Crisis in Global Governance

The international system is being tested by upheaval in the Middle East, geopolitical tensions and Russian involvement in Ukraine, and other crises such as the Ebola epidemic that seized West Africa last year. Richard N. Haass, Sunjoy Joshi, Memduh Karakullukçu, and Elizabeth Sidiropoulos discuss the mounting challenges to international cooperation today, and the launch of the Council of Councils (CoC) Report Card on International Cooperation, which evaluates multilateral efforts to address ten pressing global dilemmas, from nuclear proliferation to climate change. This Report Card surveyed the Council of Councils, a CFR initiative connecting leading foreign policy institutes from twenty-five countries around the world, to provide a benchmark measure of international cooperation year after year, and to help policymakers identify opportunities for breakthrough and prioritize among today’s critical issues. The event will present the findings of the 2015 Report Card and discuss implications for global cooperation.

PATRICK: Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations where today we're going to be launching the first Council of Councils report card on international cooperation.

I should note that this meeting is not only on the record, but is actually being livestreamed, so that those who aren't at CFR here in Washington, D.C., can enjoy it.

My name is Stewart Patrick. I'm a senior fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations and I have the privilege of directing the program on international institutions and global governance. And by global governance we mean looking at the political and institutional requirements for multilateral cooperation to deal with shared trans (ph) effort, including transboundary problems.

In a few minutes I'm going to be turning the microphone over to Margaret Warner of the PBS "NewsHour," who is going to engage four of the heads of our network in a conversation on the crisis of global governance.

But before we turn to the main event, I wanted to give you a little bit of background on the Council of Councils and on this report card product, in particular.

The Council of Councils was created in 2012. It brings together 26 of the world's most influential policy institutes to look at multilateral policy solutions to the world's most pressing problems. And the composition of the Council of Councils is roughly equivalent in terms of national membership to the G-20.

And its rationale is similar; it was created and it is very much Richard Haass' brainchild, was created to bridge gaps between established and emerging powers on the requirements for effective multilateral cooperation in the 21st century.

Now we're all aware of how incredibly urgent this goal is. Wherever we look, we are beset by transboundary problems that defy purely national solutions. Climate change is just one very important example.

Unfortunately, existing institutions as we've repeatedly seen have not kept up with this fast-changing global context that we find ourselves in, including the emergence of new powers and the emergence of new threats.

Since 2000, the world has arguably experienced the fastest diffusion of global power in its history. Established and emerging powers often see the world in very different ways. And geopolitical competition is on the rise. Simply put, the world has turned out to be more red in tooth and claw than we assumed just a few years ago.

Meanwhile, creaky international institutions, from the United Nations to the International Monetary Fund, are struggling to keep up with this new world, to accommodate rising powers, to deal with new challenges like pandemics or cyber conflict, and to respond to the rise of violent extremist groups, like the Islamic State.

Mitigating the downside of globalization and exploiting the opportunities of its upside requires creative approaches that involve all major centers of world power. But that cooperation can only occur if countries agree where we are now and where we should be going.

The place to begin is by asking, as Ed Koch used to ask in New York City, so how am I doing?

And that's where our report card comes in. We asked the heads of CoC, Council of Councils, institutions to assess global cooperation on 10 critical challenges. And you can see these challenges on the slide that's on the screen right now.

They include preventing nuclear proliferation, managing the global economy, mitigating and adapting to climate change, advancing development, promoting global health, expanding global trade, managing cyber governance, combating transnational terrorism, and preventing and responding to both inter-state conflict—that is, between countries—and intra-state—that is, internal conflict.

And in each case we asked them to do three things. First, grade international cooperation during the past year. So in this case, 2014. Second, to rank these challenges by their relative importance. And third, to assess opportunities for breakthrough during this current year, 2015.

So what did we find? In terms of grades, the world, one has to say, is doing poorly, meriting at best a gentleman's C. The single bright spot in—in relative terms, at least, has been non- proliferation, likely reflecting cautious optimism about the framework deal with Iran.

Coming in dead last was internal conflict, no doubt influenced by the implosion of Syria and the rise of the Islamic State.

What about importance, relative importance? In terms of relative importance, preventing violent conflict between states is right at the top. And Ukraine was explicitly on the minds of most of the think tank heads that we noted. In fact, they mentioned it more frequently than any other international problem as a threat to world order.

And preventing internal conflict was right behind, followed by terrorism.

What about opportunities for breakthrough? Note that here despite the importance that the respondents gave in the previous slide to conflict—both conflict categories, in this case they both came in dead last in the opinions of our global think tank leaders, but the respondents were more optimistic when it came to other categories. In their accompanying comments, they gave some reasons for this.

Top of the list was global trade. As negotiations continue on mega-trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade Investment Partnership. Global health was second. And my sense here is that the Ebola crisis gave at least some optimism in its aftermath that there might be some opportunities to reform the World Health Organization and associate its efforts to try to deal with improving global public health.

Third was climate change, which elicited some optimism, particularly in the wake of the U.S.-China bilateral deal and also the—the sense that Paris was going to be an action-forcing event at the end of this year.

And then finally nuclear proliferation came in fourth, again, perhaps reflecting the Iran framework agreement currently underway.

Now I'm coming to the end of my allotted time, but I want to point out that both the hard copy and the interactive web-based version have a lot more compelling features. And I'll just mention a couple of those. This is a screenshot of the issue description for transnational terrorism. Now, do not attempt to read this. This will strain anybody's eyesight.

But I just want to note a couple of features that it has. We have a section called "By the Numbers." And you see the numbers across the top. And that tries to come up with revealing statistics, for instance, the number of fatalities in—with respect to transnational terrorism.

There's also more in-depth analysis in the text that's sort of on the left side there that places the grades and rankings into context, basically the equivalent of—of a page of background information putting the findings into context.

There's also a graph on the right that shows how many people placed this—voted in terms of what—what—what vote that they actually gave it in terms of its importance or its grade. And then there are also comments by institution heads that—that provide more information on that particular issue area.

And then, finally, we also have an interactive map displaying the comments from all of the heads of the institutions. And you can filter these by issue area or by country of (inaudible). Here, for instance, you have some comments from Michael Fullilove, who's the president of the Lowy Institute, which is our Australian partner.

So the report card was very much a group effort, not only a group effort in terms of the CoC membership, for which we're incredibly grateful. But I do want to just single out two colleagues without whom today would not have been possible.

And the first is Isabella Bennett, assistant director and my wonderful colleague, who supervised the production of the report card from its inception to its finish. Thank you very much, Isabella.

(APPLAUSE)

And—and the second is Alexandra Kerr. Please stand up, Alexandra. Alexandra, as all of the people...

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you. Alexandra, also assistant director in IGG, my program, is basically responsible, virtually single-handedly for the entirety of the coordination of the Council of Councils, which is a herculean feat for even one extraordinarily capable woman, so thank you very much.

