 We have a spectacular afternoon session for you, two of them. This is panel two, looking at cross-cutting challenges. This day is really to look at how can we come up with some ideas to make conflict prevention more effective. And I think there has been a broadly great progress in the last 20 years on the concept of the responsibility to protect conflict. You have administrations thinking about this, but that hasn't necessarily translated into actions. And I often look at conflict prevention as a circle. What can you do leading up to the conflict itself to prevent it? And then in a post-conflict situation, it's almost the same identity. So we're now in a post-conflict situation in Iraq. And what positions do we need to make sure that that doesn't return to conflict? We're in the middle of one in Afghanistan. And then you've got various conflicts, Kyrgyzstan, Burundi, we heard this morning about Ethiopia. And today we're going to sort of look at the trends and forecasts indicating what is happening in Talwan, something that's at risk of an outbreak, talking a little bit about some specific countries illustrating that these challenges, and what conflict preventive strategies can best address these challenges, and hopefully get to the stage where we talk about what steps we'd like to see the Obama administration take in order to reduce the risk of conflict ahead of us. Over lunch, Bruce Genelson had a good way of looking at the discussion. You can do it everywhere, nowhere or somewhere, and somewhere in there's the balance that we want to get. And someone else suggested whack-a-mole whenever one pops up, you try and push it back down again. Hopefully we can come up with something a little bit more systematic than that. What we'll do today is have three speakers speak for about 15 minutes each, and then save the bulk of the last half hour for questions. We'll end it at 2.45, so get your questions ready. We will start with Ramesh Thakur, who's a distinguished fellow at the Center for International Governments and Innovation in Waterloo. He's the author of over a dozen books, a former senior vice rector at the UN University, and a former professor and head of Peace Research Center in Australia at the University of Australia and University in Canberra, as well as at a university in New Zealand. And most perhaps appropriately for this discussion, he was on the panel that came up with the responsibility to protect doctrine. So he comes as an author, a thinker, and a practitioner, and I ask you to welcome Ramesh. Thanks Nancy. It's a pleasure to be here, and I noticed over lunch that Abby Williams and I had an identical selection even for our lunch. You can see how the UN system clones you into groupthink and group eat as well. Let me begin with an observation that departs from the instructions to us from the organizers, in the sense that peace can be built at any point between dormancy, imminence, onset, and even abatement of crises. In other words, at a fundamental level, conflict prevention turns into or morphs into peace building, and the distinction between them is artificial. Ninety percent, if not more, of conflicts that will arise, will arise based on existing tensions and disputes. And therefore the single best measure of conflict prevention is actually conflict resolution. If you could resolve the conflicts today, we prevent them intensifying. To the extent that, as I said, more than 90 percent are existing things. This is true even of interstate issues. Think of the long-term intractable conflicts, Korea, Taiwan, China, India, India Pakistan, Cyprus, the interlocking conflicts in the Middle East that were mentioned in the earlier session, the Caucasus, etc. It's also true of internal and transnational armed conflicts. For example, if you think of the whole debate over addressing root causes as a tool of conflict prevention, addressing root causes means conflict resolution. And therefore that distinction, in a sense, I think is artificial. And the emphasis that we've been asked to give to primary conflict prevention is somewhat arbitrary. That said, I will follow it since I do follow orders. It's another training of the UN system. I'm going to use as my organizing framework something that Tom Wies and I developed for our recently completed book on global governance as part of the UN intellectual history project series. And that is approach it through five gaps and we measure progress in governance by the extent to which these gaps are being filled or have been filled. First, knowledge gap. Now on the one hand, very few conflicts catch us really by surprise. Most we know, the indicators are there through a mix of different sources. We are aware of them. Similarly, at one level you could say that most of what we need to know about conflict prevention already exists in the literature. The Carnegie Commission report, the Secretary General's own report following that. More recently, Ban Ki-moon's report on implementing R2P, which is if he's still in the audience, which he helped to write. And therefore there's not much more really that we need to do by way of adding to our knowledge base before we move into action. On the other hand, as with any other part of social science, we are never going to have perfect knowledge about the full plurality and range of issues involved. Knowledge gaps both in the sense of the empirical facts and in terms of the theoretical advancements that relates cause and effect and also not just causes but potential remedies as well. So the plurality of possible causes and remedies plus the multiplicity of tools raises questions in conflict prevention of conflict sensitive indicators to identify systematically countries or areas at short and long term risks, the existing local, national, regional and international capacities for conflict prevention, the best placed actors to engage in conflict prevention, and the best mix of strategies bearing among the different stages and context involved. And we need to build on this knowledge base as we go along. Second normative gaps, we haven't really moved from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention as the norm for international action in dealing with conflicts. We've talked about it. It exists there at the rhetorical level, but we haven't really internalized that as a norm. Another normative change at the same time that is helpful and certainly we have it along in our commission on in our to be commissioned is the softening of sovereignty and the non-intervention law. So that today when bad things happen like Rwanda, the international reaction is how do we let that happen? It is no longer did we have a right to do something? And that's quite a dramatic shift over the five, six decades since the Second World War and the UN. And that's I think worth noting as well. But basically we haven't actually moved to internalizing the norm of prevention. Next policy gaps. Now again at the rhetorical level and more than at the rhetorical level in terms of dedicated units, many of the major multilaterals including the EU and including the World Bank, including also regional organizations like the European Union, African Union, sub-regional organizations, Ecovast, SADAC, EU, G8, et cetera, they have policies assisting, facilitating, requiring conflict prevention measures. At the national level policy gaps would involve addressing the development deficits, governance deficits along the lines of DDR, security sector reform, rule of law, power sharing, et cetera, et cetera. In terms of assistance from one country or group of countries to others in the various structural support measures beginning with the Carnegie Commission report and picked up by others as well. Conflict sensitive development analysis, back to the good governance. But all this with a measure of flexibility and adaptability and if you like, certainly for me, an instinctive aversion to a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, when is a federal solution preferable? When is a centralization option preferable? Democracy, yes, but what does it mean in practice? Do we want a presidential system or a parliamentary system? What sort of electoral system? What about timing and sequence? If the state institution and state capacity isn't there, as we have discovered to our cost, elections can exacerbate and solidify cleavages and worsen the conflict situation rather than easing it. We know from a lot of literature now that one of the most difficult and intense times is transition from authoritarian to democratic systems. So we need to be careful of that. These are real issues and I think we need to be open to changing our solutions and policy prescriptions depending on the context and depending on the answer to that. And what is important is some adaptability and power sharing from formulations and co-optation if necessary between the elites. I think of the difficulties we are having presently even with regard to Afghanistan. And in that I think the basic rule about first make sure that you do no harm or that you do not worsen the situation. And then of course there's the direct conflict prevention measures as well. That's very familiar. Broadly encapsulated if you like under chapter six of the UN Charter. Good officers, mediation, arbitration, personal invoice. It doesn't have to be through UN, all of those ranges and tools. And again the choice of the right person whether for mediation or good officers is very, very critical. The person will need to have the authority, the stature, the credibility, the skills and experience, the courage sometimes even to go into local situations and very high risk situations. Next, institutional