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| Speaker: | Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; vice chairman, Perseus, LLC |
|---|---|
| Presider: | Carla A. Robbins, chief diplomatic correspondent, Wall Street Journal |
April 22, 2005
Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
Term Member Conference
New York, N.Y.
CARLA ANNE ROBBINS: Thank you all. I'm Carla Robbins with the Wall Street Journal. And we're going to have an interesting morning here. We have 50 minutes in which I have the delight for half of that to interview Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and then you all get to do it as well. We have really bad feedback on this [microphone].
I'm not going to go through his whole bio, since I know that all of you had to pass that as your test to get in as term members. [Laughter] But for those few of you who got in on the legacy, I thought I would [laughter]--I thought I would very quickly, though. He is vice chairman of Perseus, LLC— yes— and of course, he most recently served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he was assistant secretary of state for Europe, and of course was the key architect of the Dayton Accords that brought the end of the slaughter in Bosnia, played a key role in Kosovo as well, as we all know. He was U.S. ambassador to Germany, and probably— were you the youngest assistant secretary of state when you were assistant secretary of state for East Asia Pacific affairs? I believe that to be true.
He's also been a journalist. He was the managing editor at Foreign Policy, which of course, is the challenge for me here today, because Richard has been editing my questions basically my entire career [laughter], but today you don't get to tell me I'm asking the wrong questions.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Or to write your leads for you.
ROBBINS: OK, well, you can do that, too, later. [Laughter] In part, we're going to talk about the United Nations. And my first question for you is how broke is it really? We've had an incredible number of scandals, most recently the alleged scandal in the election section under Carina Perelli; the oil-for-food [program], obviously; sexual harassment; sexual exploitation. How broke is it really? And can you fix it with [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan as the head of it?
HOLBROOKE: First of all, I don't accept the statement it's "an incredible number of scandals." I think that we've had— by that definition, we've had a far more incredible number of scandals in Washington in the last few decades. But the U.N.--nor is the U.N. broken, but it is deeply troubled and flawed. And part of this is structural, part of it's historical, and part of it is the result of the leadership style that is now there at the U.N. So let's start— can we do something about this feedback?
It's really— let's start with a basic macro-premise: the U.N. is an indispensable but deeply flawed institution. When I say indispensable, I mean to United States national security interests. It is— when it fails, it fails not because it's been hijacked by the Third World or PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] elements or any of these things; it fails— although those things are very serious problems— it fails because, in the larger sense, it hasn't lived up to its original ideals. Let us never forget that the U.N. was created by Americans who were veterans of the failure of the League of Nations, who created the U.N. in the American image, and whose charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which [former First Lady] Eleanor Roosevelt was the key drafter of, were all American models.
But the U.S. is a founding nation, the host nation, and the largest contributor. We spend about $4 billion a year to support the U.N. And yet, for the last four years, the administration, while putting up the money, undermined the institution. And this made no sense at all to me. For that amount of money, we should have gotten reform. But the Bush administration completely, totally ignored the reform issue until Condi Rice became secretary of state, and she immediately appointed a personal emissary for reform whose name— Richard, you'll know this— is Shireen—
UNKNOWN: Tahir-kheli.
HOLBROOKE: Yeah, Shireen Tahir-Kheli, who was an ambassador, U.S.-U.N., in the first Bush administration. And that was a really terrific move. She— this is what we should be doing. We should be trying to improve this institution.
When it fails— and it has failed a lot— it's not because of the U.N.; it's because of the member states. And this brings me to a very core point, which is, what is the U.N.? In the 40-plus years since I entered the Foreign Service, there is no issue which I've worked on which is more misunderstood than the U.N. The U.N. has become this thing that we all like to attack or defend. The certain contingent of Americans just loves the [inaudible], right or wrong, and supports it blindly. And another contingent of Americans just hates the U.N. and wants us to leave the U.N. or get the U.N. out of the United States or whatever. But the U.N. is nothing more than a collection of its 191 members. When something goes wrong in that big empty factory of diplomatic mumbo-jumbo on the East River there, it isn't the U.N. that's happened; it's the ambassadors representing their governments.
