In terms of policy, you know, the fundamental issues were political and economic and they failed to deliver on their promises, on what people were expecting, you know, and this is this is what precipitated the rising i think significance of these religious groups, later on fundamentalist groups and later on extremist groups throughout the region, and the key problem here their rise was not just in terms of their own popularity, you know, within their borders, muslim brotherhood, 11, 12, 30 of the vote but more importantly i think they were able to dictate the parameters of the discussion in terms of the policy issues that were ongoing. You know, rise influence secular groups, nonpolitical groups so much so that they felt the need to bring religion to their own discussion, to their own sort of policies, proposed so to speak. One good example is what is happening in turkey today. Erdogan and akp have come to power in 2002 and hes been i mean, hes a politician and so successful in terms of changing the political, you know, sort of system in turkey in such a way that the secular parties are unable to determine the agenda, political agenda, they are unable to discuss issues in the way outed of the parameters set by erdogan himself. One problem, both religious and nonreligious both try to cater to religious demands because people will want more, currency in political debates. Erdogan has not been uniformly successful. He was successful in growing the economy in the earlier years but hes run into trouble, more trouble now and political trouble. More as a Political Tool to advance, you know, advance his political or do you think that this is just so indigenous to the people of turkey that every politician Going Forward is going to have to encompass religious beliefs more into their way of right. I cant speak to his personal belief. Thats beyond any sort of focus as a political scientist. What i can tell you is that religious is an important element of his political discourse and when you look at time, it changes in terms of intensity in political discourse. Losing, you know, elections to some degree, losing popularity and then he started actually started using more religion because he we wanted to bring some more conservative elements especially kurdish voters in turkey and some of the nationalist votes. So what we see is depending on the time religious discourse and not just erdogan but other politicians. Brian mentioned of, tunisia and whats underlying support of groups is economic and political issues. Once those issues are addressed first and foremost i think we are most likely going to see a decrease in support, but i think thats really the key. So tanasians you used the phrase repeatedly and i think its pretty smart. Using the religion. Leaders use religion in their own way and the point i wanted to make, one this is about power. Not necessarily about the right interpretation of religion if theres such a thing without power and secondly in addition to domestic use of religion what i see in the middle east right now is multiple faceted, multidimensional competition for power and influence and the use of islam by turkey today versus saudi arabia because its owned sort of definition and uses islam, the birthplace of it but my main point is the first point that this is about power not ancient hatreds and interpretation of religion. Leaders are trying to stay in power by appealing to themes and compete with adversaries or competitors in the region through the use thats the jose underanalyzed an interesting aspect of it because its media fight and all sorts of things and its something that frankly the book doesnt cover itself but its hart that america wants better Foreign Policy and approach need to understand that this is in addition to sort of military moves and the use of terrorism a competition to stay in power. Is religion going to be social media or is it going to be legitimacy, theological rulers or is it going to be populist leaders and if so how are traditional muslim scholars looking at this rise of populism and you really think that the way in which people consume religion is going to rapidly change, whether the United States can keep up with that. Great question. Some of my research actually addresses the question. A couple of years ago we started project trying to look into how religious authority is sort of distributed across the middle east among religious leaders, primarily muslim leader and what we found is that theres a couple of major findings, one of them is islamic political groups, political actors have great popularity. People do look up to them as religious leaders and this is something really important. Thats been rising and changing a lot. In terms of social media, i think thats a change that was precipitated at the turn of the 20th century, more than a century ago. Islam is a little bit different. It has premarket of religion like protestantism in christianity, it doesnt have authority or hierarchy. So what this means is everyone can be a religious leader if people willing support and follow the people. The group of collective class of islamic scholars were big between end of 19 into tenth century upon turn of 20th century in islam. They were the class as religious authority. They were the sort of religious authority and once they started dying so to speak, there was a big void in terms of who was the eminent religious authority, right . This is this is a process thats going evolving with the rising of social media more so. I dont know whats going to happen in 40 years but definitely not the mosques, i dont think. Things are changing fast and quick. Some sort of hierarchy authority and things will be pretty sort of distributed. Islam force stability or not in the region . It depends on what we mean by stability. If we look at turkey, it is stability. Its