 Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. I'm John Chorchiari. I'm a professor and associate dean here at the Ford School, and I'm also the director of our Wiser Diplomacy Center. Delighted to welcome you to this event with our partners from the American Academy of Diplomacy, which is a premier forum for former U.S. ambassadors and other high-ranking foreign policy officials elected by their peers for their excellence in service. Their mission at the American Academy of Diplomacy, with whom we've partnered now for four years, is both to strengthen U.S. diplomacy through policy engagement and advocacy, and also to communicate the importance of diplomacy as an instrument of advancing American interests and values to the public at large. And it's part of that latter prong that brings them here to U.M. for a return visit to talk to us about the international global implications of the war in Ukraine. Our four expert guests have diverse regional expertise. You've already been able to see their bios, and they're very illustrious. I'd spend the whole hour if I were to run through them in detail, so I'll just share a few highlights with you about our guests. Sitting furthest from me, Ambassador Bob Secuda was U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, along with occupying senior posts in the State Department focusing on energy and on economic and business affairs. He's also served in senior roles on international bodies, including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the International Energy Agency. To his right, your left is Ambassador Susan Elliott, who served among other roles as U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan. She's also held senior roles at the U.S. European Command, at the State Department's Executive Secretariat, and the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. Her current role is as President and CEO of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. To her right, returning, actually, and she also has come here to the Ford School before and helped to train some of our students. As has the gentleman to her right, Ambassador Richard Boucher, who has taught here at Ford before, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus, as Consul General in Hong Kong, and Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, as well as the spokesperson for the U.S. State Department. He's now teaching, including, as I mentioned, some teaching that he's done here in the past at the Ford School. So welcome back. And Ambassador Ron Newman, seated closest to me, has served as Ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and Afghanistan, among other senior roles in the State Department, focusing primarily on the Middle East and North Africa. And he's the current President of the Academy of American Diplomacy. Before I turn it over to Ambassador Newman, who's going to moderate and chair our panel, I want to point out that these aren't the only Ambassadors and Senior Foreign Policy officials who are giving to our community. We've got our clinical faculty, Ambassador Melavitsky and Ambassador Susan Page, sitting here in front of me. We also are just wrapping up the stays of two exemplary visiting experts, Ambassador Dan Shields and former Deputy Secretary Steve Began, who have just completed teaching courses here in the Ford School. In Dan's case on Diplomacy in Asia, and in Steve's case on U.S. Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy. I know a lot of you have been in one or both of those classes, and so I wonder if you would join me in giving them a round of applause for the time that they spent here. Lastly, of course, I always like to thank our excellent staff at the Diplomacy Centers, Usana Wisely and Matt Doss. You all have gotten to know them, I'm sure, in the many programs that we run at the center, including the wonderful panel event today. And with that, I want to turn over to Ambassador Newman, who will moderate our discussion of the global implications on the war in Ukraine. Thank you. Thank you, John. It's a pleasure to be back. We started this program a few years ago. I think this is the fifth, but maybe it's the sixth. It's a real treat. It helps to have contacts. And so Ambassador Lewicki was the original go-betraying matchmaker here. We're very grateful to him because we keep coming back and we keep enjoying the interchange, and I know it's been stimulating every time. I just want to say a word about today's program, because obviously there are no short-hitcher programs on Ukraine these days. But we wanted to do something different, a little different, because Ukraine has implications that go way beyond the Atlantic Alliance, Russia, and America. And that is almost the total focus of everything being written in kind of a popular press and a lot of the articles. And we wanted to get people to think a little bit beyond that because, in fact, it's having implications all over the world. We will, I'm sure, we will certainly come back to all those questions. Also, this is not a military panel, but I would just note in passing that there's an awful lot being written which seems to treat the military situation as though it were predictable, foreseeable, and scriptable. Now, I was an infantry officer about a half a century ago, and I remember they taught me before I went off to my first war that the enemy gets a vote. There are lots of things we do not know that people are ignoring in much of what is written in the popular press. We have, I have no idea what our intelligence community has, we have almost no insight into the degree of casualties or strain in the Ukrainian forces. We treat what they're doing as a constant that they can maintain, and I hope they can personally, but I have no idea. We have very, very little insight into all kinds of things military. And that's not to say that what you see, what you see is not necessarily what you get today. War is full of surprises. Nobody ever starts a war thinking they will lose, and that happens 50% of the time. So remember as you read stuff, you'll be a little more limited about this. So we're going to try to get you to think largely, to push your thinking out beyond just the Atlantic Basin and the Ukrainian issues. Not to exclude them, we're going to come back to them. But I want to ask, I've asked each of my colleagues to start in their initial presentations by talking about one piece that isn't the Atlantic and Ukraine. And I have to say, sorry, there are so many subjects out there we can talk about in that focus that ordering breakfast would not be a miss, and then we wouldn't complete the program. But to get us launched, I wanted to ask my colleague, Mr. Boucher, if he would start with particular reference to China, where, you know, China? This is about you. What's it going to do? Or he might have sort of alluded to rectifying some of the problems. China is a bit shocked. They played a very careful, tried to find a very careful line on this. They don't want to break with Western sanctions. They don't want to get in trouble with their biggest customers in the outside world by breaking sanctions, but they don't want to do too much to offend their Russian friends. It's been an interesting thing to watch. They have gotten a little more squirrely on this one as they have seen what Russia has done. So just the other day they stood up for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Kazakhstan, where a lot of the Russian draft dodgers have gone. They didn't stand up for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but they're getting to the point where kind of drawing a couple lines for the Russians about what they might do if Russia should think bigger is important. And working their way into Central Asia has been really important for the Chinese. And you see them sort of flooding Central Asia in a whole lot of ways. And displacing the Russians, something really reverses 150 years, 200 years of history when the Russians went in in the 1800s with railroads and military. So there's some big changes going on in this part of the world because of this invasion. China is generally happy to see people pushing back against US unilateral assertions of security. The way NATO has defined security in Europe and the United States, along with its allies in Japan and Australia, etc., have defined security structures in Asia. So China is kind of glad to see Vladimir Putin pushing back on that and said, no, you can't have it your way all the time. They have a very comfortable economic and security relationship between China and Russia. China buys raw materials, hydrocarbons, metals, especially, sells consumer goods. And they're taking some advantage of the situation. They're buying more Russian oil at cheaper prices, oil and gas. But still only 21% of their hydrocarbon imports and the rest of the stuff they've got to pay for inflated prices from