ROBBINS: But wait, wait—
HOLBROOKE: When the United—
ROBBINS: Richard, wait, wait a minute—
HOLBROOKE: Well, just let me—
ROBBINS: The question that I asked, though, is, you have the oil-for-food scandal, which is an enormous scandal. You have the involvement of Kofi Annan's son [Kojo Annan] in it. I mean, this looks to some like a corrupt bureaucracy. I mean, how— this is— beyond the question of whether Americans like to bash the U.N. or not, it's got a lot of problems.
HOLBROOKE: I agree. And if you look at my speeches for the last seven years, I— unlike the Bush administration, I spent an endless amount of time hammering the U.N. to deal with these problems. They did nothing. And then— and oil-for-food, it is a mess. And the Volcker commission [chaired by Paul A. Volcker, former Federal Reserve Board chairman, to investigate the oil-for-food program] is sorting its way through it, and I hope they get to the bottom of it. But it is not central to the issue you're raising. It stinks. So were tons of scandals you've covered in Washington. As for Kofi Annan's son, his son lied to him. That's not the first son to lie to a father in history. But unfortunately, in this case, it had massive consequences.
Volcker has said publicly and told me privately that there is nothing to link Kofi to these actions. As far as I can tell— and I don't know what's going on inside the investigation— they are not going to come up with a smoking gun. The press is covering this, and everyone asks me, "Can Kofi survive?," as though he is still in the midst of a major crisis. The truth is, the crisis hit its height in November-December [2004], and the press is running about four months behind the reality. He has fired people. He's starting to reform the institution. He's got a new chief of staff, [former U.N. Development Program Administrator Mark] Malloch Brown, who many of you know, who is terrific. They are going to appoint a new head of the United Nations Development Program this week. I hope it will be Kamal Dervish, the Turkish former finance minister, who would be the highest Muslim in the history of the U.N., a world-respected financial leader, actually ran for president— for prime minister of Turkey. And if it's Kamal Dervish, they'll also bring in another major figure.
They are going to appoint a new head of UNHCR, the refugee commission which is the most important agency in the U.N. Thirty million lives are dependent on it. There was a real scandal— much worse than oil-for-food, a disgraceful appointee, [former High Commissioner Ruud] Lubbers, who was a genuine, serial sexual harasser, really truly. And every woman I know who's ever been in a room with him, particularly after the second glass of wine, can attest to this. And Kofi should have fired him a year ago, and I begged Kofi to fire him. But Kofi didn't, and now he's removed. And they have a group of eight candidates, some of whom— [former head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo] Bernard Kouchner, [member of the European Parliament] Emma Bonino, [International Crisis Group President and Chief Executive Officer] Gareth Evans, [inaudible] who's now in Kosovo— are really terrific. So Kofi is already trying to reform. Has he been injured by this? Of course. But I need to make the core point about the U.N. because it's so important.
In the Iraq diplomatic train wreck that took place exactly two years ago, you will all recall that— here comes my legal adviser when I was at the U.N., so if you wanted any more questions you address them to Counsel [Jonathan] Levitsky— in this incredible train wreck, in which the United States and the British sought a second resolution in the Security Council to go to war with Iraq, a colossal miscalculation. They never had the votes, and they didn't get it. The French and Russians said they would oppose it, and, what do you know, they did. And then the Germans joined it.
Now, here is the most important point about the U.N., because it was at that moment that the administration, the right-wing acolytes of the administration, turned on the U.N. Who was to blame? Was it the U.N.? Of course not. The U.N. was just the building in which the train wreck took place. Blaming the U.N. for what happened is like blaming Madison Square Garden for the Knicks. It's just a building. What happened there really happened in capitals— [Paris] and Moscow and Berlin and Beijing said no, and the British and the Americans went ahead. And then they unleashed the savage attack on the institution. I cannot stress this too highly. Your distinguished [Council] president and my friend, Richard Haass, was in the department then, and he can explain to you why they made the miscalculation. But the point is, the U.N. [Laughter]--I'm not blaming Richard. He's got a much bigger and better job now. But they thought they had the votes, and [U.K. Prime Minister] Tony Blair said, "I have to have this vote or I can't go to war." So they didn't get the vote, and he supported the war anyway, as he should have. They never needed the second resolution. They had the right to go to war based on the first one, in my view.
