 in the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University and a political consultant. Dr. Mitchell is the author of Democracy, US Foreign Policy, Georgia's Rose Revolution, the Color Revolution, and the Democracy Paradox, as well as two books about baseball. Linda Linderman, to the left, is a respect fellow with Pertice Petruccio, your mentor at the Atlantic Council, her research focuses on origin politics, economics, and foreign relations. Previously, she served at the Asia Center as an associate director, where she developed and shaped analytic and intellectual work on George's port of Georgia and Turkey, Ukraine, and most of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the region. Before we get started with the presentation, I would first answer a question that maybe some of you have, what is your Atlantic personality? On the table of the event, and this is gonna play a central role in this discussion, I would answer that by saying, your conditionality describes a process partner states take liberal democratic reforms in return to economic, political, or security incentive projects in your Atlantic community. These incentives are institutional or transactional, digital, or symbolic, or a combination of these. But in general, you can conditionally imply that you need to be ever closer in connection with your Atlantic structures, NATO or the European Union. So with further due, I would like to pass the mic to Lincoln and Lincoln, the floor is yours. Thank you, thank you to the foundation. Important questions, and important questions in my view is they ask us to sit in a capital in Tbilisi, Kea, or Chisinaw, but also in Washington or elsewhere, you know, elsewhere in the West capital, you mean in a provincial tent, like a small, like. First question, they ask us to ask, why do we value democracy? If as Michael has pointed out, the conditionality is not really there anymore. Then everyone has to say, why do we want my country to be democratic if you're sitting in Tbilisi? Why do you want my country to be democratic, frankly, if you're sitting in states? But also, why do I want to be in London or watch wherever I care about what happens there? It's not the conditionality. Because the conditionality is not just, you do this, you become more democratic, we do these things, it's, you become unaligned. So it's the stand alone. We have to rest the weaning of democracy. We go along the West and you kind of have a market economy. There's no, you know, you're kind of, everyone speaks English and you know, all of that. And we have to come up with a more, and I think it's a full definition of democracy. And you know, I actually very impressed that Michael was an introduction, because the way he did it is usually what happens is that you frame this by what's happening with it and all of that. I'm glad that you, because these questions exist way, we're important way before all of this happened. The rollback in the West makes it harder to answer questions. These questions don't emerge out of, right? They predate that quite a bit. And then I want to just say that I want to suggest we should, incentive is the word here, not the conditionality. Because incentives means that we can't offer something. Listen, in ocean is that no release, we can offer that anymore. But conditionality is a little different because we can't pull anything back, right? If you look at the populations with, in any whatever country you want it, we have much more power and very little stick. The notion that we're going to cut assistance is not plausible, right? The notion that you're not going to care any more what happens in your country is not possible. Maybe some of the leaders want, it's not plausible, right? At the end of the day, let me rephrase that, if you peel away the layers of policy rationalizations, for the United States an ally is somebody who will take our money, right? So the reason we can never threaten that we're going to cut assistance is because actually we lose an ally. We define an ally as will you take our money? And most people are, life as in politics and geopolitics are happy to take your money. So what then is happening, right? How have countries, what's happened on the grouse of this change? One thing is that as the, on the one hand, the country is no longer there, right? Countries have seen that what we do we're not that map. The road to the United States seems to be starting to repeat itself, rather than then ending. And at the same time, many foreign governments to about which we're talking today have become very good at gaming the West. They've begun to understand our real motivations. They understand the winking that come, accompanies talks of democracy. Well, it's okay if you're not so democratic, stay the right thing on Russia, right? Or you got to the right thing on how to really give secure issues, right? So that one kind of gets that. I would say that tilt very recently being strongly anti-Russia in your rhetoric was a stand for democracy, right, region. That was a surrogate measure and an imprecise and imperfect surrogate measure of democracy. I'm not sure the extent to which changed in the last 13 months or the extent it will continue to change, but that certainly was the case and that made it easy for foreign countries to fudge their democracy. I think what I've said about our limited condition because we can't take away assistance is not