 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to Carnegie. I am very fortunate to be the President of the Carnegie Edowment, but I am particularly fortunate today to welcome back to Carnegie Samantha Power as well as Bort and Shepi Abramowitz. And so I'll say a couple things at the start. First about Mort and Shepi, and then about Samantha before we begin the conversation about Sam's terrific new book, The Education of an Idealist. On Mort and Shepi first, we launched this lecture series a little more than a year ago to recognize and celebrate two wonderful people and the values that really did shape both of their professional lives. Mort, as many of you know, was for more than three decades a professional diplomat and a role model for my generation of Foreign Service officers, not only because of his skill as a diplomatic practitioner, but more importantly because of his integrity, his honesty, his fearlessness in advocating principled American leadership in the world, his devotion to his people, to his staff over several generations, as well as his legendary intolerance for bullshit in a city where it always seems to be in surplus. Mort also set a very high standard as one of my predecessors as the president of the Carnegie Edowment. He opened the first of our overseas centers, really launching Carnegie on the path to becoming a global institution. He helped incubate a number of really important institutions here at Carnegie, like the International Crisis Group, and I think ICG's president Rob Malley is with us today. And he also oversaw the design and the construction of this building. Shepi left her own remarkable and indelible mark as a humanitarian professional and an activist, and also as a role model at the Refugee Bureau and the State Department and many other places for a new generation of practitioners, especially women, including my wife, Lisa, who was a colleague of Shepi's a number of years ago. So this also happens to be the 60th wedding anniversary of Mort and Shepi. So we are truly honored to have both of you here with us today and congratulations. Now to Sam. I can't think of a more fitting or more admirable Abramowitz lecturer today than Samantha Power or a better topic for this conversation than Sam's terrific new book, The Education of an Idealist. Samantha is one of the most distinguished members of the Abramowitz alumni club. She worked for Mort as a junior fellow as an intern straight out of Yale more than a quarter century ago. And Samantha, you really have set the standard for future generations of junior fellows here at Carnegie. The only thing to be honest that I suggest to new junior fellows that they not emulate is your parting act at Carnegie, which was to forge a letter from the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, which was then a Carnegie publication to help get your press credentials as a war correspondent in Bosnia. Stealing stationery not on the exit memo list for junior fellows. But I would say that that characteristically creative act certainly did work out for the best. Sam went on to be an accomplished war correspondent, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, and eventually to take on senior policymaking roles at the National Security Council staff and then as the US ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration, where she was an extraordinary colleague and friend. Samantha's new book is equally extraordinary. It's not just an account of an exceptional career. It's not just a story of what it takes for women to navigate an often unforgiving and male dominated profession. It's not just a story of the highs and lows of policy and politics. It's truly a story of America and it's a beautifully written reminder of how much is at stake at this troubled moment for all of us and how important it is to sustain the American idea and all that it's going to take to renew it. So I'll begin the conversation with Sam and I promise to leave time for questions for all of you. Following our discussion at about 1.30, you'll have an opportunity courtesy of politics and prose to buy as many copies of the book as you can carry. And then Samantha will also be signing books as well. But first, please join me in a warm welcome to Samantha. Thank you. It's great to see you. And let's begin at the beginning of your professional life, your time at Carnegie. My recollection is that Morton mellow much after he left the State Department, he was determined as ever to make a difference and as devoted a mentor as ever. So tell us a little bit about that. I will. And let me just say that so many of the qualities that you've described in Mort Bill are those for which you were famous. And for all of the darkness right now that some of us feel about the state of diplomacy, American diplomacy and the state of America's inclination to and capacity to promote its best abroad. I did an event last night with politics and prose at GW. And I just met so many people who remain in the bowels of the State Department, still valuing expertise, still having modeled their actions on your painstaking diplomacy, whether that to Iran or any num any one of a number of conflicts and crises and all the good that you have done. And so many of your generation, of course, learn from Mort. So I really feel as if there's sort of, you know, a kind of generational baton going on and that the current holders of the baton, many have left, unfortunately, but but many are holding strong and really trying to do the good they can do, not withstanding the circumstances. And that's in part because they were inspired by both of you. So I feel just incredibly privileged even to be associated, you know, with this lecture honoring Mort and Sheppy, and to be able to tell a little bit of the story of the kind of mentor mentorship that both of you have done. So I thought what I would do if it's okay with Bill and all of you, you might embarrass Mort a little bit, but Mort's actually a kind of prominent character in the book. And just to I find it kind of creates a shared sense of something. When I when I read just a little bit, so I'm going to give you a taste of what it was like to be an intern here. And I know we got the junior fellows in the house. And however badly you're suffering under Bill's leadership, I promise you, you know, he has nothing on Mort. So so I would be nowhere, nowhere right now. I certainly wouldn't be up here talking about a book, if not for Mort and Sheppy of Romowitz, and I'm just so moved and so grateful to be here. But this is what it was really like. When I met Mort of Romowitz in December of 1992, he was a 59 year old retired diplomat who had spent more than three decades abiding by the strictures of the US government in roles that included Ambassador to Thailand, Ambassador to Turkey, and Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, he'd grown up in New Jersey and held degrees from Stanford and Harvard. Mort lived in his mind and sometimes lost sight of practical details, arriving in the Carnegie offices wearing mismatched shoes or a woman's coat he had mistaken for his own after a breakfast meeting. In order to get the internship, I wrote essays for the application and was invited for an interview with one of Carnegie's senior associates. A few weeks later, I was told I was one of 10 graduating college seniors who had been admitted to the program. And I had been assigned to work as an intern editorial assistant at Foreign Policy Magazine, which as Bill said was a foreign policy journal then, which was based here at Carnegie. I was thrilled. