 I do want to say to all of you that not only are you having a great time and tackling some of the toughest issues that there are in the world, but you also have achieved a certain degree of contemporary currency in that this morning peace game has been sort of trending on social media and that in fact for a while there was trending in D.C. and there have been more than 1,300 tweets with this hashtag today, almost all of them admittedly from Andrew. But having said that, one of the questions was will the sessions be recorded and available to watch later? The sessions are actually streaming. There are some people watching streaming, somebody said it was streaming into some offices which suggests to me that some people don't have enough work to do, but in any event, because if I had people working for me, they were spending all day watching streaming video of this conference, I'd be a little disturbed. But it is recorded and will be available to watch on the web. And then there's a variety of different tweets. This was handed to me by the social media people here and one of them says something about me, which I'll skip over it, although it says, no, no, it's nice. Why do you assume that I'm skipping over it because it's not nice? It was very nice. I didn't want to be self-serving and it ends, hope you can eat too, which I assume it's from my mother. And somebody else said, peace game is fascinating, yes, it's Petri dish diplomacy, but how great if as much energy went into peace games as war. And somebody else said on session one of USIP's peace game, great community of experts, hope later talk, moves to more talk about second order effects of deal and making processes. And then, of course, here's Andrew tweeting, halfway through peace game day one and Rhonda Slim and I playing Hezbollah are winning the hell out of this thing. So before we go any further, does anybody have any comments? And then there's one here saying Dana Stuster is doing a fantastic job live tweeting peace game, but his spiffy new Twitter avatar is making me feel inadequate. Look folks, if your Twitter avatar is so closely related to your identity that it can make you feel inadequate, turn it off. Turn off the phone. You are too connected to social media. In any event, it's good that there's some buzz out there about all this. Let's now move on to the next session and the next phase, which is called building a sustained peace. And we're going to talk about how we tackle this first, but let's go through the couple of slides that we've got to frame it following a negotiated settlement and admittedly we didn't actually arrive at a negotiated settlement, but there is certainly one of the possibilities that we discussed was that there might be one. And there are several daunting tasks, one being disarmament, demobilization and reintegration. Second one being restoration of governance. The third one being economic reconstruction. And the fourth being refugee return and resettlement. Now again, we'll probably not be able to get through all the dimensions of all of these here, but we'll certainly start with a couple of them. Go on. Well, this just adds a little bit of color. Leon Panetta said, I think it's important when Assad leaves to try to preserve stability and the best way to preserve that kind of stability is to maintain as much of the military, the police as you can, along with security forces and hope they will transition to a democratic form of government. Those of you who are following your programs will know this is a veiled follow-up to what we did in Iraq, right? This is essentially a comment about the debathification, without saying as much. Next. In terms of disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, you know, there are a bunch of domestic obstacles too. At first of all, the opposition groups as we've discovered here are diverse as some of them are radicalized. Somebody, you made a comment earlier, and I'm going to give you a microphone and I'm going to give you 45 seconds. But just make the comment about how some of the opposition is changing because it goes back to the point about it being dynamic. Is it on? The microphone on? Okay, go ahead. Thank you. So I said we've been oblivious to two major veto players. We have lumped everyone under Islamist extremists. You have the Islamic front, 60,000 recently came into, was recently established, 60,000 long fighters spread all over Syria. So that's a force to reckon with. And they're a major veto player. You need to keep thinking about them. And then there's also the PYD, PYG, the Syrian version of PKK. They have ambitions for a semi-autonomous or an autonomous region. And there's a sub-conflict between them and the Arab armed opposition. So you also need to keep that in mind. So it's not just the Islamic state of Iraq and Shem. There's also the Islamic front, and you need to keep thinking, you need to think about them, because if they say no, then you're going to run in trouble. Okay, thanks. Well, just because a microphone was passed in front of you doesn't mean you can... Okay, it shows a lot of restraints that you have two microphones. Please take those away from him almost immediately. No, no, go ahead. You may use one of them briefly. I would just add, if you're talking about the opposition, the military dynamics of the conflict will drive the peace process, and that has not been talked about enough, and to the extent that the United States refuses or does not wish to get involved with the conflict, you're basically setting the terms for the peace in a very disadvantageous way for the opposition. Okay, thank you. So anyway, the opposition groups are diverse, they're radicalized, or some of them are certainly radicalized, and in terms of the regime-affiliated state security apparatus, the armed forces serve as regime protectorate as well as potential stabilizing force, and there is, of course, a potential for some, or all of the armed forces to continue fighting. Next. In terms of the disarmament phase, the destruction of chemical weapons and the need for peacekeeping will require some sustained international involvement, something we may want to deal with in the context of this. We do have international peacekeepers and others who now might get more involved in this discussion. Next. Michael Hamlin said, the Syrian government built around the Bath Party and the Assad family does not have a great deal of institutional depth. We can challenge that or not as we go. Next. In terms of restoration of governments, societal fragmentation, there's a theme here clearly, is that despite the ethnic and religious diversity, there is a clear, large Sunni Arab majority, which complicates any future discussions on power sharing and the protection of minority rights. Sunni Arabs make up about 60 percent of Syria's population. And of course, you know, there is this bigger Sunni Shia tension throughout the region, and I think one of the things that we need to keep in mind is the failure to address this issue could end up exacerbating that tension and actually contributing to the spread of a kind of a region-wide conflict. In fact, I've spoken to some people who have argued that we're actually in the middle of a region-wide conflict now, and it could actually be the intensification of that conflict, which would then lead to much greater kind of issues and challenges. Next. In terms of political restoration, you know, it says institutions and democracies, Syria has a long history of weak institutions and stifled political culture, making consensus building and political restoration an arduous task. You know, I mean, clearly we can debate this if you've got one family that's been ruling the country for a long time, then some of the institutions aren't so weak. In terms of doing what they're supposed to be doing and in terms of responsiveness to public need, that's another issue. How one goes forward from that, particularly if that regime has some role in what's going forward, is poses some interesting challenges that we'll get to next. Okay, another quote, we'll skip over that and you can read these later. In terms of economic reconstruction, you know, the conflict has caused absolutely devastating consequences economically, whether it's agricultural yields falling to less than half of pre-conflict levels, the deindustrialization, 75% of production facilities in Aleppo, for example, are no longer operable. GDP has essentially been, you know, I mean, eradicated, it's quite striking. The oil industry's at a standstill with 95% decline in production, most of the public infrastructure has been destroyed, including 600,000 homes, 3,500 schools, universities, hospitals, et cetera, and of course there's big price tags associated with that. And then the next, in terms of structural challenges, you know, you've got youth unemployment at 50% roughly, you've got about an $80 billion rebuilding cost, you've got income inequality growing there, and it's growing fairly rapidly, as is the group of people in poverty. Again, another quote, which you can read later, and then finally, in terms of refugee return and resettlement, refugees threaten regional stability, clearly that's one of the reasons that countries like Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and so forth are extremely concerned about this and how one gets those refugees back, if one can get those refugees back, is as complicated a logistical challenge as any associated with this process. Next, part of this is restoring specific communities, and by the way, part of, you know, there's political consequence to where the refugees go back to and, you know, which areas are empowered and so forth, you know, coordinating refugee return is also coordinating the political future of different parts of the country. Next, there's no, that's it. So let's go to the questions very quickly, again, five questions. What's the biggest challenge Syria will face after a potential political settlement is achieved? Armed groups with competing interests, restoring basic state functions, repairing economic infrastructure, refugee return and resettlement, or distributing humanitarian aid and services. And again, if there's another one that we haven't covered here, let us know. So armed groups with competing interests is the dominant answer. Is there another one that somebody here wanted to, okay, sure. Yeah, I think one of the things, it falls a little bit under the first one, but you're going to have a lot of different groups armed or not who are going to be competing over access to these resources as they flow in. And I think that's something that we're really going to need to think about in the reconstruction phase and hasn't been thought about enough. Okay, I also think, by the way, we should just flag, or at least I want to flag that, you know, because no one said distributing humanitarian aid and services, you could draw a couple of conclusions from that. One is that nobody thinks that's the biggest problem because, you know, it falls behind all the other problems that exist. But secondly, I think that suggests exactly what will create problems in that area, because as it sort of put at the back of the train, it's going to get under-addressed and underserved and under-utilized and under-funded. Next. What's the biggest obstacle to achieving disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration following an agreement? Fractured opposition, lack of public trust and peace agreement, sustained sectarian tensions, widespread appetite for revenge and retribution, or flow of arms and support from regional backers? So sustained sectarian tensions leads the way with flow of arms and support from regional backers being second. I think that those two things are clearly related to one another, so one might see them as overlapping to some extent. Next. The most important aspect of restoring governance that must occur in post-war Syria. Constitutional review, re-establishment of state services and rule of law, developing transitional justice mechanisms, decentralizing power to the regions, allowing for public participation in the process. View the answer to this is re-establishing state services and rule of law with decentralization and allowing for public participation following up as the next two. Interesting to the extent to which constitutional review lags all of these things. Next. After political settlement is achieved, which of the following economic issues is most pressing? Integration of combatants into the workforce, lifting of economic sanctions, encouraging domestic and foreign investment, immediate repair of infrastructure, or restoring trade relationships? 