Saudi Arabia, Iran and elsewhere. So it's not all, you know, mana for the Chinese economy. Russia is becoming more dependent on China. In the 1950s they used to talk about the big brother, little brother, you know, the kind of relationship that they had. And the big brother was Russia. Well, the big brother is turning into China. Russia needs China a whole lot more than China needs Russia right now. And I think China will take advantage of that. The Chinese are also happy to see the West preoccupied. China can portray itself as a foundation of stability in the global order. President Xi's global security initiative keeps coming around. And he's, you know, on his way to a third term. We'll talk about that more later. Still all is not well. They had very significant interest in Ukraine, 6,000 citizens there, along with business interests and other things like that that are being disrupted and destroyed. They see a strengthening of Western alliances and solidarity. And to China that has to be a bit disturbing. They were counting on dividing off the Europeans, promoting what Xi called indivisible security, basically multi-polarity, which is something the Europeans have long advocated. And the Chinese thought they had a friend in Europe on this, and now they see Europe falling very squarely back into the U.S. NATO camp. And Western solidarity in Ukraine is, I would say, something of a warning to China about what might happen if they should try to act militarily against Taiwan. We'll get to Taiwan maybe later in the questions, but I really don't think they have any intentions with regard to Taiwan militarily. But they want to maintain enough military force to sort of warn Taiwan that Taiwan doesn't have an independence option. China needs technology and productivity at the stage it is with its economy. They've got a declining population. They've got export industries leaving because of wage rates and COVID lockdowns. They've got economic troubles because of all the lockdowns and some of these fundamental problems. And what China needs for its next phase of economic growth is technology and productivity enhancements. They're not going to get that from Russia. That's got to come from the Western world. In some extent they can develop it internally, but in the end the technology and productivity enhancements have got to come from outside. And that means the West. That means the U.S. and Europe. So, you know, yeah, having good relationship with Russia, relying on Russia for certain products is great, but they're not going to succeed without a good relationship outside of Russia, so that kind of explains. So, President Xi, I mean, this is all very interesting, but frankly none of it matters. The only thing that matters in China is the continued rule of the Communist Party. And the only thing that matters to the Communist Party right now is Xi Jinping getting his third term. Looks like that's going to happen next week. And this doesn't play really well for that. You know, those pictures of the Pinky Swear, they're all over the Internet. Everybody knows, you know, and it kind of looks like maybe he backed the wrong horse. Now, this falls into the trap of saying, well, he may have merged victorious. As Ron said, military fortunes can change overnight. But for the moment Xi's best friend doesn't look like he's succeeding. Let's put it that way. So did he bet on a loser or not? We don't know yet. Strengthen Western resolve. U.S. victory. Don't really help Xi's best efforts to raise China's status in the world. Also, the failure of Soviet and Russian military equipment in Ukraine is not looking very good. And that has implications for the Chinese military as much as she relies on the Chinese military, talks about the Chinese military. She believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was because the military was no longer under control of the Communist Party. And he's invested an awful lot in having a strong military under control of the party. And now at least some of the weaponry that they use is not living up to its promise in Ukraine. So there's a lot of things that make it a little bit of a downside for Xi personally within the party. He's going to get his third term, but it's looking a little rocky and not as abundantly wonderful as one would think based on the propaganda. So there's a lot of implications for Ukraine, for China's position in the world, also for Xi Jinping's personal position in the Communist Party. We'll just have to see how it works out. Thank you. If that wasn't enough to think about, we're going to go down the line. Let Susan talk about it. Thanks, Ron. And because I do what the moderator tells me to do, even though I've focused probably most of my career on former Soviet Union and NATO transatlantic relations, in my current job running a nonprofit focused on U.S. foreign policy, we do a lot in the Asia Pacific. So we do talk with China, but since Ambassador Boucher has really given you a good overview of what the implications of Ukraine are for China, I want to talk to you a little bit about some recent discussions I've had with other Asian, and especially Asian partners and friends, Japan and Republic of Korea. And one of the things that always come up, came up, we're fortunate. These aren't government groups. These are scholars who have, thankfully now that the pandemic has eased up, are able to come back to the U.S. And hopefully later this year we'll be able to travel and have more discussions. But it was clear to me, and a little bit different points of view from Japan as opposed to Republic of Korea, but the Japanese group that we discussed again, these are scholars and people who work in think tanks, who really wanted to discuss, in the past we always discussed China, we discussed North Korea, but the main topic was Ukraine, and what did I think about whether the Ukrainians can win, what is the U.S. going to do to help the Ukrainians, and then in their mind there is no option but for Ukraine to win. And so one of the discussions I had, well, what does winning mean? And I think we still really don't know exactly what that means. Does that mean Ukraine gets all its territory back? Does that mean that Ukraine comes to some kind of a solution, has a truce with Russia? It's unclear what it means, but I thought it was very interesting that this delegation said, well, there's just no other option that Russia has to be defeated, Ukraine has to win. And so that was interesting thing that I didn't think that I would see. And the other thing they talked about is the importance of relations, especially military relations with the United States. They didn't go as far as saying, well, what do you think about Japan joining NATO? But I think the idea that countries that are not contiguous with, although Japan is close to Russian, they had their own disputes over territory with the Russians. But this is something that people were thinking about, especially scholars are thinking about, which actually took me a little by surprise when we talked to them, because normally we talk about, okay, what do we do about North Korea? How can we work together on that? But they really wanted to talk about, well, what did I think that the U.S. strategy was going to be to help the Ukrainians to win? And will the countries that are supporting Ukraine, whether it's NATO, Europeans or others, will they be able to keep this strength going? The Koreans had a little bit different point of view while they in general agreed that, again, we talked about Ukraine maybe more than we talked about North Korea. We did talk about North Korea, but Ukraine seems to be in any kind of informal discussion that I've had be at the top of people's list. And so the scholars from the Republic of Korea were talking about, they weren't all in like the Japanese on that Russia has to be defeated, because they have business interests with Russia, and they were thinking about, you have to kind of weigh your options. How does this go beyond just sort of a military conflict? But here's a democracy who has strong military and other trade and other relations with the United States of America, but yet they have to feel like they're walking a tightrope, a fine line for how can we support what's happening, but not lose maybe business interests that we will need in the future. So that's another thing that, again, as I said, prior to February, we didn't really ever talk much about Russia or Ukraine or any part of Europe when we talked with people in the Asia Pacific. The other thing, and I also recently met with a group of scholars from, and some of those people worked for the government, but from Vietnam. They also wanted to talk about Korea, and in their case it was more not about Korea, but about Ukraine. What is the U.S.