Now I just want to encourage you to explore the report card and—both in its paper and its online form, and to let us know what you think. Our plan is to keep this going on an—on an ongoing basis. And so it's—it would be wonderful to get your inputs into how we can improve on a product that we're already quite excited about in the years ahead.

Now it's my great privilege to introduce Margaret Warner. She is well known to all of you for her years of incisive commentary in interviews on the PBS "NewsHour." And Margaret is going to introduce her fellow panelists and get this event started.

Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

WARNER: Again, welcome to everyone. And as Stewart said, this session is on the record. And we have four distinguished panelists today to discuss this really very impressive body of work. I'm planning to spend several days digging deep into it.

HAASS: You could dedicate several shows to it.

(LAUGHTER)

WARNER: Dedicate several programs to it, yes. Richard always has an ulterior motive here. And—but let me first introduce our—our panelists because they do represent some of the think tanks and the councils that are—have been part of this.

Richard Haass, of course, you all know. Sunjoy Joshi, director of the Observer Research Foundation in India. Memduh Karakullukcu, how'd I do? Vice chairman and president of the Global Relations Forum in Turkey. And Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, and she is chief executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs in South Africa.

What is—and we're going to go about, I don't know, a half hour, and then we're going to have a half hour for all of your questions. So, you know, one of the—obviously the striking thing about this report is how poorly people like our panelists and then others felt the world is doing in cooperating on these major global challenges that face us.

And, in fact, when you look in the report, it's one thing to see a grade like C or C- or—but when they—you can use adjectives, mediocre was the word that got the highest grades in almost all of these categories.

And so, let me start with you, Elizabeth. Does that surprise you that in almost all of these critical areas, the grades ranged from mediocre to poor?

SIDIROPOULOS: I think it reflects really the state of global governance or the pulse of international institutions. I think on a whole range of issues over the last couple of decades they have become much more prominent, particularly also transnational challenges. I think our cooperation globally has been—we've created a lot of great fora for discussion, but in terms of really substantive moving forward of—in—in—in, you know, really effective terms, that has not happened, whether you look at climate change, and, you know, we go from summit and summit, and hopefully we'll see something in—in Paris or—or on the WTO-related issues and indeed, after the initial panic around the financial crisis, sort of a tapering off of the intensity of—of collaboration even within the G-20.

Richard, does it surprise you?

WARNER: Richard, does it surprise you?

HAASS: No, actually, I think the word "mediocre's" pretty generous...

(LAUGHTER)

... so I take that as relatively good news.

No, it doesn't surprise me. There's an enormous gap between the number of scale of the challenges on one hand and the—and the response on the other.

In part, the institutions have lagged badly. A lot of them are now celebrating or marking their 70th or close to 70th birthday, because they're associated with the end of World War II.

They haven't kept pace, I mean, whether it's the U.N. or the IMF or virtually any other institution.

Their governance has fallen way behind the redistribution of power and capacity in the world.

Organizing 190-plus states around any issue is tough. What makes it even tougher is the fact that in many cases, states are not the most importance actors, or they certainly don't have the monopoly of relevance, and we haven't figured out how to bring into the mix effectively non-state actors, be they foundations, corporations, individuals, what—what have you.

And then lastly, there's not a consensus, as Elizabeth was getting at.

Take an issue like environment. Why would anybody think that advanced economies, which are at one level of development, would necessarily be the same as a country like yours, like Sunjoy's, where you have what, 500 million people who don't have regular access to electricity, 600 million or 700 million people who don't have regular access to—to proper sanitation? Why would we think that we're going on the—the—the same page?

So this, to me, is—is in some ways a very predictable, if sobering reflection of where we are in the world.

WARNER: Sunjoy, do you think that that is partly what explains it, that essentially, you do have countries with much different definitions of their interests? And so while everyone may agree that, say, climate change is an important global issue, the way a country sees it, it's not at all surprising that it's difficult to get cooperation.

JOSHI: Well, precisely, a little bit, because what you're really seeing is, you know, the emergence of these new kids on the block. These are countries which are large economies but are essentially low income countries. So that makes a huge difference.

And besides these two things, a third important factor which comes into play is that because of the large economies, these countries today have global ambitions.

The problem that then arises is the fourth thing, that in spite of having global ambitions, because they're low income countries, they are not sure where they can afford to have those global ambitions.

So that is what creates the contradictions, and they find themselves very much outsiders in the global institutions, which have been fashioned after the second World War. So the effort would try to redefine, recreate and explore new ways doing business with each other.

WARNER: Memduh Karakullukcu, your country, Turkey—I mean, all of the countries here, represented here, are considered certainly regional powers, major powers in their region. Does the weight of that hang heavy on Turkey?

In other words, is there a conflict between what Turkey's definition of its own interest is and expectations that it should play a leading role in that part of the world. How does that affect its ability and its willingness to cooperate on some of these issues?

KARAKULLUKCU: I mean, in terms of the regional responsibilities, that's one set of complexities and issues. In terms of global responsibilities, it's a totally different sort of ball game.

The regional responsibilities, which I think have been sort of new in our foreign policy in the last decade, because we've managed after the 1920s to keep a certain healthy distance to the region, now the region does not allow it. This is new. WARNER: And you're talking here, of course, about terrorism and...

KARAKULLUKCU: Absolutely.

WARNER: Absolutely.

KARAKULLUKCU: At the intrastate—intrastate—the whole—the whole complexity.

WARNER: Yes.

KARAKULLUKCU: So as that is thrown on us, that really requires a transformation in the public's perception of what Turkish foreign policy should be. It requires a reconfiguration of our foreign-policy apparatus, because that it is not what it has been used to for decades.

So it is very difficult. It really—I think Turkey is going through that transition, and many of the issues that we face vis-a-vis the world, what Turkey is doing, whether it's managing it well, I think actually stem from that transition to our new role in the region.

The global...

WARNER: And your leader, President Erdogan, he has to cope with different domestic—I mean, he has to deal with the domestic politics of this.

KARAKULLUKCU: Of course. Of course. And—and even, you know, obviously, presidents, prime ministers change.

I think this problem will remain. Whoever is leading the country will have to deal with the legacy of a Turkey that sort of saw itself at a certain distance from the region to a Turkey that feels it has some responsibility to—in the transformation of the region, to become a sort of a more peaceful, reasonable place.

HAASS: Actually, I think that's not unique to Turkey. One of the things that comes through here loud and clear is one of the reasons it's so hard to get global governance is because of the domestic governance.

Every—look at the debates in this country this week, say, about trade. We're going to have the American example of it, or, say, dealing with nonproliferation, a debate about the Iran agreement.

Virtually every issue that got graded here in the report card, countries' governments are not free hands, shall we say, that intellectually choose what they might want to do, simply because they're constrained by their own domestic politics and economics.

 

And I think the—the—the problems, again, domestically have really affected and infected, in some ways, the—the potential internationally. WARNER: Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, do you think that's any more the case today than it was five years ago?

