device room the infrastructure and systems of a modern economy. we hope in the polls divide a system, banking regulators, antimonopoly law. we have a legal experts coming over telling them how to do budget. we did things the we frankly can't even discuss for ourselves, pension reform, but that's something else. a balanced budget. on a see bill sitting here. he is responsible for economic support from the monrad and the middle east post transition. he's using some of the tools we pioneered in central europe enterprise funds dick is also sending here and made the point in the clinton administration that the stability in the country in the countries is going to depend on them getting the economy right. that was the first tool. the second tool was the strategic implications of the fall of the berlin wall and of the was the enlargement of the european union and nato which created the reality of the poll and helps stabilize these countries, stabilize the region in an unstable and uncertain time. that's where it succeeded where it failed former yugoslavia and other places is a different story. >> can we talk about that, we have both rwanda, 94, very different places and circumstances but i would like any of you to please address. i know that there has been a report on this fairly recently the was brought together on rwanda. >> let's talk about what we've developed as tools from this experience. number one, international tribunals. the possibility that you could localize responsibility and a few key leaders. and milosevic went to the tribunal we didn't end of occupying belgrade, and it shows that there are other ways to respond to international criminal abuses. the second is the notion of diplomacy backed by force leading to a negotiation which is what holbrooke brilliantly did in dayton and in the third is the concept of atrocities prevention, which madeleine albright and bill cohen and others did was to bring this forward the president has now signed a directive on the prevention board for exactly the kind of early warning. and then finally, democracy building as a longer-term antidote, the community of democracies and other kinds of devices. so, these were horrible the episodes but i think what it did is triggered structural change which is one of the hardest things to get in the human rights area. >> i agree with what herald said. i think that there's another factor here will probably is evolving that's evolved very fast and that international attention. in effect, rwanda was remote out of the way, not what tended to slow rolling in the public while it was rapidly filling in the disaster, so that i think all the things back. only a other hand, darfur had more press attention than it had peacekeeping capacity and add more early press attention which was complemented by a very elite deployment. so in fact, it wasn't a sovereign answer, what was a piece of the puzzle that was necessary but entirely insufficient to make the process go ahead. there is the rule of the international year york or the ability should do things alone. to some extent, particularly in the clinton administration after somalia we were highly gun shy over participation ourselves in peacekeeping endeavors that evolves particularly the notion that we might have to use force for both good and bad reasons. and i think in the and darfur showed that we paid a pretty high price for that. when i was maybe too much but much too late if i could put it that way in some ways. but you're right, the evolution of the tools are still out there. it's still working. i think that what we lack the most is what i would call for site and preventive measures. they require more courage and decisiveness and a good analysis and more ability to mobilize the and i think we currently at the international community have. it is i think in the paradigm the next direction to go because we are not cured. what is the curse in this century which harold put on the table very well the groups and ethnic violence that is now churning and will continue to churn. we have seen syria now -- >> i would like you to apply the tools you all been talking about. how do they apply today. look at the news this morning and in the past two weeks. a massacre after a massacre of children. we know the stories give it how to the tools apply? >> my sense is that we have not yet exhausted the tools short of the use of military force in part because the russians and the chinese have blocked it. in part because the secretary blatantly last week tried to turn that into responsibility and accountability on the part of the russians for a bigger share of the disaster, and i think that needs to be done. it's made the russians very uncomfortable. they rushed to damascus to days after the veto to see whether in fact they could put in a fix the would cover. they support the plan, and i don't know what he's going to provide for the additions he's talked about, but the need to go there. but i think one of the things we need to think about with or without the u.n. is whether something like a koren team can put more pressur we are now seeing in syria house-to-house, 121 killing of children and civilians that personalizes and makes it more clear the nature of the violation. the legal response, and tom frame one, the notion of a quarantine as opposed to a blockade was a legal concept developed in the cuban missile crisis and now being applied in various human-rights. but the concept began to arise in the post cold war period is the notion of responsibility to protect, which i think has three faces. when the country, whose citizens are being killed the government has abandoned its response to a buddy to protect who acquires a responsibility to act, this is quite a step beyond what had happened before, which was it's one thing to say what a country does and a government does with its own citizens is not just its own business. it's another thing to say that somebody else has the responsibility to act. and the frame of kosovo called for multilateral responses. the kosovo episodes remains a highly controversial one both as a matter of law and in many circles although most of us are participated and felt that it you had a security council resolution, the russians appear to feel they were burnt and made clear they are not going to do anything like that for syria can react according to the kosovo model. there were times during the bush administration where the united states felt that acting alone or with a coalition they're willing itself constituted a quorum and that was proven insufficient. it does need to as an organization itself constitute a quorum