an authoritarian way. If you look at other context, lets say early 200s 2000s or it was questioning them into trying to get more political space, representation or change of policies, so totally depends on the context. I dont think islam by itself is different than many other religions. It depends on the political context and depends on overall circumstance in terms of role it fills in these countries. So it depends on the context. In iraq or in syria it can be force or instability, but in say tunisia because of commitment in terms of muslim democracy. I actually think thats one of the major issues face if iraq. We look at iyatollah which is the shiite religious figure, hes cognizant of what the popular opinion is and instead of simply leading it he has to worry about following it because if he goes too far out in friday sermons and pronouncements he risks being exposed as the emperor wears no clothes if the young People Choose not to follow him and therefore we sea caucasian that really hasnt been there since we listed under saddam hussein. These religious leaders are not blind to whats going on around them. They know whats going on. They follow them and they adjust their discourses. Whether these are traditional religious authorities, oriented religious figures. They will cater to those needs. Ultimately what islam does or religion does for them, maybe believers but islam religion is a tool, political resource that you want to make use of and make sure it helps you in terms of power struggle. I think this is the key point. Does that have any value . And i would throw this out to all of you. Is that something that the west should be encouraging . What does it even mean . Its happening. Its an organic process and in my view own when you say the west im taking that as mostly governments and things like this and i dont think necessarily we need to play a role in that, you know, i look back on certainly right now we have a president who when he ran as candidate says i think islam hates us. He used interpretation of islam which is quite dangerous. Deeply unhelpful. Im not making a comparison or parallel between the two. I think when the u. S. Did things like appoint special envoys to the organization of islamic conference, that was anywhere from irrelevant to maybe slightly unhelpful because i dont think it should be u. S. Policy to sort of encourage and reform islam, its a religion. Its going to sort of have trends that are organic and im not a muslim but my friends who live here in america or europe, their different sort of ideas of their own faith and religion and i would stay away as that of use of engagement. When president obama spoke in cairo there was sort of an idea of muslim engagement that a lot of my friends in the arab world sound a little bit offensive especially those friends who were christian or were not muslims tradition but not of faith, wanted to be engaged as egyptians or something else. Let me put in a different way to my liberal friends. One of the issues where its caught one of the excerpts occurring in the region is morocco when it comes to program and women are educated to be Community Prayer leaders along side men and morocco, of course, has a theological and intellectual history that goes back well over a millennium except when you talk over officials what morocco is doing and the moroccan model often times what you hear is that, well, morocco is irrelevant to broader islamic world but intellectually and theologically whats happened in morocco traditionally is much more significant than what has happened in saudi arabia. Saudi arabia, of course, had advantage of oil which is why a much more minority interpretation spread but we seem to be doing saudi arabias work for them when we are dismissing of other trends because we see from our advantage point them as peripheral. Our own perspective from washington can get in the way. I will agree with brian that there has to be a limit of what we do in terms of religious debate although we cant ignore it completely but, on the other hand, our first rule should be first do no harm. Would you disagree with me . Not necessarily disagree with you but i have a little bit of a different take, i think. I dont disagree with you but i disagree. [laughter] i do think that islam is in great need of reform. The muslim world has a great problem in terms of underdevelopment at this point in time with violence. Im not saying religion causes violence but case of violence throughout the muslim world. If you look at the muslim world today, i cant remember the figures but 8 or 9 muslims that are being killed today are being killed by other muslims and that i think is a very important statistic we have pervasive underdevelopment, undereducation in the muslim world. A lot of issues and problems, one great book that addresses these issues recently published by cambridge university, under development, highly, you know, important work i think that looks into the issues very critically but the point is theres a great need for reform and religion whether we like it or not is being used, is used to justify ongoing trends issues and problems in the middle east. A great problem of gender inequality. In tunisia debate about introducing legislation for equal inheritance and the most progressive islamic parties opposed this legislation and what are you going to do with this . I think this is important issue. I do think theres a great need for reform in islam because i think islam or muslims, rather, are still trying to in my opinion, trying to are struggling trying to come to terms with it. This is a big issue. This is a very deepseated issue that needs to be addressed but with the current state of affairs its very difficult to come to terms with that part of the problem, something i try to emphasize about how islam, fundamentalists have been