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, the head of the program called to tell me that the president of the Carnegie Endowment, this Mort of Romowitz, had reassigned me to his office. Imagining an administrative internship from which I would learn little, I pleaded with the program head to revert to the original plan. She was firm. Samantha, she said in a thick southern accent, I can hear to this day, you can't turn down the president. What felt like an unlucky turn of fate would end up being a tremendous stroke of fortune. In December of 1992, long ago, six months after graduating from college, I moved to Washington, transferring my dorm room furnishings to a studio apartment near Dupont Circle. Mort was the first person I came to know well, who had helped make foreign policy at such rarefied levels. And over time, he would drill into me a simple truth. Governments can either do harm or they can do good. What we do, he would say, depends on one thing, the people. Institutions, big and small, were made up of people. People had values and people made choices. I would learn later that Mort was famous in the diplomatic corps, as Bill is now today, for eschewing hierarchy and tracking down the best informed officials in his embassies, irrespective of their rank. He also took care of his people, making phone calls on behalf of junior officials whose work he admired. But none of this was apparent to me in the first couple of months I served as his intern. When I offered edits to drafts of his speeches and his top eds, he would say, very helpful, Susan. And then incorporate none of what I had proposed. My tasks at the outset were as administrative as I had feared, making sure Carnegie's public materials didn't have typos and helping seat the VIP guests who attended Carnegie events. From former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and legendary journalist Bob Woodward to Tom Lantos, a human rights champion who was the only Holocaust survivor in Congress. Although I didn't yet work closely with my boss, people whose names I had underlined in the newspaper during college were suddenly handing me their coats and occasionally even looking me in the eye. Okay, last bit. Mort seemed to respect people who came here like Jean Kirkpatrick, who had served in government and could offer informed views. But he was impatient with what he called the blowhards who circulated in the think tank world. These people speak so much, Mort said, about the proliferation of self-styled experts in Washington. And yet they managed to say so little. He was even harder on himself. After he had chaired a meeting or published an op-ed that I found persuasive, I sometimes made the mistake of complimenting him. What a load of horse shit he would respond. I was never sure if this referred to his work or my praise. What I once thanked him for publicly challenging a visiting head of state, Mort looked at me blankly and said, you do know I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, don't you? His humility, his legendary humility, often manifested itself as self-criticism, which seemed an extremely uncommon but to me, hugely appealing trait for a person so respected in Washington and around the world. Mort's standoffishness did not deter me and his cutting commentary was familiar from years of watching my dad in action at a Dublin pub called Hardigan's. But I wondered whether I had what it took to win his confidence. I saw in him someone who could help teach me how the world really worked. He seemed to be guided by only one criteria. The question he would ask every time I approached him with an idea as I often would in the coming decades, will it do any good? Thank you. That gives you just a flavor not only of Mort and all of his wonderful qualities, but of the quality of Sam's book. So as I said, I encourage you to buy as many copies as you can carry. So, Sim, after you left Carnegie still in your early 20s, your next formative experience in a way was as a work correspondent in Bosnia. So tell us a little bit, you write about it vividly in the book. Tell us a little bit about how that shaped your education. Well, as part of working for Mort here at Carnegie and Shepi was then doing incredibly important refugee work as well on behalf of Bosnia and refugees, Mort used this venue, this platform to self-educate, I think, and to try to educate a Washington policy community that was sort of hovering around Bosnia, but coming up to speed. I mean, the initial disposition of the Bush administration, the first Bush administration of George H. W. Bush had been tar baby, don't touch it, Balkans, the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, don't go near there. And then there was a recognition that in the wake of the Cold War, this kind of implosion in the heart of Europe was implicating more than just the lives of the people who were losing loved ones, but it was also implicating the future of NATO, which was figuring out its identity in the wake of the Cold War. It was implicating the United Nations, which for the first time was freed to actually have a kind of quasi-executive decision-making body, the Security Council unlocked after the Cold War and the Soviet Union and the United States standing off and gridlocked for so long. And so the fact that this country was being ravaged by ethnic cleansing and by civil war, Mort just saw really, really early that this was bigger than the conflict itself and that it implicated really strategic interests of the United States. So this was this venue and just you'd have the Bosnian prime minister or a Serbian human rights lawyer or the leader of the Kosovo Albanians coming through every day. And then at the same time you had some of the bravest and most important journalism I certainly had seen up to that point and even to this day such as uncovering concentration camps again in Europe. And so I worked here for a year as Mort's intern and I just should say that my predecessor Shane Green and my successor Lucas Haines are both here also to honor Mort. So junior fellows you'll never stop coming here, rest assured. But I felt, you know, can I do something? Is there something beyond editing Mort's beds? And you know I began to develop opinions because again he was always asking what should America do, what should America do? And that became the way I would process events. That can be a dangerous way to process events but I think it was an important kind of heuristic. And at a certain point I thought, you know, I was already learning cyber curation and, you know, rating Kramer books and, you know, imbibing Balkan history and trying to understand this conflict that was consuming my boss. But at a certain point I thought I'm maxing out here on what I can learn. And I tried actually first, you know, very much modeled on Shepi's work to see if I could become a humanitarian. But I was a liberal arts graduate from college and hadn't ever really helped anybody or done anything for anybody. So that pathway didn't seem obvious. And as you noted, Carnegie then was at 24th and then we were in the same building as US News and World Report. And