 Good afternoon everybody and welcome. I'm Susan Collins, the Joan and Sanford Wildein here at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and I'm really delighted to see you here for today's policy talks. Today this event is actually a two-part event. First we will have the policy talks conversation and that will begin shortly but then at 7 p.m. the Ford School is delighted to host a free screening of the diplomat at the Michigan Theater. This is a really fascinating documentary about the late Richard Holbrook and we hope to see all of you there also this evening. So first I'd like to acknowledge our co-sponsors for today's event, the NAM Center for Korean Studies and also the WISER Center for Emerging Democracies and we are very pleased to have the founder, Ambassador Ronald Wiser here with us this evening. Thanks for joining us. We are very grateful for their generous support of this program. But of course we would not be able to have today's event without our honorable guest, Ambassador Christopher Hill. Welcome to you. We're delighted to have you here. Ambassador Hill was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. He then served for 33 years in the Foreign Service and he was a key player in several major American diplomatic milestones including the Dayton Peace Accords, the Kosovo Crisis and the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program, certainly a relevant set of topics for discussion today. And I'm sure that we will hear more about these critical periods and their implications. He also served as ambassador to four countries. He was ambassador to Iraq during its 2010 national election and before that ambassador to South Korea, Poland and Macedonia. And in 2010 he was named Dean of the Joseph Corbell School of International Affairs at the University of Denver, which like the Ford School is a member of Apsia, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs and as a fellow dean I've had the opportunity to get to know him in that context. And so that's been a real pleasure. Under his leadership, the Corbell School has constructed a new building and established several new research centers including the Center for Middle East Studies and the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research. Ambassador Hill has recently published his first book, Outpost, Life on the Frontiers of American Diplomacy. This candid memoir details the complex and very human aspects of diplomacy including his perspective on key political actors. His fundamental underlying critique of U.S. foreign policy really challenges us to think just what makes for a successful American policy, foreign policy. And that is a very provocative and important question that helps to frame the conversation that we will all participate in here today. I'd also like to introduce my colleague and the co-director of the Ford School's International Policy Center, Assistant Professor John Churchari. And all of us who know John know his deep expertise on foreign policy issues in a wide range of areas and won't be surprised that we invited him to host the conversation today. So for today's event, we will follow the conversation format that's often used in the Council on Foreign Relations. So John will kick things off with a series of questions. And then after about 30 minutes of conversation, we will open things up to questions from the audience. So a little later from now, our staff will start collecting question cards. And all of you should have received a card. And we invite you to fill those out and pass them to the sides. Anyone watching online, please tweet your questions to us using the hashtag policy talks. The question and answer session will be facilitated by Ford School Professor Susan Walts, who is also a Corbell School alum, I might add. Together with two Ford School students, Travis Herald and Swathi Shunmuga Sunritham. So we are delighted to welcome them as well. So now please join me in welcoming Professor John Churchari and our special guest, Ambassador Christopher Hill. Ambassador Hill, thank you so much for coming and welcome to the Ford School. As Dean Collins said, I'd like to start off with a few Council of Foreign Relations type conversational questions before we open to the audience. And I'd like to start by looking back at Bosnia. We've just passed the 20th anniversary milestone of the Dayton Accords. And I wonder if you'd kick off by sharing with us some of the lessons that you think are most relevant today from the process leading up to the Dayton Accords. What factors were the most important in enabling you and other members of the negotiating team to craft a deal in 1995? Well, thank you very much, John. And before I get to that, I just want to mention Ambassador Ron Weiser, whom Susan already introduced, but Ron and I were neighboring countries, Ron and Slovakia and I in Poland. And at the time, Ron, I think you remember, everyone was worried about Slovakia. You had this guy, Mechar, is the, you know, this very right wing kind of guy that everyone was afraid of. And you kept telling everyone it's going to be okay because it's really all about the economy and the economy is really going in the right direction. And sure enough, I think Slovakia has ended up in the right place. And meanwhile, in Poland, I mean, I'm always going to be optimistic about Poland, but we got some challenges right now. And finally, before I get to your question, I just want to say I'm thankful today because I'm a New England fan. And and our our University of Michigan quarterback is still alive today. It wasn't I was at that game yesterday, and I was in one of those boxes with all these Bronco fans. And for me, you know, growing up in New England, I don't have a choice about teams. It's just, you know, sort of tattooed on you Red Sox Celtics Bruins and Patriots. But I'm just glad he's still alive. Anyway, it was a long day yesterday. All right, so where were we? We're talking about, we're talking about Dayton. You know, it was 20 years ago. And I think 20 years, maybe a blank of an eye in a historical sense. But I think it's, it's really time to start assessing what went right and what went wrong. I was at a conference, in fact, Ambassador Boucher Richard Boucher somewhere in the back row there was at the same conference at Brown University, which was Richard Holbrook's alma mater. And the issue was, you know, what's, what's happened in Bosnia. And it was amazing that we had a number of these Bosnian speakers. And, you know, we used to joke, you know, and you can't find humor even in horrendous situations. I've always found humor is my sort of best companion in life. But I mean, to hear all these Bosnians complaining about Dayton. And it was like 20 years ago when they all complained about the Ottoman Turkish occupation for 400 years. And then they complained about the Austro-Hungarian occupation after 1908. And now they're just going to