Britannia Radio

THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION MANAGING GLOBAL INSECURITY

WITH JAVIER SOLANA

Washington, D.C.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

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Keynote Speaker:

JAVIER SOLANA

High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy

Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union

Moderator:

CARLOS PASCUAL

Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies

The Brookings Institution

Panelist:

STROBE TALBOTT

President

The Brookings Institution

STEPHEN STEADMAN

Professor and Senior Fellow, CISAC

Stanford University

* * * * *

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P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. PASCUAL: Good afternoon. My name is Carlos Pascual, I'm the Vice President and Director of the Foreign Policy Studies program here at the Brookings Institution. It's a pleasure to welcome you today to this launch of a new project on managing global insecurity.

It is a joint project among the Brookings Institution, Stanford University, and New York University, and we are extremely pleased to be able to officially launch the public side of this project today with Javier Solana, who in his person, is perhaps one of the best examples of the institutionalization of global governance that we have today.

This project is built on a couple of paradoxes; one is that the United States is perhaps the most powerful country that we've seen in history; it certainly has the most powerful military. We spend about as much in defense as just about the rest of the world combined, and yet we cannot achieve unilaterally and militarily. Our objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan and the threat of global terror are expanding.

The second paradox is that at a time when the United States has had a reputation for unilateralism, we probably have more serious issues in front of the United Nations for either political action, or peace keeping, or financing, or legitimacy than ever before. Today Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Lebanon, Kosovo, Congo, and Haiti at a minimum require a major United Nations role, yet that in and

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of itself is not a panacea because we've seen that the multilateral security system is crippled and having difficulty coping with issues that are transnational in nature, and where the concept, traditional concept of boundaries has been eclipsed in a world which is interconnected in ways that we have never seen in the past.

And so the challenge that we have taken on in this project is to develop concepts and ideas on how to revitalize that national security system and shape the world in a way that can provide for peace and security over the next 50 years. And if we do not do that, to recognize that we are going to be responding from crisis to crisis and that those crises themselves are going to create their own ad hoc realities.

This project is really divided into two parts. Part of it is an analytic part that will produce a series of case studies on countries and cross-cutting issues such as peace keeping, peace building, counter-terrorism, non-proliferation, dealing with energy in the environment and biosecurity.

We will produce at least two books out of this project, a series of policy briefs and case studies. In effect, we want to have the materials that are necessary to underpin an ongoing debate on these issues. And secondly, we will seek to build up networks, networks of senior leaders, and politicians, and academics, and policy experts, diplomats, and with the media so that we can develop an understanding and a momentum to support a process of change of multilateral security institutions, and be able to place before a new U.S. President in 2009 the foundations for engagement, as well as to build within the international community a

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willingness to take up these issues again at a point in time when we have tried before and have not succeeded, and we have to build the confidence that is worthwhile to proceed, and so that's really the mission that we are launching on today.

In addition to Javier Solana, we have a panel that includes two close colleagues and friends, including my boss, Strobe Talbott, the President of the Brookings Institution, who in and of himself has played a major role on global governance issues and is writing a book on the topic. And if I remembered your publisher and the title, I'd give it a plug, but we'll do that at a different opportunity.

And in addition to that, we have Steve Steadman, again, a friend and a partner from Stanford University. Steve is a professor at Stanford and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security and International Cooperation there. And they will have an opportunity to comment on Javier's remarks.

I want to thank all of you for joining us and participating. I want to thank in particular Ambassador Gunnar Lund from Sweden for his presence, the Sharza of Lebanon and other friends from diplomatic community are here, and I haven't seen you, my apologies in advance. Let me end there and ask Strobe Talbott if he would then continue the process and say a few words and introduce Javier.

MR. TALBOTT: Thanks, Carlos. Welcome to all of you. I wanted to add just a couple of words to what you've already heard from Carlos about this really quite remarkable and I think very promising project that he and Steve Steadman and Bruce Jones have undertaken.

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As Carlos has said, the goal of this project is to help our nation and our world better meet the challenge of managing global insecurity. And Carlos framed the issue very properly in terms of that category of issues that's so much on our minds and so much in the headlines, which is that of regional conflict.

But the challenge really goes beyond that, and Carlos and Steve and Bruce and I have talked about that a lot. The challenge of global insecurity, the challenge to our ability, to ensure that we make it through the 21st century in good shape includes issues like terror and the roots of terror, proliferation, global poverty, climate change, environmental degradation in general.

Those problems and those perils are, as Carlos said, very much connected, and so are the solutions to them. And it's getting at the nexus that is part of this multi-year, multi-institutional undertaking. Carlos has already said how lucky we are to be working with Steve and with Bruce, and through them, with Stanford University and NYU. I want to say just a quick word about the background of the Brookings Institution's own work in this whole area of global governance.

In a sense, we have been working on this topic here at Brookings for more than 60 years. A Brookings economist by the name of Leo Pasvolski, who was an immigrant from Poland, was instrumental in planning the UN system back during World War II. And I might add that Carlos, in his own work in government, was deeply immersed in the issues that we're going to be talking about and the policy making and in the diplomacy of global governance.