I was introduced to the chief of correspondence and he said, you know, you think you want to be a journalist over there? And I said, well, yes, I think I do. And he said, well, what experience do you have? And I said, well, I've covered the Yale women's volleyball team. Very ably, I might add, no. And I gave him my pathetic clips and he was like, all right, look, if you go over there, I'll take your call. But basically, you know, get serious, like this is a big risk to take to go and be there. And Mort had given at Carnegie a platform to the amazing disaster relief specialist Fred Cooney, a Texan engineer who I also write about a lot in the book. And Fred just over and over again, it's just like you've got to get over there, you've got to get over there. So unable to sort of have US News vouch for me as their correspondent and in need of a press pass. I did. Bless me, father, for I have sinned. But I did take hold of some stationary that didn't belong to me. And I did write a letter saying that I would be a correspondent for foreign policy magazine. There's a statute of limitations. There's a statute of limitations, I hope. But young junior fellows, luckily, foreign policy, I think has broken off. So there's nothing. But Bill stationaries off limits. Okay, so but I went over there. And then as you say, that was a formative experience, both the experience initially of the press corps being so welcomed. There being a sense that if it was just a beautiful kind of human sentiment that I've seen in every war zone I've ever been to, which is the belief if you are being targeted, that if America only knew that it would that that there would be that rescue. And I bet even today notwithstanding the Trump administration, I bet they're still out there in the world, people who think, you know, if if not America, the government, if Americans only knew, and they welcomed us into their homes, they, you know, didn't have electricity, they're burning books, basically to keep warm in the winter. Yet they would share with us, you know, coffee and and tell their stories of what had happened to their loved ones. And after a couple years of doing that, I and being able to write for the before I left more called like all the editors of all the newspapers and call the foreign editor of NPR, and made all these introductions for me. So I made made it as a stringer. I was able to make a living doing this writing because of the time that he took to do that. And I was by the end, I was even writing for the Washington Post, he introduced me to the editorial page editor there. I was the stringer for the Washington Post, but I covered the fall of Srebrenica for the Washington Post, like above the fold, you know, UN safe area falls, 8000 Muslim men and boys murdered, you know, over the course of just a couple of days. So I asked myself, wow, you know, even when I'm not a stringer, when I'm a big shot, if I'm lucky enough ever to become a big shot reporter, I'll still the best I'll do is be writing above the fold in the Washington Post, you know, and, and I'm still dependent on someone to read this story, to be moved by this story, you know, someone like you in a decision making role. And so I decided to, to, to not take that chance and to try, I guess, eventually to put myself in a position to be able to do something, which to me, at that time felt more concrete. And initially, my idea was to go to the Hague and prosecute the bad guys. But I got a little rerouted when I went to law school, but I did go to law school. I kept writing, I kept I still believe so much in the power of the pen and the power of journalism. But at the same time, I wanted to try also to be able to do something that wasn't a bank shot so much. You're being too modest, because I mean, you went on to huge success after your experience in Bosnia as an academic as an activist as an author as well and then entered public service as you suggested. And at the end of the preface to the book, you write something that's really powerful and honest, you say some may interpret the book's title as suggesting that I began with lofty dreams about how one person can make a difference only to be educated by their brutish forces that I encountered. That is not the story that follows. Explain a little bit what you mean by that. That was my version of a Mike Trap. That is not the story that follows because I couldn't I tried so many times to describe what the book was going to be. And I could never find the word. I mean, no idea how many drafts I went to. Thank you for saying that that was okay. But but so instead of saying what the book was going to be, I decided to say what it wasn't because I do think the title can lead young people, which is a key target audience of the book. You know, people are starting off in jobs like the ones that junior fellows have here. But to believe that the only way you get educated is to lose your ideals or to be disabused of some of the ideas I had when I when I worked for more. And instead, the story I try to tell is one of how you yes, of course, your your your ideals get honed. You realize that if you if you're for 10 things, you're going to be a lot less effective than if you're for one, you know, so focus becomes really important. You learn you get better at anticipating counter arguments. You get better at knowing what the right means are. When I when I did finally enter government, I got better at understanding that your success in a meeting turns often on all the things you've done before the meeting, rather than, you know, initially, I'm like, I got to get to the meeting and I've got to make the case of what turns out five phone calls ahead of that. You know, where you hear where someone else is coming from and you understand better what's wrong with your idea, you know that that can be very beneficial. So a lot of it is about tactics and focus and prioritization. But it's also about, you know, when it works, why does it work? So it has plenty on when it doesn't work. I mean, and when US foreign policy doesn't make things better. But I think it's important to look at those cases where, for example, I think one of the more powerful chapters is about President Obama's very brave decision to buck the politics and send troops and health workers into the heart of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. And again, part of the education, the idealist is to take note of the fact that no one talks about this, right? Like so as somebody who now understands a bit better the ways of the world, you don't get credit for what you prevented, which really skews the cost benefit analysis. But as a result, I chose to tell that story because in September of 2014, we were told that 1.4 million people were going to be infected by January. And it wasn't like hyperbole. It was an epidemiological curve stemming from the way the virus and the epidemic were spreading already. And President Obama had the, and this is another part of it, this would have been something that more it would have instilled in me very early, but just deepening my understanding or my conviction that our interests and our values on something like that are so intertwined. And President Obama saying, if we don't deal with it there, it's going to come here. And it would have come here. And understanding that how the power of fear in our politics, which