complain about American diplomats in in Dayton. So I kind of challenged them on that. The point being that what we did, it was a negotiated document. That is, if if the three sides, the Croats, the, then we call the Muslims, now we call them Bosniaks. So we've sort of awarded the place identity of Bosnia to what was then considered the Muslim population. So the Croats, the Bosniaks and the Serbs. And we were trying to negotiate or mediate. So if the three of them had said, we want to call this place the Grand Duchy of Bosnia would have been fine with us. So what we tried to do was get consensus. So often what we're trying to do is we wanted to create Bosnia as a single state. It was very important that we not, for example, you know, a couple of years before Berlin and Germany had been reunited, we didn't want to turn Bosnia and in particular Sarajevo into a divided place. So we had certain objectives to make it one country. At the same time, because you know, in democracy, majority rule is understood less than one. But I wish more people would take a look at lesson two, which is minority rights, because you cannot have majority rule without minority rights. And a lot of what went on in the Balkans was the failure to understand lesson two. And so lesson two, minority rights had to be articulated in the form of democratic institutions within the Serb Republic, and among and within the so called Federation between the Bosniaks and the and the Croats. I think to this day, it is proving to be a big challenge. And the question is whether the peoples there have understood that Dayton was a platform on which they could do a lot of things. And instead, they have many people, I can see 20 years later, have seen it as a limiting thing that we have to do exactly as the Bible of Dayton set out. And so, you know, we heard from Bosnian speakers talking about some school that had a Croat side and a Muslim side. And you know, isn't this terrible, as if our constitutional lawyer, Robert Soan, had sat down to say, how can I divide Bosnian schools according to ethnicity or ethnic identity? In fact, that was not at all the point. It was to stop a war. And you know, in the in the retrospect of looking at Iraq and Afghanistan, you think back to the Balkans, hell, that was just Boy Scout camp or something. It wasn't Boy Scout camp. I mean, there are 200,000 people kill their rape camps or all kinds of hideous things. It had to be stopped. But it was stopped finally with not as some people say today was stopped by American power. It was stopped by arranging by putting together political arrangements where people could live together and feel they were going to be safeguarded. It was not enough to say to people, hey, we have the we have the sort of Council of Europe guarantees on human rights. And, you know, if you speak to some Bosnian peasant about the Council of Europe, or OSCE or CSCE at the time, and they just kind of say, are you kidding me, you know, that that's supposed to protect my identity. So you had to put together these institutions in this country. And I think we did that. So I think institutions are key. And we also understood something that I think has proven to be an elusive concept, or I should say, our collective memories have not been able to keep it in our minds, which is elections absolutely a part of democracy can have democracy without elections. But elections in the absence of political institutions of democratic institutions, elections often in a country become a kind of census on, you know, in that case, who's a Croat, who's a Serb and who's a Bosniak. So elections in and of themselves become a kind of census, and that they do not tackle the underlying problems of how do you do how do you manage dispute resolution, etc. So we went beyond elections, we went beyond a ceasefire. In fact, the ceasefire was really the last element we put together. And I know we're going to get to Syria. And people are always saying, Well, the first thing we need is a ceasefire. You know, I think Beirut had 477 ceasefires, ceasefires in the absence of what the political arrangements are going to be are not going to last. No one wants to be the last person to die in the civil war. I mean, I don't think there's any monument to someone who's the last person to die in a civil war. So what you have to do is convince them the war is over, and then they'll get out of their trenches. I think we understood some of those things surprisingly well. In Bosnia, we also understood that there were different levels of this problem. Huge human rights issue. No question. But one shouldn't be just a single issue voter on human rights, because there are other things that were very important. We had had a we and we continue to have a NATO alliance, I think essential to our country's future, and essential to our country's relationships. And yet in the mid 90s, it was being called into question because we had, you know, the the Cold War is over and wasn't the purpose of NATO to, you know, fight the Soviets. And there was no more Soviet Union. So we do we really need NATO? So a lot of questions about NATO. And that fed into a whole question about the cohesive cohesiveness of the transatlantic relationship. With Europe trying to forge an identity at the time, you know, as Europe became as because of German unification, they tried to go deeper into German into European unity. And so as Europe was coming together, they were often forging this European identity at the expense of the trans Atlantic identity. And so this whole Bosnian issue was we were really not in sync with the Europeans. It was very dangerous. And yet we understood that that was a problem. We understood the need to be engaged in it in such a way that at the end, together with the Europeans, we'd come out with a solution. I think a lot of Americans who sat and, you know, think tanks in Washington and just talk about what a what a bunch of, you know, terrible people the Europeans were kind of miss the miss the whole point of the thing, which was to try to forge an understanding. And I think we did that very well in Dayton. And so I'm mentioning a lot of lessons of Dayton. And by definition, a lesson should be learned. And yet 20 years later, here we are dealing with things like Syria, and it's as if to quote tally rand on the restitution of the Bourbon monarchy, nothing learned and nothing forgotten. I wanted to follow up and ask you about Syria, because lessons obviously, if they apply apply to other cases of complex multi ethnic and ethno religious regional conflicts. And one question that comes to mind right away is to build off of the insight that Dayton wasn't intended to be a definition of a desired end state. Dayton is a platform on which the the various parties are able to move forward on the basis of of a durable ceasefire and at least a resolution for some period of the conflict. And you know, we had a concept that