50% saying immediate repair of infrastructure and 32% saying integration of combatants into the workforce. That's, we could come back to that. I'm not sure that's correct, actually. Not that, well, you know, look, you speak for Turkey, you speak for the United States, I will speak for what's right and wrong. And finally, what is the largest hurdle in return and resettlement of refugees? A, loss of property records and homes, donor fatigue and limited international involvement, sectarian violence and acts of revenge, absence of social, medical, and educational services. Again, sectarian violence and acts of revenge. So let's talk a little bit about this. Let's talk about two components. We didn't achieve a peace agreement in this last session. We sort of arrived at a couple of possibilities, one of which is a deal might be struck. You know, if we could get, whether we call it the Royal Flush or we could take Kristen's analysis and say, well, we might get one or two components of this. We might get Iran to put some pressure on or Iran and Russia to put some pressure on and you might get Assad to leave. But you will probably end up in that situation with some rump Assad regime as a player going forward in this process alongside some other players. And I think the core, or you don't have a deal, the Assad regime remains in place. The fighting continues on. The other parties fight and then you might have something that's resolved as a result of military pressure or entropy or some other factor. But I think both of these things are related to, you know, how power gets meted out and what the governing structure of the country looks like post either a deal or even post a failed deal and moving towards a best possible peace that does not actually involve a deal. How do you split up power? Is it possible, and I'm going to go back to you, Steve, since you've framed this thing again, but is it possible to envision realistically a unitary government, you know, for Syria, you know, that covers the whole state in which the opposition groups and some successor to the Assad regime or the, well, I don't think we can work with the Assad regime as it's currently constituted, but some successor, share power? I think it's possible. I think the odds of success of that kind of an outcome will depend very heavily on the specific functions that are assigned to various state institutions and the division of labor between former regime figures and opposition figures that emerges within each of those institutions. For example, I could imagine fairly quick movement toward the reconstruction of state institutions responsible for the provision of basic services, which is a critical element in creating conditions that will move Syria quickly towards something resembling normalcy. I can see much slower, more difficult and more contentious processes surrounding building accepted divisions of labor within newly restructured Syrian armed forces, within a redesigned intelligence apparatus whose functions, one hopes, will have changed in the post-Assad or post-transition Syria. So I think if we can disaggregate the various roles, functions, authorities, responsibilities of state institutions, I can imagine a number of arenas in which it will be possible to see fairly rapid movement toward the reemergence of effective state functioning and basic services on the basis of division of labor between regime figures and their opposition counterparts and others in which those kinds of understandings will be very difficult to achieve. Let's talk about power sharing and who shares with whom and who comes out on top and how that looks. Andrew, you've thought a little bit about this. Talk a little bit about how you think that would look. It's a very good question, power sharing and sharing. Prior to this, Andrew came up to me and said, you should ask that question because I think it's a very good question and that's why I've asked it instead. Well, I actually was generated out of a conversation that Moorhaaf and I were having in the break. It's an incredibly tricky situation because you're looking at, if you're talking about a power sharing agreement that encompasses the entire country, you'd have to be looking at sides that were willing to make significant compromise, real changes to their position. And I think in order to integrate the opposition back into a centralized structure, the Assad family and the Mahloos in particular would have to go. The problem that I see is that we see nothing forcing that happening. If they're not in a situation where they stay and die or go and live, I don't really see them anything forcing that absent a military intervention that we don't see. Also on the other hand, I don't see what also forces the, there would have to be an arrangement from the opposition side as well, particularly among the extremists. I think Moorhaaf has outlined this in terms of they would have to make some concessions or members of their groups would have to be peeled off and brought on to the more moderate factions and I just don't see it. So I think in the short term, it perpetuates this idea in my mind that Syria will in fact be in a de facto state of partition for some time. How would that look? I think it'll look something, we actually, Karina and I were having a conversation as well. I hope you don't mind I'll just refer to it but we were trying, after we were discussing what it looked like and if you look at these maps, right now it seems as if both sides are trying to solidify their lines of control and you can see in some areas the lines of control smoothing out the contours between the two sides. Much less like a mosaic and more like just a messy watercolour. But then going forward, people have said, well, because Syria and the foreign Yugoslavia are roughly the same population and you have the sectarian dimension, they point to that. Actually it seems as if, and I agree with Karina's point, was that it looks something closer to Somalia, particularly given the role of extremists. And actually this conflict just goes on and it just sort of settles out into a divided country in which there are some areas with... That's the process but what does it look like? What does it look like on the map? I think it does not look like the Syrian Arab Republic as I lived in it and is currently the Sykes-Bicot borders. That doesn't mean I don't think Syrians want that Syria to stay in one piece. I think they do and I would prefer it as well but I think it would look like a messy watercolour for the possible future. Karina, he was speaking on your behalf and he asserted you said all sorts of things. I hope I did okay. But just, what I really want to get at here is what does the power-sharing look like? And there's two ways we can approach this, within a government or in a partitioned country. I mean, those are kind of the two ways that can shake out. I'm just wondering what your view is. It's very difficult because it depends on when is it that this situation solidifies and what areas are consolidated. But in many ways, for a very long time, humanitarian and all sorts of international workers from the secretariat outside have been talking about there's no continuum between peace and war but there is continuum in terms of areas that coexist at the same time with different degrees of violence and with different degrees of institutional control. And so in many ways, you could eventually consider a map of, in the worst case scenario, a map of Syria where some areas are consolidated and you have the Somali lands and company of this world and the others that are absolutely out of control ruled by clans, families and that's the worst case scenario for Syria. Well, it may be the worst but if it's the best possible case, that's what we're interested in. In other words, it may be a bad case but, you know, again, maybe one of you guys, and what I really want to get at here is what do we think it looks like? What does either power-sharing look like within a government or what does a fragment at Syria look like? You can address either one of those because they're both sort of parallel scenarios that we... Okay, I think we'd all agree that right now we have a very fragmented opposition to Assad. It's been mentioned the Islamic Front, Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS outside of the Islamic Front, more or less. You have the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian National Council. What I think could happen is warlordism because I think if the Assad's go, you do have clans. I never thought the Alawites were monolithic. You do have clans among the Alawites. And I don't think that the Alawite officer corps is monolithic. And I think that when and if the Assad's go, despite the best laid plans of great powers, et cetera, this might devolve into a free furl. But in the context of what we're talking about, there are some likely bad cases. But in terms of the best possible piece, let's just take that a second. Is there... Are there possible arrangements there that are more stable than other arrangements? You were talking about there are some parts of the country that might remain fairly stable and then there'll be some parts that are in almost constant conflict. But that might be as good as you can get in the first phase and then you might have to go in and squeeze the places that are in conflict, right? And I'm just wondering, is there a sort of a semi-stable approach? Right now you have a semi-stable area along the coast, Tartus, Latakia and the coastal mountains that the Alawites and their Christian allies dominate. There are Sunni populations, large Sunni populations in Latakia and all, but the ethnic cleansing at the moment is not going on there. So that's one sort of region? That's one region that is potentially semi-stable. Kurdish regions might be semi-stable unto themselves. Those are bright. And in that western area, which I think Ambassador Ted has talked about, you have a situation that what would be the ideal, perhaps some kind of deal between, for lack of a better term, Alawites with guns who are not in the core of the regime and the more moderate factions of the opposition. We don't see that yet. But I think in either whatever scenario comes out, you're going to have large swaths of Syria that are ungoverned spaces and that's the real problem of the argument of, why don't we just go back and re-engage