I will be the moderator. Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who put together this panel, which i think is on a key issue. It is talked about a lot, but there arent that many panels about the topic around town. I look forward to this discussion. As i mentioned for the past couple of years, there has been a lot of debate about Multilateral Institutions. And on chinas influence and how that is quickly growing and leading to changes in the fundamental rules of these institutions, and also giving rise to alternatives to the old ones. Arises then,that does that make the institutions that we already have counterproductive to preserving a liberal world order when authoritarian states rise within the institutions and partly take over responsibility for them . Another key issue is the one on fragile states. They seem to be continuously bogged down in poverty, lack of education, etc. Although, we have spent decades on development aid, peacekeeping, etc. From the institutions such as world bank and the u. N. Does that mean the institutions that have failed to contribute to raising basic individual welfare and qualityoflife . Also the issue of the human rights situation in countries such as molly and south mali and south sudan continues to be disastrous despite you and peacekeeping u. N. Peacekeeping. Does that mean these instruments have failed . Does the Multilateral Institution not done their job well enough . Have they instead become money machines for corrupt governments and employees instead of assisting the civilians that they pretend to serve . Issues some of the key that i hope we can talk about today. Few people seem to think the institution should be left as they are. Some demand pragmatic reform. Others call for wholesale transformation. Totalt, others, destruction of the global framework that we have now of Multilateral Institutions. This panel will address the pros a systemof preserving of Multilateral Institutions at a time where we have fluctuating risinges, trade wars, authoritarianism and other developments that fundamentally affect how they work. We have 4 distinguished speakers to address these issues. The professor of affairs who has written numerous books on u. S. Politics. Her most recent books is called the challenges of , coming out of Yell University press. Prior to this, she has been a fellow at the Woodrow WilsonInternational Center for scholars. She also held numerous other positions as researcher. She was staff at the House Committee on Financial Services. Eli, currently a partner at a law firm. Prior to this position. He served as the executive rector of the world bank from 2007 2 2010. He has extensive experience. Advising with respect to World Trade Organization and regional trade integration. Earlier this month, he served as the witness on the u. S. House committee on Financial Services hearing on Multilateral Development and institutions. Third, we have a fellow here at hudson. Most recently, he served as the executive director of the task force which is a congressionally mandated project convened by the u. S. Institute of peace. Prior to that, he was director of the bipartisan alessi centers National Security program where he managed a team responsible for research and developing calls and recommendations concerning a variety of National Security issues, including iran and its nuclear program, u. S. Turkey relations. Have thenot least, we ambassador and permanent representative of denmark to the. Nited nations before taking up this position, the ambassador served as a state secretary for development in the Danish Ministry of foreign affairs. Heor to this appointment, served as ambassador to indonesia and was also papua new guinea. Before that, he worked for the undp and bhutan. The panel will spend about an hour debating the issue of multilateralism institutions. After that, we will open it up for questions from the audience. I will start. Lisa you have just written a book about Multilateral Institutions that will is about to come out or will come out. Can you briefly describe how you see the role of Multilateral Institutions in todays world order, where we have these fluctuating alliance patterns, trade wars, rising authoritarianism. Do these trends mean that these institutions are counterproductive to preserving a liberal world order . Are they taken over by authoritarian regime with little respect for basic liberal market and economic principles . How should we read it . Kathryn thank you for that question and thank you for inviting me here at the Hudson Institute. It has been a privilege to meet my copanelists. I look forward to the discussion. I think you are raising related questions. The book is forthcoming. At kind ofally looks the long view of multilateralism and the long view of the history of these organizations. I think when you take a longer view, by long, i mean the end of the napoleonic wars. When you go back that far, you see so many things that are the same, and then you see a few things that are different. Tendencies, the controversy is about the organizations themselves, has certainly always been there. The way i look at the history of the organizations is that they have been intermingled with the history of the scientific process and the industrial revolution. I scientific progress has been involved, states have had to figure out ways to be involved, but also the International Community has had to understand that. If you want to think about Something Like an environmental issue, back in the 18 hundreds, the issue of migratory birds were very important. When