if you want to change Dayton, you're free to do so. But you need to do it through consensus. And that was important because you remember the whole problem with the referendum that they had had in 1992. The whole problem of that referendum was you would essentially if you got a majority for independence, as they did, then you you simply would not pay any respect to the minority. And as again, minority protection is a is a key key element. So we knew that just having a referendum was not was not going to solve the issue that we needed to kind of make sure that everyone felt they had something out of this. And so in the fullness of time, we we said, look, if you can't come to an agreement, you can't change Dayton, you can't change Dayton. And the problem has been, I think that people who have not wanted to help the country and in that I'm sorry to say there's some Bosnian Serbs I put in that category, such as Mr. Dodik. People who have not wanted to streamline improve the country have simply hidden behind Dayton. So should we could we have put some kind of dispute mechanism such that we could interpret Dayton in a broader way than we've done, rather than just going back to sort of the literal meaning of the sentence is probably there's some room for improvement there, because right now, Dayton is being held up as an instrument to oppose change. That said, I know a lot of Bosniaks who feel that the what the Serbs have to do is just put away their Serbian roots and just call themselves Bosniak end of story. And I just don't feel we're at the stage yet where Serbs are prepared to do that. Tell me with respect to Syria, what we can draw forward from the Bosnian experience. First, firstly, what does that I don't want to say it's an interim agreement, but that that first important agreement in order to be able to stabilize the peace. What does that look like to you in Syria? And then what steps does the US government among others have to take in order to put the conditions in place to make that kind of a deal possible? You know, let me first say, I think Syria is a hideous situation. And I think it's probably worse than Bosnia. I mean, it's it's you've got all kinds of people there, many of whom have no concept of what we've been talking about in Bosnia. So the complete lack of consensus, the sectarianism that has gone rampant there. It's not easy. So the first point I want to make is it's it's easy to be critical of the people working on it. But you know, you got to understand the degree of difficulty that they're that they have to contend with. One thing we did in Bosnia, and I should have mentioned this earlier, is we were prepared to basically work with anybody. Now, this was somewhat changed by the fact that we were not going to work with indicted war criminals. And you recall we did we pointedly would not have Rotko Mladic, the head of the Bosnian Serb Army, in any kind of negotiation in Dayton, we wouldn't have Radovan Karajic. But I tell you, when we lifted the siege of Sarajevo, we lifted I mean, we got the Bosnian Serbs to pull back their heavy weapons and lift the siege. We we talked directly to these people. Is it fun to talk to Radovan Karajic? No. I sat at a table with him at this Milosevic's villa up up in Vojvodina. And he was eating a big piece of of pork with the bone on and just kind of chewing out his fingers. I mean, it was just grotesque to watch him him eat, let alone listen to what he had to say. So it was not it was not fun. But we did it because we knew that he controlled the heavy weapons that were, you know, 120 millimeter mortars and other things that were, you know, murdering people. I think history will show in the fullness of time that there have been two terrible mistakes in the Middle East. One of them, of course, was that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. And, you know, that's going to be talked about for a long time, because it was really it involved a lot of mistakes, including the abuse of intelligence. The second one though, came some years later, when our intelligence agencies concluded that Bashir al-Assad was going to be gone in a matter of weeks. Now, Assad is not someone I would, you know, exchange New Year's greetings with. I mean, he's not a nice guy. But when you look at a miserable dictator of that kind, the first question, it should not be how do we get rid of them? The first question should be how did he get there in the first place? And when you start examining Syria's polity, it's complicated. I mean, you have these Alawites, and he represents Alawites, you know, 15% proposition, but, and you have Sunnis who themselves have their divisions, but they're more like 60%. And many of them have felt disaffected from Syria. It got a lot worse. And these are things, you know, people need to take a few minutes to read about these things. For example, Syria's had a long standing drought that has brought many of these very hard Islamists, you know, not urbanized, sophisticated Sunnis. I'm talking about people out in those villages, hard line Islamists into the towns because there was no economy left for this drought. So you had a certain radicalization of the Sunni community there. It always had its Muslim Brotherhood elements in places like Hamah, etc. But you could tell that was that was going to be tough. And then meanwhile, you have Christians, you have Druze, you have Kurds, all of whom have essentially supported Assad. So you've got quite, now, why are they sort of supporting Assad? Do they like Assad? No, they just worry what happens when Syria becomes Sunni stand. So meanwhile, people in the US sort of anxious to see some sort of follow up to the Arab Spring or, you know, Arab thing, whatever we're going to call it in history. And they start calling this opposition to Assad democratic. Well, it is democratic in that the there was probably more opponents to Assad than there were supporters of Assad, because the Sunnis were largely in opposition, although not completely. But certainly these Islamist Sunnis were in opposition. So yeah, you could call that majority. And therefore you can call that democratic opposition. I submit to you, however, that the sectarianism that we see today in such stark relief was probably there from the get go. And it's a bit of a fiction to say, well, you know, at first, they were very democratic, and then we didn't give them weapons. And then they became Islamists. You know, I see that as kind of a self serving narrative for people who want to send weapons. I really think that how it would start to get to your question is with a pencil and a piece of paper. And what you would do is write down on probably one sheet of paper, maybe two, what Syria should be in the future, you need to define in some broad strokes what the political arrangements will be in Syria. One, should Syria be within its international borders? You know, as much as we heaped scorn and for