Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Enterprise Institute Discussion On Authoritarian Governments 20240714

Corruption. Live coverage now on cspan3. I bear the distinct honor of introducing myself on the aai stage as the gene kirkpatrick fellow in foreign defense policy studies here. I hold four degrees in Political Science, one of them a ph. D. From the university of south carolina. This event is a discussion of my latest report called dismantling the authoritarian corruption nexus, which is now available for download on the aei website. Read it, share it, let me know what you think. For followup see my aei scholar page or find me on twitter at clay r fuller. The American Enterprise institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit educational organization. The institute takes no institutional positions on any issues and the views expressed in this report are mine and mine alone. Im going to make some brief comments on the report. Then we are going to invite our distinguished guests to the stage. I will give them an introduction and i will sit with them and we will chat about this topic until about 4 00 and then well take questions from the audience and then we will dismiss right promptly at 4 30. So what is this all about . I am a political scientist. This meaning that i study and explain how the political world works. Its not my jo be to offer my opinions. Its my job to explain how things work. So my work here stems from actual personal frustration, letting you know my opinions. I have been frustrated with being able to predict terrible outcomes in the worlds authoritarian regimes. Looking afternoo looking around, seeing terrible things that are going to happen, knowing they are going to happen, and frustrated by the fact that i am unable to do anything about it in my personal capacity. What are these things . Authoritarian regimes are involved in every single war. They are among the worst human rights abusers around the world. Authoritarian regimes tend to end just as violently or suddenly as they begin. And they are generally horrific in how they deal with individual people and individual rights all around the world. In authoritarian regimes around the world corruption is a feature, not a bug. And all of this, wars, corruption, by the way, is terrible for markets anywhere. However, we have to recognize and know that authoritarian regimes around the world are sovereign states, but they are now interconnected with our markets and our politics in any number of ways that are quickly expanding, changing, and deepening. And so what this means is that it presents our policymakers with a core challenge. How are you going to go about addressing authoritarian regimes and authoritarian corruption without sacrificing our own values . Without harming our own interests as free societies or without harming our own capitalist markets . How are we going to do this . This is the core challenge. We should not shy away from using our military and economic power to defend our friends and ourselves and advance our own interests. This deepening and expanding of integration with authoritarian regimes means that these traditional methods of dealing with National Security threats such as military interventions and sanctions that tend to treat authoritarian states as unitary isolated actors are going to become less and less and less successful over time. On the converse side of that, liberal International Institutions such as the World Trade Organization or the United Nations that tend to depend upon the dreams or the hopes of people for better action are going to continue to fall prey to illiberal actors around the world looking to influence then and pebend them to their own wi. Essentially, what im saying is that liberty needs a strategy. Democracy needs a strategy. The rule of law needs a strategy. America, especially, needs a strategy for navigating the postcold war era of authoritarian regimes. To sum it up in a sentence, i would say we need to consolidate gains and liberty where it already exists and then lead by example. So con sal late gains where they exist and then lead by example. Now, you might say easier said than done, right . But it really is pretty simple. What i have done is created a handy new concept that can help explain why. The authoritarian corruption nexus. The authoritarian corruption nexus is the growing convergence of licit and illicit state and nonstate actor that launder the profits of illegal activity reinforcing the strength and r survival of authoritarian states and governments around the world. Thats kind of a big definition. So, in other words, authoritarian governments, they abuse their access to u. S. Markets to prolong their own rule at home and gain strength. And in the meantime what happens is that terrorist groups, International Terrorist groups, Transnational Criminal Organizations use these exact same methods and avenues to support and gain strength in their own activities. So the nexus is where we need to focus, but the problem is, is that it overlaps into free societies and free markets as well. So in the report what i to is i characterize modern Great Power Competition as not a clash of civilizations, but as a clash of governance systems. This is freedom versus toratore authoritarianism. The method which atoretarions seek to remain in office, thats the method they use to remain in office. Second, its the channel which they infect free economies and countries with greater amounts of corruption. So, to be clear about this, getting to the term kleptocracies, because i have written a bunch about this, all atore the authoritarian regimes in my view are a form of kleptocracy. Now, in foreign in defense questions, all of our enemies are authoritarian regimes. They are also kleptocracies, but not all authoritarian regimes are enemies. We have a lot of authoritarian regimes that were friendly with, and thats okay, but thats no reason to sympathy turn a blind eye to the corruption that exists in those countries, thats feeding this nexus. We need some adjustments. Some recalibrations, if you will. So the first aspect, before i get into the policy recommendations i put forward here, the first is that American Foreign policy in general needs to make a clearer distinction between the people that suffer under authoritarian corruption and the regimes and leaders that create those conditions for those people. In other words, china is not the enemy. The communist party is. Iran is not our enemy. The ayatollahs are. Russia and north korea are not our enemies. The putin and kim jong un regimes are. To better understand these threats in a strategic and, as i have said many times, nonviolent manner, domestically what we need to do is look in the mirror. What we need to do is deal with the abuse of anonymous Shell Company formation in the United States, number one. Second, i would say give the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network a clearer mission. What are they doing in the world . Who are the enemies . What are they trying to do . Third, we need to deal with Money Laundering in a better more systematic way in real estate. Thats outlined in the report. Fourth, clearly evaluate how the Global Network of Foreign Trade sfwloens around the world work. There are some 3,500, 4,000 zones around the world that we dont know much about how they work. They dont have a singular devin f kevin anything for them in ounds understanding how that works with trade fraud and issues related to this. Fifth, i would say reevaluate the role of the foreign agents registration act in fighting disinformation campaigns, which i go into in the report as well. And then, finally, give the private sector a greater role in anticorruption efforts worldwide. This could be done fairly simply by amending the foreign corrupt practices act to punish the fcpa to punish the demand side of bribery. Now looking internationally outside of the United States, what i think is that we need to formalize the group of seven. So the g7, which was the g 8 until we haphazardly kicked russia out in 2014. The g7 should be made as a formalized institution only for established democracies. Thats what it is now. Its not formal and doesnt have a charter. And in that charter for the g7 i think we need a clear mechanism for ascension to the charter to provide an attraction anth for others to get in the charter and also need to have a clearer method for expulsion, which is something that other International Institutions lack and were seeing problems with that across europe and other places. Lastly, i would say the Financial Action task force, which was created by the g7 in 1989, needs to find ways to refine its mutual evaluation reporting to look at how other countries are doing with antiMoney Laundering and step up to start focusing on tradebased Money Laundering. Its one of the least understood, most pervasive, worst elements of Money Laundering problems around the world that is right under yoour noses and we are not doing much about it. So, in conclusion, i would say the rule of law in democracy are roads with no set endpoint, and i would say its time to begin road improvements. And thats how we win this round of Great Power Competition. Thank you. And now id like it call my two distinguished panelists up. I will tell them, tell you