But that is a microcosm of the misunderstanding. There are three ways to look at the UN: love it regardless of its flaws— kind of the traditional liberal view; hate it despite its importance, which is kind of the conventional right-wing view, including of course the editorial pages of Carla's newspaper, but that has nothing to do with her superb coverage of foreign policy— those are two completely different issues. [Laughter]
But let me say that when the U.N. passed the first resolution, the Wall Street Journal wrote what I would consider the quintessential editorial on this, which was that the U.S. was wrong to go to the U.N. for the approval because it implied that the U.N. had a role to play in these things.
And then there is the middle position, which is where I would come out, which is that the institution needs to be improved, desperately needs to be, and that the failure to make it a hallmark of United States policy is the key. And Carla, the U.N. is only as strong or weak as its No. 1 nation wants it to be. And that's why I'm hoping that Condoleezza Rice's appointment of the special assistant for reform, with whatever happens to [U.S. ambassador to the U.N.-nominee] John Bolton, is a sign that they're going to do the right thing.
ROBBINS: I want to ask you about things beyond the U.N., but just very quickly, if you could frame it this way, and of course you guys did have eight years to reform the U.N., poor Richard was only in government for four, but—
HOLBROOKE: But we did, but Carla—
ROBBINS: You've been mentioning the Clinton administration. [Laughter]
HOLBROOKE: Carla, we did reform the U.N. massively. And I need to pause on this point particularly, since there are several people in the room who were part of my team— John and [inaudible] and others— we had the first financial reform of the United Nations in 29 years, since George Bush, Sr., was ambassador. We reduced American dues from 25 percent to 22 percent, and fulfilled the criteria of Helms-Biden [Agreement for payment of U.S. arrears to the United Nations] and saved the U.S. taxpayers $170 million a year. We imposed a new commission for peacekeeping, headed by [U.N. official Lakhdar] Brahimi, which doubled the size of the peacekeeping office, put in a senior American— there had never been one.
We got Israel into a regional group after 40 years in the wilderness. We did a lot of other things to improve Israel's position in the U.N., which was a scandal. We took on the Human Rights Commission. We fought successfully to keep Sudan out of the Security Council. So I just need to be clear.
ROBBINS: So the three things that you would do right now, the three things that the Bush administration should do right now, and if John Bolton survives, is there a possibility that he is the guy who could get it done? Is there a Nixon in China possibility?
HOLBROOKE: Well, on your second point—
ROBBINS: No, let's do the three very quick bullet points, the three most pressing things that need to be done for U.N. reform now.
HOLBROOKE: Well, first change the editorial policy of the Wall Street Journal. The first three things are, No. 1, the United States needs to make reform its core goal at the U.N., because if we don't, there is no energy for reform. And that's why I was trying to explain to you that the Clinton administration, at least in the year and a half I was there, made reform our No. 1 issue. We took one of the ambassadors and made that person solely responsible for it. And we set up a team, and we were successful enough so that Senator [Jesse] Helms [R-N.C.] supported us.
No. 1— but that is the key point. Nothing happens without U.S. leadership. And I don't care whether you think it's a filibuster or not, it is the most important point for this wonderful group of people to understand the key to American leadership. And not just at the U.N., but elsewhere, like the Balkans, which— this is key. If the U.S. starts the reform effort, if the U.S. declares that they are in favor of reform because the U.N. matters, and a better U.N. is good for our national security, everything else follows.
Now, Kofi has this high-level panel with the 99 recommendations. Some of those recommendations are non-starters and some are very good ideas. The administration was quite correct to say they couldn't accept it lock, stock, and barrel, because the core of the recommendations were Security Council reform, and that's a really tough issue— tough enough so that the Chinese have now launched, or allowed to be launched, an extraordinary series of public anti-Japanese demonstrations throughout China aimed at blocking Japanese membership in the Security Council. Pretty amazing thing going on in China right now. So the administration was right to say we'll look at them case by case. But most of the reforms are very good, and one of them that reforms the Human Rights Commission is terrific, because the Human Rights Commission was hijacked in the absence of American involvement in it by the worst elements imaginable.
So the second thing is to have the U.N. itself do some reform, root and branch reform. Now this is very hard to do, and it may be very boring. But the truth is that the U.N. system does not easily fit into the kind of bureaucratic reforms and overhauls that are necessary. There's not enough accountability in it. That's why Lubbers was allowed to get away with his appalling behavior. And the sex pedophile scandal [involving U.N. peacekeepers] in the Congo, which everybody knew about, was hushed up. You know, the U.N. is not the only institution that has these problems, and I'm not here to defend the U.N. I'm here to put pressure on the U.N. through American engagement. And that is a critical point.
