 This is really the fundamental issue, this word freedom, which has so many definitions, the freedom of the ancients and the modern freedom. And in reality, maybe I'm old-fashioned there, but I believe that freedom to survive, to endure, must have a content. It must be a freedom for something. It's a freedom that you define in your books. And what we have seen since 1989 is a great vacuum in that respect, including in the countries that were liberated, so to speak, from dictatorship. There has been this idea that now all of us as little free individuals, the invisible hand of the market, would save us and would give us an answer to all our issues, including the moral issues. And that is not the case. And what we have seen is the kind of death of politics in that respect, because politics had been discredited by the isms that destroyed the 19th, the 20th century. And now, in a way, politics is coming back under different guises. When we see these horrible fundamental, I mean, extremists of the Islamic state, they are occupying the vacuum of values as are many movements around the world. And that is what is dangerous. And I think if we want to be, I mean, to get out of the dark ages to answer your question, we need to have a more positive and clear view of ourselves. Paul says we have, we don't have enough confidence. I think sometimes we have too much confidence because we don't really think about who we are. And if we are not able to define who we are, then others will do it against us and then we'll be in trouble as we are now. We have to get engaged, all of us. And particularly those of us who share these ideals of humanism and freedom, these things that we hold quite dear to ourselves, they're not going to continue, in my opinion, if we just take them for granted and just assume that things will continue, that people will have some enlightened view. And somehow it'll all work out. It'll only work out if we take active steps to do that. And I think that right now, at this stage in time, I'll speak from my own country, we have a lot of work to do. We have a huge responsibility, in my opinion, to use the leadership that we have been granted by many in the world that we have assumed. We have a responsibility to use it wisely and actively and correctly. And if we're going to do that, then we in the U.S. need to have credibility. We've lost a lot of our credibility for many reasons in the last decade or two. We need to regain it. Where is Germany going? Is Germany, will Germany stay if the conflict between the West and Western Europe and the United States is going to be heated up with Russia? Because I have the feeling that Germany is today very uncertain and very uneasy about the present development, extremely uneasy. And if you would allow me a micro perspective on the German affairs, suddenly a new party popped up in Germany, the alternative for Germany and got immediately in regional elections in Saxony and Turingia and Brandenburg, 10% even more than 10%. And that party is very much reluctant concerning European integration, especially the euro. And they are, and that's interesting, they are pro-Russian. And this combination between being critical of European integration, especially the euro, which brought about German domination in Europe. If you would be President Obama, what would you do? What I will do, I will try to address the American nation and the world. I will try to play Pope Francis, Orbi et Orbi. And I will say something like that. First of all, I will try to create the impression that I am leading not from behind. Secondly, I will try to say to the ordinary Americans in very simple words, folks, you know what, we have reached the tipping points. I would agree with Paul, who was talking about tipping points that might be reached in the future. This was apparently a thought. I would say we are in disaster already, because the international order is unraveling and I'm very glad that Jean-Marie will try to re-energize it. But you know, shit is coming. And we cannot rely upon the global governance, because it doesn't exist. The Security Council is simply blocked by the veto right. And the whole structure, the whole architecture is the left over of the Second World War. It's a long time ago. All principles have been undermined recently. Even the Westphalian state, the Yalta agreements, the Helsinki agreement and the rest. Nothing does exist. Putin was the first to cross all red lines, which I don't know where Obama had these red lines, as we know. But our well-being fellow Americans and our prosperity depends on whether we as a nation normative power with hot power, because there is another normative power, the European Union, which had no hot power, so we need to answer the challenge. And my second thought would be to reintroduce the dimension of the values into the foreign policy that everybody, especially after Iraq, I'm sorry to say, forgot about values, as a kind of, you know, some leprosy or whatever. But I will try to persuade the world who will be listening to this issue of values. When the American president says values, it looks something like regime change, something that we don't like and hate. But I would talk about humility. Because everybody understands that America is like a dark in a very small room with glass windows. And every time it wakes the tail, it breaks the windows, okay? Everybody understands it. But I would be very humble and would be addressing, you know, Americans