good reason on Sykes Pico, you know, those two diplomats who are French and British who in 1916 drew this line, as a colleague of mine said, and you know, they weren't even ambassadors. Well, you know, and so they draw this crazy line, you know, and so, so the first point, I would not try to change that border. It's not that I think it was a great line that Sykes and Pico drew was basically between British and French influence. But you know, show me a border change in the Middle East, I'll show you a war. So I'm not really sure trying to impose a border change is necessarily the right way. So I just say Syria, and it's existing borders. Syria should be decentralized. And then I describe some of the decentralization, a canton system, describe what a province in Syria, the rights of province that Syria should have. Can they teach kids in their, in their own dialects? Can they can they have certain religious aspects attached to the state? I don't like that. But, you know, maybe that's what we have to do. Should Syria have a kind of collective presidency that is instead of just an Alloite president, which is what they have now, should they have a kind of rotating thing, you know, like Bosnia has, you could write this kind of stuff on a page. And then you could shop that. And be aware of those who say, no, we don't need this. This is patronizing. Well, my view is when you've killed 300,000 of your fellow citizens, you've forfeited the right to complain about being patronized too. So I would be a little scornful of that argument. But I think ultimately, people would need to decide, do they want it within its international borders? Do they want it decentralized? Do they want a parliamentary system, maybe an upper chamber that through some combination of, let's say, you know, national identities can veto. So if the Sunni majority pushes something through, if the Christian caucus, the Alloite caucus, and maybe one other, I don't know, the Druze caucus in an upper chamber could veto that, something like that. I think you need some description of politically how it would work. And right now, people have been talking about, you need a ceasefire. And you know, I'm all in favor of ceasefires. And you need elections. But I submit to you elections are just going to be a census. And a ceasefire is just going to be broken unless people know why they're ceasefiring. And I just, in Bosnia, we basically had all the accoutrements done that defined what the contact group plan was before we got to Dayton. And then on the eve of Dayton, we said, okay, ceasefire while we implement all this in something called the Dayton Peace Accords. And that's where that's where we were. Great. Of course, there are a few other things I wanted to get your thoughts on before we open up to questioning. And one of them is to pan out and say there's also, of course, the broader conflict in the Middle East with a strong sectarian dimension to it involving Iran. And I wondered if you could share with us your thoughts on the Iran nuclear deal. Is this conducive to the resolution of this complex patchwork? Yeah, I mean, whatever, whatever you ask someone, what do you think of X? The answer should be compared to what? And I, you know, I'm not saying the nuclear deal was, you know, the only thing in the world to deal with it. But I have not heard an articulate explanation of what the alternative was. People often say the sanctions were working. Well, I think the sanctions certainly were impoverishing the middle class of Iran, if that's your objective. But I think, you know, everything has its life cycle. And I think sanctions do too. So I think it was, and given the parties involved the Russians, the Chinese, Brits, French Germans, I think we'd kind of gotten to a point where it was time to sell sanctions and get a deal. Now, is it a perfect deal? No, certainly within 10 or 15 years. First of all, the nuclear, their nuclear capacities are still there. I mean, but you know, how are you going to deal with that? You're going to shoot all their nuclear scientists? Is that your solution to keeping nuclear knowhow out of Iran? I doubt it. How are you going to manage that? And so I think the idea of getting some limits on it, getting the Fissile material out of the country, which has gone well, I think it was probably the right approach. Obviously, it will start bringing to Iran a lot of capacity to because they'll get more money out of their own bank accounts, by the way, that have been frozen. And certainly there's a danger that some of that money can go to some of the Iranian mischief making in the Arab Middle East. You can imagine they could be giving more to Hisbalah. There's no question that's a problem. But I think Americans need to understand that when we talk about Iranian support to terrorism, we are talking Hisbalah. We are talking about some of these militia groups in Iraq. We are not talking about Al-Qaeda. We are not talking about ISIS. Those are extremist Sunni groups. Iran is on the opposite side of that ledger. So, yes, it's a danger for them to have more funds for Hisbalah. But at the same time, internally, and our policymakers don't talk about this as much, but internally within Iran, I think to have Iran in somewhat better shape is to empower some of these urban people who want to see more development. And if you look at the history of sort of political unrest, it usually comes up through a process known as rising expectations. People sell them revolt when they're flat on their back. They revolt when they see things changing but not fast enough. So I think to some extent we're making a bet on internal dynamics. It's a long shot. I mean, it's not easy to unseat these ayatollahs. But given the alternative to the nuclear deal, I think it's the right approach. I do want to say one other thing, though, in any deal in life, generally, you have something called externalities, negative externalities. And what this has done vis-a-vis our relationship with Saudi Arabia is serious. Saudi Arabia, frankly, they forgave us for supporting Israel. They've kind of dealt with that over the decades. They have not forgiven us for the fact that we went into Iran, Iraq, rather, and turned Iraq into a Shia-led country. So if you're Saudi and you're looking at that northern border, you see Shia. You see Shia in Iran. You see Shia in Iraq. And you see Iran because of Iraq's Shia status as a Shia-led country. You see Iran able to play more in the Lebanon and Syrian space, and you get very worried. So Saudi Arabia feels that demonstrably their strategic situation has worsened. At the same time, there's another thing, and it's a little more complicated, which is Saudis saying, and you have to combine it with the whole idea that we're pivoting to Asia. Pivoting to Asia, dealing more with Indonesia, China, all great stuff. But if you're in the Middle East, you're going, what are we, chop liver? I mean, and