-China relationship going to be? Because they share a border with China, and then in relation to, again, Ukraine and Russia, what did I think the Chinese would do? Would they support Russia? And even, I said, well, it doesn't appear that they're supporting them militarily. And then they were like, well, how do you know that? How do you know? And maybe they're giving weapons via North Korea stuff. That's a really interesting kind of point of view that China may say they're not giving military assistance, but how do you know? And of course, I don't really know because I don't have access to that information. But I thought that was an interesting perspective. And finally, I'll just say, most of my career, again, I focused on former Soviet Union, but I think people of Central Asia are in a very difficult position because Central Asia really is, you can talk about the Silk Road, but to me, it's kind of the crossroads in a very important area of the world that maybe has been ignored, especially because it was part of the Soviet Union. But having lived and worked in that region, the influences of Russia, China and Iran, and especially when I lived in Tajikistan, of course, what was happening in Afghanistan was extremely important. But I think the people there have another balancing act. I can give you, for example, Tajikistan. A large portion of Tajikistan's GDP is from remittances, or it was from remittances because people would go to Russia to work. But now they really, not only do they not go to Russia to work, but Russians seem to be going to, if you've seen on the news, you know, going to Kazakhstan, going to Georgia and other countries in there to get away from the conscription. There also were, and have been, I think this is not just a report, but it's true that Russians were trying to entice Central Asians, citizens of countries of former Soviet Union to serve in their military, giving them financial or other kinds of incentives because Russian citizens don't necessarily want to fight the war that's being fought. So I see it as, at least before this happened when I lived in Central Asia, one of the things, this in terms of the U.S. government will, I saw this, is that you need to strike a balance among these three important, it's not a zero-sum game. You know, you have to deal with Russia, you have to deal with China. China has a big influence in Central Asia and Iran as well. And, but now, you know, if I were the ambassador in one of the countries of Central Asia, you know, the calculus on Russia is completely different. And again, I met with a group of, I live in New York and a lot of scholars come to New York and I met with some Uzbek scholars who were interested in studying China, but we ended up, because my organization does a lot of interaction with China. But we didn't spend that much time talking about China. We talked about Ukraine and what, you know, what did I think about? And so I asked them, well, what do you think? And they told me it was very interesting that they, having spent, they were like on a program like two weeks in the U.S. and said, what you can see in the U.S. press and media is so different than what we can see in Uzbekistan because they get mostly Russian media and in the Russian and Russian language media, it's, you know, it's a special operation. You, you know, they had to, the Ukrainians are fascist, whatever, whatever, you know, you name it. So, and then they said, but people are very concerned about saying what they really feel and the fear of being somehow disadvantaged in maybe in the future by something related to Russia because, you know, in the end they also share history and a lot of trade and other things are related to Russia, especially the economic migrants, you know, the workers that would go to Russia to work. And that's sort of that because of the sanctions and because of the war have, you know, have dried up. So I would say, you know, for me as now, not a U.S. diplomat, but someone who conducts informal discussions with many countries, but most of them in the Asia-Pacific region, I would just say everyone, you know, wants to talk about Ukraine, what is the U.S. going to do with Ukraine, what do I think NATO will do. And even we talk with people in Taiwan, same kind of thing. I had a delegation recently from a foundation in Taipei and we did talk about cross-strait relations, but a lot of the discussion was what was our analysis of what would happen in Ukraine. So I think to just, you know, follow up really the extent to which this regional conflict has affected every country in the world is, it's hard to determine, we know now, but what will the future implications be as the conflict continues or even when we get some kind of resolution, you know, to the war. So, vivid at that. Now, in case you thought by the time we'd added China potential conflicts over Taiwan implications in Asia, they're now thinking about Ukraine and wars that we had brought to the subject sufficiently, we have a whole other dimension in energy, which is becoming, again, something of a subject to the United States. And so over to Ambassador Sakuta to enliven you on that problem. I'm going to sort of pick up on something Ambassador Elliott said. It was out in the Caucasus in March and to summarize and something which I've heard from conversations with ambassadors and so forth from Central Asia, a deep fear of we're next. And this is something, the Baltics and so forth, we're next. And that's the sort of summation, I think, on the government side. So how do you manage that? And it's been interesting to see how some Kazakhstan, for example, have been rather neutral, which neutrality is not the same thing as being on the same side as Moscow. But I would talk in sense about how this war is affecting shopkeepers in Cairo, farmers in Argentina, and everybody in this room, because it's through economics that foreign policy affects everybody. We're in a global world, in global systems. And so what we've seen, yes, there were factors in the international energy market before this that were pushing prices back up and so forth, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine seriously disrupted the energy markets, it seriously disrupted agricultural markets, it seriously disrupted food security for literally billions of people around the world. This is not a cost-free exercise and we have an interest in this. Starting off on the energy side to be a little bit easier, yes, there are three major, three top energy producers in the world today. The United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia. Each produced roughly in the neighborhood of 10 million barrels a day of oil, the world consumes roughly 100 million barrels a day. So we're talking a third is produced by these three countries. You knock Russia out, that's going to have an impact on oil supplies, that's going to mean an impact on oil prices. That's one factor going on. Second factor, the world is looking at what Russia is doing with horror and doesn't want to support it. So there's a move to stop buying Russian oil, a move to stop buying Russian gas. Now if oil is a source of income for Russia, gas is a source of power for Russia. The gas pipelines that Russia has built over the decades to Western Europe. We're seen by many Western European governments that spend time working in Berlin. The Germans particularly felt, well, we're going to bind people together, work together, so integrate together. We can't have a war. Well, we've seen what happened. Europe right now is desperately trying to break its dependence on Russia. At the same time, Russia is taking actions which show the extreme wisdom of breaking energy relations with Russia. Exploding pipelines don't just happen. Like Susan said, I don't have the intel anymore, but there are lots of pipelines around this world. Gas pipelines around this world, they don't blow up, especially at the bottom of a sea. That's not the place your average truck bomb can hit. Believe it there. Russia has shut off gas supplies to different countries. Russia has driven up the prices to various countries. It has used gas as a weapon. And so the Europeans wisely, they will claim belatedly, are trying to get away from this. They have stored up all the gas they can get. They're probably at about 85% of their storage capacity for the winter. 