 Afternoon folks. My name is Alex Lennon. I'm the editor of the Washington Quarterly here at CSIS. I'm also a senior fellow at the Security Program. We have just finished a project actually on the future of democracy support in U.S. Security Strategy, which we'll be talking about a bit during the session. And I'm delighted to welcome you here to this bipartisan dialogue on the future of democracy support. What we'll do for the session is we'll actually do this in a couple of different parts. Both House members may have to leave. Apparently there's a couple of other votes going on on the hill today about something. Actually, we're just afraid of questions. Right, exactly. Sort of a duck-and-run exercise. So what we'd like to do is have them make initial remarks and then we'll open it up to the question and answer session. We're delighted both to have Lauren Craner and Ken Wallach as well here. And when we open it up beyond that, we'll open up the question and answer and they'll get into the dialogue as well, subsequently. For starters, I'd like to welcome the co-chairs of the House Democracy Assistance Commission, both representative... It's not quite right. That's not quite right just in my hierarchy, would you say that? Close. He's the chair and I'm the ranking number. My apologies. Representative Dreyer from California and we'll actually start with the remarks from Representative Price from North Carolina. Okay, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you and with this distinguished panel, fellow panelists. And I want to thank CSIS and IRI and NDI and anybody else who's sponsored this event, we have quite a collaborative effort here. And we're going to talk about another collaborative effort. That is democracy promotion and particularly promoting the development of strong and effective and responsive legislatures in our partner countries around the world, the mission of the House Democracy Assistance Commission. This has been a partnership and it's a much more crowded field fortunately in the sense of many players. Contrasts in many ways to the first such effort back in the early 90s when the Frost Solomon Commission first began working in Central and Eastern Europe with the former communist states as all of a sudden showcase parliaments had to become real parliaments. I was involved in that effort as was David Dreyer and at that time the field wasn't as replete with groups working effectively. Now fortunately we have lots of partners and we do take pains to not replicate each other's efforts but to compliment each other's efforts and I think we succeeded that very well. It's a particular pleasure for me to work with David Dreyer. It's true I'm the chairman now and he's the ranking member but then it wasn't too long ago that he was the chairman and I was the ranking member given the way things work in the House. In fact David was the founding chairman of this effort four years ago and he has shown a passionate commitment to the work of our commission and to strengthen democratic institutions and it was his leadership that got us launched and of course he's continuing to be a full partner in this effort. We have 20 members operating on a bipartisan basis in a very effective way. I just prepared a few minutes of remarks here to get us started. We want to have a discussion with you. I'll just say a word though about our work and also about some of the lessons I think we've learned about democracy promotion as we enter a new administration and on a fairly widespread basis I think we're going to be rethinking foreign assistance and foreign aid and I would hope that the question of democracy promotion and aid to institutions of the sort we've been involved in would be on that agenda. Our founding premise as we often say on HDAC is that democracy isn't just about elections. Democracy is equally about what happens between elections and advancing voters' concerns through peaceful constitutional responsive means requires moving beyond elections and developing the capacities of representative institutions. We have had an opportunity to travel worldwide. We're no longer focused just on Central and Eastern Europe as the Solomon group was. We have 12 partners worldwide and we'll add a few more judiciously. We have observed democracy promotion efforts of our government and other governments and do have a few suggestions about how we might proceed in the years ahead now with new administration. I think we do need to take a good look at how our democracy promotion resources are allocated. The high-profile crises of the day not withstanding democracy funding needs to be allocated to sustained programs in nations that are still in the midst of democratic transitions and to support nations beginning such transitions. We must avoid devoting outsized portions of the budget to a concentrated group of recipients for the detriment of burgeoning democracies that may have smaller, lower profiles. Moreover, we need to be persistent in this. We need to finish the job. The rug can't be pulled out from other nations just as they're beginning to stabilize or beginning to show some success. A good case in point, I think, is Sub-Saharan Africa where there have been numerous positive democratic developments recently. Africa currently receives less than half as much in democracy assistance funding as any other region in the world on a per-country basis. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S. funds only seven democracy strengthening programs working directly with national legislatures, and one of those is Ethiopia, where it says Freedom House flatly understates is not an electoral democracy. Of the roughly $1.5 billion our country spends on democracy promotion, one-fourth is spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. In all, the top ten largest recipients claim more than half the budget. In fact, the money spent annually in Afghanistan alone is enough to fund the entire democracy assistance program in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Africa example suggests that we may be misdeploying our resources in three key ways. First, we aren't spreading money around sufficiently. Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly priorities, but they should be allowed to cripple efforts elsewhere. Secondly, sometimes we're allocating funding in the wrong places. We need to focus on places where our efforts can have a strong marginal impact. Non-democracies like Ethiopia, in my opinion, should take a back seat due to democracies in transition. And thirdly, support too often doesn't extend to key governmental institutions, particularly the legislative branch. I'm hopeful that the new administration will make it a point to include legislative branches both in capacity building programs and in consultation on bilateral policymaking. A secondary in need of re-examination is the set of assumptions that currently guides how and with whom we engage. Two quick points here. The first is that the new administration must emphasize engagement with institutions, not individuals. Much has been made of President Bush's personal relationships, at least initially with Russian President Putin and then Pakistani President Mishorov. But, you know, overly personalizing diplomacy is just as risky when the leaders are firmly committed to democracy. In any case, we need to focus on institutional development, not just personal diplomacy. Indeed, instead, the new administration should emphasize the construction of effective, enduring institutions by supporting capacity, building of capacity in the executive legislative and judicial branches of government, fostering civil society and media, promoting active political debate. In many cases, this is supporting the development of democracy, might even entail enabling the political participation of opponents and critics of leaders that are friendly to us. And that leads to the second point. Our credibility is undermined to the extent it is seen as partial, partial to our country's most vocal friends or partial to our near-term bilateral interests. U.S. democracy strengthening programs should, to the extent possible, engage all relevant parties. Such a principle will, particularly with regard to Islamist parties in the Middle East, mean engaging parties that are dubious or sometimes even hostile toward U.S. interests. But we'll do well to remember, I think, that when these increasingly popular parties actually take power, their policies will be shaped by their experiences in opposition and their perception of the U.S. posture toward their political participation. Engagement with these parties offers the U.S. an opportunity to encourage their commitment to democracy, as well as the expression of their views and grievances through democratic means. Finally, I'd suggest that democracy promotion as a discipline can't be considered in isolation. It must be coordinated with a broader range of U.S. foreign assistance programs. Transitioning democracies need to be able to deliver some kind of democracy dividend, a tangible improvement in the quality of life for their citizens. Such an improvement is vital for cementing public support for democracy, and our development assistance programs can play a key role in helping new democracies deliver the goods. More than that, democracy assistance should be coordinated with large infusions of foreign aid, such as through the Millennium Challenge Account so that governments develop the capabilities to manage and oversee such projects. Unfortunately, all too often our foreign assistance can seem like a zero-sum game. As Millennium Challenge money comes in, democracy assistance is phased out. As policymakers take on the difficult challenge of foreign aid reform, I urgently advocate mechanisms for ensuring far greater coordination so that our democracy assistance efforts and our broader foreign aid can achieve a true synergy. So let me stop there and turn to David Dreyer. Thank you. I look forward to our discussion. Thank you very much, Alex, and to Ken and Lauren, and of course David Price, and to all of CSIS. It's a great privilege to be back once again talking about our favorite subject, and that is the building of democracies around the world. So we last year had a great celebration of the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's great Westminster speech that led to the establishment of insurance that Lauren and Tanner employed, that being the establishment of the National Delta Democracy and the core organizations, which have been very important. And I really see our House Democracy Assistance Commission as an offshoot of that original vision that was put forward by President Reagan then and has had strong bipartisanship. And in many ways, I would argue that the work that is going on in democracy building is more important today or as important as it ever has been. And I think that ensuring that it continues to be a high priority is something that all of us are committed to. And I hope that our government will continue to have the strong commitment that it has in the past. This organization is, well, the issue of democracy building and the question is, I believe in many ways, misunderstood. It's often