[inaudible conversations] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] this is my coverage of the center for strategic and International Studies were anticipated conversation on the politics of the middle east. Topics covered will be different nuclear deal come badly nice as in the fifth anniversary of the arab spring uprising. While late for this event to get underway, some other happenings on the cspan networks include the u. S. Holocaust museum told in a remembrance your money at the u. S. Capitol. About 60 Holocaust Survivors will attend the ceremony and you can watch that live right now im spent. Theres also a discussion on the different than the way the Chinese New Year experts think about Nuclear Weapons compared to the usb at that event will start at 10 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] [background noise] good morning and welcome to csis. I am the Senior Vice President here and head of the middle east program. First, before we start from a security announcement. Weve never had a problem before the event. We have exits on the side and back of the room. We can do lots of places, so dont worry. Follow my direction. I am delighted to welcome Lisa Andersen to present the third in our series of three talks on the middle east at an Inflection Point. This is an activity which is supported by the general funds of the middle east program and adjusting to us as we were looking forward to in the industry should buy theirs after the beginning of the arab uprising will be useful to take stock of where we are. In my mind there could be no better guide than our speaker today. I have no lease for 25 years and shes always impressed me. From a fiveyear tenure as the American Press that university in cairo where she also served as provost for two years. She was the dean of the Columbia School of International Public affairs and head of the middle east institute at columbia. Professor of international relations. Lisa has not only had they been english career in administration, but as a political scientist. I think she has really had a remarkable record analyzing and describing in real terms what is happening and why things are happening in the middle east in an incredibly tumultuous five years in egypt. She was working with the various government and working with students. As we think about the middle east that Inflection Point, i can think of no better guide for the perplexed then Lisa Andersen. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, john. It is a delight to be here. Im honored to be in the company of the other speakers in the series. Particularly the ambassador who estimate that was the trust the entire row. I have lots of things that i can talk about as they were doing my Farewell Party at auc, the remark that it probably would not happen again that a president of auc served under four different president of the republic. And i think that is probably true. What i want to do is really a much larger reflection on where the middle east is today and how we really need to be thinking i think im somewhat new ways about the region itself and about the challenges that at present to us in the United States, to its own government, to its own people is a very complicated time in the region as you are undoubtedly know. I think it is important to take an opportunity like this to step back a little and reflect on what i actually think might be called multiple Inflection Points. The title of this series, the middle east that Inflection Point i think speaks to an interesting moment, but it also suggests that we should be thinking is not a single thing that is changing. All such things are changing in history. So that may start with a few general observations about what i describe as the historical art in which the region find the self today and signal a little bit how they are reflected in the current fortune under particular country. So i would argue there are really three quite distinct historical revolutions at different scales that are converging and the events that began in Sierra Springs five or so years ago. Which is part of the reason why both its timing and fury were somewhat dated. There were plenty of jeremiahs around including in the city, but there really wasnt anyone who anticipated quite the draw that would follow the departure of denali from tunisia in the region. The first cut everyones eyes and probably is what we understood the best or what might be called straightforward uprising against authoritarian government and regime. This is the original call in tunisia and in itself these changes, these developments were not dynamically dissimilar from comparable revolts and political revolutions in other kinds, so we expected the process to look more or less like the fall of the military regimes in latin america with the classic communism in Eastern Europe you were ready to look for a very domestic act as, how hardline was the military, with Civil Society to negotiate patrician performance, all that kind of thing was what we saw was pretty familiar and we added a few notes about the neighborhood effect and our involvement. The United States is involved in a jet and so forth. But it all seems like gardenvariety regime change, something political scientists and policymakers that this country will familiar. Even libya was pretty predicted. But somehow it was well beyond that. And this is the second of my three arcs of revolution. I would argue that Global Politics that south is inflicting and that was to raise the stakes and add an element significant uncertainty to the dynamics within countries in the region. The end of the cold war and more importantly the revolution in information and Communications Technology that which we call time has brought largely unanticipunanticip ated changes to the character and context of politics everywhere including in