85% sounds good, but that's also 15% shortfall. This is great for Europe. Why? Europe is rich. They can afford to pay the high prices. But the gas had to come from someplace. It takes years to develop gas fields. It takes years to develop oil fields. So the Russian, the European gas, much of which has been bought from us, was originally going to be going to China and Japan and Korea and other countries. That means they are now scrambling for gas. One alternative to gas is to go back and use coal-fired power plants. Oh, by the way, those coal-fired power plants aren't the most recently built ones. They're old. When some of these countries talk about coal, they talk about what we call lignite, which is brown, wet, dirty, dirty coal. We're fighting to save the climate. We are going to be burning more carbon because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There are countries that, Kazakhstan, for example, ships its oil 1.4 million barrels a day through a pipeline that empties in to Russia, goes through Russia to the rest of the world. There have been maintenance issues on the Russian side that have shut down that oil. As a result, Kazakhstan is being pressured. The world is missing oil it needs. The price is going up. Oil is not just used for driving cars. Gas is not just used for generating power. It's a feedstock. It goes into plastics. We might not lot plastics, but face it, how much plastic is around us, go grab your phone. Now, that's going to drive up prices of all sorts of products. That's going to increase inflation. The world is dealing with a difficult economic crisis to begin with the possible global recession. At the same time, we're fighting inflation by increasing the price of the dollar through higher interest rates. That means other countries which buy their oil and buy their gas in dollars are not only going to be hit by the higher price, they're going to be hit in a higher real price because they're going to have to spend more of their currency to get the dollars they need to pay. Okay, so now you're seeing inflation in high prices around the world. Gas is not just used to make plastics. It's used to make fertilizer. Fertilizer prices around the world have gone way up. Go to your local Home Depot and look at what you pay for a bag of fertilizer now. Russia and Ukraine, by the way, were big fertilizer exporters. So the farmers are now going to be paying more for the fertilizer. Oh, but wait, they don't have the money to pay for the fertilizer. That means they're not farming. Oh, here's another problem. How do you drive your tractor? That's a farmer in Argentina. Farmers in Argentina this year were not plowing as much as they normally would because they couldn't afford the diesel. That means they won't produce as much. That means they won't be putting food out as much. That means food prices will go up around the world. This comes to our shopkeeper in Cairo. Egypt got huge amounts of wheat from Ukraine. Oh, you can't export wheat from Ukraine. Oh, the price of energy in Cairo is going up. Oh, inflation is going up. Prices is going up. How is that shopkeeper in Cairo going to take care of his family and what are the political ramifications in Egypt? And now come home to us. The prices here are going up. So Russia's actions have had global ramifications. We're looking to address them now. Expectations are a tough winter. Expectations are for a tough winter, 23, 24 as well right now. I'll give you a formal part with just a couple of observations. One is that because the United States is such a big power everywhere in the world, U.S. policy is a central concern of countries all over the world. It doesn't mean they necessarily want to do what we want them to do. But the vast majority of countries in the world, as they think about what their policies are, want to take into consideration where is the U.S. going to be, whether they're opposed to us or in favor of us. And U.S. policy has been seen to be in flux. It was in flux with Afghanistan. Ukraine is pretty steady. But it means the price of that is often that our attention just doesn't stretch to Central Asia. Now, Secretary Blinken is off on a trip to Africa. We're trying to say that finally we're going to pay attention to Africa. We're going to pay attention to Latin America. We have made such claims before over 40 or 50 years. We're usually seen as defaulting on them. We lose focus. And there's the human. I mean, there's only so many places you can focus in the world. But the intense focus of Ukraine, which may go on for a long time, is depleting the American ability to focus on multiple other issues. And other countries know that. And so they have to guess where's the U.S. going to be? How much can I count on it? What is ramifications? Bleeds into the Middle East where I spend most of my career. This stuff goes on and on. You can't think about it in silos. Although there's a point at which you sort of say, my God, I can't think about all this at one time. Which is perfectly true also. I can't fix that for you, by the way. But you've got that. You've got this question coming back into other issues. And to pull back a little bit into the transatlantic, one of the questions that some of you gave us questions, one of the questions we had was about where's the whole future of the transatlantic alliance? And nobody, really you can't say. Right now, solidarity is higher than it's been for a long time. NATO's looking good. But if three years from now Ukraine is still at war with Russia, people are in the second or third winter with inadequate heat in Germany and all across Europe. Commerce is looking bad. Will we all be holding together or will we not? And you see the question of the transatlantic alliance and its solidarity, not to mention of course if Russia makes a mistake. We could get to World War III. We'd rather not do that. But how these things come out, the military development, the length of the war is going to impact our entire structure of our Central or Atlantic alliance and those relationships. If you have a miscalculation that actually led to some form of nuclear exchange, there's a whole lot of countries that might think that's not so cool. I think we'll avoid that. But all I'm trying to say is you can't look at exactly where we are now in solidarity and say that tells you where we will be in a year or two. Nor can you do the reverse. You can't say well it's all going to go to hell. Not necessarily. I mean this world is full of surprises. NATO has proven far more solid and the support from countries with very disparate views has been well beyond what most analysts probably would have predicted. So I'm not trying to predict it. It gets worse at all. It may get better. All I'm trying to say is there's this huge potential. This is the bedrock of prosperity in the post-World War II world is the American-European relationship. And we don't know where it's going to be affected by this. So on that happy note, I'm going to stop our presentation. About where I said I would. And I want to give you all a chance. We want to devote a substantial portion of this session to questions, both from people here and we have some online. We have two mics. We have two microphones. I ask you to wait for the microphone before you start your question. Particularly because there are people online as well as in the room and they can't hear you when you start without the microphone. So then we will yell at you to wait for the microphone. Also, I would ask the questions be as short, crisp and direct as possible. I will ask my colleagues that we will try to keep our answers as short as we can. Not always a function of answers. But we will do our best in order to get to more questions. So who wants the first question? There's one over here. There's been a huge outflow of people from the Ukraine and that's something you didn't address. What do you see as the impact of all of those refugees? Who feels like starting on that? I could start. Back in April, I went with a delegation to Poland and to kind of look at this issue. And just to give you an example of, you know, again, I think it was Ambassador Newman that brought up. We don't know exactly the numbers, but thousands of people have fled Ukraine and thousands of people within Ukraine have been displaced. So maybe you lived in Eastern Ukraine but you're living in Western Ukraine. But one of the things that we saw in Poland at the time was just the, you know, the impact that this had on not the federal government, I mean, the federal government was involved, but just the local governments. We met with one of the mayors of the, you know, a suburb of Warsaw and, you know, talked about how he as, you know, the person who was in charge of the schools, how did he cope with an influx of, you know, maybe a third more children in the school system who can't speak Polish? And how would you accommodate them on a very short, in a very short period of time? I was very impressed, and again, this was back in April, so things may have changed, but very impressed with the ability that, and it was a lot of, you know, NGOs who got together and helped people, the European Union, as well to figure out where they could go. I think the interesting thing for me in this is that most of the people we met with didn't really want to go far from Poland because they were hoping that they could soon go back and, you know, and try to restart their lives. And I lived in Germany in 2015 when there was a migration of people from Syria, and that was kind of a completely different group. It