all a little bit about them after they sit down and then we will sit down and have a discussion. So dr. Bruce is the julius silver professor of politics at new york university, a senior fellow as Stanfords Hoover Institution and a partner in selectors llc, a Consulting Firm that uses his gain theory investments to address government and business problems. A member of the American Academy of arts and sciences and on the council on foreign relations. A former guggenheim fellow and 2007 dmz peace prize. He is the author of 21 books, including the spoils of war, greed, power with alex smith, dictators handbookk, the prediction years game using the lodge irk of brazen selfinterests to see and shape the future and my favorite the logic of political survival with al ster smith, randall ciphererson and james monroe. He is author of 140 articles and numerous pieces in major newspapers and the subject of feature stories in the new york, the wall street journal, the economist, u. S. And news world report, independent, Financial Times and a two hour documentary about his political forecasting. He has a doctorate in Political Science from the university of michigan and doctorates from the university of grunnen general and the university of hyfa. Three doctorates. Welcome, doctor. Dr. Daniel twinge joined the International Republican institute as president in september 2017. He leads iris team of nearly 600 global experts to link people in governments, motivate people to engage in the political process and guide politicians and government officials to be responsive to citizens. Previously he served as counselor and director of the asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Before that dr. Twining served as a member of the u. S. Secretary of states policy planning staff as the Foreign Policy advisor to senator john mccain and as a staff member of the u. S. Trade representative. He has taught at Georgetown University and served as a military instructor associated with the naval postgraduate school. Also a columnist for Foreign Policy and served as an advisor to six president ial campaigns. Please join me in welcoming our guests. [ applause ] so welcome. Thank you. How did you like my little speech . I have been told i can be a little evangelical in how i talk. Apologies for that. Evangelical in pursuit of freedom is a good thing. Well start with that. I wanted to start by asking both of you, you have had advanced copies of the report and have had a chance to look them over. And im curious from your own personal perspective, we have two very different perspectives here on this, i want to see what you thought of it, what you think is your key takeaway, its strengths, its weaknesses. I thought you raised extremely important questions that are understudied, not discussed enough. You started your talk this afternoon with a list of problematic types of people, including autocrats and terrorists and drug dealers and so forth. And i thought you left somebody off the list that is fundamental to addressing the issues of corruption that you raise in your report, and that is we, the people. And the leaders that we elect. Mindful of the subtitle of the dictators handbook, bad policy is almost always good politics. Corruption is not an accident. Its not a consequence of bad people, but of bad institutions, as you indicate. Unfortunately, as you also indicate, democratic governments ex employed the opportunities that corruption provides not to enrich themselves in the corrupt sense, but rather to make deals with a kratz. Well give you money on foreign aid or a pass on corrupt activity and in exchange you give us policy concessions. So weve extracted east with israel from egypt in exchange we pay the money. We buy the peace. We want the pakistani government to pursue militants and we give them money to pursue militants. These are good things. So we face, as a people in addressing skrupgcorruption, a tough problem. We want those policies to be conceded to us, and the governments in power need to pay off their cronies to stay in power. The way they make these concessions to us is we give them the money to pay off the cronies. So we have a difficult decision to make in tackling corruption, which is a disaster for the people in the countries that are most victimized by it, as you note, and that tension is that we also have to address how do we satisfy our constituents at home on important policy areas without essentially bribing corrupt governments to do our bidding. So thats my concern. I think on the normative side i am in agreement with everything in the report. Its thoughtful. Its pretty precise. But we do have to address why we, the people, reward politicians for rewarding dictators thats something that we have been reluctant to d. Thats a fair point. Before i respond, ill give dan a chance to say what he thinks about the report. Okay. Im here because i like the report a lot. Congratulations. Thank you. You know, there are a lot of people out there in America Today who understand that we are in a Great Power Competition, who understand that the world is much more competitive and a adversarial than at any point since the end of the cold war, but they essentially think that the solution to that is the Defense Budget and building up American Military power. Of course, thats got to be a part of it, but thats part of it. Thortarions are using nonmilitary, nonkinetic instruments to corrupt, subvert, and assault open societies. By definition, you argue that there is an authoritarian corruption nexus because where there are lacks of checks and balances, where there is personalistic oneparty control over state resources, you do end up with gross abuses. All sorts of corrupt forms. But one key insight from your paper is that corruption in such a country does not stay in such a country. In fact, corruption is essentially laundered out of that country into the west. And so you argue, quite persuasively, that we have it in our capacity, it is in our wheelhouse to take on this issue of corrupt atore terian actors who are working to subvert, attack, weaken our leadership in the world and our own Democratic Practice at home. Clay, you point out very compellingly that we talk about these separate strands of threat against the United States and our way of life. As if they were separate things. Mass migration, conflict that produces failed states and pathologies, Great Power Competition, kpeters like russia, china, human trafficking. All of these syndromes, in fact, emanating from a similar cause, which is governance that is corrupt and kleptocratic, despot i can, et cetera. This takes different forms in a country that is poor and weak than in one that is strong and vigorous. Thinking about the difference between, say, libya and china. But in fact the glowback, the fallout moves to our shores. And so i like your argument that the solution to dismantning the authoritarian corruption nexus lie in democratic capitallism. Free people and free markets go together, and free People Living under durable reputable accountable institutions do not export their pathologies abroad in ways that threaten america, free people in well governed societies, governed by rule of law, credible institutions look after themselves quite well and all of the challenges to us emanating from cases where that is not true. You also argue that dependence on illicit Transnational Networks is the achilles heel of corrupt thortarions. Corrupt atore theirions rely on international nonstate actors to preserve wealth, to launder money, to educate their children, to park resources offshore of kbochbigoverning el. Ultimately, in a century that will prize technological innovation and human capital, which is the greatest resource of the 21st century, democracies, open societies should still have an advantage. A fundamental advantage, which is that our way of life is more attractive, our systems more competitive, we innovate, we care about people if the way that corrupt authoritarians do not but we need to safeguard our societies from these transnational entities. So i want to respond to what you said, and dan, and keep this conversation going. I tried to make it very clear, as clear as i could in the report, that i dont think that Democratic Capitalism or democracies dem arok sees are perfect. Corruption is a, you know, terribly difficult thing to conceptualize thing to measure. We are talking about it in an abstract way. But everybody talks about it in their own way. There tradebased Money Laundering. There is transactional bribery. There is grand corruption, all sorts of stuff to get at. I tried to make it clear that these groups of elites that will steal, rob, commit crimes in order to get the private goods that they need in order to keep remaining in power exist in all countries everywhere. Thats just a human trait. But in authoritarian regimes they are artificially culled and curated to a Smaller Group at the top. This makes is worse there. And then getting to what you said about us bribing off countries with foreign aid, i see that and i have read all your research on that and i love it, but i sort of think of it like peace in the middle east is a public good, right . So if you are bribing that off, thats actually that fits into the model for how a large Winning Coalition regime or democracy works. So