new. If I were to go to Kiev and well, if many countries and say, I don't know if you understand that. They understand that we have tools in our toolbox and we like that we have and that gives weakens the West. So I'm just gonna talk a little bit about how to then give it all that. How do we build momentum? How do we create the energy needed to consolidate democracy, to consolidate the movement of the movement of the movement? The first thing I think is it is more important than ever to believe in these ideas, to really understand them and that sounds like it doesn't mean anything. I think it actually means something. For a long time, this is the moment our belief in democracy, obviously, I'm leaving, I'm leaving to make a American Democrat go back to the side of the moment. But you can't say to a creed, if you do this, we will do that. When the second half of that sentence becomes possible. And certainly off the record, how it is in many, many cases now, we know that the map is, right? When the NATO may happen, but for a while, right? We're kind of, certainly with the U.S., we kind of, you're all about organizations. So our efforts to sell or promote democracy can no longer be based upon that transactional. It has to be based upon the ideals. But it also has a domestic component to that. Domestic, that if you are sitting in Georgia, pick one country on a random. For a long time, democracy was key to national security strategy in Georgia. I first wrote that in 2007 or 2008, people thought that was not, you know, people, well, actually people didn't agree because they thought Georgia was already democratic. But that was considered new. Now that's considered an old idea. It's less true now, because in fact, regardless of what's hand Georgian democracy, the national security, kind of the more democracy didn't get them into NATO, less democracy didn't get them into the West. So it's a kind of, not a variable. But for meth, of internal stability, democracy is probably important. If you believe in democracy, because if you believe in democracy, remember where you're sitting, if you believe it's the government, when there's domestic stability, when there's war, when there's peace, when there's everything in between. And that's my view. So for many of these countries, the way to re-energize this is because the domestic stability may be at stake. More democracy, not less, it may be the way the range of radical problems. And I would say if we look at Ukraine, which is kind of the most difficult challenging country in the region, and certainly the biggest in many words, given the last events, last few years, there are many interpretations of what happened in 2012 to 2014, and what caused that to happen. But certainly one of them would be democracy wasn't strong enough, right? More democracy, stronger institutions in Ukraine might have led to more stability and prevented the need to have the Euro-My-Den movement, might have made it hard. But the last couple of points to make here is that our record in all of this region, we talk about continuity or not, we have many successes and many failures. We've made, we've delivered on many promises, we've been able, and here I'm speaking both the US, but collectively as we've been able to deliver on others. The last year there was a debate I guess 18 months ago, there had been a spate of 25 years celebrations of this event, the end of the beginning of that. This is not a long time. We're not, this is not many days anymore in the grandest of, you know, first three periods of those, but in this, the country, our Azerbaijanians existed for an Indian state more than about 30% of them. Yeah. So we're pretty far down. These relationships are very complicated and we need to be thinking about that and saying, just promise and be surprised when they don't deliver or be, people that we haven't delivered for 20 years on site, they know we have on us and that's the context in which it's occurred. And then, you know, and I think again, there are countries in the region completely in flux, right? And I think the next frame remains in a country where the regime is in flux. It's not clear to me, which goes 20, 36 months. And it's clear to me that this, it's really level of stability that's really sustainable. There are other countries in the region where in my one it's not, it's not always the one that everyone seems to agree, but I'll say it anyway, where change has slowed, the illusion of change has not always slowed. So what we're seeing is some countries settling into kind of a semi-authoritarian regime, it's pretty hard to get together. The other countries all into a authoritarian regime, which is not asked forever, but will likely be replaced in other semi-authoritarian regimes, right? And this is in fact the history of modernization in many respects, much of the modern times. And that's the point of that, very difficult to think about, not just what you have kind of a possible additionality, but what do you do even with it because possible conditionality didn't work. So maybe end there, and make more comments on the question. Okay, thank you, Lincoln, those are all provoking. Next, we have Laura Linderman. Laura, Laura's yours. Thanks, thanks for that. It's very interesting how you framed the question, which in a sort of a different direction. When I sort of saw the introduction and talked about the thinking, well, given the reality of what