Events

Panelists discuss the current state of identity politics and populism in Europe, including the complex interaction between economic and cultural factors, and how they affect the state of democracy across the continent. This meeting is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.

Panelists discuss the implications of the recent human rights protests in Iran for the nation’s domestic political regime, U.S.-Iran relations, and the wider Middle East geopolitical landscape. The CFR Young Professionals Briefing Series provides an opportunity for those early in their careers to engage with CFR. The briefings feature remarks by experts on critical global issues and lessons learned in their careers. These events are intended for individuals who have completed their undergraduate studies and have not yet reached the age of thirty to be eligible for CFR term membership.

Panelists discuss the future of nuclear energy in the United States and Europe, including arguments for and against the increased use of nuclear power and its broader implications for combatting climate change. With its Renewing America initiative, CFR is evaluating nine critical domestic issues that shape the ability of the United States to navigate a demanding, competitive, and dangerous world. This project is made possible in part by the generous support of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation.

As the battle over raising the U.S. debt ceiling continues to take shape, former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and former Senator Rob Portman discuss the politics surrounding the coming fight, the possible consequences of a default, and the implications of mounting debt for the United States going forward.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco discusses how the Department of Justice is countering new and evolving threats to the rule of law posed by hostile nation states, from transnational repression to foreign malign influence. This meeting is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.

Panelists discuss lessons learned from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, including the circumstances that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom and whether it was a necessary war, as well as the ramifications of the resulting war for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The Lessons From History Series uses historical analysis as a critical tool for understanding modern foreign policy challenges by hearing from practitioners who played an important role in a consequential historical event or from experts and historians. This series is made possible through the generous support of David M. Rubenstein.

Former officials involved in the negotiations discuss the landmark 1998 Good Friday Agreement (or Belfast Agreement), lessons for the ongoing peace process, enduring sectarian tensions, and the future of Northern Ireland. The Lessons From History Series uses historical analysis as a critical tool for understanding modern foreign policy challenges by hearing from practitioners who played an important role in a consequential historical event or from experts and historians. This series is made possible through the generous support of David M. Rubenstein.

Panelists discuss the history and legacy of the Helsinki Accords, the 1975 agreement that concluded the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and human rights concerns today.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi discusses IAEA efforts to address the nuclear safety and security situation in Ukraine, and the main proliferation challenges worldwide, including concerns surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. The Paul C. Warnke Lecture on International Security was established in 2002 and is endowed by a number of Council members and the family and friends of Paul C. Warnke. The lecture commemorates his legacy of courageous service to the nation and international peace.