i would assume that if this carries on into the future and we solve some of these problems, then there would be, you know, less need to do that. And i have worked some, and maybe you can respond to this with the transparency stuff that you worked on with rosendorf and the transparency index, looking at making information more credible. Is that a way that we could possibly build more capacity and weak he states to get more information out there . So more transparency in government compels governments to behave better and more publicity about the absence of transparency in many governments is, i think, a critical ingredient in educating, for example, the american public. We, the people, on what the difficulties are in some of the places that we deal with. So that they will then increase the priority that they have for seeing better governments overseas as opposed to concessions at home. So i do think thats part of the recipe of cure. I think another part of the recipe, to your comments, is the promotion of democracy, which we have never been good at, and have never been sincere in my opinion about doing adequately because autocrats are much more willing to be compliant on policy questions with what we want in exchange for money than are democrats who have to represent what their citizens want. But the fundamental, as i see it, the fundamental problem in corruption, which you alluded to, is despots depend on very few people to keep them in power. If you depend on very few people to keep new power, the easiest way to stay in power, the most efficient way to stay in power is to let those people steal and be corrupt as long as theyre loyal to you. So if we put more effort into making our commitments to dictators contingent on their meeting some benchmarks. You want help from us . Fine. First, you deliver more free speech. You deliver more free press. You deliver a more competitive system and well do more for you as opposed to were going to do more because you promised to do that. Well, i guess we have to give you more because you havent fulfilled the promise. You know, there is either a naivete or a strategic dissembling that goes on that is very troubling. For example, a few years ago, in fact we wrote on this, at the time Hillary Clinton spoke about how great it was that myanmar was becoming a democracy. We said, oh, slow down. I remember that. Autocrats have an incentive to act as reformers for the first two years in power as they learn where the money is because in those first two years they are at more risk of being overthrown as autocrats than as democrats. After those first two years the survival prospects of democrats are tarnl and the survival prospects of petty dictators are excellent. So that first twoyear window is the opportunity to lock them into the kinds of reforms that you were talking about. And we dont exploit that enough. I think thats a great point. Speaking of fair trade practices or fairness in markets, dan, i know the iri just recently put out a new report on chinese maligned influence. I wanted to ask you what thats all about. Give us a summary of how that relates possibly to what im talking about and what were talking about here. Then i wanted to ask you guys both about china. Whats going i mean, i said in my comments that china is not the enemy. The Chinese Communist party is the enemy, meaning that they are the ones doing everything. Like i wrote a blog recently talking about how billions of people out of poverty, right. That wasnt the communist party that did that. That was the Chinese People that did that. The communist party just allowed them to do it, to do it for themselves. But so the question is, what i worry about with china is domestic stability. Whats going to happen . So when the ussr collapsed seemingly out of nowhere some people predicted it, but seemingly out of nowhere, it didnt harm us much because we didnt trade with them. If that happens in china today my worry is that is a massive risk that we are wholly unprepared for if there is domestic instability there. And we tend to treat it as its a monolithic going to last forever, but we did the same thing with the ussr. So, you know, im curious where you guys fall on the china question. Okay. So just two quick points about china. One is that chinas developmental quoteunquote miracle is singular in scale just because there are 1. 4 billion chinese. If you wanted to destroy an economy, the mall zo don playbook is a good one to follow. Chinas experience was replicated in an earlier era by japan by south korea, by taiwan, the asian tigers, right. China is the new asian tiger. What is happening is so big that its displacing Global Economic and Stephen Colbert balances. Small countries dont do that. Thats point one. There is a lot of talk, which i would love to pick up in the discussion, about china having a superior model. It has delivered a lot of growth and uplifting. It created a middle class, in some respects the Worlds Largest middle class, without political liberty, right. Hong kong, where two weekends ago 25 of the entire population was in the streets, 2 Million People in the streets protesting against an extradition law to mainland china. People in hong kong are as rich as in germany and france, yet they were still protesting the infrin infringe. Of their political expression. This argument of being chinese makes you not value democratic freedoms and anything anity is untrue. We have seen it in taiwan and china. They do not buy the tradeoff between the oneparty state and economic growth. On china had aand the world, am and europe are the Worlds Largest foreign investors. There is height in chinas economic expansion. That said there is a lot of chinese money waushing around different parts of asia, africa, the middle east, latin america. And its not new that there are Foreign Investment flows. Whats new is they are chinese. Whats new is the concept, the model is not led by the private sector. Its led by Stateowned Enterprises and private Chinese Companies using stateprovided forms of finance to expand because china is at capacity at home. A lot of these deals that china is doing, chinese interests are doing in different parts of the world, do have the effect whether intended or not of corrupting local politics. There are a lot of back room deals that are not transparent at all, that in fact are very opaque that involve tratdoffs of countrys sovereignty, which is often whiy they are opaque back door doors. If the people understood they were trading away a harbor, Stephen Colbert piece strategic piece of infrastructure, they might protest. You are seeing a reaction to this in many parts of the world now. In fact, of course, chinese money not going away. Its a phenomenon in the world we are living in. Our response this report begins our engagement on it, having strong and effective ip stugs to have Health Relationships with china because where countries dont have strong and effective and open political intuitions, accountability, anticorruption laws their politics are often subsumed by forms of chinese financial and other engagements. So helping countries have effective open societies and strong competitive politics is part of how they can protect their sovereignty in a world that is a wash in chinese investment. Thats great. I think its wonderful. I like that your work. I like that you point out that there is a lot of hype put on bri and other things. It is something for us to watch, but its the corruption aspect of it. Its the infecting corruption into other states, developing states and retarding their growth and their development in different ways. Bruce, you made a living off of predicting the future. So what is it you think about the future of domestic stability in china . Well, i have actually written on that, as it turns out. I did a book in 1996 called red flag over hong kong which was a bestseller in hong kong until july 2, 1997, when for some reason it could no longer be found. I think there is a significant probability that the chinese political system and the communist party will implode in about 15 or so years. China faces, in my view, a fundamental problem which they will solve in a fundamentally bad way. The problem that they face is that in order for the party to survive in the midtolate 70s they needed a new economic model. They brought duong somehow ping back from exile to implement that model for which he was sent into exile. That model was to liberalize the economy. This has created a tug of war in china. In the coastal provinces you have a lot of wealthy people. In the noncoastal providences, especially the northwest of the country, people have enjoyed no benefit from the economic reforms. They are now demonstrating. They want to participate. How do they get to participate in the reform . Well, the Chinese Government has to, if they want them to be a part of the economic miracle, they need to shift money to them. Where is that money to come from . By taxing more heavily the people in the coastal provinces who made the money. They dont want to be taxed more heavily to pay for people like the uighurs to become wealthier. The government is in a tug of war. The solution is political survival or economic survival by which i mean the party will put itself, put its political survival ahead of the economy and this will result in 