 I think one of the things that has come through loud and clear in the course of this discussion is that essential to any successful peace process of any sort is flexibility. I might add that some of you have not been terribly flexible. Now, by the way, that is reflective of a problem in scenario exercises like these, which is if you are representing a group, you can only really represent it in terms of what it has done in the past. And to achieve a breakthrough, typically something has got to give and a group has actually got to change what they've done in the past and do something completely different. And so essential to moving to a new level of this would actually require different kind of behavior from some players than we've gotten. But when I began by saying flexibility is essential, I was not going for anything so substantive or elevated. Rather, I wanted to discuss for a moment the weather. Because while the U.S. Institute of Peace has a congressional mandate and the best-looking building in Washington, apparently does not control the weather, and that's on you. Having said that, we've consulted the weather gurus and the people who at least have some sense of the weather, and apparently it's going to snow tomorrow rather significantly Well, it's a rumor. But in terms of that rumor, the problem is that we would not know until tomorrow morning whether it was true or not. And in terms of people coming in and in terms of your schedule, it would be impossible to communicate to anybody in time, you know, a rescheduling. And so, because we are nimble and flexible, as befits this kind of a process, we have had a high-level consultation, and we have concluded that we are going to conclude. In other words, we are going to skip ahead to tomorrow morning session now. We will still end on time. You will still go to the dinner. We will still talk at the dinner. We will try to gather some information at the dinner. But and I'm sorry, you know, Mona, you've been mixing it up the whole day. You'll know no one is sitting on either side. Well, you know, people are afraid. But the, you know, we can talk about some of the curveballs that have been thrown in, but we've actually talked about some of them as we've been doing this thus far. And in fact, of the curveballs we talked about initially in the program, you know, one of them is insurgents don't stop fighting. We've talked a lot about that. As driving this scenario, another is lack of international economic or military commitment. We've talked a lot about that as part of this scenario. And, you know, third one is sort of political insurgency and, you know, political competition that fragments a power sharing agreement. We didn't even get to a power sharing agreement, really. And so, you know, I think we've addressed that to some extent. Whereas the next session, the morning session tomorrow is really supposed to deal with, you know, some of our conclusions and this longer term set of issues. Like, how does this get phased? How do we get there from here? And so, what we're going to do now is between now and five o'clock, which is an hour and 10 minutes, we're going to go through what we were going to go through tomorrow morning in terms of establishing a sustainable peace. But as you think about this, and as we go through some of the questions, what I want to do is I want to encourage you to think about what I was just talking about, two things. One, you know, if our timeframe were somewhat stretched out, if we don't think the situation is ripe today, if we don't think that Russia and the U.S. and Iran are ready to go and push this forward to a particular place, what could we do now? And then what could we do next? And how might we phase ourself into something longer? You know, I think that's worth considering. And the other thing I'd like you to think about is where the breakthrough may come, because let's not stay trapped. I mean, if I had said to you two or three years ago that the U.S. would be on the verge of a certain kind of a deal with Iran or the U.S. would have changed the, you know, we have its relationship with Saudi Arabia, its relationship with Israel or wherever, being in a somewhat different place, you might say, well, that's not possible. But there have been changes. And there have been changes in the positions of the Iranians in the course of this past six, eight months, which are rather dramatic. And I just would like you to open your mind and sort of guess ahead or speculate as to where those kind of substantive changes may take place. That sort of gets you to where we want to be. Okay, so establishing a sustainable peace. Let's talk about this. And this is a little more conceptual. First slide. Among the countless potential outcomes, you know, one of them was a temporary ceasefire. One of them is a divided Syria. One is remnants of the regime remain. And another is recalcitrant international community. I do want to point out these slides were put together a couple of weeks ago before all this happened. And those are sort of the four main conclusions that we've arrived at today. So, you know, perhaps that's because they're all obvious or we are clairvoyant. I leave it to you to decide which of those two it is. Next, in terms of the alternative outcome, ceasefire. Could a ceasefire be reached to allow for protection of civilians and enable a more robust response to the humanitarian crisis? Could a stalemate put pressure on parties to agree to a ceasefire and perhaps provide for some humanitarian aid in negotiating space? So, you know, this begs one of the questions that we had earlier. What might a process look like that produced enough progress that it could continue forward? It might not produce peace or political settlement right up front, but it might produce an abatement of suffering, a reduction in hostilities, and put us on a pathway to that. So, what might that look like? Next, divided Syria. We've talked about this significantly, but, you know, could you end up with a Kurdish space, an Alawite space, an opposition space, a Rump Assad, well, I guess that's the Alawite space, and how might that shape itself over time? Next, we talked about remnants of the regime remaining, and, you know, we've actually dwelt a lot on that today, but that was one of the things that we anticipated. Next, could it succeed without strong commitment from the international community? I think this question really, if you look at the way this slide is divided up, this gets into one of the core things we've been talking about today, and that is, if the international community is traditionally described, which is beyond the region, has a weak involvement, but the region has a strong involvement, what might that get us? How might that get us further along in the way here? And the next, or is that the final slide? That's the final slide? Okay, so let's go to the questions. Five quick questions. Based on the discussion over the past two days, and by that I mean one day, are you more or less likely to believe a lasting piece is attainable in Syria? More likely, less likely, or the same? Wow. Now, what am I surprised at here? That 71% of you say your views haven't changed? No, that's been the nature of the discussion. That 13% of you say you're less? No, it's that 16% of you actually, based on today's discussion, think it's more likely. You've just arrived, obviously, or have not been paying attention, but that's as optimists keep these kind of discussions going. Are you more or less optimistic about short-term prospects for a peace agreement? Okay, let's try this again. It'll be zero now that I've played it that way, but more, less, or the same? See? See what happens? Okay, next. Pardon me? And the timeframe is a crucial element to this entire conversation, and so I really hope we get to this point of what you expect in one year, two years, 10 years, 20 years, because that's a different question because you have the word short-term. Totally agree. No, no, I was