and the world. And thirdly, I will try to formulate the idea of returning America to Europe and reviving transatlantic partnership. Without maybe words, I like the words, by the way, concept of democracies. But maybe not everybody would accept this term. And I would return to the tradition of the Marshall Plan when Americans helped the world. And without Americans, hardly, you know, the countries that were defeated Germany, Italy, Japan, hardly they would have succeeded. And in order to persuade Americans and the world, which is suspicious of the Americans, and the world does not like Americans, well, for many reasons. And I would try to do something practical. I would present the idea of giving Ukraine the status of the American LA without waiting for NATO membership. And I would find, and I can find, persuasive arguments for President Putin to agree to put the peacekeeping forces along the border of Ukraine and Russia, consisted of non-aligned nations. Essentially, the idea is that difficult things won't happen without Americans playing a leadership role. Easy things can happen. We can do certain trade rules. We can solve certain problems that are easy. But when something difficult comes along, American leadership is indispensable. It doesn't mean that America can do it all by itself. It doesn't mean that America is the policeman. But I think we've gone through a pendulum swing over the last, say, 15 years. And we reached this point where America thought, with all respect, Paul, that it could reach across the world 10,000 miles and overthrow a regime. Whether you agree that it was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, we did it badly. We lost respect both for the decision to do it but the fact that we did it badly. That it took years and years of slogging on the ground to end up with a time where we now have the Islamic State and we have to go back and figure out what to do. And that's 10 years after the invasion. So whatever you think of the decision to go in, whatever you think of Saddam Hussein, this was not a highly competent operation for which the United States previously had been respected. Afghanistan, Kosovo, World War II, Korean War, whatever you think, America's military power was highly respected. Deterrence was working. The Chinese, the Russians, others believed that if America threatened them in the period after Afghanistan before we invaded Iraq, Iran was rushing to make a deal with us. We lost all that and that's the terrible tragedy that has made our indispensable nation more difficult to operate. And that's the real tragedy of Iraq, is that right or wrong, it's ruined America's self-confidence and other country's confidence in America, as you mentioned. There was a time when America was able to gather together a group of democracies and deal with a mass murder in Kosovo, overthrow Milosevic, but do it by the Serbian people did it. And we prevented a genocide and we had a post-war plan and we had legitimacy. That's what indispensable nation means. It doesn't mean reaching 10,000 miles and overthrowing regime. On the other hand, and this is where the pendulum problem is, it also doesn't mean pulling out of Iraq without thinking through the consequences, putting troops into Afghanistan and pulling them out before you even finished getting them in, trying to lead from behind in Libya. I think Paul Wolfowitz was right. We didn't need to lead from behind in Libya. We didn't need to create a new theory that America, the leader of NATO, allows Britain and France to take the lead. They did a really good job in using military power to overthrow Qaddafi. But then, nothing. You needed a plan. You needed to make a deal with the rebels that if we'll come in and give you some air power but you have to be prepared to pull your weapons down if we succeed. We need to have a peacekeeping force. We need to have a post-war plan. Then America could be the indispensable nation. Guide NATO and Libya wouldn't have been a disaster because the rationale was there. We prevented a terrible atrocity from happening but we had no plan because we were leading from behind. Britain and France were well-intentioned but they didn't have the wherewithal. So Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and then Syria, the great abdication of American responsibility. Whatever you think of America as the indispensable nation, all those millions of refugees think we could have made a big difference in those first six months by changing the calculus of the Syrian military knowing that the United States was going to engage either through arm and train or through selected airstrikes or whatever. We had a mass murder of 200,000 people and the last time they took notes and wrote down how they tortured these people was in this continent and it was Germany that did it. It's a horrible thing that's going on by a fascist regime in Damascus and the world has done nothing come up with all these reasons. Well Assad, you know we might need him in our fight against ISIS. You know, well we might need him in this case. It could be worse, there could be chaos. It's really hard to imagine anything worse than a leader torturing and murdering and taking notes and photographing hundreds of thousands of his own citizens and the United States did nothing. So that's the other side of the pendulum and I would like to think there's something in between. I think there's something in between and that's something in between