we know, for example, the National Partnership Summit 2019, there's going to not be incredible EU membership for the Eastern Europe countries, let's just say it. Any reform agenda being undertaken sort of in some countries, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, it's done in an environment that's not benign, information, aggression, a lot of stuff happening. So given the situation as it is right now, these questions of conditionality are really interesting. And what sort of approach can, what truth do we see, what sort of carrots are going to be possible to offer or not? And I think that we're going to see in the short term this transactional approach, say the EU, a group of MEPs recently, talked about some particular practical ideas of what is done in the short term to even sustain any sort of reform, especially for the runners, who think that there is some movement, it's unclear as you sort of switched direction. Those were something like a relation on the customs union that would deepen trade relations and improve custom controls, popular that maybe help in political leader regions get quick, such as eliminations of roaming charges or integration to the EU's emerging or digital markets, trust funds, focusing on economic infrastructure, supporting economic reforms and other initiatives that will help sort of phase out monopolies, limiting the role of oligarchs, et cetera. Those types of ideas are helpful and might be something that could be useful in the short term while we do see the big, these questions about membership, map, et cetera, it's not going to happen right now. But if roof can somehow sustain in the short term, some point in the short term when it could be a door of opportunity, maybe if reforms continue, then it could be some positive in the future. So I think important to look at what can be done right now while we're talking about these good questions sort of from a high level, where do we see things and what should be done. Great, thank you, Laura. Your role as moderator, I feel I reserved the right to. Ask the first couple of questions, so I'm gonna take a minute of that. First question's for Laura. You mentioned that you see a traditional approach as being something that is possible, at least for the short term, in lieu of kind of this ticket conditionality items like membership in NATO, membership in the EU. And it reminds me of past, the end of last year, ahead of NATO partnerships in late November. You know, Parliament issued a more tangible benchmarks and rewards by advanced Eastern partnership states, including the possibility of flies in the face of this whole discussion we're having, because that actually seems to imply that it is possible, that though it is open. I mean, how real do you think something like that is? And is it just a warm statement from Brussels, or is conditionality making a comeback? I would, what I would argue, and what I would say is that four leaders in the countries such as Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, spending time cultivating political and opinion leaders for individual members pushing some of this, for some of the declines from the AAPS resolution, spending time in Germany, focusing less, is gonna be useful, and more, you know, putting forward security arguments such as a strong independent Georgia is good for the security of Europe. And it's a necessary long-term strategy for combating Russian aggression. I would also argue, you know, continuing to work on economic reform, that's also gonna help security, so pushing some of these economic initiatives that have been put forward. And then asking for particular things such as petitioning the EU for anti-corrupt assistance for Ukraine with anti-corruption reforms, independent anti-corruption courts, or soft, soft things such as, you know, international scholarships or exchange programs. Those have been very, very beneficial and can continue to sort of move things forward. So I would say definitely pivot away from big asks towards practical, might be in the current environment. Link, do you think the West made a mistake conditioning integration or other offerings to reform? I mean, did this undercut the case for for merits, by conflating it as a bargaining chip? Or did the West fail to make a convincing, sustained case for organic reform? Or both? I don't think it, I'm okay with using some carrots as a way to incentivize reform. I am, the problem that you and your question in my view seem to kind of dance around a little bit is that that, there's two ways to look at this, I guess. One, it would be to say that in many countries the desire for reform was never as deep as we would have liked to have seen. And the other is that we were happy, we didn't push it when we thought we would be able to go back to that desire real, real. And because of that, the danger remain that as countries, as carrots become less realistic, the desire for reform erodes. On the other hand, I'm not convinced, it sounds a little simplistic, right? Clearly Ukraine to a great extent, that's what happened. That's one of the reasons that that contributed to the kind of the 2010 to 2014 events, not the events since then. I'm exhausted. So let me just, back to the question. Okay. A question. Yes. The desire for reform, how real it is, it's interesting because in recent Ukrainian protests, you saw a really strong engaged civil society and the protests