Possibilities. My own office at the state department has had a pretty consistent budget thanks to the congress to support Civil Society actors in a variety of countries and, of course, the National Endowment for democracy remains the pree moore institution in the world premier institution in the world for targeting assistance to democrats usually many tough places. So they know they have support from the outside community, from the International Community. So let me mention a couple of things just to wind up this opening scene setter. One is that i think we in the United States need to appreciate the Important Role that congress plays. While we disparage its occasional polarization and inability to resolve certain major things, the congress has been a major contributor to american democracy programming in a lot of ways. Not least in the creation of my part of the state department. You know, the bureau for democracy, human rights and labor was created 30 years ago over the objections of the state department and the executive branch. Because it has long been seen in our political culture that we need to have some people minding this part of the store, and so we have played a role and increasingly, i think, prominent role inside the u. S. Government in being part of the conversations about how we integrate security, prosperity and our support for freedom as well. And so we do that, can we get increasing support from congress in various ways. One of the ones thats important for this discussion in an age of heightened security consciousness in our Foreign Policy is something called the leahy law. Senator pat leahy 10 or 12 years ago first put into congressional appropriations a provision that says we cannot provide military equipment or training to Security Forces units that we have credible evidence are involved in gross human rights violations. This open toes up a whole other dimension opens up a whole other dimension of engagement with foreign governments and societies about how Security Forces can be made more rights respecting and lawabiding. And it works to some extent. It works in key ways to provide a different kind of pressure on authoritarian governments, particularly those who are allied to us, the kind that was referred to, you know, that are not democratic, but are friends of ours, so were willing to provide them with certain kinds of Security Assistance. We do that, but now we have a rights dimension to that discussion as well in many places. So i appreciate the role that congress has played in framing our assistance, our engagement in the world, not at least through the funding of the National Endowment for democracy, but also the large budgets that aid and others get. But also these policy discussions about things like the terms on which we provide Security Assistance. And ill just end by echoing what several people have already said, that one of the most important things we can do in the United States to strengthen democratic systems abroad is to be a better democracy. We need to be a better democracy just like europe needs to be better democracies and more persuasive and to carry in the wider world. And so i think we need finish those of us who care about our International Profile need to take an interest in domestic politics in a way i dont think we always do. I think we figure somebody else is working on that x were just going to solve the rest of worlds problems. Those of us who travel a lot and are called on to explain the u. S. System, i think, need to pend more of our time spend more of our time promoting better government in the United States. Thanks so much, tom. Before we open the floor to questions, were going to give each speaker a chance to give a brief response to what theyve heard, two to three minutes. Well start with carl. Thanks. Maybe the first point to make is one that nikolas concluded on which is, you know, the nehru problem, as it were. I prefer nehru to mao and a democratic india to totalitarian china. We dont expect every country when they become democratic to somehow do our business, you know, do our bidding. But democracies tend to be friendlier than dictatorships which, you know, often rely upon needing enemies which whip up extreme nationalism to deal with their legitimacy problems. I prefer south korea to north korea. South koreas not perfect, and a lot of people in south korea that have problems with the current government. But i assure you, its better than north korea and not just that it doesnt have a gulag and murder its own people, but its friendlier to us than north korea. And those are the choices we face in the world. And its not irrelevant, you know, that dem can accuracies are not perfect democracies are not perfect and 100 allies. Second point, yeah, change sometimes difficult. First of all, we dont bring all, about all that change. Mubarak was not going to be permanently there. The question is how to manage change. The problem with the mansfield argument that you referred to is he considered milosevic to have been a product of Democratic Change, that this was a transitional government. Milosevic was not a democrat, and its a false argument. There is instability in the world. The question i think we have to face is, you know, as we think about this work, what is the division of labor between a nongovernmental entity and the u. S. Government . And what do we want from the u. S. Government . I mean, one thing we do want, and ive said this, is that the people that we support could use the help, the diplomatic and Political Support of the United States. And of the west. A lot of that is being done to a certain degree. They need it more. You cannot view democracy assistance in a vacuum. You need to back it up with the Political Support that the activists need in order to survive, in order to and to function. We need a strong voice on these issues. We should not call dictatorships democratic or in the process of a democratic transition as weve, you know, basically