Assad or cut a deal with Assad. The control over the country, we have to accept that control going forward is going to be very loose, particularly out east. Let me ask a question. As far as the polling, did you teed up like a true false or something like that? Yes, no. Just either one of them is fine. OK, just ignore what the words say. But listen to what I'm saying. I'd just like to get a temperature of the room kind of quickly. A means you think that power sharing within some kind of government apparatus is the best possible outcome over the course of the next 10 years. In other words, you think you could get there. Or B, you think that a fragmented state is the best possible outcome. In other words, within a government or multiple actors within the borders. Which is most likely, excuse me. Which is the most likely scenario? I know, I just said most likely. So it was the right question, you're right. So let's just say most likely. So A is within a government, B is fragmentation. So that's interesting in a group like this that is immersed in this issue that 60% of the group thinks that over the course of the next 10 years fragmented country is more likely. Did you have somebody else who wanted to say? Do you want to say something really quickly while we're walking past you? Very quickly. We can imagine a pathway to power sharing emerging out of some kind of a negotiation. The question is what the division of authority would look like at the national level, assuming an integral Syrian state. And I think my own sense is that the most likely outcome is what I would call a Zimbabwe solution. Oh, that sounds great. In which we're talking about best possible, best possible. In which a governing party will continue to hold power over major state institutions. The opposition will occupy the role of Morgan Changari. It will participate in government. It will be relatively weak. But we'll consider that it has greater incentives to remain inside the game than to opt out. OK, that's a very interesting point. And there is a hierarchy of potential outcomes here. And what we're saying, I mean, I don't want to conclude the discussion, but that the most likely seems to be fragmented state within an integrated government that perhaps the most likely, but you're suggesting, is one where the dominant role is played by the regime or a successor. And the opposition is in a secondary role. And it's actually the third possibility or the least or less likely possibility is the one that you hear more of in terms of high-minded policy discussions where there's some kind of representative balanced movement towards a democratic representative government. Sharon. Yeah, I'm speaking here as an international relief and development organization that does a lot of governance work in these kinds of places. I think the discussion around ungoverned spaces ignores the fact that there very is often governance in those spaces. And I think one of the best possible outcomes, the international community is very often focused on the formal structures of governance. And it's ignored many of the informal structures of governance. And so if we're looking at a fragmented type of future, I think one of the best possible outcomes is to really think about how do we strengthen governance that brings together the formal and the informal in these different areas. Again, it's a very decentralized form of governance. Yeah, but again, it's an interesting approach, right? That if you're going to have a broken country and it's in different pieces, it's going to have different kinds of governance. And instead of seeking one kind of governance solution, you might seek the best possible governance solution within each of the fragmented regions. Peter, did you want to say something? OK, Henri. I mean, I agree with Sharon, but also I would argue that what happens in Syria is not going to be determined by Syria only. And we have to look at Iraq because the fragmented government, the fragmented state option that we're talking about is also very, very likely in Iraq. And that's going to have spillover effects. And that spillover effect is going to go both ways. So I think Syria alone, in this particular case, is not determined if we have to think about Iraq as well. Yeah, very, very, very interesting thing. We'll go to Daniel and then we'll go to Mara. I had somebody who studies these power sharing arrangements as part of what I do professionally. My sense is that, first of all, there's no necessary contradiction between having a more fragmented state and some sort of parallel formal power sharing arrangement. But power sharing and these, of course, who study this as well, power sharing arrangements of the kind that we're thinking of in a more formal way are hard to maintain unless there's an enforcer, unless there's a third party there that it really is able to provide the support militarily and on the ground. And that would revolve around the international community. So I can't see, particularly in the context of Syria, formal power sharing work working without a long-term commitment from the international community to play that role as third party enforcer. Did you want to add something to that? I will. Not as a UN peacekeeper, but as somebody who studies ethnic power sharing also. That sounds like the easier of the two options. But we've mentioned Northern Ireland and Bosnia, Lebanon, Iraq, Kosovo, these are all rigid ethnic power sharing arrangements that often require third party assistance in order for the governments to function. And if we're looking to Southern Africa for examples, let's just talk about South Africa as opposed to Zimbabwe. The armed resistance, the opposition is armed in Syria unlike in Zimbabwe where it's not armed. So Changarai isn't about to take over by force. Whereas in South Africa actually the resistance was armed. And what they worked out in South Africa was a temporary power sharing arrangement. They had a sunset clause and that meant that they could actually transition to a democracy whereas in the settlements where there's no sunset clause, you get Bosnia. I mean, in other words, when there's no hope of transitioning beyond the rigid ethnic power sharing arrangement, you're left with rigid ethnic power sharing and not a unified country. Actually that comment was much more articulate but that was along the lines of what I was going to say which is many of the things that have been described, Somalia, warlordism, a Cantonized Syria, to my mind those are all symptoms of failed power sharing. And if the question is what is the best case, I would think you have to, I love this idea of the temporary notion and then the eventual, with the idea of a transition toward democracy but clearly issues like guarantees for minorities have to be in there, some degree perhaps of decentralized power in particular instances. And for me the question is how do you deal with the sense of existential threat that is now intimately tied with identity and are there ways to negotiate solutions to that? Well in your capacity as the head of the radical Armenian resistance and in Syria, is there any incentive for the groups that you're speaking on behalf of in this discussion to sort of go along with any organized approach? No but the groups that I represent, now I'm taking my Armenian hat off and I'm putting my very staunchly jihadist hat on, they're not interested in the Syria, they're interested in a much broader transnational idea of the restoration of a caliphate. They are where they believe they should be, let's not forget Damascus is the seat of the Umayyads and this is where they get their inspiration from but they have zero interest in any notion of a Syria. They don't even recognize the idea of a nation state so they're not really part of that discussion. So one of the questions here, if you end up with a power sharing arrangement and you end up with a need to sort of stabilize that and that requires an outside set of actors to do that is that there be a reason for those outside actors to come in and exert that role. And if it's the international community, for example, as it's traditionally constituted, the question is what's the reason? And I'd like to ask a question, maybe I could ask you, Jim. It goes to the point that Mona's made and some other people have made which is we're talking here about Syria but Iraq is part of this discussion and frankly fragmentation and redrawing of the borders within this entire region of the world seems to be a bigger issue. And the question is if we get this wrong and you've got this kind of weakened ebb and flow going on within Iraq, should the United States and other Western powers really be looking at this and saying we can't afford to stay as hands off as we've been, we can't afford to let the chips fall where they may because we could really end up with something that re-drew the lines here in a way that would be materially more dangerous? Boyd is wind up being a bit stickier than you might think they would. A lot of argumentation could go into how does Iraq hold together and it somehow holds together including the Kurdish North which has a lot of other options. And that's partially a sort of residual commitment that people have other than the jihadists many of whom of course are people who've come in from the outside and that was the same case in Iraq but the people who are natives of the country tend to have some residual identity with that state beyond their ethnic or religious background. Then the other thing is if you go in then you have to be prepared to go in really hard and big and long. That's what we did in Kosovo, that's what we did in Bosnia. It's not what we did in Iraq as it turns out and it doesn't look like what we're gonna be doing in Afghanistan. And the difference is we were met with fierce resistance in both places. In the Middle East we weren't met with fierce resistance in Bosnia and Kosovo. We would be met with fierce resistance in Syria so we have to think twice about that. Well this gets to an absolutely sort of core question about how do we go forward with this? Actually, I see Peter's brought that up but I'm gonna pose the question to you which is does the United States, is there any likelihood that the United States would actively be involved in whatever was necessary to stabilize this situation or the international community actively be involved in whatever is necessary to stabilize this situation or if that's not the case then what does that say about what the situation is likely to end up with? Peter. I just consulted in my civil society cohorts here. It might make a lot of sense is to create a separation in time between the security guarantees and the protection of civil society and the construction of an end game. Maybe three, four or five years with the sunset provision that allows. That puts pressure on all parties to come to a conclusion but when you try to eliminate the violence at the same time to find an end game it might be an experience that it might be a frustrating. So one possibility would be, and just correct me if I'm getting this wrong, disengage, let people sort of stay in place and deal with their own issues for a while. Have that be the basis of a kind of a power sharing and then plan a transition three, four, five years down the road, is that? Yes, there's an empowering, the lack of violence empowers civil society. So over time the reduction of violence creates a different ability to see an end game than it would right from this moment. Okay, I'll come to you