What if this report had been done five years ago? Were the domestic pressures any less on leaders, or were—was the complexity of the problems any less?

SIDIROPOULOS: I think five years ago, also, we were in—in a particular sort of global economic context.

WARNER: Yes.

SIDIROPOULOS: And I think certainly on some levels, that galvanized cooperation, certainly among key—key states.

But on a number of—of other issues—and again, whether we bring up the climate change, (inaudible) all of the discussions around trade and the interminable discussions of the Doha Development Round, those were, you know—those were there.

I mean, at the institute, we started monitoring it very closely from the start of the Doha Development Round, and now, you know, it's—it's been one of those things that you put on the back and—and say, you know, "We're not going to move on this.

So I think some of the intensity has—has increased, and some of the crisis has reduced in the context of—of financial issues, and particularly, of course, in—in the last couple of years, what we've seen in Europe and the Middle East has—has added a dimension where many of the underlying different interests and approaches, I think have come to the fore.

WARNER: Sunjoy Joshi, one thing that struck me is that when people were asked to grade what were the most important challenges, three of the four, the top three—preventing conflict between states, internal violent conflict and combating transnational terrorism—got the lowest grades in cooperation.

What do you think explains that?

JOSHI: I don't think the answer is very difficult to find to that, because as far as international cooperation on these central (ph) concerns, you have—on the one hand, you have a situation where you're trying to combat transnational terrorism, but you still have states conducting proxy wars through—through these organizations. This creates a certain (inaudible) in the very effort to create any kind of cooperation on most of these issues.

Now, how do you move from here?

The other factor is that much of what has been happening in the world around us, when you're looking at conflicts like, you know, the I.S. and all the others coming up, the Islamic State rising, you're—you're finding that the new media has come in in a huge way. Today, you have a long tail, which stretches (inaudible) starts shaking in Syria, has reverberations in Florida. It has reverberations in Europe. It has reverberations in Belgium.

And this is making the whole issue of—the threat which was far away has come right to our doorsteps. Organizations, structured entities within the states when you're talking of state establishments, are perhaps too rigid, in many ways, to deal with many of these new threats which are emerging.

WARNER: Richard, do you think that—that—if you look at those three issues, that really, it's driven by a major fault line, really, within Islam that is going to have to be resolved probably not through, quote, international cooperation.

HAASS: Two things.

On that, it was Sam Huntington who wrote the famous piece for "Foreign Affairs" magazine back when about—that essentially projecting that history was going to play out as a clash between and among civilizations. It's actually turned out to be much more a clash within them.

WARNER: Within them.

HAASS: And outsiders can play a role in this debate in the Islamic world about coming to terms with modernity, how to organize societies and so forth. We can play a role using a whole range or array of foreign-policy tools. But there's limits.

I think one of the things we ought to have learned after sending more than 2 million Americans to Iraq and Afghanistan is the limits in translating our power into influence.

Can I just make (inaudible) about conflict between states? I actually think—maybe this reflects the fact that I taught at Harvard and I'm used to giving high grades, but I actually think the report's a little bit rough there.

And I think in some ways, it's interesting that—you know, intrastate conflict, while potentially, obviously, in principle, a concern, I actually think the world's doing OK on that.

Yes, there's the obvious exception of Russia in parts of Ukraine, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but I would argue it's wrong to generalize on that. I don't see any Russian threat, if you will, to most of—to Europe that's in any way emerging.

Asia has actually done surprisingly well in maintaining balances. Latin America looks pretty good.

Most of the problems in Africa and the Middle East are internal. So I think intrastate conflict, yes, real high.

But I actually think one of the characteristics of the age of history is the traditional 20th century concern, which is major powers going at it, two World Wars and a Cold War, and the rest are actually less prevalent now. The major-power intrastate war, yeah, it's out there potentially. But in terms of immediate concerns, if I were making a list, I would've actually ranked it quite differently.

WARNER: But Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, there are certainly fewer wars now than classic wars going on. But a lot of these transnational problems, as I think Richard said earlier, really, the non-state actors are just as important. And in that sense, no matter how well the government's even think they'd want to cooperate, if they did, which we don't—we don't accept, necessarily, this panel—but it's really confoundingly difficult, isn't it?

SIDIROPOULOS: Absolutely, and particularly, I think, in the—in the African context.

I think in the African context, we have interesting characteristics where you have, you know, certain internal conflicts that have been ongoing for some time, notwithstanding, I think, the efforts of the international community, which I think have been good in containing them, but not withstanding, I think you have these underlying conflicts, which have also, from time to—to time drawn in different actors.

I think there are clearly underlying issues around development—it's interesting to see that in one of the scorecards, development was right at the bottom—that feed into—into—into much of this.

And that's about governance. It's about accountable governments, which, you know, particularly, if—if we look at the African continent as one of the underlying problems and challenges, and it's an ongoing thing, I think there have been some—there has been some—some real progress over the—the last couple of decades but still huge gaps—huge gaps in it. That in itself helps to precipitate some of the problems that we've seen across—across the continent become quite prominent over the last few years.

And at the same time, international involvement, need I say here Libya and the—and the removal of Moammar Gadhafi, which has, I think, set off a whole set—chain of events, which I think has made the situation, particularly in West Africa and across the Sahel much, much more difficult.

Those countries, you know, the—the—for those countries, what is—what is critical is what is happening in their immediate—in their immediate neighborhood, the ability to deal with ungoverned spaces, or spaces that at least are not governed by the state and that the state itself is often a predatory state, which I think helps to—to add incentive to—and strength to the non-state actors, particularly if you look at, say, Nigeria and Boko Haram, or indeed, sort of in East Africa and—and Al Shabaab. WARNER: Memduh, could you weigh in on this question of these three, you know, top priority, the violent extremism series of issues?

And comment, if you would, on what Richard said and I think what I said earlier that—that a lot of it is really a conflict within Islam that—that kind of defies much international cooperation. In other words, there's very little that other states can do about it.

KARAKULLUKCU: I think that diagnosis, it can be based on two things. It can be by choice, or it can be because there's nothing we can do about it. If it is by choice, at the moment, that seems to be the narrative that...

WARNER: What do you mean by choice?

KARAKULLUKCU: I mean that the global powers have decided that really there isn't much to be done there, so gradually stepping back and letting the region sort of reach its own equilibrium, which is very understandable.

But, I mean, it's inevitability. I think it's something that we need to at least discuss. I mean, it is possible that there may be things that the global powers can do.

So how we calibrate that coming out of the region is, I think, a parameter of this discussion, something to think about.

WARNER: So you'd be thinking of Syria, for example?

KARAKULLUKCU: Oh, Syria, for example. And, you know, maybe earlier on, there were things that could have been done that would have changed the trajectory of where we are now. So that is one thing.

The other thing is the—when you leave this region to itself, I think people forget about the path dependence or the irreversibility of sectarianism. Once you open that box, and it is open now, you can't really roll it back. So there is that cost. This is—the equilibrium can't snap back to where we were. Now we have this new situation to deal with.