Carlos and I, by the way, had a chance at the very end of last year to

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meet with Von Keemoon and his colleagues just as they were moving into the Secretary General's office up in New York. And Mr. Von has been very encouraging of this work and has said that he will be receptive to its reports and its recommendations.

Carlos has also said a word or two about the distinguished group of advisors who will be working with the scholars who are producing the products that you will be hearing a lot about from this podium and others during the next couple of years. And we're all particularly glad that Javier Solana has agreed to be part of that effort, and that he has also agreed, in the midst of a very busy schedule, to lead us in this discussion this afternoon. Mr. Solana is a trained physicist, which means, among other things, that he brings a special insight into the phenomena of bipolarity, unipolarity, and multipolarity in the international system. He also knows a great deal about governance, both national and international.

In his native country of Spain, he was a Cabinet Minister from the early 1980's into the mid 1990's, including a stint as Foreign Minister, which is when we first became friends and colleagues.

Mr. Solana played a key role in bringing democracy to Spain and bringing Spain into a position of leadership in what I would call, to coin a phrase, the new Europe, which is to say a community of democracies, a zone of peace, and under the flag of the European Union, the most ambitious, promising experiment in transnational cooperation, and indeed, supranational governance on the planet, whose success is crucial, not only for its own member states, but for the world as a

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whole since it can serve as a model for other regions.

In the second half of the 1990's, Mr. Solana was the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He lead the alliance in the first major combat operation of its existence, which was, of course, in the Balkans, and that mission was to manage regional insecurity. For the last eight years, he has been the Secretary General of the EU's Council and High Representative for Common Security and Foreign Policy. I think by and large in the world of politics, the power that comes with a title is inversely proportional to the length of the title, but Mr. Solana is a notable exception to that rule. By sheer force of his political and diplomatic skills, and his unfounded energy and capacity for optimism that Carlos was commenting on, Mr. Solana has made the most of a complex and constraining mandate, and he's made himself the closest thing that Europe has to a foreign minister.

In that capacity, he has become a global statesman of unique standing, and incidentally, one of the busiest, most permanently jet lagged human beings on the face of the earth. He's here in Washington for the US/EU Foreign Minister's meeting, but he's also here to help us launch this important venture, which by the way will be web-casted, and of course, that means that all remarks are on the record. So I want to thank you, Javier, for that and for much else, and the podium is yours.

MR. SOLANA: Thank you very much, Strobe and Carlos, for your kind words of friendship. Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, Dean Acheson, in his

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memoirs, the title was present at the creation. The story he tells is how in the post war period under the U.S. leadership a system was built that put the world on a new path of international cooperation.

His generation was determined to learn the lessons of the 1930's, drive economic protectionism in a paralyzed League of Nations. They were committed to do better, but they were not naive. After all, this was also the start of the Cold War. So they knew about power, but they decided to make subject constraints. The title of his book of memoirs is fitting. The leaders at that time were not always aware of it, but they created what became known as the multilateral system. Corporation could not be just ad hoc, but based on strong institutions. For the case as we know the system served as well.

This morning or this afternoon, I am delighted that I am so to say also present a declaration of something, maybe this new initiative on global governance. I want to thank Strobe, Carlos, and Steve for getting this project off the ground, together with the Center of International Cooperation at NYU and at the Center of International Security and Cooperation of Stanford.

It seems to be that the aim of this project is ambitious and is also urgent. To launch a reform effort for the global security system in 2009 is imperative. As Carlos has said, we have to analyze the capacity of the existing system to address the new threats we face, we have to assess why previous reform attempts have not always worked, and then decide how we can build the momentum for a successful reform effort in 2009. And I am delighted to play a modest role

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myself.

Let me start by saying that the global governance is an awful term, but it is vital -- we need it because of the simple reality with this inter dependence. We live in a world where people, goods, ideas, money, threats, opportunities move at the global level and it increases beat. What happens half way around the world, in Afghanistan, in Gaza, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, affects our security and our prospect.

Globalization has offered millions of people a chance to live better lives, but it has also unleashed forces that governments can neither stop, not control. You know the list; terrorism, non-proliferation, climate change, pandemics failing the states, none can be solved by a single a government acting alone.

So the question is, how do we organize this globalized world and especially how do we tackle the dark sides of globalization? In the whole, our capacity to analyze problems is good, but even when we agree on what has to happen, it brings to my mind the Israeli/Palestinian problem, we still don't know how to manage to translate the consensus into results in the ground, and that can be said of many of the problems that we are facing today, and I think it is worth analyzing why this is so.

Let me return for a moment to the book of Ikes. The post-war system was very successful. We had a network of strong institutions and regimes. The UN, the IMF, the GATT of the time, NATO, yes, the Cold War set limits on the capacity of the system, but it also prevented the Cold War from degenerating into an open

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conflict -- to deterrence, the Dayton, the Helsinki Agreement, the Arms Control Treaties, we eventually brought about a peaceful end to the Cold War.

And this lead in 1998 -- 1989 -- in the early '90's to the break which I would have called euphoria. It was a period of the anniversary, the period of a time for markets and democracy, a new world ordered to be managed by a rejuvenated United Nation, it was great to live that phase, but people were too optimistic, for the global system is in serious trouble, and we know it, and it's simply not capable of solving the big challenges of today.