influential and being able to change the mind set of those on secular side, a lot of the issues, as you look at issue of lgb issues, the muslim world was more progressive on this particular issue, for example, on many other issues, ethnic religious diversity, i will argue that the it was much more progressive a century or two centuries ago and this is i think really the crux of the issue. Not sole importance but not because we have 30 or 40 support Popular Support but because they were able to shape, reshape the mind set of a lot of people in their society. We will make the same point. He can correct me if im wrong, we went out and met with officials and talked to people but we went to universities and i remember we were in morocco. We asked to do sort of town hall with student, University Students an it was one of the give and take and we said, lock, we are here from america and you might find this alarming, a lot of people are puzzled and a lot of people asking us what is going on and we asked that one question, whats different about your generation, from your parents generation and one woman raised her hand, she said, some of us are lgbt lesbian and we talk about it openly and they debated for at least 10 or 15 minutes. Whether they could bring someone home to their parents. Not necessarily the case. The Younger Generation is starting to shift back the question is generations that we had are the outlier or the signifier of a continuing trend. Its not just about, you know, the individual level but Public Policy level. I think there was much more tolerance to about many of the issues than it is right now. Fair enough. How many majority countries have Death Penalty these are important issues. Can you build a mosque in saudi arabia . Why not . They want to exclude mecca because of religious, whatever, what about the rest of the country . Thats a big problem. Does this change have to come organically or is there a role for the government leaders . How does reform you say reform is needed, how does this reform come about . Its a taboo subject right now. Its difficult to introduce the budget. In several countries, those people, individuals, whether they were scholars or prominent figures who wanted to debate in discussion of islamic reform have been castigated. Some of them were penalized for other reasons but, you know, it was pushback from government officials or others in terms of their official stance. This is what they understand from introducing debates about islamics future. Fundamental issues going back to socioEconomic Development, unless you have good Education Systems where you are able to introduce thinking, analytical thinking, you prove equality in the country, you prove socioeconomic, or Economic Development, people in this country, i think its very difficult. We are in think tank, back during Bush Administration in 2002 case of egyptian american sociologist who was in prison in part for what he was talking about in terms of reform and the Bush Administration held up 120 million worth of aid. I think if we go further back in the Reagan Administration and we look at the islam and theres scholar, im forgetting his name. Im sorry . He talked about how reforms showed include the point of this is while is United States we have separation of church and state, does that mean that, a, we can ignore religion in other countries and use the leverage of our purse, for example, in order to create some sort of space for those people who are being most bold on the course of reform dont end up in prison or work . Yes, this is an important point. 3 quick ones for u. S. Policy. Number one listening and understanding, what we were saying before. Getting diplomats outside of the wire. Ambassador who was killed in benghazi was doing this. Its powerful to understand social dynamics. I think its important. Number 2, keeping issue of democracy and freedom, on the u. S. Policy agenda is really important and obviously its been downgraded under president trump. I would submit that thats a preexisting condition, that actually started, the process of not having focus in terms of what diplomats do, started under the Obama Administration for a number of reasons because we we wanted to pull back and we defined distorted debate about democracy equating with interference of the sort that russia did in our own economy and totally missed in our own government. You think its something that the United States should still what michael was saying whether in saudi arabia or other parts, we need to raise our voice and make it part of the conversation and being serious about it. Bipartisan issue. Theres no reason why it cant be. Thats a human rights issue. Thats not necessarily promotion of democracy. If you dont and thats why im skeptical, if you do that while maintaining your position as absolute monarchy and dont give organic space for people to debate religion or other issues, its likely to fail. The third one is a simple one and relates to what you said at the top, carol, war is one of the worst things and flawed wars, unnecessary wars that actually enhance the hardliners and hardline interpretations of religion, so, you know, sort of extremist feed off of this and this is where we have to have a new style of engagement in the middle east as i was saying earlier, trying to learn the lessons from the last 40 years and especial think last 15 years or so and talk about right level and understanding what is happening. I want to clarify what brian has said or add to it. I will do that later. When it comes to reform, often times when we talk about reform and when the middle thinks about reform is apples and oranges. Take, for example, saudi arabia, what is a reform absolute monarchy. The reform is reform absolute monarchy, its not a democracy. Sometimes it seems that our conversations in Congress Cross