this country. In the absence of a great power and great power minister Matthias David dynamics of the cold war missing two key people are rallying around the flags end with the newfound access and expertise particularly of young people, the surge of global populism come a great skepticism about authority of all kinds and enthusiasm for creative destruction, not unlike the political upheavals of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. We are in a world historical revolution of important magnitude. In the occupied movements around the world were called to millions of individuals to mobilize and flash mobs of protest in madrid and new york, istanbul, santiago, kiev, cairo and elsewhere in the arab world. From that, which you will recall, all of that was part of this dynamic to the popularity of outsiders as president ial candidates even in the United States. Antiauthoritarian, antiestablishment politics is endemic. So you saw the interception area local complaints about very local governments and regime with dynamic that were Global Dynamics of how protests have been and what kind of modalities there are two protests. So some of this, the global level before south, although probably not how quite tantalizing and terrifying it would be peered policymakers and analysts to anticipate that there were going to be a major shift in how the Global Political economy would take shape, but not exactly how that would happen. I want to remind you of a passage that i often use as an example of how clever we all are, at least some of us, and yet how puzzling the implications of water inside may be. About 10 years ago, president of the council on Foreign Relations wrote, and i quote from the nations states will not disappear, but they will share power with a larger number of powerful nonsovereign actors never before come including corporations, ngos, terrorist, drug cartels, regional global institutions, banks and private equity funds. Sovereignty will follow the end to the powerful and accelerating people, ideas, greenhouse gases, emails and weapons within cross borders. The world 35 years from now will be semisovereign. It will reflect the need to adapt legal and political principles to a world in which the most serious challenges to order come from a global force is a Global Forces do a global force is due to stay from what governments do to their citizen rather than from what state do to each other. 10 years then, that sounds pretty right actually, at least if you think about the middle east. And yet we havent been that description really thought very much about how exactly transpired. I think we see much about playing out in the region. But even if we half expected this revolution at the global scale and we understood the revolution on a domestic scale of the uprising against regimes, we are still working on its implication and for our purposes in the middle east, the dual revolutions of global transformation converge in what i would describe as a third revolution between the scales, which is regional. Between the local in the global, a racial revolution or perhaps to his taking place before our very eyes. We are witnessing both and these people have that now, but i need to put them together is important. The beginning of the end of the imperial era and the particular state system left in the region. And in turn all regional revolt if he will, perhaps better transfer of power, whether this turns out to be a revolt in any seismic way in the region remains to be seen. Transfer of power from saving nationalist establishment in the government of those countries to a sword of nouveau riche, the pulse against egypt came against generals with all of the political and cultural implications that entails. So these regional revolutions of the larger than a change in regimes, smaller than the change in production, but they shape out these other revolutions are reflected in the region at Health Center of course shaped by them in turn. No wonder it seemed so complicated. I think it is fair to say we now live in an era of quantum politics. Uncertainty is not a condition. It is a principle and that will be true forever. We can understand with certainty that carrots her of politics particularly in the middle east, but globally is probably over. So the interplay of all this revolutions create an enormous amount of complexity and confusion for us. So what i simply want to do is take off a few issues that i think are necessary to instruct a description of the region and anticipate the trajectory of some of these Different Levels of revolution might be. I think in fact there are some patterns about these winners and losers for shifts in the way politics happens that we can tease out of this very complicated land gave peered in the first place, keep in mind the stakes we have described for now 10 or 20 years is in eclipse is itself a relatively new feature of Human Society and there are a lot of alternatives to the state and that historically has been. Other sorts of communities, families, tribes, churches, brotherhoods, networks, all sorts of things have served for millennia as vehicles for regulating social interaction, organized in exchange, ensuring security and in many courts in the middle east were formal expression of dave to come the territorial boundaries Come International sovereignty are eroding as anticipated. These types of communities are revising. And why they may be partly reinventions of tradition, they are quite robust and theyll be returning to that time. The way was created in the south contributed to the character of these kinds of nonstate actors. There were two congenital defects if he will in the state that they were established particularly after the First World War. They have been ambiguous sometimes unhelpfully codependent on relations with nondate. I will elaborate on