however you want to define it. That's the indispensable nation. What we see in the Middle East, the hardening of the position of Saudi Arabia, the hardening of Israel, all that points to a fundamental fact which is that there is no more the reassurance. I think it's another head of policy planning staff. I think it's Richard Haas who once coined the phrase the reluctant sheriff. When there is no sheriff, then every country in the world begins to feel it is on its own. Whether it's in Asia or whether it's in the Middle East or any other place where there's a crisis. And that's a very dangerous situation because you see that whether you want to have a successful negotiation with Iran, whether you want to have a de-escalation in the whole region of the Middle East. We need countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia to come to some accommodation because it's at the heart of the problems of the region. But it's much harder for them to come to an accommodation if they don't sense that behind them there is an enforcer who will stabilize the thing. And that I think is something that we see all around the world with the sense that the US is there but you're not sure it's there. Not only when you go to Riyadh, that's the sense you get very strongly and I think you get it sometimes in Asia. What separates me from the rest of the panel is I'm the only guy from the east and I'm the only active government official so I have to be careful otherwise... But I'm just tempted to follow up Jamie's point about the somewhere in between. First, I do hope somebody will be able to find somewhere in between because we are still relying on you and you are, in our mind, still the only superpower in the world. In a sense that from the perspective of military strength, the only superpower, from the perspective of the curiosity, getting involved in difficult conflicts, being ready to make difficult concessions and criticism and follow through to the solution. So I do still believe that the US is indispensable when it comes to the solution of difficult issues but it's only that it's no longer sufficient. I think you need cooperation with other countries. That's it. So there's not the only sheriff. We need a group of sheriffs, which is led by the United States. We are talking about 1.3 billion China, 1.2 billion India, both of which are rising. So it inevitably comes with the transition of the balance of power. It seems to me that the war in Ukraine, and this is war, this is not simply incursion of the bear into Ukrainian territory. This is the war and annexation of the territory of the European state with 45 million people. And the war already affected many lives and not only Ukrainians. Regretfully and sadly, it affected the lives of the people of Netherlands. And in Ukraine, we have not only the expansionist desire of some mediocre guy in the Kremlin, but in Ukraine we have, I don't like this clash of civilization term and I felt that Huntington was wrong, wrong, wrong. And now I'm returning back to this term clash of civilizations. In Ukraine, the Russian system, that the system of war, unfortunately, we cannot survive in a different way. We are war civilization and we liberal minority have failed to change the system. So our state still can mobilize itself on the basis of war patriotism, mobilization. It's war rhetoric, it's war tactic. And so Russia in Ukraine is fighting you folks, the West. So this is a war of the new type. And what is dangerous about everything, it's the fact that my favorite political leader of Germany and Brussels, well, by the way, who are people in Brussels? Well, I hope that Brussels does exist. People will be there. Good, we have fresh blood over there. And you know, the West pretends that nothing is happening. This is the most serious and the most dangerous thing. The West never produced the word aggression or war, pretending, you know, that, you know, the life is as usual, business as usual. And so the blurring of the border between war and peace in our time gives stimulus and triggers. Many wars like that. Because, well, if there is peace and at the same time there is war and nobody acknowledges that there is war and no punishment for crime, you can go forever. So this is the difference, you know, between our time and the previous time and our time is much more dangerous. Yeah, because this country was indeed deeply shocked by what happened on July 17. But I can assure you that just reading the newspapers, Ukraine is not part of our public discussion. I mean, what's part of the discussion is what we can do with our tomatoes and that we are not very happy with the sanctions. So it doesn't leave, you know, of course there are troubles, but there are troubles everywhere. But your troubles are not our troubles. So your idea that it's a war against the West, it's not experienced as being a war against the West. Do you think that the West needs more evidence? In favor of my argument? I'm sorry to say that. An eternal discussion, as all these degrees is about in geopolitics and international affairs, realism versus idealism. Should international affairs, geopolitics, be based on defending your own interests? Nothing more than that, which probably is now the case. Or the idealism that certain basic values are at stake and there is a kind of moral obligation to take action? Idealism is realism because ideas are fundamental. Ideas can kill and ideas can do a lot of good. And to ignore the