Let me go back to the 19th century for a moment. Do you recall the problems of industrialization that brought about – were solved through a series of state interventions from safety standards to a ban of child labor states. We have to ask ourselves today, what is beyond the state do have to solve the big problems of our times.

We're dealing with complex security challenges that defy traditional ways of operating. We have to see the connections between different threats. In many ways, and I like to mention that, Darfur the crisis of Darfur can be called, or at least can be we’re at war and maybe the first war as a consequence of climate change. It is a problem of water, is it problem of desertification a problem we have known in other previous times, but this is the first time that we're aware that all these things related to climate change may have also security components. We need more integrated strategies to address these problems. And all system, everyone was doing their own thing in their own corner. We know now that we must bring together the

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world of diplomats, of soldiers, of judges, and of development interests if we want to solve the problems.

More fundamentally, the old system cannot cope because power is shifting away within the political system, to the media, to the markets, and our fold (phonetic) to individuals. These days, and I would like to say there is less obedience, well understood the term. Who wants to be a follower?

You are constantly told that you can be what you want to be. It is a strike -- it strikes me when I see the note in Britain that the slogan for the recruitment for the Army has changed from the classical phrase, "your country needs you", to a new phrase, "be all you can be if you join the Army", it's quite a change.

Power, as I said, is shifting, but it's also shifting between the political system in our world from the west to the new powers in China, in India, in Brazil, South Africa, to mention some. And, yes, from the United States, we have seen a tendency to make this engagement in the most radical system more selective, more narrowly focused on short term priorities, and less willing to seek deeper trade-offs with other countries. What can we do? I think the first requirement has been sort of ready by Strobe and by Carlos, is that the United States plays an active and constructive role inside the system, the multilateral system. I have a sense, it's a sense that is growing in me, that the tide may be turning. And I hope that this project, the project we're introducing today, will strengthen those who argue that working through multilateral organizations is the best way to get lasting results.

But more broadly, we need to make more space at the top table, the

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table at which (off mike) Take for instance the G8, at present, I will dare to say that is not working well, it needs to change, it needs to change membership, and some ideas come to mind, why not make instead of a G8 a G10, in which the ten major countries are represented based on a composite of index of international weight and B -- but why not put A’s contribution to make the world better, soldiers that are at the disposal of the United Nations for peace keeping operations, and define a new index that will be the reality of the weight of importance of the countries in the world.

These will not only bring China and India, but it also will keep some of the current members of the G8 on their toes. Equally, we should make space for the new heavyweights at the UN Security Council, no doubt about that, and in turn, the new powers should keep in mind clearly that with greater global influence comes also greater responsibility. Another idea that we can work with is to extend the regional cooperation that we may have the possibility of having all security council, if I may say, permanent members, that together with the great powers, but also with some of important regional organization. I am convinced that we need a stronger regional organization.

The African Union, fundamental to solve the problems in Africa from Darfur to Somalia or ASEAN in the Pacific, which is doing fantastically well in the last period of time, and the other organizations in Latin America.

I also wonder whether the Middle East region will remain the big exception over armed and institutionalized and rife with tensions. Then I'm afraid we

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have the need to development new bargains, a bargain on the environment and on climate change, or on something very important to me, the new forms of dialogue between cultures.

Sometimes we need to be more serious about upholding our own side of the old bargain. And I'd like to insist, and I will keep insisting as much as I can in the question of non-proliferation. But if we want to be credible on non-proliferation, we have to take also the other side of the coin, which is disarmament if we want to have the real old bargain be a reality.

In addition, the multilateral system cannot only address our immediate concern. When we talk about non-proliferation, we mostly mean weapons of mass destruction. But for many people in Africa or many people in Asia, the most urgent proliferation problem is that of small weapons and small arms. So above all we need to relearn that the biggest shift in history came when they extended the rule of law, first within the states, now gradually also among them. We should as above we are already doing. Regionally, most striking probably the European Union, but also globally on some aspects of international life say the WTO dispute settlement system, fantastic achievement, or even international criminal court very important for many countries.

In short, we need to share power, to rethink power, entertain power, to share power with new players, to rethink power beyond the state paradigm to tame power, understand the rule of law internationally.

Let me end by saying a word about legitimacy. One big problem is

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that we all know that we live in globalized world, this is obvious, but our politics remain local or remain national. And this is a problem for those who are convinced that the world needs more global level multilateral cooperation, for we are also democrats and believe that power has to be accountable.

So the question becomes, how do you make global governments more effective while making it also democratically accountable. A key benefit acting multilaterally is legitimacy, which in turn, enhance effectiveness. As I said, this means bringing in new centers of power. But legitimacy also brings our public along with us. If decisions are increasingly taken at the international level, people have to see these as legitimate. So we have two imperatives that we had to make compatible to create greater effectiveness in global governments, but also to uphold democratic legitimacy. To do so is not easy, in fact, it's difficult. It requires new ideas and a sense of compromise, but I really don't see any other alternative.

Let me ask to finish with a quote from Jean Jacque Rousseau from the Social Contract, a famous book for societies that probably today we can also take it about global social contract, and he said, "the strongest is never strong enough to be always the master unless he transforms his strength into right and obedience into duty", let's see if we can do it.

