- Well, good afternoon,
I'm Daniel Benjamin.
I want to welcome you to this
Dickey Center event entitled
"Giving Up the Higher Ground:
"Where Does the U.S. Go from Here?"
I particularly want to thank
everyone in the audience
who thought that even
on this dark and dreary
November afternoon much like
the beginning of "Moby Dick"
that you decided to come here
instead of doing what
Ishmael did and shipping out.
So I don't want to be overly
judgmental about the matter,
but I don't think there
is a more pressing,
or more urgent question facing us today
than the one in this title.
And in the last three years
we've seen the United States
abandon traditional values and policies,
mistreat allies, traduce agreements,
and largely abandon its
role as global leader,
while still sometimes
throwing around its weight
as though the world should
naturally accede to our demands
regardless of what else we are doing
elsewhere around the globe.
So let me just mention
a few proper nouns to
frame that contention.
Yamin, Syria, Ukraine, Putin,
Erdoğan, Mohammad Bin Salman,
the Paris accords on climate,
the Iran nuclear deal,
the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Have you had enough?
Well, I'm delighted that
someone else is here
to discuss this sad
record, and in particular,
I'm pleased that that
person is Sarah Margon.
Sarah spent seven years did
you say at Human Rights Watch?
Wow, where she was director
of the Washington office,
and Human Rights Watch
I'm sure you all know
is one of the really fabulous NGOs
that work in the United States today
upholding what many of us thought
were traditional American values.
Just last month she was appointed director
of Foreign Policy Advocacy at
the Open Society Foundation,
and for those who pay
attention to these things
that means she's is now
either part of the most
baleful left wing conspiracy in history,
and part of the malevolent Soros empire,
or if you prefer my view that means
she's now well-placed to carry
forward the terrific work
that Open Society does
as one of the clarion voices out there
pressing for a progressive foreign policy.
Earlier in her career, Sarah Margon,
was senior foreign policy advisor
to Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
I believe that's when we met
when you were looking at me skeptically
when I met Senator Feingold
prior to a confirmation hearing
on Capitol Hill.
I am guessing that she
was looking skeptically
at all the national security nominees
who were passing her way,
but I will leave it up to
her to say that or not.
She's also served as staff director
of the Senate Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on African Affairs.
She has skyrocketed up the list
of favorite Dickey speakers
without even coming up to the podium
because she brought her own audience,
which is a really remarkable thing
here in Hanover, New Hampshire.
I should add that Sarah
has received a master's
from Georgetown University's
Walsh School of Foreign Service
as well as a bachelor's
from Wesleyan in Connecticut, correct?
So we're really pleased
that she has ventured north
from Washington today.
Sarah, the podium is yours.
(applause)
- Hi.
It's really nice to be here.
Thank you for taking me out
of Washington, actually,
is what I should say.
Thanks to Dan Benjamin and the
Dickey Center for hosting me,
and thanks to Justin Anderson.
I don't see where he is.
Oh, there he is, but he's kind
of the catalyst in the seat,
and if you don't know
he was also the best man at my wedding.
I think I might be as
close to a hometown girl
as you can get coming up to Dartmouth.
I'm not from Hanover,
but I'm married to a native Hanoverite.
Is that what we say?
- [Daniel] Hanoverian.
- Hanoverian, so it's a real
thrill to be on the other side.
I've spent 20 years coming
up to see my family here,
two of which are in the audience,
and many friends of the
family and of my husband, Sam,
but I'm also really excited to be here
because I'm suddenly not Sam's wife,
or Leo and Isaac's mother.
I am Sarah Margon the professional,
which those of you who
know me in the audience
have maybe heard about,
but you don't actually know what it is,
and nobody seems to know really what I do.
And these days I should be honest,
I'm not entirely sure what I do
given sort of the state
of affairs in Washington,
but I thought I'd talk a little bit about
the Trump administration's foreign policy
over the last two years.
I put it in a little
bit of global context,
translate a little bit for those of you
who don't watch every movement
of the U.S. president,
or other global leaders,
and then talk about what
it means for the future
both for us here in the United States,
for you here in Hanover,
and then for the world,
but the spoiler alert is that
I don't have all the answers.
