 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Fred Wary. I'm a senior fellow here at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this discussion on U.S. democracy promotion in the Arab world. The event comes, I think, at a very well-timed instance, just days after the death of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, whose authoritarian rule and overthrow had a singular impact on the Arab uprisings and also the course of U.S. democracy promotion in the Arab world and across the region. It laid bare a lot of the dilemmas and paradoxes in U.S. policies. Indeed, nearly a decade after those uprisings, which offered the hope of a more participatory and effective governance for the region, the prospects for democratization and political reform seemed more distant than ever, given the widespread authoritarian entrenchment in the region, civil wars, proxy rivalries, and state collapse. And yet the notion of an authoritarian triumph in the region, I think, would be misplaced and premature. Many of these authoritarian systems, dictatorships, are themselves under increasing strain and facing renewed protests in some instances and challenges from within. These protests, I think, signify citizens' convictions that the old order is no longer tenable, even if a new one has not been realized. It's important to note that many of the activists in these protests have drawn lessons from past mistakes about strategies, coalition building, and articulating their demands. It's also important that democracy promoters and advocates, especially those in the United States, take stock of lessons learned from the Arab world. And in that context, I'm very pleased to welcome the author of a great new book on this topic, Mitek Bodyshinsky, currently a professor of political science at Pomona College. I've known him for many years, and he approaches the topic not just as an academic, but as a policy practitioner. He's a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, a public diplomacy specialist with wide experience across the region, including tours in Iraq and Libya. And in fact, we first met in Tripoli in 2013 after a brief period of hope and even euphoria in that country's post-Qaddafi transition, where Libyans conducted relatively free and transparent parliamentary elections in the summer of 2012, before the tragic death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. And I'll note that you worked with Ambassador Stevens and dedicated your book to his memory. Of course, what happened after those tragic events in Libya, in terms of U.S. policy responses and ambivalence, our Democracy Promotion forms one of the case studies in your book. Of course, also included our Egypt Bahrain and another number of other Arab states. So this book is informed by his own firsthand experience, but also rich interviews with U.S. policy makers involved with these countries. Some of them join us here on the panel today. The book is a fruitful starting point for discussion and perhaps debate on these matters. And as the title implies, beyond interests and ideals, it moves beyond this simple dichotomy between realism and idealism. And I think it offers a unique framework for assessing the constraints and the resources for U.S. democracy promotion that centers first on an evaluation of the bureaucratic contexts of U.S. policy institutions and things like budgets and also the preferences and outlooks of individual policymakers. So it draws from organizational theory and even political psychology. Another innovative aspect is the inclusion of what he calls third party democracy challengers. And in the Arab world, this means a block of monarchical, wealthy Gulf states who've made their influence felt across the region and domestic affairs of the countries. So we'll use the findings of your book today as an entree into a broader discussion about U.S. policy, U.S. democracy promotion past, present, and future. What are the tools available? Things like conditionality on U.S. security assistance, the role of different institutions, NGOs, the obstacles and opportunities both within the U.S. political context and within the region. And to do that, I'm delighted to introduce a stellar lineup of panelists and dear friends, all of whom participated firsthand in these policies in these countries. Someone from directly within the region. To Mitek's left is Andrew Miller. Andrew is the Deputy Director of Policy at the Project for Middle East Democracy and a non-resident here at Carnegie. He served as the Director of Egypt, Egyptian and Israeli military issues at the National Security Council. To his left is Daphna Rand. She's currently the Vice President for Policy and Research at Mercy Corps and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. At the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Also formerly at the NSC. And she's also the author of her own great book on the roots of the Arab Spring. Finally, Nancy O'Kale. Nancy is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a longtime democracy activist in the Middle East and specifically Egypt, both under Mubarak and after where she confronted firsthand at great personal costs some of the U.S. policy dilemmas and contradictions that we'll discuss today. She was formerly the Executive Director of the Tahir Institute for Middle East Policy. And with those introductions, Mitek, I'd like to start out with you as the author. Why did you write this book? And second, in a crowded market of books on U.S. policy in the Middle East, why would a busy U.S. policymaker buy your book, let alone read it? What are the four key takeaways that you would advocate based on your research? Thank you so much, Fred, for organizing this. Thank you to all of you for taking your lunchtime to come today. Fred has been extremely supportive not only of this book, but a bunch of other things I've been working on. So I'm really grateful to you. As of other people here at Carnegie-Michel Dunn, who I think is not here a few years ago, we sat on a bench just at a DuPont circle there to talk about my angst, whether I wanted to be an academic or a foreign service officer. And of course, Mr. Carruthers, who's also not here, but whose work influenced it, Ambassador Burns, whose recent memoir was really important to this book. And then, of course, my fellow panelists who were part of the decisions and events that I write about. So I'm really honored. So why I wrote the book. There's an intellectual trajectory and a professional trajectory. And by the latter, I mean my time at State in the field as an implementer, not as a decision maker like these folks. So the intellectual trajectory is a longstanding interest in democratization and democracy promotion. I did my graduate work and wrote my first book on external factors in democratization in the Balkans. And I worked in and on the Balkans. And actually, that sort of transcended both my academic career and my early foreign service career at a time when U.S. and European Union Democratic leverage were at their peak. And both of those entities, the European Union United States worked actively and in harmony and cohesively to shape democratic transitions in that region. And one thing I realized when I started working in and on the Middle East is that the big difference, or at least one big difference between democratic transitions in the Balkans a decade or so earlier and in the Arab world lies not exclusively in just different domestic conditions, but indeed in the international context of transition. And what do I mean by that? So take a country like Albania, which actually was my first posting as a foreign service officer. And this is sort of where the intellectual and professional trajectories intersect. Albania was a closed communist society, not so different from North Korea in many ways until 1991. It had been in the Ottoman Empire for 500 years. It was economically underdeveloped. It was not a foregone conclusion, in other words based on sort of domestic factors, that democratic transition would succeed in a place like Albania. It wasn't necessarily much better prepared than a country like Tunisia. But the difference I think, or one key difference, was that at key moments, both the EU, European Union and the United States worked in lockstep to actively consistently promote democracy in Albania as well as some of its neighbors. During critical moments in the democratic transition, third country spoilers such as Russia, which are a factor today, but weren't so much as a factor back then, weren't part of the picture. So importantly, there was a consensus and there was a will in the West to see democracy succeed in the Balkans. By the time I started thinking and teaching about post Arab Spring transitions and working in the Arab world, I realized that the same will was not there. There is no similar faith among Western policymakers and publics that democracy can succeed in this part of the world. Indeed, 2011 was never seen as a 1989 moment. And then of course in the Arab Spring cases, as Fred alluded to, there were powerful third-party reactors determined to roll back democratic gains. So in other words, just to repeat the main point, the international context of transition was very different. And I suppose the professional part of the trajectory that influenced the book was a time I spent at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli after the overthrow of Qaddafi, which was, as Fred just mentioned, a much more optimistic time. Nate Mason who was with me at the Embassy then was here somewhere and I were just discussing that too. But being in Libya was both was a professionally and personally searing, experienced searing, S-E-A-R-I-N-G, to be there during of course the Benghazi tragedy and the loss of my boss to whom the book is dedicated, but it was also equally frustrating to see U.S. policy unravel after Benghazi for mostly domestic political reasons here and also to be consumed by counterterrorism as the overarching foreign policy goal. And Fred and I have talked a lot about that and I hope we'll have a chance to discuss it here today. Okay, so some lessons from the book for policymakers. So this is sort of a bigger point which transcends the political science policy thing, but often democracy promotion, U.S. democracy promotion is understood as an expression of values or ideals that are an