almost were because of the desire for reform that had not sort of been undertaken by government, by this like brought off the really engaged civil society and others in the population who want should reduce from a really organic way, so. And that's why we're looking at the 2010 to 2013 time to make this argument. The point I was gonna make related to this was that, countries, states negotiate with other states, what they do if you're a poor state, if you're not a superpower. And the idea that Moldova or Georgia would look around and say, I can get, I can get no roaming charges from the, and I get some investment low interest from China, like that's total, that's very rational behavior by the states in question. It's not evidence of a desire to reform, it's evidence of a desire to advance state interest. It doesn't preclude a desire to reform, but if I think we should read too much into it. Okay, I'd like to open the questions. Please introduce yourself if you can. So, I'm gonna stay on the floor. I want to talk about democracy, and we're talking about the same thing, but I don't think we are. If I may, I'd like to quote a couple sentences from Lincoln's first inaugural, which I think bears on this. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, that's the key phrase, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does a necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. This is a rejection of the nation state as a form of democracy. When he talks about public opinion, a few years earlier, John Stuart Mill, an unrepresentative government, had promoted the idea of the nation state. This is really floating around with the French Revolution maybe before. Lincoln was rejecting that. You have to focus on public opinion, no identification of the nation with the states. In the United States, at the founding of the United States, we spoke of the empire of liberty, a large amount. I think this is the difference here. When people talk about democracy nowadays, they tend to think of the nation state, and they don't think of the constitutional checks and limitations so much, it's majority rule. These, I think, are the critical matters. I think you have to go back into the history more of how this evolved before you can start in on these questions. Do you have a question? It's just a comment. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not sure I agree for a couple of reasons. I think that I've worked on democracy issues all over the world, not just in this region, and not just for American organizations, and almost everyone understands that this is about limiting state power, that this is about checks and balances, almost to a fault. It may not end up that way, but everyone who talks about democracy gets that, so I'm a little hesitant to say that people don't. I think your point is an accurate one, but, and I mean, I think there's a challenge here, which is that, and I wrote this in the democracy promotion paradox, I think, in this town, and I mean literally in this town, Washington, a Democrat, if you're a leader of a foreign country, which I don't think any of us are, but if you are, and you want to be a Democrat, you have to have two qualifications. You have to be under 50 years to speak English, full stop, right? And which means as of like a month and a half ago, I can no longer be a democratically elected leader of a foreign country, but because what has happened is not that those who are thinking about what democracy is, lack of sophisticated understanding of it, it's that everyone else, and I am including, I'm not from Washington, I rarely even spend the night here, and it's not because I'm an outsider like Sarah Palin, it's because I have children and a dog and I like to get home, but I am amazed at the people in high ranking positions in this town, and I'm not pointing partisan fingers because it's across partisan lines, very powerful people who are impressed when they meet a foreigner who speaks English. I'm sorry, but that is mind blowing. New York is a tougher town, we're a little more skeptical there, but that's a bigger problem that, aha, he speaks English. He went to school at Bill and ex American, nothing wrong with American universities, I've taught a lot of them, but that is not proof that you are a Democrat. That is the bigger, and the kind of hoodwinkery that goes on around that, and now 25 years in, everyone knows that game. So I think that is actually a more, and I would also, and I don't want to get a lecture about democracy, but I would also add, I think another problem is that we tend to project, there is much about American democracy that is unique in the context of other democratic states around the world, and we, because the United States is, and again, I don't know this new world of the United States, but through the end of 2016 is the largest single actor in the democracy promotion of the world, that we tend to form an emphasis on local politics, right, a local, local, a very strong argument in the democratic literature against how to power at the local level, right? Gallaud up, right? Right? Representing a discrete geographical area, which is one of the problems of our democracy is all the constituency service in parallel, and I think back to my district, rather than I think broadly about what's best for the country, right? But we bring these back to the American democracy. So there are problems with understanding