that. And they have responsibilities they could never fulfill on their own resources. When they tackle a bit about that because i think its important to recognize the way they stayed in nonstate identities have been intertwined since the very beginning of the modern state era in the middle east 100 years ago. And i will start you off by reminding you of a little bit of the language of the terms of the league of nations, which established the mandate and former ottoman territories. It says there are quote, certain communities that belong to the former Ottoman Empire that has reached the stage of development with specific independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the mandates. And in article xxii, the league promised to there should be applied principles that the wellbeing and development of such peoples sacred trust of some of nation. So the language suggests that communities will be recognized as nations, presumably to be accorded corresponding im actually of course what really matters with imperial convenience and political patronage. In other words, to the zionists, the hash made, to the state rulers, to the junior partner in the First World War italy and benin bolivia and so forth and so on. These were not communities that were designed to be nations and accorded stays. So for the very beginning, state identities were entangled with family patronage, Identity Community of networks and that has been true for everyone in this room. Except in the very established states, most of which predate this period, i, turkey that 80 of the bureaucrats at the ottoman imperial administration. Hence the state was instantaneous very strong, wellequipped, welltrained in the 1920s and most of the former ottoman provinces in the arab world were viewed as their bureaucratic. Iran, he, egypt, tunisia to some extent had formal institutions in bureaucratic state, but apart from them, those institutions always have a fake intersection or is the u. S. Ambassador said of independent india in 1951, it was a last resort and an experiment. It was not obviously something that he had a lot of confidence in succeeding. The alienation of and hostility to the modern states in italy was for violent Political Movement against governments and their supporters, usually when politicized, but not that often. Or certainly not as often is the case today. But what happens is was routinely visited from the bureaucratic state of the corruption that is reliant on friends, family, ethnic, religious ties, network to obtain the necessities of daily life. These categories, these networks in a way it efforts to create the formal institutions of a modern state. He had the scaffolding of the moderns take, but most of the ways was for the purposes of other kinds of networks and identities. The second congenital defect was the proposition of the wellbeing development of peoples sacred trust and civilization. That included what i just called the necessities of modern life as an obligation on the part of the state may not seem like a bad thing, but the introduction standards of the modern welfare state responsible for Wealth Development in countries that have not developed the economic base extracted capacity or fiscal apparatus to pay for it was the most of external patrons with a hallmark of robust sovereignty. These states were as much the appearance as the reality. Debilitated from the start, expected to meet domestic policy standards that were possible at even the most most economically developed and well administered states while the rest of all but the most minimal economic aspects in elementary institutions. It was unclear what constituents they were to third. So they were very robust as you can obviously tell and over the course of time they fail to meet the standards set for themselves. They never thrived, never. And they slowly in the beginning imperceptibly began to fail. We now talk a lot about failed states. Filled states dont usually fail and continuously. They fail over time. What you saw were state that were being hollowed out. They were failing before it was apparent. But a compensatory world developed. You dont have failed state and then i do my strides on the land gave. Today i will give you an example in the country that has one of the strongest things in the region, egypt, well over half the commercial transaction are unrecorded. 7 of adult egyptians have a bank account and this is not as desperate mobilephone penetration was 115 . So there are more mobile phones than there are people. But the same people who have mobile phones, smartphones and so for dont put their money and advantage. So even in a country, which as i say, has a fairly robust a capacity, this is not a country that is managing its own fiscal apparatus, monetary policy. None of that is taking place in a sophisticated way. Fiscal reform, not tax revenue in nature just 10 of gdp with christy and the guard of the imf and is very low for a modern economy. So in a sense, you have a layer of the appearance of a modern economy like egypt and below that were rounded as a different economy and as i say, egypt is a fairly robust day. It is virtually no reliable data on the economic activities. We can hardly expect its counterparts elsewhere in the region to know more than egyptians know about their own population. The informal world of the middle east is often called the dark sector, but its actually quite colorful. Their personal associations of extended car religion from original and ethnic networks move money around to other goods and services with the constant churn of act dignity. Ideas move, money moves, people move they reform cant donate. Informal Savings Association like egypts credit but the busters to access credit to friends and family and sometimes when people talk about the informal economy of any place in this region