Thinking a little bit about how do we set a strategy strategic frame to support Good Governance. Think about all the things we heard this morning about some of the problems, some of the challenges that need to be addressed in fragile states. Governing institutions need to become more accountable. We have to work on ways to build inclusiveness. Tackle the problem of marginalization and exclusion. Figure out how to empower youth. To take leadership roles. The importance of enabling Civil Society to be an important part of cementing a stronger state society relationship. Hese are all dimensions of governance in one way or another. And this is one of the central challenges of transforming fragile states to be more resilient. How do we do that from the perspective of the United States , how do we set a strategy strategic frame that helps to put into motion better support for transforming governance to be Good Governance. We are very fortunate to have three superb leaders from the peace building world and the governance world with us. O of them are members of the task force on extremism and in disenfranchise the states that developed a set of recommendations on tackling the problems of fragility to be a long longterm solution for havent extremism. So we couldnt be more fortunate. To help us with the discussion, to moderate the discussion, im really delighted to introduce to you mr. Nick schiffrin, he is the Foreign Affairs and defense correspondent for the pbs news hour. I couldnt be happier to hand it over to nick to start the conversation. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Nick let me introduce the people you are here to listen to. You are not here to listen to me. Needs no introduction, but i will just briefly welcome secretary madeleine albright, 64th secretary of state, chair of the board of directors at n. D. I. Chair of albright, stone bridge group, and capital madgement. President and c. E. O. Of usip and Derek Mitchell president of n. D. I. It seems to me to give a frame for this in 18 years we have spent a lot of time defeating terrorists, terrorism has increased. We targeted extremists, but extremism has grown. We have overthrown governments, but governance has not been improved. We have won battles, but certainly not won the peace. How do we create a way to do that . How do we reduce personal and financial costs . Its been 6 trillion, 5,000 10,000 americans dead, 50,000 americans wounded. Hundreds of thousands of iraqi and afghans who have been killed. How do we protect the country . How do we create a more sustainable and successful strategy . How do we prevent extremism from taking root. How do we deneat todays and tomorrows terrorists. Nancy, can you give us a sense nancy hink we can do nick, you did a great lay down of the problem set. And to take a hard look at the Solutions Congress asked usip to convene a host, a task force, bipartisan, High Level Task force in 2018 to create a comprehensive plan for how should we address extremism in fragile states. It was based on more than a decade of thinking and lessons that had identified the fact that its the conditions in fragile states where you have a weak or nonresponsive or illegitimate or all of the above governments, and a broken social bond between people and their government. That gives rise to a host of conditions that can enable extremism to take root. Congressman lee hamilton and governor tom cane, they considered this to be Unfinished Business because one of the three recommendation of the 9 11 to adopt a policy of prevention. That recommendation was never taken forward. So that became the touch stone of the Task Force Recommendation that is we need a polcy of prevention. And they thought about it in terms of really focusing in on addressing the conditions that give rise to fragility and therefore extremism. By the way civil war, extreme poverty, forced migration, a host of ills that address us that we face globally. But to do so in a more coordinated, comprehensive strategy across our u. S. Government. To just quote senator coons, one of the many bipartisan cosponsors of the global fragility act, who said the problem is we are trying to deal with really complicated problems, and d. O. D. Is playing football, the state department is playing soccer, and the usaid folks are playing lacrosse. And nobody is the coach or the quarterback. So of course we are not going to make the progress that we must make to tackle this more effectively. Three main recommendations, more coordinated strategy. Longer term approaches that require a different kind of mechanisms, legislatively. And coordinate more effectively with international partners. To do so as you heard from joe, against principals for longer term, locally led, it aive programming. Nick coordinated strategy to create that strategy is always a challenge. Coordinated strategy. Think of it long term. Think of longterm coordination from the u. S. With partners in local countries. And make it international. Even create a fund. We talked about private sector as well. Lets exam those over the next few minutes. Secretary albright, there is no one i would rather ask this question to. Is this about democracy . Is this about enabling democracy to be more resilient in fragile states . If so, how do we do that . Secretary albright i do think it is about the fact that people everywhere want to be able to make decision abouts their own lives. One of the things that i resented when i was in office was people saying that asians arent interested in democracy. Or whatever. I on purpose made my assistant secretary for democracy a korean american. But i do think we are all the same and we do want to be able to make decisions. And the question is, how is it done . It is more difficult. We are proving it ourselves right here. And i think that the question is, how to have that perseverance. Just listening to nancy and to you initially is, i have been at this a very long time. I was trying to do it when i was in office, and then when we came out, what happened was, for instance, billon, the former secretary of defense and i, did a task force on the prevention of genocide. It was the overwhelm task force except for this now