referred to egypt recently. We may need to work with egypt as a country that shares certain interests with us in the middle east at a time when you have isis, but we dont need to call them democratic. And we need to speak about human rights, and it doesnt necessarily conflict with our interests in these countries. Finally, i think we underestimate the extent to which democracy and progress for democracy depends upon an orderly international environment. Youre much more likely to get democratic progress where there is a certain modicum of world order than you are where there is chaos. And one of the things i was arguing for is that i dont think it helps to remove the pole that holds up the tent of world order. And i consider that pole and we can argue about this to be u. S. Leadership, u. S. Influence. Because nothing is going to take its place. Its not all the answers that we have, but a stable world will depend upon that, and i think democracy needs that in order to progress. Two last quick points. We as a country in thinking about our Foreign Policy have to find the balance between what my board member calls maximalism and minimalism. We tend to have these swings, sometimes very, very sharply. There is the possibility of a solvent, stable middle ground. We have to fight for that which can take account of the need for power, the need for deterrence and also the need to support people who are fighting and struggling for democracy. And second and related to that, manager were thinking about something were thinking about, i think we have to really start thinking very clearly about the relationship to Security Issues to democracy issues. These are complex questions, and i think its important to bring people together to start thinking through these complex questions. Because its not necessarily, you know friendly tyrants are not necessarily the source of stability and friendship in the world, and we have to somehow think about how to balance the tensions that exist. Therell always be tensions, but we can find a better way to balance them than we have in the past. Thanks. Certainly, north korea is a worse case than south korea, and i think theres no disagreement there. For the u. S. , of course, the india example is that our preference for pakistan when it did not have a democratic government because of the belief that it was closer to u. S. Security interests, i think, is more akin to what i was trying to get at, not the we can always have a clear cut case of where democracies are always preferable even when they have issues. And then we do have to get, i think though, and, tom, i think that this point you were bringing up is very critical of how we find these balances, what were willing to give up in terms of our security agenda. And with egypt i think it is a great case. We could have advanced a democratic agenda or been more willing to do so if there were certain elements of our security agenda we were willing to give up. What im trying to argue, we cant do both. We will have to have these debates. We have to find where the balance is going to be between we would prefer to see a democratic government and, therefore, willing to cede on a set of issues, a recession, and then conversely, i think, when we have Security Issues where we might feel that transitions might be problematic in the short run. And, again, having a calculus, i think, is better than simply flailing out and simply saying, well, these issues dont exist, or we can do can it all. And i think that one of the issues that weve had in recent years, the criticisms that are out will is that we dont seem to be able to strike this balance. We also then have to strike a balance with our diplomacy. You cant go to a government that is authoritarian that you are now asking for a whole list of security cooperations and then say, by the way, were also working to change your form of government. Be that change of government is being if that change of government is being perceived as change of regime. And, again, its not that we cant do both or that we should give up one or the other, its just being able to have these conversations about what were willing to accept, what half a loaf solutions were willing to have. I was glad that you mentioned the leahy amendment was if we always are more time, we can always bring up more things, and i think thats a great example of where we can use our conditionality. A state is free to reject our assistance if they dont want to abide by those terms, and some countries dont. Certainly what i see in the context of the International Military education is that it has ap impact because when you say that in order to get Security Assistance from the u. S. , you have to meet these standards. And when our diplomats can go to other countries and say you will have to pass certain smell tests with the u. S. Congress in order to get certain things, that can be effective. So i think that is one of the ways that we can find, we can search for the conditionality that we need if we want to pursue these things without having it, again, become this either or; we can either pursue security or democracy, but not both. So i think that the leahy amendment and other things like that are important for us as we continue our discussions today. I think we should look at those as being tools that can serve both sets of interests. Um, i want to pick up on point of instability in the world. I think its a working in africa and spending a fair amount of time there, i see this all over the place, and i think that what were seeing, take somalia as an example. This is a problem that weve been faced with for over two decades now, 1994 is when the u. S. Went in the first time there. And its still broken. And its still and the security threats there are real, and we have to think about what is a way to work more constructively in these societies. I think israel has been trying to bomb hamas out of existence for a long time now. The more bombs they drop, the