gaps. Everyone who deals with this field very quickly remarks upon the imbalance of resources and the tension and time given to conflict prevention as opposed to conflict management. Preventive diplomacy as opposed to peace operations, counterinsurgency operations, a full-fledged war and all that. And that is reflected in the institutional division of labor, staff devoted to it and so on and so forth. And I think we need to invest much more in establishing, resourcing adequately and empowering institutions at local, national, regional and international levels. And linking my comments to the earlier panel, I'd like to make a particular plea for regional level institutions. It seems to me it is regional level institutions that are more likely to be successful than either strictly national or even international. And certainly if you think of the European Union as a conflict prevention initiative, which in many ways of course in origin it was. It was designed to make war impossible between heavily warring countries of previous centuries. It's a very good example of a successful initiative in this regard. And the way they have done it is I think worth studying and worth replicating in other regions. In terms of what it means to be European standards and benchmarks which you must satisfy before you are admitted to membership. But also that combination of structuring your incentives and disincentives so that there are both incentives and disincentives. And the incentives are attractive enough to induce a change of behavior in the targeted regimes. And I think to often be emphasized the stick and downgrade the importance of carrots. So regional solutions I think are very critical. And as I said after a lifetime of studying and being part of this on the practitioner side as well, I think that is the most seriously underrated part of the equation in my view for a number of reasons which we can talk about. And the final gap, the fifth and final gap is compliance gaps. Compliance in terms of resources and the institutions for monitoring and enforcement. Compliance in terms of enforcement as well. And here again, we see a sort of ambivalence in the various configurations that we have for addressing this. In the architecture of governance for conflict prevention. We've got chapter six of again of the UN Charter on the soft side of engagement and intervention. And we've got chapter seven as we move from the soft side to the hard side from inducement and consent based activities to coercion with increasingly tough measures. On the soft side, the difficulty is the political sensitivities of the target countries or regimes concerned. And the hesitation in accepting international engagement and involvement and arguments caused in terms of interference in internal affairs, encroachment in sovereignty, and so on and so forth. And the fact that chapter six remains non-binding shows our ambivalence on the outside that we are not prepared to impose external solutions. Either we accept the existing distribution of authority between national authorities and global authorities. But if you move to the hard side, the closer we come from dormancy of crisis and conflict to imminent or actual occurrence of conflict, you move up the ladder to the coercive hard side of it. There the difficulty becomes and we see it again and again and mostly simply with regard to Iran. And we'll see it again if you have to go to the next stage with Iran. The difficulty is the closer we move to harder coercion, the more the international consensus begins to dissipate and fray. So on the soft side it's more difficult to get the target countries to accept engagement. On the hard side it's more difficult to maintain the cohesion and necessary unity and purpose of action to be able to impose meaningful sanctions, whether economic or even the use of military force. This also raises questions of early morning indicators and, more importantly, publicizing these early morning indicators and signs of things. And there again, because of political sensitivities, governments and even intergovernmental organizations have very severe constraints. And certainly some of the most authoritative and useful and usable reports that come out are from non-governmental sources, like crisis group, which Nancy used to be the head of the North American about the vice president here. And also we've talked about Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria and Kenya. The reports coming, for example, from the Global Center for R2P based in New York, where they've just issued a report on Kyrgyzstan. They issued a report earlier on Nigeria and contrary to what Mr. Blaney was saying, the reaction of the Nigerian mission to the UN at least caught us by surprise and that they were not at all deeply offended. They appreciated the fact that we had alerted them to how close Nigeria was to what we call an R2P type situation. And said, yes, we need to address these issues. But I think it's not necessarily the case that they're always offended. Partly it depends upon how accurate it is and partly the language used. The European network on conflict prevention is another good example of this. In conclusion, let me just say three things really. To my mind, governance is important and critically important because it is only through looking at the governance side of it that we will move to institutionalize the conflict prevention lessons, the knowledge, the best practices, etc. So that we can make the transition from ad hoc and reactive responses to creating a systematic, robust, and resilient capacity to engage in conflict prevention. Secondly, I think governance is important because it highlights the critical disconnect between the existing distribution of decision making authority in the international governance institutions that we have on the one hand, and the transition in economic, political, and military power in the real world on the other hand. The example was mentioned in the earlier session above by Ambassador Yates and then I think by Peter Hakem about Brazil and Turkey's initiative with regard to Iran and the existing P5 simply brushed that aside. Well, the fact of the matter is the power distribution is changing, is changing substantially and countries like China and India are not going to accept norms and rule interpretation and adjudication and enforcement by others. They are going to demand a say in writing the rules, in formulating the norms, and then in deciding who are the ones breaking these and what is to be done about it. And if that is not conceded to them, we will be in for some considerable stress and volatility. So there's going to have to be a genuine give and take. The ability to impose our agenda, our values, our rules is fading and is unlikely to be recovered, I suspect, in my lifetime. This, by the way, is a historical norm. It's the past two centuries in the broad scene of history that will count as a deviation. China and India have traditionally been major players in world affairs and in regional affairs. So we need to get used to having, we need to get used to genuine joint collective decision making. And the final problem is that the evolution of multilateral institutions and regimes lags well behind the emergence of collective action problems that require multilateral solutions. And there again, the importance of governance is highlighted. We have not developed the capacity to shed regimes and institutions that are passed there, used by date and should be taken over the shelf. And the capacity to replace them with newer institutions or to adapt and evolve the older ones. And so we have a hodgepodge, at least with the G8, I think we are making the transition from the G8 to the G20. But the need for something like the G20 would be much less if we had the capacity to change, for example, the fossilized structure of the UN Security Council. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ramesh. Next, I'd like to invite Paul Hughes to come and address us. He's the Senior Program Officer at USIP's Conflict Analysis and Prevention Program, as well as Executive Director of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the US. So he comes with great knowledge. He's also a former active duty Army Colonel and a fellow at NDU's Institute for National Security Studies. He has direct experience in conflict prevention, having served in Iraq for the CPA, as well as the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. We first met 15 years ago, I guess, when he was working as the Deputy Director for the Office of Humanitarian Assistance and the lovely issue of landlines. So we haven't solved that one yet either. So Paul Hughes. Thank you. I could not have asked for a better segue than what I just heard Ramesh say about the fossilization of international institutions. On the topic of non-proliferation and the prevention of conflict, a paradox exists where you try to push non-proliferation too hard. You may actually go someplace where you don't want to go. We all recognize that the Non-proliferation Treaty serves as the foundation for the world's efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and its associated technology. But despite the best efforts to update it and implement it, I fear it lacks the flexibility to remain pertinent to today, as we just heard about the issues of power distribution and being relevant to the changing world. I think that there are three questions that are relevant to the inquiry of non-proliferation and the prevention of armed conflict. The first one is, does the MPT's standards, do the MPT standards remain relevant to the realities of today's world? The