you're sort of feeling that America is abandoning the Middle East, and then you combine it with a sense that, wait a minute, now they're talking to their old buddies, the Iranians. We remember that one in the 70s. So while for an American, it looks ridiculous that somehow we're going to rehab our relationship with a country under these Ayatollahs, it's ridiculous to us. To the Saudis, it's not so ridiculous. And so we need to manage that Sunni reaction. And the Sunni reaction has been pretty ferocious. And by managing it, what have we done? We've sold the Saudis F-15s, that's always a solution to every problem with the Saudis who sell them airplanes. But we've also looked the other way, while they've bombed the Bejeebers out of these Shia areas, these Houthi areas in Yemen. We've also looked the other way at the fact that the Saudis are not even in the fight anymore with ISIS. Because, you know, to many people in the Saudi public opinion, they look at ISIS and they go, well, we don't really like their tactics, but at least somebody's doing something about these Shia. And, you know, as Americans, we always have this kind of solipsistic notion that's always about us. You know, ISIS is out for out to get us. They are. But they're really out to get the Shia. And so, you know, this is this whole approach to Iran. I think it's the right thing. But we should not minimize the problems, the tectonic shifts we're having in the whole Sunni areas. For the last leadoff question I have for you, I want to pivot to Asia and ask you to compare the situation in Iran with another embryo that you know all too well, which is the nuclear issue with North Korea. Having served as the head of the Six-Party Talks team for the U.S. as Assistant Secretary of State for a number of years, when you look at this latest nuclear test by the North Koreans, they claim they've detonated an H-bomb. China calls for Six-Party Talks. The South Korean president and the U.S. have said maybe five-party talks are in order, excluding Pyongyang. What do you think the right next step is there? And is there any hope for a deal in North Korea? Yeah. First of all, you know, I negotiated with the North Koreans in the context of the Six-Party Talks. You know, we made some progress to be sure. We can discuss that. But I guess what's annoying about it is people always assume that you have some kind of Stockholm syndrome and that sooner or later you develop some appreciation for the North Korean position. I never did. I mean, these are Pyongyang syndrome. These are people only a mother can love, believe me. I've never had such an unpleasant experience. You know, give me Karajic and Miladich any day over these people. It's pretty awful. I think we were right to engage, and I think President Bush was not only right, but he was courageous to engage. And the reason he was courageous is half the Republican Party, and it may be three-quarters today, opposed any kind of negotiation with people like that. And I submit to you that they kind of missed the point that he understood very well, which was, first of all, we had a double header going in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secondly, if you looked at polling data in South Korea, and that is the relationship that we absolutely must preserve for many reasons. If you looked at polling data in South Korea, some 50 percent of South Koreans in 2004 were blaming the United States and blaming our truculent behavior and blaming our lack of interest in negotiation, as being the reason why North Korea was pursuing nuclear weapons. That's all changed now. That's all changed. I mean, South Koreans are not doubting our will to find a solution, especially where they know that we're not afraid to negotiate. But the problem, as you suggest, is that North Korea is not interested in a negotiation. So now what do we do? I think China is a major part of the solution, but I think a dialogue along the lines that somehow China needs to solve this is not going to get us there. And I'll tell you, I was frankly a little disappointed when our Secretary of State spoke to Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister. That was a good idea to touch base with him. And then our Secretary of State says to the press, I spoke to him and I told him their policy has been a failure. We've put up with it and they've got nothing done and they need to step it up. Well, guess what Wang Yi's response was as soon as they could get their Chinese invectives put into English? It was that you Americans haven't done anything either. And he's right. Actually, both of them are right, but both of them are wrong to be going through the press. We need to have a deep dive with the Chinese on what we can get done. I think to some extent we need to have that deep dive in the context that the US contrary to what many Chinese in their communist and security service apparatus believe contrary to that, we are not interested in taking strategic advantage of China. We are not interested in a unified Korea such that US troops would be on the Yalu River. We are interested in a unified Korea if that's what Koreans want. And we support our friend and ally, the Republic of Korea. But we are not interested in supporting our friend and ally, the Republic of Korea, in order to put pressure on China by putting listening posts or other things that many of these Chinese security people believe that we are doing. We need to have a kind of deep dive with the Chinese to explain what our real interests are. I think there are too many Chinese who have too many Chinese, especially in this security world, who think that this would be a victory for America and a defeat for China. And you have to understand North Korea in China not as a foreign affairs problem, but rather as a near abroad. Remember, China doesn't come out of the 1648 in Europe. China comes out of a very different view of neighbors. And so for many Chinese, if North Korea is to fail, and that's what Chinese believe, if they really put pressure on them, they'll go under. They see this as something that would be, would resonate and have a sort of echo effect within China itself, where people would start saying, well, you know, our communist neighbors are down. Why are we still pretending we have a communist system? It would have an echo on their internal issues. These are serious matters in any serious country. And I put China in the category of a serious country they need to think about. And so we have had a lot of disagreements with China. You can see their misbehavior in the South China Sea and trying to sort of turn that into a southern Chinese lake. You know, we need to work, we need to really have a proper dialogue with the Chinese. And most importantly, I think we need to kind of set out some priorities. You know, priorities are a good thing. It helps sharpen the mind. Individuals do it every day. But we have a foreign policy, and this