15 or so years in either revolution or coup detat. There will be an implosion. That will be bad, obviously, World Economy for a while. The longer term effects will be good because china will be, i believe, a free society. With regard to people who naively believe that the chinese have a better economic model, id like to make a very two very simple observations. They are closely related. China is the second largest economy in the world today. I like to ask my students, what was the second largest economy in the world in 1890 . It was china by many measures. What did chinas economy do under various forms of government . Swung hugely. Dictatorships depend on the wisdom, for want of a better term, of their dispos fdespots. You might get lucky and you might have a li kwon yu who produces a good economy. Might have a mall say tone or mikitatu chef or kwon yingkuma who produces a disastrous economy. The difference in Economic Performance between economies is not the average rate of growth. Its the variation, the predictability in the average rate of growth. So democracies chug along steadily, occasional setbacks, growing. Autocrats do big swings. Big swings are long term bad for markets. They are bad for citizens. This is not a good model of economic development. Its a disastrous model. There is a lesson, in my view, back to the theme of your report, that we could take from xi jinping. Xi jinping has cracked down on the corruption of his political opponents. He has not cracked down on the corruption of his inner circle. He has no problem with his relatives being fabulously i have written about this, culling the circle, yeah. We could at least at a starting place satisfying our domestic constituents crack down more seriously on the corruption of governments that are in any event our adversaries are not helping us to be more secure, are not helping us to be more prosperous, are not jeopardizing our freedom. There is no shortage of corruption in the iranian regime. Exactly. Go after those folks who create problems for our citizens and for free people as a starting place. Saudi arabias a pretty badly behaved government, a very corrupt government, but it is a friendly government. Russia is a pretty corrupt government. Its not a friendly government. Its not doing anything to advance freedom in the world. We should be doing more to target the leaders and their cronies as you do with his opponents, target our opponents. But does that sacrifice our values as no, it advances our values because we have no need to do business with those folks. And we should do more than just Pay Lip Service to their problem. We hoo make life difficult for them. Not for the people, because you have it exactly right. Russia is not our adversary. The putin government is. China is in the our adversary. Xi jinpings government is. And the north Korean People im sure auwould love to be free an prosperous. Kim jong un is not so worried about how they are doing as he is worried about how he is doing. Instead of kowtowing to him, we should be tough on him. We should cut off his access to international banking. We should make it in the interest of others, others in powerful position in north korea, to ask themselves, are we down the right path . So i think this is where i came up with the nexus aspect of it because i think we have been trying really hard for a long time to cut north korea off from banking access or from trading access and we have been trying with sanctions to cut iran off. And so whats happening is they find ways to connect. China keeps trading with north korea. China is still trading with iran. They are still moving goods all around the world and they are doing it by relying on these product agnostic Transnational Criminal Organizations who are increasingly contracting with terrorist organizations with nonstate actors that can move across state borders and use technology in new ways to get around it. I have come to the conclusion that weve been trying to target them and they when we talk about corruption, there is always this, its like squeezing a bag of sand or a balloon, right . You try to clamp down on bad behavior and it squeezes out in all sorts of other directions. Thats what caused me to fall back on this leadership idea that we should strengthen our position at home, are more transparent at home and clear about what it is we are doing and leave the rest of the world to be a able to compress down on this balloon of authoritarian corruption as, you know, Free Democratic capitalist states around the world. Can i react to that . Sure. I think you lay out an excellent tondown u. S. Led strategy for how to tackle this problem. There is a bottomup strategy for which to tackle this problem and its based on the fact that people everywhere hate crooks who take Political Office and steal public funds. It actually doesnt have a lot to do with the United States. People in iran hate it, that moolas all run these side businesses that make them lots of money. People in russia hate it that Vladimir Putin owns the fanciest real estate in russia even though his salary is modest, he is worth billions, with a b dollars. I think its estimated 160 billion. Yes. Personal net worth. Having an american conversation, which is appropriate, sitting washington. There is a conversation to be had about how we can support good people inual of these societies who are actually more angry because its their money. They are living in clet row racratic authoritarian states. They are poor while their leaders are rich. One way to figure out what kind of country you are dealing with is decide if taking Political Office makes you rich. The key to power often, the key to wealth is political power. What can we do about that in a bottom up way. I would like to Say Something abo ri. We work in almost 90 countries around the world with civil society, Political Party, other leaders to try to level the Playing Field for good Democratic Practice. We think that actually is an american interest. I would distinguish between closed societies and open societies. Closed societies, absolutely very difficult to access and operate. But one can work with insiders to map clkleptocratic networks figure out who is making money how through Political Office. One can empower investigative journalists to do data digging and to expose what is going on. And civic activists in these countries can shine a spotlight and organize around these abuses. For instance, nevalni has done in russia, right, to spotlight the kleptocracy of the putin regime. Thats kind of a closed thats what happens in closed society. In open, competitive societies that are still transitioning really i think its all about balancing executive power and creating Strong Political competition and having effective institutions. And so where Political Parties can compete in politics based on ideas, not personalities, you can better constrain selfinterested behavior. In theory, politics are running on a platform to deliver for citizens rather than running for office for personal game. To check executive power to prevent the worst forms of executive corruption, one can strengthen the legislature, the parliament, the judiciary, right. The legislative branch and the Judicial Branch are going to be the most effective intergovernmental checks on abuse of executive Authority Just like they are in the United States. And, three, really investing in open and responsive local governance which is not what about politicians are doing in the capital but the local government level. Thats where citizens connect with governments most directly and thats where instilling a democratic culture in the citizens, even if its holding their city council accountable for that little puny city budget, thats that is a way to address the issues in a bottomup way. And again people in all of these countries care about these issues even more than we do. We are living in a rich developed society governed by law and institutions. Many people are not. And they are looking for ways to organize so that he this can influence exactly the kind of things you are talking about in your report. I am going to take this opportunity to explain sort of my take on this. I think you are doing the lords work. I think its wonderful. But . And its great. Let me just keep complementing you until i come with the perceived insult, but its not an insult. Anyways, looking at how the networks and our whole democracy promotion i have been thinking about this a lot since i have been out in d. C. And looking at how it works. And i think there is been so i want to ask the election side of it, party building, legislature side of it. In the authoritarian Political Institutions literature less than ten years ago a book was written that said authoritarian governments have legislatures, too, we should count those. And we started doing that. Then a book or voting in authoritarian regimes and ive been talking to people a lot, like, trying to show north korea holds elections, every five years, they hold they hold an election and we have this, but theres not the Party Competition so that stuff is all very important but those are the closed societies that we cant get into. So the ones that youre actually building capacity in, its thats great. But im thinking about ways to reach into those other ones. To the closed ones. Right . Im thinking about the role that markets play in democracy promotion. I i think weve sort of moved away from that in that whole area, so i wanted to sort of get your take on what should we be doing and this is why in the report, you know, i wanted to put in there, you know, triple budget, but i didnt. I went with amend the foreign corrupt practices act to give the private sector a greater role in anticorruption efforts. Because while iri and ndi and others are blocked from participating in deeply authoritarian countries or not invited to or limited in how they can, the private sector is there. Those are their markets. Were all integrated. Right . If we can incentivize a greater role for the private sector actually promoting greater parties, free and fairer elections, better, cleaner governance, transparency measures, is that an avenue that could be explored or is it being explored . Theres an obvious selfinterest for American Companies in operating in rule of law societies where their Property Rights are protected, where theres dispute settlement in courts, if theres a commercial dispute, et cetera. Companies, international, western, japanese, other democratic companies are taking inordinate political risks operating in a closed society. Of course, many oilrich economies, for instance. Going to be a high reward for high risk, but, right. Yes. So theres a broad interest, i mean, i think were having kind of a washington conversation about good Public Policy, but i think if you were in an investment lounge in new york or Silicon Valley and were a group of corporate titans, maybe some of you are, you would say, look, you will make more money in an open society that is prosperous and democratic and has rule of law. You may make a lot of money in a very short time in a corrupt autocratic society, but at any time, that government can come in and seize your assets. Right . Or steal your intellectual Property Rights as has happened in china to the tune of literally trillions of American Business dollars. And so you were assuming inordinate political risk. I think my question for you is, will Companies Operating in more authoritarian regimes, western companies, actually put their Business Practices at risk . Their shortterm profits at risk. By advocating for things like greater rule of law and greater electoral transparency and accountability and that sort of thing. Thats a good question. Maybe bruce has something to say about it. I do. I also have something to say about competitive legislatures because theyre more complicated than weve made them out to be. So i think its correct for many large corporations doing business in lots of countries, they wold like open, free, societies. Its also true that if they sacrifice business to try to promote open, free societies, they get squeezed out by chinese firms, other firms, that dont care about that. So its a its a problematic dynamic because while in the long run its clearly in their interest, every longrun decision is a set of small shortterm decisions, and we keep our jobs or lose our jobs moment to moment. Not in ten years. So we have to make all these shortterm decisions that we hope will be long term. With regard to competitive legislatures, a little bit complicated maybe, but it is in the interest of an autocrat, a dictator, to have either factions within his or her one Political Party or to have competing parties. The reason its in the dictators interest is you want the people who are helping to keep you in power to work hard for you, but if theres nobody else who might get rewarded instead of them, then theyll free ride. So its in the interest of the dictator to have factions or seeming competitors so they can say, well, you want the rewards or you want the rewards, whos going to work harder . You also want to know whos against you so you can and we can see this even in some normally described as democratic societies. I did a study a number of years ago on why World Bank Aid to tanzania didnt have more of an impact. Tanzania is a multiparty system in which one party, the ccm, wins about 90 something percent of the vote, wins almost all the seats but they preserve a competitive system. Theyre all judged to have free and fair elections. They are free and they are fair in the sense that the votes are fairly counted. People can vote for multiple candidates. But they have structured the system so that the opposition is severely divided. The average constituency, at least when i did the study from parliament, had ten Political Parties competing. A westminstertime system as in britain where you expect two parties because if you come in third, you get nothing. If youre coming in second, you get nothing. You have to win. The third party has an interest in backing the second party to get something. But the government had promoted this, so the promoted ten parties per, essentially, per constituency, so that they could win on average with under 10 of the vote. They got much more because people bandwagoned saying they were going to win. So we have to look at not just whether there are competitive legislatu legislatures but what the institutional structure is behind them. Its a much more subtle phenomenon than just the existence of multiple parties. Russia has multiple parties. Im not worried about putin not winning the next election. I am very confident that he will win. More importantly, i am confident that he has no doubt that he how is he going to change the constitution first . So that is that is the difficulty. I go back to the observation i made earlier. The great moment of opportunity for converting an autocrat into a democrat, well, there are two opportunities. One opportunity is when that person is newly in office. So they have a better chance of making it through the first couple years by emulating a democrat. We could lock them in by providing rewards for their creating the things that locked them into a democratic government. Free speech, free press, freedom of assembly. Necessarily means theyll get kicked out by free elections they may. Although, we have examples where that didnt happen. J. J. Rollings when we bankrupted ghana converted the country into a democratic society. Ran and won. Yeah. Because he was then doing a good job. That twoyear window is one where we dont exploit. That we should exploit. Raul castro is very old. Yes, i know, they have a new guy. Hes decoration. We could make a real difference there. The other is when a leader is believed to be very sick, when a leader is believed to be very sick, the leaders cronies can no longer count on that leader to keep paying them because you cant pay beyond the grave. So when a leader is sick, they have a natural incentive to liberalize so they dont face revolution. Right. We could step in at those moments. We monitor health of leaders. We could help to turn those countries into a better direction. A less corrupt direction. And i add to the list of sickness, very old age because old age is a terminal illness. You know, Robert Mugabe has been forced out of power at 95. We have not similar thing in algeria. We have not exploited yes, exactly. We have not exploited that opportunity to influence and transform the government to have genuinely competitive politics. We have sat on the yeah. Sideline and simply watched. Thats a terrible policy mistake. Right. Can i say a couple sure. Then i want to move to discussion. Just a quick point about elections. Of course, we understand when a country has a fake election, what its all about. This happens in places like central asia and russia, in particular. I didnt mean to but there is also an interesting phenomenon where the leader of a oneparty state gets overconfident because he lives in an information vacuum where all of his cordiers tell him hes hugely popular, he or she, with the people. And youve seen two examples of that really within the past year. Actually, more, but just to give two examples, one is in malaysia, which had a oneparty system for over six decades, and there was a nexus, there was an authoritarian corruption nexus between the ruling party that ruled for over six decades and kind of business elites, et cetera. The former ruling party had so gerrymandered the system that any, quote, election, was almost bound to favor it. Somehow an Opposition Coalition got together, worked very hard, organized and won that election. And the first one of the first acts of the new government was actually to freeze chinese Infrastructure Projects and they opened the books and discovered extraordinary forms of corrupt practi practices, powered not just by china but also saudi arabia and other foreign actors. So thats one example. Another example is the maldives, a small country, but very strategic, given it sits on those Indian Ocean Sea lanes that are the Energy Superhighway of the world. A dictator there who had won in an election and then basically eviscerated democratic institutions, Democratic Practice, decided to hold an election last september. 