seen as simply a priority of the extreme liberal bleeding heart left or as a tool, as a weapon in the arsenal of the neo-conservatives. And that really, from my perspective, does not correctly characterize the importance of democracy building. The reason being that if you look at the question of peace and stability, economic growth, and ensuring, as David correctly said, this need to have gauges that determine our success, that being improving the quality of life for peoples around the world, that is really what this is about. I think that the notion that we've had in the past of the United States of America through democracy building, attempting to impose its form of government on peoples around the world, again, I believe to be a real mischaracterization. I've always wondered how it is that you can impose self-determination on people. And to build on what David said, I argue that one election of democracy does not make, and the real work begins after the elections. And in many ways, there are more than a few countries that become more vulnerable after the transition than they had been before. And that's why this work continues to be of utmost importance to us. This commission is right now partnered with 12 countries around the world. I'm going to try and name them if I can. I'm sure David will catch me if I don't include all of them for you. Mongolia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Haiti, Colombia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Liberia, Kenya, Macedonia, Ukraine, Georgia. What have I left out? David? I got 12. I got 12. Okay. And right now, I don't think that I would be breaking any confidence to say that we have just had a staff delegation working at the newest country in the world at being Kosovo. And so we very much want to do what we can to ensure that we assist in building the parliament. Because we all know that as you look at these institutions that exist, the parliament is certainly from the perspective of David Price and me. This is the most important part of government. We are the first among equals, the first branch of government. So we understand how important the United States Congress and parliaments are. And we know that when it comes to the issue of oversight, I should tell you just a little bit about what it is that our commission does, because we spend time with these countries, with these parliamentarians and their staffs working to do many things that we have a tendency to take for granted. Committee oversight of the executive branch. Building a budget process. Building the libraries for these parliaments. Constituent service. And one of our great, you know, anecdotally one of our great experiences was we were in Kenya and went to Ambacelli in the south and were able to see the kind of work that a member of parliament of the Kenyan parliament did there. It was a very, very eye-opening process. And to me, as I look at one of the most interesting accomplishments, and we're not quite there yet, but we really made very bold steps towards it, is that to take the most populist Muslim country in the world, the fourth most populist country in the world, Indonesia. We found, on our first trip there, that the Indonesian parliament in fact has its entire staffing and budgeting process and all of the hiring within the parliament handled by the executive branch. Now we sat with President Yonho Yono in Jakarta and talked with him about this and, you know, the notion of having either George Bush or Barack Obama hire my staff was something that I had a difficult time with and as we made this case to members of the Indonesian parliament, they have been very sympathetic and interestingly enough President Yonho Yono was responsive in a positive way to that. Now there are some within the government who are not, but we have continued to beat this drum with a great deal of enthusiasm about the need for independence of the parliament from the executive branch. And I think that if you look at directly impacting a large number of people, and you've got whatever Indonesia is, 230 million people, this has I believe the opportunity for us to have a really wide ranging impact on working directly parliament to parliament. So I will say that I also, bipartisanship is something that everyone is talking about. President talked about it last night in his news conference and we all throw that out, we all aspire to trying to deal with the economic downturn and a wide range of other issues in a bipartisan way. There is no better example of bipartisanship in the relationship that my partner David Price and I have in working with this commission. In fact, I'm always proud to say we've never had a single vote. We've worked on consensus in determining the countries that will be our partners and in determining our priorities. We haven't always agreed on absolutely everything and very easily come to a consensus and I would like to think that in parliaments around the world and maybe even in the congress of the United States we could use our commission as a model. Thank you all very much. Great. To take advantage of the congressman's time while they're here we're going to open it up directly to a question and answer session which both Ken Wallach and Lauren Craner have been gracious enough to say don't have us do remarks, we'll just talk in the question and answer. There are two microphones at the front. If I can ask to come up to those microphones I'll point directly. I'm going to ask the first question as we launch into it and then we'll go directly over here. Can I ask both of you what do you expect that democracy assistance, both