I saw [conservative radio talk show host] Rush Limbaugh yesterday attacked me for being an unadulterated U.N. lover, quote unquote. I guess if you're attacked by Rush Limbaugh that's some kind of honor. But that's not true. The U.N. people did not like me when I was there. I was much too in their face about reform. But it was reform with a commitment to the institution. So that's the second thing, the U.N. itself must reform.
Third, other nation-states, led by the Africans, have to recognize that the U.N. cannot be a repository of ritualistic old-think, kind of anti-neocolonialism. This G-77 [group of 77], which is the developing-nations group, and of course being the U.N., the G-77 is actually the G-158, because there are about double the number of members that the name implies. The G-77 group has to stop ritualistically voting for the Palestinian anti-Israeli resolutions, cutting off its own nose to spite its face, and a whole ton of other stupid things. They will only get there, however, if the U.S. goes around Africa, and to a lesser extent, parts of Asia and Latin America, and lobbies for them to behave. In the U.S. foreign-policy working on individual capitals to improve their performance in the U.N. is nonexistent. And as long as that's true, the U.N. becomes a kind of appendage.
Now, I need to be clear: the U.N. is not the center of American foreign policy. It's just part of it. But the closer it gets to its original intent, the more valuable it will be to us.
ROBBINS: My time is running out in about three minutes, and also because I want to get invited back, I neglected to point out— one could say that this is perhaps a Freudian slip— I neglected to point out the fact that the Council's usual not-for-attribution applies here today. [Note: the session was subsequently put on the record.] As a reporter, that always pains me.
HOLBROOKE: You can quote anything I say. I just wasn't clear. But I have no qualms about having this discussion.
ROBBINS: When we throw it out, people can make their own deals on whether the questioners want to be quoted. The final question, which is John Bolton.
HOLBROOKE: Who? [Laughter]
ROBBINS: If he survives, does he have a chance of doing your reform? Is there a Nixon-in-China possibility? Or what sort of ambassador do we want to have up there?
HOLBROOKE: I think the real question is, if he doesn't survive, which looks increasingly likely, then what's next? And all I can say is, Richard, watch out for your job. Richard knows Bolton very well. Carla knows Bolton very well. I've met him only once in my life. He called me right after he was named and asked if he could have my support. I said, "I've never met [you] and your statements are confusing." And he said, "Let's get together." We had a very, very pleasant talk for a couple of hours, and he was extremely assertive in saying that he was in favor of the same kind of reforms we're talking about today. And I said to him, "Look, the key issue— we're all for reform, everyone from Kofi Annan to Jesse Helms is for reform, right? The issue is, whether you're in for reform because you want a stronger U.N. in the national interest, or whether reform is a device to strangle the ailing patient." And he said that his views had evolved and it was more the former. So that was the end of that.
So could he be Nixon in China? Of course that is the analogy that the administration has put forward repeatedly. It is a flawed analogy to start with. Nixon wrote in the magazine of this institution [Foreign Affairs], before he became president, in a very important article, which was understood in the United States but was read very carefully in Beijing by [Chinese leader] Mao [Zedong], who then responded through Life magazine, that we have to recognize the reality of China. Nixon really started the process before he became president. And he had seen it through.
But could he be Nixon in China? Sure. And if he is confirmed, and he asks my support and advice on these issues, he'll have it, because the national interests of the United States is all that matters here. And I would like to remove this issue from the partisan political arena. In the year 2000 we did that. Helms and I worked closely together at a level I would have never imagined possible. And he and I became good friends through this process.
And George Bush, Sr., and Governor Bush, agreed to keep the U.N. out of the 2000 campaign when it was an easy target. [Republican presidential candidate and former Senator Robert] Dole had bashed [former U.N. Secretary General Boutros] Boutros-Ghali, deliberately mispronouncing his name, as you remember, throughout the ‘96 campaign. Remember that, how Dole would string out the name?
But Bush left the U.N. alone. And I would like to get it out of this partisan arena, where it's just this cheap whipping boy, and get down to the business of making it live up to its expectations— one of the very important points, at the end of next year [when] Kofi Annan's term ends. By rotation, the next secretary general is supposed to be an Asian. The ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] put up a candidate, the deputy prime minister of Thailand [Surakiart Sathirathai], former prime minister. It's not too early to start thinking about that, because it's a long process. We're already thinking about 2008 in the U.S. We might as well start thinking about the next secretary general.