of democracy, but I'm not sure the one that you outlined is the one that I would address as the biggest. I think what I said about NATO, basically you maybe I said that, what I said about NATO was that, I'm sorry, let me turn this on. What I said about NATO was that for many countries like Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, the promise of NATO membership doesn't seem realistic in the near future. More people bought the baseball book, actually. But in the democracy promotion paradox, this was before Trump and everything, but I said there's a very easy argument to the United States. I did not expect it to be picked up. I expect to be picked up by the law election, not the public, and that's one of the reasons we have some of the problems we have today. So I have a question. Responsive good governance in the abstract, which is predominantly conflated with liberal democracy, I have clear benefits for a state's economic development and security. So why has it been such a challenge to link liberal democratic development with some of these concepts? And why has conditionality really been the primary vehicle for democracy rather than these organic cases for reform? And this is for both of you guys. If I'm understanding the question right, and I think that there is a lot to say on economic development and reform for the, as we've been talking about this, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, and I know there's written a lot on how economic development in Georgia can be a security strategy for them. And I think that's important, maybe we can go into that. But we have a global economy, and some of the question about reforms is on the nation level. So obviously, the response of government or a non-responsive government can hinder economic development, but economic trends are global. So the way that they're interacting, I think it's not, it's complex. So it's not necessarily one follows if I'm understanding the question. I don't know if you have something to add. That seems like a very narrow. That's not how it's a student, Sam. I can see that. And I'm a, I think if you read the entire uber, I'm finding the sense of his a little contribution. People focus on a later world, he admits that it's more important of contributions than nothing. But the long answer is he never ends. Nothing is permanent, but also nothing ever does at the time, right? So somewhere in the middle of the mountain town of Georgia in 1915, you're saying it's a couple of years from now, we'll be part of a union, and all of this will happen, right? And if you are, I mean, I went to grad school in the 90s and worked on some of the things in the summer of 1991. Summer of 1991, I went to grad school for the summer, we were doing a lot of presentations on why this would happen. Distance in people's lives in the unimagined and the unimagined and the unimagined, argue this is a, we step back when we think we think about, I may be a bigger picture, but we have to, I mean, that nothing looks at the moment. So this five years from now, this might be a little bit, but we have to open to the possibility. A few months ago, I was at the U.S. from some board of detectives that I shared with the Europeans. What happened was the privacy of the laws of Europe got in the way and these acts of World War II. U.S. citizens collect a lot of information we protected. The Europeans don't collect information because mere election information is a vital priority. So as I said, I mean this split between the U.S. and Europe on trade issues, security issues. And I'd like to give you views on what you think does the democratic coalition and the margin of generalist. Someone told me when you don't know the question, you should say no. I have not given that a thought. I feel like I could really give you a good answer. Your question, I also don't know how to answer it, but it does, it didn't answer another question, which I just, this idea about indives and reform, two questions. One is, DCA accepts all these operations between the EU and countries in the Eastern Partnership. We've done a lot of work on the support and order and control of technical work. And then the question is, from the EU often, how do we find that form and make sure it keeps happening? But then the question is also, for countries in the EU, what about their reforms? I don't know, I don't know the answer to that. But it is interesting discussing traditionality. So, yeah, I think the answer, that's what got me thinking. Well, I think there's another point in there is worth exploring. And please correct me if this is a completely different direction, but I think maybe a narrative of answering that question is asking, these coalitions of the EU or what will be the West? There's only a set of texts of presentation when we talk about issue of condition and when we talk about the possibility of integrating of the US, the US and the US states from Eastern Europe, Asia and beyond. There are just too much different opinions between and among the countries that are in this community that allow for conditionality to begin. I mean, you mentioned in this term, traditionality may be the key to moving things, but are things that really come back? And this is something I'd like to hear from both of you if you can. A few different questions. One is, is the West as a word for agnosticism is what can we ever come back to? There you go. I don't.