in a second. What about? So the question you posed to us was, can't afford? And the question then becomes, can't afford compared to what? The experts around the table in the rooms, 60% think this is headed towards a fragmented country. In those circumstances if you're an American policymaker how do you come to grips with that particular challenge? Do you think, do we think after our Iraq example or our Afghan example that we can make a significant difference? Where we may conclude, not yet but in time is that this becomes an issue less of governance and more of threat as the jihadist threat grows in the north and in the east. At that point we may redefine our interests in Syria away from the issue of governance and in response to a threat that we then think has direct implications for us. But that requires a lapse time between now and some point in the future. For sure. I think one of the things that drives everything and what we're talking about here is that all of the actors around this table, none of them seem to think that there's sufficient urgency to do anything really strong now. They all think, well we've lived with this thus far. Russia or Iran or the United States or Europeans are kind of like, well, we'd like to see a good outcome. We're happy to have peace talks but we don't want to put troops on the ground. We don't want to spend a lot of money. We don't want to run a big high degree of political risk. And at the same time there seems to be a perception from those close to the conflict that without that kind of pressure you're not going to get the conflict resolved which is why you end up with I think 60% of the people saying fragmentation and that the peace talks aren't going to go anywhere and that this is unlikely because there is no political will, absent a real urgent threat. George. A couple, I was going to start where we were before with the Zimbabwe non-analogy because it is not an analogy because what you're dealing with in Syria is a fiercely dedicated armed opposition, fragmented opposition and that's far from what you've got in Zimbabwe so that model doesn't apply, example doesn't apply at all. And the problem with the scenario of a fragmented solution is it's not a solution to the extent that known as folks up here are not party to it and if they're not participating in it then you do not have a viable governing structure even if it's a decentralized one that is stable over some period of time. More so because the folks, some of the folks who are going to be occupying large stretches of territory are people that we don't want to see having a hold and an ability to operate from that territory. Why were we in Afghanistan? At least what was our rationale? Rationale was to prevent certain terrorist elements from establishing themselves in Afghanistan. So you're not gonna allow that to happen in Syria either. So it's not, the problem I see with this fragmented sort of decentralized system is that it would be fine if all the elements in that system were dedicated to the proposition that they want this to work as a stable political solution but not all of them are. But wait a second, I don't mean to challenge all of it, but just with this one question. We were in Afghanistan so that you couldn't have that kind of terrorist force there but we are leaving Afghanistan and we are seemingly willing to undertake the risk that that kind of a force grows there. There are more terrorists on the ground in Iraq right now than there were in Afghanistan when we went into Iraq or when we went into Afghanistan in terms. So we seem to be willing to accept this in big places where we have much bigger investments than here. Yeah, or we seem to be willing to fool ourselves into thinking that we've solved a problem that we've had to have not solved. Well, that's... And could we be equally willing to play that kind of a charade in Syria by saying we're going to acknowledge upfront that we're creating a situation which is indeed as volatile if not more volatile and whatever it would be. Okay, look, Karen, you have a comment and I'd like you to make whatever the comment is but I want to ask you a question or you and your colleagues a question here. In terms of the Saudis and the moderate states looking at this, it looks like this is going off the tracks to me, you know, it looks like what you're ending up with here is protracted divided country, some pockets of stability, some pockets of instability, some of the forces that are most concerning to Saudi and moderate Arab regimes, both in terms of the Assad-Iranian connection and in terms of the Islamist extremist connection allowed to continue to flourish in here and the rest of the international community, despite all the checks you may wish to write, sort of saying, okay, well, this is your problem in the region and I'll just be interested in it. That's basically the point I wanted to make. Oh, I'm sorry. Everyone else can say their piece but I think even from a Saudi point of view as I tried to say earlier, we, the ruling Al Saud family, have even bigger issues than Syria. Not that we don't care about Syria but we have even bigger issues, namely our generational leadership transition, the fact that we're not a monolith and we don't really tend to do much in the region except pass out money unless the Americans tell us what to do and the Americans have no earthly idea what to do and don't really wanna get involved. So I think from the point you were picking up on earlier, everybody's point of view, the critical actors, there's simply not enough urgency now. Things are going to have to get worse. We can all fear and talk about what might happen but until it happens, it's harder to give up and make concessions than it is to wait and hope. So I don't think there's much appetite for the Americans who I still think do remain important to do anything and therefore we don't really know what to do other than pass out money to everybody. I think there's one thing you can say about the Saud is they know how to set priorities and Syria is outside the red line and it would be nice to win and we don't want Iran to win and we don't want this but at the end of the day, there are things you can do and there are things you can't do anything about. God's will. As long as that trouble, the troubles there don't cross the red line as in Bahrain, Iran, Kenny, Bahrain. As long as it doesn't cross into our direct territory, we can find a way to live with the messy situation as long as it stays in Syria. Okay, Jim. I'm more nervous at one stage. I'm more nervous at one stage. Very quickly, let me caveat, my rather discouraging last comment. We've gone into other horrifically violent places before. Kosovo, Bosnia, even the Sinai, with troops we still have a battalion there today and it's worked in a way that clearly didn't work or hasn't worked in Afghanistan, Iraq and years back Vietnam and I think the main difference isn't the horrific violence that was present in all these places. It's that there were outside actors who both had both the intention and the capability of contesting our presence in those latter three places, whereas with Bosnia, with Kosovo, with the Sinai, all of the regional actors in the international community essentially supported that presence and that dried up the support to those who wanted to challenge our in the international presence. So if you could get some kind of international agreement where everybody, including the regional Jihadist support network to either support or to be shut down, then international presence, including even an American international presence would be conceivable and one could imagine that it would not have to encounter years of heavy fighting. Hans. As I look at the map of Syria today, it reminds me of Bosnia in the early 90s and Bosnia today is a divided nation. It has the fictition there that it is a unified state but it's basically two states. So how did, and that's not a bad solution compared to where we are today in Syria. So, you know, is it possible to follow the Bosnia model here? And what did it take? I mean, it took Shrubranica to get people motivated. We thought we might have a Shrubranica moment with use of chemical weapons. That was obviously not enough given the fatigue we have in the United States and in Europe. But if things continue, that Shrubranica moment still may come. So if it does, if we can get attention, what is it that you need to do to sort of follow that Bosnia model? You do need some intervention. You need a vision. You need a Dayton. You may need a Dick Holbrook. There's going to be population movement so that this checkerboard starts looking more like what Bosnia might look like today. And you're going to need some follow on force. Now here in Europe, we happen to be busy with Nali and... Well, but that's what I was going to get at. I think we do need the Americans to lead you. I would like you to speak on behalf of Europe. Yeah, okay. That's, yeah. I'm just laying out a vision for what might be. This is the European vision? No, this is a vision that I think the United States might consider leading. I understand. I think it would provide some assistance. This is the European vision I'm used to. Which is, we believe that we need intervention. This is a critical issue of moral imperative to the world and the United States should do it because we're busy. Well, you forgot the fact that in Bosnia, they had largely beaten themselves into a point where neither of the three parties thought they could win and so they were resigned to spending a lot of time with Richard Holbrook. So I, you know, if we are looking at an intervention forced to keep APs, that's a lot more possible than as we've talked about occasionally, a force to enforce APs. I just don't see politically that's something that the United States is going to be prepared to do. Absent a consensus in the region. I mean, remember, Libya has set a very high bar for American intervention, including a UN Security Council resolution, including an Arab League invitation and including not just the United States, but partners from Europe. So none of those conditions have existed in Syria. And I think the consensus of the group is they're not likely to exist anytime soon. Well, I mean, here, you know, you talk about a Srebrenica moment. There are 120,000 people dead. Chemical weapons have been used 14 times. You know, what does it take? You know, you know, half the country is dislocated. I think what we've established in Syria is, you know, short of, you know, a blonde American college co-ed being killed there, the United States is not going to care about it. You know, forgive me for being so good, but the reality is we, you know, we are like tuned out. But it's relevant to the overall discussion because if no one is willing to go in and keep a piece, and by the way, even if we have a unitary government, even if we have a government for the whole state, we've still got Mona out there blowing up things and causing problems, and it needs to be stabilized by somebody. And so that becomes another, you know, issue in this conflict. So we've got a few more people now ready to jump in. Please, I encourage you to jump in your roles here in terms of how do we tackle this issue of stabilizing this situation, which right now looks to me like a fragmented state. But how do we stabilize it, Ron? I'm not going to step into my role here, but I hate to bring this example because it's not that Chinese example, which is how the Lebanon civil war was ended in 1989. And it took the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Syrians, and the power of the Syrian government at the time to force the Lebanese parties to come together and come to some kind of a power-sharing agreement or a revised power-sharing agreement to what existed before, and it was later enforced by the Syrians. But it was a regional affair. And I think here there is too much emphasis, and it's clear from hearing the international parties, that the international groups are not countries, I mean, parties are not interested. They are not going to go into the conflict now. So maybe the emphasis should be on the regional access. And here I'm talking about four main countries, that if a peace is going to be introduced in Syria, are critical to that making it happen. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey. And is there a common interest, a basic common interest on which we can start to build common ground among these four regional powers about achieving peace in Syria? For example, is there a common interest in preserving the territorial integrity of Syria and not introducing some kind of changes or minor changes to the... Is that a rhetorical question? Yeah, I mean, is there an interest among these four regional powers today and in the short term to have... Let's address that question. Ken, let me turn it to you. It seems to me there may be a common interest among those parties, but it wouldn't be to maintain territorial integrity. It'd be to maintain as much of Syria as they could maintain. And that Iran would say, okay, fine, let's just draw the lines. And part of what Andrew you were getting at was, it seems like people are anticipating that lines are gonna be drawn. And they're sort of moving into position and sort of saying... And there is, you talk about outside people being involved, well, the Russians and the Iranians will be very happy to defend the parts of Syria that will protect their interests or keep writing checks or doing what they need to do. Is that correct in your view or is it... Yeah, and just as my head is the Iranian, something Dan and I talked about earlier was, I think for the Iranians, a second best outcome would be a situation where there is a very well-protected Alawi enclave controlling mostly the territory that they have now. Now, from the Iranian perspective, that could expand. It certainly couldn't contract, but they'd be glad to have it expand over time. But that might be a basis for some kind of a comparison. But if I could, David, I just wanted to make a couple of quick, other alternate points as well based on things that people have raised. PJ's right, and we always forget about this. In Bosnia, what made Dayton possible was the fact that we built a Croat army that beat the crap out of the Bosnians, out of the Serbs, excuse me, and the Bosniaks as well. And it's a critical precondition. It goes back to a point that was made by a gentleman behind me earlier that the military balance is absolutely critical to this. And another one, Rhonda's nice point about Lebanon, where, yes, at the end of the day, what really solves things is the Syrian army going in and cracking heads in 1990 and taking down Michelle out, which also raises a possible outcome in this, which is if another regional power, perhaps Turkey, were willing to play Syria's role, that would be another way to do it. Okay. Does Turkey have any appetite to play that role, do you think? Turkey will not play that role by itself. I mean, Turkey is still in the mood of being a free rider. It wants the United States and the Westerners to do it. But what I remind the Turks very often is that in 2003, when we were getting ready to invade Iraq, the present U.N. foreign minister of Turkey said, Iraq, it's a regional problem. Why are the United States coming and dealing with Iraq? We should deal with Iraq. Well, maybe this time has come for the United States and the Western allies to turn the table around and say, this is a regional problem. It's going to affect you. You deal with it. Yeah, and the U.S. may do that intentionally or unintentionally. But that eventually, I mean, the worsening situation in terms of both refugees, instability, et cetera, I think is going to force the regional countries. The four that were mentioned, but I would also add Iraq there, because Iraq is the one that is most, most, most threatened. Maybe dysfunctional at the moment, but it is an important actor. Without Iraq involved, you can't get things done. Okay, what is the Russian perspective on this evolving situation here? And then I want to come back to you, Ben. You know, I think that the Russians would be extremely unhappy to see the fragmentation of Syria. That Russia fears fragmentation within its own borders and to see yet another precedent, I guess it's, yet another example of this taking place, it just wouldn't be happy at all. So I think that they want one of their reasons for supporting the Assad regime, supporting the Syrian security services is to prevent this. But if we have something such as, for example, a jihadist Syria in the interior and an Alawite enclave on the coast, then I think that obviously they have an interest in protecting the Alawite enclave. Partly because of the naval facility, but also I have a feeling that we would then see Russia moving aggressively to reconcile this Alawite rump state with Israel. There was that basically for, as Lavrov himself said recently, the main enemy for Russia in general are Sunni jihadists and to unite everyone who doesn't care, they don't care, they don't like each other, but everyone who has an interest in working against those people should work together basically. Brokering that elusive Israeli-Iranian partnership that everybody's looking for. You know, it's, I wouldn't rule that out. Well, so let me ask you one question, it's rhetorical, but I think we need to say it in the context of this whole thing. Russia doesn't want to see broken up Syria. Is the fear of a broken up Syria enough to get Russia to want to get rid of Assad and play that sort of heavy handed role to try to produce a political transition that might keep the state together? I think the fear of a broken up Syria is an argument what Russia would use to try to persuade everyone else that you cannot afford to do without Assad, that after Assad, you have chaos. Therefore, he is the key, whether you like him or not, he is the key to any kind of stability. Can the U.S. ever accept that position? I think you'd have to create a kind of a Sudan-like environment where, or a Palestinian-like environment where the Bush administration invented the Prime Minister's position to marginalize a president, but if Assad is still calling the shots, they'll be very difficult in the United States. Can Saudi Arabia ever accept that position? Of Assad? Of Assad is the answer, of keeping Assad in place. It would be very hard for them, I think, not impossible. I think they will kiss and make up with the Iranians here, but it would be a little difficult having put so much into getting rid of them. Depends on the terms. Yeah, it depends on the terms. Jeremy. Let's look from a Turkish position. It's not a question, can we accept it? It's a question that the premise is false, that the idea that Assad is the key to stability is exactly 180 degrees wrong. It is, in fact, that Assad is the problem and that his very presence guarantees that there will not be stability, in part based on the rather spectacular war crimes that he has committed, which has delegitimized him in the eyes of his own people and in the eyes of the international community, but also because of the regime that he's been running and he and his father have been running for 40 years, which has depended on a degree of oppression, which is simply incompatible with where Syria is. So it's not about Turkey or any other country deciding whether that's acceptable, it's about the fact that he is not compatible with stability. So listening to all of this, I'm back in a fragmented state. This is what you guys have left, is a rump state, rump, Alawite state. I mean, is that what you're hearing here as well? It does not have to be necessarily fragmented and here this is the Assad regime speaking, the solution is very, very simple and very clear. Stop the American Zionist, Turkish, Saudi, Qatari conspiracy against Syria by stopping to equip them with weapons. Look the other way when the Syrian army creates massacres and in the end, there will be stability in Syria without any fragmentation. This is point A, this is the Assad regime. If I could have a point B to counter-argue myself. Yeah, well, I found the first part completely unconvincing, so try to be. But I have to say this because I heard Rhodesia or Zimbabwe and I heard South Africa and I heard Ireland and I heard Bosnia. I returned not too long ago from Bosnia. I was in Sarajevo and most people I spoke to told me they didn't like Ambassador Holbrook very much. They hated Dayton, they hated the division and this was in fact not their solution. And I look around in this room, we voted 60% that it is likely that Syria would be fragmented, but I bet you out of the four or five Syrians among us here, I bet you anything that we would vote counter this fragmentation. There is an urgency about the situation and I agree with Karina, it is a function of time. The longer the conflict goes on, the more like Somalia is gonna look and the more fragmented it's going to be and the danger is it's going to spill over into the rest of the region. So it is an urgent situation. I do believe that a national government, a national unity government can come out of this without Assad and we really have to, we really have to calculate the effect of the absence of the Assad regime on a national unity government and I think that would be a very positive effect bring in civil society. And a Syria that is not fragmented and that has a decentralized system and I want to second Randa Slim on what she said about Lebanon. Look, Lebanon is very, it has a very fragmented society but at the end of the day it was saved by Taif and Lebanon week or not and believe it or not is one of the more stable Arab regimes. So I am hoping that Syria would look something like Lebanon in the future rather than having it fragmented or rather than having Syrians lament as the Bosnians are lamenting now. Now that was a very articulate, thoughtful and compelling argument. It was totally against the rules of this, okay? Because it was essentially saying I would like to set aside everything we've established so far and tell you how I'd like to see it. But we can't get to some of those things based on the way this conversation has gone and I just want to note that while respecting the articulate comment, yes. I suspect that Assad believes that if there were, if he were truly willing to have a free and fair election in Syria, I mean all of Syria, that he might well win it if he was up against one candidate put up by the opposition because if you look at that chart that was up there, okay 59% of the population is Sunni Arab and let's speak in generalities. There are Sunnis who as much as they hate Assad and they do think he's the lesser of the two evils. So he would get most of the minority votes and he would carry a certain number of urban Sunnis. But theoretically he would actually do better if he were up against five different people too, right? Yeah, but anyway, the fact is he can never govern, we know he can never govern all the Syrians, all of Syria again with anything