ROBBINS: Are you thinking about 2008?
HOLBROOKE: Yes, I'm not going to run.
ROBBINS: Let's throw it up. Obviously, this is your meeting, you can ask any questions you want. I just have a few requests, which is, we only have 25 minutes, and then you're going to go into your breakout sessions, which all look really fabulous, so very short questions. We're going to ask the ambassador to give very short answers so we can get as many people as possible.
And it had been my hope that I could ask some broader foreign-policy questions, particularly about democracy and where the Bush administration is going. So just if I could pique anybody's interest there who feels like asking questions of that sort. So very quick questions and no filibustering from the audience. And please identify yourself. Gentleman right here.
QUESTIONER: Hi, Daniel Drezner, University of Chicago. [Economist and Earth Institute Director] Jeffrey Sachs just wrote a book [The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time] proposing to increase aid budgets as a way of dealing with extreme poverty in the world, upwards of about [inaudible] a year from the developed countries. And one of his key proposals is that most of this money be administered by U.N. agencies, particularly the U.N. Development Program. My question is: Would you trust the U.N. with the money and for them to actually run this properly?
HOLBROOKE: I certainly wouldn't trust the U.N. with the money based on its track record and the quality of its personnel. And while I am a strong supporter of an increased foreign-aid budget, and I'm sure most of you know that our overseas development assistance level is .13 of one percent, the lowest of any major country in the world. They set this arbitrary [level] of .7 of one percent. At the G-8 [group of eight industrialized democracies] summit this year, all the countries are going to take the pledge except the U.S. But the truth is, they're not going to fulfill it. It will be out there in the year 2025. It's just theater for the press.
But to go back to your point, I'm really in favor of increased foreign assistance. But any of you who have traveled in the countries that need it most— and again, I think first of Africa, because Africa is the key. If we don't get Africa— let me rephrase this. If Africans don't— if African leaders don't get their continent right, the rest of the world will participate in the consequences. You can't do triage by continents. And while it's fair enough to criticize the colonial history of Africa [and] the American Cold War involvement in places like Angola and Congo, in the end, the African leadership is now destroying itself. [Zimbabwean President Robert] Mugabe is only the most dramatic example. And as long as that is true, no matter how much aid you pour down the well, it's going to get thrown away. So I think that the administration's Millennium Challenge Account program was conceived very well, and it's something that I think both parties and any presidential candidate should endorse. The problem is that the Congress didn't fund it adequately. I don't know if you've covered that, Carla, but it's a terrific idea.
But anyway, no, I wouldn't give the money to the U.N. in the present circumstances. I would condition the money to the recipient countries— that's the key thing. And you can't do that through the U.N. The U.N. won't accept conditioning for the reasons I already described, it represents all the countries.
ROBBINS: Woman in the back, please.
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] St. Mary's, Manhattanville. I was just wondering if you could speak a little about the role of the religious right at the U.N., if that's either of growing or lesser importance than it was, say, 10 years ago, and also the possibility of funding for the United Nations Population Fund, where you think that's going to be going in light of the current—
HOLBROOKE: I don't— Chloe, I'm not sure about the religious right at the U.N. It's not— it's been introduced into the equation by the United States, and it's created some extraordinary alliances where we join with Iran, Syria, and Libya and Saudi Arabia in opposing the rights of women in conventions and the reproductive rights issue becomes a colossal issue, and we have the strangest political bedfellows. And I find that very unfortunate, but it's happened.
On the family-planning issue, the same thing happened. And it was very unfortunate. But I need to be clear on this: when it comes to HIV/AIDS, the Bush administration's policies were very impressive. And they, and Bush in his 2003 State of the Union message made a historic proposal, the $15 billion, $10 billion in new money over five years [inaudible]. And the way he did it— and I've endorsed this, wearing my hat as president of the Global Coalition on HIV/AIDS, which works very closely with the Bush administration on this— the way they did it was to co-opt what you call the religious right. [Evangelical Christian leader] Franklin Graham and [Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist and Jesse Helms are critical factors here.
