Welcome to the more than 1000 registered attendees at this jackson virtual discussion forum. This is the fifth of these discussions. These discussions have tapped the Exceptional Leadership in knowledge that resides in the jackson network. Today is no exception. All of our panelists today are senior fellows who teach here at yale. Our moderator today, secretary john kerry graduated from yale, and like jacksons founder, john jackson is joining us today, secretary kerry, left new haven to serve in vietnam. He then served more than two decades in the u. S. Senate before becoming the 68th secretary of state under president obama. You probably know all of that, but what you might not know is that secretary kerry continues to pay it forward, helping to train the next generation of leaders here at the Jackson Institute and across yales many schools. It is my pleasure to welcome secretary kerry. At this time, perhaps you might offer perspectives on how you assess the global ramifications of covid19, and then introduce our panelists. Thanks. Sec. Kerry well, jim, thank you very, very much, and ted, thank you for organizing this event for the Jackson Institute. Its really the underwriter of what were doing today, and its a privilege for me to take part in this with a distinguished group of diplomats, many of whom ive spent many hours with and learned from. Their capacities are extraordinary. In syria foreader a long preiod of time and hung in there until they had to leave. They were telling the truth about it. We have a great group of panelists. Ill introduce everybody shortly. 50,000 deaths today in the United States of america, and we are moving up at a disturbing rate, obviously. And we hear from the experts still, dr. Fauci and dr. Redfield and others, that were not cresting, that we have a ways to go, and that this is in fact perhaps the most infectious virus that they have ever confronted. We now have 190 countries that are recording infections. The virus has impacted 190 countries. Our president didnt know there were 180 or so, but we are heading upwards. Obviously, the Economic Impact has been catastrophic. Unlike downturns in the economy or a normal set of ebb and flow recessions or booms, this was government and private sector we had to shut down to keep people from being infected at a rate where we wouldve totally and completely overwhelmed the medical capacity of our country to respond. So, we are now seeing 26 million americans who filed for unemployment since the outbreak began. And i have read estimates and talked to people, Economic Experts, who suggest we could be at 2030 unemployment by the fall, late fall. I also hear from various experts that this is going to be with us through the year at least, and probably well beyond. Well be Wearing Masks through the year. We will certainly be challenged with respect to social distancing, and more challenged with the question of reopening our economy. We will get through this. We absolutely will get through it. But the question is going to be at what level of loss of life, at what level of chaos, that we have to rebuild from, as we will, and we are going to rebuild. What saddens me, as a former secretary of state, and somebody who believes so deeply in multilateral engagement, is the lack of Global Response to this, the lack of coordinated effort. Its been quite haphazard. Individual states and countries, our own president throwing the mantle of responsibility of leadership away from the white house and to the governors, the governors pleading for additional equipment. And for the First Time Since world war ii i want you to think about this hard the First Time Since world war ii, the United States is not leading where there is, in fact, a Global Crisis demanding leadership. To a certain degree, the world itself is adrift. We see the general secretary of the u. N. Saying a comprehensive Global Response would require 10 global gdp, and this comes at a time when we are looking at a global recession. Needless to say, there will be profound impacts. I cant protect them all, i dont know if anybody on this panel can, but they will be found impacts on all of our lives. Profound impacts conceivably on the alignment of the world, the world order in structure. For a number of years now, ive been fairly focused on the increased pressures that create a new cold war between the United States and china. And there are two schools of thought, those who believe it requires a confrontation that is inevitable, and then a school of thought that i fall into, which is it is not inevitable. Clearly diplomacy we will never know the answer to that question but the United States requires good diplomacy as a matter of principle as well as our interests. All of the major issues of our time, and there are a number of them, but there are some preeminent ones. First, obviously, im not doing these in order of the challenges that present us. But the challenges of cyber, increasingly, it will change warfare in its entirety. The coronavirus, covid19, is not the only paradigm shifter here. Cyber, for years, has been building up and the challenge is now, could make modern warfare a different animal than people are used to thinking about. I guarantee you this, i dont foresee a lot of set piece wars, and most of aircraft carriers that nations have, big ships are going to disappear in a matter of seconds if you have a real war. The fact is that with the push of a button, you can shut down financiald shutdown systems, create havoc. Certainly have it at commandandcontrol above all of the things. So, a lot of things are changing right now, folks, and we just dont have the level of diplomacy, the level of International Engagement that puts those things