MR. PASCUAL: Javier, that was a tremendous presentation. I couldn't think of a better way to get this project started. And in particular, one of the things that you've done is really very squarely put on the table this question that, in the end, there needs to be a sharing of power, that that sharing of power is

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fundamental to legitimacy, that there needs to be compromise, and ironically, that in the context of that compromise, that that is fundamentally what strength is about, which, in fact, is almost counterintuitive to an American perspective, because if you're strong, you don't compromise, and it actually lays out a whole series of the challenges that we face in front of us, and I think it was very helpful to have the way that you laid this out, in both the substantive way, but in a way which actually requires a change in mind frame in the way that we think about the world, so I appreciate that, and I thank you for it. I'm going to start by first asking my colleagues here, Strobe Talbott and Steve Steadman, for each of them to just take a couple of minutes and either reflect on some of the comments that Javier offered, or if there are other perspectives that you want to put on the table. Strobe, please.

MR. TALBOTT: Carlos, I think I'll reflect in the form of a question to draw out Javier's reflections a little bit further, on two issues to start with, and then Steve, if you will broaden the scope of this discussion so that it's truly global. But a question about the EU and a question about the US/EU relationship. Many of us have the impression from this side of the Atlantic, particularly those of us who travel across the Atlantic a lot, that the EU is going through a period of uncertainty about itself and its future. What is your own assessment about how severe the doldrums of the EU are right now, and do you see the EU coming out of those doldrums in time to contribute to the positive process that you were describing?

With regard to the US/EU relationship, in the first term of President Bush's presidency, that relationship was strained, I think all of us recognized that

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objectively. You just emerged from very intense discussions with Doctor Rice and others; what is the state of the US/EU relationship today?

MR. PASCUAL: Do you want to go ahead? Why don't you go ahead.

MR. SOLANA: Okay, thank you, thank you very much. The two questions are very important and I would like to answer briefly, but clearly, on the European Union. I have been qualified as an optimist. If you ask me about the European Union, I would like to say it's super-optimist. I think that this is one of the most beautiful buildings that have been created after the Second World War, there's no doubt about that.

Starting with six members, we have 27 now, and it has created the most important, the most important change of society without the need of shooting a shot, only with a magnetic pole that's supposed to be part of that institution. The attraction that for many countries supposed to be part of this institution have changed societies in a manner that with other means, would have been probably impossible to do it.

To have countries that came out not long ago from the communism and they are now societies developed -- democratic societies playing a very good role in the world as an active players collectively. So I will be optimistic, and I am optimistic, and it is true that you may have a moment in which -- because we wanted to go so far to have a constitution that we have some problems in that sense, that it was not approved by everybody, by every country, but I can bet that this probably

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will be resolved, and not only resolved, it will come out with more energy and with more determination than before. And then he also say something which is, for some contradictory -- not for me, in the years that we have been without a constitution because it was subject to a referendum probably we have been more active internally and externally, acting in the world more than we have ever thought.

So, therefore, the vitality that exists there is, to my mind, tremendous vitality that is going to maintain the European Union as being an important player in the world beyond the economy and entering also in the crisis management security aspects of our collective life.

The second question is multilateral relation between the European Union and the United States. It is true that the first period of President Bush had some tension, and the tension that clearly or the most clearly manifestation was the time surrounded declaration of the war with Iraq, that produced divisions profound divisions in Europe, it produced profound divisions in your own society, in the Security Council, everywhere. It was a decision that divided the societies in different manners.

But I have to tell you very honestly that the second part, and in particular last month, the relationship between the European and the U.S. are going through a very, very, very good time, and we are cooperating in a very constructive manner in trying to solve the big problems that have been mentioned by everybody here today that probably will continue to be meant being the Middle East, being the questions as related to Iraq, in the disorganization of Iraq, meaning Afghanistan, we

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are cooperating very closely, and being climate change, being in energy, being many, many other issues in which we are cooperating very efficiently, I think.

Now, I will say then, to answer the second question, the second part of the question, that at this point in time, our relationship are normal as are the relations of people who are friends (off mike) that have the same objectives in life collectively, and that we want to construct a better world with a better of our intention, our capabilities. So we're going through a very good moment of our relations now.

MR. PASCUAL: Steve, let me ask you to jump in. For those in the audience who aren't aware, Steve Steadman was the Chair of the Secretariat on the high level panel report that was done for Kofi Annan and put forward a whole package of reforms on global governance that were made public in November of 2004, and deeply influenced then Kofi Annan's proposal to the United Nations that were made in March of 2005.

And so in a sense, you've seen the best of a multilateral process in bringing together some of the smartest people in the world, gathering ideas, developing proposals, building the enthusiasm, and you've also seen some of the ugliest developments, the sausage factory afterwards, and in fact, the sausage that was produced even. And just given some of the challenges that Javier laid out, I wonder if you would mind particularly reflecting on what are going to be some of the challenges here to, in fact, actually get the international community to come back to a table and take a process like this seriously.