A lot of the feminist groups objected to this because it included abstinence. And the right-wing, religious groups opposed it because it included condoms. And what the president and [presidential adviser] Karl Rove did was a very smart operation which they— they gave the liberals condoms, if you'll pardon the expression, and the right-wing abstinence. I'll let you choose which you prefer. But the combination did for the AIDS issue what I'd like to do for other issues. It removed it from the political arena for the most part.
And those of you in the room who are somewhat younger than Carla and Richard and myself, and haven't gone through the history of the last 40 years, should understand [laughter]--should understand that, historically, there were wide areas in which there was bipartisanship, and they weren't part of the political arena. That area of bipartisanship kept shrinking. And up until Bush's 2003 speech, AIDS was part of the partisan debate. And for Bush to take it out was an historic thing, one of the best things they did the first four years. But the price was that they bring the religious right into the U.N. from time to time on these other issues. I disagreed with them on that. But I'm still willing to take the larger outcome. I hope that is clear, because this is an issue that is so important, and I know there is a lot of controversy.
But even if you disagree with them, they've done something good on AIDS. And by the way, when the victims are 13-year-old girls being abused sexually by their uncles or sugar-daddies, which is a euphemism for the man who comes back in and says, "I'll give you a nice new dress if you have sex with me," what's wrong with promoting a little abstinence? You wouldn't want your 13-year-old in that position.
So again, I have no problems with this. And any of you who have been in the settlement sites, like Johannesburg, and Laputu or Cape Town, and have seen the situation there, will understand that this issue is far and away the most important we're talking about here today.
ROBBINS: Right here.
QUESTIONER: Tina Bennet, Janklow Nesbit. I'm just wondering if you think that the rise of the EU [European Union] has had an effect on the U.N., and there are some conversations that might have taken place at the U.N. that are now taking place in Brussels?
HOLBROOKE: The EU's relationship to the U.N. is one of the great unexplored and relatively tedious mysteries of the international system, which I'll leave to the back pages of Foreign Affairs.
But let me link it back to Carla's question about U.N. reform. The reform of the Security Council and the situation in the U.N. are inseparable. The reason it's highly unlikely— as I said, I put my remarks on the record, it's only Carla's [that are] off the record today; I will be very precise here and careful— the reason Security Council reform is going to be difficult is twofold: It takes Senate ratification as a treaty amendment, and nobody wants to put the charter back into the U.N.
But the second reason is the EU. The proposal is, essentially, that Germany become a permanent member. That would make three members of the EU in permanent membership. If you were starting the Security Council from scratch today, it wouldn't be the Security Council, the big five circa April, 1945. It would be one EU seat. If you have one EU seat, history would change. They would have to have a common foreign policy. But now, for an area that stretches from Portugal to Helsinki, and Reykjavik to Athens, and is edging eastward— Ukraine will be a member of the EU within 10 years. Turkey is more problematical, but I hope it will be an EU member. To have a single foreign policy would be a dramatic shift.
Does anyone in this room think that London and Paris' international global status is more dependent on that residual veto in the Security Council than any other factor, would voluntarily give that up, and place it into the bureaucracy in Brussels, where [EU High Representative Javier] Solana or [EU Commissioner Christopher] Patten or one of the successors would be the key? Never. And that is the key thing. There was a man none of you in this room have ever heard of named Paolo [inaudible], the Italian ambassador at the U.N. for about a decade— [Council International Affairs Fellow] Saskia [Reilly] heard of him because she is married to an Italian— and [he] spent 10 years wrecking the German chance by saying, "No Germany without Italy." The Spanish woke up and said, "Well, no Italy without Spain." The Dutch woke up and said, "We don't want any of the big countries." So long before you get to Asia, Africa, Latin America, the European morass kind of tied it up. So that's the connection between the EU [and the U.N.]. There is an EU caucus at the U.N. Saskia and John and I have been to it many times. It's the typical shambles. But this is the key blocking force to U.N. reform.
ROBBINS: And do we have— I hate to edit questions, but I'm going to do it— do we have any questions here on Iran, North Korea, the Middle East, the things that are consuming Washington? I'm sorry, you do here? Great.
QUESTIONER: Richard Murphy with Fortune. In the last few months, we have seen some encouraging developments in the Middle East, pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt, elections in the Palestinian Authority, peaceful demonstrations for and against the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. The Bush administration in its cheering section has been quick to argue that none of these things would have happened most likely had we not invaded Iraq and subsequently sponsored elections there. Are they right to claim credit?