And the other thing is the brutality of the new equilibrium is an issue we have to deal with, because that defies and goes beyond the norms of warfare, the norms of humanitarian requirements that we have been, as humanity, accustomed to recently. That is just now moving beyond that. So that's a new thing we as humanity need to deal with in terms of our, you know, emotional setup.

So Sunjoy, do you think that the international community has a responsibility, even though it looks very daunting, to—to try to take on those issues, which really stem from a conflict within the Islamic world about its future, its future character?

JOSHI: I don't how—how correct it is to posit it as a issue within—you know, just as within Islam, because let's look at it from a slightly different perspective, you know, that there are—where does all this stem from?

There are perhaps, for all the larger narratives we have about equality, democracy, (inaudible) opportunities arising in—all—all—all over the world, today, there are a million other subnarratives, (inaudible) narratives about disaffection, about disenfranchisement, about not having enough, which are really feeding into and being fed by these counter-narratives, which are percolating down right from the grassroots. Now, you—you need to confront it at that level.

Now, at that level, sometimes what we are finding is that when states are talking to each other, are they even what—as Richard said, are they even the right organizations talking to each other? (inaudible) talking to each other.

So that is where the real—(inaudible) as a major issue, that is the reason.

WARNER: And that does bring us to, what would it take to change this trajectory just on cooperation?

In other words, are—Richard, let's start with you. Do you think that the most promising avenue are trying to reform our big international, multilateral institutions? Do you think it's better to go with sort of regional—whether they're coalitions of the willing in a military sense or—or regional trade agreements like the TPP?

Or do you think that perhaps the most promising avenue are bilateral understandings, for instance, what the U.S. and China did on climate change in the hopes that that will help galvanize others?

HAASS: I once got in trouble early in my tenure in the most recent Bush administration when I was asked a question like that. The difference between then and now is then I was speaking as an administration official.

And I said, "Our policy is one of multilateralism a la carte." And I think that's the case, is that you choose the grouping, formal or informal, where you have the entities that are most like-minded and have the greatest capacity to do something.

So in some cases, that could be the large formal, multilateral institutions, but more often than not, they're smaller ad hoc coalitions of the willing or—or some sort of grouping. You sacrifice something in the way of legality and legitimacy, and those are real considerations. On the other hand, you get—you get a willingness and an ability to do something, and that, to me, is the tradeoff.

But by and large, I wouldn't knock ourselves out thinking about institutional reform, because institutions tend to be more reflective.

The line in New York, you know, "If you want to improve basketball in New York, you don't remodel Madison Square Garden." That's not going to do it for you. You gotta change the Knicks, and that's a different entity. So to me, you don't want to spend your life remodeling the U.N. Security Council, as unrepresentative and unreflective as it is with modern realities, because you can't get a change, because there's always potential winners and losers to change, and shockingly enough, the losers will tend to resist you.

So what, again, you want to do, I think, is focus on the issues.

To me, the biggest recommendation I would make is to rethink a little bit American foreign policy. So much of what our senior people do is negotiations, and I would actually suggest a much more important thing would be consultations, that we would spend a lot more time overseas in our conversations with other governments and others thinking about this kind of stuff. How do we wire the world?

Take one of the issues here: cyber. There's virtually no international agreement in part because there's no intellectual material to work from. It's the newest issue of the town. It's the sort of area—we're not ready to negotiate.

But what we should be doing is developing ideas and talking about them. And virtually all these issues are not teed up yet to have international consensus. It's premature.

So what our diplomats have to do is invest and have those kinds of exchanges, and then where a consensus begins to emerge, then you try to translate the consensus into actual agreement that would lead to some action. But many of these cases, we're simply not there.

WARNER: Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, weigh in.

SIDIROPOULOS: Yeah, I would agree with—with Richard on both issue around consultation and also on the fact that, you know, you need to move—if you're going to be moving the debate forward and making progress on some of these issues, you probably have to take them—you have to work through small—smaller groups.

I think the—the challenge—and here, it's the issue, really, of legitimacy and—and efficacy and power. The challenges that once you take them out of the formal multilateral environment, for the bigger countries, they're in a position, because of their—their—their power, to—to have things their way. The smaller countries end up not really participating in the discussions and what comes out of it and simply having to comply.

And certainly, in this—in this new world where you're having emerging powers that are beginning to want to have a greater say in setting the agenda as well as in determining the outcomes of the agenda. That does become a problem.

I think the one way of tackling it is the issue of consultation. It's creating, and—and it's—it's about not being prescriptive. I think it is about consulting. It is—it is about creating informal groupings on particular issues that can then be taken forward, also through multilateral channels, but the multilateral channels end up in stasis. We've seen that often enough. And—and this is also, I think, a point that Richard has made—whether through such informal arrangements and groupings and consultations you can also, where relevant, bring in multiple stakeholders.

So it's not just the states, but it's—it's other actors. And certainly in the cyber governance field, I think that could be an important case in point.

HAASS: (OFF-MIKE) we were talking about with Ebola, groups like...

SIDIROPOULOS: Yeah, yeah...

HAASS: ... Medecins Sans Frontiers...

SIDIROPOULOS: Absolutely.

HAASS: ... or the Gates Foundation. And those—they become far more important than states in terms of the relevance and the capacity they can bring to bear.

WARNER: But they're positive actors. What do you do when non- state actors, Memduh, are—are major players and they're very negative or destructive influence?

KARAKULLUKCU: It's terrible to be from the part of the world.

(LAUGHTER)

I get all these questions.

Well, now, we also talked about this a bit yesterday. It seems these non-state actors feed on the disenfranchised and their search for empowerment identities. I mean, that is what is feeding it.

Can we come up with other magnets to attract these individuals as empowered identities? I mean, that is the big challenge, but it's such a long-term challenge.

And the problem with it, the positive agenda, building a positive agenda and attracting the young people, is simply a harder task than gathering them around this destructive agenda that we currently face. So that—structurally, we have a problem.

The other thing is—that, again, came up yesterday, is probably in these societies, we need to build some sort of resilience rather than trying to remove the causes. What is it that makes a society resilient to these kinds of, you know, pathological behavior?

KARAKULLUKCU: And it seems, as much as we cherish individuality and individual as the core sort of value, maybe we will have to think about going back to non-violent communities as a substitute to stop the slide into the violent non-state communities and actors.

But this is, again—I think this is a domain where we are in very early stages and we are all thinking about it. And again, we had a great few presentations yesterday, so I'm thrilled that we started discussing it.

WARNER: Well, I'm glad you're sharing some of that with all of us who were not in those off the record discussions.

Sunjoy, where do you stand on this question on what the most—if we wanted this report card to look better, higher grades next year, other than grade inflation, what would it take? Do you think the most promising—Professor Haass, we won't allow to give out the grades.

What—what would you—where do you think is the promising avenue? I mean, is it reforming the big multilateral, multinational institutions? India has certainly been for making them more representative. Is it through sort of regional groupings? Or is it two states coming to some understanding? Or all of the above?