that you were talking about, nancy, that had an effect and president obama named something, created, there was a president ial decision on having a prevention board in order to be able to get a group of people in the u. S. Government looking ahead, trying to figure out what might be happening to prevent it. We also, i have been did work in order to try to get the International Community involved in it through this concept of responsibility to protect. Any number of different ways. I was happy to be asked to be on this task force because i do think it addresses the major problem which is that we have to spend a long time on it. I have said by the way i am no longer a diplomat, but i have said that nick you dont have to be diplomatic. Secretary albright americans are the most generous people in the world with the shortest attention span. I think that part of the issue here is how to give it that strength, both institutionally and morally, that is going to take a while, and it does take this new statement whole of government, which is very hard. It always is hard. But seems to be particularly hard at this time. And the other part is to fully understand what are the conditions that create fragility, or what are the negative aspects that make sure that fragility continues . What are the positive aspects that have to be taken care of in order to be able to be supportive of it and understand that democracy is not a spectator sport. Not in the United States, and not anywhere else. It has to we have to find the partners in these various countries that want to be a part of this and not have us be patronizing about it or say it has to be only american democracy. We have to recognize that there are other aspects in the way people are able to make their voices heard in society. That would be the larger nick lets zoom in. There is a lot that secretary gave us. Zoom in as you experienced in burma. Talk a little bit about the conditions on the ground there. Specifically what secretary albright was saying the conditions you saw that create fragility, some of the solutions to try and take away that fragility, and were there partners, are there partners to work with as you saw . You are asking how we solved burma while i was there. Clearly there is a long way to go in burma. I have lessons learned, but i can tell you at least how we went it about it. The lessons get to what we heard in the previous panel, i think. To some degree. First of all the really important idea of context. Of understanding intimately, doing your tome homework and understanding every context is very different. Derek burm why to folks in the west is easey. Its always been black and white issue. You get now into the nittygritty of that country you realize just how incredibly complex. By their own count 135 different ethnic groups. 20 or so were involved in peace. Context is essential and is essential and doing homework. The most important thing to get involved is do no harm if you are working outside. You can step on a land mine figuratively every step you take. Number one. Number two, the importance of building trust. If we are going to be in there, working on this stuff, they want to know that you get it. And the only you have to prove that. But then you have to build a relationship. Thats where the time really takes in. The effort of peace takes time. The building the relationships painstakingly, demonstrating you get it, that is a longterm effort which means you have to work at this and they need to know you are at that. There is someone you can count on. But third, and i say this maybe self reverentially, as ambassador, the ambassadors are very important in this. That is one focal point on the ground when we say the point of the spear in the country that brings it all together. You have a mission where you have different components. You have defense, you have a. I. D. , others there. It is up to the ambassador as the operational person on the ground to bring this all together. I was very lucky because hi a president , obama, who really cared about burma and people in the white house and state department and Hillary Clinton and john kerry, thats extremely important back in washington to get the importance and put the resources and the time into it. But absent that, you still need ambassadors and people on the ground who work on this issue, understand the importance of coordinating all those instruments. And thinking in terms not as we heard in the last session, do an explicit formal program on inclusion or on whatever it is on peace, but integrating it to everything you do. So that i would get asked, tell us about your democracy program. Or your peace program. I would look and id say, everything we are doing is a democracy program. Everything we are doing is a peace program. Because its the how we do it. Not just what we do. If we do a Health Program or agricultural program, we are bringing people together across ethnicities and building that trust and interaction that creates peace bottom up. Is it working . Also in the buddhistmuslim side. We did a lot of work there. Is it working . Its painstaking, takes time and there are lots of spoilers who will be there trying to make it not succeed. I think its worth the effort. I do think its what is required in ustained stability fragile environments. Nick nancy, you worked in so many fragile places. We just heard derek go through how important it is to know from the u. S. Perspective, know the country, avoid land mines, create trust in relationships, and have an ambassador, diplomats who are both wise and also backed from washington. Whats your experience been in these places . What are these places looking for to best make them a little more resilient . A little less fragile . Nancy first of all i think every country will be different. But some of the Core Principles were embedded in the Task Force Recommendations which have now been enshrined in the global fragility act. As you heard from raj at the last panel, we have this unbelievable moment right now where a decade of lessons, hard rned lessons, data research, the task force, putting that into recommendations, a lot of organizations, many of you in this room working on