inherent tension with national interest. In other words, we get democracy promotion when there is no countervailing interest. But I think, and I'm not the only one who said this, Joe Nye has said this in his new book, that a country as big and powerful and geographically isolated as the U.S. actually has room to frame its interest in ways that are compatible or incompatible with values. And this framing of interest is not done by some kind of abstract force but by individuals and institutions. In other words, policymakers and policy-making bureaucracies who have long conceived of U.S. interests in the Arab world in ways that are not compatible with democracy promotion. And because of that, not only do we not promote democracy but we're stuck in these relationships with Arab autocrats that actually hurt our interests. So even as the strategic context has changed, suggesting that U.S. interests should evolve, and here I'm channeling Andrew's recent piece in the Texas National Security Review, which you should all read, oil has become less important. There's new routes by which we can move commercial goods and military assets. As Arab states have begun to cooperate with Israel independent of the United States as the threat of terror has evolved, we continue to prefer autocracy in this part of the world. To put this in more concrete terms, there's habits of thinking among individuals and narrow institutional interests on the part of foreign policy bureaucracies that have trapped the U.S. in certain policy repertoires from which we cannot escape. These interests are filtered through relationships, security relationships, intel relationships, and frankly also personal relationships. These relationships are paired with enormous resources on the military side, and the perceived need to maintain these relationships, which is often a very short-term calculation, lowers the propensity to promote democracy. And often, these security relationships in particular conflate military presence with diplomatic influence, and not only over pro-democracy reforms, but also over other issues. In fact, the opposite is true. We don't buy leverage. We don't buy influence. In fact, the leverage often runs the other way. In other words, these regimes know that we won't easily give up their relationships and act in ways that are counter to our interests. And this in turn perpetuates a vicious cycle of unaccountable government in the region. So to put it another way, national interest is sometimes indistinguishable from institutional interest, bureaucratic interest, especially when it comes to autocratic Arab allies with whom we maintain these relationships. So to cut to the choice and invoke the question that Fred has posed to frame this panel, will there be a future, sorry, there will be a future for U.S. democracy promotion in the Arab world when we reframe our interests, and this will involve getting institutions and individuals on board and changing how they think about our core interests in the region. So the book goes into some specifics about critical moments of democracy promotion after 2011 when the U.S. had leverage, but did not use it in part because of the individuals and institutions who might have served as democracy promoters could not agree on what the appropriate policy was to seize this historic opening. And this of course reflected deeper contention over what the U.S. interest is. So we had mixed messages and unclear policies and interagency divisions which were readily exploited by the autocrats. So I talk about some very specific critical moments. The period of SCAF or military rule in Egypt after the overthrow of Mubarak there, the period of Morsi's rule in Egypt, the run up to the 2013 coup in Egypt, the political isolation law in Libya, we can discuss all this if some of you are interested, the issuance of the Bahrain independent commission of inquiry report in Bahrain, and so on. And I know that one argument out there is that the U.S. did not have leverage. And I heard this from a lot of Obama administration officials. I don't think Andrew and Daphna have fallen to this group. And maybe we didn't have this leverage to change things in a democratic direction, but the fact is we will never know if we had that leverage or not because more often than not we never meaningfully tried to exercise it. In the book I also try to measure democracy promotion. I look at the range and combination of tools that Fred mentioned that are deployed and emphasize the importance of high level attention. So it can't just be the civil society support without higher level attention from the White House and other high levels of government. So this gets back to the point about the divisions between individuals and institutions within institutions and so on and how this can be exploited by autocrats. And the last point is about challengers to U.S. democracy promotion in the region. So here I draw on the concept of Black Knights elaborated by Levitsky and Wei and their work on competitive authoritarianism and also on an expanding literature on autocracy promotion to show that whatever efforts there were at U.S. democracy promotion after the Arab Spring were rolled back by powerful third party actors especially the Gulf Arab states, certain ones. And this was done not only in some well-known ways by financing authoritarian retrenchment through military direct military intervention as in Bahrain but also by influencing policymakers here in Washington. Final final point I promise. So you know we've gone through two full circles. I'm not a die-hard democracy promotion purist, but twice now, since 9-11 we've said that actually maintaining the status quo in the Arab world is not in our interests. So in the 80s and 90s as democracy promotion expanded around the world, it did not reach the Arab world. You know until after 9-11 when the Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, finally woke up to the idea that maybe there's a connection between political repression and extremism. And so there was some meaningful pressure for at least a while before this effort got swallowed up in the war on terror and Iraq and so on. And then of course Obama came in with an initial sort of reticence, a reaction, right? Every president wants to be different than their predecessor. And then the Arab Spring happened and there was a very bold response which then as as Fred mentioned you know over time the importance given to democracy promotion got lowered and now we are in a situation where autocrats not just in the Arab world but elsewhere but elsewhere in the world are seemingly embraced at the highest levels of the U.S. government. So two full circles and of course the Arab Spring is not over as we've seen in the last year, the last couple of years in Algeria and Sudan and so on, Iraq, Lebanon. So look forward to discussing with you and look forward to my co-panelist feedback. Terrific. Andrew you worked at the White House during this critical period U.S. policy on Egypt. Could you just pick up on some of the points Mitech raised in terms of missed opportunities and flexion points, especially the issue of leverage and then the third party challengers? And I guess what lessons would you extract from your time there? Thanks Fred and thanks for having me. I recommend to you all to read Mitech's book. I think it's an excellent example of a combination of political science research, historical methodologies, and policy relevant research. And again I commend all of it to you. I think Mitech's frame where he identifies three types of actors, the individuals or personalities, institutions, and these challengers is very is very elucidating in terms of understanding what happened and why it happened at the time. And actually looking back at this period given the motivations and the perceived interest of the actors, it's somewhat surprising we did as much as we did. And that's not an apology, that's not to suggest we did do enough or anything close to doing enough. But in a social science perspective the outcome was over determined. Everyone seemed to be moving in the one direction. And I think if you start with personalities, Mitech points out in this book that there were these predominantly young aides at the White House and elsewhere also at state who were trying to push the bureaucracy in a direction that was more supportive of democracy within the region to take advantage of these remarkable developments within the region. But I don't know that there were that many of them. In the literature on democracy there's often the question can you have democracy without Democrats? I think it's equally fair to ask can you have democracy promotion without democracy promoters? And Daphne and I were often in the camp where we were trying to push the bureaucracy to be more forward-leaning but we were outnumbered 10 or more to one. So it was very difficult to to gain any traction and the victories that we had were often fleeting. And of course personalities move in both directions. You had those who were pushing very strongly for democracy promotion but you had other actors who were equally committed to maintaining the authoritarian order. So it was very difficult to achieve any sustainable momentum. On the institutional environment I think Mitech is right that only DRL, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at State and the United States mission to the U.S. UN as we refer to it of where the consistent actors seeking to support democracy promotion within Egypt. And the reality is these actors were less powerful than the other actors who were working at the same time. As Daphne experienced as a DAS and DRL DRL has difficulty influencing outcomes without the cooperation of the relevant regional bureau. And that mediates the influence of DRL. Unless DRL can convince the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for instance that they should row in the same direction NEA has the effect of diluting any impact DRL is having. For USUN they had an important role because the U.S. Ambassador to the UN was a cabinet member but they didn't have diplomats out in the region. They didn't have resources to expend. So it really wasn't an equal fight. Regarding my personal experience working at the White House and Daphne, and Alex, Michael, others who have had that experience before you know the White House was less consistently