was all men, and they were people fleeing and really didn't want to go back but wanted to start new lives other places. I think we even see, you know, migration that we see to the US. There are people who come here to try to find a new life. But the Ukrainians that we met, they weren't in that category. They were people who had to flee to, you know, protect their families, protect themselves, and hoped that they could go back because, oh, by the way, they had, you know, usually it's, we see this in the US, a male member of a family leaves, establishes themselves, can go, and then they bring their, you know, maybe the wife and the children or the partner. These were all women and children who had left fathers, brothers, spouses behind. So their intention was really not to start a new life but to, you know, to try to weather the war. And so I think that's going to be an issue because as it, as the war goes on, you know, what happens to those people? What happens to those children? What happens to the disconnection in the families? So, and I think European Union has done a lot. I think the US has done, you know, some, but I think I've been amazed, I think one of the things that amazed me about the Polish people, and it's not that I'm not a welcoming and nice person, but I can envision welcoming a stranger who doesn't speak the language into your home for not just a day or two, but for an unlimited period of time. And that really made the difference, I think, in a lot of, in a lot of the situation. So, but I think this is something that is we're going to have to deal with for a long time to come because even if the war were over tomorrow, you know, how are people going to go back and how we're going to rebuild? And, you know, what's the situation going to be like? So, you know, each one of these questions in a way is like throwing a rock into a, into a puddle of, you know, still a body of water watching the ripples spread. And so, Susan was talking about the Poles. Well, you know, historically, countries' patience dries up over time and people start getting resentful. Right now, this is really challenging that kind of historical pattern. But what is happening, of course, is that all the attention comes on to Ukrainian refugees. Well, if you happen to be an Afghan refugee with a claim on a special immigrant visa, go whistle for attention. I mean, the Biden administration didn't want to talk to you anyway because it would like to forget about Afghanistan. But apart from that, you know, the attention, the money that all focuses on Ukrainian refugees then takes the attention away from the millions of Afghan refugees, of Syrian refugees, of other groups, except they're all still sitting there in Europe, in Turkey, in the United States. Who's got the next question? We've got one right here. Hi. I just had a question relating how likely or how probable is it for a national security advisor to recommend a full-on direct conflict with Russia? Keeping it short. How many nukes do you want to use? I mean, the problem with a full-on direct conflict with Russia, the problem with the U.S. getting directly involved is the prospects for escalation are enormous. And you'd have to do this very carefully with NATO, with all your friends and allies. And you'd have to think very carefully about the nuclear consequences. And I can't imagine... I mean, if Russia started making serious gains on the battlefield, and we were no longer in a position to help Ukraine with ever more advanced hardware, it would be a very, very difficult decision for a president to make, because as soon as you get NATO and Russia going head-to-head, you think you're going to end up in a nuclear war. It may be, you know, a theater nuclear war, but something's going to glow in the dark by the end of it. People have been writing about limited nuclear war for, well, 65 years, roughly, since Harman Kahn. Nobody has made an argument that everybody believes that you could limit this. It is in Russian doctrine, but I'm not sure they believe it either. And, you know, so Richard says quite correctly, you have to think carefully. You also have to think carefully that it may be outside your capacity to think carefully, because you simply may not be able to calculate. Question over here. Hi, my name is Will. This question is for... One question for Ambassador Susan Emeliot. So this is in regards to the recent conflict in the Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with the Russians having a historically good ties with Emeliot-Ramen, given their involvement with the Tajikistan Civil War after the collapse. And given that the Russians have more or less had an imperial overstretch with their fight in Ukraine and the subsequent peace, brokered peace ceasefire, how do you sort of envision a Russian hold on Central Asia going forward, as well as China's involvement in Central Asia, given that they have more or less expanded their influence through the SEO meetings? And also, another question is on Aliyev. Whether you believe that there's an opportunity for the West to potentially work with the Azerbaijan and Aliyev in regards to containing Russia on the Caucasus Front? Well, the one thing I would just say, he can talk about President Aliyev because he was U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, but I would just say, you know, even though Tajikistan and, you know, many of the countries of Central Asia have enjoyed relatively good relations with Russia, I won't say that they're fantastic. I think the calculus in my mind with Ukraine and having Russia forcibly come and try to take over a sovereign country is of a concern. So if I'm President Rakhmon, while maybe I've had traditionally fairly good relations with President Putin, I need to have somewhat good relations because I was dependent on the Russian economy for about 1.2 million of my citizens to work who send money back that helped my economy. I think that's probably changed now because of the sanctions and the war. So it's a different thing to say, yeah, I will have a, you know, a working relationship with someone, but then when you say, well, will that working relationship turn into a more hostile relationship if perhaps I don't agree with or I don't do the kinds of things they want me to do, I think that's a dilemma, not just for Tajik Assembly for all the countries of Central Asia because as Ambassador Sukut has said, I think at the beginning, you know, am I the next one? Even when I was in Poland, as I mentioned, we met with the President of Poland and one of the things that I think a lot of countries are thinking on the periphery of Europe on the East, I'll call it the Eastern Front is am I next? If the Russians succeed in, you know, taking over Ukraine, will they then decide Poland is their next target? And then you could say, okay, well, they're part of NATO so they don't have to worry. Well, even if you're part of NATO, who would want a conflict on the soil of their country? So this is, I think, a dilemma for all the countries, you know, of the region. And I'll let Ambassador Sukut talk about President Aliyev. Yeah, I think I totally agree with what Susan said. This is a problem for everybody and it's the question of trying to figure out, you know, what was the, there was a term, the Kazakh, the Kazakh standard was a multi-vector diplomacy. Balance of power diplomacy. You're balancing off those who are influencing you. Russia, Turkey, Iran, China. Western India, US, West, we're further away, seeing a little bit more benign. In some cases they complain we're not closer and more involved. So I think the same thing holds true. Maintaining your sovereignty was hard one. It's now being realized. Younger generation doesn't remember being part of the Soviet Union and in many of these countries, 62 thirds of the population was born 1990 or later. So, I mean, how much do you remember of the Soviet Union? As far as Azerbaijan is concerned, yes, it's the same thing as Takayev or Mazaryev or the others in the region. I think the real issue there is Armenian Azerbaijan and finding way forward. And one thing which the Russians have used these protracted conflicts for years as a way to gain influence. The solution to the problem is in Moscow, which you're repeatedly. You've got Russian troops in Azerbaijan and Armenia in Georgia, Moldova. I would say the really thing right now to be doing is something which is actually quite good that the administration is doing, is engaging to try to bring the Armenians and Azerbaijanis together and finally end 30 years of warfare. I want to say one short thing on this, that as much time as we spend trying to open up avenues for the folks in Central Asia to deal with the rest of the world, outlets to east and north, south, east, west. The south hasn't worked out very well. The lines down into the Persian Gulf and Pakistan have never really worked out that