actually saying that because of the way we framed it, I thought it would suppress the optimist vote, whether it should or not. Following our discussions, do you think reaching an agreement in Geneva or negotiated resolution to conflict more broadly is more or less critical to achieving a lasting peace? Is it more critical or less critical or the same? In other words, have you changed your view on that based on the discussion? Okay, well, that's a fairly significant move, thinking it was less critical than perhaps I thought it was before. Next. Based on the previous four sessions, or as we like to refer to them the previous three sessions, what do you consider the single biggest hurdle to Syrian peace? Governance, economic reconstruction, establishing security, reconciliation and justice, or humanitarian relief and resettlement, or something else, and if you would like to say something else, then you can say something else. 73% say establishing security. Did you have a question? Okay. Anybody else have a different view? Any, okay. One last question. What will it take for the international community to remain focused on restoring and repairing Syria? Consistent advocacy in the UN, semi-annual peace talks, continued increases in humanitarian aid, I don't know how that does that, and spotlight on the agenda of global and economic forms, like it keeps getting brought up. Correct. That is the correct answer. None of the above. I mean, you can vote, or I can see there's a protest vote going on here. You say semi-annual peace talks. The reality is none of the above. Yes, do you want to say something? Yeah, I think the answer will be the stronger the jihadists get. Ironically, I think the more successful the jihadists are in taking and controlling territory and using it as a base of operations, the more the international community will decide that it has to do far more than it's doing now. How much would it have? I mean, that's going to happen, and there are a lot of predictions right now that say, if you don't make, you know, some kind of peace agreement in the next year, the jihadists will gain sufficient amount of ground that it will be almost impossible to dislodge them. Is there a threshold of jihadist gains that might produce a response from the U.S. or the Europeans or from the international community? I'll start off and Kaz can join in. I mean, part of it is the question of whether the jihadist threat remains internal to Syria or whether the jihadists threaten some fashion, moves beyond the borders to threaten countries that the United States has significant more interest in, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon. If there's a spillover, I think it's far more likely that as Kaz was saying, the issue gets reframed. But again, part of that depends on a matter of timing. I think you have a set narrative for this administration. If we're still asking this question at the beginning of 2017, you may well have a different political equation that then in turn creates possibilities that don't exist today. All right. Mona is not here, but Mona's capability is not withstanding. Let's face it, the jihadists are entering Syria today because of certain countries that are allowing them to enter. You start closing borders, it becomes much more difficult. They should not exaggerate the jihadist threat to that extent, that they will control huge territory and there will be a base of operations. Because they're coming in through Turkey, they're coming in through Iraq. Jordan, not that much from Jordan and not that much from Lebanon. So if you control those two borders somehow, then you're not going to control every jihadist. There will still be jihadists coming in, but it's not going to be the numbers that we're talking about that will control a large chunk of Syrian territory. Somebody wants to address this. What strikes me is cutting off money to the jihadists strikes me as one of the ways to weaken them and ripen the situation, if you will, to use that terminology. And is there a potential deal anywhere where there might be an agreement on regional countries that are funding different components of the opposition to stop and thus move forward? I wasn't going to answer that question. I think the timing thing, I want to go back to what Esther said. The timing thing begs a larger question since we're in the last session, and that is, do we have a strategic vision? We began the morning you astutely did with the notion of enough about war games. How about a peace game? A peace game would beg two things, I think. One is, what's our strategic framework for building a peace over the next decade? If we know what the end point is, how do we work through the timing dimensions and increments of a year at a time when the engagement of civil society, when the kind of institutional supports, et cetera? So that would be a task that would be apropos. But the other is, I think, of the participants around the table in their roles, what's their theory of how peace will actually come about as opposed to our existing positions, but what's in it for Turkey in Turkey's best interest, given how they think things may change on the ground if you did seal borders? And each actor be a little bit more accountable in those terms. And that's where I think we can not look for what's the single event that'll break the impasse but how the participants in the international community can create the kind of change that will actually lead to peace, that they can proactively do it. Those are both really good questions, and I hope I encourage you to think about answers to those questions and brazen them. I would also add that I don't think we can think of rightness as a condition that can be achieved by transforming the circumstances of only one critical actor on the ground because of the interconnections among them. Weakening of jihadists on its own is going to have a series of interactive effects that will change the strategic calculus of a variety of actors. The regime may view it as an opportunity to advance its campaign to recover territory. The moderate opposition may see it as a chance to assert itself militarily in areas now that it doesn't face jihadist competition. So we have to be aware of these interactions. Okay. But just as I was going to say as far as George is saying, I'd like to come back to the critical players and ask the question that George posed as the question, which is either from your own personal view or from the point of view of the group that you're representing here, what's your best guess as how peace unfolds based on not just this discussion, but the other facts that you've got informing it? George, you don't have to answer that now. I'm just saying I would like to come to that. The question was what would change the calculus of brightness and the attitudes of external players to intervene? Right. One that was mentioned was the evolution of the jihadist. I think that is a factor. Some what related is the fragility of the neighboring states and the transboundary effects of this. We've already expressed the concern about Jordan and the concern about Lebanon. If those two situations start to unravel very quickly, I guarantee you that that would change the attitude of the American administration about how deeply to get engaged. I think that's absolutely true. And I think Jordan more so than Lebanon. Right. I think that there's a pitfall that needs to be identified when we're looking at both pushes, which would definitely bring in or pull in western interest. One is the evolution of the jihadist and one is the destabilization of the countries. And that pitfall is it transforms the type of conflict and lowers our standards. So as the jihadists increase, as in then we're more willing to put up with a benevolent dictator. We're more willing to have Assad remain in power. And I think that in that sense time, particularly from the Syrian civil society perspective, is not necessarily the best way to move forward. And I worry that again the standards continue to lower. I also just want to point out whereas I think cutting off funding to jihadists is absolutely brilliant. I think it's also equivalent to saying let's all hold hands so no one can hold a gun. The reality is our allies are funding these jihadists. There's a lot of interest in the jihadists and for the past 10, 12, 13 years, we've tried to cut off funding, which is why I reintroduced the concept of engaging civil society. Really cut them off at their source. If you're not cutting them off at their source, I think the problem is you're keep trying to handle it in a state level. And that's why every time we think we've controlled them, they reemerge. We're not waiting for them to join borders. It's now al-Qa'ada Iraq and Isham. They now have no border. I wish we could control the Iraqi border. 