second is, how important is it that the spread of nuclear weapons technology be controlled or halted? And the final question is, what price is the international community or any nuclear power willing to pay to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons? And I'm going to step through these three questions. The first one, do the MPT standards remain relevant to the realities of today's world, focus on the three pillars of the MPT, the one for non-proliferation, the one for disarmament, and the one for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Regarding the first pillar, non-proliferation, this remains key as the principal element in preventing our nightmare, the United States nightmare of a terrorist group's attack on the US with a nuclear device. Many believe that preventing this attack would require total cooperation among all states to ensure the control of technology and nuclear weapons. And in that pursuit, two significant programs have been undertaken in the last 10, 15 years outside of the MPT, I might add, to control the spread of nuclear weapons and technology. The first one is the global initiative to combat nuclear terrorism. And of the 192 states in the world, only 81 have signed up to that. The second one is the proliferation security initiative, only 95 states have signed up to that. Additionally, the MPT has very strict language in defining who is a nuclear weapon state and who is a non-nuclear weapon state. And it does not provide for the flexibility of changes in the world's situation. So consequently, it assumes that if you were a non-nuclear state when the MPT went into effect, you were always going to remain a non-nuclear state in terms of weapons. Now, some have argued that no nuclear state declared or not would risk giving away part of its nuclear arsenal or technology to groups or states that cannot be controlled. But is that accurate? We know that the People's Republic of China provided Pakistan necessary information and technology to pursue their own weapons program. And some have suggested that the United States itself provided similar support to Israel's program. In this globalized world, we must now also deal with the nexus of transnational criminal networks that would use their infrastructure and strength, their financial strength, to procure or provide stolen nuclear weapons or material to terrorist groups. And as of today, it's not clear that non-proliferation initiatives have really decreased the chances of violent conflict. It is true there has never been a major war between nuclear armed states, though low-level violence and proxy wars have existed. For example, during the Cold War, there were a lot of proxy wars. There was also a conflict between two nuclear armed states, Russia and the People's Republic of China, who clashed over the Yusuri River boundary in 1969. But they did not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. With regards to the post-Cold War, some would argue that the 1999 Kargil conflict in South Asia between India and Pakistan is another example where two nuclear armed powers knew the limits of what they could go to, and they were able to successfully keep their violence in the conventional realm. Others have argued that this was just sheer luck and that you have no control truly over a conflict situation when nuclear powers are involved. The second pillar, disarmament, is also essential to our goals as a government, as the United States. And that's been demonstrated recently in the New START Treaty. But it's not certain that this progress will reduce the likelihood of conflict between an undeclared nuclear state and the rest of the world, or between declared nuclear states for whatever their purpose might be. But in my mind, it is clear that a world that has reached nuclear zero whenever that will occur would remove that threat of nuclear attacks. Now, with regards to the NPT's last pillar on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, that unfortunately has provided the cover for every undeclared nuclear power that's aspiring to become a nuclear power. Every power, I should say, that's aspiring to develop its own nuclear capability. And that family includes North Korea, whom we heard about earlier today, Israel, India, Pakistan, and perhaps Iran. The major issue involved is the enrichment capability and the mastery of the fuel cycle. How does the international community prevent the dissemination of that capability and control it? Because once a state has reached the ability to enrich uranium, it can continue to do so in easier steps until it produces what's necessary for a nuclear weapon. In my view, and I think the world's view, the countries that are seeking control of a fuel cycle have to open it up to international scrutiny and have to be absolutely transparent. And trust is vital to making that work. And if a country fails to follow through on that transparency just one time, the world justifiably can question the motives of that country. Now, to my last question, how important, or my second question, how important is it that the spread of nuclear weapons or nuclear technology be controlled or halted? It may seem intuitively obvious to us that it's important. But some have different views. Many believe that it is vital to the security of the world's political order that this be controlled, that any nuclear program with the understanding that any nuclear program can be transformed into a weapons program very easily. We also have to deal with the issue of nihilistic terrorist groups. Not all terror groups seek to destroy themselves along with their targets, contrary to what most people think. But if a group such as Al Qaeda did achieve obtaining a nuclear weapon, it would be a clear and present danger to the free world. Now, most policymakers assume that proliferation adds to the risks of nuclear conflict, that having more states armed with nuclear weapons makes the world much more dangerous, because there's more opportunity for use. There have been some who have argued exactly the opposite, such as Ken Walts at UC Berkeley and John Miersheimer of University of Chicago. But finally, the last question, what price is the international community or any nuclear power willing to pay to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons? It's a tough question. We all recognize that coercive diplomacy has its limits. And the international community has the option of accepting that states will develop their own nuclear weapons programs or the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. They may not actually produce the weapon itself. They may just have the capability. And this leads to some interesting questions. What would that mean for the future of the MPT? Would it become irrelevant to what we seek to do? What options are there? Realistic options are there for rolling back proliferators to make them give up what they have worked to obtain. We have historical examples that have succeeded, but are they relevant to today's world? And are sanctions a useful option in light of what we have learned from Iraq? The use of force to compel a state to not proliferate has many consequences, some of them positive and some of them not. The positive ones obviously include the fact that if you have proliferation under control, it reduces the danger of somebody with bad intentions getting a hold of that stuff. But the negative ones also include forcing the proliferating state to strike back either conventionally or in an asymmetrical manner. The use of force to prevent proliferation has been applied before. And it's always been in the Middle East. The most obvious and serious example is the US invasion of Iraq, which was justified in part by preventing or reversing proliferation. Carl Rove, a close advisor to President George W. Bush, said that he would have opposed the invasion had he had known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Israel has conducted two violent attacks intended to prevent or retard proliferation. In June of 1981, they attacked Iraq's Osirak reactor. In September of 2007, they attacked a partially constructed Syrian reactor that was widely assumed to have been built with the assistance of North Korea. In addition, many assume that Israel today would strike Iran to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon if they believed a strike would be successful. Note that they would strike if they wanted to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon. They wouldn't wait for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Again, history suggests that if a state believes allowing another state to develop nuclear weapons becomes an existential threat, there will be an increased likelihood of the use of force. There are few examples of proliferation that would have resulted in an existential threat to a neighboring state. Thus we don't know if the Israeli actions might set a precedent for other states. And there is also the anecdotal but unconfirmed evidence that both the United States and Russia, or the USSR, considered military force to prevent China's acquisition of nuclear weapons. But the irony of it is that if you are a state that owns a nuclear weapon, you don't use it. This doesn't mitigate though the valid concerns that we have in today's world where we have so many transnational actors that really don't worry about the issues of sovereignty and the responsibilities that go with it. So what options then exist for the international community and with regards to the NPT? The best one is that we continue to support the work of the NPT because we don't have much of another option at this point. And that