pro-democracy than perhaps the book suggests. And I think there are two primary reasons for that. The first is that you know while there were these aides who were pushing for more democratic outcomes there were other offices other personalities that had very different views. There was an office of counter-terrorism. There was a defense office. As Mia Tech notes in the book National Security Advisor Donovan was a more cautious operator in many respects. You know Dennis Ross was in many respects more cautious. So you had other actors who to some degree neutralize the impact of the Ben Rhodes and Samantha Powers and Susan Rices. The second reason and this is I think very important to understand is that the impact of NSE staffers on policy outcomes is diluted by their dual-hatted role. So at one level NSE staffers advise the president. They're asked to provide their best advice on what should be done. On the other hand they're responsible for running the process and ensuring that it operates fairly. You can see the obvious tension between these two. If NSE staffers lean in too much with their views it has the potential to skew or warp the process. So in many instances NSE staffers who deeply disagreed with what the state department or the defense department were recommending felt that they had to pull their punches because they would have disqualified themselves as these somewhat more objective mediators in the broader inter-agency process. So I don't think the White House was necessarily an anti-democracy promotion actor but it wasn't a clearly inconsistent democracy promoter in the way that you might have thought given some of the people who were present there. In terms of the role of the spoilers or the external challengers this is a role that we did not understand with respect to Egypt at the time. We didn't understand it in 2011, 2012, 2013. It really wasn't until 2014 that we recognized the impact that Saudi Arabia, that the UAE, that Qatar, that Israel were having on the policy process. And more often than not it wasn't that they were persuasive. It wasn't that we would sit down with the Israelis or sit down with the Emiratis and we agreed that they were right. It was more that they were prepared to commit their own resources to apply leverage to make it more difficult for the United States to pursue the policies we would have otherwise. And I can even remember sitting with Israeli officials and one of the most frustrating parts of it was our analysis often didn't diverge. We agreed where this was going to wind up. We had different frames. Their frame was we'll get as much cooperation as we can from the authoritarian regime in the short term and when they collapse we'll worry about it later. Whereas we in the United States were looking at things from a longer term perspective. But the level of intervention both within Egypt and also with U.S. policymakers was substantial. I can remember a few instances where literally Ambassador Burns, the president of Carnegie was having meetings in Cairo with Egyptian officials. He would leave the room and then the Emirati ambassador or Emirati foreign minister would walk in and said ignore what the United States is saying. Don't worry we're supporting you and we're not just supporting you theoretically. Here's 20 billion dollars to ensure that you can do this. And it's not that the United States didn't have any influence. It's that we couldn't ignore the fact that other actors had influence and they were ultimately prepared at the time to put more resources on the line than we were. So moving on from that frame of the three levels of actors, potential inflection points, a lot of the analysis is focused obviously on the coup in 2013 and the aftermath roba. I continue to think back to the 2011-2012 period. I think that the U.S. government was excessively deferential to both the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the ruling body in the immediate aftermath of Mubarak's Alster, as well as to the Muslim Brotherhood government of Muhammad Morsi. And this is I think important to understand that while there was a willingness on certain actors to work with both of these actors, it wasn't out of an interest in democracy, it was out of an interest in preserving cooperation no matter who was in control. So speaking of Embassy Cairo where I spent some time in 2012, no one was really invested in the Muslim Brotherhood as either a Democratic or anti-Democratic actor. They were invested in the Muslim Brotherhood as the ones who held the keys to the kingdom. And in order to maintain cooperation, we needed to find a way to work with the Muslim Brotherhood. And in both cases with the SCAF and with President Morsi, we were unwilling to be more directive. We said, okay, we're going to trust that they're going to do the right thing and they're ultimately going to find a way to achieve stability. And we're not going to second-guess them, we're not going to try to move them, let's just give them the space to do this. And I think that was fundamentally mistaken. And I think it was partly rooted in ignorance, ignorance of what the SCAF was as a military institution, and ignorance of what the Muslim Brotherhood was, what they were seeking. It's well known that we had poor contacts with the Muslim Brothers for a number of reasons historically. And it's understandable that we didn't appreciate who they were. It's much less easy to forgive that we didn't understand the military. It's hard to believe, but there genuinely were US policymakers who thought that the military was a relatively non-partisan, apolitical institution that was only interested in stability. It's laughable now. But I think Secretary Kerry, for instance, genuinely believed that. It's not just that he was in some sinister way trying to undermine democracy or prop up the military, it's that he genuinely believed that the military was the best engine, the best vehicle to achieve democracy. So I think that's particularly important to keep in mind just that level of that lack of understanding. And I think that really impaired us. We were operating in the dark partly because we had deferred to Mubarak for so long. We weren't building additional relationships. And we made a number of bets on actors who proved to be bad bets. And the results were quite predictable. So I think looking forward, I derived three lessons from this experience. The first is regarding the challengers, the external actors, democracy promotion isn't going to be successful unless we're prepared to take on and neutralize those actors. And in particular, the Saudis, Emiratis and the Qataris. They operate for different reasons and in different ways, but they've all acted in Egypt, in Libya, in Bahrain, in Syria, in ways that are counter to a democratic transition to democratic development. And this is not easy. I'm not suggesting that, of course, we should have done this. They are in the position to impose costs on us, particularly in the short term. So if we're going to do it, we need to be able to recognize that we will pay costs and prepare to pay them. But I think when, at the time, when we began to see the role they were having, we were prepared to just let things go because those relationships were considered to be more important to us. But unless we're willing to deal with them, we're not going to be successful. Second point, I think high level involvement is critical to any democracy promotion. Miatech has these various levels of democracy promotion, low, medium, high. In my personal experience, unless the president is directly behind democracy promotion, it doesn't work. He needs to be involved not just in the policy design, but in policy implementation. And there are two primary reasons for that. The first is that absent presidential involvement. It creates space for the various institutional actors to war policy in ways that are more consistent with their interests rather than the president's interests as he defines them. The second reason is a lot of foreign powers, including the Emirates, the Israelis, the Saudis, don't respect anything other than the president's word. If they see that the president isn't on board with a given policy, they're not going to listen that seriously to the Secretary of State, to the National Security Advisor, to the U.S. Ambassador, to the U.N. So democracy promotion requires that heavy degree of involvement. The third point, and this is more a broader, almost philosophical point, and I'll close with this. I think the circumstances for democracy promotion are very difficult right now in Egypt and throughout the region, with the notable exception, perhaps, of Tunisia, of Algeria, and maybe in certain respects in Lebanon and in Iraq. But in Egypt, it's not particularly optimistic. I think what we've seen within the U.S. government is that the look at a situation and they'll correctly assess that the United States cannot bring or facilitate democracy in Egypt overnight. And they then reason, if we can't have the desired impact, if we can't achieve democracy, we are not morally responsible for what happens. We might as well take advantage of the situation and continue to work with the existing order. We might as well get what we can. And that's not in a rational position, but they don't recognize the way in which those actions actually make it more easy for the authoritarian order to endure. When we're providing foreign military assistance to the Egyptian army, we're propping up their patronage networks. When we're providing them diplomatic and political cover, it makes it easier for them to sustain the same level of repression. When we provide economic assistance that tends to benefit those actors within Egypt that are most committed to the regime, that has the effect of making the regime stronger, making it more resilient. So just because we can't have a positive impact in all times doesn't mean that we're not having a negative impact. And I think the way to look at this is the opposite to democracy promotion is not neutrality. It's often complicity and it's often autocracy promotion. I'm not saying we're doing this deliberately. Most U.S. officials and institutions do not want to prop up autocracy as such. However, their actions have the unintended effect of making authoritarian regimes more adorable. So even if we can't achieve major progress in terms of