well. There's still hopes and dreams of railways and pipelines and all that stuff, but there's still really stuck between Russia and China. And they can do a lot with China, but it's not an alternative. Russia is still up there around them. We said workers go up there to work, pipelines come down, oil and gas prices determined by what Russia does. One of the leaders, Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan said to me once, we can't change our geography. And that's something you've got to remember as much as you might think of alternatives. Do we have any online questions that we should be... I'm not sure who's monitoring the... Okay. If we've got anything on the other side, I don't want to be neglecting people here. We had some others... Oh, thanks. Well, the microphone. So the people online can benefit from your question. I just wanted to say one thing that for me, I'm Jewish and my grandparents died in the Holocaust. And for me, watching the TV and seeing what's happening, it's exactly what was going on during Second World War. The whole world is looking around, looking and feel sorry while they're taking them to the concentration camp and killing them. So today, it is exactly the same and the world didn't change, didn't improve at all, which brings me to the issue of the United Nations. Why do we need the United Nations? What do they do? They absolutely did nothing. They actually make it even harder. So fault the United Nations and use this money for something better. I can start, but is somebody motivated or shall I...? I mean, I would just say you bring up a good point is that the United Nations, who should be dealing with this issue, is unable to just because of the way it was structured. So in my opinion, maybe it's time, and I've heard more people talking now than ever before about it's time to not get rid of the UN, as you said, but to reform the UN so it works better. How that can be done, how quickly, but it's something that I think we need to think about because UN should be really working hard to help resolve this kind of an issue. Yeah, we can think about it, but there is an unpleasant reality, sometimes it's pleasant, sometimes it's unpleasant, which is that there is no greater power for international law than states. It would be desirable, might be well desirable to have one. It is not there. It does not exist, and you cannot call it into being because you want it into being. So, and states won't, the UN is blocked. It serves a very useful purpose as a place to bring nations together when they can come together. It does not have, as you say, exactly the power to take action when the big powers don't agree. But I do not know how you would, how you can create an organization that has a power that does not exist in the world. And for that matter, the United States would not easily surrender its veto and its power to block other actions. The world doesn't always agree with us. And maybe there should be a greater authority that could tell the United States to get a line. But I don't think we're going to get one. Wait for the mic. We will let you make a comment. But just on your last point, the world is not doing maybe enough to aid Ukraine. But I think there is a considerable difference between the early days of World War II and the number of weapons and arms that are going into Ukraine. Western forces are not going in. That's a calculation. Would it be worth risking nuclear war to enter directly is a question you can legitimately pose. I won't try to answer it. But that really has to be the question when you talk about doing more than increasing arms supplies, which I'd like to see us do even faster. But if you really want to do something significantly more, then that's military engagement. And it's military engagement between nuclear powers. I'm not trying to answer the question, but that's the question you have to deal with. No, do you want to make a comment? Just the point, there is a way of doing it. It was tried in the Congo a number of years back. It's called Uniting for Peace. For our students, the Security Council, the word is stopped from taking action in a certain situation. There is a possibility of doing Uniting for Peace. It was a complete failure when they tried it in the Congo. So although there's a, you know, as you say, you need all five security permanent members to be able to do anything in the form of peacekeeping. You're not going to get it that way. So, I mean, it's maybe a sad fact, but it's also a reality. You don't get cooperation and agreement among sort of the founders of the organization, all of which have veto. United Nations is just not as worthless in that kind of situation. If it's outside the Security Council, United Nations has done and can do things to promote peace. But in this situation, you're going to have to rely on something else besides the UN. But something else on this, I mean, there's another aspect to the UN, which is the technical agencies and humanitarian agencies. Some work better than others. I'll be diplomatic. But if you've got people who can go out and work with these millions, I mean, what was it? One number, I think at one point, was like 10 million Ukrainians were displaced, I think, at one point. So you have UNHCR, UNICEF, others that's sort of out of that soup. If they can go out and they can help people, then that's something. I mean, again, as everybody has said, you're not going to get the... The veto will disappear when the United States gives up its veto. And I don't expect that anytime soon. But there are other ways, you know, that can be helpful. And so, while not perfect, let's do what we can at least encourage people to do what they can. I'll go next because we have a question from an online viewer. And the question is, to what extent do regular people in Russia support this war? And to the extent they do, what can the international community do to appeal to them or to help Russians who oppose the war effort? I'm not sure whether we're the right group but we can... We're always happy to speculate. Who would like to speculate first? My answer is, who knows. Second is, remember, their sources of information are limited. And third, even if they did oppose the war, their ability to influence their government as currently constituted is limited as well. So, I wouldn't put too much hope in that camp. I would just... Second, what Ambassador Voucher said is that, you know, even in Russia and former Soviet Union, the Russian language media has a big influence, and especially in countries like Central Asia. So, even in 2014, when I lived in Tajikistan, and I remember when the Russians took Crimea, a lot of people that I talked to who didn't speak English said, well, Putin had to go in because the fascists, you know, the Ukrainians are fascists and the fascists have taken over persecuting the ethnic Russians. And, but that's what they heard because especially in poorer countries, if people don't speak English or they don't have access to the Internet, I mean, at one important time it's probably gone up now, but in Tajikistan only about 17 to maybe 25% of the people had access to the Internet, and their main source of news is television, and television is Russian coming from, you know, Moscow. So it's very difficult to make a decision on, as I said these Uzbek scholars that I spoke to said, wow, you're really seeing a lot different, you know, aspect of what's going on in Ukraine than we are. So I think that makes it hard to make a decision, but also, you know, when you live in a country where you don't have freedom to express your points of view, it's, you've got to be really courageous and brave to, you know, fight against the, you know, the government. So that's what I would say having lived in, you know, lived in and visited every country in former Soviet Union, that it would be really difficult, and I think the only thing I would say is look at what we see on the media, again I don't know, but on with the conscription, look at all the Russians who are going to Central Asia and Georgia, and I can tell you, I don't think at least in the past that a top vacation destination for Russians is Central Asia. So I'll leave it at that. Please, there's one here and there's one next and I don't know who got over here. Okay, who was in the back earlier? Okay, let's start with the lady in the back who had her hand up earlier. Did we steal it from somebody who was about to ask a question? Give them the other mic, we'll go back there next time. Thank you so much. I would like to start by saying that I lived in Ukraine from 2017 to 2020 when I was evacuated as an extended service Peace Corps volunteer and since I've been out and watching these events unfold there's a little bit of a dialogue that I would like to explore a little bit more. Maybe you can help share some light on. And how are institutions supporting the