we're now living. Indeed, Donald Trump, one of the stories I tell in the book is how Trump used the Ebola epidemic. It was one of the first examples of him, I think really lighting on to how fear works and how many headlines you can get by stirring people up and being impervious to facts and impervious to consequences. But it worked for him. It gave him an even bigger profile than he had through his, his prior incarnations. But, but you know, showing the catalytic role where the US isn't bearing the whole burden far from it, but where because the president decides to leap first, I'm then able to go to China, you're able to go to the Indians in the Malaysians and the this and we're all together then able to round out a coalition that means that no, we're not the global policemen, but we're kind of the team captain, you know, picking, you know, members of the coalition and, and ultimately getting the job done in a way that saved, you know, I'm sure more than a million lives there, but also I think lives all around the world. No, I think it's a really, the Ebola intervention by the United States and a coalition is a really powerful example at a moment when as you and lots of others in the audience know very well, the American public, I think is really torn for skeptical wisdom of using American influence in pursuit of what appear to be, you know, humanitarian issues. And that's a really good example, I think, too. Another complicated set of choices that we both lived and worked through in the Obama administration has to do with the Arab Spring as well. And Rob Malley and a number of others here labored through that as well. And you write about it, I think, really elegantly and thoughtfully in the book. I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit more about two of the most complicated sets of choices that, you know, the president and all of us faced on Libya and then on Syria, because one of the criticisms of right to protect as a concept, I think has been over the years, the notion that, you know, prevention often morphs into regime change, given the reality that ruthless authoritarians, whether it's more Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad, are going to fight to the bitter end as well. So was that slide, you know, from prevention to regime change inevitable with regard to Libya? And how much of a break do you think concern about that slide was on the choices that we ended up making in Syria? It's, of course, I get a version of that question all the time. That's definitely the most sophisticated version of the way the question has ever been posed, of course, from Bill. Kind of live up to more. Yeah, yeah, seriously. But okay, so maybe I'll just do them in turn, but but the what I try to do in the book is really take the reader with us into the situation room and into the choice as it was presented to us in early 2011. And people forget, you know, that it was actually the British and the French, who were pushing for a no fly zone in the face of what looked to be the quelling of a rebellion or at least parts of a rebellion and Gaddafi's own words saying that he's going to, you know, hunt down people who were loyal to the opposition house by house Gaddafi's own track record of being murderous and ruthless in all the ways that Americans know as well because of his support for terrorism in the past. So, you know, we're in the situation room and Barack Obama is the person who opposed the war in Iraq when it was it's hard to believe it ever was, but was fashionable and looked like it was potentially political career suicide for him to have opposed it when he did. He was a person, I think, elected to get us out of wars in the Middle East and beyond and not to get us into wars. And yet what we're looking at is again the words of a murderous dictator and an appeal from the Arab League to create safe areas to protect civilians are closest to allies pushing a no fly zone that isn't going to do any good for anyone. And what the president said is, look, when it's mass atrocities crimes against humanity, you know, I think we will not act alone. We will not act unilaterally. We will not act without the support of the Security Council. That's usually a break on the US being able to do anything because Russia never supports action under the guise of, you know, for humanitarian purposes, you know, under the rubric of humanitarian. So Obama says to Susan Rice, our ambassador to the UN, you know, see if you can go get a civilian protection resolution. And I mentioned this because I think people remember this as like this, it was a US led initiative, but to try to speak to the consensus, relatively speaking, that existed at the time of just how monstrous Gaddafi was, but also the sense of momentum that the Arab Spring had the time that's so hard to remember, you know, that in Tunisia peacefully protest had led to the departure of a dictator in Egypt, Mubarak, who seemed the eternal leader had stepped down without much bloodshed in a way that surprised, I think, many people. And so it was in those early days, and I think that was part of the reason that Russia and China, countries that never hesitate to use their veto on the Security Council, basically said, OK, like we're not going to embrace this, we're not going to vote for this, but we get it and we're abstaining. And the reason your question is so sophisticated is you skip over that part to what happens then. So in the situation room, in my memory at least, I don't remember anybody saying or and us really grappling with the question as you've posed it, which is Gaddafi won't exit, you know, a version of this. No one in the situation room was and the President of the United States was not in a million years pursuing regime change. He was trying to prevent the massacre and the siege of these civilian areas. So the question is you pose it is, yeah, but if you know Gaddafi and you know he's never going to give up power peacefully, then in effect by taking on the task of trying to protect civilians, you're taking it on either infinitely or eventually you're going to come to that moment where he has to leave in order for the terms of the UN Security Council resolution to be realized. And I think while it wasn't articulated in a way that it in retrospect I think should have been somebody should have posed that question in that way. I think that our belief that was that his Gaddafi's desire for self-preservation, his own notorious self-love and megalomania would lead him to privilege his own life and his own wealth even over retaining power. And so I think in fairness while it did become exactly that kind of a lesion and I think there are a lot of criticisms of Libya. One I don't think is fair is, what I know is not fair is that we went and pursued a civilian protection mission and we were taking out ground militia and units that were killing civilians or pursuing civilians. That was a bait and switch that was a leap from what we were authorized to do. That's bullshit. We were authorized to do that. That was what the terms of the resolution said. It wasn't a no fly zone. That was a small clause in the resolution. It was to do that. I think the legitimate question is you know at the point at which it becomes impossible to imagine again fulfilling the civilian protection mandate while Gaddafi's still in power. Is there a