more problems they wind up creating for themselves. Im not saying that we need to go and bring terrorist groups into governments. Im not, certainly not saying that at all. But if you think about libya or large parts of the sahel or large parts of the middle east, these are countries that are going through profound and difficult challenges, and its going to take much more than a military solution. And i hope that tom is leading a lot of these efforts to bring the state department into these and to bring usaid more into these challenges because it is they require political settlements. Now, on the positive side, and i said that i think u. S. Democracy assistance has been very effective overtaking a broad view is that most of africa, where i work, there are elections, and there are vibrant elections and getting into power really means something. And, certainly, there are problems in almost all of these cups with corruption and countries with corruption and vote rigging and poor rule of law. But i i also see that losers are upset, too, and they take steps to try and make these countries more effective. And so i see in that sense, i see a lot of positive change, and i see a lot of countries that are just, i mean, the competitive role of politics makes people and times want to improve the rules of the game so they can increase their chances of winning or more transparency for the government or stronger media for it to be critical. And so in that sense i think that we have, that two or three or decades ago no one would have predicted that ghana would be such a great democracy or senegal or even all the problems in kenya or zambia. It can go on. And so i think we shouldnt have undue pessimism because i think that given where a lot of these countries started 30 be or 40 years ago, no one would have predicted that they had challenging problems. And i think that we should be proud of the work that weve done there and learned there those lessons and apply them to challenges we face today. Thanks. And tom. The United States remains the most important country in the world and is also the one thats providing the most important leadership on democracy and human rights. Bar none. Pick next ten most active democracy promoters in the democratic world, and they dont add up to half of what the United States is doing. And thats not just in the funding, thats in the diplomatic and Political Leadership that the United States continues to provide. Were trying to overcome a period in which we seem to do that in an arrogant and clumsy way, and so it may have it may be sometimes too subtle for some or not as over the top in our rhetoric as we might be or might be more pleasing to some. But the United States is at the center of every important conversation on how to defend democratic governor nance and institutions governance and institutions and developing strategies on trying to widen those circles. Its not always public, but every other government will tell you that when they want to have a discussion about what to do about x country, it starts here. So im confident and comfortable that were managing an effort. The effort, as i said earlier, has some very strong opposition to it in some key governments and some key nongovernmental actors in the world. And were incurring some costs in other parts of our relationships. I mean, our advocacy for activists in places like azerbaijan and russia comes at some cost to our bilateral relationships in those places. We are active with, in defending those who speak up for the kind of values that we share. We do that publicly and privately. We are engaged with nondemocratic but allied or partner countries in a wide range of ways, and it does come at some cost in other parts of our relationships on security and other matters. So thats the enduring tradeoff, thats the balance we have to sometimes find is where, you know, how much, how much of a cost in a different part of our relationship can we incur in defense of our values. And thats what we wrestle with every day. And depending on the circumstance, depending on the threat, depending on various things, you know, we might be more forward leaning in some dimension and less so in another dimension. But that is what happens on a daily basis inside the u. S. Government. It was mentioned earlier that at world bank theres a movement for democrat, you know, among people that work there thinking that it matters more and more to their work. And thats also true in the United States. During this last 25 years in the United States government, these last 25 years it has become part and parcel of every diplomats dna to appreciate that the democratic character of governments that we partner with affects their International Posture and policies as well. And our military establishment, our intelligence agencies, i think, increasingly understand that and increasingly weave that into their engagements with their partners as well. So its but its, its not a universeally held view yet, but its an emerging and growing view. And so i think that we will continue in this direction for at least another 25 years and, hopefully, well have a few more successes to talk about in the next when we meet 25 years from now. [laughter] well, thanks very much, tom. I am going to open the floor to questions. I do ask that you keep your questions to actual questions. Weve had some very long and very detailed presentations here. I know this is a very, an issue that a lot of people have opinions on, but i want to restrict the discussion to questions and answers. So, please, focus on questions and not comments. So well take this person right here. Well get a microphone to you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is miriam from the collaborative for civic education. We run projects to help Civil Societies through civic education, and one of those is tavana which is an Elearning Institute for iranian Civil Society. My question is when does u. S. Oil harm democratic poli