13 years, we failed to control the Iraqi border. The reality is we need to engage the informal sector. The reality is we need to move beyond the models of security sector reform that are frankly archaic and have failed us. Otherwise we will continue to have these conversations and the people who will pay the price will be the civilians on the ground. Thank you. Just to pick up on several of the points, first was going back to this issue of time and I think actually my UN teammates point about Somalia is actually a very good one. Then effectively, Somalia was a 20-year process and that throughout that period, you had, since there was a UN presence and element there, while the rest of the member states are off doing other things. So I think you need to think about what are the pieces, and what element becomes the economic and we have to think about what happens in one year, what happens in six months, one year, five years, ten years, and what has to happen to bring in all the other parties we've talked about, including civil society, but you have to have a generation-long engagement, thinking about that, that you can use the multilateral tools but only after member states agree. Neither the security accounts nor the secretariat can do that without member states themselves engaging. That does mean the U.S., Russia, had Saudi Arabia been on the Security Council or Jordan, that you have to have the power so they solidify the agreement and lay out the structure so that everyone agrees to the same structure and timetable. And again, remembering in Somalia that actually the heavy lifting, I do not see a case for a military intervention with multilateral pieces. There isn't the structure for it. The peace enforcement can't be done by the UN system on its own. The heavy lifting is usually done by one government, two governments. In the case of Somalia, it was the African Union that did the heavy lifting and basically the military campaign against al-Shabaab with UN support, but not on its own. So if you're envisioning that, you have to say which one or two countries are going to do that. I don't see that, so you have to come with another security structure. If I go back to where I started at the beginning, I said you have to come up with an agreement with the long-term support because all of you major powers are going to be busy two or three years from now, but you'll need the multilateral system to kind of keep the things rolling along and you still have to engage periodically just to keep it going. And funding. Okay, thanks. I'm going around and there's a lot of things here. So George, if you're done, and Manal, you're done. Judith. And by the way, let me encourage everybody, if you're in a position of this would be nice. Or, you know, I'd like to stay within what's possible and I would like you to focus on things that you think could actually move this process forward over a short-term or a longer-term. In other words, let's stay practical in sort of the building of the elements of this truncated game idea. Judith. To hit the button. One point, I'll go back to the beginning and I think that's weakness. You've got to get them, the jihadists in a position of weakness. But the point is, they're taking over territory. They're controlling villages and communities. You could cut off all the money tomorrow that comes from the Gulf. They'll be fine. After all, Hezbollah thrived when there was a lot of Iranian money or very little Iranian money. They're building communities. There are ways that they can acquire money of what's what they're fighting for. They're fighting more for that than each other than they're fighting the Assad forces. So my point would be yeah, we've got to stop the funding. But you've also, again, is there a model from Iraq here in the sense to build up the opposition to fight the Basawah for Syria and that you use the locals. Use the community. They're the ones who can turn against them because they are the great, the jihadists are the greatest threat to the other Islamists, moderate or whatever they are and certainly to the secularists, whatever, they're the greatest threat. So they have to, in the end, turn against them. But just by saying, well, cut off that Gulf money and they'll be finished. No, that won't do it. I'm trying to do this in the order. I'm trying to get to everybody. But let's just stick with the discipline. What can we do constructively to move things forward? Daniel? Well, first of all, the solution for the radical Islamists is very difficult to imagine precisely the reasons that have already been said. When I was in Tunisia and in Morocco, I met a lot of NGOs that were trying to get their Tunisian colleagues back from Syria to Tunisia. It's become a region-wide problem and it's threatening the stability of all of North Africa, so it's hugely challenging. I do want to reiterate, it has been said before here, and I'm not sure if my Rouhani had or not, that the prospect looming of negotiations on the second phase of the nuclear agreement, a successful agreement between the United States and Iran will significantly shift all the regional calculations. We can prepare for both failure and success, but success requires, as has been said here before, some sort of way of managing the dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia, something that Rouhani and Javad Zarif have been trying to advance. So I think this is a really critical arena that, depending on how it plays out, may open up space for solutions. Don't take an hour, but take six seconds or two minutes. Play it out. If we're on a track to a deal, how does that affect this? If we're not on a track to a deal, how does that affect this? On a track to deal. If a track to a deal with Iran and the U.S. I mean, I think if there's a successful deal, what you'll see is that the forces that represent an alternative, Dahmin, Indijad and Iran who want to engage and whose central focus, if you look at Rouhani, Javad Zarif, their central focus is the Gulf. Their central focus is re-eviving international engagement. They have a very different agenda and to the extent that a successful second phase in the negotiation empowers them, they're going to be more amenable to solutions and compromises on Syria of the kind that have been discussed. On the other hand, if the peace process is a failure, they will be discredited and on their way out and the supreme leader will go back to supporting the much harder line elements and a peace deal will be much more difficult. I think that there is creative thinking about how to reach that deal. A satisfactory agreement is going to open up space. If the agreement doesn't take place, we're going to see Iran playing a much more of a spoiler. We can talk about it. So the question is about ripeness and I would argue that the situation today is less ripe for peace process than it was a year ago. And if that's true, why is that true? Because the free Syrian army is losing. And the jihadists are in a stronger position because they're being supported by the Gulf states and Assad is stronger because he's getting supported by Iran and Hezbollah. So things have changed