particularly, they behave as if it is only for people relative. This Credit Unions have Senior Vice President s to the American University in cairo. They are per particularly people who are not reliant on the former banking system. Theyre illegal Housing Communities and settlements are caused a major cities in the arab world. Some of them are quite posh. This is not simply the informal slums of the big cities, and that the gated communities that are developing allaround cairo, for example, i think called them legal. Health care, childcare, medical assistance, job leads all an exchange among networks of family, friend and neighbor. Often cemented by ties of affiliation and again its that in egypt that has been happening everywhere as well. As it was for some years ago, games, privatization nepotistic privatization, tolerance of drugs, the socalled formal economy and status rackets have all been obstacles for democratization. But to remain at this level of ethical condemnation is inadequate because these things are also survival groups marginalized by the state says those forces maintaining those dates. And i will return to this. I think the condemnation, the description of the effect to the deep of corruption and therefore not rising to a level we can actually address fanatically as being part of our analytical and therefore policy failure. The failure in the states of the region produced and sustained nonstate actors over the place. Not simply a political and military challenges for the state, but in the daily lives of nearly everyone who lives there. This is important that general mattis who is also a speaker in the series is called a franchising transnational nonstate terrorist group isis is operating to see a franchising transnational moms get actors of a whole variety of kinds, many of which are quite benign and are wellregarded or their beneficiaries. Those distinctions and away resonate as opposed to just things about violence. Thats an important element, but clearly not the only one. I think the importance that says these kinds of nonstate tears are quite benign and wellregarded is visible in the second element of the revolution. I talked about the effort to create recognizable stays. I talked about the fact those states virtually from the beginning were designed to fail and that they did in most places. I think theres also Something Else that is going on in the region that i think is important. The advantage that the monarchs of the ggolf jordan and morocco enjoyed in a world like this, they make no claim to operate any other way. Dynastic rule, which is so tested by the formal impersonal world of the modern state is entirely consistent in both principle and is, the operation of these kinds of Informal Networks of personal and particular ties. These regimes, particularly the gcc regimes have managed to revenues of which so many are beneficiaries to strength in their client tells within their own countries and across the region has of course contributed to and perhaps accelerated the erosion of the republican state and the National Secularist and populist ideologies they have found. But it is also permitted to operate in a way that is consistent with the lived experience of many people in the region. The egyptian blog blogger mock mood that appeared several years ago about each of being trapped in the 1980s that its a lovely piece, exceptionally good perceptive. They thought they were the most modern country in the region. But what it does not do is discuss just at the moment when agent became complacent, the golf took off and quickly overtook egypt and the area within the region of cosmopolitan prosperity. Not only did the egyptians not notice, but frankly a lot of people didnt notice that both within the region and beyond. But the initiative in the arab world was clearly moved east from egypt, at least for the foreseeable future. As it did, the authority in regional politics was further rebound. By 2011, popular disillusionment and cynicism was expressed in outright opposition to the policies and government and regimes than in some places the states of the region. The flash mobs of protests all over the world solidified Guerrilla Forces and militias in this part of the reason region supported by Transnational Networks of money. And murkiness networks and challenging legitimacy of the punitive state, they have challenged notions of crime and corruption. The rulers of the criminals are correct our Natural Communities of friends think all religions and so forth are the uncorrupt, the moral, the way they are to be behaving. So today there are many challengers in few defenders of the formal personal vultures tapes that fail to deliver on promises nor the state system to stabilize them in the region. Outside powers including the United States are understandably puzzled about how to contribute to shaping an alternative system. What are the alternatives . In the first place or need to think about how much we want to invest in the institution in particular states in the region. This is an existential reflection on which of his project had estates are not going to be the powerful mechanism was Global Politics and economics what is and should we be trying to shore up states. The strong bureaucracies, iran, and egypt. These institutions are becoming increasingly the tools of particular persons. Informal and personal apparatus that can collect taxes and distribute us and provide services at what a bully. Iran is already deep respect carrying. The ethnic and religious turkey state is becoming more and more apparent. In egypt competing networks of power, saudi supported brother, muslim brothers, the u. S. Complex has been dropping for supremacy, even in israel to mid20th century secular citizenship is giving away two open expressions of religious. Clearly even and a strong state, the question