other than an incredible iron fist and he doesn't have the resources to do that anymore. But we have to recognize that he has a following. He has a group of people who believe that absent him, the regime falls apart and they will fall prey to the worst of the jihadists. Okay, very quickly, because I want to move on to another point, quickly, yes. As you're conferring with my colleague, we'd like to second our Turkish counterparts point. The Assad regime is not only brutal and at the very heart of instability in this matter and the way it's tried to shoot its way out of the crisis, it also has a proven track record of being inelastic. It can't reform. It never has, even under the best of times. So perhaps, and we have put forward, and let me see if I get this right, General, that more opportunities going forward are between moderate members of the FSA and the SMC coming together with vetted members of some of the security services in the Army around the regime, that that perhaps might be a viable formula for putting the pieces back together in the future. Okay, calm. Yeah, I was just going to talk a little bit about it. Touch the button. I'm just a tiny bit about the international force. I mean, it seems to me that, I mean, the UN, there's already kind of war games or peacekeeping games going on about what sort of role of peacekeeping force would serve. And it's basically the idea of kind of informally, I think reinforcing a kind of de facto partition, providing protection for the Alawi for other minority groups. The notion that, you know, you could turn this into an enforcement operation. I mean, the only possibility I could think where you could get agreement on an enforcement mechanism would be solely if it were directed at the more extremist jihadist elements. And it would put the UN and the West in a particularly awkward position of sort of in some ways indirectly reinforcing this tendency towards President Assad or the Assad regime. If he's not in power as essentially, you know, being his international army. I mean, at this point, it doesn't seem that there's much prospect for the armed opposition to play, to have much of a role if they're not in some way supported with outside support. I mean, the Bosnian example, you know, sort of increasing the Bosniaks and the Croatians military capacity to challenge the Syrians kind of brought them to the table doesn't seem like there's anything like that in place to strengthen it. Okay, if somebody would like to make a compelling argument after I go to these next three people quickly, that there is actually some international force that somebody would offer, I would love to hear that. I hear a lot of people saying you need to have an international force, but I don't see anybody willing to actually field an international force. You're quite ready. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's extremely constructive and Ken is smiling. He's absolutely delighted that you've worked that out. And Syrian civil society. But, you know, I do think, you know, underneath this jollity here, the reality is that it's just in question after question after question, it's just in question after question after question. The chips are on the side of Assad, the Iranians, the Russians in that perspective, because they're committed and it's existential for them. And the other side, it's not. And, you know, we can talk around this all that we want, but it seems to be something that is coloring every dimension of this. However, as Syrian civil society, you may have a different perspective. I'm just going to go back to the question that was going around the room, particularly to the bilateral and to the government agencies, is if we remove Assad or keep Assad, is this something that you would accept? And acknowledging that we are helpless and acknowledging that we are voiceless and we are not decision makers as civil society, I think that it's very important to remember that it's actually Syrian civil society that will be implementing whatever is made in these back rooms in these corners. And so really, the question of is Assad acceptable or not should be geared at Syrian civil society? Are they willing to negotiate? And as time prolongs, as the issues of transitional justice and revenge become more essential, the more families who are victims, both of the rebels and of the Assad regime, that question becomes harder and harder to answer. But again, I think that we can have... But what leverage do you have? Well, we're the ones who are going to implement. So you can make all the agreements, but it's pen on paper. It's the Syrian civil society. It's the individuals on the street. It's the people who are picking up arms who will decide whether whatever you agree on is realistic. But what if the best possible peace is a threat? That phrase in itself really bothers Syrian civil society. Well, okay. But as we say in the West, tough luck. Yeah. In the case of the best possible peace that we have here, it looks like we've got to kind of run a regime, and then there may be some pockets of semi-functioning Syrian civil society. There may be a little Kurdish pocket. And then everybody else has got Mona wandering around saying, you know, don't park your car there. Because... You know, and so... But I mean, you know, in that kind of situation, the traction you're going to have is in your enclaves that are not controlled by her or by him, right? Or it's in the decision or voting in terms of who you actually support. So as you begin to support Mona or other groups, it's basically the decisions that you're making at this table where civil society will say, actually, we're going to give all efforts to support Mona's position. So the more realistic the agreements are, the more likely, beyond those who fall, you know, the civil society will actually make a decision where to throw it. And civil society, I'm not talking about NGOs. I'm not talking about humanitarian. I'm basically talking about the citizens on the ground, which is very diverse, encompasses the religious groups, encompasses everyone. So those decisions and what you do, again, in closed doors will determine your legitimacy as a political power. True, and I don't want to be argumentative on this point, but I do want to underscore the point that as we look around the Arab uprisings of the course of the past couple of years, there have been a lot of activity in part of civil society at the beginning of them, but because they weren't organized and there was no leadership, it ends up not having a lot of political resonance. And that's why I think the point that my colleague Peter made is so essential is that you need to build in the time for the end game where you're actually allowing a process for civil society to participate. Okay, now, because we can't cover everything, but I do want to move this forward within the context of the session, I'm going to address one more issue here in the stabilization and structure issue, and then I want to jump ahead a little bit to some issues that may seem a little bit optimistic, which is a couple of economic questions and humanitarian questions before we get out of this session. But there's a lot of discussion here about international peacekeepers, but so far, even though you represent international peacekeepers, nobody's offering you peacekeepers or money or support or anything, and I just... You know, I... That wouldn't be unprecedented now, would it? No, it's not. And yet... So what I'm saying is you seem to be a figment of the collective imagination. And yet peacekeepers are being... I mean peacekeepers, there are 15 UN peacekeeping operations as we speak right now, so they are all over the place, even if not many countries are willing to donate. It depends on what they're going to do, but I would quote from the former Indian representative to the UN about what you're asking peacekeepers to do, and we talked about the difference between peacekeeping and peace enforcement. I'd just like to jump forward. I don't know that the solution to Syria is contingent on peace enforcement. It probably is not. It probably... We have as our mandate to talk about the UN peace... robust peace enforcement mission, that's probably not what we're talking about in this case, because of Russia, right? Because we do actually have a veto on this matter. It's not just a spoiler issue. It's an actual veto. So we're talking about Chapter 6. We're not talking about Chapter 7. We're talking about more of a classical, yet multi-dimensional peacekeeping operation along the lines of what we had in Cambodia. And remember, in Cambodia, it wasn't the 200,000 Vietnamese that defeated the Khmer Rouge. It was an election. It was a UN peacekeeping operation that didn't use force, that only had diplomacy to work with, and it took the wind out of the Khmer Rouge. They didn't have any political basis. They didn't have any legs to stand on anymore. Anyway, so it's not like it's unprecedented in that kind of a scenario. It sounds a little rosy, but it has happened before. Just one word of caution, and then I'll end. We started this session talking about pillars. And one thing that has not worked very well in these complex UN missions is the pillar approach. NATO, you'll be in charge of security. The EU, why don't you be in charge of reconstruction? You know, disarmament, the World Bank can do development assistance, and when you have pillars, you have stovepipes. No one wants to be coordinated by anyone else. And you deal with this all the time, right? It's really, the pillar approach has been very problematic. It doesn't work. You need a benevolent dictator, which is what Sergio Vera de Mello was in East Timor, for example. I mean, you need somebody who is in charge of the operation who is all of the different components of the international operation is answerable to that person, and then you have more or less functioning UN peacekeeping operations. And actually, Yasushi Akashi played that role in Cambodia also. It's when you have one person who's answerable and one organization. Okay. I think in defense of the pillar arguments you could just as easily use the term components. We weren't arguing that this should be approached as pillars, but there were multiple components to achieving peace. Sharon, I want to go to you. And then what I want to do is I want to go and talk to some of the economic folks here about this situation and what degree of stabilization in either of these scenarios might start to lead towards some economic activity and some organic activity. And then I want to talk about what degree of stabilization might be seen as a potential trigger for any kind of international economic. Can you envision a situation where absence a peace process, a peace agreement and one government for one Syria money could be coming in to help stabilize different regions of the country. Because at the end of the day one way you win in one of these things is by defeating another army and another way that you win one of these things conceivably is by creating a little bit of growth and a little bit of activity and giving people some incentive to build on a inchoate but developing status quo, sure. Yeah, no thank you. That actually tracks very closely with some of the things that I wanted to say and speaks to the economic issues as well. You know, this section really was, it felt a lot more like we were in the political settlement section in some ways, whether there is a power sharing arrangement whether there is a fragmented state one of