political and development assistance will come under extraordinary pressure because of the financial downturn? How vulnerable is financial assistance right now because of the ongoing fiscal crisis? David's on the appropriations committee. That would be a pass to you. All right. I don't feel like I can give you a very precise answer but I don't think it's just totally wishful thinking to believe that we have pretty well made clear our intent to keep, we're going to look very carefully at Howard Berman and there's a lot of support for this from all sorts of reporters but Howard Berman is made very clear that he's going to use these early months to take a very hard look at foreign assistance and of course the new administration coming in we'll do that as well. I do not expect that to include a serious reduction in foreign aid levels. Now there will be pressures on all sorts of components of the budget but one thing that has happened and I hope this is a lasting situation. One thing that has happened I think with this past Republican administration and I give President Bush credit for this and Colin Powell and lots of other people. The tendency for detractors to just hammer on foreign aid mercilessly and to make this so difficult for a lot of members to support foreign aid and to put forward all kinds of damaging amendments to cut foreign aid, to kind of demonize foreign aid. You all know what I'm talking about and you can remember times in our history where this was pretty recent history where this was a quite common exercise on Capitol Hill that really hasn't happened. It hasn't happened during the Bush presidency and so as a result a lot of people who might otherwise have been tempted to try to go after foreign aid have actually been part of a coalition that has maintained fairly decent aid levels. I don't look for great increases and I do look for some shifts within aid categories but I do not at this point see any kind of move to greatly decrease the overall level of aid. David may have heard differently but I don't think so and I certainly hope that's not just wishful thinking. I really don't think it is and let me say that having worked with Lorne and Ken over the years I've been on the board of the IRI for more than two decades and one of the responsibilities that I had early on was to ensure that our colleagues who wanted a gut funding for the now international democracy were not successful and I'm happy to say that we've gone through those debates and frankly those of us who are very committed to democracy building have succeeded and we have prevailed I'm happy to say and I don't see an effort being made to undermine it why because again one of the I suppose you can say a silver lining from the tremendous expenditures we've had in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past several years the notion as Ronald Reagan pointed out in his speech the notion of building up these institutions is certainly much more cost effective than relying on the military as a means to bring about self-determination in these countries and obviously I believe that both are very very important but I see democracy building as an important part of our national security and we will continue I think to have an interesting debate on this question but I should add here that the United States Agency for International Development has been extraordinarily helpful to our work in this quest for democracy building Ken before we came out Ken was very correctly talking about the need to look at the priorities and David mentioned in his remarks this notion of having too much building in one particular area and so just as is the case and Alex was saying this earlier before we came out too the notion of ensuring the most cost effective use of democracy building dollars is a challenge and we always need to be vigilant in ensuring that we do that although in many ways democracy building front gets back to feels great directive on advertising you know in the Marshall field when he said I know that only half of my my advertising budget is effective but you tell me which half is effective and so we don't always know exactly how we can determine the level of success but we should establish whatever gauges we possibly can the first hand I saw was over here if I can ask you to step up to the microphone identify your name and the institutional affiliation Hi, I'm Vladimir Karamazov with our TVI Russian television I got a question specifically on Russia where everybody agrees Democratic institutions have been rolled back completely in the last nine years Vice President Biden in his speech in Munich last week, first major foreign project he talked a lot about having cooperation with Russia improving relations with Russia he didn't mention a word about democracy or human rights problems do you expect this new administration and the new congress to do something about democracy and Russia may be engaging in dialogue with the Russian Democratic opposition or what remains of the independent media and things like that and what do you think should be done about it, thank you Do you want to bring Dan on that? Well I want to say that he did mention democracy the President talked about diplomacy in this section about the need for greater diplomacy something that this administration the Obama administration will pursue more aggressively he said diplomacy isn't enough that you also need democracy and development so he had a whole section in that speech about democracy so from reading that speech I think that you can assume that that will be part of the dialogue with Russia and between