Brian Winter, vice president of policy at Americas Society and Council of the Americas and editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, leads the conversation on U.S. relations with South America. CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the Winter/Spring 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Brian Winter with us to discuss U.S. relations with South America. Mr. Winter is the vice president of policy for the America Society and Council of the Americas and editor in chief of Americas Quarterly. An influential political analyst, he has followed South America for more than twenty years and has served as a correspondent for Reuters in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Mr. Winter is the author of several books including Why Soccer Matters, a New York Times bestseller he wrote with the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé. He is a regular contributor to television and radio and host of the Americas Quarterly podcast. Welcome, Brian. Thank you very much for being with us. WINTER: Thank you, Maria. Thanks for the invitation. CASA: Can you begin with a general overview of current U.S. relations with South American countries? WINTER: I can try and actually, as a matter of fact, today is an extremely fortuitous day to be doing this and let me tell you why. A couple of weeks ago on February 10, Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made a one-day trip to Washington. He met with President Biden while he was here. He brought his foreign minister with him as well as his chief foreign policy adviser, his finance minister, a couple other members of his Cabinet. One of the biggest sort of concrete results of this trip that Lula made up here was a U.S. donation to the Amazon Fund of $50 million. That is million with an M. Well, today, Lula leaves for China with about half of his Cabinet and a delegation of approximately two hundred and thirty leaders from Brazil’s private sector in what Brazilian media are calling the biggest foreign delegation ever to leave Brazil for another country. They will be in China for six days and there is a whole roster of deals on the table ranging from financing to infrastructure to education, environmental, and so on. So the point I’m trying to get across here is one of clear asymmetry and it really reflects kind of the new moment for U.S. relations with South America overall. As Maria mentioned, I started my career in the region as a reporter a little more than twenty years ago. I was in Argentina for four years. I was in Mexico for one year and Brazil for five, and in the course of that relatively short period of time we’ve seen kind of the power balance in how we think about Latin America but specifically South America. We’ve seen a significant change in how we think about that region. Back the early 2000s, certainly, during the 1990s, these were the final years of the so-called Washington Consensus, a period characterized by kind of the unipolar moment that came with the end of the Cold War, a certain consensus not only around democracy but around a certain set of liberalizing economic policies as well, and that ran its course. But really, it was around 2003 when everything started to change for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is the one that I’ve already referenced, which is the growth of China as a trading partner for the region. China had always had a presence in Latin America. In fact, for the magazine that I run, Americas Quarterly, we ran a piece two years ago about the Chinese presence in Mexico going all the way back to the 1600s when they operated barber shops and other sort of forms of commerce. But what’s happened over the last twenty years is really remarkable. In numbers, Chinese trade with Latin America and the Caribbean overall went from 18 billion (dollars) in 2002 to a stunning 450 billion (dollars) in 2021. China is now the largest trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, and for South America as a whole if you take all those countries in the aggregate China now outranks the United States. When you look at Latin America, by the way, that includes Mexico. If you take that grouping then the U.S. is still the number-one trading partner but, again, that’s almost entirely because of that relationship—that trading relationship as a result of the former NAFTA and now USMCA. Along with that big growth in Chinese trade have come other changes. We’ve had a lot of talk in the U.S. media in recent days about the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq war. That was something—and I was living in Argentina at the time and you could really feel how that even then carried a cost for the U.S. reputation in some of these countries. I think that with the failure of the—the failures of the war over time I think that that only accentuated the view that—not only a long-standing view that the U.S. was an unwelcome, meddling, and in many cases imperialist presence but it also accelerated this narrative that the United States was in relative decline. More recent years we’ve seen kind of other things contribute to this diminished reputation of the United States and throughout many countries in the region—everything ranging from not just the election of Donald Trump, who, of course, was not popular in most of the region; but also specific decisions that were made by his government, such as the withdrawal from the TPP—the Trans-Pacific Partnership—that, of course, is the trade deal that was negotiated under the Obama administration that included several Latin American countries, including Chile and Peru—but also the weaponization of tariffs; and, you know, Trump’s repeated threats to even cut off Mexican imports. They did—those threats did have the effect of kind of forcing, first, President Peña Nieto in Mexico and then his successor, Andrés Manuel Lόpez Obrador, to cooperate with initiatives like management of migration policy. So in the short term, they, quote/unquote, “worked” but in the longer term it showed Mexico as well as other countries in the region that the U.S. was not a particularly reliable partner. Some of you may be listening to all this and thinking, well, this sounds like the viewpoints espoused by governments in the region that are leftist and have never really cared for the United States in the first place. But another interesting thing about this latest trend and the way that things have changed over the last ten years is that this desire to forge a middle path between China and the United States as their strategic competition escalates is shared by leaders across the ideological spectrum. South American countries in particular are not unlike the United States when it seems like virtually everything is polarized, and yet in this area and specifically the need—the perceived need to have closer relations with—I’m sorry, closer relations with China while maintaining a civil relationship but not siding too much with United States, some of the most enthusiastic proponents of that view in recent years have actually been governments on the center right and right such as Sebastián Piñera, the former president of Chile, Iván Duque, the former president of Colombia, Guillermo Lasso, the current president of Ecuador, who has worked extensively with China, and even Jair Bolsonaro, who was until recently the right-wing president of Brazil, ended up essentially going along with Beijing and allowing Huawei to participate in the recent auction of 5G mobile communications technology there. And so what we end up with as a result is a policy in many countries across the region that some are calling active nonalignment, the idea that governments in the region, regardless of their ideological stripe, need to seek an equidistant or middle path between Washington and Beijing, essentially taking advantage of their relative distance from not only potential conflicts between the U.S. and China but also looking at what’s happening in Ukraine right now and saying, look, we need to maintain our independence, not side too strongly with either of these emerging blocs, and see if we can benefit from this by selling our commodities to everybody, keeping in mind that these are economies, especially in South America, that rely extremely heavily on the sale of commodities exports to drive their economic growth. So, you know, in conclusion for these initial remarks that is a huge change in the course of a generation. We’ve gone in a little more than twenty years from this assumption that most Latin American countries are in the U.S. sphere of influence, to use a very outdated term, which I detest, that they were part of our, quote/unquote, “backyard” to an increasing realization in DC, and I think people are still getting their heads around that, that automatic support, automatic alignment, can no longer be expected whether it is in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, and then on down into South America, which I know is our focus today, governments like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, another country where we’ve seen a lot of change on this front even in the last couple years and, again, not just because there’s a leftist president in Colombia now because his predecessor, who I’ve already mentioned, Iván Duque, was one of the main people pushing this change. So that’s a lot to digest. I’m happy to take any questions and hear from you. So thank you. CASA: Thanks, Brian, for that comprehensive introduction. Now let’s open it up to questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question is a written question and it comes from Andrea Cuervo Prados, who is an adjunct instructor at Dickinson State University, and asks, what is your perspective regarding the new leftist president of Colombia and U.S. relations? What is the risk that Colombia could turn into another Venezuela? WINTER: Right. It’s a good question. I think that we are still figuring out exactly what Gustavo—not only who Gustavo Petro is but what his ambitions are for both Colombia and for his relationships with the rest of the region and the rest of the world. There is some distance between what he has said he wants to do and what he may be able to do. This is a president who, you know, talks in these grand sweeping terms but ultimately has to get things through congress, and to just cite a result or an example of this that doesn’t directly have to do with Colombia’s foreign relationships, he said—he gave a very dramatic speech at the UN General Assembly last September in which he talked about the need to legalize narcotics across the board, including cocaine. But then—it was a speech that generated a lot of attention in capitals all over the world and all over the region. But then in ensuing weeks when he was pressed on this he didn’t really have a lot of detail and admitted that it was not something that Colombia could do unilaterally, which is all to say that, again, there’s this gap where I think it’s important to pay careful attention to the gap between the rhetoric and what’s actually possible with Petro. I don’t personally—you know, the question of could X country become another Venezuela it’s a question that people have been asking all over Latin America for the last ten years. I think—I understand why people ask it because what happened in Venezuela was so awful and dramatic, not only with the country becoming a full-fledged dictatorship that represses political opposition but also the humanitarian crisis that has forced some 7 million people or about a quarter of the country’s population to leave the country. But, look, Petro is Colombia’s first president on the left and I don’t think it necessarily follows that—in fact, I’m certain that it doesn’t follow that every person on the left wants to go down the path of Venezuela. So I suppose I’m a little more optimistic not only that Petro is a pragmatist in areas like the economy—for example, his finance minister is a quite pragmatic figure, a Columbia University professor who is well respected by markets—and I’m also somewhat optimistic about Colombian institutions and their ability to stand in the way of any truly radical change. CASA: Thank you. Our next question comes from Morton Holbrook, who is an adjunct professor at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Morton? Q: Hello. Yes, I’m here. Morton Holbrook, Kentucky Wesleyan College. University of Louisville also. Thanks for your really interesting comments, especially about China’s relationship with Latin and South America. Can I turn north a little bit to Russia? Considering particularly the Brazilian president’s upcoming visit to China do you think he might want to go to Russia, too? Bearing in mind that the International Criminal Court just issued an arrest warrant for President Putin, how might that affect Latin American relations with Russia? Do you think some of them might now have second thoughts about Russia or inviting Putin to visit their countries? Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela have all signed the ICC statute promising to cooperate in the carrying out of arrest warrants. Thank you. WINTER: That’s a great question and one that is—I can tell you is very front of mind for Brazilian officials and I think others around the region right now. I was just in Brazil two weeks ago working on our—our next issue of Americas Quarterly will be on Brazil’s foreign policy and what it means for the rest of Latin America. This is a question that’s very front and center. Brazil’s foreign minister did say in the last couple of days—he did explicitly almost word for word repeat what you just said, which is that Brazil is a signatory to that treaty. That would seem to eliminate any possibility of Vladimir Putin visiting Brazil. I’m not sure that that was really on his list of things to do anyway. But it was not only a practical signal but a diplomatic one as well. Lula’s position on Russia and the Ukraine war has been inconsistent. He said during his campaign last year that Zelensky and Putin bear equal responsibility for the conflict. My understanding is that after that statement, you know, nobody wants to contradict the boss openly and sometimes not even in private. My sense personally based on conversations with others in Brasilia is that at the very least his foreign policy team regretted that he made that statement. Brazil has, in other form, condemned the Russian invasion. Other governments including Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and others have done the same. However, these are countries that, like most of the Global South, are firmly opposed to any sanctions and so their position, again, ends up being I suppose you could call it nuanced. They believe it’s important in part because of their own experience as nations to condemn invasions of one country by another. I, personally, think that it’s fair to think of what Putin is doing is a kind of imperialist aggression, which these are countries that have certainly objected to that when it’s the U.S. over the last, you know, 200-plus years and so you would think that it would be in their DNA to do so in the Ukrainian case as well, and in fairness most of them have. I would just add that, you know, the Brazilian position, I think, though, gets influenced also by two other things. One is, again, this notion of nonalignment. Most people talk about nonalignment in Brazil and Argentina, in Chile and Colombia, and they think about the U.S.