain goals and values you can't always get the whole world to agree with anybody I mean whether it's France, the US, Turkey there will always be certain alliances, certain coalition certain like-minded in the UN system on the economic side we have like-minded donors which are mostly the most generous Nordics and so on all that's fine but the basic approach is we have to have an international system that works how can we actually make it work and how can we slowly have rules which people submit to like in the WTO WTO is actually a fairly good progress because WTO everybody actually submits to arbitration there and so enlarging that kind of approach and having building political support for multilateralism I think is the essence once that political support is there once people are no longer afraid in an election campaign to say yes I am for multilateralism you know once that barrier is broken then I think one can sit down and say okay how do we do it what's the better choice empirically what works better then there are lots of things that can be debated but first one has to go beyond that barrier which unfortunately still exists that even saying that you might want to work with the United Nations is not such a great political thing these days still and that has to be changed thanks a lot oh sorry I think I have to run Marina because there is a plane we want to very much thank you for coming and have framed a copy of the the poster that's been out front that you all saw with thanks for all of your work and your contributions thank you very much thank you very much