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MR. STEADMAN: Sure; actually, I would start almost where Javier started. When Javier was quoting Dean Acheson present at the creation, I had to laugh, because Bruce Jones and I, who was my Deputy at the UN, we often had a conversation that if someone were to write the history of United States diplomacy and international order after 1989, it would be something like present at the drift asleep at the wheel, something that would convey the fact that the Cold War ended and the super powers didn't seem to really notice it, or if they did notice it, didn't seem able to put together a compelling vision of what new international architecture was needed to create order and legitimize U.S. power, right.

And it's stunning because we're -- depending on how you cut it, we're 17 or 18 years into the post Cold War era, we're six years into the post 911 era, we keep defining ourselves by what we are not, which again speaks to a lack of vision, and not only a lack of vision, but something that Javier alluded to, which is, I don't think we have a clue about power these days. I think traditional definitions of power that so much rely on military power cast this long shadow over us, and yet, as Carlos stated, there is this paradox that America has all of this military power, yet is unable to get anything it wants by itself and has to find cooperation somewhere to get anything that it wants. So our ideas about power are outmoded and so we've got to start thinking about interdependence and whether, you know, you can get an American foreign policy that acknowledges that American national security is interdependent with global security; that, to me, is a fundamental question.

Now, when it came to what we tried to do at the UN back in 2004

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and 2005, which was essentially to help the Secretary General put forward a new vision of what collective security could look like, what would a vision of collective security today look like. In 1945, in some ways it was simple, because you need a common threat perception, the threat was international aggression, so you create an organization that's supposed to protect against international aggression.

Well, there is no common threat perception today unless we are willing to say that a whole host of threats that are felt regionally and are felt geographically or felt by different groups based on power and privilege, but they are all threats to us, right, whether it be HIV, Aids, dire poverty, environmental degradation, civil wars, regional conflicts, nuclear biological chemical wars, international terrorism. And what we said was, if you could imagine a new collective security for today, the idea would be that the international response to HIV Aids would be as robust as our response to international terrorism, that's what a new collective security would start to look like, that you first acknowledge everyone's threats, secondly, you start to look at how they are interconnected, and third, even when you can't find the interconnections, that you base your policies on cooperate to cooperate.

How else -- in a world where you cannot unilaterally defend yourself against your biggest threats, how are you going to do it short of getting cooperation with others, how are you going to get that cooperation unless you are willing to cooperate with others in addressing their threat, so that was the sort of -- the vision. A good question, what happened to it?

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Well, the vision still remains, and if you look at what we tried to do over a period of two years, you can see some accomplishments. You saw the creation of new institutions, a peace building commission, a peace building support office at the UN, a new counter terrorism implementation task force at the UN.

On a normative basis, you've got all of the members of the General Assembly to agree for the first time that sovereignty is not sacrosanct that there are instances in which, you know, when there is genocide or ethnic cleansing, countries cannot hide behind their own borders to say this is an internal matter and not a matter for everyone else, it was an endorsement of the responsibility to protect. That's as far as it went, and everybody says, well, isn't this a huge disappointment, and my answer is, it's the, you know, the answer to the question of, you know, the dancing dog, you know, it's not that the dance is particularly well, it's a miracle that it dances at all, that is, the UN was able to accomplish that, Kofi Annan was able to accomplish that at a time when American engagement was feckless episodic and downright hostile at times, radioactive at times.

And so, you know, playing it back, could you imagine what the two years of reform effort would have been like if you had actually had an administration that at the time was very much engaged and signaled its willingness to listen and to give and take and really take a leadership role in trying to forge a whole new set of institutions that would govern collective security. So, that's why I actually -- I think your optimism is infectious so that even having gone through that for two years I can be somewhat optimistic that if you had American leadership and a

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new motive, American engagement in international institutions, we could start a new Dean Acheson moment

MR. PASCUAL: Strobe, I want to bring this back to you because you got off easy here by asking two questions, and it sounds like Steve has presented a direct challenge to you in that in effect you had something to do with government, not to mention the fact that I did, but let's focus on you since you're far senior to me, that, you know, we had asleep at the wheel allegations of drifting after 1989. Now, you had -- there were a couple of years that intervening, but still, you know, there was this phenomenal challenge at the end of the cold war period, and there were phenomenally difficult things to try to deal with that we had never dealt with before, and there was a struggle to achieve a vision. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that struggle to achieve a vision of what the world should be at that point and how has it evolved and where do you think it should go? I mean, what are those key missing gaps right now that perhaps we didn't understand of back then and how is that gelling differently?

MR. TALBOTT: The easy part of your question, Carlos, is where we should we go from now, which I would say isn't exactly the direction that Javier and Steve have suggested, but since you've prefaced this by saying you weren't going to let me off easy and you wanted to take me back to the early '90s, let me do recall a moment or two about that.

I'm very struck as I look back over the history of the end of the cold war, and there are a number of people in the room with whom I share the

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experience in government. How much continuity there was, actually, between the first President Bush and President Clinton both in the way they saw the opportunity that came with the end of the evil empire, a development, by the way, that is as close to we have seen in our lifetime to the proof of Carlisle's great man theory of history. If the Soviet Politburo in March of 1985 had, you know, gone into that closed door and the white smoke had come out and anybody other than Mikhail Gorbachev had emerged as the leader of the Soviet Union, we'd still be in the cold war. So, this was largely, I think, a lesson in the importance of individual leadership. And fortunately, by the way, during that period we had, including in the person I think of George Herbert Walker Bush, leaders -- I would say Helmut Cole, very much on your side of the Atlantic, Javier, who realized that there was a terrific opportunity.