spectrum and so forth with regard to what is reform versus what is understood by people in the region are two Different Things and clash occurs it can make things a lot worse. All right, i will ask in terms of what role the United States can play, i think its very important to understand that any kind of intervention. I mean, those safe spaces should be created but i think the way they are created is very important because antiwesternism is so much ingrained in political islam or fundamentalists or even among seculars. Any kind of interventions by the u. S. Or European Union or other European Countries is going to be deemed as problematic and thats why, you know, those kinds of interventions in terms of creating those spaces should be done really carefully because its going to undermine. Youre going to basically, you know, make the issue toxic. Whatever that person decided says or does up to that point onward is going to be we had the debate during Bush Administration because what happens in the case of iran. When iranians says when we are not touching someone, they are supported by the americans, damn if you do, damn if you dont. Shouldnt we use our ability to compel governments not to arrest certain people . Compel them not to arrest because they will be slandered no matter what they do. All im saying it should be done in a way thats not going to undermine ly ask one more question and open it to the audience. Theres a whole question on the chapter about the militaries which i find interesting. Yes, yes. A big point that was made that militaries in the region have attempted 73 coups since 1952 and the Point Military are often a force for instability, not for stability and also hammers the point that a lot of the militaries suffer for lack of training, for lack of equipment. The United States has spent decades, you know, Training Officer corps whether in egypt, wherever, billions of dollars worth of weapons to a lot of the countries. Was that for not and, two, how can you say so many of these militaries are underresourced when it seems like all we do is spend military aid . A couple of points from this. Consider the collapse of Iraqi Military in 2014. We had invested 25 billion in that, of course, weve also invested a great deal in afghanistan as well. Im glad that you highlighted. A couple of things that come into play. One of the reasons that aside from perhaps being destabilizing in their own countries, militaries should have big question mark over them, they seldom profess to do what they say they are going to do, part of that also has to do with differences with regard to shame. When a sergeant in basic training breaks down, when a drill sergeant breaks down a new recruit the idea isnt simply break them down. In the navy if its wrapped up, then this can have implication on ability to actually correct mistakes. Putting that aside and bring to go what brian was talking to being front and center. If you look at a country like pakistan, pakistan during 2007 you had the amendment which was a bipartisan approach to say, look, the states of american diplomacy shouldnt be the military and shouldnt be the cia even though thats what its been for decades in pakistan and they put forth a 7 billiondollar aid package and actually made antiamericanism worse, why . The military which was about to get cut off from the train started through the rumor mills and so forth that the money was meant to christianize pakistan which was nonsense an it was also an insult, accounting mechanisms were insult, one to have issues that we say that we have to deal with across the board as we try to get diplomats front and center, doesnt make sense resourcing the state department and saying thats going to solve the problem if they are stuck behind walls but when it comes to military in egypt and pakistan i would have i think theres one i would call cycle of extortion in which we give money in order to have the local militaries fight the islamist insurgence but at some point the idea that is dawned that we would defeat islamic insurgence, we would be cutting off money. When you look at egyptians in northern, for example, its one or the other. When it comes to the military in general, its not just the coup issue. When brian and i were in egypt together, you could argue perhaps cut some slack for making corrections which he needed to make economically which were 20 years overdue but instead of Building Platform for new Economic Development what hes done the military has come in for own unique interest and repeating all of the mistakes which the military had made for the previous 50 5 decades which means what sisi is doing is cracking down on human rights. I agree with what michael said. What i was trying to say before the last 40 years and especially the last 15 years of u. S. Policy we really need to have a strategic questioning of using arms sale and military aid as tool of engagement with the societies to produce stability and the sort of things we are trying to get at in this book if that makes sense. It has not succeeded in places like egypt which we talked about before. Internally i think its tilted the balance of power against freedom and corrosive and doesnt lead it creates it reinforces what is essentially a state centric system and reinforces the authoritarianism which i dont think its sustainable in the long run, but Bigger Picture you look across the region and especially the hundreds of billions that we have either sold or or delivered to gulf states and others. In essence when i look at it, theres a dangerous and dysfunctional dependency on u. S. Military approach. A lot of the militaries are in the region themselves cant defend themselves. Look what happened in september in saudi arabia, how the hell did that happen if we sent them defensive systems and things like this. Thats the main point. As