-China relationship, as I noted during my introductory remarks. But they also think of it as a helpful guide to thinking about the conflict, the war in Ukraine, as well for reasons that are not firmly rooted in morals or values, let’s say, but in interests as, you know, foreign policy often is. To say it in a different way, I had a conversation a couple of years ago with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who I helped him write his memoir in English back in 2006. He was president during the 1990s, and in talking with him about the China question he said, we have to take advantage of our greatest strategic asset, which is that Brazil is far. (Laughs.) And to just unpack that a little bit, I think the meaning of that is clear to all of you. But these are countries that really see an opportunity right now just by virtue of their geographic distance from these conflict zones to avoid being dragged in and also to potentially, at some level, benefit from it through strategic superpower competition for their support as well as through higher prices for some of the commodities that they produce. There’s one added element in the case of Brazil, which is that Lula, I’m told by people close to him, sees himself as almost a Nelson Mandela-type figure. He’s back now for his third term in the presidency twenty years after he was president the first time. Of course, I’m sure people on this call know that he went through some real struggles in the intervening years including nearly two years in prison over—on corruption charges that were later thrown out and, you know, he may see his presidency as an opportunity to kind of write the last chapter or two in his biography, and there’s talk that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize and that he sees potentially helping negotiate a peace deal for the Ukraine war as the best opportunity to do that. I actually think that that idea, which is—tends to be dismissed in Washington as well as in European capitals, I personally think that idea is not as crazy as some people here in Washington think. But maybe I can go into that a little bit later if anybody wants. CASA: Thank you. Next, we have two written questions from the same university that we can take together. They’re from Marisa Perez and Trevor Collier, who are undergraduate students at Lewis University. They would like to know what world leaders such as the United States can do to prevent deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and how they can do so without compromising Brazil’s sovereignty. WINTER: Well, it’s a really great question, in part because it mentions an issue that Americans don’t often think about, which is precisely the sensitivity on the sovereignty issue. Brazil, and specifically not only Brazil’s military but Brazil’s foreign policy establishment, have a long-standing concern that is part of their doctrine, I suppose you could say, that is concerned always about the possibility of territorial loss and about foreigners gaining influence or, in some cases, even control over the Amazon. And I have to say, you know, this is another one of those ideas that I think—I wish we were all together in a room. This Zoom is kind of the next best thing. I could see your faces that way. But sometimes when I talk about this I see people kind of roll their eyes as if it was some sort of imagined conspiracy. But the truth is that as recently as 2019 when the—the first year of Jair Bolsonaro’s government when the fires in the Amazon really became a huge controversy, driven in large part by social media and tweets from people like Justin Bieber and Cher, who, to be clear, were, I think, justifiably and quite heroically shining light on what was happening there. In the midst of all that Emmanuel Macron actually proposed that perhaps some sort of international force in the Amazon was necessary, that that deployment of that would be a good idea if Brazil was not capable of taking care of the Amazon itself. That proposal was disastrous because it just reinforced this long-standing fear that so much of the establishment in Brazil has always had, and it’s true that Bolsonaro was on the right but you, certainly, in conversations, I think, with people across the ideological spectrum this is something that people think about. So OK. So back to the original question, how can the U.S. help. Well, the U.S. could help by providing both logistical and financial resources beyond the $50 million, which is, you know, the equivalent of about seven seconds of what we’re spending in terms of supporting Ukraine right now. I don’t know—Norway is the biggest sponsor of the Amazon Fund. I don’t have that number in front of me but I think that their contribution is upwards of at least a billion dollars, probably more. Ultimately, though, I do believe that the Amazon is a local challenge and I know that can be unsatisfying to hear in forums like this where we’re sort of designed—you know, this is a CFR event. We’re supposed to be thinking of ways that the international community can get involved. But it’s going to be a big challenge. The good news is that Brazil has shown that it is capable of getting its hands around this problem before. During Lula’s first terms in office from 2003 to 2010 his government was able to reduce the level of deforestation by upwards of 75 percent. It was a very dramatic difference in a very short period of time. This was done through a variety of means, both things like satellite monitoring and new technology that let the authorities follow this in real time. They were also able to step up environmental enforcement agencies like IBAMA, whose inspectors are necessary. It’s necessary to have them on the ground in order to, you know, stop—actually stop illegal loggers from setting the fires that are the main driver of deforestation. They were also able to build political consensus around the need to reduce deforestation during those years. I don’t think it’s going to be—in fact, I’m certain it will not be as “easy,” quote/unquote, this time around. A lot has changed. The upwards of 60 percent increase that we saw in deforestation during the Bolsonaro years had the support, unfortunately, in my view, of local populations who believe essentially that slashing and burning will lead their day-to-day economic lives to improve. In the election that happened in October where Lula won and Bolsonaro lost but by a very small margin—the closest margin in Brazil’s modern democratic history—the strongest support nationally for Bolsonaro was in areas that have seen the most illegal deforestation over the last four years and what that tells you is that, again, these are local populations that believe that this will lead to greater wealth and greater well-being for all of them, this being deforestation. So that’s a big challenge for Lula with a—you know, at a time when resources are fairly scarce. It’s not like it was during his first presidency when all of this increase in Chinese trade was really boosting the amount of money in Brazil’s coffers. So he’s going to have to figure out a way to dedicate financial resources as well as convince local populations that this is in their interest to do it. It’s not going to be an easy road. CASA: Our next question comes from Mike Nelson, an affiliate adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Mike? Q: Thank you very much for an outstanding overview of what’s going on in U.S. relations to South America. I study international technology policy and data governance but my question is about corruption. You mentioned corruption in Brazil but it’s a problem throughout South America, and my three-part question, is it getting worse or better; are there any countries who have really done the right thing and have taken serious measures to address it; and how can the internet and some of the technologies for citizen journalism help expose corruption and make leaders less likely to dip into the public fund? WINTER: OK. Yeah. No, great questions, and reflective of if you look at opinion polling and remember that these are countries that many of them have been dealing with rising crime, rising homicide levels, economic stagnation, the pandemic, which hit Latin America by many measures harder than in any other region in the world at one point—I haven’t seen updated numbers on this but it was fairly consistently throughout the pandemic Latin America, which is about 8 percent of the world’s population, was accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s confirmed COVID deaths. Anyway, amid all of that, and the economic stagnation that has been such a problem over the last ten years, in a lot of countries and in public opinion surveys, the thing that people identified as the number-one problem in their country is corruption. That was not always true. If you look back at public polling twenty years ago, people tended to identify kind of more, what’s the word, basic needs—think, like, unemployment, hunger, misery, which often is kind of asked as a separate—that’s one of the boxes you can check. Twenty years ago, those were the issues. And as the region became more middle class, especially in the 2000s because of this China-driven economic growth that described during my introduction, a lot of people were able to move beyond their basic needs and focus on essentially what was happening to the money that they paid in taxes, keeping in mind that many people were paying taxes for the first time. Some of it surely was also driven by these things, as you mentioned, mobile phones that not only things like videos of people carrying suitcases of cash, but also the attention that was given to big corruption scandals. Previously in a lot of countries, governments were able to make pacts with newspapers and TV channels, and kind of tamp things down a little bit, and lower the temperature. In an era of Facebook and Twitter, that was no longer as easy for them to do. All of this culminated in several corruption scandals at once in the mid-2010s, the most emblematic of which was the so-called Lava Jato, or car wash, scandal, which originated in Brazil, but eventually had franchises, if you will, in almost a dozen countries throughout Latin America and the world. That story is complicated. Politicians all over the region went to jail. Business leaders did too. Lula was one of them. That was the case that put him in jail. In intervening years, we’ve discovered that there were abuses and procedural violations, both things on behalf of the prosecutors and the judge involved, who the Brazilian Supreme Court decided, I think in 2021, they ruled—maybe it was earlier than that—that the judge overseeing Lula’s conviction had not been—or, rather, it’s easier to say—had been partial in his rulings. And so that’s left us in a place today where populations are still angry about corruption, as I mentioned, but it is no longer driving conversation in most countries, like it did before. I still believe—and you can probably tell, this is something I’ve thought about a lot over the years and continue to watch. The first question you asked, in some ways, is the most important one. Is corruption getting worse or better? It’s impossible to know for sure. My hypothesis is actually corruption is about the same, and may in fact be getting better, which flies in the face of all of these headlines that we’ve seen. But to me, the operative question over these last ten years or so has been, you know, not why—I’ve heard people say, well, why are these—why are these countries so corrupt? And to me, the real question is, why are we suddenly seeing these cases of corruption? Because I think it speaks to not only the technological changes that I referenced, but also the improvement—(audio break)—these are countries many of which transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s. And therefore, it really took a generation for independent prosecutors to show up, to have the training and political support that they needed to go after some very powerful people. So, in sum, I am a believer in the story of rule of law improving in many countries in Latin America. I would recognize, again, that it’s a very complex story, in part because of some of the problems around not just Lava Jato but in other countries, such as Peru and Guatemala. But progress is rarely linear. (Laughs.) And I still think that this is something that is likely to get better with time. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Mary Beth Altier at New York University. She asks: What role do you think misinformation and disinformation play in citizens’ perceptions of the U.S. versus China and Russia in Latin America? What could the U.S. do better from a strategic communications perspective, if anything? And then—I can repeat this other question later, which is kind of a follow up. So you think— WINTER: Yeah, maybe. Well, that first one—that first one is worthy of a book. All of these are—these are great questions. They’re difficult to answer in pithy fashion in three minutes. I am continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America. Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español—(changes pronunciation)—RT en Español—it has one of the biggest social media followings of any “media company,” quote/unquote, in the region. Even people who I know are—who I know to not be pro-Russia, let’s put it that way, I see sharing content and videos from RT, which, of course, is just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government. But also, you know, have a whole network of sites that are more subtle and that push very sophisticated and sometimes, you know, not particularly obvious narratives that are designed to undermine the United States or promote the views of China and Russia. I would recognize at the same time that—I referenced this during my introduction remarks, sometimes the United States does not need any help with it comes to undermining its reputation in the region. I mentioned some of the, quote/unquote “own goals” that we’ve seen over the last five to ten, even twenty years, going all the way back to the Iraq War. As far as actively pushing back, all I can say is this: You know, I think that they’re—on the one hand, I think there are concrete steps that are being used. We’re still trying to get our heads around this problem to fight misinformation. But I was just in a different forum this morning where I was asked, what—how can the U.S. help the cause of democracy in Latin America. And my answer to that is that the best thing the United States can do to help democracy in Latin America is to get its own house in order, to move past the polarization, the misinformation, and the scorched earth politics that have put our own democracy at risk over the last several years, and try to, you know, recapture some of the consensus, at least around basic democratic rules of the game and how we hold elections that characterized most of the previous two-hundred-plus years of our history. Because I do think that while—you know, look, I lived ten years in Latin America. I know that people roll their eyes at the notion of the United States as being kind of the shining city on the hill. And I understand why. And that was always true, in part because of the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America often showing, you know, some of our worst behaviors. On the other hand, as a Brazil specialist, I’ve seen how some of the tactics and even some of the same people that were behind our own democratic decay of the last five years, some of those same tactics were repackaged and exported to open arms in Brazil. So I do think that it makes a difference on the ground in places like Brazil, potentially, and other countries as well, when a strong democratic example is being set in the United States. And I think that’s the most powerful thing we can do. Some of the other stuff, like what’s happening on RT and Telesur and some of these other outlets is relatively outside our control. CASA: We have a complementary question from— WINTER: There was a second part of that question. CASA: Oh, no, you did end up answering, I think, what could the U.S. do better from a strategic communications perspective. I think you kind of covered that. We have another question from Gursimran Padda, a student at Stony Brook University, who asks: Does China’s strategy of gaining influence in Latin America differ from its tactics in Africa? And if so, why? WINTER: Gosh, all these great questions. China—I have to start from the beginning. I am not an African specialist. But I can tell you kind of the narrative of what happened in Africa through Latin American eyes, if that makes any sense, because this is a conversation I’ve had a lot over the years. The perception is that China went into some of these countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and engaged in infrastructure projects and other things that had abusive terms. In many cases, China imported its own labor to do some of these projects. They also engaged in some predatory lending practices. And that was all—essentially the takeaway from actions like that in places like Buenos Aires, Bogota, certainly Brasilia, was that the Chinese would not be allowed to come and engage in those same behaviors in Latin America. And I think, in practice, it seems that the Chinese have realized that. There have been examples, such as the construction of a dam in Ecuador, where the terms ended up being perceived as something of a debt trap. But my sense—again, and this is not so much my sense; it’s repeating what I’ve heard in numerous conversations about this subject with leaders across the ideological spectrum and throughout the region—is that they understand the risks involved in working with China, in part because of the experience throughout parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And they’re determined to not let those things happen in their home countries. You know, I know that that’s a view that, in places like where I am today—I’m on in the road in Washington, participated in this other conference this morning. That’s why my Zoom background is not quite as put together as it sometimes is, by the way. I know people roll their eyes at that notion here, and are constantly warning—you know, kind of wagging their finger a little bit at governments throughout South America, and saying that they need to be eyes wide open about the risks of engagement with the Chinese. The problem is that here in the U.S., I think they’re underestimating, in some cases, the sophistication of foreign ministries and trade ministries in places like Peru and Chile when they make those comments. Which is to say, I think that there’s something both visually and in terms of the context a bit paternalistic about it, that everybody picks up on and tends to make people in the region justifiably crazy. (Laughs.) And then, the other part is that the U.S. is not really offering much in the way of alternatives. We’re at a pretty unique moment in the history of the United States right now where we have both parties—the Republican and Democratic Parties—are pretty much closed to the idea of new free trade deals. That, in my lifetime, has never happened before. I mentioned the fact that Trump dropped out of TPP. Well, Joe Biden has not picked that back up. I think there are domestic political reasons that explain that, but what it means in practice for our relationships with governments in Latin America is that Washington doesn’t have a whole lot to offer. Because, unlike the Chinese, we can’t just order our companies to go invest someplace. That’s not how our economy works. It is very much how the Chinese economy works, where they can decide to make these decisions. They are not necessarily for a short-term economic payoff, but for medium-term reasons, or even decisions that have very little to do with dollars and cents or ROI, return on investment, and everything to do with geopolitics. So wanting to have beachheads in terms of, say, ports in places like El Salvador. So, you know, again, without that—without trade and without that ability to kind of dictate investment, there’s not a lot that’s left in Washington’s toolkit for counteracting this kind of influence. CASA: Our next question comes from Daniel Izquierdo, an undergraduate student at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Daniel. Q: Good afternoon, sir, ma’am. Thank you for taking the time. I just had a quick question on the increasing tensions between China and the U.S., and how that will kind of develop itself in Latin and South America. So given the strategic interests of Latin and South America, and the persistent political unrest, along with increasing tensions between China and the U.S., what do you believe the likelihood to be of proxy conflicts or foreign meddling, similar to what occurred during the Cold War, occurring in the region? And if not, how do you foresee the U.S. and China competing for influence in the region? WINTER: So another very good question. Thank you for that. Look, I think some of this ground we’ve covered already, but I would say that, you know, you’re the first to mention—I had not previously mentioned this idea of a new cold war. And this—you know, this is another reason why so many countries across the ideological spectrum are opting for this policy of nonalignment. Essentially because they believe that the first Cold War went badly, very badly, for Latin America. It resulted in all kinds of traumas, from the wars in Central America during the 1980s to U.S. support for coups in places like Chile, to, you know, Cuban meddling in places like Bolivia and elsewhere around the region during those years, which led to the rise of guerrilla movements like the FARC, that ended up killing very high numbers of people. And so essentially, you know, not to be glib about it, but the reaction that today’s generation has is: We want no part of this. Because it didn’t go well for us the first time. I think there are obvious differences between a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union back in the 1950s and 1960s, and this strategic competition between Washington and Beijing, that thankfully has not quite reached those heights, at least not yet, here in the twenty-first century. But I have to tell you, and again this is based on conversations I’m having all the time, the fear is real. The perception is that the world may be headed back to that kind of conflict, being driven not only by what’s happening in the Ukraine but the increasing speculation of potential war over Taiwan. So this, again, as far as—as far as how it could play out in practice, I think it’s still early. I think it remains to be seen. Right now there is—you know, there are clear cases where I think the Chinese are, as I alluded to in my previous answer, making investments not for economic reasons but for strategic ones, with a long-term horizon I mind. Things like the, quote/unquote, “space base” that they’ve established in Argentina, which really is deserving of the full air quotes when we say the phrase “space base.” I think everyone senses that—you know, that that conflict—or, that competition, if you will, is likely to define the next twenty to thirty years. And I think there’s a determination in most countries, it makes a lot of sense to me personally, that they don’t want their countries used again as a chessboard amid that larger conflict. CASA: Our next question comes from Damien Odunze. He’s assistant professor at Delta State University who writes: Ideas in the long run change the world. Do you think a closer educational collaboration between U.S. universities and those in Latin and South America could help shape and strengthen liberal democratic values in those countries? WINTER: What an interesting question. Look, let me talk first about kind of the—that equation today. There’s already quite a lot of connectivity, especially at the—at, you know, not a word I love to use, but at the elite level, the elites in government and business and U.S. education systems. Which is an unnecessarily wordy way of saying that a large percentage of people in South America come from the elite classes and get educated at universities and sometimes even at high schools in the United States. That is one reason why, again, many of these governments are likely to at least forge a middle path between China and the United States, rather than going full-fledged in the direction of China. I think there’s a cultural affinity, family ties, cultural ties, educational ties, and other things that are probably kind of the strongest connection that the U.S. has with a lot of these countries right now. As to whether a strengthening of those educational ties would improve dedication and the strength of democracy, whew. It could, but I watched with dismay as poll after poll suggests that younger generations, not just in the United States but across the Western world, are less committed in theory to both democracy and democratic institutions than their predecessors. And so I wonder just—I don’t have an answer to this—but I wonder if even, quote/unquote, “even” within the United States, if we’re properly instilling an appreciation for democracy in today’s generations, which then raises the question of whether we’d be able to do so amongst the youth of other countries as well. I’m not sure. I think this is another area where, you know, in the U.S. we have some work to do at home before we start thinking about what’s possible in other countries. CASA: Our next question comes from Mary Meyer McAleese, who is a professor of political science at Eckerd College in Florida. Mary. Q: Yes. Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity. I have, well, two questions. I hope they’re quick. The first one is, what do you think the effect will be on Latin America or South America with regard to the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank? I read that a lot of Latin American businesses have had investments in that bank, so I wonder if you could say a bit more about the banking situation and the longer-term effects there. And also, gender violence, of course, is a horrible problem all around the world, but especially in Latin and South America. What do you think the United States and the Americas Society could do to support groups in the region that are fighting against gender violence? Thank you. WINTER: Well, thank you for both questions. Both very good questions. There’s been a lot of talk about SVB and possible effects in Latin America. What I’ve heard from people who are far more knowledgeable about the financial—excuse me—the financial system than I am, is that as long as it does not spread and become a more systemic risk, it should not pose much of an issue for Latin America. In part because—and this is another area where just like—where we were talking about the courts having, I think, been engaged in a thirty-year long process of improvement—I think the same can be said of banking and financial systems around most of Latin America. My first job was covering the financial crisis that Argentina went through back in 2001 and 2002. Which, for the uninitiated, that saw five presidents in two weeks, a freeze of bank deposits, and a 70 percent devaluation of the currency. It was quite a traumatic thing to be a part of. And during those years, we saw similar—well, not quite as bad—but at least thematically similar crises in Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere, following other crises in the 1990s. Which is all to say, Latin America has been curiously quiet this time around in terms of financial contagion. The economies aren’t doing well, for the most part, but at least we’re not talking about a financial meltdown. And that is because of lessons learned. These are banking systems that now have stricter capital requirements than they did in the past. And the macroeconomic fundamentals, generally speaking, are better than they were twenty years ago. Argentina, of course, is kind of in trouble again with an inflation rate that just passed 100 percent. And that’s terrible. But again, the depth—(laughs)—everything’s relative. And the depth of just financial devastation is, thankfully, nothing compared to what it was when I was there twenty-plus years ago. So, you know, we’ll see. If the bank run spreads and we start seeing other banks come in trouble here in the U.S., then my sense is that, with the whole Credit Suisse thing, and we’re not out of the woods yet. But if it stays more or less contained, then the consensus, at least so far, is that Latin America should be fine. Your question about femicide is an excellent one. It has driven the political discussion in Brazil in recent years. It’s something that President Lula has spoken movingly about. It has also been, on the other end in Mexico, the feminist movement that has had femicides as one of the main areas of concern, has been one of the most effective opposition groups to President López Obrador, who has often been, sadly in my view, dismissive of the seriousness of that problem. As far as what the United States can do to help, or even what my own organization can do, I think that in a lot of cases these are—you know, like a lot of problems—there are things that the international community can do to help. And certainly, I see things from a journalist’s perspective, even though I’m more analyst than journalist these days. I think that shining light on these problems, using vehicles like—platforms like Americas Quarterly, which is the small publication about Latin American politics that I run, that’s, you know, my own insufficient contribution to looking at his problem. But it’s certainly one—I mean, we look at the numbers in places like Brazil. I don’t have those numbers on my fingertips, but it is just an incredibly serious problem, and one that deserves more attention. CASA: Thank you, Brian. We have so many other questions. I’m really sorry, though, we have to cut off now. We’re at the hour. But this has been a very interesting discussion. And you’ve covered an enormous amount of ground. Thank you to all of you participating for your great questions. I hope you will follow Brian on Twitter at @BrazilBrian. The next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 29, at 1:00 Eastern Time. Renee Hobbs, professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island, will lead a conversation on media literacy and propaganda. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. Follow at @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you, again, for joining us today, and we look forward to you tuning in again for our webinar on March 29. Bye. WINTER: Bye. Thank you. (END)