90 of people voted and they voted him out and they voted him out so resoundingly there was sort of no way out, others move in to make sure he didnt step down, others within the armed forces and the society, to observe that election outcome. And this new government, always very troubled, these new governments that take power and have to dig out of various corrupt dealings by their predecessors. But the new government has a very different look. So, just two examples of where elections have consequences even in oneparty systems and the one i would look for next that really could be quite consequential is venezuela. Maduro knows if venezuela had anything like a free and open election, he and his cronies would be long gone, right . I think the fear of many observers is that maduro will be forced into a negotiation where his out is to hold an election, but as long as he sits in power and holds the rein skrs in that direction period, theyll tilt the Playing Field and steal that election because he cannot afford to have a free election. So in venezuela, i think the u. S. Government unofficial position as i deduce is that should venezuela announce a move toward elections to resolve this terrible stalemate thats produced more refugees than syria in the absence of war over 4 million now. That you would need some kind of Transitional Government where maduro was not in charge, some kind of technical process to oversee that election. So that it actually reflected the will of the people because otherwise, crooks will steal that election. Right. So i wrote about that with untangling venezuelas authoritarian web and we have the cover of the report is actually taken from the hyperinflation that comes out of the corruptness of authoritarian rule. So were going to begin transitioning to questions from the audience. I have i have two general questions im going to ask the two panelists while you think of your questions. Make sure you formulate your statement in the form a question and make it brief and be prepared to state your name. But before we do that, if we can get the microphones ready for that, i want to ask the two panelists two more brief questions. In the report, i make the claim that ideology is not as important today as it was during the cold war. Essentially, we dont have these big ism fights and authoritar n authoritarianisms are dispersed and not connected. Do you agree with that . How would you reach approach that . So i partially agree with it. If i may borrow from carl marx, ideology is the opiate of the masses. I dont think ideology was important in the soviet period. I think it was decoration i thought you would say that. To give people an organizing principle. What was important was coming to power and staying in powe ee ee however you could. That was true when zersies was around and that is true today and everywhere in between, so i think youre right its not important today. Never was important. Great. So i think in your report you say its not an ideological contest to say contest of systems. Youre not saying theres not a contest. Youre actually saying its not driven primarily by institutional governance. Right. And so, yes, and i accept that. Theres a contest of systems. Again, i think americans have gotten unused to the idea of a contest of systems because unless you were coming of age and very engaged during the cold war, you have lived through a 30year period in which essentially there hasnt been a contest of systems. Right . Were back to that. Now, i still think we hold inordinate advantages, we in the free world. We know where people, hightech taleatalent wants to immigrate. They dont want to move to russia or iran. We know that the greatest source of human ingenuity is the innovative forces that are unleashed in a free and open society so we have many advantages but leaders, corrupt authoritarian leaders, in great power competitors, are waging their own campaign and its very interesting because we used to have these debates about do these do the leaders of russia and china actually realize, do they think they are competing . Do they think theres a contest of systems . In different ways both xi jinping and Vladimir Putin in the past few years said that. Even if americans want to have kind of an objective valueneutral conversation about geopolitics and Great Power Competition, the leaders of russia and china are actually positing a contest of systems and saying democracy is in decay, it does not perform, itd its full of populists, whatever you will. Right . They are making a claim that their systems in different wayses are superior so lets test that proposition. Yeah. I think standing up to it will make it fall down but that leads perfectly into my second question which has to do with the democratic decline, authoritarian resurgence, narrative, thesis, whats going on. Ive written a few things on this looking at it, looking at the data, how this comes together and whether, you know, if democracy is really in declize decline around the world or if authoritarianism is really resurgent. I tend to be kind of skeptical just from the view that i look at. But part of writing this report came out of my concern that a lot of scholars that i look up to, historians, people of great prominence, are very worried about democracy around the world and very concerned about it and that concerns me that they are concerned. And so part of writing this report was to sort of give a little oomph back to, you know, the faith and Democratic Capitalism and how freedom and free markets work so we can, you know, sort of change that narrative. But, so im curious what you guys think about where democracy is. Is it in a death spiral or are we on the way back, or, you know, how how do you view this . The way i think about it, its not in a death spiral. Its in a setback. And it will oscillate back and forth. Theres something simple to understand that tells us about that cycle. That is, the difference in the institutional interests of leaders, ordinary citizens, and the disenfranchised, and the cronies who keep a leader or a coalition that keeps a leader in power. The interest of leaders is to have as autocratic a government that depends on as few people as possible. Those are the leaders who survive in power the longest and enrich themselves the most. Its great to be a dictator if youre the dictator. For citizens, their interests are best served by democratic governments that depend on a lot of people because then its too expensive too bribe people. You produce good Public Policy. And for the members of the Winning Coalition, so to speak, the people a leader needs to keep them in power, theirs are the interest that will tidictat that isolation. Their interests look like the nike swoosh. Their welfare is high when the coalition is small. It drops as the Coalition Gets bigger. As the Coalition Continues to get bigger, it rises and it passes this high point. So inside this bowl, you have revolutions. You have coups. You have instability. You have poverty and misery. If you cross this line, you cannot improve the welfare of your insiders except by becoming more accountable, more transparent, and have a more democratic government. Inside here, you can. So when theres a coup, for example, coup makers like to increase the ratio of how many people a leader needs to keep them in power to how many people thats drawn from. There are two ways to do that. Disenfranchise a lot of people and push this way or infranchise a lot of people and move this way. When they move this way, you get liberalization and you eventually get democratization. Thats the oscillation. That oscillation doesnt end always in democracy but it certainly doesnt win always in a autocracy and leans in favor of democracy. Thats a good point. I have a couple quick pieces to this. One is that people power doesnt move. Its in motion in the world, in hong kong, in venezuela, in sudan, in algeria. Youve seen this people are voting with their feet including in the arab world for Democratic Political opening and Democratic Political change. Right . Whatever we and our western malaise are talking about, theyre not really listening. They want greater rights and dignity and opportunity. Thats one part of the answer. The same things we want. Too, this would be an interesting debate, i actually think dictators live in great fear and insecurity, so maduro has cuban bodyguards. He does not trust venezuelans to protect his personal security in his own country. Think about it for a minute. He has foreign bodyguards. What does that say about him, right . China, today, has more people working in the internal Security Service than they do in their entire armed forces. China has the biggest armed forces in the world by number. There are more people in the Chinese Military than the military of any other country but there are more people than in the military protecting the regime from its own public. Right . So i can go on and on with these sort of examples but its worth reminding ourselves, we say, oh, gosh, congress isnt exercising its appropriate function or, oh, gosh, you know, europe is slookislook i look bing a little messy politically these days. There are different variation s of good and bad politics. Twitter. Yeah. Such and such happened on twitter. Okay. Thats a great point on the people power. Okay. So were going to go take a question here. And well go to you second. Right here in the blue shirt. Please state your name and the question. Hi, im chris orr. Im currently a policy analyst, contract, support the dod. Decade ago i was a customs and Border Protection analyst at Los Angeles Long Beach seaport, i gained plenty of firsthand familiarity with via