you see in washington theres largely tactical debate that i think in some ways, i think its important. Its a reflection of americans saying what the heck but often not strategic. It often assumes that the sort of tool of assistance or sales if we cut it off then we read them the riot act and they will change. I think we need to have somewhat back from the tools and emphasize the other aspect because what weve done with the arms sales with sr. Have not produced stability in the regions themselves. Okay, anybody have any questions . We ask that you identify yourself if you have a question. The gentleman in the back. [inaudible] with the association of the u. S. Army. I had a question about the arabisraeli conflict. I think for a while especially in the 90s there was this belief that all roads to middle east stability went through solving the arabisraeli conflict. Do you see realignment especially now between israel and some of the Sunni Arab States in the middle east and what do you see as the continued importance for regional stability of that conflict today . What i would answer just briefly is decades of incitement remain so even if governments, the diplomatic posture of gulf states has altered. That doesnt necessarily trickle down to the various populations in egypt and saudi arabia and so forth. Brian alluded when we went to mohamoth university, they have less than filters than embassies do. When i was doing something at university in iraq, one of the things that was strange is in session nobody brought up israel once and people brought up saudi arabia quite a bit and the problems are looming so great throughout the regions that people are focusing on their own immediate problem. Now that doesnt mean that the arab israeli conflict isnt important but i would say theres greater perspective throughout the region. I would say theres a shift but not realignment yet and i used to lived in west bank of gaza and lived in the region. Its not a high priority but i dont see a realignment in that. I dont see what in essence many gulf officials and many say. We have relationship thats in the closet or underneath the table with israel and concerns about iran, we are not going to come out publicly so long theres the sense of injustice, the sense that theres not a sustainable just resolution to the israelipalestinian conflict if you see reaction of president trumps initiatives whether moving embassy to jerusalem or Golan Heights and thats all youve got, but my main point is you dont see realignment, open relationships with the countries, breaking out with any sort of sense of pathway to resolving resolving the conflict between israelis and palestinians. Anybody else . Im sorry. [laughter] sorry about that. [inaudible] just a second. My name is bill chip. I thought when you talk about the middle east in your book. Im not sure how far east and west you go, but i think your discussion today is mostly focused on that little area from lebanon to iran, is that correct . We cover different authors and bring different examples, morocco through iran, a little bit of pakistan, chapter of education, the professor of education at university of michigan focused heavily on north africa. One quick comment and a question. When you say that while we may be here tend to look at all the problems as religious here, one form of religion extreme against another, we have to remember that in many cases religious has been adopted as a tool to gain power and not the other way around. My comment is maybe the exception to that is afghanistan where i think religion is whats driving, people are trying to take over the country and doing it for purely religious reasons, but thats a comment. The question is in the area you focused on, there are two ancient divides. Religious divides between the sunnis and the shiites and ethic divide between the persians and the arabs. I think im not wrong that the war more people died between the war in iraq and iran than any other conflict all put together in the last, you know, 40 years. And my question to you is in the long term, how do you see i think we see a little bit of that now, right, because in iraq people are starting yeah. In the long term, do you see the those two divides . Which do you see as ultimately creating more stability or overcoming the other . First of all, just one small factoid the wayest nicety has historically been considered in the middle east was originally geography starting in 1920s and 30s and shift today shifted to linguistic. If we want to put in what is happening in syria, however, that may have surpassed the iraniraq war. Its about 5050 parity. But in conclusion, what i would argue is that people who are bent on having a conflict will always come up with an excuse to have one and that can be political, that can be religious, it can be some other aspect. What i wanted to avoid with this and the reason we were doing a brief today is we werent trying to come up with a Political Science theory where one size fits all. In this case i will defer that, im a historian by training. That means i get paid to predict the past. Brian would say i get that right half of the time. The point of this is i simply dont know. I think its an interesting question. I would respond and this is not a dodge. I think my mind went to when you raised the point to the question that carol asked me about iraq which is what is going on inside there and i think the center piece of the struggle, i dont know whether those things will be resolved and in some ways they are quite large and big but the center piece of the struggle is bottom up in a sense and the struggle that is happening and i think accelerating. The thing that people thought was over 2 or 3 years after the arab up rise asking not over and my guess now that we are in a new decade is that is actually going to accelerate