President Obama and President Medvedev when they meet in April and I assume that there will be a continuing commitment on this front but I can't speak for the administration but certainly in the Vice President's speech he was forceful on the issue Needless to say I can't speak for the administration but I was actually there for the speech and he did refer to a number of areas where we do disagree with and he was very very forceful on the line talking about the regions of Georgia that have been taken over for example it is true that in that section he didn't talk about democracy he talked about it at some length later in the speech so I think it's we would be mistaken if we think that there's going to be a wholesale engagement with Russia I think it would also be fair to say if that happens my guess is it wouldn't last very long because I'm not seeing any kind of responses that one would hope for coming out of Russia I think that's the kind of it is certainly the case that in the first term of the Bush administration there was a lot more engagement but I think by the second term people had figured out they weren't getting what they had hoped to get back and the second term looked a lot different so I'd be very surprised to see a wholesale engagement just forgetting about all these other issues I'd add one point to the work of our commission as I said Georgia is one of our 12 partner countries and last December we had a delegation in Georgia and John Kerry was in Georgia just a few days before we were there and had met as we did with President Sakashvili and the one request that was made by President Sakashvili and other leaders in his government was that we pursue the establishment of a West Georgia free trade agreement and I've been working with Senator Kerry on this and our request to put together a bipartisan support for this President Sakashvili with whom I spoke I guess week before last maybe it was last week or the week before feels very, very strongly about the need for that and as we look at the challenge that Georgia faces you know in Abtazia and South Ossetia I believe that the idea of strengthening our economic ties which has been as really an offshoot of our democracy building effort there will go a long way towards dealing with that challenge Well, they haven't asked us for an HDAC program and Russia quite yet Well, the implication of what I had said earlier about about working with countries that are in the right place in terms of democratic development and transition I think we we're taking on some pretty great challenges but we also I think just talking about HDAC and about the kind of work we do we do understand I think what our strengths are and what some of our limitations might be and we we are operating only in places where there's a full and willing and eager partnership and where there's a certain development already underway in the parliament and we can facilitate and encourage now that in the remaining work in Central and Eastern Europe and we're at work in Macedonia, Georgia and Ukraine some places I would say more successfully than others but I understand that for our kind of work there really are some pretty important preconditions that are going to determine where we can be most effective and where the leverage whatever we've got to offer can be most best utilized Let me say one more thing on Russia as difficult as our economic situation is here there are a number of countries around the world that are going through or are going to go through a much more difficult situation and I think what this administration is going to encounter is a very, very dynamic situation in places like China, Iran Venezuela, Russia it is also the case that this economic these economic problems are going to affect friends, countries in Latin America places like Ukraine, etc but my guess is that the if we assume that things are just going to continue on as they are in places like China and Venezuela and Russia it is very much mistaken that there is going to be a very dynamic situation and opportunities will arise there Last one? Before the congressman leave and I don't know what time to have to depart but I wanted to make one point about Pichda, it gets beyond the Russia issue traditionally I think over the past quarter century when you look at the international development community at large they have tended to look at development in terms of supporting state institutions government ministries to deliver and to the development of civil society and in the process they have largely ignored the institutions of representative democracy the political parties and parliaments within which they operate and at the same time there have been a number of studies the most recent by Stephen Fischer at Berkeley who have made a correlation between the strength of legislatures and the stability of a country that if the legislatures fail to fulfill their special role it will place in jeopardy the democratic system itself and often times the peer to peer support that parliaments and parliamentarians provide each other becomes quite significant in this effort and the H-TAC initiative has become so important because often times members of congress will travel to foreign countries and they will meet with heads of state and heads of government and government ministries and they have traditionally not spent enough time with their peers and the commission has provided now a vehicle through which members of congress can support their colleagues in other countries in support of an institution that has largely been if not ignored and marginalized in the development