psychological implications of the generational generational trauma domestically in Ukraine and internationally when it comes to the mental health of this event? I'd say one quick thing and again this goes back to when I went to Poland. That was a discussion that we had with a lot of the workers who are NGOs about not just where will people live and how will they find something to do, but what's the impact on children, what's a long-term impact and how can we help people who are afraid or upset to cope with this and I think it's not a problem as the war drags on that can be answered or resolved quickly but I think it's a really good one that we all should be thinking about not just helping people find food, shelter and jobs but helping them to cope with what's happened to their country and their families and their life. I wish there were a better answer out there. I'm seeing a little bit in the press. I don't know if anybody has an answer. I don't know if anybody actually I don't know what's within the sum of our human knowledge to know how to deal with a country-wide problem like that and I was living with this in Afghanistan where they've been at war for 40 years. If you could talk about a country that has nationwide PTSD they would qualify and people cope with it in various ways and it's another subject we won't get into. We had one over here who's got the mic. So I think my question was just we've seen in kind of the past years and the past decades of the Putin just how a personless dictator or a personless authoritarian ruler can kind of give this unpredictability and provide an obstacle to negotiate peace settlements or just to try to maintain the status quo of peace and so I guess my question is like do you think there's any kind of lessons like we've learned from the example of the one Ukraine of how we can manage the obstacle like a personless ruler in trying to prevent conflict and to resolve conflict? Peace in our time. Let me say one thing power corrupts and absolute power corrupts it's it's a law of nature and mankind and you know the only thing you can do to prevent this from recurring in other places and other ways in the future is to try to balance out the power of autocrats open up the channels of information and you know I think it's probably one of the arguments for democracy we don't make as often as we should. Isn't it also true? One of the factors is I mean Putin is I don't know if I love this with Putin but Putin has supporters and there are lots of people in Russia who for years have called for sort of the same sort of thing tragedy of the collapse of Soviet Union reunification of the old Soviet space and so forth. He's not alone. And there was also a role there was also a role here for simple miscalculation Putin got it wrong in his calculation of what would happen if he went into Ukraine his calculations weren't very different from what our own military and intelligence agencies were calculating about how war would go they were calculating differently about how long term resistance would be but in fact everybody got it wrong from my point of view thank God but you know I don't there are lessons and you know going back to questions gentlemen is now left but there are awful nations who are unhappy with this if Russia fails demonstrably that is going to be a very large lesson for some time won't last forever but it will be large and it will have an impact on the other hand if the west breaks down and Ukraine loses that's going to be a different kind of lesson who's got the mic you got the mic go hello thank you for coming here to the University of Michigan I can put it closer I guess prior to coming to Ford I worked in financial services in anti-money laundering compliance and sanctions compliance and that requires keeping track of all the numerous sanctions regimes that each country has so what has impressed me most about the diplomacy in this conflict has been the US's ability to get the western coalition on board with a more coordinated sanctions effort but it appears as if this is not exactly affecting the Russian economy to the extent to which the United States and its allies are hoping to what extent like what is the next tool that is available to United States if economic sanctions continues to fail and to what extent does this harm western efforts to curtail other conflicts if it appears as if economic sanctions are not very fruitful I'm looking at this you're the current officer I'm looking at this I'm looking at this I'm looking at this I'm looking at this US sanctions although I know that kind of comes across in the US press they are sanctions that are being imposed by a number of different governments the European Union is really taking the lead on sanctions there are things they are sanctioning that we don't sanction yet particularly on the energy front there really are this plan to sort of stop imports of Russian crude and refined product by December 5th for example off the gas. That's stuff that we would like to have seen, but they've really done it. That helps a lot. Go back to the early days when various sanctions were put on the Russian central banks and so forth, when the Swiss froze Russian assets, which is something they didn't do to Nazi Germany. Okay, so yeah, there are some things here that are really far-reaching. Sanctions are not going to solve the problem completely. They will help. Now, we're seeing some impacts of sanctions, and again, I'm not coming at anything from Intel's side here because I don't have that anymore, but there are some signs, for example, on microchips and the new vaccination, we all have a microchip because you realize where microchips are, where this has had an impact on manufacture of cars, wash machines, things like that in Russia. Something that we're now, I've heard in a recent conference in Washington, concern about, this comes back to Central Asia, is the extent to which Central Asian countries might become avenues for microchips. Not because you're getting a box of microchips, but you're getting something where you take the microchip out and you then reuse it someplace else. And you go back to the Cold War days and the whole shenanigans used to go on in getting products that we would not export to the Soviet Union, how they would sort of transit through Austria or something like that. That's something. The sanctions are having an effect in slowing things down in the Russian economy, but the bigger thing I think becomes how do you actually have the pain that moves the economy, that moves the government. We've put on really tough sanctions on Iran. We have killer sanctions on North Korea. It has the impact. So you do what you can to an extent, but sanctions can be a tool, but a tool. They're part of an overall strategy. And I think sometimes that gets lost in some of the discussion. To follow on where Bob left off, I've worked on sanctions my entire life. From 1980, when I was in the office of East West Trade, administering the sanctions on Iran and Iraq and things like that. A hundred years ago, Woodrow Wilson said a nation boycotted as a nation about to surrender. He was wrong. He's still wrong. People manage. They manage to evade sanctions. They manage to smuggle stuff. Kim Jong-un still gets limousines. He drives around in Mercedes and stuff like that. The places where sanctions work are the pariah factor. People who don't want to be seen as illegitimate, impolite company. So a somewhat democratic, white dominated South Africa. Eventually those people decided they wanted to be accepted in the world. And they had to negotiate with Nelson Mandela. Partly because he was leading a movement that was so strong that they knew they could not resist it forever. So there's got to be a whole bunch of factors, but the pariah factor seems to be the only reason that people really try to get out of sanctions. And that making Russians feel unacceptable and polite company has got to be part of it. The economic factors people get around. We've got another online question and this is from someone from Taiwan who asks what can we learn from this war that can help prevent Taiwan from becoming the next Ukraine? You're the China, ma'am. You know, I think the first thing you can learn is the defense is stronger than offense and that China should be very careful about overestimating their capabilities. They can cause a lot of damage to Taiwan and Taiwan's trading ability, but actually going in and trying to change things and take over the place is a hell of a lot harder than they think. And I think Chinese learned that lesson as well. The second lesson is Soviet military equipment, Russian military equipment is not as good as American. And Taiwan has got the latest, almost the latest, Western technology. It's going to be very hard for the PLA to go up against that. You know, the PLA was an army that was founded on the principle of sort of