JOSHI: Actually it's—the position is pretty much multilateral institutions are more used by the emerging economies as testing the waters. They test the waters and then they go back and they then try to figure out certain positions, coalitions, in smaller sub-groupings.

Now this tendency I see increasing. Because reform, as Richard pointed out in the existing institutions, is actually going to be a very, very difficult process. Organizations are organic entities; you can't reform them overnight. They do not change like this.

So you are going to see a certain supplanting of organizations, a certain supplanting of institutions, where you will see bilateral deals like the U.S.-China deal take precedence. You have the mega- trade arrangements coming into place, you know, the TPPs (ph) and all the other acronyms that you are playing around with.

So a lot of this is starting to happen. Interestingly, if you read the report, it says trade, there (ph) will be definite forward movement.

WARNER: Yes. JOSHI: In spite of everything, in spite of the (inaudible) you're having disaster and countries coming to blows there. There is going to be positive movement in trade because no one runs away from a deal. We're essentially deal-makers. And it is always good to be part of a club rather than outside it. So this is the way we are going to continue moving into the future.

WARNER: And that's...

HAASS: Can I say one word for the WTO? Even though it's not succeeding as a negotiating forum, it's incredibly valuable still as a dispute resolution forum. If we didn't have it, things would be far worse. You almost have a division of labor that the WTO is where you battle things out. You negotiate more manageable entities so hopefully over time some of the regional agreements will end up as global. But in the meantime it's not a bad division of labor.

JOSHI: That's what I said about testing the waters, using these forums to test the water, see where you stand, where you can push.

WARNER: And where your allies may be and what—where you can come to some consensus.

Before we go to audience questions, let me just pick up on something that Richard flicked at. And I wanted to end with on this part. Which is, some of these issues are new. Let's take cyber. So this is a very new issue. As Richard said, there's really no even common data or understanding of how big the problem is, what's our definition of the problem, and so on.

Does that make that a more promising—and Elizabeth, I'll start with you—a more—does that make it harder to deal with that issue because it's so new? Or do you think it actually opens up the opportunity for cooperation because these—because countries don't carry the weight of a lot of baggage and history on it?

SIDIROPOULOS: I think even though it's a fairly new issue and certainly in the African context particularly now really starting, in certain countries anyway, becoming a very important point, I think the line's already drawn in terms of—in terms of how particular groupings of countries in the developing world or emerging powers or re-emerging powers or revisionist (ph) powers are seeing that debate vis-a-vis other—other countries.

And I mean, I think in—South Africa is—is sort of an interesting in-between space. And particularly in the African...

WARNER: Explain what you mean by that.

SIDIROPOULOS: Well, I think as a—as a democracy, as a—as a—as a constitutional democracy I think there are certain perceptions of where South Africa would sit in that broader debate around—and here I'm talking about issues of freedom as opposed to sort of security.

WARNER: And privacy, yes. SIDIROPOULOS: And privacy.

But I think that's—that's not the case. And certainly working in—in—within—within groupings like the Brickson (ph) and certainly on issues before the U.N. Human Rights Council, I think the—the approach has not been as clear-cut as perhaps some countries or some people might have—might have expected.

I think in an African context there's also a very strong element of issues certainly within civil society movements in the continent around issues of—of—of privacy, democracy, liberty, freedom of expression, that are—that form part of the—part of concerns around how you—how you govern—how you govern that. And we see that particularly—we see that in some countries and the whole of Africa, how it's been—so it's not necessarily going to be easier (ph) to develop (inaudible).

WARNER: Weigh in on this.

HAASS: I actually think it'll be tough. On one level you can draw the parallels to the debate over cyber to the nuclear debate in the '40s and '50s. New technologies emerge and academics and scientists and policymakers are trying to figure out exactly what kind of behaviors you want to encourage, what kind of behaviors you want to discourage.

But in the nuclear realm, initially—initially we just had two. And there was a limited number of systems and the rate of introduction wasn't that great. Here we've got, you know, unlimited numbers of players, state and non-state alike. The rate of innovation and introduction is phenomenally fast.

We—and some things we want to preserve—commerce, free flow of information. On the other hand, people—some people want to stop the free flow of information. Others are more interested in stealing intellectual property than trading it. You've got offensive (ph) considerations to use it as a—as an instrument of war.

I mean, just as an aside, when General Clapper, the American DNI, gave his annual report this winter, he said cyber was the number one threat facing the United States and highlighted the difference between China, which he didn't see as that big of a threat because they're mainly interested in blocking the flow of information, and shall we say acquiring certain information, as opposed to Russia, which is militarized.

I just think that this is going to be, given the range of views and just the—the number of hands involved and the pace of innovation, I think this is going to be probably the fastest-growing area of international friction.

So my guess is on our chart in years to come this is going to grow in importance, but I'm not sure the grades get higher. It's quite possible the grades get lower.

WARNER: And you're saying in all categories, but particularly cyber.

HAASS: Particularly cyber. I think cyber's going to be very tough for, if you will, the world to get its arms around.

WARNER: Memduh, how do you see that?

KARAKULLUKCU: I fully agree with that. I mean, I think cyber is actually part of the broader global security question, which brings in the whole strategic stability of nuclear, space issues. It's a part of that core issues for the world. So I think it will be there and I think we'll all have to deal with in terms of big power relations. So it's in this context.

WARNER: But the newness of issue actually if the world could, I don't know, find some way to actually have consultations on this, does that present an opportunity?

KARAKULLUKCU: At that level of big power relations, probably it'll take a long time. Because I mean I think all parties have a stake in sort of playing with the ambiguity. There is, I think, you know, unfortunately I think there is that ambiguity sort of benefiting all parties at the moment.

Now at a more social level, the freedoms versus Internet, that's I think a different debate that cuts across the world, including my own, and in that debate, what is interesting is the issues that we deal with locally—is there Internet freedom? so on and so forth—and then the global debate about ICANN assigning names, there's a huge disconnect between those two discussions.

So I think the work that we'll do, hopefully, will connect, will show the connections between those debates because otherwise we're really not getting the publics in countries like mine excited, interested in the global discussions about Internet and cyber that we have in such forum (ph).

WARNER: Sunjoy—OK, I want to get to the questions from our audience and I just wanted to give Sunjoy an opportunity, if I might, just to comment on this, the newness of the cyber issue, whether it presents an opportunity for more cooperation or in fact will make it more difficult.

JOSHI: Cyber is a strange animal. You see, the issue here is that the people who are discussing global governance between themselves, in cyber-security and the cyber space, are actually the ones who are being governed. They're not the ones in control. The whole space, actually, is a very diffused, amorphous space where you have so many other entities actually doing the governance and the management of the cyber space.

So the conversation probably is not even taking place between the right entities. So that is the first problem you're going to face when you actually deal with cyber governance, that's the primary issue you're going to face.