community and so I think it is quite significant and I think it is being welcomed by parliaments and I speak as an organization that is sort of operational on the ground along with IRI we see among parliaments that we work with a real deep appreciation for the commitment of the commission and the time that is spent by individual members of congress to support their peers in these countries Thanks for that, Canon one of the reasons that members of congress have had a tendency to do that is that there are parliaments around the world that for all intents and purposes are impotent and we know that to be the case and we have felt that if you have the rule of law and it is great to see the former attorney general here who is clearly focused on that internationally and if you look at security relations trade relations and things like that we know that for that to continue to be successful it is imperative that you build a parliament to help ensure that and so again because of this commission's commitment to building the strength of that parliament oversight of the executive branch and better constituent services and having libraries and a budget process and all I think that is part of our goal here is to strengthen those institutions within the countries and I think one of the best lessons you give is walking in the room together people are always stunned that NDI and IRI work closely together but overseas sometimes the best lesson we can give is to walk in the room as the two competing American political parties and say in our system nobody goes to jail nobody goes into exile because of who wins, we have to work together you know one of the things that I've observed actually is one of the greatest challenges and today the elections are taking place in Israel and we know that Sipi Lidni had a difficult time in trying to build a coalition going back three months and as we look at these twelve partnered countries for us while it's not enshrined in our constitution at all one of our greatest strengths is the two-party system and you guys know it better than we the multi-party structures that exist in so many countries create a very unique and often difficult challenge right although there are some people argue that parliamentary systems provide more stability in new democracies because they are more inclusive for that initial phase now when you have a fractionalized party system when you have 60 or 70 or 80 political parties it creates huge problems open it up in the middle there in the back that you guys are on the hook with us until four o'clock you don't want to be pulled over a little Paul Vaca Georgetown University if we were here talking about AIDS or malaria we'd probably be talking about working with other countries to jointly fund and implement programs but yet when we talk about democracy systems we rarely talk about bringing in other democracies that have also been at this game for quite a while I'm wondering looking at the new administration the new congress to what extent do we see working with other democracies to jointly fund and implement democracy systems you know I've been president of IRI twice once in the 90s and once in this decade the biggest difference in doing this work in this decade is how many more countries are engaged in this work now and how closely we work with them in the 1990s it was us the British and the Germans doing this work now there are dozens of countries from Australia to South Korea to South Africa to Central Europe to Latin America that are doing this work we work with Mexico in other Latin American countries if you had told me that 10 years ago I would have just laughed and I would have said that's not possible more and more of our staffs are from other countries preferably frankly recent democracies you know people look at Americans when you're trying to help them assist them building their democracy and they say well you really don't understand government and democracy for 200 and some years but when somebody from Serbia or somebody from El Salvador or somebody from South Korea that Ken and I have brought Ken or I have brought to the country walks in there is a real empathy that they you know that really advances and catalyzes the program so just in the last I would say five or six years it is a dramatic difference and really by working with them enormous amounts of synergy it's not one plus one it's one times many many things to be able to help so I would say it's something that has well along at this point and hopefully will only increase because it's all for the better Lord reminded me of an anecdote which I've shared with him that was part of the work of the IRI in the well nearly 20 years ago one of the staff was in Romania working on democracy do you remember the storyline working on democracy building there they had gone through elections and he spent time working with training people as the elections were taking place and finished that work and four years ago he was in Iraq and this woman came up to him as they were working on the election there in Romania for our election and reintroduced herself and to me that was one of the best anecdotes that I've forgotten on the fact that your quest and our shared quest of taking these developing and developed democracies and bringing them into the process is very important it's not only countries by the way too if you look at intergovernmental organizations right now the United Nations Development Program which is the aid arm of the United Nations is approximately 40% of its budget now goes to democracy and governance programs the OAS has a Democratic Charter the