democratization, in terms of liberalization in these countries, I think it behooves us to think more carefully and more systematically about how we are unintentionally reinforcing orders that are not only bad for the local populations but are detrimental to U.S. interest in the long term. So when democracy promotion isn't possible, maybe we think more along the lines of autocracy prevention or mitigation. And I think that's another area that we really need to explore moving forward to complement any democracy promotion work we do. Terrific. Thank you. Daphna, you and I have talked a lot about your work on Bahrain at the White House during this critical period after the uprisings and specifically the notion of conditionality on U.S. security assistance. And I guess could you talk about that episode and then take us to a broader discussion of the issue of leverage, especially in the case of Bahrain where we have this massive military presence that's often used as a justification for not pushing harder on this regime. Great. Thank you. Hopefully you can hear me. And thanks so much, Fred, for bringing us together with people who work closely on these issues. And thank you for the terrific book. I really commend it to anyone who wants to study who's, even if you're disinterested in democracy promotion and the beliefs, it is an excellent model of how foreign policy works. And you did a great job from the outside of piecing the stories together. So thanks a lot. And I hope this book makes a big difference as people read it and start processing even other case studies. Just two quick points, and then I want to get to the Bahrain case. One is, you talk a lot about individuals and how much individuals matter. As I read the book, I kept on thinking about the role of individuals and institutions, the interaction effect. Because to me, that was among the most powerful experiences having worked on some of these countries from different institutions, whether it was Capitol Hill or the White House or State Department, even within State Department, the different subunits, as you mentioned. And I really give credit in your list of the different levers of democracy promotion, which I thought I commend to everyone to read. I don't know what page it's on. But you talk about private diplomacy as a very important element of this. And I do credit the President of Carnegie Endowment on Bahrain in particular. Because when the events of 2011 began, there were many different crises erupting at once. And the kind of totality of the challenge was really big for people at the helm of the State Department. And Ambassador Burns, Jeff Feldman, who subsequently became a high-level senior official at the UN, and the Deputy Secretary of State, Jack Steinberg, really decided to go and work with the Bahraini royal family, the Halifas, in the period of March and April of 2011. And so because we're in the Carnegie Endowment, I just feel like that was very important timing. They really tried. It's true that in most cases we didn't give it our all, so we can't really come to the finality of a conclusion that we had no leverage. In this instance, on this particular lever of democracy promotion, the combination of Bill Burns and Jeff Feldman and the Deputy Secretary of State going to Bahrain and trying to explain that the U.S., as you rightly point out, was not interested in actually democracy promotion. It was interested in the slow liberalization of the regime in Bahrain, the incorporation of the main opposition group that had always stood right under the majority of seats in the Majlis, and a slow process of a greater minority majority right for the Shia majority. So those discussions were very fruitful later on. And moreover, what I learned from those discussions when the diplomats really had the time and space to prioritize this, and we can talk about why they decided to prioritize this diplomatic angle amid all the other crises, it then set the stage for later in 2011 where those same actors in that same institution, again the interaction effect felt very firmly that we should suspend all security assistance to Bahrain. It wasn't that young guard, you know, and again let's not elevate my or Andrew's role, we were back ventures at best, we wrote a lot of memos, we were often ignored or shut out of meetings, right, we were staying up until one of the morning meeting memos for nobody often. So just to be honest about our seniority in the system. But what was interesting by the Bahrain case for me among all the other things you've laid out was the unanimity of the most senior level of the State Department in 2011. And I do believe in reflecting on that moment that it was a function of the highest diplomatic effort had been tried, and it had not prevailed. And so the reaction was pretty unanimous in suspending all assistance. There was no, you know, and compared to some of the Egypt's suspensions, which I'll talk about the kind of learning that went on, because security assistance conditionality grew as a tool. It was pioneered with us in the Bahrain case, the Seven Fourth State Department actually suggested that to the Secretary Clinton rather than DRL or PM or one of the operational subunits that actually works on that. And that leads to my second just observation about your setup of your book, which is you list these different levers of democracy permission in reality, and you list them strategically, assistance as a lever, public diplomacy as a lever, a private diplomacy as a lever, multilateralism as a lever. In reality, it's very hard to strategically unite these interventions because they're often reduced to the silos of the sub-urows or the sub-urows across DOD and state. So what was quite remarkable about what happened in 2011 was for the first time, we took this kind of obscure arcane and honestly buried lever, which was the security assistance, SMS, foreign military sales, that most high-level senior political people of the Seven Fourth State Department really had not been familiar with the process, didn't know the acronyms, was very legalistic, often involved very junior conversations with the Department of Defense, and elevated that available option of leverage up to a tool of statecraft. And to me, that was remarkable to watch and I was part of that, I wrote a memo on it and suggested it obviously, but it became a very important utility of the use of security assistance as a tactic up to the level of strategic conditionality. And so I find it quite interesting that 10 years later people talk about, yeah, obviously, security assistance is a tool of conditionality. At the time, it was very offensive to people in the State Department that you would take something that was just practical, like very specific foreign military sales and use it as a matter of kind of statecraft at the highest level. So that was a shock to the system and now we've become accustomed to that, but that was really interesting. So I would just, as I comment on your frame, which I really like, I would just urge people who read this to think about the ways they interact with the bureaucracy. And similarly, the private diplomacy, you know, you talk about the military leverage, but I would add the military diplomacy was even another tool on that list. So it really mattered which individual was the head of CENTCOM, the difference between the chairman of CENTCOM when it was General Mattis, General Austin, subsequent generals, who was the head of NAPSENT for the Bahrain case, NAPSENT is the big naval base that sits in Manama that has 9,000, probably more sailors there, a huge and important component of CENTCOM. So those two individual military folks were key diplomats. They were being utilized to pass messages. So the advent and the rise of military diplomacy grew with the Arab Spring across all of the countries and I believe had persisted. And I think it's true in other regions and other countries, I'm less familiar, but I did see that these crises elevated military diplomacy as even co-equal or superior as a lever in terms of being listened to than some of the civilian diplomacy. And that's a trend worth noting for the future. Okay, lessons learned. And then I really want to hear from Nancy because Nancy is a super expert. So we're chatting here from the Washington view. But Nancy, of course, was supporting the policy makers by offering our help and understanding what was going on. So really we should reserve, we should have reserved the first word for you. So the lessons learned and I have a lot, so maybe I'll just summarize them. In the Bahrain case, I do believe when I look back on why Ambassador Burns and Death Elm and really focused on Bahrain, they thought it was a bit of a low hanging fruit, right? The argument was, it's not going to be that hard. Country of one million who have a majority minority population, they're already in the parliament. You know, this we can work on this. But the other part of it was that there was a really good relationship between Bahrain and the United States predating the Obama administration that had been enshrined in the liberalization of Bahrain. So the Mill Mill base, just as a historical matter, had a ribbon. The growth of the Mill Mill relationship had been predicated on reform in the early 2000s. A new king had come to Bahrain. He had created a constitution. He had gone into a constitutional monarchy from an emirate. He had held elections. He had brought in the Shia minority. So they were tied together. So I actually think that that's very different than Egypt, where the story of the security partnership was a function of the peace deal as opposed to liberalization of the regime. And so I think looking back on this case of election as a political science matter, you do believe that it was perceived as a low hanging fruit. And I think that's really important as a, you know, if ever again there's a choice that's to be made, which is part of policy makers' job. The instinct to build relations, this is a lesson learned. Andrew already touched on this. It was amazing to me to see how some of the diplomats and especially an embassy Cairo but elsewhere would be so stuck on the meme, the trope of you just want to build relations with whoever holds the keys to the kingdom. That, I mean, that was just amazing. And again, it wasn't democracy promotion. It was about good relations as an angle. And you