The second thing is that cyber, you know, both simultaneously makes large and the small and the big equally vulnerable and it equally empowers them. But that is a big difference. So in the cyber space, you are going to see a huge lot many more David and Goliath battles where David always wins. And David is probably going to become the new Goliath, which you're going to have to confront time and time again.

Now that is a challenge which I do not think global governance systems are really ready for.

WARNER: We're now going to invite members to join our conversation here. And we've already had some hands up. Please wait for the microphone to come to you, speak directly into it, and we'd love it if you could stand, just state your name and your affiliation. And I've been asked to ask all of you to limit yourself to one question and to keep it concise just so we can get to a lot.

So there was someone right here, actually two people right here. The lady in gray and behind her.

Please start.

QUESTION: First, thank you so much for this presentation. I'm thrilled that you've put this group together on this work.

HAASS: Former member of the policy planning staff (ph).

QUESTION: I'm happy to say I had the honor of working with Richard and learning from him during our period. I would ask you about that particular court (ph), but I respect your wish to ask one question rather than so many from this distinguished panel.

If I may ask how you looked at some of the international tools? Indeed, one of the most difficult issues is looking at the challenges of the use of military force, which when we think about the many different tools internationally, I'd be the first to say that military force is often not the answer.

But one of the areas of disagreement amongst many states is when is it appropriate to use military force and how do we think about those two distinctive tools of the Security Council, the use of economic sanctions, which are particularly difficult for developing countries because they're costly, and the use of military force, particularly when we come to internal issues, how did you grapple with the age-old issue of sovereignty?

Thank you.

WARNER: Who would like to try that first?

HAASS: I'll say two things on the use of military force.

One is there's clearly less consensus than might have appeared to have been the case a decade ago. We're now at the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Responsibility to Protect resolution at the U.N. I'm not sure you could pass it today, quite honestly. I actually think the idea that—that the international community has an obligation, a right to intervene under certain circumstances, I think it would be much tougher to get that.

And even though we have it, we don't act on it much, as Syria and other situations show. And I think there's lots of reasons why, including Libya, where it was seen to be misused.

More broadly, I don't think there's a big consensus on the use of force. Let me take two examples. One is the Russian use of force against Crimea. That goes up against what you might say we thought was the most widely accepted principle of international relations, is you don't use force to acquire territory. Indeed this summer we're marking the 25th anniversary of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, which was about just that.

So there, again, the consensus shall we say is not quite what it was. Take another area, which is in some ways what the U.S. did in Iraq in 2003 and what conceivably we could—others could do in other cases, there's no consensus about preventive military strikes against gathering threats, say, nuclear capabilities.

And—whether it's North Korea or Iran or other cases, I don't think there's any international consensus about a program that's a few months away from fruition, is it acceptable to use military force to thwart its emergence? Some might say yes, some might say no. I actually think the gap when it comes to the use of force is pretty profound.

KARAKULLUKCU: I'll just say a few things about the economic sanctions. Again, in our discussions yesterday, a point was made that we are creating a club of pariahs and that it is corrosive to the sort of global system because at the end of the day the global commons are critical to what we have built in the last 70 years. And the Western world, the U.S., has been sort of guarding that very carefully.

And now we are creating this ambiguity about whether we are guarding it or we are using it as a leverage. And you know I do recognize the need for it, but I think it needs to be presented to the world with that caveat in mind, with that concern in mind, because it is building up. So I think that's—I'll just stop there.

WARNER: We'll go to the next question, this lady right here.

QUESTION: I recognize the most difficult thing to do is to change the way people think, feel, and behave. So the issue I have is when you look at these systems across the world, how do you change the reward systems, whether it's our personnel system, our military system, so they look—it's not a matter of doing what we've done in the past, but having new ideas and thinking into the future?

And the Defense Department's going through those, wanting to be innovative now, but they continue to look at the world through a rear- view mirror. So I think—I mean, I think this—this is—you have to get down to how do you change systems.

HAASS: Let me—thank you for making the case for the Council of Councils. The reason we created this mechanism was just that. None of us has power in the sense that we can't snap our fingers and make things happen, but ideas matter. And you've got here more than two dozen institutions that are plugged into their respective public debates but also have connections to their respective governments and others. And the reason we built this—this organization, this network, was that we would do just that. And the idea was to kick around these ideas, hopefully refine them, and then we all head back.

And so we're here in Washington. And people appear from three other capitals. We've got another two dozen represented on the floor. And the idea, again, is that these ideas would travel and hopefully they influence the context in which policy is made in their respective countries. And that'll be the measure about whether this is—whether this is working (ph).

But you're right. Ideas are the movers here.

SIDIROPOULOS: Well, it's—coming from South Africa where talking and negotiation has been a keystone, I think, of—of—of our transformation, I think it cannot be said enough that the more you dialogue, the more you interact, the more you learn about the other and sort of use that as a means for—for developing policy interventions and also changing the way in which you're thinking and operating, I think it's—it's—it's absolutely invaluable.

I mean, the debates around the use of force and economic sanctions. I mean, South Africa's position, not withstanding where it came from historically around—around sanctions, you know, in the apartheid period, is that you actually need to sit down and talk.

Now I think there is a role for sanctions. I think the use of force particularly has proved to be one that is not the—provides the greatest outcome. And Libya is obviously the worst case in point from—from—from an African perspective.

But it underlines the importance of actually listening. And I think one of the points that the South African government, which in 2005 around the debate on responsibility to protect, was particularly—was I think supportive, as were many other African governments, is that this should not ideally be—the use of force or the intervention to avoid and to protect civilians should not be seen through the prism of regime change, and that at the end of the day, when you do that, you have to face the consequences, particularly when you haven't taken into consideration fully the perspectives and the views of other regional actors and what that might mean in terms of your plan beyond the intervention and beyond the removal from power.

And so the more we talk and the more we exchange ideas, I think the better it is, although it is a very long process.

WARNER: The gentleman right back there?

QUESTION: The question I have is why did transnational terrorism get so high on the list? Because it seems to me ranked against some of those other items it doesn't cause as much death and destruction as the others, and it may be not as big a long-term threat. I'd be interested in how it got ranked so high.

HAASS: Well, I'll take a shot at it. I actually think it is a pretty significant threat. First of all, even if its manifestations are local, its genesis is transnational. Look at a group like ISIS. You're getting dollars and recruits from all over the world. And the largest immediate impact has obviously been in Syria and Iraq, but I wouldn't think for a second it stays there.

I think the rest of the Middle East is vulnerable and the rest of the world is vulnerable, either by direct action or by, quote-unquote, "inspiration" and copycat-ism. So I actually do think it's a significant threat. And the nightmare that all of us in the filed have is not just that, as if that were not bad enough, but it's the marriage of that kind of transnational terrorism obviously with some sort of weapon of mass destruction.

So again, yeah, I actually think it is—it is a threat to—to take—to take seriously, both whether it's locally, regionally, or—or globally. It's part of the dark side of—of globalization. And I think we would be remiss in underestimating it.