World Bank President David Malpass discusses the overlapping challenges facing developing countries and opportunities for action.

The CFR Academic luncheon event held in conjunction with the International Studies Association Convention featured a discussion on Geopolitics in the Middle East on Friday, March 17, in Montréal. The conversation featured Steven A. Cook, Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at CFR; Nicole Grajewski, Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University; and Catherine E. Herrold, associate professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University. Lawrence P. Rubin, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, moderated the discussion. 

Experts discuss the U.S. policy options available in Ukraine and how the current military situation on the ground affects what the United States should do next to achieve its goal in the region. 

This symposium will convene senior government officials and experts from academia and the private sector to address the U.S. Department of State’s newly created Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, the goals of American cyber diplomacy, and how major public and private international stakeholders can advance global cyber cooperation amidst threats from authoritarian states like Russia and China. The John B. Hurford Memorial Lecture was inaugurated in 2002 in memory of CFR member John B. Hurford, and features individuals who represent critical new thinking in international affairs and foreign policy. Click here to download the full agenda for the symposium. Please register for all sessions you plan to attend.

Peggy Hamburg discusses her distinguished career as an internationally recognized leader in science, medicine, and public health. Hamburg served as the twenty-first commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the foreign secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, and the founding vice president and senior scientist at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and currently chairs the Harvard Medical School board of fellows and serves on numerous other nonprofit boards and advisory councils. Lessons Learned is a roundtable series, open to term members and younger life members, which features distinguished speakers who reflect on their career experiences, the choices they made along the way, and the lessons they have learned from them.

Panelists discuss the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic, the evolution of the virus, vaccinations around the world, and lessons learned for future pandemic preparedness.