we work to make its application more relevant to the issues of today. The fact that we have a very locked down process that prevents other countries who have acquired nuclear weapons from becoming declared powers is a huge inhibitor and it keeps those undeclared nuclear powers from being held accountable under Article 6 of the NPT. From the perspective of the United States, the best options are probably to continue our robust non-proliferation effort through multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, select powers that come together such as the Six Powers regarding North Korea, the work on non-nuclear weapons, free zones, things of that nature. The United States, I believe, also should take very proactive steps to strengthen the international agency, the international atomic energy agency through increased political, financial, and technical support. I think that we also need to press on the Conference on Disarmament to free up the objections of Pakistan and move forward on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and that for the cost of a mere four to five billion dollars we can help secure all of the nuclear sites in the world so that they would not lose any of their material. One other consideration that I think deserves some thought is that the United States, since it's not going to get rid of its nuclear arsenal anytime soon, extend its deterrent umbrella over Israel which would put Iran on notice but in return I would ask that Israel join the MPT community. Madam Chair, turn it back over to you. Well thank you very much Paul. Now for our last speaker who will focus on economics is Claire Lockhart who runs the Institute for State Effectiveness. She's one of the world's experts on transforming unstable societies so we're lucky to have her here today. She understands the need to use the state institutions, the market and civil society to try and prevent and contain conflict. She also has direct experience in conflict situations served as a UN advisor in Afghanistan and as a program manager on institutions at the World Bank. She's also an author including Fixing Failed States, a framework for rebuilding a fractured world. She advises civil and military leaders on global security and economic issues is a member of the bar in England and Wales. What happened to Scotland? Succeeded. But you won't be surprised that she's ranked 20 out of the top 100 global thinkers in 2009 so we're lucky to have her and please join me in welcoming Claire Lockhart. Thank you very much. Why is economics relevant to conflict prevention and peace consolidation? The answer is probably self-evident to everybody in the room but to perhaps restate the obvious. When asked by the Government of Norway recently to interview leaders in the peace building and conflict prevention community, my colleagues and I asked them what their biggest regret was and without exception, all of them included in their answer that they forgot about economics. And they said as a consequence of this in their work, whether it was in conflict prevention or in peace consolidation and peace building, they said the consequences of this were that it wasn't possible to provide the necessary jobs for the youth of the country particularly young men but more broadly the youth. It was unable for the State to have the revenues required to resource and underwrite the costs of security, infrastructure and social services within the country and instead because of the lack of focus on building of illicit economy, instead it created the space and intensified the criminal networks and the criminal economy and instead they got criminal mafias that then poisoned the politics. So I think in words of leaders in the peace building, in the diplomatic community that's well established but it's well established in the academic literature which I won't review now and is well known to the USIP community that there is a clear connection between poverty and lack of economic growth and conflict. Now there's a wide debate on the nature of the causes and the nature of the solutions but I think for purposes of today we can recognize that 38 of the 50 poorest countries are in or have recently emerged from conflict and that poor growth is certainly a consequence of conflict and in many cases a primary or a direct cause. And conversely and my colleagues and I have been undertaking studies, others have done the same, studies of how countries have transformed successfully and achieved a virtuous cycle of transformation out of conditions of instability and conflict. The leaders of those societies put job creation and laying the basis for a legitimate inclusive market and firm formation as one of their central tasks. As we were very lucky to hear this morning, Mary Yates referred to the bold vision of our forefathers who laid the basis for the Bretton Woods institutions in the UN after World War II and that these wise men and women created a vision that combated poverty and exclusion laid the basis for prosperity in much of the world but we're still faced with a situation today where 40 to 60 countries depending on which in set of indicators and which index you use are suffering from instability and most of those countries deeply wracked by poverty. My colleagues and I as I said in the introduction look at the balance of state market and civil society institutions for the 21st century and economic development is inextricably linked to the balance and the intersection between the three and there's been clear recognition in the discussions today that we haven't at the moment got the right tools for addressing the problem or we may have the right tools but we're not using them that we have international institutions which have enormous value. If we wanted to recreate them today we probably couldn't arrive at the consensus to build them but they haven't there in the words of Mary H. they're sagging and they haven't caught up with the context. Why isn't the agenda of economic development as good as it could be today? Perhaps because our approach falls into one of three traps. The first was that most associated with the Washington consensus in its most pure dogmatic form which in over simplification but an assumption that if we get the state out of the way the market will flourish by itself. And we know this doesn't happen. We know this doesn't happen particularly in the most poor and insecure places. We need much more sense of a balance between state and market. And related to this it's morphed into sort of abstract notions that we need an enabling environment for the market but it'll take care of itself. Perhaps a second argument we come across is that in the poorest societies we need a purely humanitarian agenda and of course that's important and can be fundamental but that our economics can wait till later. And the third, an argument that aid as an input is the most important factor which confuses development as a process with aid as one of the inputs. Perhaps a model which over-emphasizes the competence and potential of UN agencies and NGOs which is a top-down approach which crowds out the market particularly for domestic firms and even if they play lip service to economic growth doesn't create the conditions. In preparing for today I look back at a conference on the relationship between economic development and conflict prevention actually from Ditchley Park at which many members of the US peace building community and conflict prevention community attended and this was in 2006 when they agreed that the relevant interconnections whether the lack of an economic growth or economic development agenda meant that poverty, social exclusion, disputes over natural assets and the failure of institutions to stave off desperation or deter greed prevailed. I think today we'd probably add another component and that's particularly the component of growing young populations in the poorest countries in the world. I asked the organizers of the last World Economic Forum at Davos what most surprised them out of the discussions from the Global Agenda Councils and they said it was the demographics in the poorest 60 countries. But over and over again we're hearing statistics and I'm very interested to learn if anyone's got better statisticness but what we're hearing is again and again is figures of around 60% of the populations in the poorest countries under the age of 20 or 25. So growing young populations. I'll touch then on two components. One is criminal economies as an institution and the second what components of an economy are related to a conflict prevention agenda. We know that where conflict is prevalent that criminal economies exist and I think what can be helpful to see criminal economies as an institution. We have criminal economies, we have illegal economies and we have informal economies and many of you will know the work of Hernando de Soto but making the distinction. Informal economies are not necessarily criminal ones but it helps to understand the distinctiveness of a war economy and its role in causing and perpetuating conflict. And I don't think in the work on peace building that we've enough attention is played in analysis or in intelligence into understanding those criminal networks and how they interact with the state, with the market and with society. So as a domain of study, clear need for analytic tools for mapping and understanding both legal and illegal economic interests and flows. Then why is a healthy, why is an agenda of inclusive development and economic growth important? Simply put, it provides opportunities, jobs for young men. It creates a broad based economic stakes in the system. Critically it provides