know, we've said that many times, but I do think that I was being really exposed one of the pathologies or the distortions and our diplomatic approach as the United States where we see the relationship itself as the angle, as opposed to what it really is, which is a means to achieve our interests. So again and again, our diplomatic corps saw their job as to improve relations as the angle when in fact what we wanted was the T-relation overflight right, help on the peace deal, etc, etc. So that instinct to build relations needs a lot of thought and was a big lesson learned for all of us. Okay, security assistance. This is a back to your question. There's a lot of lessons from the Bahrain experience and from the Arab Spring experience on security assistance. Maybe I'll end with there because I want to keep to Nancy. But one, as I mentioned, it had been a new and perceived new lever. I mean, it had been used before with Saudi Arabia. It had been used before with Pakistan. So it wasn't the first time in U.S. foreign policy. But in this way to tie, especially in Bahrain, where the security items were not perceived to be related to the democratization issue, it kind of created a trope. And honestly, Congress was part of the story because it was a convergent evolutionary story of security assistance being used as conditionality. At the same time that we at the 7th floor of the State Department were pitching this idea to our very receptive senior leaders, a bunch of very low level staffers in the Senate said, hey, wait, we just saw a notification for these giant Humvees and huge missiles Bahrain. Isn't that that country over in the Persian Gulf that they're pressing their protesters? And they said, hey, wait, and they took this very cane, very kind of very legalistic document that usually passes with no notice through the Senate as a matter of process hundreds of days go through from around the world. And two or three staffers really mined it, but it varied in the bureaucracy of the executive legislative system. And they said, wait, we're going to hold on it. We're not going to do that. We're going to ask the White House, like why they're selling these sales to the country, our friends who just, you know, so there was a convergence between what these congressional staffers were asking and what we were pitching and ginning up in the State Department. And that the lesson here was enormous because over the hour of spring congressional staffers began to learn about security assistance as a lever of the congressional branch. And you can't, you have not been able to turn that off. You've seen in Egypt shortly after Bahrain, there was a lot of learning that went on where the appropriators in the Senate appropriations understood how FMF, a different kind of security assistance, foreign military financing, you know, money and not sales could be used as a conditionality. And now, again, in Yemen, that was the story. So there was an interesting learning and evolution that went on at both states, but mostly in Congress on how both, this is a congressional imperative, this is a power of Congress over the executive branch. And so that is probably, you know, a change forever in some ways, because now congressional staff know how they discovered and explored one of their new powers. But second, testing of how and where this works. And the key lesson there is it works much harder, much better in my view, when the things that you're holding, the foreign military sale, or have a direct connection to the undemocratic or authoritarian or repressive behavior of the regime. And just to end on sort of the Yemen cases, I think that's what explains the kind of remarkable bipartisan votes on that have withheld Yemen assistance items that have created, you know, a veto from the Trump administration. There's a function of, you know, the items themselves have been used to target civilian casualties. And this I'm talking about the precision guiding emissions debate. So I see, I make a, I see a storyline from what happened in Bahrain to the learning and evolution in U.S. foreign policy that brings us up into this current moment. Terrific. Nancy, as Daphna mentioned, you were not in D.C., you were in the region actually doing a democracy promotion, perhaps some reactions to New Text Point. And then moving forward, what's, what's the regional climate like today? What's, what are perceptions of the U.S. as a democracy promoter, both from states and perhaps from civil society and activists? Thanks, Fred. And thank you so much for having me here. And I must say, to be honest, I, this is one of the, I have like such an honest account. I, from people, oh, from people who are like Andrew and Daphna's honesty and kindness is also very encouraging for me. I usually get people telling me before my panel just like, try to turn down what you're going to say. But now like you have encouraged me. It was interesting to read your book now, like what I'm out of D.C. after eight years and like wearing the academic and political hat and seeing like the discursive relationship of your analysis between the actor-oriented approach to analysis and structural. It's one. And it was very obvious. So, do you think, is that better? Okay, I'll try not to look at them. So, and this tension was reflected in the account that Andrew gave and then what Daphna also elaborated on. And it was actually very jealous reading the book and listening to that because we don't have this tension in the part of the world that I come from. There's one word, one person, give orders and there's no deliberation out there. But I want to look at this in just we need to have a distinction between three things. One, the U.S. political position in vis-a-vis democracy and changes in dynamics in the Middle East and the actions and the political stance they have and the actual leverage that the U.S. have in the region back then and now and the programmatic approach to democracy promotion, the actual programs and implementation of the program. Because it's very important to see those in different lines. To begin with, I mean I just, I think Andrew and Daphna and even like in this book gives enough account to show that there wasn't any serious position behind democracy promotion. I'm not talking about intentions and I'm not talking about speeches. I know the President Obama gave a very inspiring speech at the beginning and says like we have to be on the right side of history. But that side of history meant something else for us back in Egypt than it was. That meant for us standing by the people, not just standing by yet another government or yet another military rule. And it was very obvious from this next day in February 12th after the after Mubarak stepped down there was a complete embracement of this calf and its approach. No matter what atrocities that has been and they were very clear to begin with the rushing into going into the constitution referendum without giving people the space to even campaign or deliberate. By August of 2011, only like few months after like Mubarak stepped down, there were 12,000 people in military detentions and no one said anything. In October, the Mespiro massacre happened where military tanks actually ran over peaceful protesters. And I remember very well having a conversation with people in the White House while this was happening and I just like saying I don't understand like how you are claiming that you're standing by democracy and you see this happening and what gets out of the White House a very timid statement asking both sides to exercise some restraint as if they're in equal grounds like peaceful protesters with military tanks. And then again in November, it was like the events of Muhammad Mahmood were 50 people were killed and thrown in the garbage. And the main thing about the US position was to stick to procedural democracy. It's not about understanding the environment that is conducive for democracy but rather like checking the the boxes is like we're going to have a referendum and then we're going to have parliamentary elections and we have presidential elections. I remember like in the middle of my trial I came here to DC for some advocacy to raise awareness of what's going on and speaking to a very high US official and saying they were like high like really at tense points where like there were demonstrations like this is not going well and he's like don't worry though once Egypt has a president everything will calm down. I'm like no because things don't happen this way and they don't happen in the way that you actually think that just by giving a transit or a roadmap the things are going to go into the right direction. And this is just one example to show. And Egypt is no exception. This was happening across the board. In some countries it happened in a way that went completely out of hand and in Egypt they just managed to consolidate the power and and support the consolidated power of the military. Whether we're talking it was Morsi there or the snap just to give you an example and it's like and I reflected a lot about your book when you're talking about the power of the individuals and thinking about my very own experience. I got interrogated under staff. I got tried under Morsi and I was sent from under staff after that. So it really tells you where this happens and this brings me to the second point about the actual leverage of the US. I've said it before maybe Robin is here we said that the Halifax Forum is saying when people are asking me what's the influence of the US in the Middle East and then my response is like you are only as powerful as your ability to use the tools that you have. Not having the tools. Not having this like massive might of weapons and army and technology and you are only as powerful as your ability to use them and it happened on the higher scale and on the smaller scale like even in the micro scale I remember very well when we were under on trial and every single American official then all of them still burns like working very hard for this and I always told them don't wave the card of military aid if you're not going to lose it because they're going to call your bluff and if that happens it's going to set a problem. So it's it happened then and it continued on and already they used the card waving the military aid but there was an understanding that they will not use it because so much