power of ideas is extremely dangerous. And I think it is up to the idealists to integrate their ideas in the game of global politics. But the notion that there are interests that are distinct from ideas, I think every country constructs its own idea of itself. It's an imagined community to quote a famous author. And if you don't realize that, if you don't realize the power of ideas, you are not a real realist because you are looking at just a very small set of factors that influence the behavior of countries. So I don't oppose idealism and realism. Paul, I would like to ask you. The Iraq war, was that an act out of idealism or realism? I think it can underestimate the extent to which it was seen as a real danger confronting the United States after September 11th and this combination of states that were involved in supporting terrorism in Iraq was, whether it was involved, how much it was involved with al-Qaeda is a different issue, but it was clearly a state sponsor of terrorism in a rather vicious and dangerous way. And in fact, the group that now calls itself ISIS grew out of the terrorist Sarkawi who was operating in Iraq even before we went in there. I happen to agree with Jamie that an awful lot of mistakes were made when we got there. And the fact is, I think thanks to the... we finally got around to having an effective counterinsurgency strategy and therefore we got to a point where things were reasonably stable and I think it was a real mistake and a necessary mistake to leave and that's created chaos in its wake. But I would say it was much more about a sense of US national interest. The question of idealism, if you like, comes in and it comes in in Afghanistan. If you've actually gone in and removed a regime, what do you replace it with? The notion that we could have reinstalled some Sunni dictatorship in the wake of what we'd done was not a realistic alternative. So I'd say it's... even in that respect, I think what Jean-Marie said is absolutely right. Ideals are part of the real world and how people think and how they choose to govern themselves as part of the real world. Whether Iraqis could have risen to that challenge in some sense the Kurds who were almost as badly abused as everyone else rose to that challenge back in 1991 and I think when I said to some extent in Syria I think we've repeated the mistake of 1991. I don't mean that in 1991 we should have gone to Baghdad. I don't think that was ever a good idea to consider. But we allowed some 100,000, maybe 200,000, to be slaughtered by Saddam's army when we controlled everything that moved on the ground and could have stopped it. I think you might have had a sort of southern Iraq that would have been a success like northern Iraq. But I just say one other thing. It's been mentioned that a lot of here is about how countries deal with their past and when the past is as ugly and brutal as it has been in Iraq or as it now is going to be in Syria. That's an enormous challenge. South Africa is, among other things, remarkable for Mandela's wisdom and finding a way to bring the old oppressors sort of back into the tent if you like but with a form of justice. It was called Truth and Reconciliation Commissions where people, if they confessed their crimes, were more or less forgiven. That's one, South Africa is unique, each country is unique, but I think, as I said in my remarks, it's impossible to exaggerate the damage that has been done by these regimes of fear and terror. And perhaps to some extent that's an aftermath in Ukraine as well. I don't know Ukraine, but Jean-Marie is right that Ukraine, a healthy Ukraine has to be part of any solution here but frankly a healthy Ukraine is what Putin is afraid of. He didn't go into Crimea because Ukraine was failing, he went to Crimea because Ukraine had thrown out a man very much like him whom he had helped to install. And I have to disagree with you on one point. You said, we've seen the limits of military power. Unfortunately, Putin is now demonstrating the effectiveness of military power and I think that's what makes him so dangerous. I think, and I might err because I'm not so very close to, let's say, to the policymakers, but that it was the European Union that brought about the conflict in Ukraine. This kind of association and integrating the Ukraine, the Europeans were marching as if nothing happened in the 90s, they integrated the former glacis countries of the Soviet Union. Suddenly the European Union started to brass again. I just want to remind you that in the 80s if it was a dead end concerning the European integration, people spoke about the rule of sclerosis, there was no horizon of expectation anymore in the 80s and suddenly, 1989, 1990, 1991, there was a European project integrating, modernizing the former Eastern European countries. And the European Union continued with that policy concerning the Ukraine. And that made it suddenly evident that there is a problem concerning the architecture of the European Union. You are modernizing, it's a wonderful, wonderful perspective, a wonderful task, but what about policy? What about security policy? What about the consequences and your responsibility concerning Ukraine? So suddenly the Ukraine became, I would put it like that, the question of Europe. And it's a question for Russia to define itself and it is a question for Europe to define itself. And in so far it's not a problem of pragmatic policy. It's not a question of that conflict moment. It