of whether these are going to be serving the citizens as opposed to some ethnic religious, is an open one. L. Sawyer is almost completely failed states. Alternatives proliferate that would have an impoverished vocabulary to capture and describe these alternatives and indeed weve spent the last century or so condemning them as corrupt does not make them any less powerful. This suggests we need a way to talk about these particular identities and patronage communities that goes beyond condemnation of horrible shame. Not necessarily to endorse them, but to understand how they work. The black market in the grey economy cannot remain opaque to us if we are actually to play a role in improving life in the middle east. If i were to give one of rice to the next president of any country, including this one, follow the money. Get the numbers and insist on the data. Find out where things are going. As is repeatedly observed about this part of the world, the data on numbers of people, financial transactions, anything that has a number attached to it is terrible. And that is not coincidental. It is because there are essentially two worlds operating here. But the formal world, the formal economy, the formal numbers, with his government supplied to the imf is so forth is a small proportion of what is actually going on. If we really want to understand how people are living their lives come away and it should know much more about the rest of the economy, what is below the water line. So unless we are better at doing that in their own track record of the american track record in afghanistan, iraq and here at a scandalous underscore. So we have to do better on their own terms, but we also have to know much better where the military in these countries are going and who is funding the game, the Real Estate Developers , the tv networks whose buying the guns and the drugs and the political leaders. Unless we know better, we will never understand the politics and we should not we should not known more about Irans Nuclear program than about egypts military budget. So sir made these things are the information. The u. S. Will have to work with the government of the established state. Tunisia and egypt the strongest states in the arab world. We are struggled to the abuses continue. In the gulf, and skillful outsourcing of state options for military economic policymaking, education and health care has permitted reliance on family to grow and indeed flourish. Governments may show us a future in which the responsibility associated with modern states, the welfare and development of the people can be fulfilled in novel ways. You can outsource a lot of the welfare states. But because there is little difference between the public treasury dynastic regimes, the call for transparency is more essential than more difficult. Privatization is a way of living things out of the Public Sector and out of the glare of publicity. So to a public sphere in which citizens debate policy is difficult to outsource in the importance of the realm of open and unfettered debate should not be discounted. So i think these are the kinds of things within the region anyone, any outside power, and power, any internal government will need to be grappling. The apparent paralysis of the great powers of what used to be called the great powers, notably the one we are sitting in, but also europe and in many ways russia is partly a reflection of the complexity of the challenges. It also reflects the impact of the global revolution i was talking about locally. The antiestablishment streak to shaping policies everywhere from athens to madrid to brussels and london and washington is getting attention and stop in the confidence of foreign policies everywhere. Governments are either the legal by political uprising are themselves an insurgent frame of mind. The president of russia and at least one of the Political Parties here. So with him on this of interest and National Capabilities are disappointing in that context while inflammatory claims and fear mongering will produce unworkable and dangerous policy. Looking over the region the last time and this is my final comment. The last 10 time globalization was imploding into work about 100 years ago said jess and salutary lessons, not least that outsiders get entangled in vocal fuels and vendettas in which they will never be more than tools. This time however there seems to be little appetite for taking on as possibilities of rendered and assertive advice and assist in him the power to the civilized world bar probably more importantly, even a clear out exactly what is civilized. It is indeed a world at an Inflection Point. Thank you. [applause] what you said a more humble little conversation and then we will open it up. Thank you very much for those very thoughtful and thoughtprovoking remarks. The first question that strikes me is to shift the goal state made to sort of modernizing keeping personal politics was facilitated by spectacular wealth. What does the advent of scarcity in the middle east is probably certainly much lower for the next 10 years than they were from the last 10. What is the rise of scarcity means for the ability to keep the personalization because of this and that the great thing about bureaucratic politics as they are efficient, they should be more efficient than personalized. It doesnt have all the extras given to the loyalist. The scarcity change the schema just make the game more vicious . We should think about scarcity and turns of this model and the rise of personal politics. Well, i think there are two things. First of all, our sense of bureaucracy making things more efficient is not the experience of most of us actually. Anybody had to renew their drivers license doesnt feel like bureaucracy makes them politicians anywhere in the world. I think the experience of bureaucracy, yes