HOLBROOKE: Well, we don't know the answer to that question yet. I understand why they're taking credit because that's what governments do. If something good happens on your watch— communism fell under Reagan and Bush, they claimed credit for it. You can argue it was an intellectually and morally bankrupt structure which would have collapsed anyway. But it happened on Reagan's watch. And he said, tear down the wall. And he's perfectly right to take credit for it.
And those things happen. But we don't know the outcome of this yet. It's very early, and in some cases it's very dangerous. Pure democracy, which if you had a free election in Saudi Arabia you might have a rather bad outcome. So you have to be rather careful about it. Our national interests are complicated here. And democracy is not just a vote. It's the rule of law and a whole lot of other things.
To me, having just come back from Qatar, where we spent a lot of time talking about this at a conference, to me the No. 1 issue right now in the Arab states is the status of women. That is the key issue. And if women are allowed to emerge and fulfill even a fraction of their potential, in that culture in the world where they have the least opportunities now, I think that you're going to see a lot of other things follow. Now, it's only 85 years since the United States gave women the vote. And we're talking about something much more revolutionary than an election. So I just— this is a fantastic, interesting issue, but I don't really know the answer to it, and I don't think anyone in the room does.
ROBBINS: We're going into final Jeopardy here. So I'm going to start grouping questions if we could do that. So why don't we take two at a time?
QUESTIONER: My name [is] Mark Fung from SAIS [the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced and International Studies, Johns Hopkins University]. My question, Ambassador Holbrooke, concerns China. On the one hand, you have on the domestic front pressure in the Senate, the China currency bill trying to revalue the yuan. And also you have the normal free-traders who are now very protective of textile industry in the U.S. On the other hand, we have national-security issues and clearly U.S. national interest in North Korea and the Taiwan Straits. And I wanted to hear your opinion and your views about the evolving China policy here.
HOLBROOKE: All in 30 seconds here.
QUESTIONER: Fifteen if possible.
ROBBINS: Why don't we do one more. But that's a big question.
QUESTIONER: Sundaa Bridgett with the United Nations.
HOLBROOKE: With the United Nations?
QUESTIONER: Yes.
HOLBROOKE: But I just said it's just a building. Where do you work?
QUESTIONER: I work in the Department of Political Affairs with [Undersecretary General for Political Affairs] Mr. [Kieran] Prendergast.
HOLBROOKE: With Mr. Prendergast. One of the places I've been most critical of, I'm afraid. Not you personally.
QUESTIONER: I agree with everything you said, and I actually have more criticisms about the management, et cetera. My question is about special envoys. In the building itself, there is a growing concern about the use of special envoys, particularly given their importance on peace-building and conflict-prevention, and the fact that perhaps the U.N. is not moving beyond the small pool of— particularly Mr. Brahimi. And I was just wondering if you could—
HOLBROOKE: I'm all for— let me take this because it's quick, and then we'll go back to the monster question. Look, special envoys are fine. You need them. Sometimes they do great things. Brahimi literally saved the administration on Iraq. [Former deputy assistant to the president and Council Counselor] Bob Blackwell himself at this conference in Qatar two weeks again said that publicly. He said that without Brahimi we couldn't have gotten through Iraq. And [former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights] Sergio Vieira de Mello before he died was a great, great man, and a great special envoy throughout the system. [Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator] Jan Egeland, Bernard Kouchner, so I'm not opposed to this at all. And I'm not sure where your questions go beyond that. Some are good, some are bad.
Now on China. Over the course of our lifetimes, I think— over the course of our lifetimes, I think on bilateral issues, the Sino-American relationship is going to be most important. It's also the most difficult to manage of all our bilateral relationships with the sole exception of Israel. Because, like Israel, every single thing in the bilateral international relationship has domestic implications, as your question alluded to. You mentioned textiles. Well, I interpreted the textile issue quite differently than you.
January 1st at the WTO [World Trade Organization] rules— the limits came off the Chinese textile industry, which is two months, [and] China had a 75 percent increase in its exports to the U.S., and tens of thousands of people in Mali, Senegal, Chad, and elsewhere lost their jobs. It was well reported by your paper. It was a disgrace. People who desperately needed jobs thrown back into the wastes of the Sahel, while the Chinese, who are going high and were offered free chances to sell socks and tee-shirts to the U.S. I don't know how that happened. But you don't have to be a free-trader or a protectionist to know that was wrong.