bigger, thicker kind of even pause in everything diplomatic push that could have been we did a diplomatic push behind the scenes as you know but could that have been more aggressive? Could a golden parachute for him? I mean again we were doing that. It wasn't an absence of diplomacy but could something more robust maybe again have spoken to that self-interest. I'm skeptical and then the last criticism which is the hardest I think to deal with is just how Libya looks today and how terrible it is and knowing what you know. Do you know that it was going to turn out this way? Should we have done what we did anyway? I grapple with this at length in the book but I think I am not persuaded that Libya would not look like Libya today had we not done what we did and we did get to give Libyans the chance to have a politics of their own. They were the ones who didn't want an international presence. We certainly Benghazi in the siege that would have ensued would have been incredibly brutal and had we not done it I think Libya would look a lot like today with the rebellion and the insurgency just as Syria looks like Syria today without US intervention but I say that humbly because we can't run history. I mean certainly nobody who supported doing what we did back in 2011 would have anticipated that it would devolve to the extent that it did but to some extent I feel like it's always America. It's like America is why Libya looks the way it does today. Syria it's America why Syria looks the way it is today. I mean part of the Arab Spring was people also rising up and claiming agency as well but and and then on Syria I tell the red line story in retrospect I mean Rob will Mali will attest to this. We had so many meetings and it always felt as though every tool in the toolbox was being considered and discussed but when I went back to write the serious story I decided in a way that the most important chapter to tell was the red line chapter because that was the moment at which I think it became clear that the US I didn't know this at the time but I think in retrospect we broadcast to Assad to Putin to ourselves rightly or wrongly but that we were going to not be using military force in Syria. I mean we still debated it and there were all kinds of no flies on this and planning for this that and the other thing but but in truth I think you know in light of the legacy of the war in Iraq in light of the sectarian dynamics and by 2013 in light of the proliferation of terrorist groups and armed groups and so forth and then of course this became clear once we were actually fighting ISIS the idea of two of two-front war so it's it's interesting just even from a policy standpoint that that only in retrospect when you're in these meetings do you do you realize that it was it was sort of a chronicle foretold and unfortunately the Syrians didn't know that. Yeah you know that's you're right it is a common experience when you look backwards like that and just one last question from me and then I want to open it up to to your questions from the audience while we still have time and this this one is directed a little bit more to some of the younger generation here as well as those still working in government in in a problem from hell your wonderful one of your wonderful earlier books you write about you wrote about upstanders people who resist the temptation to be bystanders and not take a stand in that case to prevent genocide and you write a lot in in your new book about that same kind of dilemma as well there are lots of people career people in government today struggling with questions of exit of loyalty of voice and there are lots of people who are thinking about their career in public service who are wondering about some of those same questions so well based on your experience and what you write about what's what's your advice to people I guess I'd say a couple things I mean first what I love about being out and talking about the book with people is yet reminder for myself also just how many ways there are to serve and you know as heartening as the midterm elections were and seeing all these women and moms and young people and different faces getting involved in national politics it was even more heartening that election to see the state legislatures and the school boards and and here I will say one nice thing today maybe the question and answer I'll say a second nice thing by accident but about Donald Trump which is he has made everybody think some version of if he can be president like surely I could be on the school board yeah you know so there's a sort of I guess a thousand flower like I guess one part of my education is to see service you know because I started working with more you know my my conception of what it was to be in public service was very oriented by him and his career and what he had done and the idea of being a diplomat was was just I never imagined it but but the the idea that I was able to do that and the sense of meaning and purpose I got out of it when I finally did get to do it I mean I can't say enough about it and I'll come back to that in just a sec but but the but the range and when I hear it means it's so heartening like I mentioned this event last night at GW I mean the people come up to me and say you know I read a problem from hell I was forced to read a problem from hell in college and I now work on homelessness because I love the idea of you know the idea of the upstander and I you know I work nearby you know and your foggy bottom I'm doing this and that and just the a kind of Catholic small C conception of service I think is extremely inspiring to me the way the what people are doing in our own communities and how activated they are second thing I'd say and by talking about diplomacy as such but I have the penultimate chapter of the book again part of my education which I hope doesn't sound like a compromising part because I'm pretty unrepentant but is the penultimate chapter is called shrink the change and it talks about I think an impediment to being an upstander or trying to do something for someone somewhere and that is the feeling I think all of us have that the problems are just so big and you know 67 million refugees displaced you know when Mort was saving the Cambodian and the Vietnamese refugees and and opening up Thailand when you guys were working on the Kurds and Turkey and I mean it was a really big problem but it didn't have the backdrop of 67 million people displaced and so so the temptation to think the problem is so big and the planet is warming so fast and if I see one more disappearing glacier you know how do I even think about the idea that me as a citizen that there's something I can do on on climate change and so that temptation something I felt even serving as a member of the President's cabinet I mean you know even when I could do things on a given day maybe to reunite a husband and a wife who were separated refugees you know separated by paperwork or something and and and so that this idea of shrink the change comes from a book called switch that I was very taken by when I worked at the White House and it's just basic the basic thesis is big problems are very rarely solved by big solutions they're solved by these very very small and at times unsatisfying increments and and so that isn't we're judging from the Democratic debate last night when I saw