a revenue base and Dr. Ghani in our book said if we had to reduce a measure of state effectiveness to one measure it would be revenue. The sound economic and public financial management provides the basis for public policy and he even handed allocation of resources. And then the regional economy providing opportunities for integration and win-win. So in some, there seems to be an emerging consensus that we need a new approach to development in the 21st century, one that builds upon the existing global organizations and existing practices but puts at the forefront a broad based agenda for economic growth, premised on economic justice or economic fairness. And the agenda that puts people at the center of it recognizing human agency and importance of stakeholder groups and the business community within society is a potential agent of change. I'm going to touch now on what we've learned from what doesn't work and where we can gain hope from what does work before turning to the how to. My colleagues and I upon leaving Afghanistan in 2005 wanted to understand why the aid complex hadn't worked in Afghanistan and whether this was a unique problem to Afghanistan and whether it was generalized. Our first task was to go to places like Southern Sudan and Nepal, look at Liberian Haiti. And we found that there was a common pattern of where the aid complex was failing us. Parallel institutions, lack of accountability, multiple chains of contracting, meaning that rather than serving citizens, empowering citizens, domestic firm creation, in many cases they were being marginalized. But we also went to look at examples of successful transitions. And I think it's really important to bear in mind that over the last two or three decades there have been a number of societies that have successfully made transitions from poverty and instability to a track of successful developments in a virtuous circle. And in each of these, the leaders of the societies created a virtuous circle of using public finance and public management to create an agenda of creating market institutions and then the basis for a legitimate economy. And previous speakers have alluded to the European Union as one example of where a common market and market institutions were created, a project of peace building that put economics at the center, both in its early phases and in the more recent accession process. And particularly there, the use of structural funds that created the ability to attack the problems of social exclusion through inter-regional allocations of funding and job creation opportunities. Drawing on these successful examples and looking at the components that drove that success I think gives us an agenda for a way forward. And Dr. Ghani and I proposed a set of what are the 12 functions that the state must perform in the modern world and this is not meant to be a cookie cutter approach but at the start of a dialogue. Many of these relate to the functions of the state which could be perhaps norms and standards of a concept of responsible sovereignty. Many of these relate to the functions that are necessary for an agenda of market building to lay the basis for a legitimate economy. And I'll touch briefly on each of those. The first is getting the rules of the game right for the balance of the state and the market to the regulation of the market. And here it seems that a lot more work needs to be, well we need a lot greater understanding of how financial instruments can work whether it's reinsurance or insurance or risk guarantees that can venture capital and investment vehicles that can structure the incentives for investment in a legitimate economy. The second the management of the assets of the state and particularly we see here the failure to manage mineral resources in many countries and there's a major driver of conflict. So what are conversely then what are the best practices? President Kazai who was here a few weeks ago interviewed by Ambassador Taylor for example has pledged to the platinum standard of minerals licensing for Afghanistan but he is asking the question what are those standards how positively would we one create the mineral regime? Do we have the information? Do we have the tools to advise somebody like him? And the assets of the state not just the mineral assets but more broadly the natural assets the forests, the water and so on. Third the sound management of public finances. We talk a lot about corruption and we see corruption as a major problem in a driver of conflict but how do you turn that around? What does an accountability system look like across the different dimensions of accountability revenue, procurement, budgeting, accounting and auditing? And what are the best practices in ensuring that those resources are implemented and a crew benefits the population in an even-handed way? There's investments in human capital. What would be an education agenda and many of the countries were talking about that links to the requirements of the job market and here I think we have to ask difficult questions about the relevance and the appropriateness of the Millennium Development Goals as a framework for some of the poorest countries particularly as we're coming up to the end of the term of the Millennium Development Goals they've achieved an enormous amount but do we need to look again and refine what those goals are and how they're applied? Particularly here the goal of primary education universal primary education. A valuable goal but have we missed out the need to look at secondary education vocational training and equipping citizenries to the needs of managing civil services generating an entrepreneurial class and citizenship for the 21st century? And then finally provision of infrastructure services and not just road and rail and sanitation transportation but critically the communications infrastructure that enable societies to join the process of globalization. And lastly the provision of rule of law. So I think these components are the standards and the tasks that are required internal to a society. In closing I'd also like to mention two other dimensions. One is the question of regional economics and regional integration and again today it's been mentioned importance of regional organizations as well as global or international organizations and we have a lot to learn in our view about how regional economic cooperation could act as a basis for building peace and security. One of the foremost examples of course the use of coal and steel and economic cooperation of coal and steel after the devastation of World War II in laying the basis and creating incentives for political and security cooperation in Europe. Other examples from around the world the Mekong Delta work on the Nile and water sharing agreement so many examples from around the world. If we look today at the current conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan one could ask what's the coal and steel of Afghanistan and its region and it would clearly be cooperation on trade and transportation. But is there sufficient attention is there sufficient analysis to how such an agenda would be implemented in practice and as an observation perhaps too much work on peace conflict and development takes place with the assumption of the country as a unit rather than looking at the country in its regional context and opportunities for cooperation. And finally then the global dimension. We hear again and again when we listen to leaders how the fast-paced nature of the world with information communications is changing the pressures and changing the way they do business so do we have a sufficient understanding of how globalization is playing and changing the task before us. Finally it's a lot of talk today and necessarily on do we have the right international institutions and what agenda do we need and I think we can either have a brave new vision or a gradualist approach that looks at how we need to update and retool organizations like the World Bank, particularly the multilateral development banks and the IMF and regional organizations but also recognizing the value of a vibrant civil society. In the 50s there were a handful of international NGOs registered at the UN. Now there are thousands. So how do we take an approach that recognizes the value of civil society in this process as well as the market and the state. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. Thank you very much to Claire and all the panelists. So we have about 20 minutes for questions. Ramesh's point about the need for a regional system with robust capacity for conflict prevention. You have that in Europe, you have that in Latin America sort of with Asia with the Australians leading it but you don't have it in Africa. So if you could just address how you would address the gaps in a regional capability for conflict prevention in Africa and similarly Claire you ended with a call for a system that would make the global system work better promoting best practices on resources, public financing. How would you get that going on a regional level and in that vein for both those questions. Paul you talked about a robust system for conflict for the non-proliferation system that is actually working quite well. It needs to be strengthened and updated but do you see a global system for either the conflict prevention or the functioning global economic system that might work in those areas and please invite you up for questions while they're answering that. Maybe Ramesh you could start. Sure. I think the question of regional capacity in Africa is intimately tied to the question of state capacity in Africa. You can't have a regional organization or regional efforts that are way ahead of individual state capacities and that's the difficulty in Africa. The interesting thing to me about Africa is that the pan-continental sentiment already exists. It's very strong as it is in Latin America. The one continent where there isn't a sense of continental identity is actually Asia and Asia was defined essentially by Europeans and if you look at the whole continent very few Asians identify themselves as Asian and that is reflected in the sub-regional organizations. If you divide Asia into, I guess you could even say West Asia but leave that out for the moment, Southern Asia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. The only part that has functioning regional institutions is Southeast Asia and that's not accidental either. The others don't and that impede the conflict prevention and conflict management capacity within the sub-regions also. So in Africa I think as states develop the capacity, the pre-existing sentiments and sense of identity and shared destiny will help to strengthen regional and sub-regional organizational capacity as well. Let's not forget in some respects they've been ahead of all other regions already in terms of this article 4-H of the constitutive union of the African Union for example. They have accepted the right of peer intervention by fellow Africans when things were wrong. In theory. And that's it. So I think that's the way I would look at it, that you need the regional things. The regional organizations should not be undercapacitated compared to the capacity of states in the region but you can't expect the regional organizations to be well ahead in terms of its capacity and effectiveness. Maybe just briefly clear and Paul because we've got two in line already. So just very briefly. Certainly I think in three ways. One is there are a number of, I think in general in the peace building and stabilization agendas we need to look much more to bringing the multilateral development banks and the regional development banks into play. For example in Afghanistan in 2006 the World Bank and IMF were moved out of the way and I think this had devastating consequences for the agenda of economic growth and accountability. There are a number of regional banks. The Asian Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, African Development Bank, Inter-Asian Development Bank and I think these organizations need to be brought in to the debate as well as updating their own tools. Then we have the regional political organizations and I think here there's great potential in theory to look at how a model that's similar to the EU accession model could perhaps be applied to organizations that look at and are in fact already been doing so and that look at a set of standards. I think the third component is whether it's the economic organizations or the political organizations, how do they change their practices and their tools to create platforms for multi-stakeholder dialogues that bring at the regional level and at the national and local levels civil society actors and market actors essentially into play. And I'll end briefly with an anecdote when my colleagues and I were recently in Nepal and after three sets of dialogues the business community came and said we'd like to tell you something and said because we've been working together we've now decided that we no longer want to be kings in a sea of mud, we want to be burgers in a rising sea of prosperity so we're going to commit to an agenda of job creation. But how does one have those kind of multi-stakeholder dialogues that result in those mutual commitments? On the issue of non-proliferation I think the best that we can pursue is a network of networks where you have regional nuclear weapons free zones. We've got five in the world today we just convened them a couple of months ago here at USIP but it needs to be broadened and we need the entire globe covered by these zones and then there needs to be an international framework that backstops them. The regional entities are formed around each other they know each other they know their limits they know the aspirations and the interests of the countries in the proposed regional zones but the international zone the international framework would backstop them by providing expertise and resources for example the World Fuel Bank could provide the fuel for the reactors that so many countries around the world want to have for energy purposes. It could provide the oversight through the IAEA and God forbid if there were an incident a nuclear incident somewhere it would take the world responding in the form of a consequence management response so you need a network of networks here. David Hamburg is the first question. That's a very interesting observation as related to what I want to ask you about during the Cold War we relied to a very heavy extent on the rationality of the actors. They only want to go so far in taking risks especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now it may be a different situation now President Eisenhower once asked what are the Soviet leaders like anyway? And he said well they're unpleasant and they're difficult to deal with but they're not early Christian martyrs. Now from Iran we're hearing some doctrine of martyrdom. I don't know how seriously to take it and it's I think inherently speculative but if you have total control of nuclear weapons state let's say as Hitler would have had in the case of nuclear weapons and you believe that paradise will somehow come to you in the event of a nuclear attack even if it's a retaliatory attack. How seriously should we take that threat? Is that an existing reality? Is it an emerging reality or is it just too far fetched is there some ultimate rationality that restrains us in the nuclear field? That's a very good question. A lot of people I think have different perspectives on Iran and its intentions. I certainly don't claim insight into it other than through the contacts that I've had with Iranians in a variety of different form. The doctrine of martyrdom is as the West understands it I don't think is accurate in how Iran thinks the people of Iran certainly don't see themselves volunteering for martyrdom. They have aspirations like so many other people have in the Western world and elsewhere in the world. They wanna have a life that provides for their family and carries things on. We have to remember that Iran has yet to be a nuclear weapons state. There are a lot of assumptions. The latest one being Mr. Panetta this last weekend saying that Iran has enough nuclear fuel to create two weapons probably within a year. Creating a weapon and then knowing how to deliver a weapon are two entirely different sciences. And the Iranians have not proven at least anything that I can see reliably. That they can put a nuclear weapon on top of any of the missiles that they currently possess or are developing. If they aspire to do so one day they'll get there. But I think that's a day that's yet to be determined. I don't think that the Iranians though are pursuing a world of martyrdom. I mean there are a lot of other ways they can go other than through a nuclear attack on some other state in the world. But if someone is going to pursue a nihilistic agenda the best thing that we can do is prevent them from getting hold of the nuclear technology and the nuclear know-how to produce a weapon, a nuclear weapon. In that regard the multilateral efforts that the United States has been participating in with the P-5 and the Germans I think are our only option right now and as much as I hate to say it I don't think the military option should be removed from the table. Though I find it increasingly doubtful that any military action by anybody, by any coalition would do anything to stop an Iranian march towards a nuclear capability if that's what they chose to do. I find it interesting as someone who doesn't live in this country, the extent to which Iran is the object of attention on this issue. The country with the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world today, the fastest growing is Pakistan. The country that has the worst known record in proliferation with the Iqquan network is Pakistan. If you believe he was acting as a rogue element with no government involvement or knowledge, well you know, the standard phrase, I'll have a tower in Paris I'd like to talk to you about. The country that is the source of the biggest number of terrorist attacks now both in its own country and in Afghanistan and India is Pakistan. A country where the intelligence services are in cahoots with Islamists. Whichever way you look at it, in terms of real threats it seems to me a disproportionate attention being given to Iran, whereas Pakistan remains a stable, reliable, non-native ally in receipt of good sums of largesse from the American taxpayer. It's an interesting puzzle for those of us who don't live here. I wanted to state your name and, when you state your question, your affiliation. Rob Dubois again, I'm the generic security advisor, Dr. Lockhart. You mentioned the benefits of employment and getting young men employed. It puts financial stability into their households. It also puts financial stability into the economy in the local, like a local flow of currency in the local economy. In one of my years in Iraq, I proposed in an article that we siphoned off some of the Basque and Robin's money from the dining facilities to put into local economy. And a vocational rehabilitation, probably exactly what we're talking about there, to try and put some money into the individual households and the young men specifically. But other benefits that we're talking