On the larger issue of Sino-American relations, we're in a bit of trouble here. The Chinese are very wary of the United States, and the U.S. is very wary of China, and there are issues everywhere. Taiwan is not— although the most publicized issue, Taiwan is not the most critical to me. The Chinese and the Taiwanese have been much closer to conflict in the past than they are now, and serious issues; and both sides need to talk, and the U.S. needs to encourage it. But the greater danger to Sino-American relations are things like Tibet, where the Chinese behavior is much more aggressive, much more hostile to the people, and where the Tibetan— a crackdown there like they had before could lead to crisis.
But this new emerging anti-Japanese sentiment, because Japan is our most important ally, and this new emerging Sino-India relationship. Last week they called themselves strategic partners. Anyone who knows Sino-Indian history— three wars in the last 40 years— constant Pakistani-India-China triangle [inaudible]. So we can't do China here at the Council. And the Asian Society across the street has been working on this issue forever.
But I just want to be clear on Taiwan so you won't misunderstand. As long as the U.S. maintains its commitment to Taiwan and encourages a dialogue, this issue is manageable. War is unmanageable. And I don't— I'm not in the alarmist group that thinks that one side will invade the other. First of all, the island is never going to invade the mainland. The mainland goes after Taiwan and they will destroy their international position. What we have got to figure out, we and China, what we're going to do as we emerge as the two great powers of the 21st century. Because Russia's day is gone, and Europe is always going to be Europe.
ROBBINS: We actually only have four minutes so I'm going to indulge myself. Give me, as a reporter, advice, and the reporters and the readers of newspapers in the audience. If it's not Taiwan and China, what are the three crises that are going to mean genuine strategic challenges for the Bush administration over the next four years?
HOLBROOKE: Iran, certainly, is the biggest complicated issue. And you've covered that a lot, and you know it better than I do. North Korea, which in the last four years has been producing nuclear weapons, apparently. And the 1994 agreement [Agreed Framework] is down, and nothing has replaced it, and there are no serious talks. All we've done, basically, is talk about talking, and getting the six partners together. It's good we have the six-party talks, but nothing has ever happened in them.
So those two obvious issues remain at the top of the list. Beyond that, and you said strategic issues so I'm not allowed to cover HIV/AIDS or Darfur, which are in fact affecting far more lives than the strategic issues. But again, that's the tension. And it's always [inaudible] of some kind of soft humanitarianism [inaudible] with these issues, and that's not [inaudible]. In fact, these are [inaudible] political instability. And then it really becomes strategic.
But sticking to your definitions, Carla, Iran and North Korea and China. It's the obvious ones. There may have been something else here, but the crises in the world, the ones that really consumed our attentions both— over the last 40 or 50 years, were never where you expected them. They were usually the smallest countries on the fringe of people's areas of prime interest: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo. It's issues that come out of nowhere [where] the big powers have ill-defined interests. That's why I think Taiwan is less likely to become the problem than, for example, Tibet, which nobody talks about because it's inside China.
So we can sit here and make up lists. But it will be some place that hasn't been on the front page of the papers like Bosnia wasn't. Or to take the ultimate case, Rwanda. You may say that wasn't strategic. But it left a legacy which is shadowing our foreign policy now. The never-again syndrome, does it apply in Darfur, et cetera? It's very important. When Richard [Haass] was head of policy planning, he put a lot of effort to try to figure out which areas would fit that description. But you never can— you're never sure. For one, you don't notice what slips out of control, and one day it's on the front page of the paper and you say, "How did that happen?"
Maybe, for example— I'll make one up— maybe it's Nepal. Nepal is falling apart. It's heading for failed-state status, right Richard? Have any of you in this room spent any time at all [inaudible] Nepal? Has it been on the front page since that terrible royal family shooting? No. But it's sitting there between the two largest countries in the world. Maybe it will just be a contained tragedy, like Sri Lanka or Darfur, but maybe it will affect us. We don't know. But we aren't talking about it.
ROBBINS: Well, I wanted to thank Ambassador Holbrooke for being so generous with his time and his knowledge. It's been time. And [inaudible] has asked me to tell you all that you all have your breakout sessions so go there quickly. [Applause]
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