goes much, much deeper. It's a question of definition and self-definition. And in so far, while it opens again an horizon, well of expectation and, well, of fear, what is going to happen? It's not a conflict that will pass by. It is something which goes very, very deep. And in so far, well, the Ukraine might be, might be, well, the luckness teeth of the European, of European integration. And I'm returning to my first intervention, which is for me, well, the question of Germany and its relation to Russia. Lily and I were at a conference about the conference of Vienna in 2001 and 2014. There's a big difference and it's called nuclear weapons and we don't talk about it very much. But here in Europe I suspect it drives a lot of the decision-making about how far they will go in confronting the Russians because they fear what will happen. What will happen with the next step? What if they go into the Baltics? What if we respond militarily? What if they say if you respond militarily we will use nuclear weapons and we hear these conversations from Vladimir Putin dropped selectively to different people designed to scare the very politicians that you're talking about. Designed with the express purpose of generating fear on their part so that when we decide how much pressure we will place on Putin Angela Merkel decides that we can't violate the 1996 agreement with Russia in which we agreed not to put bases in Poland or the Baltics. We can't violate that agreement, okay? But that agreement has been thrown out of the water jumped on and ripped into 17 pieces by the Russians by invading Ukraine and we're worried about our part of it. And at a minimum it seems to me we could signal our determination to defend the Baltics and you may not be very happy people that we made this decision, okay? And maybe it was one of the dumbest things that NATO ever did but we did it. And our obligation now is to have clarity and make sure that the other side is sure they know what we're going to do because if we don't have that level of clarity we create the possibility of a terrible crisis. They have to know what we will do. They have to know we will defend the Baltics and by placing a base there we will show them that we will defend them and then Putin will know that's a line too far. If we don't do that, if we worry about irritating the Russians then he might misinterpret our willingness to defend the Baltics he might do something and we might have to defend the Baltics anyway. Wouldn't it be better to draw our line where we mean it and we've already signed a treaty that says we will go to war for the Baltics? And it seems to me if we won't defend that line we've got a much much bigger problem. What worries me a bit is the gap not in this panel but in general discussion between the rhetoric of universal commitments and the reality of rather limited commitments and that is a very dangerous set of positions that really makes things more dangerous. I saw it firsthand in Syria when I was working with Kofi Annan on Syria where I could see those officers from the Free Syrian Army at the time convinced that NATO was going to come save them and I was telling them this is very unlikely to happen. And so there with that kind of rhetoric you raise expectations you make any negotiation more difficult because the parties believe that they're going to be saved from the air and when this appointment comes well what happens is one of those officers was telling me if you're right Mr. Gano, someday we'll put us beside best. That's where we are now. So I would caution also for Ukraine we have to know exactly what we are prepared to do what we are not prepared to do because that rhetoric is dangerous. I'm totally convinced that it's essential to uphold the commitments of the NATO Alliance we have to do our best to stabilize Ukraine but Ukraine is not a member of NATO and we must not pretend it is in our rhetoric because if we do that at the hour of truth then things will not happen and that's really dangerous because and so I think we have to tone down a bit things. One more question. Are you ready to modernize? Are you ready for the 21st century? One number from the polls 37% of Russians would like to think that the interests of individual personality are much higher important than the interests of the state so 37% less than half but still a lot of people millions and millions of people of Russians consider that they can live in a rule law in a law state the problem is and it is a dramatic civilization of problem for Russia and not only for Russia I'm afraid that for Ukraine for all other post-soviet rabbits it would be a problem we lost the dream I have a dream we lost a dream we had a dream by the end of the 80s the dream was to join Europe Europe was a kind of you know paradise with freedoms, dignity, well-being, etc. all nice things but now when we look as all retired western I'm not sure about American politicians but European politicians definitely are standing in a queue knocking at guests from a door and offering their service not only Chancellor Schrader or Finnish Prime Minister Lipponen but so many others you know I have a list of 40 political leaders and personalities from Europe members of the Russian companies with very fuzzy biography so we lost you know our dream because we think Europe maybe in decay, maybe not this is not the ideal that we should strive for so if you practice what you preach it will be the great support for us