of international legitimacy? if nato decides to act by consensus and by invitation of a regional organization the arab league, someplace else, does that constitute an issue of international legitimacy? how much weight do you give to the chinese and russian security council veto? i am not here to suggest an answer. but the issue of international legitimacy for these kind of actions is an unsolved question and much debated. what we really have been happy if the consequences of not doing what we did in kosovo? we reversed ethnic cleansing. but. >> he's 100% right it's been a torturing problem. if you are a strict constructionist for the u.n. charter, then you are stuck with a veto, and in cases of genocide or actions that border on genocide is a curse we have never or if we ever had, never should have been in favor of not taking action in the security council to deal with cases of genocide. i don't see any plausible or politically viable effort to change. but we need to take our thinking a step beyond the notion that anybody that discusses the veto and has the unmitigated and total protector of the united states interest above everything else needs to take a look at this conundrum that dan has so beautifully set forward and that is now to be devah less. and we should use the post cold war period to see whether we could get a voting convention in the united nations that in the cases of a veto unless three people objected to the text of the resolution. i understood it at that time even though there may have been a pleading moment when we could have persuaded people to do something like that. but this is the case that we face because the charter itself kind of rules out regional organizations that don't have the approval of the security council. ar to he has not suggested another alternative and what we ought to begin to look at whether in fact there are international arrangements that we could arrive at where coalitions of the will then have some legitimacy in the international framework to deal with questions of genocide and other things whether it is a new treaty or set of arrangements it is a very hard course to run. but dan is right. i've been trouble with this for a long time. i've spoken about it, but we need to think about how to begin to deal with this because this is a big unsolved problems not just for human rights but u.s. special-interest. and i have to say security interest. if in fact human-rights violations have a gross sort are going to destabilize the international community internal strike than it is clearly a security question for us. >> she talked about the contact with the people as opposed to the leaders and talks about paradigm shift from the end of the cold war in the national interest. can you name a particular turning point or specific turning points are moments it could have been made even more central to our national security interest in a way that people would have appreciated more have we missed the opportunity to link human rights to our national interest more clearly in previous incidences? you are smiling. >> i would take 1977, 35 years ago. when i attended the funeral vigil for, henry kissinger got up and told the following story that about two weeks after gerald ford became president and everyone remembers the doubts about ford's capacity get that time. kissinger recounted that the russian see men jump off of a harbor and thought political asylum and kissinger recounted a meeting that he attended on which the winter of the table kissinger advised for to return them to the russians. he said are you kidding me this is america. we are not going to do that. it's proof of what a great president ford was for rejecting his advice. >> this is a moment because it also coincided legislative activity. this continues to be very much on the forefront of our thinking what we do with this person seeking our support? this is america. this is what we do. it is a corporate of the nation that concedes itself as conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all persons are created equal. [applause] >> your time is up. >> thank you. [applause] speed i was supposed to tell him that he had an important engagement and had to leave early. go ahead. >> tree is another episode from the ford administration. the famous dissident writer in exile in the united states wanted a meeting with the president and we went into an agony of in decisions agonizing whether or not we could cause such offense to brezhnev and the soviet union by receiving such a controversial anti-communist writer. there was the opposite of the story. i thought reading about the handling was the opposite. the real list of view into the traditional american foreign policy review of such incident was to haul him out of sight and out of the embassy, make the problem go away. we should never make something like that our problem. the problem is for the government that represses human-rights to such a degree of an individual constitutes a national security problem. here's another story. from the 1980's poland friend of mine in the underground gets on and smuggles himself on a freighter across the baltics and in the middle of the baltic the ship starts to turn around are the on to me? yeah they are on to him then he turns off and goes far than the plants in sweden and the bureau is debating his fate and whether they should push back if the bureau is discussing my miserable fate they are finished and he's telling me the stories while we're having a drink to celebrate the nado exception to nato and he was the minister of defense of poland. that's a story we should never put ourselves in the position where we had a nice about the trends of this world. make them agonize about the trends of this world. [applause] >> if you're ready to identify say between 75 to 82, which is where you have the helsinki process, the legislation five vote to be the congressman frazier and members of congress where you have the creation of drl, the founding of human rights ngos, mike posner founded the lawyers committee in 1976 and the period that ended in 82 we have colleagues from india i -- ndi that started with the westminster speech and i think there was the pivot. from central europe where they are experiencing what means to experience free expression and not be put away for it. my question is can you translate what is happening with our policy to insert human rights more in foreign policy was that something for example talking about having drinks with them is a tangible to them or is at go ahead and talk about this. islamic another cabinet member told me that in these when he was