on the ground which make the situation less ripe. And if you want to make it more ripe, you reverse that. Okay, Mark. Three observations. You know, I don't think the Russians would be unhappy if the conflict continues but it leads to deterioration in relations between America on the one hand and Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other. Two countries are seen as promoting the jihadists. I think what Russia would like to see is that just as America has woken up with the true nature of Pakistan it will wake up with the true nature of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. At least as Russia understands it. Second, I think that Russian support for Assad might weaken under certain circumstances. Syria obviously is not occurring in a void. If Ukraine blows up, if the North Caucasus blows up, if there's a domestic crisis in Russia itself, Russia doesn't have the time or resources to focus on Syria anymore and it may simply you know, agree to let the US deal with it. Russia might not. There are circumstances which may make Russia less of a factor but they don't relate to Syria itself. Third, it's not so much about what Russia could do but how Russia thinks. We're talking about the jihadists but of course the jihadists are divided aren't they and the stronger they perceive themselves to be the more likely they are to turn on each other and it strikes me that certainly the Russian approach would be to try to find who's the Khedirov among this group. Who's willing to do a deal to survive and it strikes me that we shouldn't simply you know think about the jihadists as uniform as monolithic nor should we think about them as more committed to ideology that in fact simply their own power. Mona. Speaking now not as a jihadist, I think I would underscore actually Manal's point about the importance of working at the grassroots within Syrian society is one of the most effective ways frankly of depriving the jihadists of the kind of support that they may get. But I also think we need to think about a de-escalation strategy from the outside as well in other words I think both are critical I don't see frankly a Geneva 2 getting off the ground on January 22nd because of the ripeness issue and therefore what I would recommend concretely is that on January 22nd some sort of interim conference take place that brings around the table the P5 plus 1 plus Iran, Saudi, Iraq and the key neighbors Turkey, yes thank you Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and that conference have three goals the first is to work hard to get the access, humanitarian access issue front and center and to begin to assuage the suffering of the Syrian people which I will go some way toward minimizing or reducing the appeal of jihadists. Secondly to de-escalate the sectarian tension because the extent to which there are sectarian tensions driving this the issues become existential and so the extent to which we can begin to de-escalate and in particular I would say bring Saudi and Iran around a table to start a dialogue I think is essential and third the destabilizing impact of Lebanon and Jordan the socio-economic forgetting even the sectarian issues the socio-economic impacts of this crisis are so significant that I think it should be a third key goal of getting in particular the Gulf and Russia countries that have not contributed proportionate to their means to begin to help those countries on the periphery of Syria deal with the spillover by the way you know I think this is really important very constructive kind of suggestion particularly in the context of the longer term approach if the consensus of this group in gaming this out is that in the short term a Geneva based or some other kind of political agreement seems to be impossible if the wherewithal to cut a real deal and bring in peacekeepers and do the things that we normally associate with this doesn't seem possible then maybe one should say well what is possible over the course of the near term is that de-escalation you know if you are is less war a good precy to some time eventually peace and in that context could you then also be doing grassroots and other kinds of things that are neutralizing other groups driving the ripening forward working on behind the scenes and relationships and so you get to a phased approach where there is a process and so long as the process is moving forward the situation is getting somewhat better I think you know I'm hearing that between the lines and a lot of this discussion and I just want to circle it because you know if that's the outcome of this discussion that's quite constructive I think Moulin thank you and I want to say to be honest I think some of the main problems that we were discussing today whether it is sectarianism jihadist economics decentralized but effective local governance and so on in Syria as we're going forward to sort of an overall peace plan but as the international community is sort of stuck in this gridlock and to be honest most of the time ignoring realities on the ground I said that comment earlier about the best way to defeat jihadists being through civil society I don't think that's optimistic at all and you can only sort of first of all somebody mentioned the lack of a Mandela that's an Arab Mandela that could rise in Syria that he can only rise through supporting local governance starting in villages and small communities and integrating them together as you go into a provincial level we saw that in Aleppo the one province that is completely controlled by Islamic State of Iraq and Shamware all resources are controlled by the Islamic State the most extreme of any faction in Syria more extreme I would say than even traditional al-Qaeda thinking and the only reason people don't go out and protest isn't fear of death but is fear of not getting bread at the end of the day so first of all channeling instead of doing this arbitrarily sending humanitarian aid into Syria channeling it only through civilian governance where the civilian governing council civil society or whatever you want to call it is not a religious scholar nor is he or she an armed person or part of a militia and then you can only look as far as the language of the jihadists themselves I mean they talk about Sahwa awakening all the time they go after apostates that are more important for them to kill before the regime that's every moderate Sunni every civilian council and anything like that that exists and finally you know talking about closing borders or cutting off funding I believe as the lady said they're self-sustaining in Aleppo they've taken over factories they've taken over everything they're able to sell and they have a very strong economic agenda I was really surprised in my last conversation with people in Aleppo on the inside just that extent of consolidation of governance that they have done in that area and so first of all translate move this into a you know prescriptive how do we get forward we send all humanitarian aid only through civilian governing structures that are emerging and we remember that unlike other Libya and other places civilian society in Syria civil society never actually went down it actually just grew and became more powerful we just never covered in the media and I think realizing that is the most important thing thinking about closing the Turkish border for example the biggest place where maybe jihadists come through would kill the revolution the Turks easier for them domestically politically to close it obviously but honestly humanitarian aid and everything else would hinder the revolution so much would be the biggest favor for us so I think really counting on civilian governance and ensuring sort of its integration and growth is the only way to fight jihadists the only way to really have a real idea of sort of a model of what a decentralized government with some sort of central government can look like okay I've got a lot of people around the table I want to be respectful of that Kaz