the questions I'd really like us to grapple with a bit more and maybe not around governments but certainly around economic development and the way that we see the energy return and resettlement is, you know, assuming that one or the other holds and the international community is starting to flow assistance into these areas, do we have the right models? And I would argue that we probably don't. If you look at the way we deliver governance assistance in Afghanistan and Iraq it clearly didn't work particularly well. We picked one side of the conflict. If you look at the way we develop economic, deliver economic assistance globally it triggers violence. It does not support stability. And so as we think through these models you know, I think we really need to ask ourselves some hard questions about you know, are we doing governance the right way in these places by flowing so much of our assistance towards formal institutions as opposed to the types of arrangements that Manal is talking about where we certainly have seen in places like Iraq, we've put governance way at the grassroots level government officials, tribal leaders, religious leaders, civil society groups Sunni, Shia, Arab, Kurd those groups at the civil society level have very successfully promoted good governance in smaller discrete areas that begins to flow up. And quite frankly I know people were a little skeptical of Moaz's point, these kinds of groups have dealt with extremists very successfully on their own. And so again I want us to start questioning our overall models. I don't think the way we've been doing it works and I think that we as a community need to push a little bit further on how we change the way we do business in these places. So that would be my plea not just for governance but also when we look at economic development assistance. Okay, Julianne. Europe's feeling a little defensive I just wanted to make a couple of quick comments All with the first time. I'm the international peacekeeping force so yes Europe is still limping along and recovering from the Euro crisis. Yes we have a war weary public deep skepticism about the ability for the west to reconstruct an entire country and definitely looking forward to ending the mission in many ways in Afghanistan. But let me say that depending on the parameters of the agreement I think you can count on European financial assistance European presence of some kind training police institution building some sort of civilian capacity not in huge numbers we don't have thousands and thousands of troops to contribute to this but I think it's not fair to say that Europe and the United States would necessarily sit it out. I think there are legitimate challenges with trying to construct some sort of either peace enforcement or peacekeeping one could be easier than the other but I think there is the potential for the west to contribute something significant again depending on the parameters there's lots of different scenarios here. Secondly in the category of being a bit defensive I just want to defend our American partners David you've been you know you've summarized kind of the American position of sitting this one out you know that turning a blind eye not being particularly active I think there were moments early on in the conflict where the United States wasn't particularly helpful or playing an active role but now I think the game has changed no there's not a full-scale U.S. intervention in Syria of any kind but the role that the U.S. is playing right now in negotiations is critical the role that the U.S. is playing on the CW destruction while not resolving the conflict is also critical the donations that the U.S. has provided along with Europe on humanitarian assistance are important so I think we're being a little bit too simplistic how are those arms shipments going? Right right okay right I can sit here and tell you all that there's a big clip about this and say okay not enough we haven't worked a solution 120,000 people dead but it haunts Washington and it haunts Europe and I think for us to sit here and continually make this assumption that the West is somehow just turning the other way and doesn't give a damn isn't exactly fair either so that's all I wanted to say and I agree with you what I'm trying to do here I'm not trying to be a clip although sometimes I can't help it but what I'm really trying to do here is to stress test some of the assumptions because periodically people say well we need to have a robust peacekeeping force or we need to put money into this thing or these states need to get together to support this transition and we have to stress test the idea because we're looking for the best possible piece we have to know whether it's possible or not now some of you guys here down are dealing with economic issues and there are a bunch of ways to deal with this and others among you may have views on this as you represent states because clearly if there's pockets of Saudi supporters some place they may get a little bit of economic assistance if we're in this kind of fragmented world but is it possible to, there's a $80 billion price tag that's been put on this is it possible to imagine any kind of economic recovery taking place in this part of the world with any of these solutions that we've described that are kind of partial solutions what's the trigger going to be what is the private sector going to look for what do you think the government trigger is going to be Rob? I think actually the fact that there are many disparate players as there are in Syria yields itself to a better way of rebuilding most engagements we've had in the last few years in the last few years in the last few years in the last few years in the community level in other words look at political subdivisions or groups or tribes that have some coherent sense of legacy in the community create decision making processes about what should be repaired first and second have access to resources and have an impact I think to take it from the top down approach which we've taken in Iraq and we've taken in Afghanistan and we've taken so many other places is frankly it's ineffective in most cases it lends the whole process to all the rent seeking and all the dysfunction in central governments and as a result there is resentment that grows between central government and the local players because money never gets to them and things don't get done and disarmony or dysfunction among these many players yields itself to more localized economic development initiatives there are distant perspectives here that said Syria is a hard place to engage in physically and so the Alawite merchants on the coast you could do something with that community but it's very difficult to do anything with the Kurdish community anything with the Sunnis who are opposed to the government so it's going to be very difficult to do any kind of economic development other than right along the coast you know I sort of feel like this is just as we've been discussing on the political side it's about a staged approach it's a phased approach the economic development is going to be a redevelopment is going to be phased and staged but it's very important to remember that as Hernando de Soto said talking about Egypt what's been lost in the discussion about the Arab Spring in Egypt is that the people who were in the streets first were primarily jobless youth of which there are more in the Arab world than any other region in the world in Syria you have you know astronomical joblessness and particularly youth unemployment so unless the solution is seen to be including addressing that you're probably going to not be satisfying a lot of the fundamental needs of civil society the other thing I just want to add is that we started an interesting project here at USIP on the role of economic development in post conflict and fragile states and that work is the easiest days and I think has a long way to go but there's a general recognition and we did a case study about Rwanda as an example Rwanda was probably one of the most desperate basket cases post conflict of any country in the world in 1994 and for the last 10 years has had the greatest year on year per capita income growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and as I tell people there's about to be a hotel to be built there which in my mind is sort of the pinnacle of economic development who to thunk it right 17 years ago so I really do believe that there is an opportunity and a role yet to be completely devised for what the economic development piece is of the reconstruction yeah you know it's interesting because I in the previous life in the Clinton administration was involved in post conflict economic intervention in a couple of places and then after that went and I wrote a book at the Carnegie Endowment on this thing and one of the punchlines after talking to a lot of people involved was you can't build an economic house on a political sinkhole but that doesn't mean that you need to have a broad political solution you can have pockets of stability that produce some pockets of growth but the other mistake that gets made very often in this is that you then call upon parts of the United States government or European or other governments that have a responsibility for economic development in the traditional sense to do post conflict intervention and it's just a completely different set of needs because the post conflict economic intervention has to have a political outcome as opposed to simply a long-term economic outcome and we literally this is one of the things the United States has been doing the longest in the post-border era going in and intervening post-conflict reconstruction and stuff and we still don't have the institutions to do it every time this happens we say we don't have the institutions we still don't have the institutions to do it did Turkey wish to say something here on the economic front we did look I think that Turkey can agree with all of the points that were made about the problems of a top-down approach and agree that there are some benefits to be had from working with local actors but at the same time I think that we see some serious dangers in that approach too in particular that if it's not done well and if it's not done correctly it can empower the wrong types of actors that can threaten the unity of Syria which I think is very important for the region so it would be Turkey's view that it would be particularly if Western U.S. and European governments are going to take this approach that it would be very important for them to work through the neighbors particularly through Turkey to help them to identify who are the correct local actors to support and I think that Turkey would insist upon that if it was going through Turkish territory which it of course would so I think that if Western actors in particular are thinking about this approach keep in mind that it's going to have to be coordinated with Turkey and that Turkey is going to have some very strong views on who the appropriate actors are and that we don't actually have faith in the West to be able to correctly identify the appropriate actors. Do you want to add something Mona? Yes. Not only are we thrilled that we have our emirate established now in some fragment and portion of Syria but we also profit. Congratulations by the way. Thank you. We also are profiting from a war economy where we there are smuggling networks there are all kinds of criminal activities that we are deriving and sustaining our emirate off of and