was right to do a great deal more with the bureaucratic organization. But theres even more to that. Secondly, part of my concern is when you think about the region and scarcity, you think about what is above the water line, what you can see. I am not persuaded yet that we are really entering that kind. Said egypt is a country where scarcity is the watchword. And it has been on the verge of collapse since 2011. Every quarter it doesnt live that way. The experience has been able to continue the staggering building that is going on in the suburbs of cairo and so forth doesnt stop. So i am not sure that we fully understand how the formal economy is connected to the informal economy. Presumably the element that is the formal economy for distribution of oil revenues will be reshaped. But since so much of that is safe and has always been siphoned into an informal economy whose traces we really dont follow their effect ugly, i am not sure that its going to feel a scarce as its going to look on paper on the one hand. Secondly, i have no idea how the choices will be made should they have to be made that im going to have to cut out some of my clients because i cant afford it. So i am simply not as convinced that his people always say one to have fiscal austerity of have to straight men and fly right in. You cant waste a lot of money if so forth you im not convinced we are confronting that. One of the things that you feel is also happening is the decline of the state after a century of not only the rise of the state, but all of the suspect accuweather relevance of modern states where they have been insisted before. The only borders said it changed in the last hundred years has been israel palestine and the two yemenis united. [inaudible] they never lost them. These states are token remarkably not only durable, but there is no competitor even with the rise of all these other institutions. From the event the United States government, the european union, china, they only have two interfaces that their governments. There is something about the external environment, which seeks states to interface with. Does that create a lifeline for the state . Does it mean that all the states just decline together and nonstate areas across the world be, more powerful . Or is there something nonstate actors are already on the weak side . Does this give the state of newly found mike . Actually, any think you are right. As the Subsaharan Africa there was an agreement saved since it would be such a catastrophe if we really thought over all of our borders, we are not going to fight over our borders. Moreover, it is easier for the rest of the world to have an interlock or that it recognizes and thats the president ial powers of the country and a member of the united nations. And so there is an international can disagree that this is the way we will operate. The difficulty with that is that it stays at this level and most of these countries and i would argue that this is not if you actually look at Subsaharan Africa, you have something of the same pattern, that they are sitting on the top of society that are very loosely linked to that system. So you either the parts of the world, europe, United States, so forth that are much more invested in the state has done figure out a way to force a connection of the states and the populations in the region and elsewhere. Or more likely, even in the countries that were the origin of the International State system that will begin. Basically it doesnt matter what we want to do. Corporations are going to be more important. International ngos more important. Everything will be more important than the state system is only one of the many ways in which we interact with each other. You are quite right we have very limited mechanisms for interactions that are of those scales. The state system, International Law and the united nations, we understand how that works. We understand how you give foreign aid from one country to another country and how the military regime sought to intersect with each other and so forth. As we struggle even now with this business with corporations moving their headquarters to avoid taxes and so forth and so on, it is slipping out from under control it even in the parts of the world in which you would expect there would be a fairly strong capacity to monitor control and so forth. So i dont know that theres going to be this is what i was suggesting before. This is part of the real puzzle. This is not an easy time to figure out policy in general, but to say bush is sure at the states in the region at a time when the other end of the spectrum, they are beginning to shred doesnt seem to make a lot of sense. On the other hand you dont know what is stable at equilibrium wont be. You are either confronted with saying we are going to do if not dead actors even though we dont really know how to do that or we are going to continue to deal with states because its the only thing we know to do. This is the tool i have, so everything has to be mailed. It sounds from your presentation like you think the foreign corrupt practices act is a nice idea, but probably not well tuned to the world in which we live. Is that inaccurate extension of the argument . Yes. It should be where we are focusing energy. I do think that it is a complicated challenge to be thinking about what we want our own domestic rule of law to look like. And that knowledge that there are whole worlds in which thats not going just not the lens through which people look at things. So i do think that, you know, there is a growing smallish Political Science now in patrimonial standards even in the United States. Many more of the wealth he has people in this country are families in a way that wasnt true 50 years ago, so forth and so on. And maybe even hear you begin to see different standards in different