is at stake even if at that time there were 17 Americans on trial. So that's one example from Egypt but also on another macro level like Obama's red line. Again like they're calling the US bluff that okay you are not going to use it. So that's the issue of the leverage. The other issue which is also interesting in the book when you're talking again the difference between like videos and maybe this is something that I kind of disagree with because I think the overarching strategic relation overrides the the people who are there but not because of their intentions and here's the paradox like under Obama it's just like things were happening as all the different examples I listed in Egypt and nothing happened including the Rabah massacre and under Trump it was actually the only time that it was expanded and it was under a Trump that I guess it was under Trump for that. You can't hear as well. Well let me hold it in my hand okay. Would that be better? So and under again under Trump the suspension led to the repealing of the NGO law even though it's coming back and all this but also under Trump there is an American citizen most of us and died in Egyptian prison and nothing happened. So that what this tells us is not about personalities and what's going on in the intentions of people whether Obama was more progressive than Trump or or the opposite it's about the kind of relationship that the US has with the Middle East that is particularly in Egypt which is in like contrast with Saudi Arabia and Israel it's a transactional relationship it's not a strategic relationship and with this transactional relationship is a very short transaction you're going to do this I'm going to release the aid and then everything would go as they are as opposed to the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia or the US in Israel. Now I want to come to the last point or the the third aspect of democracy promotion and and before I get there if we look at this like very short history and before that it has always been an accommodation rather than a promotion of what's going on in the Middle East. There was always this tendency we just need to contain what's going on and make sure it stays within the borders. I think there was like a sort of a wake-up call for people when there was a democracy promotion and there is like the Palestinian elections in 2005 and Hamas won the elections and then just like everyone was like okay well we need to revisit this and we don't want to rock the boat so much. 2011 the Arabs bring to everyone by surprise and it was an experience for everyone but again there wasn't a deliberate stand that we are going to stand by the people. We are going to stand by whoever is going to contain the conflict within the borders of the country and this actually was reflected in the counter-terrorism and the anti-ISIS different programs that are there it became it's it moved we moved from democracy to security to counter-terrorism like the the scope was narrowing down to the very specific immediate threat we just don't want this to spill over outside of the region so as long as you contain it within that's that's all right and I can say this in so many words that is translated into programs that are actually documents that are out there in the State Department but finally talking about the programmatic approach and this is something I think we need to reflect on here in DC and when we talk about the tools for democracy promotion and we need to really examine how effective they are how effective they are qualitatively and how they effectively are quantitatively qualitative is it really useful and effective to have to train people on political parties engagement on elections to what extent this have an impact as opposed to the overall environment that is going on in in the country it just we find like all the time yes it's great to do these trainings it's great to support those civil society organization but standing against like a huge support for the authoritarian regimes that are out there and the autocrat I would say like we can just look at this with like a pinch of salt if we think that really is going to make an impact now that's qualitatively let's look at the numbers and if you look at China's investment in the region so China pledged 23 billion dollars in aid to the Arab world and has agreed with Saudi Arabia on 65 billion dollars in investment and have agreed with Iran to review a 25 years plan for support and economic collaboration for 400 billion dollars the US entire development and economic support in 2018 was 11 billion dollars so let's just those numbers sink in and think about when we say and you really want to seriously examine the effect of the approach the leverage and the mechanisms that we use to promote democracy how are they effective or not great on that note thank you all for the very personal but also analytical presentations we're going to turn it over to audience questions because we are we have limited time please keep your question brief please identify yourself your affiliation and please do ask a question rather than delivering a statement so um questions for our panels yes sorry wait and please wait for the mic please thank you I'm Muhammad Puneke I was in Egypt in 2011 and I'm in Sudan right now I'm drawing lessons from 2011 can any of you tell us when can Sudan expect to be delisted from state sponsors of terrorism which is preventing democratic transition in Sudan right now putting major costs in Sudan sure it was a great question and it's something that I know the NGO community is very seized by I'm worried that the liberalization of Sudan and the changes there are not getting enough attention here in Washington and I think that's part of the issue if you compare the media attention to the Egyptian revolution you compare the excitement and across the US aid state you know even if there was inconsistency among individuals and institutions everyone recognized that this was a you know generational opportunity I worry on Sudan that the story it was inspirational when we saw young women young men on the streets a year ago but it's been buried by all the other news in Washington and the really internal focus of the foreign policy apparatus to what's happening of course with um impeachment Ukraine all these other issues so I worry about that and in fact um you know I think there's been two issues with the delisting and I think people in Washington need to be educated about how much the listing is affecting the basic flow of humanitarian development aid that would be normal and that I think they want to um to make sure it arrives in cartoon in the right hands and I think also the nature of this transition is misunderstood in Washington maybe you'll be with me but I'm seeing that folks don't quite understand the transition just transitional ministers in cartoon are operating out of their cell phones and like a laptop they don't it's not like they inherited the old offices they're new people with no technical skills in my understanding I mean you know better than I do so I do think that there's been a gap here in Washington not enough attention not enough investment and not enough honestly excitement about the opportunity to help a major country in Africa a lot of resources a lot of people geographically center transition and create a demonstration effect in the neighborhood of how this is done relatively peacefully in contrast to some of the more um the bloodier transitions in the Arab world so I worry that this this huge opportunity is being um you know under appreciated and also the rule of the U.S. leadership and it is being wasted so but I think the actual technical answer to your question is that the community and development humanitarian community doesn't quite connect the dots to the OFAC and the treasury listing so that's my understanding of the problem right now. We're going to take three questions at a time to you save time so yeah please. Thank you Robin Shepherd vice president of Halifax international security forum and great to see you Nancy and I'll be bugging you a bit later as well you put on a great performance in Halifax last year and we're all very grateful to that to everybody on the panel Nancy was leaning into this at the end of her remarks and this is the question of China um uh we're doing a project on China and the cooperation between democracies and I've spoken to a number of people recently about uh China in the Middle East and I guess just to for the sake of brevity to go straight into the question um as the United States uh the western world is perhaps uh not quite in the Middle East as it used to be as many of you have just said is China stepping into the vacuum to what extent is it is it seen as a kind of alternative model which is exactly how Xi Jinping would like everyone to see it or to what extent is it and perhaps both of that both of these things are true to what extent is it economic muscle perhaps not in the Gulf states but in places like Egypt which poses the geopolitical threat. Great. Question? No. Will you answer the question or like we're doing two we're doing three at a time. Oh okay uh Bedrid Benderi and dependent researcher focusing on civic sphere in Egypt. First like I would like to thank you all for such like honest reflection and especially a command on Nancy's actually intervention that represents me as an Egyptian as well. Nancy like I've been thinking about like is it a problem like of allocating resources that the size of resources that the U.S. is allocating for democratic change in them in the manner region or efficiency in using its tools like for example despite the military aid that's given to the the military and the same time support to the civil society and scholarships for example for education the mediation on the Renaissance dam that's actually it has the potential to be the most successful talks on this conflict since it started. Do you think and despite all those resources that's being poured on a country like Egypt or and also other countries in the region you could also see the conspiracy theories supported by regimes about yeah those are those people like speak about the foreign aid that civil society organizations are getting or other any other reason for the regime to use this as an excuse of there is a threat there is a constant threat from the U.S. that to westernize our