Dr. Haass, author of the New York Times best seller The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, discusses how to reenvision citizenship if American democracy is to thrive or even survive. His guide is particularly relevant for college students who are learning how to navigate and participate fully in life on campus and in civic society. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today’s Educators Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have CFR President Richard Haass with us to discuss the themes in his new book, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. Dr. Haass needs no introduction, but of course I will say a few words. He is in his twentieth year as president of CFR. He has served as special assistant and senior Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush, served in the U.S. State Department as a director of policy planning under Secretary of State Colin Powell, and held various positions in the Defense and State Departments during the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is the author or editor of fourteen books on U.S. foreign policy, one book on management and, of course, this one on American democracy. So, Richard, thank you very much for being with us today to discuss this book. I thought we could begin with you giving us an overview of your book, why you wrote it and, more specifically, why the focus on obligations rather than on rights. HAASS: Well, thank you, Irina. Thank you all for giving us some of your time. So really two separate questions—why the book and why the focus on obligations. Why the book is, look, I’m a foreign policy guy, for better and for worse. But increasingly, when I thought about all the challenges this country faced in the world, they all presume that we would have a functioning democracy that others in the world might want to emulate, others in the world would feel comfortable depending on, relying on. Our foes in the world might be deterred by. That we would generate the resources we needed and the political unity we needed to act in the world. Increasingly all that came under—has come under question. So I don’t see how you can talk about American national security and just talk about the sort of stuff that the Pentagon or State Department do, but increasingly our ability to have a working democracy, to have a society that has the bandwidth and the unity to carry out our foreign policy. That’s in question. And that’s one of the lessons of the last few years. We assume these things are just fine at our peril. So, you know, that’s what led me to write this book. And I actually have come to see the state of American democracy as, in many ways, the biggest threat to our national security. More than China, or Russia, or climate change, or anything else, because this is the foundation of our ability to contend with all these external threats. Moving to the question of “why obligations,” look, no one should get me wrong here. Rights are central to this American experiment, as I expect all of you know. You know, the Bill of Rights was politically essential in order to get several states that were holding out to ratify the new Constitution. A lot of people understood that the Articles of Confederation were woefully inadequate, but it was something very different to say they were prepared to sign on for a much stronger federal government and a much stronger executive. And the condition that several states set then was, hey, we need this Bill of Rights which protects states and individuals from the reach of the federal government. Over the last nearly two and a half centuries, we’ve lived with the reality that there’s often a gap between our political realities and the Bill of Rights, you know, what Lincoln called the “unfinished work” of this country remains unfinished. I fully appreciate that. But just try a thought experiment: Just imagine that somehow we managed to close the gap between our reality and the Declaration of Independence, and suddenly rights were 100 percent what they ought to be. Then the question you have to ask yourself, if we were to reach that point, would American foreign policy be on safe, firm ground? And the answer is no. Because what would happen is someone would say, hey, the mother has an absolute right to choose. And someone else would say, no, the unborn, they have absolute rights. Or someone would say, I have all sorts of rights under the Second Amendment to bear arms and someone else would say, oh, hold on a minute, I’ve got rights to public safety, to physical safety, and so on and so forth. You know, it wasn’t by accident that Justice Steve Breyer said that the toughest cases before the court are right versus wrong, but rights versus rights. So what do we do? How do we avoid the clash of rights which, at a minimum, would mean gridlock, and worse yet, in all sorts of situations, one could imagine things descending into violence. If people felt that adamantly about their rights, and if their rights were not adequately recognized, from their point of view, what’s holding them back from political violence? And that’s what led me to this book. And that’s what led me to obligations. Obligation is the other side of the citizenship coin. Rights are essential. To use the political science idea, they are necessary, but they’re not sufficient. We need obligations. We need to complement rights, supplement rights with—we need obligations to one another—you to me, me to you, Irina, me to everybody on this Zoom—and vice versa. And then, second of all, we all need to think about our obligations to the country. What do we—in the spirit of John F. Kennedy—what do we owe this country? Only if we balance or complement rights with obligations do I think this experiment of American democracy has a good chance of surviving another two and a half centuries. FASKIANOS: So when you were writing this book, Richard—clearly we all need to read it—but what was your target audience? HAASS: It’s a good question. Let me give you a couple of answers. One is, and it’s something you and I know from our work here, I’m always interested in finding multipliers in American society. So in this case, it’s a lot of the kinds of people on this call, educators, because they all have students. So whether they’re administrators, classroom teachers, you know, university, four-year schools, two-year schools, colleges, at the high school level, what have you. So educators are my principal—if not THE principal audience, as the principal multiplier. Obviously, students as well because, you know, particularly if you think about it, college students by—well, we can talk about this more—but they’re a perfect audience for this. I’m also, though, interested in other multipliers in this society. One is journalists. They have tremendous reach. They have obligations. Religious authorities, the people who give the sermons. You know, tens if not even more than a hundred million Americans hear sermons every week. Well, why can’t religious authorities do things like discourage political violence, say nothing justifies violence, or civility is always called for, or compromise ought to always be considered. Or, how about this, you are your brother’s and sister’s keeper. You have an obligation to look out for the common good. Who better than a religious authority to do that? I think parents have certain special opportunities, if you will, to carry out these obligations, to model certain behavior. So I’m interested in all of them. And what I found is a lot of—you know, and the good news is I think it’s resonating. Particularly a lot of older people know there’s something amiss in this country. And what they want to make sure is that younger people get a chance to take this in. FASKIANOS: Right. So in your book, you have laid out ten principles. And under the ten principles— HAASS: We call them obligations, Irina. FASKIANOS: Ten obligations, yes. So what are the key insights that you would want, or the obligations that you would want educators and students to take away from reading this book, and that you would want educators to promote or to share with their students? HAASS: Well, first of all, all ten I think are valuable. You know, if we were in a religious context and you say which of the commandments would you jettison, you know, we all might have our favorite for jettisoning, but—Mel Brooks had his ideas in one of his movies. But I think all ten are necessary, in this case. I’d begin with being informed, which I think is particularly relevant to this kind of a group. You know, Jefferson’s notion of the informed citizen is basic to a democracy. And then I think it immediately then calls for a conversation on exactly what is it we mean by being informed in terms of the basics. What do we mean in terms of current issues that come and go? How then do you get informed? How do you avoid being misinformed? I think it’s a really rich conversation. Again, with students, we want to urge them, once they are informed, to get involved. To use an old quote of Ronald Reagan’s, we don’t just want patriotism we want informed patriotism. So we want people to be involved, but we want them to be involved once they are informed. You know, we can go through all of them, just things like behaviors, civility, compromise, observation of norms. Those are all important. Just kind of attitudes and behaviors become important. Then there’s more specific things. I’d love for younger people to get involved in public service. Several states have instituted, like California, a large public service program. I think it’s great. I think too many of us in this country are now leading very separate lives defined by geography, educational attainment, wealth, race, religion, gender, what have you. I love things that produce a bit of common experience, I think would be good. I’m obviously big, and we’ll probably get to this, about teaching civics. I think it’s simply wrong that anybody should leave a campus without having been exposed to civics. We wouldn’t let them leave the campus if they couldn’t read or write. Why would we want them to leave a campus if they didn’t have—if they weren’t, essentially, literate about citizenship, given how important that is. So, you know, I thought hard about the obligations. And I just think that this is what is required if American democracy is going to prosper. FASKIANOS: We’ve talked a lot about how this book is a perfect fit for the first-year experience and for incoming students to college campuses. And I thought you could talk a little bit about the connection of this book, and why it would be such a perfect fit. HAASS: Couple of things. One is, the average freshman is pretty close to eighteen. So what a perfect time to be doing this, because they’re going to have the right to vote. And we want them to vote. And we want them to be informed voters. So that’s one thing. But this is—the timing is perfect for people stepping onto campus. Second of all, in addition to voting, campuses, like any other, if you will, environment are political environments. And so over the course of their two, three, four, however many years on campus, students are going to be in all sorts of formal and informal, structured and unstructured, settings in which politics are going to come up. So I believe they need some help in navigating what they’re going to experience on a—in classrooms, over drinks, over coffee, study groups, what have you. I think it’s really essential there. I also like the idea of first-year experiences—and first principles—I love the idea that people read something and have it in common and they can talk about it. So whether you’re a flute major, or a physics major, or a computer sciences major, I love the fact that everybody’s reading something. And this is something with real, I think, practical payoffs, again, for the years on campus, and for life afterwards. So I actually think it’s a good thing. And, just to be clear, the book doesn’t tell them about what’s the, quote/unquote, “right” or “wrong” policy on any issue. It’s simply about how one approaches political life, whether it’s on campus or beyond. And I just think it’s—for eighteen-year-olds about to embark on a college experience and on a life experience, I think the timing’s pretty good. FASKIANOS: So we have a written question from Jim Zaffiro, who is a professor of political science at Central College. And he asks along the same lines— HAASS: Central College in Iowa? FASKIANOS: Yes. HAASS: I got a—I was lucky enough to get an honorary degree from Central College in Iowa. It’s a wonderful, wonderful place. FASKIANOS: So he would like to know, how would you present the nature and significance of this as a common reading for eighteen-year-olds? Like, how would pitch it to an incoming freshman about why they should read it? So from the student’s perspective? HAASS: It’s a good question. Like it or not, government is essential to our lives. And indeed, both whether you like it or not, that makes the case for learning about it. It’s going to affect you. But, more important, government is not some impersonal force. Government is affected by citizens. So I want students to understand that government is what we make of it. And it’s who we vote for. It’s who we reward or penalize politically. It’s who they work for. I’d love them to get involved themselves. Not just in campaigns, one day some of them may choose that as a career—I did for a long time—in public service. And it could be—in my case it was working on the policy side. It could be the military. It could be intelligence. I’ve got a daughter who works for the Department of Sanitation here in the City of New York. There’s all sorts of ways to have a public service kind of career. But even if you don’t, we still, as citizens, have the right—and I would say, the obligation—to vote. And if they don’t, well, that’s just another way of saying you’re going to let this other person decide what your future is. Why would anybody want to abdicate the chance to influence their own future and lets the person sitting in the seat next to them make choices that would affect them? So I would want students—I would want to remind them that government is responsive. That we’ve made enormous changes. I think a lot of young people have a really negative view of government. They see what’s happened in recent years—whether it’s the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or economic crises, or pandemics, or climate. And a lot of them are very down on government. And I get it. I get it. But government also, over the decades, has delivered in important ways. And even when it’s failed, the failure wasn’t inevitable. So I want to give students a sense of possibility. And that government is really important. And the good news, in a non-authoritarian, democratic system, is governments are potentially responsive, and that there are real opportunities to make an impact that will affect their future and the futures of others they care about. And, you know, as I’ve learned in life, for better and for worse, not acting—you know, if you will, omissions—are just as important as acting in commission. And so I want students to understand that it’s consequential not to get involved. And it’s probably consequential and bad in ways that are most – more likely than not, not to be good for them. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. So I’m just going to—people are already writing questions in the Q&A box. Love to see that. So if you do that, please also include your affiliation or I will try to pull out your affiliation. You can always also raise your hand on the screen to ask a question. And on an iPad and tablet, you can click the “more” button. For those of you who have written your question, if you want to ask it yourself please do raise your hand because we love to hear your voices. The first person, Miriam Kerzner, wants to know what you mean by “civics.” And I think that’s a good jumping off point for you to talk about civics and why it needs to be—how you think about it. HAASS: No, it’s a great—yeah, in a funny sort of way, everyone—well, not everyone—but almost everyone is in favor of civics until you drill down a little bit. (Laughs.) And then they go, oh, I didn’t mean that. So it’s not enough to be in favor of it in principle, but you’ve also got to be in favor of it in practice. So it seems to me, and it’s complicated, I get it. It ain’t going to be easy. I get it. But I think there’s certain things about our history, about certain documents people should be exposed to, certain, you know, dates and events that people should be exposed to, certain understandings about how government works at the national, the state, and then the local level people should be exposed to. Certain behaviors and attitudes that are consistent with a democracy that people should be exposed to. I think civics has got to do all of that. And I also think modern civics has to also take into account or include what is increasingly known as information literacy, to teach students to be critical consumers of this flood of information that’s coming at them. And it’s ironic. It’s almost strange that in an age in which we’re deluged with information, it’s also harder than ever to be informed. But there you have it. So I think modern civics has to teach elements of history, teach some of the elements or basics of the American political system. Probably teach some basic elements of American society, the economy, and so forth, foreign policy. Talk about attitudes, behaviors, almost the culture of democracy, get into things about rights and obligations, talk about information literacy. And it’s demanding. It’s going to be very hard to—it’s going to be impossible to satisfy not just everybody, probably anybody. This has now become a politicized terrain, probably a minefield’s a better metaphor. Again, I’m not naïve about that. But I don’t think we can throw up our hands and say it’s too hard. It’s probably impossible to get anything done at the national level just now, but not at the state level. I’ve already talked to several governors who are willing to take a try. I see certain schools are willing to take a try. I mean, Stanford’s going to introduce a civics module for all of its freshmen starting next winter term. Other schools have some things like it. The service academies have been doing work in this area for quite a while. I don’t mean to leave anybody out, but I know that schools like Purdue and Virginia, some others, have elements of this. Johns Hopkins is debating it. And so I just think it’s also that universities have far more flexibility because, you know, I think it’s tougher for public high schools, given the roles of state legislatures and politics. It’s probably somewhat tough also, obviously, for public universities, given the way they’re funded and the oversight. I think private colleges and universities have enormous discretion. There’s nothing stopping them. They could do it tomorrow. There are resource issues. I get it. And not everybody has the, shall we say, resource advantages of a Stanford. So I think, you know, for a lot of schools, they’re going to have to look at what’s not just desirable, but you’ve always got to ask what’s doable, what’s feasible. I get it. But I think every—I think this is a conversation faculties, administrators, boards, students, and others need to have. Which is, one, whether civics? I would say the answer to that is yes. And then, OK, then let’s have a follow-on conversation. What should go into it? And we can talk more about it, but I think particularly when it comes to history, which is probably the most controversial area, my own advice is to simply say there’s got to be certain things about history which are not terribly controversial. There are certain documents that are essential, certain Supreme Court decisions, certain speeches, certain commentaries. Certain things happen. There’s the factual spine of American history. Then there’s interpretations of what caused certain things, what are the consequences of certain things. OK. Well, there, I think the lesson is not to teach a single history, not to impose a vision of history, but to expose students to a range of responsible historical analyses and interpretations. And then maybe in the classroom provide mechanisms for debating them in a civics course. And, indeed, I could imagine lots of other ideas—and there’s teaching notes we just produced. One could imagine all sorts of model or mock legislatures where people—students would introduce certain legislation. One of the ideas I proposed was a model constitutional convention, and students would have a chance to propose amendments to the current Constitution and debate it out. So I think things like that. I think there’s all sorts of participatory things that one could introduce or incorporate into a civics curriculum without imposing a single vision or interpretation of history, which would obviously be unacceptable to, you know, significant constituencies. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. And Miriam’s at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington. So I’m going to go next to Larry Mead, who has raised his hand. And if you could identify yourself and accept the unmute prompt, that would be fantastic. HAASS: Or not. FASKIANOS: Larry, you still need to unmute, or not. All right, I will go next to Laura Tedesco, and we’ll come back to Larry. Or, we’ll try. Laura. There you go, Laura first, OK. Laura, you just muted yourself again. Q: OK, now? FASKIANOS: You’ve got it. Q: OK. Thank you very much. My name is Laura Tedesco. I’m working from Madrid, Spain, working at St. Louis University, in the campus that they have here in Madrid. And my question is basically how we are going to—I agree with you about, you know, the education of citizenship here. But how are we going to really make people understand—not only students in universities, but everybody else, you know—about the right and the need to act as citizens? For instance, in a country like the United States, where your vote is not obligatory, yeah? You know, how can we make people understand that, you know, democracy should not be taken for granted, and we should all work to improve democracy from the different positions we are? Thank you. HAASS: No, it’s a great question. How do we incentivize people not to take democracy for granted? One is to teach them in a civics curriculum a little bit about what are the structural strengths and advantages for democracy in terms of everything from the freedoms and rights they tend to provide and protect, to democracy’s ability to adapt and innovate. We also got a pretty good historical record. I mean, yes, this democracy and other democracies have made serious mistakes, and they’re imperfect to say the least, but there’s a lot that they have accomplished and a lot that they have provided and delivered. So I think we need to remind people about the record of democracies to—and to also—I’d be more than comfortable pointing out some of the shortcomings of the alternatives, because obviously the alternatives do have, shall we say, more than their share of flaws. And I—again, to encourage, you know, informed participation—I think you have to make the case that democracies are responsive, that individuals and groups can make a difference. There’s almost nothing that’s inevitable. And history is, in many ways, what we make it. And that’s what I want students to come away with, the sense of possibility and empowerment. I mean, what I came to conclude in writing this is if we wait for democracies to be delivered, if you will, or saved by someone at the top, it’s going to be a long wait. And what we really need to think about is empowerment, whether it’s young people or, again, these critical constituencies in American society from business to religious leaders, to teachers, to journalists, officials, and so forth. You know, we all have a chance to make a difference. And I want students to get excited about both why democracies are worth saving and the difference that individuals can make. And I think if we do that, we can generate some greater political involvement. And what the last two elections show is even minute amounts—you know, 1 percent here or there—of greater political involvement can have enormous impact. And that’s what I want, again, students to come away with. The, yeah, well my vote won’t matter. Well, probably not, if you’re talking about one vote. But it doesn’t take a whole lot of people getting involved in order to tip the scales. And so I want students to get a sense of empowerment. FASKIANOS: So you can build on—that starts to answer Robert McCoy’s question, who is at the University of Montana, in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center in Missoula, Montana. He says: Read the book. Think it ought to be mandatory reading for all, not just students. However, your opening chapters paint such a dire picture that I fail to see how today’s issues can be rectified. Can you speak to that? HAASS: Hmm. I’ll have to go back and reread the opening chapters. I thought the first chapter was kind of about the— is really neutral. It’s kind of the march of American history—American political history. It’s kind of how we got to where we are. You know, the second chapter is on backsliding. And the reason it’s that way is if things weren’t in a bad way, I wouldn’t have needed to write the book and I could have focused on my golf game and lowering my handicap. But because democratic backsliding in this country—and, by the way, in others—is a reality, I felt compelled to write this book. So I didn’t have confidence that it would just sort itself out by itself. I actually think very few things just sort themselves out by themselves, whether we’re talking about domestic political systems or international systems. I think it takes agency. And but again, small numbers could have really large impact. I mean, we just had a midterm here where roughly, I don’t know, 45 percent of the eligible voters voted. And which was, you know, slightly higher than traditional midterms. Still disappointing. But some of the outcomes were pretty impressive. And in terms of stabilizing American democracy. Very easily, though, there could have been other outcomes. And think of the consequences there. So the whole argument for making—you know, for obligations is that nothing’s baked into the cake, for better and for worse. So we shouldn’t assume that everything’s just going to turn out just fine. And we shouldn’t assume that it won’t. And I think, again, small numbers could have real impact. And, again, it’s an empowerment argument. And I think there’s a lot—there’s a lot of distributed authority—obligation, or authority, or potential for various groups within the society, various constituencies, as well as with individuals writ large. And I think possibly reminding people about how government over the years has adapted, I think people need to, in some ways, rediscover a bit of respect and admiration for government. And I look at some of the changes we’ve had over the course of, say, the last—take my last seventy-five years, or even, you know, from on domestic things. Civil rights, you know, extension of the vote to eighteen-year-olds, what we’ve recently done on gay marriage, and so forth. The degree of adaptability and change, government turns out to be quite flexible in this society. So I want students to get jazzed about the potential here, about the possibility, but to remind them it just doesn’t happen by itself. And people have to get involved. And politics is not dirty. It’s a calling. And so I want the best and brightest to do this. You know, I’ve had a career that’s been in and out of government, and I wouldn’t trade it for just about anything. And it’s really satisfying. I talk to them about careers and other things also. So I mean, not just people that are going to become doctors, and lawyers, and plumbers, and electricians, and whatever. And I want them to be involved, informed citizens. But I would love a chunk of the best and brightest to go into government and choose that as a calling. So again, one of the reasons I love the idea of a public service experience, say, for a year or two years after high school, before college, or during college, or after college, not only do would I think a lot of people come into contact with one another who ordinarily wouldn’t meet where people grow up, but I think they would see what government could do. They would see that public service can actually accomplish some things that are good for the public. So I think students need to realize that. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next back to Larry Mead. And let’s see if we can get your technology—there we go. Q: Can you hear me now? OK. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Yes, we can. And identify yourself, please. Q: What I wrote was, I thought I was the only political scientist to write about obligation. I wrote a book about that back in the 1960s. It was about domestic policy, mainly. I think your book is—I think the second book to really focus on obligation. And my question is this: In fact, our system presumes a very high level of civic obligation. We are, in fact, one of the most civic countries in the world, one of the best governed in the world. And that all depends on that civic culture. So why then do we talk only about rights? HAASS: Great question. First of all, what’s your book? My research was inadequate. Tell me about your book. Q: (Laughs.) OK. It was called Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship. It’s about welfare, poverty, and reform of welfare. It makes a case for work requirements. And later on, I became the theorist of welfare reform. But the general argument is that freedom depends on obligation. And actually, freedom is a form of obligation. But people aren’t thoughtful about that. They somehow think that freedom is simply liberation from all sets of outside expectations. No. Our heaviest obligations are the obligations we set for ourselves in our own lives. We work very hard to achieve those things. So freedom isn’t free, and yet we don’t talk about it. HAASS: I agree. And good for you. Thank you. I will now make up for my impoverished scholarship and researching skills. Q: Well, I’m going to read your book, and I will write you a reaction, I promise you. HAASS: Thank you. Be kind. Look, there’s a lot of—in the course of writing this, I read some religious and political philosophers. And that was their argument, that freedom without obligation is dangerous. It actually leads you to anarchy. And but obligation and the rest without freedom denies you basic rights. And you’ve got to—you got to get both. Find it infused in religious and philosophical literature. I found it in some educational literature after World War II. So I’ve asked myself, to your question, how did we kind of lose the balance? Because if you go to early American history, there was such an emphasis on rights, and my hunch is people were much more conscious of rights because the entire context was not reimposing tyranny after getting out from under the yoke of Britain. I also think our culture was different. That a lot of obligations, or the notion of obligations, was assumed. It was implicit. It wasn’t missing. It was there. And when you go back—when I went back and read de Tocqueville, and Bryce, and others, you re-read a lot of this—even the Federalist Papers, they didn’t spend a lot of time hammering away on obligations. I think they saw it all around them. I think what’s happened, and it’s probably beyond my paygrade, or at least beyond my intellectual understanding—because I’m not an anthropologist or a sociologist—was somehow this notion of the balance between rights and obligations in American society, to use a technical phrase, has gotten out of whack. We’ve become much more rights focused, almost rights obsessed. What are we owed? Whether they’re political rights or economic rights. And we’ve lost a sense of what do we owe in turn. And, you know, how that happened is an interesting conversation. And it’s something I’ve been meditating about and thinking about. But however it happened, it happened. And that’s why I think we need something of a corrective. And I’m no longer confident it’ll just happen. The ship won’t right itself. And I think that we have to now be conscious about advocating for obligations, because they have the coin of citizenship has lost its balance there. And it’s gone way too much in one direction. So what I’m trying to do is by talking so much about obligations, decades after you did—is in some ways resurrect the idea and strengthen a recognition that we’ve somewhat lost our way. And, by the way, I think people know that. I got to tell you, I’ve been on the road a lot the last six weeks, talking about this book to all sorts of citizen groups. I did one last night about fifty miles from here. And people know it. I got to tell you, particularly people who are middle-aged and older, they look out their window, they get up and they look out at this society, and they go: This isn’t the American I remember. There is something amiss. There is something wrong. I’m not saying the old America was perfect. It was obviously flawed in some significant ways. But there is something wrong about our culture. I think if de Tocqueville were to come back, he would not be happy, in some ways. He would see things that were missing a little bit from the relationship between individuals and society, and particularly the obligation I have, say, about the common good. I think there’s a degree now of selfishness and individualism. And I think it’s gotten out of hand in American society. We saw a lot of that during the pandemic. And that, to me, was yet another message that we’ve got some work here to do. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Louis Caldera, who is a professor of law at American University. Can you talk about our democracy as an example to the world that is foundational to achieving our foreign policy and national security goals? Do you agree? Do we undermine our leadership in the world if our own democracy is undermined by things like gerrymandering, vote suppressing laws, unchecked special interest money, and so on? HAASS: In a word, yes, we do. We certainly undermine the appeal of democracy. It’s very hard to talk the talk if you don’t walk the walk. And January 6 was probably the low point. But again, when people look at American democracy or look not just at democracy but American society, I think our ability—and, how do I put this—we’re not quite the shining city on the hill we should be or could be. So, we can have—we can arm every diplomat with talking points about preaching democratic reform, but it’s not going to have any traction if it’s done against the backdrop of what we now have in this country. So I think that’s just a fact of life. So you’re spot on. And I also think the divisions in our society and the lurches, increasingly, in our politics have made us much less influential in the world, because we’re no longer seen as predictable or reliable. And allies, by definition, what have they done? They have essentially made a security choice to put a big chunk of their security in our hands. If our hands are no longer seen as reliable, predictable, or safe, they’re either going to put security in their own hands—and that’s a world of much more proliferation or something like that—or they’re going to defer to some powerful neighbors. That is not a pretty world. I also worry that our—my own guess, I can’t prove it—but Vladimir Putin was somewhat encouraged to do what did in Ukraine because he didn’t think the United States had the will to come together to resist. And so I take these things seriously. So, yeah. So I think, again, this is directly—what’s going on here, you know, to use the old line about Las Vegas, it doesn’t stay here. This isn’t Las Vegas. And it’s—if anybody’s on this from Nevada, I apologize. But it does have real foreign policy consequences. So I think you’re spot on. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Collette Mazzucelli, who has raised her hand. Q: Hello. Good afternoon, Dr. Haass. And I just wanted to ask you if you think that there’s a need for a new model of citizenship because of the evolution of the internet, the next phase that’s coming, the prevalence and, you know, omnipresent nature of misinformation, disinformation in our society, and also across the world. Thank you. HAASS: It’s a really thoughtful question. It was about, what, two weeks ago the Supreme Court had two days of oral hearings—or arguments on Section 230 of the 1996 law, the Communications Decency Act. I think we’re struggling with the internet, because these companies, or the pipes that they operate, are carrying millions and millions of messages from millions and millions of people. So the question is, can we—and if so, how, and the rest—can we in any way regulate the content? So I think there’s real issues. And social media is, in many cases, inflaming divisions within a society. It is encouraging some bad behaviors in many cases. But it’s not quite clear to me what the remedies are, what’s practical, and what’s desirable. Some things are simply impractical given the number of users, the volume of messaging. And some things may not be desirable because where do you draw the line on First Amendment rights, free speech, and so forth. And who does the drawing? Who’s in charge of line drawing? And do we want to necessarily delegate the ability to draw certain lines to some individuals who may be working for Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or what have you? So I think these are really tough issues. My guess is the Supreme Court will probably punt to Congress. Congress will not pick up the ball, would be my guess. There might be some movement. If you look at one of the cases heard before the court now, I think they’ll issue their decision in, say, June or so. Where it’s one thing for the companies to say they’re neutral, they can’t be expected to regulate content. OK. I think it’s different, though, when they highlight, or accelerate, or intensify certain content through algorithms or what have you. So I think there might be some pushback there, that they can’t necessarily police or regulate all the content. But they can be held accountable for not—or, regulator-required, not to highlight certain content. I think it might get at their business model, but I can live with that, to say the least. And then the other half of the coin is how do we make ourselves more critical consumers? And that gets at the whole information literacy movement that we’re seeing in New Jersey at the high school level, and other places. But I would think, again, on university campuses, the idea—if I had my way, there would be a mandatory civics course. And, again, one dimension of it would be information literacy. So even if we’ll never succeed in totally regulating what goes on social media, in whatever form. But I do think we can improve our ability to be critical consumers of it. And I think that is out there. But, look, when I look at democratic backsliding around the world, not just in the United States. We’re seeing it in Mexico, we’re seeing it in India, we’re seeing it in Israel. We’re seeing it in lots of places. The proliferation of media, social media, you know, my word for it is narrowcasting. We now live in an era of narrowcasting. And people are no longer exposed to common things, and they increasingly go into various social and regular media outlets, which tend to either confirm certain views or prejudices, what have you. I think it’s a real challenge for democracy. FASKIANOS: So we have a written question from Victoria Powers, who’s at Capital University in Ohio. I agree with you that teaching civics is critical, and I understand that it’s complex in the current environment for some high schools to teach civics. Although I hate to give up requiring civics in K-12 schools. Do you have ideas about what we could do to help provide an education in civics for all those young people who will not be headed to two- or four-year college or universities or community colleges, obviously. And, sorry, she is an adjunct at the Capital University Law School in Ohio. HAASS: Well, I think the takeaway I take from that question, and it’s a good one, is what we do on two- and four-year college and university campuses is part of the answer, it’s not the totality of it. And we’ve got to get to citizens younger. So that gets at what you do at high school, junior high school, even middle school. I mean, iCivics has been active in middle schools for a long time. And it also raises questions of what we do away from school. And that’s where, again, I think that those who give the sermons have a certain responsibility, media has a larger responsibility than it is often willing to carry out. Businesses, corporations have a responsibility. I think there’s got to be distributed obligations here. And I believe each one of these segments of society has obligations and should be pressured by citizens to carry it out. But I do think, yes, we ought to be pushing civics down younger, but we also—we need—as important as classrooms are, we’ve also got to do things beyond—outside the classroom. But the basic point is right, particularly since the only thing most Americans have to do is attend school through the age of sixteen. So we can’t afford to miss that opportunity. Irina, you’re on mute. FASKIANOS: Right. How long have I been doing this? OK. (Laughs.) HAASS: For about half an hour, but we’ve been waiting for you. (Laughter.) FASKIANOS: I’m going to go next to Jody McBrien, who is a professor of social sciences at the University of South Florida. I understand why young people feel powerless, especially when you consider gerrymandering voting and using misinformation. You mentioned state level, she lives in Florida, enough said. How do you suggest getting students engaged in spite of these issues that understandably cause a feeling of helplessness. HAASS: Well, again, you know, the people who are in power passing certain laws now, or redrawing lines, they weren’t always in those positions. They got there. So my view is if one disagrees with them, then one has to get them out of there and put other people in there. And that’s what political involvement is all about. There’s nothing inevitable. There’s nothing permanent. These things go in cycles and so forth. So I would tell students, yeah, channel your frustration. Channel your anger. But channel it in ways that will change the political realities. Don’t just protest. Don’t just get—certainly don’t give up. I mean, I think the worst thing is to walk away from it and saying it’s hopeless. That becomes self-fulfilling, because then, again, you leave your political future in the hands of others who are unlikely to have your best interests at heart. So I think the best thing is to sit down with students and talk about how politics have changed American time, and time, and time again. And they ought to essentially think about collective action. And that’s the history of American political life. FASKIANOS: I will take the next written question from Ali Abootalebi, who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Would you comment on implications of your civic education argument for U.S. foreign policy? The American public is fundamentally divorced from U.S. foreign relations, leaving the foreign policy establishment free from certain obligations and in pursuit of narrowed interests. HAASS: Well, the latter we can have a debate about, to what extent does American foreign policy always served American interests. And I would say, at times it has and at times it hasn’t. I’m often a critic of what we do in the name of the national interest, which at times to me seems to be anything but. But that’s almost a case-by-case type thing. But, look, I would say that one part of being an informed citizen is understanding the world and understanding foreign policy. It’s one of the reasons about a decade ago here, at the Council on Foreign Relations, we made it a real priority to promote literacy in matters of the world and matters of foreign policy. And we’ve got an entire curriculum. We’ve got simulation resources. We’ve got resources aimed at younger students. We do now all sorts of public fora on our website, CFR.org. The most trafficked items tend to be the explainers of these complicated issues to give people a basic understanding of these issues. I think it’s part of being an informed citizen. So my own view is we want to have what we call global literacy, in addition to having what I would call civics literacy. I think they are both—since we live in a global world, where everything we do or don’t do affects the world and vice versa, everything that goes on the world affects us, for better and for worse, we want citizens to be aware of that loop, and to think about the consequences of certain policies or actions for that. So I think that as an extension of informed civic involvement. It’s just the content, in some cases, has to involve things international, and not just things domestic. FASKIANOS: All right. I’m going to take the next question from David Cheney. And I’m trying to pull up affiliation. While I am: How can young people stay accurately informed, given their reliance on social media? And how would you have them balance right-wing with left-wing media sources to arrive at a closer approximation of the truth? And he is at NYU. HAASS: I’ve heard of NYU. Look, a couple things. Yeah, I know what is not in my answer. TikTok is not the answer. Let me say that. A couple of things. One is, and in the book I have a whole section on where to go for more. And I also think—you know, because there are certain quality publications. Certain newspapers just tend to be good, or better than others. They’re not perfect, but they’re better. Certain magazines, certain television and radio shows, certain websites. So there are quality places to steer people to. I think as a rule of thumb we ought to encourage multi-sourcing, not to put all your—not to depend on a single source. It’s almost like a journalist. A journalist would never write a story based on a single source. They have to double-source it. And I almost feel as citizens we ought to double-source our information, and not just depend on one. I used to have a rule when I went to the gym in my pre-COVID life, when I went on the elliptical, I would divide my time among Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. And I’ll admit, I did cheat and ESPN would get a chunk of it as well. But the whole idea was the be exposed. It was just—it was interesting just to see the different “realities,” quote/unquote, that were put forward. But I think it’s important to—if you read a national newspaper, then read a local newspaper, maybe. Or if you do something of the left, do something of the right. Or if you read this book, as a professor or teacher, you’d encourage someone to read something else to—so you’re not, again, single sourcing. And I think that’s the—if I had a single rule of thumb, it would probably be that, to protect yourself from the structural biases. Because all authors or publications have a bias either in what they cover or how they cover it. I take that for granted. So the only way—the best way to protect yourself from it is a degree of multiple exposure. FASKIANOS: OK. I think we have time for one more. Dana Radcliffe at Syracuse University. President Obama in his farewell address referred to the citizen as “the most important office in a democracy.” The philosopher Joseph Tussman in 1960 offered an insightful characterization of “the office of the citizen.” Might the suggestion that citizen is a public office help advance the thesis that citizenship entails obligations as well as rights? HAASS: An interesting construct. I like it. It kind of adds a bit of heft, because we tend to sort of just talk about citizenship, almost dismiss it at times. Well, he’s just an ordinary person. But I like the idea of an office, that it’s—that you’re—because that suggests a degree of empowerment and a degree, again, of obligation. So I like the idea. I think it kind of—kind of it gets people to take the potential to make a difference a little bit more seriously. And I really like it. So that’s a useful construct. So thank you for that. FASKIANOS: OK. We have a few more minutes. Richard, is there anything you want to leave the group with that we haven’t covered? HAASS: I know I’m always supposed to say yes at this point, but no. It’s been a really wide-ranging conversation. No, and I think what I’m hoping is that people on a call such as this will think about how to promote—you know, particularly on campuses and schools—the teaching of civics. Both to create a mandate for it, and then we can debate the content. But the idea that—you know, one of the arguments often used that I encounter—I’m not in a position to judge its accuracy—is that too many of the constituencies on campus oppose this, particularly it’s often said to me, you know, faculty, or whatever. And I think the faculty could make an important difference by basically saying: Actually, no. We don’t oppose this. We think this is a swell idea. And we’re prepared to work with administrators, students, and the rest, to make it happen. And I think that would be fantastic. So, again, you’re the multipliers. And I think you’re in a special position to do this. So, again, I think freshman year experience is a good place to get the kids going, the students going with this. But I do think, whether it’s a course or a module at some point, it needs—but we need advocates for it. So I hope some of you on this call will be advocates, because I just think we’re missing not just an opportunity but, if you’ll pardon the expression, we’re missing an obligation to see that—to make sure that our students are prepared to do their bit, to do their share, for upholding democracy in this country. And so I just think universities and colleges have, again, a special opportunity and obligation both. And you’re all so instrumental to do that. So Godspeed in that effort. FASKIANOS: Well, with that, thank you very much, Richard. Thank you for writing, authoring, this book, The Bill of Obligations. Richard has also written teaching notes to go with the book that we will be posting on the website alter this week. If you’re interested in an exam copy, either digital or print, we can—we can honor that request. And if you want to try to make—put his book on the common reading list or incorporate it into your first-year experience, we can also think about having Richard address the incoming class virtually or perhaps in person. We appreciate all that you have done, Richard. He has really transformed CFR into an educational institution. You should check out Model Diplomacy and World 101. You can follow Richard on Twitter at @richardhaass, subscribe to his Substack newsletter which he just launched, called Home and Away, by going to richardhaass.substack.com. We’ll include those links in our follow-up note with the link to this video and transcript. We will include the teaching notes as well. And I also encourage you to follow @CFR_Academic, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, thank you all for being with us today, for the work that you do on your college campuses. And, Richard Haass, again, thank you for being with us. HAASS: Thank you, Irina. Thank you, all. I appreciate it. (END)