is a whole other subject, that is increasingly sort of up for sale. And the consequence is everyone's priority gets put on the list. Thank you for that. My priority right now is to turn over to Travis and to Swathi to ask some of the questions that you all have provided from the audience. So please. Great. Thank you so much for your time and thoughtful answers as far. My name is Swathi Shemmugas in the room. I'm an undergraduate student here at Ford with a focus on immigration reform and minors in Southeast Asian Studies. Could you try your name once again? Sure. You know, it sounds like a sentence because it's very long. It's Swathi Shemmugas in the room. Okay. Great. Anyway, our first question from the audience is about Syria and Iraq. You suggested keeping Syrian borders the same. Why not divide Syria and Iraq along ethnic lines instead, such as Kurdistan, Ashiya state, Asuni state, and a Christian state. You know, in a sort of de facto sense, if you go up from the Arab lands to Kurdistan, you'll find a checkpoint and it's like a border. You won't see Arabs north of that border, except as tourists, by the way. Up in the Kurdish mountains, you see a lot of people from Baghdad having picnics up there and whatnot. But it already kind of looks like another country. Today, if you go west from Baghdad into Anbar, you're also seeing a little of that happen. It may end up in a different circumstance. But I submit to you that if we try to divide it, and unless it is done in a way that everyone participates in a kind of political process to do it, I can pretty much guarantee you there will be people who reject this and there will be lasting war. So I think we need to be very careful with solutions like that. Look, if the Shia and Sunni have a meeting and they say international community, we're done. We really want to create two states the way the Czechs and the Slovaks did. Cool. We should help them kind of figure that out. But I don't think that's there. And I think, in particular, the Sunni Arabs, if you look at the Arab Middle East, it's about 90% Sunni Arab. And Iraq is quite the anomaly at 60% Shia Arab. And so I'm not sure the Sunnis would just say, OK, Iraqis, you've got all, Iraqi Shia, you've got all that. You can have 60%. I think there are a lot of problems in doing that. And I understand why people say this is a simple solution. I suggest to you, it gets very complicated. And by the way, Baghdad, in particular, is very complicated in that regard and that you'd end up with more war. All righty. So just to echo, thank you again, Ambassador Hill, for your time. Much appreciated. I'm excited to hear your insight. Hello, everyone. I'm Travis Harold. I'm a first year master's public policy student here at the Ford School. Actually, I've done a couple internships with the Department of State in Coastville, in particular. I know we didn't discuss that today, but. You're in Pristina? Pristina, yeah. Right in the crux of it. Took visits to Mitrovice as well. So very interesting. But neither here or there, but thank you again for the time. The first question is, do you think the current right wing radicalization of Europe is similar to the Balkan issues of the 90s? No. I think the Balkan issues of the 90s. You know, one thing about education that's kind of interesting is the college education is the political science that I studied became history. I mean, who the heck cares about the Soviet Politburo anymore? It's history. But interestingly, the history that I studied, the history that I studied, became political science. And so it seemed a little ridiculous to sit there reading about the Ottoman Empire. But guess what? That whole breakup of Yugoslavia was about the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. It really was 1912 and 1913. It's what it was all about. So what is going on in Europe is not the breakup of the Ottoman Empire or the breakup of the Hapsburgs or any of these other empires. What's going on in Europe is the, I think, complex difficulty of deepening political structures, creating a new identity that's never existed, that is an identity as a European. And at the same time, trying to hold on to what previous identities were. And I think many of this, what you call right wing politics, is a kind of concern that identity, whether you're an Austrian or whatever, has been put into this sort of homogenized thing known as European. And I think a lot of these right wing politicians strike a real resonant cord with people when they say, wait, do we just want to be put into this mosh pit of Europe? I mean, don't we have history? Don't we have traditions? What's happened to us? So I think that's part of it. I think when the whole idea was, OK, Germany, you can be united, but it has to be in the context of a deeper European structure. Very nice. Beautiful. The only trouble was the result of all this is Germany now dominates the European Union. So ironically, Germany is exactly what we feared it would be in 1991, 1992. So a lot of smaller countries kind of resent that. Meanwhile, Germans resent some of those smaller countries. And to see this whole thing, I always thought it would come out with the European enlargement into Eastern Europe. And I always thought it'd be the Western Europeans saying, why are we building roads in Slovakia, et cetera? Why can't these people just pull themselves up from their bootstraps, et cetera? And what it really has been is the Southern Europeans. That's been the real fault line in Europe. So I think among Germans, there's a real concern that the Southern Europeans are not pulling their weight. And I think that has given rise to nationalism. And meanwhile, you have this incredible flow of refugees from North Africa and from the war areas. And so I think for many Europeans, they say, well, wait a minute, they seem to be more interested in those people than they are in us. And so that's been hard to manage. And when you kind of lecture them and tell them, hey, this is your moral responsibility to take care of Syrians, they say, well, that's easy for you to say. But I've lived in this village of 200 people. My parents, my grandparents, my generations have lived in this village of 200 people. And now this village of 200 people has a refugee camp of 800 people right next to it. What are you doing to us? So there's a sense of powerlessness as these big European structures make decisions. And by the way, some of these decisions are not so pretty when you look closely, because you see some of the political parties. Some of this is you put a refugee camp in the opposition party, not in your own territory. And by the way, party affiliation in Europe is a lot deeper than it is in this country. So there are a lot of problems there. And then I'll add that I'm not sure, this is maybe a little whimsical, but I'm just not sure that Europe is producing the kind of politicians it needs. Statesmen, I should use the