about there included the infrastructure, the physical infrastructure itself. And I didn't hear you talking about that you probably have considered in the reports. The psychology of these young macho cultures being employed takes away the enthusiasm to be aggressive against others. He feels maybe the local Boy Scouts get affiliation and a young man's motivation to be recognized, to get wasta in Iraq is satisfied. So did you look at that specifically? I was talking about the spaghetti factory of power cords over the roads, which can electrocute children, which can electrocute bathtubs, which can cause fires. That is another consequence, another casualty of vocational rehabilitation. Same with plumbing, masonry and other local projects. Thank you, yes. And for drawing attention to the question of employment generation, particularly in the way that it can have a positive impact on the security conditions. And I think you mentioned two inter-connecting, two sort of complementary reasons. One is the psychological dimension, the pride and dignity that comes from holding a job. And that's an enormously important factor. And the second then is the, if particularly public work schemes, whether publicly managed or privately generated through appropriate design of contracting, this will create the workforce and the opportunity for infrastructure, both cleaning up the rubble, but also generating infrastructure for use going forwards. And certainly in the case studies we've looked at, those societies that transform successfully really put this nexus of using public funds initially and then revenue to design and procure infrastructure to local companies that would both then create the ownership that made people stakeholders in the system. They became stakeholders in the legal system, provided large scale job opportunities. But also the infrastructure that was created, they had an ownership stake in that. So a lot of the funding was used actually for the creation of public or private housing, then by creating the basis for the middle class and the urban economy. So it created this virtuous circle of infrastructure, housing, firm ownership and employment creation. So yes, I agree. Why don't we take two questions at a time just to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask a question. So just please state your name again. Sure, thank you very much. My name is Chick Donbuck and with the Alliance for Peacebuilding. And I appreciate this panel particularly looking at cross cutting challenges. Those of us working in the peacebuilding field recognize that most conflict environments are multifaceted, they are complex and that therefore effective peacebuilding needs to be multifaceted and complex and bring into play the various elements that can address those multiple issues. Michael Lund just came up behind me and it just reminds me that two years ago Michael and I were in Kyrgyzstan looking at the complexity of that conflict environment and recognizing the things that could be done and needed to be done but weren't done and now we see the results of it. The problem that I see with the Alliance for Peacebuilding and the people that I talk with is we can recognize the various elements of it and even know who might be able to best deal with it but there is never a complex multifaceted, coordinated, collaborative strategy to actually do what we know needs to be done and my question is how can that come about? Who could do it? Who can bring the various players together to work together to bring about an effective peacebuilding strategy that could actually prevent the outbreak of the kind of violence we've seen in Kyrgyzstan. Thank you. Thank you, I'm Allison Giffin from the Stemson Center and my question is also for Claire Lockhart from before. I was interested in the theme or the narrative that was running through this morning of the importance of strong peace agreements and the risks of buying off or freezing conflict and while my experience is in Southern Sudan, now this has happened elsewhere where you look at the large multi-donor trust funds that are set up and run through either the World Bank or UNDP or elsewhere in post-conflict situations which are supposed to be about addressing root causes and a piece of the peacebuilding and the recovery but are often actually causes of conflict again. In particular in countries where the root cause is often a very strong, opaque, unaccountable central government and these multi-donor trust funds tend to focus on strengthening that central part of the government at the expense of the state and local governments that actually provide security and services and also at the expense of civil society. So I'm wondering if you have examples of where the balance has been struck better with some of those types of post-conflict development trust funds that are involved in the peace agreements or if we're still only at the place of recognizing or barely recognizing the problem but haven't yet got to the solutions. Okay, first to the coordinated strategy question, any speakers? Ideally it should be the United Nations but you know the United Nations performs a miracle every day. At the same time Americans think it is indifferent to if not hostile to the United States and the rest of the world thinks the United Nations is a tool of the United States. It's a wonderful accomplishment. But for whatever reason, certainly my impression is that since the changeover of Secretary General from Kofi Annan to Ban Ki-moon and that may be correlation rather than causal but certainly the United Nations has dropped below the radar is often considered to be missing in action and when it does take up efforts for example on the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference the result is not necessarily pleasing and satisfactory for everyone around the world. I suspect my prediction will be that the locus of action for all of this will shift to the G20 because that's the only grouping that now brings together all the actors that count and if it manages to combine the best aspects of the legitimacy because of its greater inclusiveness but also efficiency because of the informality and small numbers of G8 now expanded to G20 if we can combine the best of the G8 and G20 and the UN system and then have its decisions validated and ratified by the UN system rather than agreements reached in the UN system that is most likely to be the one forum where the big global issues can be done and can act as a steering group but even that to be successful it will have to act on the consult and cultivate model rather than command and control because there are many G20 is not G200 and it will need to have outreach exercises where genuinely listens and consults to the remaining 180 odd countries of the world instead of just telling them. So if we can combine those things that's most likely. I agree with the comments that have been made starting with Ambassador Yates that in today's world it's impossible to believe we'd be able to recreate these great multilateral institutions and therefore short of that, I think that's the most likely existing mechanism that I can see for us to do those things. Very good, I'll take your. Certainly and on Chip's question, perhaps it's USIP who can bring together in certain contexts so couldn't agree more that it should be the UN but I think increasingly we're gonna have to look to multi-stakeholder and collaborative processes that could certainly include the UN and must I think in most cases include the UN but also reach out through networks of networks and to other bodies that can convene across the different dimensions of society. On the risk of peace agreements themselves or MDTFs freezing a set of arrangements at a particular moment in time, certainly. And those peace agreements that take the leaders of war factions and ignore an agenda of an increasing inclusion and enfranchisement of different stakeholder groups in society have often or will perhaps almost necessarily fail. The role of MDTFs, multi-donor trust funds, I think it's really a question of design and getting design appropriate to context. And in the particular case of Southern Sudan, I think what happened is they took a tool that had in the context worked extremely well in Afghanistan, 2001 to five and applied exactly the same design transported to Sudan without realizing the problem was entirely different. In the case of Sudan, the case of Afghanistan, the MDTF, the ALTF was created because at the moment it was created there was zero money in the treasury. And the design of that trust fund actually the important parts weren't transported to Sudan. One was that the monies were only released on a rainbow possible basis after audit reports were in which created extremely useful leverage. Those audit reports were published and they ranked ministries according to percentage of an eligible expenditures to the public. Again, an extremely useful lever and then they were linked to an implementation operation and this part again wasn't transported to Southern Sudan. One was there was essentially a reconstruction agency that in seeking to avoid the mistakes made with PECDA in it becoming a super agency that disempowered the ministries. It was a reconstruction agency that actually then did obey its own sunset clause so it disappeared. But while it lasted, act as an agent of accountability and oversight and incubated programs. The other dimension was that underneath the trust fund there was something called national programs sort of platforms where civil society, communities, local NGOs and local private companies were all involved in implementation and one of the