I want to come back to this issue of rightness and as an analyst I'm looking at what could change over time I think Hans was right in pointing us towards identifying power shifts as being consequential shifts towards the jihadists shifts towards Assad but similarly you could say that the western willingness to engage Assad in a cam negotiation that changed the dynamic the US participation in direct negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal changed the dynamic I've just been taking off a list of things that could change down the road that could be consequential and we've touched on a number of them during the course of the day a split in the alawites something happening to Assad but there are a couple of others that perhaps we haven't touched on as much so if there is a successful nuclear deal involving Iran that will contribute to a change dynamic but what if there's a failed nuclear deal at that point the US and others are left with very uncomfortable choices but you could see a forceful outcome there indeed you could see Israel and Hezbollah coming at it again and clearly that would have an effect on the Syrian dynamic there may be and I looked to others on this but there could be internal dynamics in Turkey if these refugee flows continue at the pace that they have that could lead to a changed Turkish position a changed relationship between Iran and Saudi that would have a substantial effect on the dynamics in the region and then we've talked about pressures on Lebanon and Jordan if one or both of them start going down the tubes as a result of this so it seems to me out of a process like this having an effect to checklists that you're looking at and if one or two or three of these start changing in a fundamental way addressing what the implications for a changed environment in Syria would be is an important contribution that you can make and I think one of the things that can come out of a process like this is developing a kind of an identification of drivers and then an identification of what might be considered a red flags and tripwires to use a terminology that sometimes I use when doing these kind of things which is to say things that could happen that would indicate things are heading in one direction or another, those are red flags and then tripwires are things that if they happen they should motivate a change in policy or they should motivate an action and so there's some of these things that you're talking about that are really tripwires that you know should motivate us or motivate the participants to say okay something has fundamentally changed the opportunity may actually have changed as a result of this because clearly the process is not going to drive us towards a peace process is not going to drive us towards peace as much as all the other processes, the war process the regional political process even environmental processes you know I think one of the things that struck me particularly as I was looking at the papers here was recalling that it was a consequence of drought that led to some of the shortages that led to this particular crisis and it was a consequence of drought that led to the food shortages that led to the Arab Spring as well and so there are big factors here that are contributory to this kind of thing that we don't sort of take into consideration but you know the drought and those of you I mean you know we can go into what the origins of those kind of droughts are and what that leads to as we think about it but I mean the picture gets bigger and bigger Jim The answer to the specific question on how we dealt with al-Qaeda in Iraq could be a way to deal with the larger problem that you keep pushing us for concrete suggestions on. First of all it was all of the above both efforts to close the frontier put the Syrians under pressure and was also an uprising of the local communities that isn't easy but it can be done in particular the Turks and to a lesser extent but still a significant degree the Gulf States can be convinced to dial back their support the Turkish border could be controlled much more effectively against these people but the question is what do they get in return the answer is there has to be some compromise or step back on the part of Assad and his Russian and Iranian friends the typical example would be Assad promising to step down the United States could leverage that if the United States were willing to play a stronger role including putting pressure on both our allies to dial back on the support for the jihadists and to put pressure on Russia and Assad and Iran to go for a compromise solution or face unending war with not only the jihadists but potentially with US and Gulf and Turkish armed more moderate forces there's been a lot of work done on the ground quietly on that over the past year and a half it just doesn't come to fruition but it could not with necessarily different American government and I think that's the easiest thing to change because frankly the US government a couple of years ago or certainly US government the Clinton administration would have been in a position where they could have used this kind of power good point it also suggests that as we look at this and as we talk about these is that a victory that's a scream to be able to get the floor to rebut this argument that we heard why would Assad give in to anything why would Assad take a step back why would Assad make a concession he is winning time is on his side he's going to continue scaring this is what I was actually going to get at which is based on what we talked about at the beginning of this discussion there is not a lot of incentive for him to do that but as is the thrust of this particular portion of the discussion there might be things that would create incentive for him to do that where Russia might need to change the situation with Iran might change the situation within Syria itself might change but in all our discussions the only concrete answer I think was given by Hans and I second him and that is the biggest threat to the Assad regime which is to support and assist the moderate forces other than that there are no incentives I just agree there's a split in the Assad regime this is what we've been looking for it's a defector call it what you may one man's defectors and other man's patriot go ahead I'll try to be brief but there's several points I want to make ripening requires stalemate of a prolonged nature it requires exhaustion of the parties the cutting off of their resources and them sustaining or them suffering unsupportable losses for little or no gain it's an ugly concept but that's in a civil war like this how you get things ripen and we in the Russians as some have noted this morning are not as far apart as we seen I think the president's statement that Assad has when you say we who do you mean the US and Russia oh so you really are a defector both powers do not want the Islamists the militant Islamists ruling Syria or large parts of Syria and I think both we in the Russians would be willing to find ways to cooperate and to co-op others to stop that from happening and that gets into the whole business of getting Assad to step aside we can offer we and others can offer the Russians certain assurances at least in terms of what our policies would be that might make it palatable for them to go with us the Alawite it seems to me the statistics you put up there were quite stunning about the losses the army has suffered those are not sustainable losses if those continue if that trajectory continues for any length of time the Alawites are only about a community of two and a half million losses in the army 50, 40,000, 50,000 they cannot be happy with that they cannot want to continue with that if they have an alternative to having their throats cut and I think they're willing to they'd be willing to jettison the Assad and McLoops for certain security guarantees but that's a strong word guarantees we'd have to be willing to put some skin in the game