term, statesmen, to deal with these problems. I think there's been a kind of crisis of confidence. And we see it in this country as well, a crisis of confidence in institutions and the leaders that these institutions are producing. And so everyone's got these issues. It's kind of global. But in the case of Europe, they have come a long way very quickly. And I think it's just been very tough on a lot of people there. At least one historian of the origins of World War I has argued that the infamous Austria- Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia would have been less of an infringement of Serbia's sovereignty than the demands NATO made concerning Kosovo that were enforced by extensive bombing. What's your reaction? Yeah, I understand why they're saying that. The Austrian ultimatum was something that there was no way the Serbs could accept. And it did involve, if I recall correctly, it did involve some territorial give back. The problem is we live in a different era, and you can't really compare an ultimatum of 1914 with a problem that was beyond just national in scope, but rather had to do with state formation in a neighboring country. 1914, it was tough because the Austrians had grabbed Sarajevo, had grabbed Bosnia in 1908. Serbs just didn't accept it. And Gavrilo Princip and his ilk never accepted it. In some ways, you could make the case that it was similar, except I would say the Serbs in 1914 handled it better by looking for allies. Obviously the whole thing had disastrous consequences, but at least they looked for allies while the Serbs in 1992 just did not understand that they were not going to be able to play the game by themselves. And for Serbs to talk about that somehow rushes their friend, I think most Serbs know better. What lessons can we learn from the lead up to the Balkan wars for ethnically fragile regions such as Brundi, Lebanon, etc.? Yeah. Well, I tried to suggest earlier that I think we need to design political structures that will be post-war structures. And for people who say that our solution to these issues is to intervene militarily, I think. And that's, by the way, that's what the whole American debate on Syria has been. How do we send more guns into that country and to whom do we send them? And to me, that is very, very discouraging because I don't think Syrians need more guns. And nor do they need more military training. What they need are structures for peace. And I really think that this obsession that we have that this is all about, quote, leveling the playing field. That's a nice expression. It's often used in trade negotiations. But when you talk about leveling the playing field in a war, you're into something a lot more than just a textile negotiation. And I would hope that we would have developed as a country a certain aversion to war and a certain skepticism that war is a solution to these problems. And yet, when you look at any politician in this country, all they talk about is, should we or should we not give weapons? I would like some affirmative solutions, such as, should we pull the parties together and offer a peace plan? And there's some evidence that that's happening, maybe happening this week, in fact. But even then, it seems to be on the issue of having a ceasefire and putting together elections. And I don't think that's going to elections. I don't think we'll solve anything. There'll just be a census of how many Druze, how many Christian, and how many Alawites you have there. What do you think the biggest challenge for US diplomacy is today? Well, I'm an old-fashioned guy, so I always worry about nuclear weapons. You know, it was funny when they were talking about had North Korea exploded a hydrogen weapon. Turns out, probably not. But I'm not even sure that's the issue. I mean, if you have a nuclear weapon, I mean, look at Hiroshima. Can we really handle another Hiroshima in this world? I don't think so, and that was not a hydrogen weapon. So I think the real issue is how to stop these nuclear wannabes. And that's why I want to see a much more concerted joint effort with the Chinese to address this. And I think trading accusations in the press is not a serious foreign policy. So I would go after that. Obviously, what is happening in the Middle East is dangerous. It's dangerous for the world. To some extent, the America is a little more protected from the needs for oil in the Middle East, because we have all this nontraditional oil development in this country. I think if this issue of Sunni and Xi goes unabated, it will be very dangerous. What are your views on the new government in Myanmar and the ethnic issues it faces? You know, I mean, I think that is a country that has come a long way. And you know, in so doing, I mean, there was this idea that Tianxian and these people were beyond redemption. You couldn't deal with them. And yet they've come a long way. There was also this view that Aung San Suu Kyi was a saint. I think people have discovered, like most of us, she's not. But she has done a lot. She's done a lot. I feel Myanmar is a place to encourage what they've done. And it's not to say that they have solved the sort of centrifugal forces in that country that are really dangerous for it. I mean, the various, you know, these tribal structures, these are not easy. And don't always assume that the government's at fault. I mean, some of these separatists are themselves at fault. So I think it's one of these things that bears attention and is worth paying attention. You know, when I was on my watch, it was, we turned it into a sort of human rights melodrama. You had Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest by this evil junta. And there's an element of that, definitely. But when you talk to people from the region, when you talk to Indonesians, Singaporeans, Thai, they saw it, yes, as a human rights melodrama, to be sure. But it was also a huge chunk of real estate. And the question was, do you want to see this in a more Indian orbit? Do you want to see it in a Chinese orbit? Or do you want to see it in ASEAN as one of these small countries that, not small, I mean, Indonesia's not small, but one of these Southeast Asian countries that kind of tries to work with their neighbors and comes up with these consensus rules of the road. And to me, that's pretty obvious. That's what we would like to see happen to Burma. But to encourage that is not always to be wagging our finger at them. And I think we need to kind of stay engaged and help them and try to support them. All right, so this question actually comes from a student, a hopeful student in the audience, Go Blue. The question is, how does one ASE the Foreign Service Test? Best advice, yes. Well, all right, well, there are two great things about the Foreign Service Test. One, it's free. The second is about, you don't have to pay anything. Take the Foreign Service Exam. The second thing that's nice is you can take it