when you look at the structural, basic metrics where the societies are going, theres going to be some change and the question is whether that change is fast or slow or moves in the right direction, however you define that or tries to go back a thousand years and i think those internal tensions in societies and what we have seen in the last year rise of nationalism throughout Key Countries of the region is going to be where the first immediate arena where impacts those other sort of arenas that youve talked about, shiitesunni. People will look to what is most proximate which is their lives who is ruling them and whether those ruling them are doing so justly and with sense of effectiveness and thats where i think it will be a big part of the debate in the decade. Do we have other questions . Yeah, i spent a lot of time in the middle east in the last 20 or so years. I guess im wondering. You mentioned nationalism, seems like unheard of thing until recently. Do you see do you actually see the nation states either recombining. I hate to say biden was right on something but iraq is really 3 places. Do you see nobody wants to give up their boundaries, Current International boundaries which to me is one of the issues that the different ethnicities and like i say the kurds are promised that they never got which spared over four countries and none of those countries want to give up. Its like what is going on with turkey and syria. I guess do you see a day when current boundaries get shifted to more natural coherent ethnicity . That doesnt mean its arbitrary country. When you consider egypt and 90 plus percent of the population living along the nile it doesnt matter you you draw the border. Egypt has a sense of being egypt. If i have to go back through countries, iraq became independent in 1938 but back in 13th century arabic literature people talked about the concept of iraq, people talked about the concept of lebanon or syria long before they formally became independent. When it comes to states, i say that the most artificial states are jordan, qatar, emirates and kuwait and many others and we see this with how they retroactively extend back their National Myths have some basis in legitimacy that really isnt going to change much. If the question is the kurds, the kurds are the largest people who have been if you will have been dispossessed and its not world war i, the treaty of the arabs in 17th century. The problem with the kurds is are you going to have one kurdishstan. We have two romanias, albanias and you could see border adjustments, yes, was i dont think you will see a wholesale revision of the map of the middle east of somehow illegitimate because i think its a lot less illegitimate and sometimes the grievance industry would have a success. Can i add a little point to that . Arent we just seeing adjustment of borders, turks coming to border into syria and claiming some land . We have the iranians and russians playing huge role in syria. Who knows whats going to happen. Assad does not have control of his country. Let me just finish the thought. The israelis have now made formal claim to the golan. Dont we already see a change . Theres a difference between wholesale and adjustment and im also not willing to argue when youve had whats fundamentally an unresolved border issue, thats separate from existing recognized borders. When it comes to turkey, i think this this is the major challengt when we look at cypress rerains remains occupied and i would worry about vans of erdogan and whether the world will be in a position to respond that, whatever his true ambition is here and we have an expert and i will refer to kadir. I think the real problem is International Context has changed has moved on from what it was 50, 60, 720 years ago. In terms of legitimacy of changing borders, right . Everything is by in large on this. Its by choice that certain people want to leave and the others agree to it. Im not sure what what will happen in syria. Turkey is expanding. I think theres University Branches or faculty that are being opened. Well, i mean, its by default right now its occupation, by definition. Im not sure how far he wants to go with that. It may depend on whether he can strike agreement in terms of what kind of autonomy will occurred get there that might threaten the turkishkurds so to speak. It remains to be seen. The way it goes, it continues this way, i dont think theres going to be a lot of legitimacy. No question. To this point, i think theres an important point he make, i think the issue is key and will be whether what is happening defacto to whats playing out already rather than where formal lines are. We havent talked about yemen on this panel, but to me the really interesting discussion about what is happening in yemen and whether there can be resolution to the conflict. If you move sort of politicized, what was yemen before this conflict and does it hang together . I kind of tried to address that and i think, again, if we want to be serious about diplomacy and using other tools, understanding how different groups have defined sort of their relationship to the Central Government or how regions do and, you know, joe biden tried to do this 10 or 15 years ago when he had the biden plan for iraq which, again, a lot of this doesnt translate well back to politics and not that meaningful because its got to be organic and the point id make that the notion that it was brought up about colonial powers. Yes, they made mistakes. I think it would be a mistake to sort of go back to the model and redefine borders. As i was trying to say about islam and reform, its organic. We have to watch and see how it develops and in a place like yemen what i was trying to get, we have to understand with more texture which is what we try to do in the book. What are the factors of governance so that they