that center around much of the army being kept intact and the reasonable opposition or the less crazy opposition the opposition isn't crazy but if we can isolate the worst jihadists the reasonable opposition may be willing to cut a deal with the Alawites for power sharing and for integrating some of their forces into a military that's pledged to serve the people and uphold a new constitution and support a transition I mean that's to me and then those who might oppose this like the Saudis we need to go to them and say what is it you want you don't want the Muslim brotherhood you don't want the jihadists you don't want Assad work with us a little bit here give us some breathing space so we can think about supporting this financially you cut off you work with the GCC to cut off aid to the ISIS and jump at the Nusra and those types of groups okay we keep going around here Andrew this will be very brief in terms of what it would take for us to kind of feel that our needs were met and we could withdraw from the conflict on the map that shows the alternative outcome a divided Syria this gets at at least two of our the first being which is mostly defending the route of advanced weapons systems into Lebanon you know defending those logistics or logistical lines the second and this is ironic for Hezbollah to be talking about a security zone but a security zone around the northeastern Bahá to where that cuts off a lot of the traffic of weapons in jihadis coming into into Lebanon that's the second thing the third thing which we haven't mentioned is the protection of the Shia community in Syria this is not this does not line up on a one-on-one basis with the Aloui community there's a separate Shia community in Syria as well as Shia shrines in Syria and I think if there were some guarantees given either by the you know military facts on the ground or negotiated settlement to protect both Shia communities and those shrines that would not only allay a lot of the concerns of Hezbollah but also perhaps some of our Iraqi brethren who have been fighting in Syria I would like to add to what my colleague here has said first I have been listening now all this afternoon about jihadis jihadis and here I am as Hezbollah in Syria fighting jihadis not one single word of gratitude from the international community I mean I'm the one who is putting all these men and losing all my fighters there doing that for you all for your benefit and I have intelligence, I have know-how I have now networks which I can share with all of you about these jihadi networks having been on the ground now for the last two years fighting them I have been in consultation for some time now about Syria with Mr. Khamenei and with the real leader on Syria in Iran, Mr. Sulaymani and basically while we started this fight with one objective in mind which is to prevent the military defeat of the Assad regime and we think that has now been achieved however we are not limited to a final end game that will guarantee the political survival of Assad. There is a range of options that is available to us between preventing military defeat of Assad and guaranteeing Assad's political survival and in between there are a number of options that we and the Iranians will be open to be to discuss with the international community to discuss with the Saudis and to discuss with others as long as our security interests which my colleague has mentioned here are met. One for example, there is one proposal that has now been floated in some of my media about the transition authority going forward about a transition arrangement that we could live with and we could persuade our ally Assad to live with one element of it could be to persuade Mr. Assad not to run in May 2014 and we believe that he is persuadable. Second is to think of the transitional cabinet in terms of three components, building very much on the Lebanese experience of cabinet formation. We can think of a transitional authority or cabinet that consists of 10 people that are selected by the Assad regime that are acceptable to all the other players regional and international. We can think of another 10 that are to be selected based on the internal opposition and maybe some expat opposition that are acceptable also to us and to Mr. Assad and we can think of a third that is selected by the international community. So these are three components of a transitional authority that could help assure Syria toward a final kind of political agreement. We don't believe that this transitional period should be preconditioned on Assad departure. We can keep Mr. Assad there as president since the executive powers would be invested in this transitional cabinet but then at the end of a year, two year, whatever transitional period we can agree on, then we can leave it up to the Syrian people after having introduced the necessary constitutional reform to decide who should run for their president. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to offer just a couple of suggestions for things I think we could do very easily right now. These are very practical and not particularly glamorous but I'm excited to deliver of our humanitarian assistance. One thing that I think would help quite a bit is if we could make our humanitarian assistance more flexible. Right now, as everyone has mentioned, we are seeing a lot of tensions between the refugee communities and the host communities in Jordan and Lebanon. One of the main reasons there's a lot of tension is over things like water. Right now, humanitarian assistance is very difficult to deal with. There are a lot of those kinds of things. A number of NGOs are starting to focus on that work, improving water systems overall to reduce the pressure on water so that there are less tensions. So anyway, make humanitarian assistance more flexible so that it can deal with some of the root causes of tensions between the refugee and host communities. Another thing that I think would be an interesting is that the refugee leaders are in theory represented by the opposition leaders. And I do think that they have a role to play in pressuring a fragmented moderate opposition to come together to fight on their behalf, the people in the refugee camps. So I think we're sort of not thinking about the leaders in the camps as a potential source of pressure for internal actors. But they'll need some help to come together to build their position so that some NGOs are doing with leaders in refugee camps, although not about influencing opposition inside Syria, but rather how do they manage affairs more effectively within the refugee camps themselves. The third thing that I think we could do a great deal more of through our current humanitarian assistance that we're not, there are 4.6 million young people and children who are affected by this conflict. This is an enormous pool of recruits for radical groups. It is, they need a great deal more than just basic assistance in education. These young people need to feel like they're doing something meaningful with their lives, that they're making some kind of contribution to their communities. Again, there are all sorts of things you can do under the umbrella of humanitarian assistance with young people that might give them options that would lead them away from a more militant posture. These are things like engaging young people in the delivery of humanitarian assistance programs. These are psychosocial programs for young people, but these are still a tiny, tiny part of our humanitarian assistance. And so if we can start rethinking how to use that, the billions that are going in in a way to shape the future piece, I think it would be worth exploring. Excuse me. On your issue about what could change, I just wanted to pick up on the point. I think if the Iranian-U.S. deal is actually finalized and concluded that that will lead to changes in Saudi-Iranian relations and even Saudi-U.S. relations, that they will be more once that's a quote done deal, they will be more interested in