 

WARNER: Yes, go over to—or Sunjoy. Everyone wants to weigh in.

JOSHI: Interestingly, on this particular subject, there is some amount of regional variation when you come to the responses. Though everyone has ranked transnational terrorism very, very high across the nations, if you look at responses from the developing countries and look at the data rankings they would have given, they would probably rate sustainability, economy, development, those areas far higher and far more important. So there is a significant regional variation.

KARAKULLUKCU: The—I just want to add one thing. The—there is the immediate cost, obviously, of transnational terrorism, but there is the derivative cost, which is the—that it—it limits the actions of sovereign countries, mine included, in the region because it can actually strike back in your own country. So it has this derivative constraining effect on solving most of these intractable issues, at least, again, in my part of the world. So it is an issue going forward.

WARNER: Elizabeth? Yes, gentleman right back here? No one over here has raised their hand. Yes, thank you.

QUESTION: I'll just make a comment about—(inaudible) stage right. We are having our annual conference tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. So we will have 150 or so, 200 people from 100 different organizations. And the question I have is what advice would you have for us? We work in a couple hundred—150-plus countries. Richard, you raised Ebola, which is a low-hanging fruit. But Memduh, is that how you pronounce it? You talked about combating violent extremism. How do—what can NGOs do to help you guys, because our work and yours are not quite the same, how can we help you guys in building support for improved global governance?

KARAKULLUKCU: There are two elements to this. One is gathering information, understanding the problem. So some NGOs are good at that, going on the field and going in the field and getting the information about what causes it and I think as importantly what is resilient to this kind of behavior. So if we get data on that, and again, I know that there are institutions doing it, that'll be great.

And of course the second one, once we process that and want to get again in the field and leverage some of those resilience agents, then again that'll be the second step of working together.

HAASS: Two things. One is that, look, we just had a massive global test case of dealing with the challenge called Ebola. A lot of these organizations literally had boots on the ground, so let's figure out—we had a session on it yesterday—about global health reform. Global governance in the area of health. What lessons have we learned? What changes have to be made?

And I would think that some of the NGOs would have as good a sense of that as anyone, and in some cases they're not—they can participate both in the design as well as the implementation of it. So I would think that's one.

Second of all, combating violent extremism, I actually think there's limits to what governments can do. In some ways governments are heavy, they're politicized, they're tainted. But whether it's the—making certain texts (ph) available as part of the intellectual (inaudible). Putting things online. Seeing that certain types of educational reform is introduced, that girls have access to certain types—have access to education so they get the chance to learn to read.

The pay-off of that in terms of societal development, health, and whatever, there's tons of studies showing that if you have one dollar in your wallet and you want to make a difference across a lot of the issues we looked at, invest it in teaching girls how to read. Do that. So that's a place where NGOs can have tremendous impact because literally, again, they've got—they've got boots on the ground in ways—are inside these societies in ways that governments can't hope to reach.

WARNER: Right over here. And then someone here, too.

QUESTION: Richard, you had mentioned that both NGOs and corporations could be more...

WARNER: OK. Did you give your name?

QUESTION: I'm sorry. Mark Kennedy (ph) from George Washington University. You'd mentioned both NGOs and corporations as some of the non-state actors that could be involved. We just talked about NGOs. When you talk about boots on the ground integrated into society, a lot of the MNC, multinational corporations, have a broad reach. How could they be more effective in addressing some of these issues?

HAASS: Well, take one of the issues here which is global health again. One of the biggest drivers of global health care, indeed, the biggest driver is not infectious disease. It's not infectious disease, it's non-communicable diseases—diseases that are associated with lifestyle, diabetes, to deal with diet, alcoholism, not using your seatbelts, what have you.

Corporations in the kind of programs they have for their workers around the world could have tremendous impact. Again, educational institution. Corporations could provide schooling for the children of their employees. Again, those could become both excellent in and of themselves, as well as models to drive change within the societies where they are based. So I think, you know, corporations, foundations, obviously, individuals.

I actually think the scope for having impact is quite considerable, particularly in an age also where our own things like aid budgets are constrained. I actually think we've got to expand that. I'll just say one other thing, that we're going to have to get very creative about governance.

Whether it's health or dealing with, say, post-crisis aftermaths, you're going to have to bring into the room groups like this and we're going actually have to become much more flexible and inclusive that it's not going to be enough, simply to bring into the room the normal set of government agencies, but we're actually going to have to have policymaking and governance models which are going to be far more, quote, unquote, "democratic" than has ever been the case in the past.

WARREN: Elizabeth?

SIDIROPOULOS: I think there is—I think the private sector and multinationals can play a very important role. And certainly also, in the broader development discussion. And it's good to see them being brought in and also into the global effective—development effectiveness processes. And I think there is also another component that is important to mention here and that is, of course, the way in which MNCs operate in a particular countries in which they are based, in terms of being good corporate citizens.

There is a social dimension to that that we've spoken about, in terms of engaging the grassroots, but also in terms of the other—the darker side of it, which I think we need to address and that's being part of the discussions that emanated from the Mbeki report on Illicit Financial Flows is the role of base erosion and profit sharing, where—and this is also an issue in the developed world, but it is a particularly big problem in a continent like Africa, where you see sort of, you know, more money leaving the continent through these kinds of initiatives and innovations than actually the aid that comes in.

And that also addresses and speaks to some of the challenges that African states face around being able to mobilize domestic resources and to be able to also develop budgets that are not dependent on external support, but actually emanate from the tax base. And so, MNCs have a role to play in the social environment, grassroots, but also in terms of being good corporate citizens within those countries around some of those regulatory practices.

WARREN: Yes. Right here, sir.

QUESTION: Joan Liedham Ackerman (ph).

WARREN: Sir—sorry. I couldn't see the—I only saw the top of your head.

QUESTION: Oh, OK. That's fine. Joan Liedham Ackerman (ph). I'm a writer and work with Penn (ph) International. What consideration have you given to the whole global criminal networks that we see emerging and growing and become almost like a membrane around good governance and certainly a part of the funding of the terrorism? And is—has terrorism in some sense sort of morphed into being a criminal enterprise, rather than a enterprise for political governance?

WARREN: Very interesting question because combating global criminal networks was not one of these top 10 and yet it undergirds many others. Who'd like to start on that?

HAASS: I should probably call on Stuart (ph). But the...

(LAUGHTER)

Look, you could have been 11 or 12. You could have had things like piracy. We could have had drug cartels. We could have had ...

WARREN: All that's part of, it right?

HAASS: There's a long list of these non-state actors, which are menaces. And the only way I'd slightly disagree with you maybe is i think—well, I mean, there's obviously a bit of a morphing between—take a group like ISIS. Some of the ways they finance themselves are through purely criminal activities—extortion, kidnapping. They are Bonnie-and-Clyde operations. You know, they rob banks. In they—they seize oil, they sell it on black markets. So those are criminal, quote, unquote, "activities."