My counterpart to Steve's minor key jokes with Bruce Jones is that Warren Christopher, the first Secretary of State I worked for, moved the portrait of Dean Acheson from out in the outer corridor into his own office, and so the rather sardonic visage of Dean Acheson was always looking down upon us as we met, and I can remember a colleague, Peter Turnauf, saying to me at one point in one of those meetings you know, let's hope that when one of us writes his memoirs it can be called present at the re-creation. But the fact that we never came up with a tag line for the era in which we were living better than "it was the post cold war era" -- and, by the way, that used to drive Bill Clinton nuts. He wanted a bumper sticker that was positive and forward looking and not about the

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era we had left behind. But I think one has to look at performance as well as underperformance, as it were, and the fact is that there was a series of episodes when we had a chance, working in tandem with the old Soviet Union in its last days in post-Soviet Russia, to address some of these issues that Javier and Steve have both talked about, and after either being too slow or getting it wrong, we eventually got it right.

Steve mentions the importance of the responsibility to protect resolution, which was extremely important, but it's worth recalling that back in the case of Haiti in 1994 the Security Council -- not the General Assembly but the Security Council -- closed ranks behind the resolution that said it was appropriate for the international community to step in and restore democracy when democracy had been overthrown in a military coup. We all learned at terrible cost, particularly to the people of Rwanda and Burundi, the price that would be paid from doing nothing when there was genocide in our time, but at least we applied that lesson -- not as quickly as we should have, but we applied it effectively in Bosnia and indeed in Kosovo and not just because we want to thank him for schlepping across the Atlantic to be with us today but just because it's an objective fact this guy was an absolute hero in that whole process both in both in taking us -- making it possible for NATO to go to war for the first time in its history, and this an alliance that had been set up to deal with the Soviet Union, not to deal with Slobodan Milosevic, and yet it rose to that occasion. And then at the end of that war in a way that preserved a workable relationship with Russia, a

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huge effort on Javier's part, and I hope that we open up the discussion, by the way, somebody will ask Javier -- if they don't, I will -- what the prospects are for the Balkans, because we're not out of the woods yet in the Balkans. Some of the issues that we thought we had maybe brought under control in the '90s are still very much with us in addition to the new challenges that Javier has already talked about.

MR. PASCUAL: Strobe, thanks, and on that note in fact let me actually bring this back out to the fore, and there's certainly a temptation to continue here on the Balkans, Iran, Iraq, Middle East and we can keep going for a long time, but I think many people are anxious to get their questions in.

We'll start over here.

MR. BERRY: My name is Brian Berry. I'm a reporter for Euro politics. Question for Mr. Solana on Israel and Palestine. The new Palestinian unity government -- you discussed that on Monday at Detroyka. You were very guarded in your comments. Don't you think it's time for a more courageous stunt, sort of along the lines of Norway which recognized the government, until the EU and US recognizes that the peace process will not move forward there?

MR. SOLANA: Well, I think what we discussed Monday was a new situation. First -- I'm sure you have read the statement that was made Monday morning. It's a statement that has a positive spin. It welcomes what has taken place with the new unity government in the sense it will calm the potential problems between the two factions of the Palestinians and that will contribute no

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doubt also to the possibility of moving the process forward.

But we have to repeat what is our position and continues to be our position, which we need the three conditions. One of them has been running the program, but the other two are not complete in the program -- may be part of the program, but we would like to see them more clearly. But that's not the question of being more courageous. This is -- I mean, be more courageous will be what we are doing for the last three years -- is paying every year more to the Palestinian people. We did not let the Palestinian people down. Every single year we have paid more to the Palestinian people. We have spent more on the Palestinian people (off mike) because we believe in that.

But one thing is not and the other thing is to do all the expenditures through the government, and the government didn't have the elements that thought should be necessary to move the process and proceed forward. But I think that we have opened the process. I have the impression and they have the belief that it will be a process in which the values and the elements that we defend will become even accepted by the Palestinian as a whole, and that will be something very, very important. But that is a positive spin that we have put in the declaration and the statement I think should be read -- and has been read -- in that manner by the Palestinians. There is no doubt about that if you followed the debate in the last two days after the government has been put in place.

MR. PASCUAL: Then go to the back of the room.

SPEAKER: -- Voice of America's Serbian Service, and my

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colleague also will have a question. In regard to Kosovo, how united is European Union in its position towards Kosovo? There are reports that some countries are less comfortable with idea of Kosovo's independence than the others. So, if you can tell us that, and I believe my colleague has a follow-up.

SPEAKER: I'll follow up. How is Russia complicating the whole process of final status determination and how does the EU plan to handle that together with the U.S.?

MR. SOLANA: Well, the first part of the question -- the position of the European Union in several statements -- the last one was last Friday -- it was to support the position of President Ahtisaari. President Ahtisaari has been a very important leader of the European Union, has been the president of Finland, and I think he's trying to do a very good job, and he has achieved the job which was very, very difficult to bring into a resolution that -- I mean, to a document that will be presented to the Secretary General of the United Nations and eventually to the Security Council.