that we're not in a shrink the change kind of moment and so I'm a little bit out of fashion I know but Obama has a version of this too and Billy your whole career shows the the fruits of this approach but Obama puts it in the book and you've heard him maybe say this publicly just he's like you know better is good and it turns out better is a hell of a lot harder than worse you know and and it is anyway last thing on diplomacy for young people is just to not give up you know we if it's true that we need to one reason I wrote a memoir rather than a policy book and I think you did made the same choice is because elites were talking to each other for a long time and the constituency for being an internationalist America and a leading America is smaller than it needs to be on the right and the left and we need to open up this world and and the sense of purpose that we have but also the good that we can do and the necessity of that leadership because if you if you had issues with a US led international order and there are many issues to be had you'll love the China led international order let me tell you so you know we don't have an option I think for the sake of our own people really of retreat and there is another model out there that is working very aggressively to change the rules of the road in ways that will not be beneficial for our people so so to be in diplomacy to be part of the foreign policy apparatus wherever that may be including the think tank world and bear in mind that even though I quote more not being entirely complimentary about the think tank world he ran a think tank and knows full well just as you have shown Bill the good that can be done in in all you know looking at the problems of foreign policy from from all dimensions from all sides thanks Sam very much let me open it up to all your questions all I would ask is raise your hand wait for the microphone which will be on its way to you please identify yourself and please keep it brief and end with a question mark yes sir thank you I download your book I'm reading it on chapter 22 I'm very much enjoying you are one fast reader dude it just came out on Tuesday in 2009 President Obama paid a visit to Turkey met with a Kurdish politician Ahmed Turk yes Turks love making fun of Kurds and forcing them to carry Turkish last names Kurt the Kurdish politician gave Mr Obama at dossier with the names of 17,000 civilian Kurds murdered by shadowy armed groups affiliated with the Turkish government given your experience in the government what happens to dossiers like that by the way in comparison in Bosnia 25,609 Bosnian civilians were murdered by Serbian tugs you quote in your book Mr. Holbrook telling you many people quote don't have another hope besides America end of quote knowing what you know of bloody Turkish prejudices towards the Kurds given America's generous support of Ankara in those years would you say America was a source of hope or despair for the Kurds in Turkey thank you I guess I can answer the what amounts to a process question first which is normally what would happen with a list like this is I guess it would go it would come first to the NSC and then it would go out to our embassy and it would be either be a question is this real is this true what can we do and then you know one of the themes of my work is this in one of the chapters of book is called the toolbox and there'd be a question of what can be done and that question and then I write as you know because you're on chapter 22 I wrote a chapter called April 24th which is about you know nothing as contemporary in some sense as what you're talking about but is about Obama's commitment to recognize the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks back in 1915 and then why he didn't fulfill that commitment and so I get I don't get into your very specific question of of the fate of the Kurds within Turkey but I I get into this it's sort of an analog I don't get into thousands of policy questions but but it's an analog and what I say in that chapter where I'm critical of our decision-making and believe we should have fulfilled our promise and rip the band-aid off but I do describe the weight of factors that caused President Obama not to and I I suppose that would apply as well when you ask why was our policy as uncritical of Erdogan at least publicly as it was or as it came across to you I think the fact that we were drawing our troops down from Iraq was a major factor and looking at especially then as time wore on and the Arab Spring broke out seeing just so much chaos in the region and being concerned I think that you know that if we were to move into a more confrontational posture vis-a-vis Erdogan that somehow that would lead that there just weren't many stable places now I I agree with at least a premise of your question which is you know when a regime starts acting the way Erdogan's regime acted domestically first toward Kurds and then Turks of all of all walks and you know also denying genocide that happened long ago that that's a predictor of of the kind of a predictor of the kind of partner Turkey's going to be for us as well and I think whether it's extremist groups in Syria who were able to take hold or it's the bombardment of Kurdish villages and other things that went on later you know this was a very very flawed partnership put it that way thanks to try to see in the back if I'm missing anybody way in the back this man yeah I just want to say something Bill can I say something sure not one woman has way raised her hand we just go on girls sorry we did okay thank you thank you sorry I didn't see but initially not yeah no no that's I was looking thank you bill you're looking taking your time hi thank you it's wonderful to finally see you after admiring you for a long time my name is Mindy Reiser I'm Vice President of an NGO called Global Peace Services hi Shepi it's been a long time there was so much hope for institutions like the International Criminal Court and I'm sure you've written about this in in many venues but I'd like you to say a word about how one can continue the hope for that institution when it takes so long for cases to have a resolution when there have been over the years not many that have even come to the court and more broadly the sadness almost despair sometimes over the working of our international infrastructures the United Nations with so much hope there and a bit of despair as to where it's going and what power it really has thank you well since you asked you asked the question the right way and this is another idea that comes out of this book switch that I mentioned before but you ask instead of asking how's the International Criminal Court doing you ask where is the hope so thank you for steering me in that direction because it has been a very frustrating decade plus really of watching an institution that had an awful lot of promise produce not nearly as much as one would have anticipated and and more worrying in the long term is is how the political support for the ICC which was always lacking in this country but also how that dried up in sub-Saharan Africa and how now politicized even the idea of the ICC is that said to your question you know I think that the idea of international justice always was that it would be a sort of footstep effect right I mean even the conception of complementarity is that when