countries to invade our culture and stuff like that despite all those resources that's being poured there is it like a lack of efficiency from the U.S. to like tie like this help that's being poured there in a tactical way or or what like this this I've been locked in this dilemma for for a bit and was wondering what's your reflection on this okay yes sir hi my name's Dave Ballard I have a quick question you've all highlighted the the conflict between what our leader our president says or does and what we pay for on the ground in terms of technical assistance none of you represents the status quo so I would appreciate your reflections on that right now that that conflict so let's start with the question on China is it presenting itself as an alternative model in the region it's obviously involved economically but what are the I guess political ramifications of that for counter democracy promotion I guess I don't have so much information on on China but we can certainly talk about Russia and Libya and other countries so maybe I'll yield to my colleagues yeah I'm I think I think countries within the Middle East view China as an alternative model how aggressively China is seeking to market its system as an alternative I think is is less clear but you know countries countries like Egypt I think Haftar and Libya would look to that as the model to to maintain political control while fostering economic growth and and some type of social development of one kind or another so they do see it as an alternative even if that's not the Chinese intent I think in terms of evaluating US versus Chinese influence we have to be careful because we're not comparing apples to oranges you know for one thing the Chinese largely are investing and that's important but that's not the same thing as aid unconditional aid there's an expectation of repayment second what the United States does for the region is more than just the aid the US is the security guarantor for many countries and it's not conceivable that the Chinese are going to be the security guarantor in the near future of the Gulf States and nor does it want to be I think to a great extent China has been able to increase its investments because it's freeriding on whatever remains of the the local order within within the Middle East and I haven't seen any intention the short term for China to displace us I also think we need to be careful we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater Chinese involvement in and of itself is not a bad thing now certain types of investment in infrastructure that we're not is a good thing for these countries and even if it's not intended to promote democratization promote liberalization we shouldn't view everything China does in an antagonistic or adversarial way so I think the challenge for US policymakers is to take the full measure of what China is trying to do but also to carefully parse what is consistent with the US interest what is consistent with local interest and what really is a power play that's intended to try to displace US influence within the region or other parts I would just add that completely agreed and fostered Iraq to me was the place to watch because fascinating they right after the 2003 war where you know much of the Arab world thought that the US military just you know create a regime change in Iraq to go after oil resources no US oil companies actually went into the south of Iraq and you served it right so what was happening was China very quietly and very strategically became the main investor in Iraq's oil and so it's been fascinating to watch this economic strategy without any political influence strategy attached in Iraq so to me it was also fascinating when this fall you know the students and young people and citizens of Basra demanded political change in a very democratic way so I said to me that case study has been very informative Nancy this question on allocation of resources versus efficiency of the tools I want to answer both questions together because of like the inconsistency and what you are talking about bed I think there are different things at play one is an issue of the design of democracy and democratization programs that are hardly revisited and questions about theory of change and examining that theory of change of all those millions of dollars that are poured into some programs I'm not saying that they're not effective but they need to be examined some we already know that they're not working but they still and continue to get a lot of like the pool of funding that it's here for example CVE like counter violent extremism and you just like it's absurd that we still have such programs that are going on without even seeing me like in the in the region it's laughable so that's one thing that's this is an issue on its own and then the other issue is the inconsistency and I think I really liked how you touched upon it in the book matic is this like when there is like the question of whether human rights first or democracy first I mean like the question itself is counterintuitive to me because you cannot actually promote human rights without democracy you cannot have democracy without human rights and you cannot support the freedom of political parties and organization and all this while you are having a government that is completely controlling state media and all kinds of challenge like basically it's the mohabarat are controlling it and just like always promoting just one narrative that everyone who is opposing is an agent of the west and everyone is who is taking money is actually trying to promote western ideals and homosexualities and freedom of speech was not even a priority for the people who just want to have bread on on the table first it's hypocritical because for example the country like Egypt is like the biggest recipient of aid and well the second actually in the Arab world the second it's actually this kind of narrative luckily and I'm happy that's the positive thing it's no longer effective and valid because if we look at the recent waves of protests if we look at Lebanon if we look at Iraq and if we look at the this very very short lived September protests in Egypt the message in the label for all of them was anti-corruption it was about accountability it was not about freedom of speech or expression it was not sectarian base which is like huge happening in Lebanon and in Iraq this shift is really significant and positive and it means a lot because it counters the main attacking narrative of the government that those people are talking about ideals that are not important we have more urgent things to deal with we need to provide like to keep the economy going and now these protests and those movements were solely and and particularly based on the issue of corruption and accountability and I think this is where the United States or anyone who is seriously trying to stand behind democracy and and even just let's put the word democracy apart stability we need to pay attention to the questions let's have the gentleman's question over there I think he didn't get it answered she we're gonna have oh okay yeah thank you Richard Coleman CBP retired I'm just wondering how quixotic the whole notion that the US is going to make great friends in the Arab world when we've already picked the girl that we're at the dance is it's Israel and as long as we're dancing with Israel I'm not sure how we can you know expand the dance card to include a lot of Arab states what's your opinion on that gentlemen thank you for the talk so I'm a student from Sudan and a question that I have is I think and you've touched upon it so one given the fact that the US is sort of hesitant to remove Sudan from the terrorist list Sudan is leaning towards again Saudi and UAE funding which again is is stalling the transitional phase into democracy so that's just something I want to highlight but my other question is what is the role of intergovernmental organizations in mitigating like democratization within the Arab world and how how are like what what is the the role of power dynamics within intergovernmental organizations stall or hold that transition in regards to the role of the US within those intergovernmental organizations where whether the World Bank or the UN etc. Thank you Tara Opelowski US Air Force I'm a student currently at the National War College my question is in regards to leverage you've mentioned that a couple of times in regards to specifically Saudi Arabia and their economic reforms diversification that they're trying to pursue with Saudi vision 2030 do you believe at this time that the United States does have leverage to to make some actual changes in Saudi Arabia and if so how okay let's start with that last question we haven't touched too much on what's happening in Saudi and what it represents maybe the US policy yeah I mean it's interesting that I think there's been a lot of movement on on Saudi Arabia here in Washington you know from as an outsider the way I read it from you know the sort of statements and reactions in response to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi by even some prominent you know supporters of the Trump administration and Congress to you know the positions of some of the Democratic candidates like Joe Biden even which I wouldn't expect you know has a very forward-leading policy saying that listen why should we be in in bed with the regime that yes is carrying out these these reforms but at the same time you know is engaging in mass surveillance and and you know there was even a report recently on Buzzfeed about an attempted kidnapping of a Saudi student in San Diego I mean you know what what what price are we paying and I so I think there's some movement on this both from sort of the the human rights he left and the libertarian right you know like what what are the benefits we're arriving from this so it'd be interesting to see you know I don't think we'll see much movement under this current administration but if a Democrat were to win I think that there could be a some movement and whether we we have I know you asked a question about leverage in particular so I'll ask I'll turn to my colleagues to address that yeah I do think I mean I think our leverage is threefold in Saudi Arabia first we are the security guarantor as I mentioned they can't turn to the Russians or Chinese and expect them to defend them against