on the table. Beyond cyber, new their weapons, the imf treaty in tatters, the start treaty threatened, the potential of conflict, accidental or otherwise, particularly with iran and tensions created by the United States of america alone pulling out of an agreement the rest of the world was trying to keep together. I mean, when have you ever seen such a measure of chaos put in place by, fundamentally, one person . And one person who is seeing the people of equilibrium and thinking, lead, general mattis, rex tillerson, this is an absolutely extraordinary moment in our history. You have of course, global poverty, which will add other problems that we have. And then we have the problem of Global Health, pandemics were here to talk about today. And that is joined to the greatest challenge of all. Some people still want to ignore and pretend its not a challenge, its the climate crisis. I spent years working on that issue as a Lieutenant Governor when i dealt with acid rain, and as a senator in 1988, and leading all the way to now with our secretary of state and when we negotiated bringing china aboard as a partner in order to try and achieve something. So, there is a complete clash here between strategy and an ideological driven process pushing us toward conflict versus a resolution of these issues. You cannot resolve any one of those issues i just put on the table, from covid to the climate, without multilateral engagement, leadership from the United States, and china and the United States actually cooperating with each other. Everything else will not happen. So weve got to get about the business of putting that strategy back together and dealing with the realities of an interconnected world where theres a real linkage between covid19 in the climate crisis. Covid19 saw our president , at first, for a month or so, call it a democratic hoax. He still, until recent days, called the planet crisis a chinese hoax. And the threat that was over the horizon, which generals and admirals and scientists and academics, its coming at us like a ton of bricks. The crisis of covid was ignored for the longest period of time, and therefore the United States is now leading in the number of deaths and the number of people infected. What does that remind you of . It reminds me of 30 years of the attitude on climate, where it is over the horizon. And youre going to deny facts and deny evidence and ignore science. So, this is the climate within which no pun intended we come together today with a group of extremely capable, extremely experienced cohorts in this endeavor. We have 150 years of diplomatic experience with us on this panel. The high points for this extraordinary group, anne patterson, is a retired career ambassador. She was the former assistant secretary of state, ambassador to egypt, columbia, el salvador, narcotics and law enforcement, and Deputy Representative of the u. N. , and i worked with her extremely closely when she was in a number of hotspots, including most recently egypt. Robert ford, a person i particularly admire, a man of courage, who stood up to the administration and retired out of principle because he didnt agree with the policy. He was ambassador to syria. Amidst the regimes of brutal repressions. Francisco paco palmieri, formerly on leave of the service, formerly the Principal Deputy assistant secretary for the western hemisphere affairs, great expertise in latin america. Harry thomas, former ambassador to zimbabwe, philippines, served philippines and bangladesh, retired. Served also as special assistant to secretary rice when she was in the state department. David most recently served as acting ambassador to beijing, and served in other assignments served in six other Foreign Service assignments in greater china, as well as senior posts worldwide, one of our top experts. Susan morton recently retired from the state department after three decades, focused on diplomacy in southeast asia. And served as acting secretary for east asian and Pacific Affairs and led the east asia policymaking. So, let me begin, give each of you a shot to tackle this. I spoke to the profound applications of this pandemic on health, economy, security all around the world. And id like to know what each of you see as the most Significant Impact of this crisis in the regions that you served, and what you think we might be doing differently. I know youve got to try and compress that into threeminute three minutes so everybody gets a shot, but lets begin with anne patterson. Thank you, mr. Secretary. I think the first impact will be the secondary and tertiary impacts of oil prices. And let me first say i dont think we know whats going on in saudi arabia or was going on in whats going on in iran. We need to get our embassies back and open. So, what are the implications . Well, first in saudi arabia, we know that the saudis have reserves for a couple years, but we also know that the breaking point on their budget is Something Like 80 a barrel, so they will be in trouble at some point. We know that some of the other gulf countries are debt ridden. We know this is worrisome with the guestworker situation, then when they start to send these people home. And historically, the largest number of guestworkers, 10 million in saudi arabia alone, come from pakistan and egypt, which are two troubled countries. So, when these people get out of work and go home, theres not going to be anything for them. And third is there assistance. The gulf countries will not be able to provide assistance to jordan or the palestinians or gaza, or any over there any of the other places they filled in. The one that would worry me most apart from the millions of people in jordan and lebanon is has camp in syria, which 