it when one country is unable and unwilling to prosecute its own that there would be the specter of international justice there and you know I don't have I haven't done read the social science or done the social science myself on this but I think if you look over the last decade at the kind of pressure that governments feel to prosecute people within their own ranks it's not anywhere sufficient but is much greater because of the existence of the ICC and the risk that the ICC will then assert jurisdiction and then the politics of that for a country because then the imperial court you know as it's now being branded would be meddling in your business and it's taken people off the playing field you know again not in the numbers we would like to see but who would be doing terrible things to civilians right now so as modest as it can seem every one of those individuals who's up there being being convicted or even just being incapacitated for the life of their trials that that's that's added we're trying to really shrink the change there right because it's such a small number of people and then you know on some of I mean I actually think I don't the fact that within the ICC there there's also proving to be some checks and balances you know I don't know enough about the very specific cases but it is important that it show that it's not just a prosecutor's court as well and so I think it's showing you know it could be that with time it builds a record where people see it less as kind of victor's justice and so forth and then the last thing I'll say because this is just probably and John Predigas who's one of the heroes of the book is here and my great friend and fellow Darfur advocate long ago you know sometimes you don't see the ICC as the venue where someone gets their just desserts but it I believe and again no one will ever really know the and there were so many factors behind Omar Bashir's fall and the fact that he is now in jail and being prosecuted he's not being prosecuted for Darfur he's not being prosecuted for murdering his people you know in in genocide which is the what he was accused to have done by the ICC but a public you know over time and we saw this with Charles Taylor we've seen this with others when you are indicted it is not helpful in your domestic politics when you're indicted by the ICC no matter all the bravado about oh it's a western court it's a this or that and so at the margins the fact that he was indicted by this institution I think is a factor how big a factor I don't know but in the dossier that helped bring about his fall and the Minister of Justice now in Sudan is a four you know a member of the group I think it was getting his PhD at Georgetown if I'm not mistaken I mean a progressive reformer and now that's the Minister of Justice and Bashir is in jail and so the ICC is not part of that storyline technically but again you do not it's not helpful to have on your CV indicted for a genocide in crimes against humanity or crimes at the ICC maybe we have time for just one last question please right there on the aisle Hi Jenna Ben-Yehuda it's nice to see you both I run an organization called the Truman National Security Project and to your point on growing that foreign affairs constituency that's really what we're trying to do in our chapters all around the country my question for you is do you think this moment has increased the stakes of these issues in the eyes of American voters do you think folks really see climate in Iran does this reverberate for you what do you think can would really draw the electorate to these issues apart from the existential threat of war because it seems so much as a national security issue at some remove but what do you think the answer is to really broadening that constituency I love your answer to your question because you're more on the front lines of it than I am maybe I'll learn more as I travel around talk about some of the ideas in the book but I think I put climate in a separate category because the just to see young people and how much they care about that issue and how I think it is becoming a voting issue just like I never thought it would happen I'm so glad it's happening finally guns and gun control is becoming a voting issue you know not a thing not a nice to have but a need to have in the candidates that are being vetted or considered I think more broadly it's pretty tricky I mean I think it's it's not a coincidence that national security is occupying just such a small fraction of the debates and that the candidates themselves don't really feel compelled I mean with their exceptions definitely but to come out with very thick proposals and so forth but you know so it's but I think the fact that sort of from a transactional standpoint or maybe on one's list it's not right here my impression but you would know better is that the ideas of sort of walking away from your friends or being alone America alone and the the and this is where it connects to the domestic the walking away from our values or the the sort of and again not to say that American foreign policy has been as we've heard you know a perfect purveyor of of our values but starting at home attacking the things that made us a democracy that that other countries in the world look to whether that's through completely you know destroying what the Statue of Liberty stands for or locking kids up in cages or whether that's attacking the media the courts minorities whatever I mean all of those things that does get voters that all those issues do upset voters and those again relate to this idea of America alone and you know I've talked to Jake Sullivan associate here at Carnegie a lot about this we've been struggling with this question of you know when in American history has there been sort of successful domestic mobilization around internationalism absent an enemy and the answer you know it's really hard is not really I mean with since you know for so long we refer to the post Cold War world and it was the post post Cold War world and then but it was like there wasn't a defining principle you know maybe climate and this idea of returning to our values and and returning to the and again I don't mean to suggest that we have a perfect yester year of America but returning to the quality at least the aspirations associated with America that people feel proud of and having them imbued in our foreign policy at the time that we have arrival ascending and again I think not merely content to practice its form of values domestically China and not merely content to repress at home but but you know making inroads in bringing more countries into the fold selling technologies that make it easier for other countries to do terrible things to their people and so you know I'm not crazy about the bashed China consensus and I'm not crazy I don't like the bashed China consensus that exists and I think some form in foreign policy there is a temptation to kind of go that direction in part to make foreign policy relevant and I think you know there's plenty to bash but there's also so much including on climate that we need to do with them but maybe there's something in democracy fate in the world as an organizing principle that isn't just about making an enemy out of China but where China is a piece of that conversation that can that can can draw people but the challenge with what I've