again. You know how if you take a GRE once and then you take it again, they'll kind of average it with the previous one, which is kind of annoying. The Foreign Service Test, you pass it. They don't care if you didn't pass it before. The record is eight times. The record for someone actually getting in the Foreign Service and having taken it multiple times is eight times. So people should really understand that one of the tricks is not to think that you have to pass it the first time. Now, if you're way off the first time and if you don't come close, you might want to consider something else. But if you're close, you should try it again. So I'm speaking of someone who didn't pass it the first time. I was in college. I was a senior. I took it and I came close. But I had my English actually was below the minimum. So I joined the Peace Corps and all I did was read. You know, just I had stacks of books. I just read, read, read and then I passed it. So you just kind of address your deficit there. So if you really want to enter the Foreign Service, you shouldn't consider the exam your problem. You'll eventually pass it. The issue is you need to consider, do you want to move around the world every two years? Do you want to, are you comfortable with some of the issues you'll have to take? You know, you don't pick and choose. If you don't like the Iraq War and you're a Foreign Service officer, if you really don't like it and you can't defend it, maybe you should get out. So, you know, it's, you have to have a lot of considerations. I think it's a fabulous career. There's no country in the world that's more fun to defend than the United States. I mean, we are, we are it. No one is indifferent to us. No one, no one falls asleep when you start talking about our policies and kind of, you know, explaining Donald Trump to the rest of the world. I mean. In your opinion, who have the most effective diplomats and secretaries of state been? Well, you know, he drove me crazy. He, I always say, he was my mentor and my tormentor, but I'm a big Dick Holbrook fan. So I'm pleased to be at this film that, done by his son, which is really quite a touching film because it's his son's effort to get to know his dad posthumously and through his dad's work. So I'm a big Holbrook fan. And look, there have been a lot of great diplomats. One of them people don't ever talk about, but there was a guy named Warren Christopher, very kind of quiet guy, not big on the media, but he understood things. He understood the balance of things. And I guess what I really liked about him, and I'll add Condi Rice to this, is when they sent you out on, you know, Mission Impossible, they'd back you up. And what you don't like is for someone to send you out, and then you, you know, things don't go well. And then lo and behold, you're getting criticized back home and you know, you don't have someone sticking up for you. Colm Powell was very good at sticking up for his people. Condi Rice was. Warren Christopher was very good at that as well. So look, you know, we've had a lot of great secretaries of state, and I think it's, we need to, you know, understand that this is such an important role for us in the world, and we need to understand that American diplomacy should not be an oxymoron, it should be something that we do and do very well. I think we've got time for one more question. Yes, yep, so last question here, and it's kind of a two-prong question. That's a bit of a nerve to questions, you know. Yeah, sneaking them in there. But the number of American students studying international relations, area studies, and foreign languages continues to drop. Do you believe this will have an impact on the U.S. government's ability to implement foreign policy in the future? And secondly, as a dean, what can be done to increase interest participation in studies associated with diplomacy? Yeah, you know, we notice this, as Susan mentioned, we're all members of this association of international schools, and we're noticing this kind of enrollment headwinds where we're not seeing enrollments grow like they did after 9-11. I think, you know, it's something we have to track and be aware of. I think to some extent, there is a feeling that somehow we cannot make a difference, you cannot make a difference in the State Department, and yet I think you can, and I think the State Department needs to do a better job of making sure that people know that this is a very, you know, a career that can really, you know, it can be very important and very satisfying to people. I think too, and I don't want to make, you know, here I am in my 60s, and I don't want to be lecturing younger generations, but no, you cannot be Henry Kissinger at the age of 24. I mean, you have to understand, I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my career schlepping people's bags in from the airport and the second 10 years, you know, writing telegrams that no one ever cared about, and then the third 10 years, I had a ball. I mean, I really, I knew the whole business, and you know, I would, you know, I'd help younger people, and by the way, mentoring people, I mean, people helped me, and my duty is to help others, and I think most foreign service get that, most foreign service officers get that, and so, and I think people need to understand that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, and so you need to understand that you're not gonna be changing the world at the age of 24, besides I did that in the Peace Corps, so that kind of gets it out of your system, so I think we should be encouraging more interest in international studies, and I don't know what the solution is, but all I can tell people is, I mean, there's a lot of concern now about business school, I mean, whether that's remunerative about law school, so I think a lot of these professional schools are experiencing some headwinds, but I just wanna make sure that as a country, we understand that there is a body of knowledge in all these fields, and international studies is one of them, and you need to know stuff, and you need to understand that if you don't know stuff, you'll end up with a prospect of some Burmese diplomat being smarter than you are, so I think we need to kind of be respectful of what education can do and understand the absolute need for more of it, so, thank you. Well, thank you so much, Ambassador Hill and Professor Church-Harrie. I hope to see all of you later at our free screening that will be at the Michigan Theater. You've already heard just a bit about the diplomat, but I very much hope that all of you will consider joining us at 7 p.m. I'd also like to thank you for joining us this afternoon, and I hope that you'll stay and enjoy the reception that's right outside of our doors in our great hall. There's also a book signing there, and I again hope that you will stay for that. Please join me in a final thank you to our special guest, Ambassador Hill.