60,000 isis dependents. Is the issue there is they basically live in a space american size of an parking spot, so theyve already got a compromised immune systems. What will happen to these displaced refugee camps . In yemen, the coronavirus is about to arrive in yemen, too, and its Health System is totally destroyed. Sec. Kerry let me interrupt. Do you know what is happening with corona in the camps, particularly the big in jordan . One we dont know yet. And i think one of the worries is the International Community is not engaged in these camps because theyve all been distracted by their domestic issues. And then theres issues like algeria, which has concerned people for years, but now its dependent on oil and gas revenue. Robert ford knows better than most what will happen in situations like that. Its not entirely negative, but i think youll see at the least increased poverty and health problems, and i would predict political instability. Sec. Kerry ill come back there, but let me narrow my questions so we can get more in. And then i will come back with individual questions to others. Do you want to fill in for your region, syria and etc . I will talk a little bit about it and i think anne is right to highlight a big at risk population, which are internally displaced people and refugees. That includes countries such as syria, but also countries like yemen, iraq, lebanon, jordan. So far, the administrations response has been to provide bits of money to lebanon and to jordan to help with refugee communities in those countries. But its small money, were talking about 5 million in the case of lebanon and about 8 million in the case of jordan. And about 26 million to iraq. So, the administration is doing a little, but these are small amounts of money. Just to give the audience a sense of perspective, i just mentioned about 40 million in total for coronavirus help to lebanon, jordan, and iraq. We are spending, this year, just on u. S. Military operations in syria, not iraq, only syria, were spending over 1 billion. Thats with a b. So, the focus, i think, on policy, to deal with Climate Change and Pandemic Public Health is going to take a real reorientation of american policy and frankly, american thinking about the region. One of the things that will happen, as anne mentioned, oil prices and economic decline reverberates through the region, a lot of states are going to actually be more challenged in terms of stability. And the response is not an American Military response to help states provide Better Services to their populations. Ill stop there. Sec. Kerry do both of you, just very quickly, do both of you or either of you believe American Leadership has been further put at issue as a consequence of what china and others are saying at this point in time . And also, what they are experiencing in terms of our disengagement . Robert, you want to go first . Well, ill just say i think American Leadership has been diminishing in the middle east and north africa for more than 10 years. I think it started 20 years ago almost with the problems out of the iraq war. So thats absolutely continued. And what interesting is that while russia has intervened militarily in places like syria and more military engagement with the egyptian military, russia cant really do much to help countries address Public Health problems like a pandemic. Or Even Economic problems, oil shock. But china is upping its game, gradually. Not saying china will replace the United States in the middle east tomorrow or the next day, but i think over the longer even thinking 3, 4, 5 or 10 years, the chinese will be more present in parts of the middle east. We will have to think about how to work with them, and in some cases, how to respond when we cant work with them. Sec. Kerry thank you. Anne, he want to help with that . Yeah, i think thats true. The rise of china in the middle east has been as dramatic as it has been in other areas of the world, but its there. People say in the gulf that the chinese are everywhere now in an economic sense. The signal we sent by pulling back many Embassy Staff in the middle east, and im well aware of the Public Health issues, leaves countries to believe we are essentially not with them, and thats a secondary effect because they start to look to other players. Sec. Kerry i just commented to everybody i was at the conference which takes place in the United Arab Emirates a year and a half ago, and the russian delegation got up and made this profound and introductory statement about how literally foreignpolicy experts from around the world, that the United States was over as a leader. I mean, they stood up at this conference and said theres a new narrative. China and russia are now leading the world. The United States is now a country in decline, and this will be a century of the far east Asian Countries and russia, and not the United States. So they have been pushing this narrative actively. Let me ask david rank, and assistant secretary thorton, given this push by china to change the narrative, and their efforts very overtly by providing some of the needed materials, critical supplies, and actually publicly touting the effectiveness of their system and its ability to be able to respond to these kinds of crises versus democracies, how effective do you think thats been, and whats the impact on our prospects Going Forward . Yeah, ill go first. Thank you very much, everyone, for comments, and to be here today. Its wonderful to see everyone. It feels like old times, and it makes me happy going into the weekend. I think for the chinese, they have been pushing to try to take advantage of the pandemic, which is kind of an unusual situation where they were the first to suffer from t