others so beyond the clear benefit of attempting to get down to the local level etc there are many vested interests in perpetuating essentially a war profiteering economy very hard to roll those interests back. But that's also a bit of a two-way street isn't it and I mean that to your advantage which is to say you're able to do that generate capital, generate financial resources and use it to pay off and buy local support and show yourself to be you know economically invested in the communities in which you are doing your work. Absolutely we can exploit all of this to great benefit and it's going to be very difficult to unseat. In other words the issues aren't just political and security there are also economic interests that are deeply vested that you will have to work very hard to dismantle. Okay look we've gone through a bunch of stuff here again much as we did in the first session we haven't covered every conceivable dimension of this but we you know I think are coming clear and clear to a picture that the best possible piece looks like perhaps several different possible pieces you know we've spent a lot of the time here talking about a fragmented state and you know what that might mean and why we might have arrived there and you know we I don't think we've solved the problem of peacekeeping I think we have sort of developed a sense that it's going to have to be a more regional solution than some of these past solutions have been and that it may need to be a more decentralized kind of an approach if in fact we don't have a strong central government or we can't get there there's one thing that I would like to say is a caveat on this whole process though before we take the break and also before we get the comments here but that is in the course of this discussion naturally all discussions have their kind of ebb and flow we've sort of had an ebb and flow in the direction of fragmented and so forth but we shouldn't rule out all together that you know impasses are broken from time to time that sometimes you may not pull the royal flush but you do get a couple of the elements and you can actually get a political process going and that can result in peacekeeping forces and money and some movement in that direction and so even though we're having a conversation that has sort of drifted away from that I want to underscore that we talked about that that's got to be sort of part of our calculus as we're looking at this in the context of this discussion in retrospect and also the one that we do next that you know we want to fill out a couple of scenarios in doing this do you want to provide us with your perspectives here and then I want to take 30 seconds more to talk about the remainder of the day yes David I can see that the expert council has had some temporary defections but I'd like to assure you that we're left with a highly capable highly legitimate and unified rump council of experts that's in full control of our territory so rest assured well give us some rump wisdom then alright rump wisdom it is headed by women Paula points out I wanted to point out two challenges I'm hearing and then also two things that I would determine in the words of that great philosopher Homer Simpson Christ attunities so the challenges I thought that was Rahm Emanuel but go on Homer Simpson was there first the first issue is this one of ripeness and you know it wasn't phrased this way in the discussion today it was framed more in terms of a lack of will or a lack of urgency our colleague Pamela all in one of the six papers our USIP experts published for today called it ripeness one question that arises is if there isn't if the conflict doesn't right now after more than 100,000 killed almost half the population displaced use of chemical weapons what needs to happen for this conflict to be right so I challenge the group you know when I look at a green banana I can make it a whole lot right for a whole lot faster if I get a paper bag what is the what is the what are the things or the components or the elements that would make this conflict ripen faster because not riping is not tolerable to any of us I also hear a repeated need for force potentially whether we are talking about protecting civilians or whether we are talking about imposing or enforcing a political agreement or ensuring security the alloy community we are going to need some security guarantees and although at least raise the tantalizing possibility that this could happen without the use of force my first instinct was that it's more like the police talking before a drug bust someone is going to have to go in heavy and so I think the question is who is that a group of actors going to be turning to the crisis unit one of the concerns raised was about the costs of fragmentation but if we flip that around I think one of the promises we heard was decentralization which is a nicer way of saying fragmentation and if there is a possibility of some kind of decentralized governance that could be enforced so that's crisis unity number one crisis unity number two is we've heard a lot in the analysis beforehand Rachel Brandenburg wrote a great paper on the regional actors role in all of this and certainly in the press we've heard a lot about regional meddling well what we heard today is also the possibility of regional intervention which is a nice way of saying regional meddling and the possibility that maybe the regional actors could come together and be the ones to provide a solution or some form of a solution in Syria the way they have in Lebanon and last we've heard an awful lot about weak institutions and all the problems that that brings with it but I think what we also heard from Sharon today was the prospect to that informal governance which is a nicer way of saying weak institutions could also help to fill some of the gap at the local level and that that could be helping to provide some stability and security I came out with some of the same points as Kristen so I'll start with the first one. Kaz you were the one who mentioned well the threat when it really is a threat versus you know managing governance and governance issues I have to agree with Kristen in the question of if this isn't a threat in all of the different lanes that we're discussing I don't know what it is just taking the humanitarian side in of itself it's destabilization that it has on other countries etc. Secondly is on the military same point I put down can mention military balance matters there have been a number of you that have really underscored the importance of the military in this component so but yet when David forced the issue about commitment I don't think anyone stepped forward at all in that area so it's Julian she offered some trips all right thank you all right she volunteered there kids I thought that this whole issue of political will permeated this conversation in so many different ways in different shapes and forms in the different pieces of the conversation fourthly I I wanted to underscore the comment that was made down the line here about governance and not having the best models of governance and then we had a discussion about top down versus bottom up but quite frankly my own view is I think the best is a combination I wouldn't quite hear maybe maybe there were some that were thinking along those lines because there were some cautionary notes made about the local communities the corrupt actions but yet on the other hand it seemed that there was some movement towards the importance of engagement of the local communities and finally I can't help but go back to an analogy a number of us had by different groups involved in having been involved with Northern Ireland something that really jumped out at me in this conversation is actually the importance of non-state actors and I didn't quite hear it defined as such what do I mean I was very struck in the case with Northern Ireland that they Sinn Fein and the UDF went out itself to confer with South Africa with Columbia to get a change in other words they themselves took the initiative in this case and again you can't make precise analogies here but why do I mention it they also later shared when actually the devolution of power came to Northern Ireland they actually shared the role that they were playing together going to Iraq maybe for better for worse but they were in Iraq and they were actually sharing their experience so I haven't heard anyone reference the role of some non-state actors in this and what some of the parties could potentially do when they feel that they don't have other alternatives and they're not working so then they want to actually shape the piece rather than be on the outside of it thank you and with that by the way that is a patch of blue sky up there that's it for the next week by the way you can see much more of that we're going to take a break now but I want to put this in a little bit of perspective the next section of this the final session from today is going to look at the things that could flare up that could really take this off track in a serious way we've talked about them a lot but the question is could these things happen in a way that makes things much worse really stops these processes and then we're going to end and we will end either on time or early I promise you that because we're committed to that then a bunch of folks will come and we'll have dinner we'll talk about a little bit tonight but tomorrow we'll then come back and we're going to talk about some of the conclusions from this but this longer term issue of institutionalizing the piece and my emphasis here is on longer term because I think there are multiple phases I don't think we're at ripeness I actually think your ripeness comment is interesting because I think that the way that several people have suggested you get to ripeness is with military intervention you weaken the parties to this thing using force and that ripens it and the damage has been done but it hasn't been done to some of the critical players they've actually you know actually gained some of the things that suggest is we've got to get to a point of some kind of ripeness but also between now and then I think PJ was the one that mentioned this but you know process may be enough for some of these players we can engage in a process we can move forward we can make a little bit of gains it can ripen a little bit and then you begin something phased and we talked about grandfathering in different ways but you know it may be that over a course of 5, 6, 7, 10 years you actually you know put a bit of a lid on things now let a couple of parties weaken watch some of the relationships among some of the outside parties change a little bit watch some of the inside groups change move forward there towards more of a political agreement but not now but 4, 5, 6, 7 years and then implement and put a little bit of a lid on some of the frames that actually get us to some place better than this as opposed to just saying chaos forever because I think that's you know that that's you know to just sort of throw up our hands and say piece is not possible is inconsistent with our overall mission we have to sort of find our way to the best way to that so there's some very interesting components of this ahead of time and we'll allow you to take the dark imaginations all of you seem to have and put them to good use and then we will wrap up and we'll come back tomorrow for more of it but once you take 15 minutes right now refresh yourselves hop around a little bit and we'll talk to you in a few minutes