being at least less publicly critical of the U.S. and more interested in a dialogue with Iran on reducing the sectarian issue so that it becomes possible maybe to have a dialogue about it's not we don't need to have Sunni Shia strife as the as the future as far as the eye can see that it's in our interest and certainly I would argue in the interest of everybody in the region that tension reduced I think if the deal is not done the opposite happens, the Saudi search for friends in the region intensifies who can we rely on in Syria who can we rely on in Iraq and those are basically not the governments right now interesting thank you as Lebanon our job here today has mostly been to be disengaged and look nervous about the trend of events which by the way you've done a great job it was harder than you think but I think I'd like to comment from a Lebanese perspective there's always been a strong feeling that the solution in Syria was going to rely on regional players coming together in some kind of agreement maybe not always invoking Taif but something that is reminiscent of Taif the problem has been though that ripeness has been reached for different groups of players at different points and because of different factors Syria and the opposition they don't appear to have reached a point of ripeness yet the US and EU may or may not have achieved ripeness at various stages as Bala I think have a very different definition of what would prompt them to feel that the time was ripe to come to a solution I think we heard about Russia what some of the factors might be to make Russia change its stance and look for a peaceful solution but the one intersection among all those groups of players may be when those effects of the Syria conflict start taking material form in both Lebanon and Jordan and so the question that goes from the Lebanese aspect is rather than allow our analytical construct to be tested that it's only when sectarian violence breaks out in Lebanon or when Jordan starts to feel even more serious stresses than they do now what are the possible steps that could be taken in advance of that stage if we all agree that that's when we come together why can't we just skip the stage of having Lebanon break down into violence and move right into whatever the kinds of procedures would be or processes would be in order to move to that piece that you're trying to define here thank you I have three points and one of them connects a little bit indirectly to that but it was more a response actually to Mona's comment earlier about encouraging Russia and others who had contributed proportionately to helping the countries on the periphery to do that and I guess I think it's rather unlikely that Moscow would agree to do that and I suspect that the response would be that responsibility for the conditions in those countries lays with those outside forces that exacerbated the civil war by supporting the opposition to the legitimate government of the country so I think Russia is unlikely to do that I guess the second thing we were having the discussion of Iran and what might happen if there were a US-Iran deal and I guess from a Russian perspective if there's a US-Iran deal then Moscow pushes even harder to get Iran really in a formal way into the process and at that point I think the Russian message to Washington would be now what's your objection right so that's something possibly to think about and the last one is more of kind of a general point of thinking about Russia's approach to this problem I would make an analytical distinction between things that we can hope to win support or active assistance from Russia to do versus things that Russia may be prepared to accept and to live with and if the situation around in Syria really deteriorated and if the extremists were making really significant gains and if those gains were coming mostly at the expense of the regime rather than the Syrian opposition then maybe we would get to a place where Russia could live with some kind of external intervention whether military or otherwise that it won't really be too keen to accept now you know as we draw to the end of this thing you know I'm a million thoughts are running through my head you know we started out we laid a groundwork we talked about peace we then as we started drilling down in terms of the interests around the table the traditional approach to peace seemed to be an unlikely thing in the near term and so we began to explore what might be able to happen over the course of the near term whether it was a fragmented state or some kind of a phased set of agreements that ultimately got us to where we were going and we've had here in this course of this conversation some fairly different approaches all of which are constructive and substantive and sort of work within this framework that we've talked about Mona had an approach where we talk about a first period where we were sort of reduced conflict de-intensify the conflict at the beginning and then perhaps you know with time and the progress on a number of other things we might get to something more traditional in terms of political restructuring and then we went to a peace Ted talked about ways that we might be able to cut a deal and lead to a transition within the Assad government Ron even talked about a structure of a transitional government that might be acceptable admittedly to Hezbollah and Assad above all Iran and that was also constructive in terms of an approach all of these are more drawn out than commonly discussed all of these are more incremental and all of them you know if there's a common theme to them it's get what you can get now and then move forward build a process where you have small successes that lead to bigger successes bigger successes going forward and that seems to be a constraint that's working here and I'm going to turn to Kristen in a second to get her take on some of these broader conclusions and I will admit I will stipulate in terms of this sort of first truncated piece came and I must admit it's a bit of a curveball to take two and a half sessions out of the thing and to try to condense it down to time that still the idea of bringing together experts and having them play roles and tackling some of the issues via the role playing has been illuminating stress testing the issues and certainly having a little bit more time would have enabled us to do that in a bit of a more orderly fashion and so some of this has been a little bit impressionistic but we'll learn from these experiences but I'm struck by this but one of the things that strikes me is this is driven by a couple of really big themes one of which is an absolutely profound and fundamental shift in our view of what the United States and the western goals are in this part of the world in terms of the level of engagement but also from 1979 until now Iran was the big enemy and most of our relationships in the region and most of our actions in the region were oriented towards dealing with that threat and over the course of the past several years and not just now but over the course of the past several years we've started accepting a shift in that both in terms of the leadership structure in Iraq in terms of where we're going now with this nuclear deal and so forth and that if you accept that if you have the leader of the western powers and the most influential voice within an important group of the regional powers accepting a different role for Iran in the region it changes the dynamic of this thing turns it on its head it's absolutely stunning and it comes out of you know something that I sort of again this is just a personal view or strain myself in personal views up until now I just want to throw one in but it comes out of this notion that somehow Islamist extremist groups are a bigger threat that they're the big threat out there that they're the bogeyman and that that's what motivates public opinion in the United States and elsewhere more than a hegemonic threat in the region or some