you look at the history of disease and cooperation and health, what was very important was trying to grapple with the problem of cholera on the trade routes and the british empire. The problems that people encountered back in the 1800s had to do with a lot of the science going on. We were talking about the telecommunications unit. Madison had to come to terms with what caused cholera and how to treat it. Once you could get that agreement, you could figure out what nations could handle and what the International Community could handle. As students of international relations, World History has had intermittent episodes of hegemonic war. If you want to look at it is more on the optimistic hopeful side of the picture, and some of the darkest hours, people have tried to figure out what to do about multilateralism. How can we make these institutions better . Have thature i would instinct as world war ii is dying down on what to do, but that has certainly been the history. To the present era, the way i look at the problem, scientific progress has continued. Two big things have happened since the 1960s. The digital revolution, we are aware in real time what is going on. Also, massive advances in global health. The World Community trying to come to terms with how those benefits are going to be distributed and who is going to pay for them as welfare systems have evolved. We know that institutions have fostered the National Welfare systems, but coming to terms with that now our problems. These are real challenges that these organizations confront. I dont know if i would say it is an either or in terms of whether or not they need to go or Something Like that. They are certainly going to need to adapt to the new realities of the problem of global advance in and industrial democracies. I think there is also reason to believe they have been able to adjust in the path and mope past and will probably be able to do so in the future. Lisa thanks. Whitney, you have been executive director of the world bank. A lot of contemporary critics of these institutions point to an imbalance between the financial const contributions made by Member States on the one hand and the actual tangible benefits forultilateral institutions a common interest in prosperity and stability. Can you tell us from your experience to what extent these Multilateral Institutions such as the world bank are more ending up being tools for corrupt governments or authoritarian governments than they actually help the people they pretend to serve . Whitney thank you for inviting me. Pleasure to be here today, particularly amongst such distinguished company. That we cant reach definitive judgment on the Multilateral Institution like the World Bank Without remembering that it is a one player in a Larger Development landscape. Includesandscape countries themselves who are clients of the bank. I we do take a longer view, think you could say that we have made huge progress on this planet. We have brought more people out of poverty in the last 2530 years then in all the rest of human history. That, to me is a fairly remarkable measure. I think that the multilaterals have made a significant contribution to the. That. They also have accumulated a lot of knowledge about the Development Process and disseminate that around the world. It is interesting, when i was testifying two weeks ago on the hill, i got any number of questions about why does china continue to borrow from the bank . I think the primary answer there is not because they need the money, obviously, but because they do value the Development Expertise that the bank has. That may beg the question of why are they borrowing . I personally think it is time for them to graduate. They could do what saudi arabia does which is pay for whatever knowledge Technical Assistance they want. As they go. On the other hand, if you understand anything about the thetical model of at least idr d component of the world bank group, i have to point out that there are five parts of the world bank group. Each one of them has its own separate financial model. You need to understand those models before you Start Talking further. Side, which is where china borrows, a very large component of the annual budget comes from the interest which is earned on the loans. China, repay everything tomorrow, there would be a big hole in the budget. Is alwaysople, there room in budgets in institutions like this. Heaven knows, when i was u. S. Executive director, we were one of the budget hawks. We were on the Audit Committee always trying to improve things. The phaseout would be appropriate here in terms of the institutional approach. There also are other aspects of Multilateral Institutions, which i think are important to remember. Ofy can provide a lot knowledge of Public Financial Management. Are not learned instantly by every country or of the world, but on the whole, i think there has been a lot of progress. One aspect of that Public Financial Management is actually the management of trust funds. I think i would submit to you that perhaps one of the more successful multilaterals husband the global fund, fighting disease. The United States is on anriated four times annual basis to the global fund as it has to the world bank. The world bank manages those trust funds. That is in itself a valuable service. Aboutwer your question there isnd so forth, politics at the world bank. It is a little bit like casablanca. Im surprised there is gambling going on here. It is constant. I had a question when i testified two weeks ago about, how could it possibly be that one