I actually don't have really any answers.
So if you're looking for that
you probably want to go somewhere else,
but what I can do is give
you a sense of things
from my vantage point
from watching policy,
human rights, the world of law,
and bad and good governments
over the last 20 years.
So let's start with
this state of the world.
That seems like a pretty
good place to start.
In January 2017 when Trump
became the 45th president
the state of the world was
in a tough spot already.
People were increasingly vulnerable.
The international architecture
like the United Nations,
and other entities that
you have known and heard of
that the U.S. helped create
since the end of World War II
were being tested.
Populous, national forces, wars
were making significant gains.
We're starting to see a
rollback in democratic countries
like Hungary or the Philippines,
political rights, civil
rights, press freedom,
refugee and asylum seekers
were all on the move.
It often feels like the world is on fire,
and in a lot of ways I think
it is on fire right now.
I think we're in a pretty
dramatic period globally,
but it's important to remember
that it isn't Trump that started this.
According to Freedom House
in 2016, we saw the 11th year
of consecutive decline in global freedom.
Think about that for a second.
That means we've been
moving in this direction,
so it's not all about Trump,
but there's no question that
Trump has made it worse.
Some of the dynamics that are shifting
would have shifted without Trump.
Some of them are long-term global changes
that are the natural outgrowth
of the post Soviet world,
but here's some ways he's making it worse.
No president has talked
about human rights,
and the rule of law the
way President Trump has.
I think it's important
to put that in context
because if you came of age,
and there's not a ton of you in the room,
but if you came of age after 9/11,
meaning you were born around
9/11 you probably don't know
the United States as a force for good.
There's aspirational
goals, there's rhetoric,
there's language that we use,
but if you're older you've
seen the U.S. do good things.
You understand how the interests
and the values can meet,
but if you travel
overseas now I find often
that I sort of don't want to be American.
I'm pretending not to be
American, I'm embarrassed,
not just by the actions
of this administration,
but even by some of the ones
from the last administration
where interests and
values were manipulated
for national security interests.
I'm thinking particularly of the Iraq War,
but also the CIA torture program.
Those weren't good things
the U.S. was harmful,
but if you look at where we are now
there's been even more dramatic change.
Trump regularly praises,
meets with, talks to,
sees and invites to the White
House autocrats and dictators,
North Korea's leader,
Pilipino President Duterte
whose running an extrajudicial
anti-drug campaign that's
killed over 12,000 people.
Recently at a G7 summit
in France he called
Egypt's President Sisi
his favorite dictator
to the shock of many U.S.
government officials.
He attacks the press, goes
after individual journalists,
goes after his own staff
if he feels like he's being crossed,
which he's doing all the time now
in light of the impeachment inquiry.
His administration has cut funds for women
at home and abroad,
meanwhile, launching an
economic empowerment program
for women, which sounds really good,
but if women don't have
access to basic services
to take care of their own bodies,
how can they be empowered economically?
He bullies, he's discriminatory,
he's anti-Semitic, he's xenophobic.
His aggressive anti-immigration measures
have been not just a
shutdown at the border,
and separation of thousands of
children from their parents.
It also means the smallest
number of asylum seekers,
and refugees being able to
come to the United States
since the program was started
at the end of World War II.
Last year he manipulated the caravans
coming up from Central America.
He blamed them on George Soros,
and actually said George
Soros was funding them.
And used them as a way
to bait the other side,
move his political base
in an attempt to win
the midterm elections.
He's also tried to use the
power of the presidency
for personal gain,
which is what Congress
is looking into now.
The ramifications of
the impeachment inquiry
are obviously going to have a huge impact
here in the United States,
but they're also going
to have a global impact
because what we've seen,
what I've been watching closely
over the last almost three years
global leaders watch
Trump, they follow Trump,
they mimic him, they use his words.
You've heard him talk about
fake news all the time.
I've seen that phrase used,
and used as a way to defend
negative or abusive actions
in countries from Egypt to
Burma to Syria and many others.
So this is not to say that
the U.S. was perfect before,
but the things he's doing now
are not just rhetorically bad,
it's not just that the
gloves have come off
is that he's undermining the
institutions that the U.S. has
that are supposed to be
the checks and balances
on the power of the presidency.