just said I can talk myself out of anything is is people are so despairing about whether democracy can deliver at home right and that's why you know I think while I'm as internationalist as you and very interested in this cause you know it's not in it's not it's not only a problem that internationalism is not the topic of the day it it is associated with a good thing which is that people recognize that there is so much work we have to do domestically and that ultimately will be a much more stable foundation if we could do that work for the internationalism and the kind of US leadership I think that we seek I hate to bring wonderful conversations to a close but I want to thank all of you for coming I want to thank Morton Sheppy very much for honoring us with your presence today Mort did you want to say anything could we have a microphone please wait we get a mic wait yeah it's coming it's coming quickly quickly where it went gonna throw it up it's coming yeah it's there you go thanks Mort there you go there you go Morton you're equipped oh I don't want to prolong this too long uh-oh I don't want to make a ask a general question about the value of the think tank and the purpose of think tank Miss Samantha was here and uh we were together in the period I need seven and uh can you Michael end it up in and turn and just put it up to your yeah because this hold my a little bit just hold Michael hold it no just stay can you hear me yeah but you're good just hold it so you said I was here in a period 19 91 to 97 and you came in a period of American interventionism the endowment spend a huge amount of effort trying to promote war and Vulcans so much so that the Marty out of Sarri who was then President of Finland came to me and said Mr. President you are not head of the corny endowment for international peace you are head of the corny endowment for international war and so my the point is right now is does the think tank have a serious mission other than analytical understanding when does the think tank become turned into a aggressive effort to change things I don't think that exists anymore may not exist anymore for a variety of reasons especially in this period where President is deaf so my question I'm trying to get at since you were part of so much part of this aggressive posture and you're still part of something in Harvard you have a very important voice so I'm getting trying to get at the question what is your purpose in trying to get things done is it purely analytical or is it time to try to change things establish a different sort of approach to some major international issues right now I don't see anything of that sort okay I maybe I'll just answer very briefly and then Bill maybe you could do go meta on what you're doing here but you know I I think Carnegie did much more than what you're describing as it happens you know under your leadership it did push the Clinton administration to go into Bosnia the intervention in Bosnia did bring the conflict there to an end within a matter of weeks and the peace as you know that was ushered in about which by the way I think you're right the think tank had done far less thinking right what should what should a post intervention Bosnia look like so I think that's a very fair point but I don't think you should take responsibility for that but but maybe Dayton could have been improved had there been more thinking about what the war's aftermath would look like but nonetheless notwithstanding you know a very flawed peace and very difficult conditions in the Balkans to date not not one gunshot of war fired since that happened so I don't think you should diminish Carnegie's role or your role actually in saving lives back in that period and in the we might even just call it not a piece but a permanent ceasefire that has existed since then that said you know Bill will have a better defense than me because it's his day job but you know expertise facts truth you know have never been more vulnerable in our country and a think tank is a place where you know just like an an academic institution in principle is a place where people can have the time and the space to learn what's true and to root whatever their prescriptions are for whatever institution they're focused on in facts and so I actually think whatever about you know we were talking about the vast range of issues that Carnegie and other think tanks work on we're in a much more multipolar world and we remain quite an insular country a think tank is a place where expertise you know at a time where we've transitioned we already under Obama transitioned as Jake says from US domination to US leadership now perhaps with China's rise and the US retreat we're we're transitioning to something else certainly bipolarity again if not a much more chaotic multipolar landscape and you know thinking I mean policy makers as you know more or suffer from the tyranny of the inbox there being places where expertise is cultivated where understanding is achieved where foreign scholars find homes where they can even understand American politics and then go back to their own communities and what bill and what you started more than bill has continued which is also building think tanks in places that don't have a tradition of providing this analytic ballast to what busy policy makers are doing I think that's an example of refashioning the purpose of a think tank to suit these times I think that's right I mean I'll be very brief more first I absolutely agree with you that it's not the role of an institution like Carnegie just to admire problems I mean I think that's largely a waste of time Samantha's right the world's changed since you know you were president here in the sense that the think tank environment is a lot more crowded and complicated than it was then the world's changed too you know the late 90s were a period the early late 90s were a period when you know the United States was the singular dominant power on the landscape that's not true today we still have a better hand to play than anybody else but that's why we've tried following your lead to set ourselves up as a truly global institution with six centers around the world because you can't understand how you approach those problems let alone solve them unless you see them from a lot of different perspectives today and you also have to adapt to the world of technology the kind of transformative forces in the world today as well and you have to be an independent voice which is increasingly difficult to do that's what we pride ourselves on at Carnegie today just as you know you did in your time we're not beholden to a particular national government to a political party to a particular donor and that's important that's incredibly important in an era in which you know so many institutions are going to tilt one way or the other and so we you know we try as best we can to sustain that as well and then find those areas where we can help not only educate about what's changing in the world and about America's role in it but also those places where we can advocate whether it's for a smart or smarter diplomatic approach on a question like Iran or in dealing with the youth's challenge of competition with China so we'll keep at it but anyway as I said thank you all so much for coming thanks to Morton Shepi and thanks especially to Samantha thank you thanks to you boys