my inspection of costco and China Shipping Company Cargo vessels with just how the chinese dictators abuse our openmarket system. Also, i got some familiarity with the finsen aspect that you, clay, talked about. My question is primarily directed toward daniel, though i certainly welcome inputs from bruce and clay on this as well. Since you mentioned how illicit Transnational Criminal Organizations are the achilles heel, as it were, for, you know, authoritarian regimes, going back to china, how big of role do the socalled triad gangs and the snake heads play in propping up the ccp and what more can we do to crack down on them and stomp on that proverbial achilles heel, so to speak . Thank you. Going to take another one . Want to take a couple . Sure. Take one right here. My name is sana. Im an economic student at dartmouth. Dr. Twining, i read your opinion piece on the Washington Post art russias meddling, and democratic assistance groups. So in the time that we live in with more like, more trends and sentiments about possible retreat from u. S. Hegemony and increasing realization that our foreign aid might not be as effective or development aid, what do you see broadly speaking as the role of the u. S. Government and different institutions in protecting democracy or addressing problems in the world when we see them, is it a moral dimension or political strategy . Thank you. You have a question over here . How about this gentleman right here with the blue shirt. Getting all the questions . Yes. Hi. Thank you. Colton. Im a law student, Liberty University school of law with International Christian concern. The u. S. Has many good tools of targeted sanctions such as global magnitsky and our narrative today, we talked about many, russia and china. Many of our strategic allies such as saudi arabia, growing extent, india, have deteriorating human rights records. How do we utilize targeted sanctions against individuals who may be part of strategic allies to the United States . I think well you want to go ahead and answer these . You want to start . Yes. All right. I dont know a whole lot about organized crime in china. I mean, it seems to me that when we think about really a malevolent chinese export now, the danger is this control society that has been built. This hightech control society in china that has been built using these orwellian tools that the chinese are using to control their own citizens, not just other autocracies. Im told belgrade, serbia, now has Something Like a thousand chinese cameras in its areas to do, quote unquote, investigations using facial technology, of course, those things could be used for other purposes as well. I think personally i worry a little less about kindicit acti china than we do about the strength of the Chinese State that allows these extraordinary forms of social control that are then exported to other countries. On the u. S. Role in supporting democracy in the world and the Development Budget, so my predecessor who ran iri is now running usaid, mark green. And, so he is in charge of this Extraordinary Development budget. I dont want to speak for him, but my impression is that im not sure were spending our u. S. Development budget, which is a tiny, tiny fraction, tiny, tiny, fraction of the broader u. S. Budget. Tiny. Its very tiny, but its meaningful in the world. That were spending it in all the right ways. I think the way you make the case to the American People about the Development Budget and supporting democracy and other good causes, is that, a, its the right thing to do. We had our founding principles in our country and want to help other people enjoy the same rights and freedoms that we do just as we got help from abroad when we established our own constitutional republic. Thats one. And then, two, its much less expensive, its much cheaper, to help build decent societies than it is to try to inoculate ourself against the violent spillover when those societies go haywire. So to give an example that we havent talked about much, central America Today, i mean, were having a great debate. We do have an Immigration Crisis on our southern border. We have a whole lot of people coming out of broken gangster societies in central and south america. Including venezuela. Flocking to our shores and were having a debate about preventative measures to protect the border. In fact, i would argue that addressing the problem at the source through some rule of law and decent governance and Human Security would be much more cost effective. This someone of the things ive brought up in the report. Foreign trade zones. Theyre called free trade zones in central mark. These people have jobs doing illicit, legal things, theyre not going to emigrate, theyre not going to be committing crimes. If they have an incent toif make a profit that legal way. Furthermore, with the chinese ones, make it within the governments own interest to take care of them themselves. It already is, right . China, look at fentanyl. Most of the fentanyl is responsible for 76,000 american deaths in 2016 was manufactured in china, smuggled out of the country into mexico or other places and or mailed through the u. P. S. System. There are gangs making money off it. Theyre making money its all about the profit motive. If youre concerned about these gangs and what theyre doing, its about the profit motive. Same with immigrants. Same with development. Theyre seeking theyre just like everybody theyre just like all of us. They want to make a profit. Some people are more risking a s acceptant. Give them opportunities to do what they want to do for a legal buck, theyll do it. I dont want to lose sight how much our political interests dictate how foreign money is used, if were interested in promoting democracy. It is true that foreign aid is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of money, but when you consider that most foreign aid goes to dictators and not to benefit the people in their countries. William easterly, my colleague at nyu, and economist at the world bank, has demonstrated this aptly. We have to understand that its a tremendous amount of money when its going to a small group of people in each of the recipient countries thats being divided over a very small pool. I hope im remembering the statistic correctly. I believe it is the case its one of my papers a 1 increase over average per capita foreign aid increases the survival prospects of an autocrat by 32 per year. That is they have a onethird better chance of being in Office Next Year than they would have had without that small increment over average foreign aid. Thats what foreign aid is buying, and they are giving us policies we want in exchange for that money. So its not so easy to translate foreign aid into a democracy promotion tool when the sad reality is that if you ask the question four questions, who gives aid, how much do they give, who gets aid and how much do they get, the answer is that its an equilibrium. It is not the case that we and other countries, european countries, oecd countries, are giving foreign aid to dictators not realizing that theyre going to steal the money. We understand that theyre going to steal the money. That is the implicit deal. You get the money, we get the policies. We want. If we ignore that, were going to be in the Wishful Thinking world and get it young. So, bruce, i thought about this a whole lot. Ill get to the global magnitsky question. I proposed before that one way to do this will get measurable results. Right . Theres conditionality, but theres political obstacles to that. I proposed that you could spend that money on National Statistics offices in countries in order to get better information that then you could measure which would tend to have so, many years ago now, we had the millennium challenge grant. Yeah. Yeah. The millennium challenge grant was designed to reward countries that have better human rights and better democratic governance principles. And for the first several years of the millennium challenge grant, we spent Something Like 3 of it because the folks in the state department who were charged with this problem at usaid and at policy planning could not agree on quantified standards for measuring human rights and governance because it meant denying money to governments that were doing things we wanted. It wasnt because they dont know how to do it. Not because there arent measures out there in the literature. Its because it ran into exactly this. Well have another panel on that very soon. Getting to what you do a couple more questions in a second but for using magnitsky sanctions against people, of course, with friendly authoritarian states, thats always going to be a diplomatic challenge and a problem, but with authoritarian ones, it shouldnt be that big of a problem. Iran, for example, bought a skyscraper that outlined in the report downtown downtown new york. It took doj Something Like seven or eight years to investigate to find out who owned it to go through it because of these Shell Companies. Thats why i come back to the anonymity of Shell Companies and dealing with transparency in that era. So there should be a way for when we do make that bold step of sanctioning a human rights abuser, especially one thats an adversary that might threaten National Security of the United States, we should have a way to find