t. Has translated into the global fragility act, which requires the government to have a coordinated 10year strategy for working along some of those core principle approaches. In answer to your question what do we need, and you said it already, nick, we need to have a longer term commitment, less focused on pushing enormous amounts of resources in right away, and rather sustaining over time and doing so in partnership with local actors, with local Civil Society, and where you can local governments. So they are in the lead. We heard a beautiful summary from sampson at the end of the last panel who talked about, if you are looking at what are the core issues that represent the breakdown between governments and their people, you need to hone in on those. How do you enable more engaged citizenry to hold their own government accountable . How do you enable a different kind of leadership to emerge as all of the previous panelists discussed . And along the way what are maybe some quick wins that you can help foster to keep the confidence of people as you go through what is necessarily a very, very long term . We dont often have the political patience at this end. There often isnt the patience for people who are very hungry and very much in danger. Sometimes you need to work on getting emergency food in and getting security, greater security in. But do it in a way that doesnt smother the other elements to emerge. So that you dont not pursue education. Or that you dont prioritize shortterm security that is repressive. And that is often a mistake we make. Its having all of those elements thought through together in a coordinated strategy. Nick how often have people like me accused the u. S. Government of pursuing shortterm counterterrorism gains at the expense of longterm stability . Secretary albright, one of the fun things about being a journalist, dont have to have solution, he i can point out chris sisms here. It seems to me what nancy just called political patience, what i would call longterm patience, or longterm strategy, or longterm notion that things like development, education, and places like pakistan, afghanistan, sudan take not only pun president ial cycle, two president decks cycles, but decades president ial cycles, but decades. Is it really possible for the u. S. Government to have a strategy that looks out beyond one president ial cycle . Secretary albright i think difficult, frankly. Because an awful lot of the campaigning and the carrying out of policy is in opposition to what the previous people did. It seems to be a regular act. And so i think that what has to happen is since we are a democracy and democracy is based on, as i said, not a spectater sport, people are participating, and they are open to pressure from the public, i think it is worth very much thinking about what our role is for the people that are not in the government. Nd i think also in a strange way, congress, senators are there longer than a cycle. I think that i have been saying at the moment for any number of reasons that this is article 1 time, which is the first article of the constitution is about the power of congress. I might not have said that when i was in the executive branch, but i do think that part of the thing that has to happen, it has to be part of our d. N. A. That we understand that this is going to take time and that it really requires a group of people from a variety of different parts of our society to keep saying this is going to take time. And also i think for a little humility to say its taken us time. It is difficult. I am very worried generally about the kind of fouryear cycle of Foreign Policy. Even when its by the same party. Because i do think that there is kind of a sense we have to do something totally different. Whereas i think picking up a project is a good idea. The other part that i have to say, and i certainly was true when we were in office, when you do something, people want to just check it off and say, ok, we have now done bozz kneea. Or whatever. Bosnia. Or whatever. We are not a patient people. There has to be nancy, i think this is something we have to work on with the fragility act, is to actually report certain deadlines that have been met. Or certain accomplishments so that it doesnt just seem that its sunk into the bureaucracy and that we are not keeping track. And that set up some kind of reporting system to the American People on this. But patience is not our best suit. And i do think that is something that we have to work on. Nancy nick, can i just add from what mad why lynn just said, the task force on extremism and fragile states sunsetted, but everyone but one of the Task Force Members asked to continue on. So the task force is continuing and specifically well be looking at those kinds of reporting. Nick derek, it seems like we have a problem, we being the United States, and people who care about strategy, have a problem thinking long term, but also thinking even short term and coordinating between agencies and departments and people. Talk about that. How can the u. S. Develop oherence across development, diplomacy, is it even possible to do that . Derek it is very, very difficult. Madeleine was talking earlier over lunch about how trying to do this across different agencies is just very, very difficult. I think a couple things on that. One, do i think it does if you have a particular challenge, you can work at working levels. There are working groups. There are people at operational levels, assistant secretary levels, even under secretary who can come together and think this through if there is a commitment. I think what is critical. We talk about the 3ds, im not sure we act on the 3ds. We educate people on the 3ds. We bring people and train them through the Foreign Service institute to operate according to the 3ds. If i may add to that, i think there should be a fourth d which we have been talking with about which is democratcy. We should run through all of this. Hi coffee late yesterday with a former colleague of mine, senior strategist in the pentagon. Who worked in the counterterrorism center. He said that he did a study of all the counterterrorism work, the problems of terrorism around the wo