African Union is in the process of doing this the OSCE has been engaged in this for many years so this is really a community of organizations and intergovernmental organizations and donor aid agencies now that see sort of this interconnectedness between economic development and political development right now it's changed dramatically over the last 20 years and that's the irony as democracy promotion although I hate that term because we do more reacting than promoting we're reacting to events that are taking place on the ground as it's become a little more controversial here because of the Iraq war and because of the elections in Palestine and in Egypt the irony is that it has become much more accepted internationally even among the most conservative international financial institutions that basically stay away from politics so this has truly been now an international consensus on this issue and I think that it will continue to be a bipartisan issue here despite the controversies that have surrounded the Iraq war and those elections I think there are there's a lot of potential here for work with other countries I don't know of any other country where the parliament is engaged directly in the kind of exercise that we're engaged in and moreover we try very hard Ken stressed I think rightly the importance of the member engagement that's really what we bring to this this kind of peer relationship but we also want very much to be more than just member to member exchanges and visits and relationships we have an extensive program with staff and this involves workshops here with staff budget staff central leadership staff committee staff who come here we send teams out to individual countries or groups of countries this whole thing is more than member exchanges it really has to do with strengthening capacity and we all know that means working with staff CRS works very closely with us as well as staff from the hill and so it's a unique program I think I don't know of any country that comes close at the same time there are there are efforts afoot that I think where we can join forces really ought to be open to that in the future I'll tell a quick anecdote myself because this kind of international effort is connected in my mind to the least successful effort I ever was involved in in the 90s there was with the Frost Sullivan commission there was also in the NATO assembly the NATO parliamentary assembly there was some outreach going on of a similar sort with countries in central and eastern Europe and actually in some cases the people who have been through the program in places like Poland and the Baltics then worked in some of the other countries it really was pretty interesting what went on I was part of one such team in Slovakia the only trouble was that in between the planning of the it was an orientation for new members in between the planning of this orientation and the execution of it the wrong side had won the election the former communists had won big time and so I've never had a less receptive audience in all my life these beefy guys just daring us to interest them from the provinces the former communist officials who weren't let's say a very receptive audience so it doesn't always work but actually there is some precedent for that kind of work with certainly with other European countries and we're very much open to developing that but I can't say that there's in any of our 12 countries that this is very far advanced right now we it's more a future aspiration Nestor Iqueda and associate a press reporter for Latin America I have a question on Latin America and what kind of work you think the Obama's administration needs to do in Latin America especially in countries like Venezuela where in the next Sunday referendum the president Travis is looking to be a president for life well you'll have to ask that of the administration and the incoming policymakers will be dealing with Latin America but I think even President Chavez once confided to some people that he is not the cause he's the result in a sense he's the result of failed political institutions in Latin America that were seen as corrupt and out of touch with the citizenry not surprising we have found in Latin America and in any place around the world people are in a demanding mood and I think Stiglitz once said if people do not get what they expect from their political institutions they're either going to go to the streets and that is not the place to solve public policy issues or they end up oftentimes voting over time voting for populist leaders to offer very easy answers to complex questions and then move against those those very institutions that have been part of the political life of a country so in my view there has to be a much greater investment in reforming modernizing and renewing political institutions in the hemisphere so they begin to as congressman Price said they begin to deliver on quality of life issues and privileged view and they have to connect with citizens they have to begin opening up their political institutions to women and youth and indigenous communities because if they don't we're going to find more situations like we have in a number of countries in Latin America so I think that's the greatest challenge in the hemisphere is how these institutions perform on economic issues how they perform on quality of life issues and how they deal with the citizenry not to be too provocative but I will anyway so I happen to feel very strongly that one of the most important things that we as a country can do and I've spoken with President Obama about this is to ensure that we proceed