out what it is that they own. Theres a Government Accountability report from 2017 where they went through and found over a thousand highsecurity leases that we couldnt figure out who owned them. So the implication out of that is that the gsa is renting fbi and hsa buildings to our agencies that are investigating china or russia that might be owned by people in china or russia, but we dont know. And thats sort of a problem, i would think. If i could just since the two countries you gave as examples were saudi arabia and india, and in another life, i was an indianist, let me just observe that lumping those two together seems to me wholly inappropriate. India has one of the worlds better human rights records. India is not an autocratic state. India is a competitive democracy. It has been a competitive democracy at least since 1967 when the Congress Party faced its first real threats to power. And one could argue that it was a democratic country much earlier than that from its beginning. You may not like some of the policies that the Indian Government adopts, and this goes exactly to the point im making with regard to aid and bribing dicta dictators. One of the reasons that democratic countries, despite their rhetoric, in fact, in their behavior, seem reluctant to promote democracy, is that the people in another country may elect a government whose policies people hear or in britain or in france or wherever, dont like. The nature of democracy is that the people who get elected in a democracy must do what their constituents want, not what our constituents want. So when we give aid to democracies, we have to give them more money to get smaller policy concessions because they have to charge more so that they can reward their constituents in other way s. So saudi arabia is an entirely different pick cur from eture f. Saudi arabia does not have a competitive government. Saudi arabia is doing what the king and the royal family want. The Indian Government is doing what their voters want. Which may to the be what we want, but its what their voters want. We have time for a few more questions. Lets take this one. Blue shirt here. This one with the tie here. Im john deblazio and i run a Development Firm focused on u skr said with our main government being the client of transition initiatives. So the question is really within the usaid development and within the state department and drl and other organizations that are focused on helping transition to democracy, how are we doing . These organizations have come a long way, particularly oti which was found in the late 90s or mid 90s to help Eastern European governments move from autocracy to democracy and they arguably had a great influence on the democracy wave that occurred. Thats the question. I just would add as a comment, bruce, i read your book. I loved it. I read both of them. And the chapter that i reflected on which i felt was weakest was the chapter on the influence of foreign aid because i think it broadens the category of foreign aid such that the correlation is very hard to tell. So i just well have another panel on that one. But the question goes back to the policy changes that weve made as a government instituting assistance programs to assist with transition, how are we doing and how can we improve them . Let me observe with regard to the book that there are technical papers for all the evidence is very sharp. I think usaid is a Great Organization. I spoke there a few years ago about it being a Great Organization with great people who are really well intentioned. How well are you doing . Soso. Why why is that . So there are several reasons, as you will know better than i do. The department of defense often will raise the concern, security, when you want to do something that they dont like. More importantly, very few governments are transformed through aid or through any sort of foreign diplomatic or economic effort. Governments are transformed overwhelmingly into democracies from within. Not from outside. So you can help, but youre never going to be having a huge impact. You know, we we see, as youve mentioned, the world has backslid on democracy. Your efforts havent backslid. Its just the leaders like dictatorships. And so finding a way to get the peoples will to dominate is very tough without their doing it themselves. We have one more question here. And well take one in the back. Ill start here with the red tie. Okay. Yeah. Hi. My name is daniel martino. Im interning here in d. C. Im from venezuela, so i have a vested interest in this, right . So a big reason the government survives is because of the help of other authoritarian governments and i completely agree with the report, clay, with all your recommendations here, but how can democracies stop cooperation between state actors . Things like russia loading venezuela, oil in their International Waters so they can avoid u. S. Sanctions and other things. Uganda with gold. Things like that. Im sorry, we have 15 seconds left to answer that. So who who wants to take it . Can i just i wanted to follow up. You actually preempted me. On your point about kind of the limited value or the limited role of foreign assistance. The world has changed so much. So iri has been in business for 35 years and certainly, after the fall of the wall in 1989, the Playing Field was open for the west, broadly, to go in and try to help democratic societies, often new ones, stand on their own two feet, right . And then there was a big debate in the west about should we engage, should we, quote, intervene, including in the civilian sense, not just the military sense, or should we not . That world is gone. Everywhere i go in the world, i bump into russian interests and chinese interests and iranian interests and turkish interests and saudi interests and indian interests, right . That includes in after ric afri. Includes in latin america. You mentioned russia and venezuela. By one count, the number of countries, quote, intervening in venezuela, america is not on that list. I mean, the countries that are actively intervening on the ground in venezuela include cuba, russia, china, iran, right . And so i think this conversation about sort of how we use foreign assistance, how we are strategic in it, needs to reflect the fact that all these actors who have very different interests are actively engaged. This is the nexus. If we dont theres a question about how we intervene, right . In the civilian sense. Not the military sense. But if we say, well, were just going to stay home and let those societies solve their own problems, the russians and the chinese and the iranians might not let them solve their own problems and i think its just a different landscape. So i did a paper a few years ago on competitive aid giving, where theres more than one donor. Exactly this problem. The short story of that is there are two consequences when you have competitors for the outcomes that you want. You pay a higher price to get a lesser outcome. In the case of venezuela, in my view, too much focus has been placed on trying to raise a revolution, which is very risky and very difficult. What is needed in venezuela, in my view, is for the military leaders to conclude that they are better off not backing maduro than they are backing him. To me, the likely outcome in venezuela, if the cards are played right, is either a coup, and as i said, when you get coups, you can move more likely tilts in the more democratic direction, or for them to back the revolution. As long as theyre getting paid, essentially, by the russians, by the cubans, thats not going to happen. So we have to find a way to find a component, significant component, of the general staff that understands that their future is brighter without maduro. Yes. We have not been doing that. At least if we are, were not doing it publicly. Were out of time, everybody. Please join me in thanking our guests. Thank you. Everybody be safe. Stay dry. My shoes are still wet. Yeah, mine, too. There has been discussion about an appearance before congress. Any testimony from this office would no go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We those those words carefully and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before congress. Former special Counsel Robert Mueller is set to appear before two committees of congress on wednesday july 17th. At 9 00 a. M. Eastern, he gives testimony to the House Judiciary Committee and later in the day, hell take questions from the house intelligence committee. Both open sessions. Our coverage of Robert Muellers congressional testimony will be live on cspan3, online at cspan. Org, or listen with the free cspan radio app. The house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. , and around the country. So you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan. Your unfiltered view of government. California senator Kamala Harris was in iowa over fourth of july weekend. We were with her when she held a town hall in des moines. The democratic president ial candidate talked about health care, teacher pay, border security, and the situation in Detention Centers at the u. S. mexico border. [ cheers and applause ] Kamala Kamala kamala jean, youre amazing. Thank you so very much. Please, can we give it up for one of the great leaders of iowa and america. And you do, you wear so many