But I wouldn't call a group like ISIS a criminal organization. I do think it has a clear political agenda. It's just—it simply uses those means to—it's one of their means of raising resources so they can better pursue from their point of view their political and, if you will, military agenda.

But you're right. If we had a longer list, I think, purely, criminal organizations, drug cartels, piracy outfits and the rest would be—and the exact same considerations or criteria that we apply to these things, we could apply to theirs and maybe we will in the future. We can—there's reason we wouldn't expand the list, indeed, if people think that we've left things off. Not just if you disagree or agree with what we've done. But that we need an expanded list. You know, we're open to them.

WARREN: Well, I didn't mean to change Joan's (ph) question as to why it wasn't on the list. It just was an interesting underlying factor here. But is there a way—let me ask you, Elizabeth—to—for countries to cooperate better on that front, given that it contributes to a lot of these other issues?

SIDIROPOULOS: I think there have been some initiatives of the last several year, probably over the last decade, around transnational criminal networks, particularly as they feed into, I think, political movements and political processes. And I think there's a—whether that's been, you know, sufficiently effectively, clearly not. But for example, if we were to take piracy off the coast of Somalia in the northern Indian Ocean. I think international cooperation there, in terms of that particular problem, I think, has been reasonably successful.

We have a budding problem, of course, in the Gulf of Guinea, which has different characteristics. But I think there has been—and again, it's probably we shouldn't beat ourselves too much. I think there has been some positive developments. And I think some of the systems and mechanisms are in place for us to be able to bid a combat transnational criminal networks. And some of it is also important—some of it also links to how you engage at the grassroots level, sort of the social economy of organized crime, I think, is also an important component, certainly if you look at it in the context of Southern Africa in some of the studies we've conducted in that regard, so.

HAASS: This is a larger point here, which is in some areas when you look at what looks to be global efforts against something, it doesn't look so hot. But the question is whether that's a global problem with a sum total of national problems. Like, I would think one of the areas—that might be one.

Or say the economy. The economy here gets pretty low grades. I actually think the grades are too low, because the major problems of the world economy, I would argue, are less questions of global governance than they are national governance and the lack of (inaudible)—so there's no amount.

You could reform the IMF, as it should be, as much as you could. It wouldn't change the fact that many countries are not doing the sort of domestic, economic and political reforms they need to do.

So the sum total at the global level may look bad, but I think we have to ask ourselves, something I think for our future work is to drill down and say, "Is this really a global issue," or is it simply the sum total of national issues"?

And on the policing or criminality issue, I'd want to ask that. To what extent is it collective failure? To what extent is really more a set of national failures? I simply don't know the answer to that (inaudible).

JOSHI: Richard, my own suspicion is that if you actually did a ranking on that, that would perhaps be one of the few Bs you will get.

HAASS: A B. Wow.

(LAUGHTER)

Sky-high.

WARNER: (OFF-MIKE) because it's—it's what's been prevented that you can't see. It's very hard to prove a negative.

JOSHI: There would be far more consensus between inter- cooperation between states on—on the Dark Net and things like that than you find in many other areas.

HAASS: All this talk of grades is making me slightly uneasy.

When I went to Oberlin, I took credit and no entry, so I'm finding this conversation a bit beyond me. But anyhow... (LAUGHTER)

MILLER: From that generation.

Do we have another question from the audience? Yes, right here, sir. This'll be the last one, I'm afraid.

QUESTION: Thanks. David Apgar, IIC.

The report's very illuminating but also distressing, because the issue that arguably is the root cause of most other issues is probably development. And—and as Elizabeth mentioned, it's dead last in priorities.

There's a reason for that. It's the one that Richard just mentioned. So much of what needs to be done is that the national level.

There's a growing minority of—of thinkers in development institutions that think that a much bigger percentage of development problems around the world than we ever thought are fundamentally political and intractable and reflect the same kinds of traps that Paul Collier (ph) used to write about as economic traps and said "political."

So I'm wondering as—as emerging powers become more important in foreign policy and political institutions, like Council of Councils, can we imagine at some point in the future that an international foreign-policy institution would actually argue for the politicization of development.

HAASS: Well, I think to some extent, you know better than I do, in the literature, you're seeing that, the idea that development is—can't be siloed as an economic phenomenon, that the question of the relationship (inaudible) governance and the politic side is—is deep and—and wide.

And I think, you know, we actually did a study at the Council on Foreign Relations a couple years ago looking at about 15 or so countries which had made the transition from—I guess you'd call it authoritarianism to something else and some that failed to and looking at the question of what were the lessons to be gleaned in terms of the sequence and pace of political and economic reform and what (inaudible) the relationship between the two.

I would simply say I don't believe we quite settled the—the challenge of—of figuring that out. But I do think there's something there. And it's one area where outsiders, I—I would argue, could make a pretty valuable contribution—is doing a closer look at the—the political competence (ph) or dimensions of development. It isn't (inaudible). It's—it's the complements to the narrow economic, whether it's (inaudible), educational, political that seem to me that we've got to get right. And the—the literature hasn't focused enough on that.

So I think you're onto something. WARNER: Yes Sunjoy. We just about need to wrap it up.

JOSHI: Yeah, quick, quick, quick response to that.

Development is—is—is deeply political (inaudible). It has a political agenda.

And if you look the report, actually, development is layered into many buckets. When you're (inaudible) the global cooperation on climate change, development figures as a major issue in that debate because of clear divides which occur on the climate change front between emerging and developed nations—are precisely to do with growth trajectories and where they're going to reach and what other choices.

So it is not that development does not figure. Development has figured very, very highly, but the goals are severely layered (inaudible). It appears across—it crosscuts various issues, including transnational terrorism. It—it—it—it is very much part of it.

There is a issue of development also in cyber. There's a clear digital divide between the haves and the have-nots (ph).

And priorities in developing countries are very different from priorities, say, in—in developed countries. And the developing countries today are adding many more people each month to cyberspace than the developed world will ever do.

So you're creating a huge new population. Someone like India adds the population of Israel every month to the Internet. What are you going to do about it? And this—this is a trend you're going to see across emerging economies.

So development is very much part of this.

(CROSSTALK)

HAASS: Some of us have planes to catch.

(LAUGHTER)

KARAKULLUKCU: The global development, the reason why I think it's sort of the last on the list is because of the time horizon we assigned. If you say one year, it really—it—it falls down. But we had said five or 10 years, what is the global challenge, I think it would be a different ordering.

And the second question, the second point I want to make to conclude, I think as this—this whole community and business is about being anxious and concerned. That's why we have all these Cs. We can (ph) have a curve next year. Hopefully, that'll push them.

And also, if you talk to technology people, which I do a lot, the—the narrative is totally different, and we all know that. So I think we should look at that in the context of a concerned, anxious community that is the policy community.

WARNER: And on that thought, we are going to wrap it up. I want to thank our four excellent panelists. Very productive conversation and look forward to next year.

(APPLAUSE)

END