Now, the position of the European Union, as I say, is to support the document and the position defended by President Ahtisaari. Now, he will correspond to the Security Council. Since there has not been agreement between the two sides, it will be probably needs for an (off mike) solution, and an (off mike) solution cannot only be done, the only manner to do it is to do it through a resolution of the Security Council to change the present resolution for which Council is governed. The European Union will be following that position that

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Ahtisaari has presented in the tape.

Now, what is going to happen when the debate is started in the United Nations -- I can guarantee you that the European Union will have a unified position and all the debate will continue in the Security Council. It is very important for us as part of the territory of Europe, and therefore the stability there is crucial for us.

Now, what is the question of -- the second part of the question is Russia. In Russia, as you know, they have made statements, the last statement days ago, saying that the position as it stands today of President Ahtisaari will not be acceptable for them. Now, why he does mean that? We have to get engaged with Russia and see how we can get resolution (off mike) the region, the Balkans, is indeed towards Russia in the interest of us to have a stabilized equation and in the manner that is really stable and as we know that it will not be a resolution that will be agreed by both sides. Somehow we'll have to vote it by the Security Council. By the end of the day I'm pretty sure we will find a solution that will be approved by the Security Council.

MR. PASCUAL: Let me come up front. Hattie?

MS. BABBOT: Thank you. My name is Hattie Babbot. First I just wanted to say the secretary-general of the OAS in (off mike) is going to be disappointed that you gave greater billing to the AU and to ASEAN.

But my question is about climate change. Europe has clearly led the world in putting together systems and structures that deal with climate

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change. There's no more global threat than climate change, and I wondered if you could expand on your comments about a future global governance to deal with climate change issues.

MR. SOLANA: First, my good friend in (off mike) will be very happy that I mentioned Latin American integration, and it is true that he will agree with me also that the integration Latin American was like that and I was like that, and he knows that. He's working very hard to continue back to that direction.

On the global change, I listened to Al Gore not long ago, and I had a conversation with him, and he said very clearly and repeated very clearly that all the elements to solve that problem are with us. All the elements -- the knowledge, technology, etc. What is lacking is the political will to solve it. And that is not solved in the drug store -- political will -- and therefore the political will has to come from people and not the government, because everything is ready. It's political will to begin to move the process in the right direction. It's not a problem that we don't know what to do. It's not a problem that is lacking the knowledge. The knowledge is there. The technology is there. What is lacking is the political will, and that is what is needed. So, my answer to your question is political will.

MR. PASCUAL: Strobe or Steve, do you want to add anything on that?

MR. TALBOTT: In the next session.

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MR. PASCUAL: Okay. Let me come over here. Don?

MR. PRESLEY: Good afternoon, Don Presley with Booz Allen Hamilton. Carlos, Strobe, I think this initiative is an excellent one. I commend Brookings Institution for undertaking it. But as you were talking, and as you were talking about global governance, I got the impression you're thinking only of the role of government, and yet in today's world of insecurity, civil society, private sector, other forces are at play and I wonder if you'd comment on how you plan to think about those issues as well.

MR. PASCUAL: Do you want to start, Javier, and then Steve --

MR. SOLANA: I think that -- I mean, my English is very broken, but I said many times that the shift of power from the government state to other places, markets, companies, etc., NGOs is absolutely crucial. We cannot solve many of the problems without that incorporation, and I believe that some kind of incorporation of those things have to be in the system of growing governance. There's no doubt about that. I don't think that -- let me -- I have (off mike) essentially the (off mike) so traumatically (off mike) on these issues of what this society has changed and how the individual, any individual, one person with a telephone can produce a fundamental change. I'll tell you a story. Very short. Very brutal. I'm talking about the execution of Saddam Hussein. I was with President Mubarak the day after, and I was with (off mike) and I was in Jordan talking with the King of Jordan and in the streets of the capital. The day before, the whole street of Cairo was full of photographs of Nasrallah. You know who is

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Nasrallah -- president or the director, whatever is his title, now the leader of the Hezbollah. A camera, a telephone, and a picture took out of the streets of Cairo most of the pictures that were not official, the pictures of Nasrallah. At that moment, the (off mike) and changed that. Somebody that took a picture with a telephone. I mean, it's something really that made you think what -- how much potential every individual has today, and he would want to have a world which is (off mike). We have to put the -- I mean, the value of every individual (off mike). The problem, as I said, is that who wants to leave -- who wants to obey is a problem. Who wants to obey. What every think that he has (off mike) all the power he can. With a telephone you can transform the society of Cairo (off mike). This is a problem that we have to incorporate it, we solve it, and (off mike) to these debates I think is fundamental (off mike).

MR. PASCUAL: Steve, do you want to add something.