programs, the national solidarity program provided a block grant to each of the villages in the country, but there were many others. So the trust fund in itself was just one part of the mechanism. So I think the question there is really, yes, multi-lending trust funds can be a useful tool but only when appropriately designed to context and when they act as a lever for accountability and transparency and when they're coupled with the appropriate mechanisms of implementation. Did you want to add? No, I passed. Okay, last two questions. Is there any Jonas? You don't have a question. Can I first? Okay, thank you. I'm just wondering what impact you see economic sanctions having on both nuclear non-proliferation and violent conflict? Last question. Oh, do you want to answer that, Paul? Or are you going to? No, I think we're going to just take them all down. All right, okay, quickly. Michael Lund Management Systems International. I was a little puzzled by your argument, Claire. On the one hand, you said at the beginning, poverty, lack of economic growth is, I think you actually said, a direct cause of conflict which looked based on correlational analysis of groups of countries in conflict compared to GDP of other groups of countries. There's a correlation, but most of the research literature suggests that causally the connection is very indirect. And your other part of your argument suggests that there's some other ingredients and you mentioned the 12 criteria or ingredients of state effectiveness in your book and so on, which seems to indicate that there's some intermediate factors in between poverty on the one hand and conflict on the other having to do with the state. But my question is how do you get to that? How do you get to those characteristics of an effective state? That leads to Ramesh's presentation where the emphasis is on governance and let's just focus on national governments. But what your presentation presents us are gaps in getting to governance. So again, the question is how do you get to effective governance or to an effective state? I think there's actually a clue. It seems to me most of the conflicts we've seen have been arising in the transition period from authoritarian systems to more open liberal systems. And so the challenge is maintaining stability during a period of this transition and there's a kind of a clue going back to Claire's presentation when you mentioned the successful cases. And I presume you mean places like Botswana, Mauritius, Ghana, Namibia perhaps, where in many cases leaders or coalitions of leaders have committed themselves to using the resources of the country in ways that policies distribute the resources more equitably and institutions are created. So I'm just wondering if there isn't a kind of area here that we're kind of neglecting in between the economic level of problems and so on on the other hand and the manifestation of conflict which is largely an outcome of political processes on the other. I'd like your comment on that. Those are wonderful questions and what I'd ask you to do is maybe you take the non-proliferation question first and then as you answer the final question any final thoughts that you have as well on the panel, feel free to make them and then we'll close. Okay, I'll try to hurry along on this. Sanctions rarely in my view do what they were intended to do. We saw in Iraq that the sanctions imposed by the United Nations did not bring down the Saddam regime, in fact it entrenched it. Sanctions strike at the heart of sovereignty of a state and the attempt to limit a state's autonomy to decide what it wants to do or will do usually forces that state to use the threat of sanctions or the reality of sanctions to resist the international community. Sanctions against South Africa, I don't think were effective. It took them 26 years and they were not the reason that apartheid ended. Sanctions against Cuba, good Lord, that's been going on my entire life and Cuba's still there and so is Castro and I still can't get my Cuban cigar legally. So I don't think sanctions are an effective tool. It may make the international community feel like they have done something well because the international community, as we've heard earlier today, usually takes the path of least resistance when it comes to tough issues. That's why you find coalitions of the willing or unilateral actions more as the norm today rather than a multinational response to something that's tough. And I would just ask that people think about the availability of natural resources. That is a coming driver of conflict and if you impose sanctions on a state for whatever the reason might be and it impacts their availability to natural resources, I would wage you whatever that you were probably going to increase the likelihood of conflict because states will fight for resources necessary to stay alive such as oil and the access to water. Sanctions are angry entirely. It's if and when Fidel Castro finally dies. I'd like to see how many number of US Presidency has outlived through the sanctions period. For now the height works. I agree with all of that. Michael, that question on how do we get effective government? I think it's a very interesting question. Some years ago on our side with the UN University, we did a project with the IPA in New York and with Simon Chesman leading that and with Michael Ignatieff then at the car center at Harvard and we published it as a book called Making States Work where the questions we phrased were exactly in these terms. If you take a group of states that at independence, let's say, you'd expect would be high risk at failing however you define that thing, at getting into trouble. Some have succeeded, many have not. And look at possible explanations for failures and success. We came to a surprising conclusion that none of the three of us as project directors had anticipated at the start. And this was a multi-author project typical of the UN University start. And the conclusion was that the most single most important ingredient was leadership. And that you can't predict for or train for. And in short form, a good shorthand illustration of this is two iconic struggles of my generation, the Palestinian issue and the South African issue. By coincidence, the two iconic leaders come into power with the coalition more or less at the same time. Nelson Mandela, Yasir Arafat. A lot of the subsequent history can be explained by reference to the qualities of the different, the different leadership qualities of these two people as well. And so this is something that I said this time. Having said that, one of the comment on that and then one final thought, picking up on the chair's invitation. This goes back to the multi-donor ship, whatever the phrase was. You know, how many instances can anyone in the room think of when there is a clash between donor priorities and interests? And local stakeholders saying, no, we want to do this way. How many times do we defer to the local things? We talk about and give lip service to ownership. But we distort their priorities and judgments and impose ours in the long run that undermines it. It fosters dependency. It's much like the perverse and unintended consequences of sanctions. It actually fosters long-term international engagement and undermines and weakens local state capacity. And there's all sorts of... You know it much better than I do because you study it all the time, these sorts of issues. The final thing I wanted to make as a comment, again, this goes back to my comment as being a non-American taking part in this conversation. I think for the United States to exercise effective leadership on a whole range of issues, the government and society and particularly the intellectual elite will have to come to terms with something that I'm not sure they have recognized. And that is the importance of double standards and selectivity in the changed international environment. And what I mean by that is, we've always had instances of double standards and selectivity, but it matters a lot more now for two very interesting reasons. One, the rest of the world is infinitely better educated and more widely read today than it used to be decades ago. Two, they now have access to instant real-time information from a variety of sources and they read it. And therefore the rhetoric action gap that translates into double standards and selectivity seriously undermines the credibility and therefore the authority of the United States to take leadership. That is a real problem and I'm not sure that I said that the United States as a society has understood how serious a problem that is today compared to previous decades. Claire, last word. Yes, and very briefly, I think, although the video recording will be evidence of it, I think what I said was that there was, recognizing there was a lot of debate in the academic literature that there's certainly an effect and there can be a causal relationship, sometimes indirect and sometimes direct. On the question of how do you get there, I think the first question is to ask whether there is and that's why, what are the standards of statehood? What is responsible for 17 in the 21st century? We need some agreement on that on where the end of the road is and then recognition that the how to get there can be very, very different, that it has to be sequenced but also simultaneous, that it's inherently about people and leadership and it's about the political process but these have to be brought into convergence in order to get it right. Okay, well thank you. I'll give them a big hand for a great panel. I'm told you get a 15 minute break so we can meet at 315. Thank you very much.