of the other things that have motivated us in the past and you know we can debate that until cows come home but it's a big deal and one of the questions that I think needs to be asked in a different kind of a form from this is is that right do Islamist extremist groups actually pose a bigger threat to the interests of the United States and western powers than others with hegemonic interests in the region or others with just simply a different geopolitical agenda than the United States that's something that there hasn't been a huge amount of debate about but just underneath all this it's a pivot in terms of how we tackle these things anyway maybe we can hear from you and then we can wrap this up sure David I'll give a few personal reflections after listening to you all today before I do that though I really really want to thank all of you for coming today and participating in this experiment I really want to thank foreign policy and we've had a terrific partnership with them I want to thank you I want to thank all of my colleagues here at the U.S. Institute of Peace and you know when you have a project like this that engages vice presidents and your external relations staff and your program assistants and your receptionist and your security guards and your public affairs team and everybody else is extremely unwise to single anybody out I am going to do that anyway I would like to single out Rachel Brandenburg and Jeff Krantel thank you I know David may want to be similarly unwise or not with his own team but I just want to thank the whole F.P. team as well as all of you now let me give some of my own reflections I'm coming not just to this game today but to this job at the U.S. Institute of Peace with a background much more in national security and war than in peace building and indeed what I have been reminded of today is what a frustrating and challenging job building is and how lonely it is as you can see as I'm left here at the end of the day you drove these people away obviously I'm sorry but I did want to say that you gave me in some ways more hope than I expected today and it's not because peace in Syria is any easier than I had foreseen but perhaps you illuminated for me more paths to peace while they may not be likely there may be more of them than I had imagined and let me express what I mean first you suggested that there could be global solutions to peace which would involve potentially the UN or great powers coming together or other regional powers coming together that could make a difference in the conflict you also illuminated though that the solutions could come more locally whether in local communities or within the region and perhaps the solutions lie there and that there could be some solutions lying there you illuminated that some of the solutions might come from friends, traditional allies pulling closer together but what I heard a lot of today is that the solutions may come from traditional enemies and that may be both within Syria between some elements of the Assad regime or the Alawite community and the more moderate elements of the opposition or it could be between traditional opponents or enemies in the region the Saudis and the Iranians perhaps if there's a deal between the Iranians and the United States perhaps there are some makings of an end in Syria there and also we learned that some of the solutions may come from the strong again and again I was struck at how traditional some of the solutions we discussed appeared this was the bring in the strong the outside powers great power politics imposing a solution many of you here today pointed to that but we also heard that perhaps the week were actually the solution to the problem perhaps it was civil society perhaps it was even people in refugee camps who could somehow come together and rise up and be the leaders that we need to see and impose and develop some of these new models when the old models clearly aren't working so with that David I turn it over to you thank you I don't need the microphone you know I do want to be unwise in the same way the terrific group of people from foreign policy have been involved in this process from the beginning Deb Cunningham who runs our events division Alex Glass who runs it with her have played a critical role Jess Dillman on the communication staff a bunch of the folks on our editorial team have been involved and I do want to point out in that respect that peace game is a process it's not an event that takes place in one day we are doing this event here every six months we'll alternate between one here and one in the Middle East so this is an ongoing dialogue we also have the peace channel on the website and there will be a constant flow of articles into that and perhaps some of you may at some point wish to contribute to that we want to have as big a dialogue as we can both through that when we do the peace game in the spring we're going to commence a program of outreach to universities where we're going to pose certain questions to them they will do there will be an essay contest some of the winners of those contests will be able to actually join us in the peace games part of the peace game package involved underwriting subscriptions to foreign policy and access to all of this for the students at the top 10 international fair schools in the United States so there is that kind of an outreach and who knows we may think of other things smaller lunches other kinds of programs along the way that we you know that we want to incorporate in this rigorous disciplined look at the processes that lead to peace identifications of the challenges looking for alternative views bringing together terrific minds like all of yours in that process I also want to point out that Claire Casey and Zach Ratner and some of the team from Garten Rothkoff which is another company that I'm involved with are the people that put together the slides and the questions and some of the substantive background associated with this they have done a terrific job as they always do but I guess what you get from this is the USIP group that's been led by Jim but by Kristen from the very very beginning and that great team and this team from FP are all committed to this are all working together to take this start of this one day and build it into something that we think will be very very different from the remarks that Kristen and I have flagged from the beginning we don't want to do things that are the same as everything else we want to look for new formats we want to look for new ways we want to bring new voices into the discussion and hopefully you can help us with that the secret to the success of this effort will be if everything we do is better than what we've done today which is not to say what we've done today hasn't been terrific you have all made an enormous contribution to the dialogue it is better than we could have hoped for but we want to make it better every day by getting your suggestions getting your input getting your articles getting you to future events having you suggest other people that could be involved and the two teams that we've got working together can really build this into something that we think can be influential and really deliver a message to the policy teams and others who are working on this that said we've worked you hard for the day you know snowmageddon 2 is coming all of the 3 inches that will shut down Washington those of all of us who live here in Washington know that even if there's no snow Washington will be shut down but that's another issue but just so that you don't go and get into these problems poor Kristen has come here today despite the fact that there's no power at her house that they lost power yesterday and 3 inches of snow could knock out this entire area so we appreciate your flexibility in dealing with us changing the schedule and we hope you'll join us at future of these events and if I may ask join me in thanking everybody here for a terrific day thank you all very much