MR. TALBOTT: Yeah. There is a host of global problems that are not going to be solved unless you have imaginative new kinds of regimes that bring in a host of different actors -- private sector, business, civil society. I'll give you one example that we've been looking at that started in our -- when I was at the U.N., which is the safety of biotechnology. Okay, biotechnology is changing at such a dramatic rate that, you know, graduate students in laboratories can do experiments today that were thought of as science fiction five years ago, right? And that's going to continue. And that will have terrific spin-offs for the good. It can also put an enormous amount of destructive power into a small group of

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hands, right? So, how do you control it? How do you take safety seriously? This is a problem that governments are not going to be able to grapple with. It's going to take scientists base and universities, incorporations and governments. It's going to take the biotechnology industry. It's going to take international organizations. And what you are going to have is not going to look like any classic international institutions. It's not going to be a heavy international organization. It's not going to be heavily regulated. It's going to have to be something that both regulates -- but does such in a way that doesn't squash the initiative that's absolutely crucial if this industry is going to continue to grow.

MR. PASCUAL: I -- Javier, I'm going to question back to you. A friend of mine would say yadda, yadda, yadda, great, great, great -- systems in global governance. But Iran's about to develop a nuclear weapon, so what in the world can the international community do about it, and why is the U.N. failing -- or is it failing? Do you see that there's a prospect here?

MR. SOLANA: Well, this is a very, very difficult question, and it will be more difficult as time goes by and the more nuclear energy we'll have in the world, and therefore the time is very urgent not only to tackle the question (off mike) fundamental but to really get an approach to proliferation. And I think that the question of proliferation is linked to the other side of the coin, which is disarmament. The nonproliferation treat, you remember, talks about two things, and one of the things is disarmament, and the big powers have to begin to move in that direction, and I'm very happy to see Senator Nunn and our friend McMurry

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writing in the newspapers about that. This is a problem which is fundamental. And we are seeing it today. Yesterday we had finalized the U.N. Security Council resolution for (off mike), and the P5 agreed, and what nobody expected -- that two other countries or three other countries which are members of the Security Council -- no permanent members -- were going to reply to the agreement. They replied to agreement, and because there is now a sentiment among several countries – not nuclear countries but countries like South Africa, Indonesia -- important countries that feel that the nonproliferation system is something that belongs to the rich countries or the countries which are nuclear. We have to begin to show that this is not the case, that nonproliferation is for everybody a very important issue, and for that the nuclear countries have to do their part to the (off mike). And they have to do something about that. Otherwise, it will not be credit and we will be in the very complicated situation, and not only (off mike), which I hope that we will be able to solve it, but in general terms. In the more nuclear work, no nuclear energy is produced, more enrichment it will be then of uranium unless we create mechanisms that are also part of the global system, that not everybody has to have his own capability of (off mike) into some centers, like the (off mike) have proposed already. Some of that nature has to be put in place, and rapidly. We don't have time.

MR. PASCUAL: Strobe.

MR. TALBOTT: Could I just take Javier's point and apply it to the United States of America. Just as the United Nations is only going to be as

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strong as its strongest member -- i.e., the United States -- wants it to be, which I think has a lot to do with why the United Nations is weakened today. So, the nuclear peace will only be as solid as the world's most powerful nuclear power wants it to be, and that's one reason that the nuclear peace is in great danger.

The comprehensive test ban treaty is, at best, a dead letter at the moment. That doesn't mean it couldn't be resuscitated. Moreover, there are hints coming out on a regular basis from the Pentagon and other parts of the administration that the United States needs to seriously consider testing a new generation of nuclear weapons. The strategic arms reduction process has been greatly slowed down and is far less promising than it used to be. The United States has pulled out of the AVM treaty. The prospect of Star Wars deployments in Central Europe has led the Russians to threaten to pull out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, one of the triumphs of the Reagan administration. Zero option. So, it's terrific that a group as diverse as Sam Nunn and George Shultz and Henry Kissinger would be coming out in favor of abolition of nuclear weapons, which is a goal we are treaty bound to support and advance in the MPT treaty, but the MPT regime is in dire straights, and if it isn't fixed within the coming years, then I think even Javier Solana's optimism we're all going to have some antibodies out there when we're going to find hard to catch.

MR. PASCUAL: I wish we can continue going for a much longer period of time, but unfortunately we're not going to be able to.

Javier, since you really are our guest here, let me turn to you and

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ask you if there are any final thoughts you want to give us.

MR. SOLANA: One thing I would like to say about -- that contribute very, very much when we talk about these issues, which is efficiency. I mean, we are -- the system is a system -- the global system has to be thought to produce results, and sometimes I don't see that element that has to be from the very beginning. We are going to want to produce results.

Now, let me put an example of the G8s, which I mentioned. I will never forget G8 three years ago when Jim Wolfensohn was in charge of producing the money by millions of dollars to the disengagement of Gaza. That project -- it was forgotten the very same day that the G8 finished the meeting. Now -- well, we just cannot work like that. I mean, the tenacity -- things have to be done in (off mike). And we create beautiful institutions and then we don't devote the time, the energy, the tenacity to get the things done. We may as well live with the institutions we have. We need results, and we need to make the world better. How many times I've listened in this country called genocide to Sudan. I never say genocide Sudan. Because you go through that genocide, you have an obligation to act according to the law. According to the international law you cannot tolerate genocide, and we haven't done anything.

I wanted to change that mentality of institutions, global governance, but we need to think about that in order to get results and to make the world a better place. This is what I would like to get the last reflection. It is not only to create new structures. The structures, the function, and political will to

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move the structures to find a better way.

MR. PASCUAL: Perfect note on which to end. Javier, thank you very much, and thank you, Strobe.

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