imprisoned the only people to ever see his family, the only foreigners with the embassy officers he said there were a lot of european countries that shunned my family because they didn't want to give or take the government and then he starts to laugh. so who's called you think i returned first? where our interests and our values coincided and does neatly all the time there are conflicts but we did get it right in central europe both in the 80s and 90s and was a bipartisan. the result of our success was profound but it was also a generational issue. what we've succeeded in doing in central europe was making it possible for younger generation to grow up without the special feeling that the united states because they are normal europeans and that's okay, too. for the generation came through and that's a proud moment for all of us. i mentioned earlier bill tayler's task and the responding to the so-called arab spurring, arab awakening. some compared to 1989 and that isn't the reality 1848. it will take a long time to strengthen come to get this straight and these countries will go through a very difficult period. but it's important that they be there and fall into what elliott called the exception list trap, democracy and human rights doesn't apply to those people that a autocracies good for them. we have to mean at. it doesn't mean that we get to avoid the problems. it doesn't mean if we give kosovo and it turned out reasonably well it doesn't mean that we have the answers for syria. >> or might i add north korea, day in and day out. june 4th 1989 to things haven't won most human and square and one was the polish elections. >> it doesn't make the problem any easier, but the fact of the human rights democracy compound to the foreign policy means that at least we wrestle with these issues instead of crushing them away. i joined the foreign service in 1977 when this bureau was a few months old and i remember the enormous compensation committees kind of smearing dismissal in these days almost exclusively regarded human rights it wasn't serious. it was an irritant or distraction and it turned out to be the pivot around which the world changed in 1989 and that is a good lesson we always russell with these problems. guantanamo to go back, it is not easy to deal with the problem of people you pick up on the battlefield. we have made a lot of mistakes as a government but it's not easy. the human rights and will fall guy in orientation won't make the problems he's year with at least you will be able to frame that the questions right. [applause] i do think that the private period that we've been talking about a central element was the way in which these issues became bipartisan and is a continuity between what jimmy carter did and ronald reagan carried down this wall and american leaders have the capacity to put things on to the agenda by saying the on sable. hillary clinton and the first lady went to the beijing conference which is supposed to be an event to basically the ngos stick out and some remote location and hillary clinton's speech women's rights are human rights and her link to be when the secretary of state last year goes to geneva to the human rights council, with my posner and says lgbt rights are human rights and it has an enormous resonance and it made it very difficult for people in the room who had successfully kept that message for being said aloud by a prominent leader to the state of affairs continue and changed to the dynamic altogether. >> i was in burma, the ambassador was an amazing moment to witness to go to china fought like burma was doing this and china was doing this. but in burma something dramatic is happened in the past years. one had been in prison for 17 years for handing out pamphlets. my question for you is are those, can your pocket the mechanisms that had with the state has done or the mechanisms can your pocket because those people are moving forward on a interview to many of them to not believe that. >> i think that if it, the geographic pivot is from the dissidents of europe to asia let's take where we are. we just heard from tex and others about a friend of my own father. the assistant secretary for human rights the president the younger is here today at the state department this development what i would go out asians don't believe in human rights did i find a great moment because -- [laughter] >> there's extraordinary development in burma which need to be supported with extraordinary vigor and care. show to me this basic martin luther king message which is about the ark of history turning towards justice. it takes a while but it does. >> americans want to put it very well. we just don't. it's not our nature. democrats to try to be realists and but not something quite sincere. our identity is to ideals we are. literally. they don't say descendants of english colonists and the colony's have created equal to british subjects. human rights policies and american policy fits our deepest identity aspirations for ourselves and that's one part and the other part is it's hard to make it work. it's great to see that and it didn't help and syria. it doesn't help figuring out how to you with -- deal with egypt, the islamist party which way will they go. but translating the ideals and to daily politics and false trade-offs that's why we all have to be realistic with a small r but not elevated to a doctrine with a big r because that just degenerates. what we can accomplish in any country in any year and the defense don't happen according to the timeline of a two-year tour of office or the four or eight here are the ministration. it happens decades ago by and nothing happens. there is no answer to that. except deal every day with these problems and be realistic about what you accomplish but also the root world really can change. it's not quixotic. it really can happen. >> i just found out i have a little more time and i'm going to make my own point if you will forgive me because i have more time which is i think that we can't always denied you mentioned kosovo. the other difference is the media. we can count on one hand how many people have gotten into north korea and told from inside for the free world. we know what's happening there, but my point to you is the power of the media and by point there is i'm here to castigate the media. they are not doing this for a news for americans and international news keeping these things on the front burner because you keep talking about this all began congress there has to be some political will besides behind what we do. not having covered news at the beginning of my career as a kid