themselves can create the new arrangements that have sort of more staying power than what we have right now. Nationalism was developed in the past 1020 years. Im sure we will get a complain from the jordanians about calling them artificials. Thank you so much for the remarks. Its been remarkable and you have covered a lot of topics in a very short period of time. Social media and influence technology in digital diplomacy and influencing conflict. We saw through revolutions and surviving military coups one way or another. In turkey immediate responsiveness of social media. Can you touch upon digital response in this and how that may contribute to diplomacy or even intensifying conflict in the middle east . If i could start with this and try to relate it to the book. I think twitter and facebook revolutions as recall of arab uprising in 2011 it produced enormous capacity for people to organize against something to be against something, i see the dynamic also in social media here and largely use as tool to disagree with people but its not all that useful and im talking just in these countries. Ly get to u. S. I will get to the u. S. Diplomacy case. I havent seen case study of building consensus and Building Political movements. You look at our current president , he uses troll power to people keep people off balance and my pain minute, Tech Companies are looking into this, tools that they use to expand freedom, tear down authoritarian rule and things like this. Now we are in this dangerous moment we see with china, we see with saudi arabia, uae and other countries that arent democracy. They are using tech tools to reimpose control and in very, you know, repressive ways they try to squelch and debate and thats bad. I dont see right now the u. S. With any meaningful serious role in the case of iran and i hope he disagrees with me at this point. I think theres so much wrong about the nonpolicy of donald trump and who knows what he just said at 11 00 oclock, at the top, but when the protests started again in iran early last year i think all we really saw was oped and rhetorical approach of this administration to talk about freedom of the iranian people but i didnt see any maybe there were different moves but no serious move to talk about how do we help iranians help themselves to protect themselves and and have sort of vpn, you are probably more adept in understanding the technology here but have the space for the people to communicate with each other in iran, those who arent in favor of the current regime. Again, talking about militaryled regime change tools of engagement with societies and we dont talk about that because of the nature how bad the government is and our debate because you cant raise it. I think if we move to a more functional space, less dysfunctional, it would be interesting to talk about how you can use tools. Back to michaels point, diplomats shouldnt be behind walls. Guess what, none of us have to be behind walls because after the panel i can connect with somebody in iran or saudi arabia or palestine and have that conversation, but i dont see the tools being used in diplomacy very well right now. A few other ways to look at this. When it comes to dime model that every strategy should have military and economic component, the United States traditionally hasnt done the eye in the i mod el. Through truth you build credibility. The drawback to that is truth is determining what the truth is slow at which point after 3 or 4 days the new cycle has moved on. I talked to people involved in information strategies who in the u. S. Government who say were so afraid of doing anything wrong that we end up doing nothing right especially on the military side of this. That said, one of the and the base of counterinsurgency is to win hearts and minds. The iranian influence operation strategy has been to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Theres one case in 2007 in which one of the iranian moderate newspapers which is a website affiliated which the goal to convert afghanistan to christiany. Okay, absolute nonsense but then theres contractor out in indiana who put biblical citation numbers on a sniper scope and this gets picked up in local media and next thing you know its in al jazeera. Maybe theres something there and its just enough to get in the way of our strategy. Now going more to what brian said, i had a conversation early on in the Trump Administration with someone who was a very highlevel official and basically said, look, in the middle east when i talk to people in the middle east including principals, prime ministers im using whatsapp or if its turkey im using signal. If its iran im using telegram and if we are still picking up the phone and calling people, its like dealing with 20th century solution to a 21st century problem and so that ultimately goes into the practice of diplomacy which i think is hard to change. This has been a very much discussion and im sure that we could go on for probably another hour. We have to leave it there, though, thanks to our speakers, michael, brian, kadir. Thank you for coming. Okay. [applause] [inaudible conversations] television has changed since c pan began 40 years ago but our Mission Continues to provide unfiltered view of government. We brought you impeachment process and federal response to coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the the National Conversation to receive Daily Program or through social media feed. Cspan created by private industry, americas Cable Television company as the Public Service and brought to you today by television provider. Its my pleasure to introduce steve in scab today. Many of you know when. Is cohost of morning edition on npr. Its also the author of this great book on jessie and john fremont. How many people are here from fremont . We have a couple, great. I can v