overwhelming the other side with the numbers of people that they could throw into a battle and it worked in Korea. But in the end, you know, it's not enough for Taiwan. You've got to be able to move people across the straits. You've got to be able to move equipment. So there's military lessons, there's political lessons. I think the other lesson is Western solidarity, that the West is prepared to pay a price in terms of our own economic capabilities to defend friends, democratic friends and principles. So I said that Chinese have to be a little bit chastened. On the other hand, they still have this ability to scare off shipping, to disrupt supply chains, to run airplanes up and down the straits and make people in Taiwan more nervous. And I think, you know, that kind of pressure is going to remain because that's the kind of pressure that, as I said before, sort of gives a message to Taiwan. You know, we have other options remaining and you can't declare independence. But in the end, if you look carefully, both sides are still saying we have to figure out a way to talk and get along. And I think eventually we may get back to that. We've got about eight minutes left. You've got one down here. And you got one over while the light's coming down here. We're gonna run out of time before we run out of time. You've got a mic. Go ahead. I got a mic. Yeah, go for it. Thank you all for sharing your time and expertise with us today. I really appreciate it. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how you think. You kind of touched on it a little bit, but I'd like to hear a little bit more on how you think the West should respond or could respond to a Ukrainian victory. So in other words, should Russia suffer a decisive defeat? We can assume, you know, their power is gonna be diminished for years to come. Putin maybe even be removed from power. How should the West respond to that and maybe not repeat or maybe take some lessons learned from how we responded to the collapse of the Soviet Union? Thank you. Got a bunch of Russian experts. We're gonna have to move really quick. I'm just gonna say this is gonna be very hugely situationally dependent. I don't know how you can script in advance. If you have Russian losers and you have the hardest line military critics of Putin taking charge, or you have some massive dissatisfaction with having committed, you get totally different geopolitical situations. I don't think you can have one knows one does not want Russia permanently isolated, but beyond sort of those very basic principles, I don't think you can script a policy without knowing the situation in which you're gonna have to apply policy. Who's got the next? Can I add one thing to this? So the military when they, you know, when they study war and all that, they always quote Klaus Witz that, you know, war is the continuation of policy by other means. And the there's another implication to that. People don't just fight wars for political reasons, but wars end, modern wars end politically. They don't end on the battleship Iwo Jima. They don't end at a conference in Versailles. They end with some kind of deal. And people make deals when they think they can get more out of peace than they can get out of continuing fighting. So, you know, and once the parties themselves find a way to make a deal, then the rest of the world has to accept that. And so whatever that status quo is going to be, you know, it kind of in the end, we're going to be stuck with it too. So I don't I don't think there's going to be a way to sort of isolate so and so or, you know, suddenly admit your crane into NATO. I don't think those options are going to be available after the parties themselves reach some kind of agreement. But what kind of agreement that becomes depends on how things evolve in the ground when the parties and when do the parties decide they can get more out of making the deal than they can out of fight. The rest period. Have a very brief question. We've talked a lot about the impact on the rest of the world, but in the West and then Central Asia, but not much on Africa beyond a few stories, sort of shopkeepers. But not many of the African countries were are ready to sanction Russia. And what do you think the impact longer term on that will be, including even though this is obviously not Africa, but OPEC's decision. I mean, Putin's getting wealthier even with the sanctions. And then OPEC went and decided to cut the output. I'll leave Bob or something, Robert, to make a comment on the on the economic if he wants to. I was looking at the vote spread from yesterday's vote in city council. And the Africans are not together. They're there is quite a spread. I think, well, they're they're spread, but they're spread in mostly extensions that some voted, but many voted against Russia. So I don't give your brother, the Africans, not if you should be answering your questions that are asking you probably. But, you know, there's 50, one of the 51 countries, 55, you can't. They can't really speak of Africa as a whole. But I would say the two things I'm seeing are one, there's incredible discomfort with being in the middle of this wedge. They don't like it. But there's it's all it's raising huge numbers of new questions about where they can rely on and finance all kinds of things. I don't think any of those questions have settled yet. I think it's just stirring up a lot of dust, a lot of thinking that's going to go on for a long time. I don't know whether the US is yet really I don't have the sense that we've really seen this as an opportunity for us to have a not just a more engaged policy with Africa, but a more sustained policy, which as you well know, a perennial problem. So that that's a potential opportunity. But that means we have to actually walk and chew gum at the same time. And we have yet to demonstrate that we're good at that. I guess two things I want to just start with actually the politics. I mean, I'm mulling about this. I have this horrible like, Oh, my God, what if we go back to sort of Cold War dynamics, you know, where you have an us, them and a non alive movement, or people in between playing the us and them off against each other, which is what we had during the Cold War days. I think in terms of Africa, I think a couple different things. One is, God knows, Susan, you know this better than I do attention deficit disorder in Washington, and elsewhere. I mean, that we've got this problem, we'll get to you. And I mean, I should see this when I was working on preps for the G eight and things like that. And, you know, 1.4 billion people, these evolving countries, this is not the dynamism that's going on in Africa, the people know about, you know, you can't just sort of ignore this. And this has got to be, you know, you're going to have to start chewing gum and clicking fingers while you're walking. The thing in terms of OPEC and oil, one of the things which I find very interesting right now is the way this is being covered in the press. And this is again, flashback to the OAPEC, not OPEC, OAPEC sanctions against the United States following the Yom Kippur war in 73. After when oil prices were hiked following the Yom Kippur war, the fall of the Shah, there was tremendous nervousness in Kuwait, in Riyadh, in Tehran, Venezuela, other places that these countries, which were at that time also developing lower, you know, middle, emerging market, middle lower income countries in the non-aligned movement of wait a minute here. As I said earlier, I'm paying in Botswana, in Ethiopia, in, you know, wherever, higher prices for energy. This is having a negative effect on my economy. And you guys are making a fortune off this. So that was when they set up the OPEC fund, the Saudi fund, the Kuwait fund, the Abu Zhabi fund to sort of go out and say, yeah, we're getting this money, but we're recycling this. We're with you. We're showing solidarity. We want to help your development. The way this is all being covered right now is this kind of Russia West fight. And where I kind of wonder is when the press or what opinion may cycle back to this earlier sort of argument, which is valid. Because the person in you pick the city anywhere, but in, you know, Africans, capital African, you know, small town, African crossroads, who's paying more money for gas that they can barely afford, that money's heading off to Riyadh or whatever. And maybe they've got plans on Riyadh for development. But at some point, there's going to have to be a sort of like an uncomfortable moment of like, you're taking, you know, it's okay, you're taking the money with the Americans. All right, we'll give you, but you're taking this money from some really poor people out there. And how do politically you're going to answer that? Sorry, you're the former Saudi times. No, no, but I'm not going to answer because unfortunately, we're out of time. And you know, now that we've