criteria for how people are permitted to operate. I would be reluctant to say we are abandoning our own legal standards simply because it would be easier if we did because thats always the rationale for abandoning legal standards. On the other hand, we do need to be alert to the fact that these kinds of candor for how we interact with each other in this country and beyond are changing. So whereas 50 or 60 years ago, nepotism was sent in that we simply thought was unacceptable in the United States, that is no longer as acceptable as it once was. In terms of how we approach the world and we approach the world first as missionaries, we have been investing in Civil Society around the world. Should we stop . Should we do it in different ways . Actually think about the project in investing in societies that work not only like us, more the way we should ourselves work even if we are not working that way all the time. I think you put your finger on a challenge that is a reflection of the fact of how little we know. We dont have data, so we go when and where was say, i mean, it was everyone who went into libya the first couple of years and were incredibly optimistic that they were going to create the Civil Society organizations, so forth and so on. We are simply taking the instruction manual for something that wouldve happened in new york and take it to aaa. They werent really listening for attending to how people in libya have become accustomed to living, which doesnt mean the people in libya want to continue to live that way, but its where theyre starting. They are starting from a different live pics periods. So to take the instruction manual without listening was a mistake. So i think we need to know more about how people live. Some of that is simply listening to some of it is collecting better data and knowing more about how money moves around in the kind of things i was talking about before. If you go inside, honestly, it was something that many people remarked on during the period of election after the beginning of the arab spring. The extent to which people came with just, you know, instruction manuals of how to run an election that they think seems to believe would work anywhere. And that is what they mean. We know latin america, Eastern Europe, what happened. There is a very wellknown political scientist who will remain nameless who came to egypt, had never been to reject before. And gave us a list of 18point to get to the government of egypt so that the transition would work well. But there are two issues. One is doing it the right way and whether we should be doing it at all. Should we be trying to move countries toward having a model that we see more compatible, investing in it. Showed that color our relations . It comes up not only in egypt but around the region. So im the one hand you are talking about government to Government Relations in the expectation that these governments are in some way in control of the state. That is the level at which there are two other kinds of nonstate institutions that we recognize and operating that. That can be fairly modest and fairly restrained. That is the level at which you can operate a National Interest level. There are lots of other things that happen in the region, in the Name University relationships and connections that dont have to be driven by National Interest, dont have to be understood in terms of National Interest. But if you are so inclined, you can certainly contribute to the wellbeing of people. My view as it doesnt have to be i dont think you have to say we are going to be isolation suddenly dont really care because we think it is beyond our risks to be concerned about the wellbeing of anybody. You can say there are other levels of interactions of people, which again its a little bit like pandoras box. If you look at the list of things that Richard Hoffer was going to release, a little bit of hope has to be released as well. That kind of thing, being able to say yes i think education and other things being equal is a good idea. Certain kinds of skills are a good so forth. That should just be going. So that can be driven by businesses and that can be driven by various kinds of investment and i dont care how you do that. That doesnt need to be at the official level. The official level could be fairly modest thing we only deal on things that are of National Interest. But we also understand globalization will bring a whole lot of other kinds of relationships. When governments they dont talk to these people should read ignore them. Ignore them. Okay. Ill turn it over to you. We have microphones if you please identify yourself. That is just one question. All the way in the back. That is you. Thank you peer welcome here. I think everybody has a list of three revolutionary element and the first were very pertinent. I was surprised on the third that you didnt mention anything about transnational religious poetry as a new or striking phenomenon of this area. In fact he went back to talk about state. Do you think that is less important are not particularly striking at this time . Well, no, i think when i say that there are these networks have relationships that are not safe, theyre a nonstate areas including religious groups, include Family Networks and all sorts of communities with which we can affiliate ourselves. And so, i intended to encompass that as well. I dont know that i think this is entirely new. As somebody whose studies, for example, in the 19th century, transnational religious groups were all over the region for, you know, century to century. How they interact given the fact that theres more money around and there was than there was in the 19th century sahara and given the fact that they are also having to intercept with state, which are presumably trying to inhibit or enhance their capacity to be transnational, that is