Iran or or another non-Arab external aggressor there isn't the trust there isn't the incentive for them to do so and that does give us some leverage second the Saudis need access to international financial markets and the US government doesn't have complete control of it but it has some influence over Saudi Saudi Arabia's ability to to go to New York to go to London to go to Frankfurt to solicit these you know these investments that they need to make 2030 a possibility and I think at the very least the US government can try to leverage the some degree international or private actors as well as you know whether we're defending them or not to those potential investors and then third you know we do have influence in security and it's different because the Saudis buy US equipment we're not providing aid however the Saudis are still dependent on US contractors and US equipment for a variety of different aspects of their security and you know as a as a member of our armed services you know equipment isn't interchangeable it's you know you can't it's not you can't have a Frankenstein's monster where you have an American plane firing Russian weapons with Chinese guidance and you could but it would be extraordinarily expensive and if we really wanted to I'm not suggesting this we could probably bring the Saudi Air Force to a near halt over several months if we cut off the service contracts because they're incapable of maintaining their own aircraft so theoretically we do have the influence it's not easy to apply and there are costs associated with it and I would point out that the fear that some have articulated that if we do that the Saudis will cut off oil you know one they no longer have the same control over international oil prices as they once did in two that would actually be more detrimental to them than it would be to us because they'd be cutting their own revenue on which they're wholly dependent but there is at least in theory some degree of potential leverage that we could employ to influence Saudi I would just add in 2030 that it's a really important case study because it gets at a number of issues we haven't talked about which is the economic private sector lever of democracy promotion or liberalization which was so relevant to the Eastern European 1999-1990 and one of the key in my understanding reasons that it succeeded was you know the Western economic framework that invested and not just US foreign assistance but the private sector and that was tried as you discuss a little bit in 2011 and met all kinds of impediments mostly well mostly the low-level trade in the region but also the economic the state-led economics of the assistance which is very very hard in fact I worked on in the White House a delegation of US companies that we were going to send to Cairo to support after the elections and to show that democracy pays that was going to be our slogan we're going to bring you know 100 American companies and they went and they went and things were really quite unstable that September and as they were leaving at the airport the purchase that our embassy started so it kind of upended the whole message that Egypt was open for business but anyway the point being is that 2030 could have been if looked at as a lever of change and opening I mean it is also a slogan for MBF and it's also a way for him to look good in the West so that is also true and that you know you can't discredit you can't be naive about what it actually is as a propaganda machine for him as a leader in the kingdom but from my understanding based on people who visited more recently there actually is a real momentum among young reformers and people have been trained in the West to come back and there's actually new office parks and office building of trying to create the beginning of a private sector that diversifies away from kind of the entire economic dependence on natural resources in the Saudi economy so there's something a little bit real there and potential on a US government and foreign policy apparatus that saw the 10 to 15 year strategy of using economic investment and private sector as a lever of liberalization not democratization but economic liberalization it's a very hard strategy but could have used that but this administration is not interested in that right and you saw that right away with Khashoggi killing there's supposed to be a big investment conference and the private sector pulled out it wasn't the Trump administration said to the American private sector don't go to Riyadh it's their own reaction and press concerns about major American companies going but then a year later it was off the homepage of the New York Times and Washington Post the issue of Khashoggi and human rights abuses and most of his American companies went back in this past fall of my understanding for that annual investment conference right so what I'm suggesting here is that something late 2030 could be an opportunity by a foreign policy interested in the hard work of leveraging these international capital flows as a force for liberalization but it has not been quite the opposite in the past couple years just like really quickly again it's like does the US have leverage like in the abstract yes but it's about picking their battles and about picking the narrative and just give you very quick examples of three countries Egypt Iran and Saudi Arabia and in the three countries like we have like you see the inflated congratulations and applause for women rights there Egypt we have eight minister women and Saudi Arabia women can drive and finally in Iran women can go to football matches and in the three countries activists women are being tortured in prison as we speak and it's the choice I mean like how Saudi Arabia and Egypt are portrayed and how Iran is portrayed makes us like they are being repressed by their government so there is an issue here about like picking the battles and picking the narrative and what is at stake again like Daphne mentions is like I mean with all what happened like in terms of like international anger and at the end of the day it just like stayed like at least less than a year of just buzz in the media but nothing really came and this is where the problems problem becomes like they're not how much power the US has voice of the battles that they want to pick Andrew you worked on Israel at the White House can you address the gentleman's question about this perennial question of Israel as a liability with the US relation to the Arab States yes so obviously the Trump administration has made a different bet and they believe that progress on Israeli-Palestinian relations isn't necessary for Israel to become more normalized within the region there's a there's a kernel of truth in terms of Arab regimes appear to be more forward leaning than they used to previously but even there they're not willing to go as far as the White House and Israel would hope I think we've seen that with the deal of the century there hasn't been aggressive for the most part vocal opposition to the deal but there hasn't been support no Arab state is willing to do the heavy lifting to put pressure on the Palestinians to agree to something that would be incompatible with with Palestinian rights but putting the regimes aside this is an issue that continues to have great salience amongst the people of the region and even if we do reach a point where the regimes are more willing to cooperate with Israel publicly I don't think that's necessarily going to translate into an easier time for you the US government to work with the people in the region you know Nancy you can address you know this the best in certain respects but the Palestinian issue may have been forgotten to some degree by certain Arab states it has not been forgotten by the Arabs themselves and it's going to continue to have an influence on our ability to work with the Arab people as well as the types of relationships that we have with them great and this the gentleman for Sudan asked the question on multilateral institutions multi intergovernment either the World Bank the UN definitely maybe you want to talk about that yeah I mean it goes back to this earlier question of how do you seize an opportunity like the transition in Sudan and what is the role of every agent of change I think the World Bank and UN need to be reformed to achieve that kind of an emboleness that was my experience working with those multilateral institutions during the Arab Spring because the development the set development processes don't always work in in a time frame and the loan process are not in the same time frame that's needed especially because it needs to be a lot of the development investment post transition also needs to think signal political support for the transitioning leaders right we're suffering from you know the need to immediately deliver to the people who put them in office in the first place so there's a tension I have found in between the timelines and actually the processes of these big multilateral organizations like the World Bank and the UN and trying to help and what are the political needs on the ground and also a real tension between the economic reforms that are really necessary to receive some of these loans and what's feasible too so it's kind of a conundrum and we dealt with it in Egypt obviously in Tunisia too about with the IMF and the desire to get the IMF in immediately to create you know with us to some of the guarantees and then just the pure fact that that would require various politicians and political ministries in Egypt to make really painful economic reforms that were entirely necessary to stabilize the economy but no one was willing to do in the short term so it's a similar dynamic I can imagine Sudan although I can't say I'm an expert on how those multilaterals are engaging with a new government in question fortunately we've come to the end of our time I want to thank our discussants for a very rich conversation I've talked a lot about these issues a lot about these issues with you and I've learned a lot thank you for your candor Mitek thank you for writing the book the book is on sale at a discount I believe so please join me in thanking our panelists yeah exactly I mean obviously we all you know it's hard to you know have a panel this size and different kinds of questions and pull it all together so I think it was a great one for me