of the managing directors of the world bank today is from china and he has responsibility for ethics . My response was, he is an International Civil servant. If he is not doing his job, the president can fire him. These are things that need to be dealt with. Questiona legitimate as raised by our moderator about whether these institutions are captive or just within the political economy of different countries, are there more to serve Civil Servants or the elite as opposed to the people of the country. I think in your question, you actually left out one dimension, which is the entire development community. A country ino africa on one of my ed trips out there world bank, i met with the head of usaid. I said how much is your budget . He said 80 million a year. I said how much of that is earmarked . He said 78 million of 80 million. Earmarks basically means, for the beltway bandits around here that have their contracts every year and so forth. He was at a disadvantage to the head of the u. K. Development agency because that country head had a discretionary budget of 10 million available to him. When the president of the country had a problem he wants help on, the u. K. Had 10 million and the United States had 2 million. I also remember looking at a loan for a road project inniger in niger. Lets say it was a 20 million loan. If you look at page 57 in the annexes, you found that 500,000 of that was to buy ford toyota land cruisers. As in any political situation, there are people whose interests are at play. As we reached the point of capture and we have alternative organizations, think of the organization started by the bricks. They were frustrated that the u. S. Congress took so long to approve the quota increase at the imf. They formed their own monetary organization and their own new bank, called the bricks bank. Look at what they did in the monetary arrangement. It has a headline number of x. But if you are an individual country and you want to access the monetary facilities of this new arrangement, you can only take 30 with no questions asked. Upperher 70 require an trausch imf program. Even the bricks are depending on another multilateral to establish important criteria. I think i will leave it there. From other panelists. Obviously, there is no black or white answer to the questions being asked. Lisa thanks. You have done a lot of work on fragile states. Arguably, fragile states seem to be continually bogged down in poverty, lack of education, all of the usual Development Program problems despite years of spending from the world bank, also the United Nations. Does that mean they have failed to contribute to raising basic individual welfare and qualityoflife or can they still be helpful . Do they need reform or can we use them as they are . Thank you for putting together this event on this important topic. Thank you to the audience for joining us on this discussion. Im honored to join this distinguished group of panelists and flattered that you think i can solve a fragile states question in five minutes or however long i have been allotted. As to just give context why i think it is important to think about the problems of fragile states. The is both because problems surrounding fragility are particularly problems that are wellsuited to or driven by the source of issues that Multilateral Institutions are solve. O Something Like 90 of all conflicts in the world are happening in a fragile state. Nationsthat the united are devoted to trying to minimize conflict. Increasingly, poverty is states. G in fragile 10 years ago, it was Something Like 15 of the worlds poor lived in fragile states. 10 years from now, it is going to be 50 of the worlds poor. Fragility is an increasingly important issue. Fragility is also an issue that matters to all of us. The ability of Multilateral Institutions to address fragility is something we should care about, whether it is problems like the spread of extremism and terrorism, civil displace hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, causing refugee and migration flows that have impacts well beyond their borders, whether it is the spread of pandemics like most recently, ebola in fragile states that like institutions to deal with those issues on their own, causing them to become mobile health threats. Fragility is going to become a major driver. It is important to think about how we deal with it. Far, theay that thus record of the Multilateral Institutions has not been great, partly because the emphasis on fragility has not been there, even within our own u. S. National security policy, fragility is a relatively recent phenomenon. We are thinking about failed states up until may a decade ago, whether that is somalia, the classic example or assumption going into the first 9 11 phase. Afghanistan and failed states that we thought were the sanctuaries and harbors of terrorism this idea of the fragility of states that havent decomposed, but are on the brink of it. Is that the seen sorts of solutions that have been applied thus far traditionally by the United Nations in terms of trying to promote peace and security by the world bank and trying to achieve Poverty Reduction goals either havent been applied to fragile states were havent been able to take root in fragile states. When you look at peacekeeping operations, most of the peacekeeping operations conducted by the u. N. Today are not in the places that we would think of if you are to come up with a list of the top fragile states. Peacekeeping. N. Mission in afghanistan and somalia and libya and so on. The first estate you would