with more trade agreements with countries within this hemisphere and I think that one of the greatest mistakes that was made in the last congress was the unprecedented decision for the first time since the 1974 trade act was put into place denying a vote that was promised President Uribe in Colombia as they proceeded with good faith negotiations for an FTA a chance for that vote to take place in the congress in the United States as we look at the challenges of dealing with Korea, Morales and with Chavez and the strength that President Uribe has shown and the impact that has had on other countries on the South American continent and frankly around the world I hope very much that we will be able to proceed with that because I think that will go a long way towards doing exactly what Ken has said improving the quality of life the standard of living and demonstrating that the United States of America can in fact maintain its commitments I think it's going to be very important for President Obama in the first place simply to express a commitment to to give great priority, front burner priority to this hemisphere and to our relationships in this hemisphere it was of course a very important way that John F. Kennedy launched his presidency with the announcement of the Alliance for Progress and then action that followed to make good on that commitment I think peoples of this of this hemisphere are looking for that and I hope the president can deliver it and can work bilaterally in all sorts of ways to improve relationships and help bring about the payoff that can describe I hope we can contribute in a more substantial way to this from the Congress and as far as H-DAC is concerned I think this has been an underdeveloped area of our own involvement not for any lack of interest it's just kind of worked out that way we have plans though to rectify that and I think we'll see us in the next couple of years much more directly involved with partner parliaments in Latin America again a number of those parliaments for better or for worse are mature parliaments pretty well set in their ways others are not taking off in the way that would make it possible for us to engage but there are a number of countries in Central and South America where I think what we have to offer can really make a difference and we're going to explore that with great great energy and an interesting point that David makes and Ken touched on as well is concerned about the issue of promotion we really see these countries as partners as opposed to our telling them exactly the way it's done because we regularly describe the United States of America as and our democracy as a work in progress and we learn that every single day you know I think that I mean I'm reminded I there was the IRI delegation we had on July 2nd of 2000 when former Secretary of State Jim Baker and I got to co-lead that delegation you were there to Mexico and we saw after 71 years the first transition from the the PRI to the PAN's success there and I remember on the night of July 2nd 2000 Jim Baker and I were standing in the hills above Puebla, Mexico checking the validity of ballots and four months later he was doing the exact same thing in South Florida and so that demonstrated clearly that democracy is a work in progress I remember I called him when he was down there and I just reminded him that we were in Mexico doing the same thing he was doing in Florida and so that's why we do see our work with these countries in partnership as opposed to our in any way telling them how it's done but also the Western Hemisphere may be a victim of its own success as well I think Freedom House rates Latin America is the most successful in terms of democracy the most successful region in the world and if you look at funds that are dedicated for this for this hemisphere they are alarmingly low and so and I think it takes certain things for granted in this hemisphere and we shouldn't because it's a great peril that we ignore this hemisphere on some of these fundamental political development issues don't forget that Venezuela used to be the country that used to be the exporter of democracy and its party foundations used to spend a great deal of time throughout the hemisphere and outside the hemisphere supporting political party development and development so we take these things for granted with that I'm afraid we promise folks that we would be done by four o'clock we have two things to tempt your interest in this continuing discussion one is we were honored to have Representative Price have an article on the latest issue of the Washington Quarterly for seven lessons for the new administration there are copies of that that should be outside on your way out to get a chance to stop and pick it up the second is on March 11th we have an event to release the findings of the democracy in the future of U.S. security strategy report the punchline for that I'll give you a little preview is exactly what Ken was talking about in moving away from promotion and towards support as the principal diplomatic umbrella for U.S. efforts in this area based on series of interviews we had throughout the security community which included with Bransko Croft, Jim Steinberg, Lee Hamilton and a number of others outside of the democracy in security policy as a whole we have been working on this for the last 11th about a month from now in the meantime, please help me both thank Ken Wallach and Lauren Craner for co-hosting this with us and especially for Representative Pryor Representative Dreyse for their very valuable time with us here today for an hour thank you very much