So before we talk more
about where we're going,
I want to drill down a little
bit on things that I see
kind of hitting the way that
Trump is engaging the world.
I see five big challenges
that in any other environment
the U.S. would be engaging
globally in a constructive way.
The first is creeping authoritarianism.
I mentioned a little bit populous,
and the rise of nationalists.
So we're seeing this in
many, many countries.
Hungary, the Philippines, Brazil.
I could go on as I watch these
trends sort of manipulate,
and I watch leaders coverup
abuse by dodging scrutiny.
They use a two step approach.
The first hatred,
scapegoating and intolerance.
One side versus the other.
You, you're in my favorite group.
It's kind of a majoritarian
push to undermine the others,
and enable this side
to go after that side.
Choosing favorites almost if you will.
Then the next step,
weaken the checks and
balances of the rule of law,
the free media and civil society.
So there is no space to pushback
on the government's approach.
If you're really lucky
you also get to stack
the judiciary with your kind of judges,
and then you don't have to
worry about an independent
judicial system either.
Second, weakening of the
international framework,
and a shift to great power competition.
This is a phrase that I have never heard
more than I have in the last 18 months.
I'm sure, Dan, you keep
hearing about this, too.
From what I understand
great power competition,
or GPC is the newest
acronym at the Pentagon
that they're all worried about.
It's no longer necessarily
just a concern about terrorism,
it's a concern about
countries and governments
going up against each other,
China, what's the great power?
Who's competing against who,
but at the same time you also have attacks
on the very infrastructure
that the U.S. helped
create after World War II.
This is most best defined
by the United Nations.
This is supposed to be the arbiter,
the center of our great
community with trees,
with norms, with standards.
The UN Security Council
is supposed to manage
peace and security issues.
The Human Rights Council
is supposed to address
human rights issues.
They're supposed to be
special repertoires,
or envoys who engage.
You're supposed to use diplomacy.
The UN Security Council is stuck
mostly because of China,
Russia, and the United States
not being able to engage.
The Human Rights Council,
which has been reformed multiple times
is increasingly being
overrun with bad actors
from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia.
Journalists are
increasingly being attacked,
and the UN is doing very little.
When you think about what
happened to Jamal Khashoggi,
the exiled Saudi journalist
that many of you have probably heard of.
He walked into a consulate in Turkey,
never to be heard from again.
The UN conducted an initial investigation,
came out with recommendations,
very clear indications
that the Saudis were responsible for it.
There's been no response.
Despite the UN's good work
the lack of credibility
that they have been able
to use in pushing forward
on actual accountability
to me is a real indicator of just how weak
some of these institutions are becoming.
It also means when you
think about great power
we're less of a community,
and that's why if you think of the UN
kind of like the living room
of the international community,
we're less of a community,
and more of a place where
you see competition.
This means transnational
issues like terrorism,
disease, technological
disasters, climate change,
which require multiple
governments to work together
because they don't know borders
don't have a place to go.
They don't have a forum,
so we'll all going to be
tackling them separately,
and meanwhile nobody's going
to be able to resolve anything.
So what happens in a space like that?
China and Russia step in.
It shouldn't be very surprising.
We're seeing it in multiple ways.
When I was at Human Rights
Watch we did a report
documenting China's way of
infiltrating the United Nations.
They did it in very
careful assiduous ways.
They went to the Budget Committee,
and they started to try to
push the money away from
human rights, the rule of law,
monitors, documentation,
and exposing of abuses.
They tried to move language
from accountability,
and responsibility to
dialogue and cooperation.
They tried to push the narrative
of sovereignty above all
when, in fact, cooperation
in the UN system
is not supposed to be an excuse
for not being held responsible.
It's supposed to be a way for
governments to work together
to hold people accountable for abuse.
At the same time they're
exporting surveillance.
They are flouting regional tribunals
on the South China Sea's decision.
Russia, as well, I
mean, Russia is engaging
on political interference
in elections as we know.
Not just here but in many other countries.
Without anyone or any collection
of governments to stand up
they're slowly but surely
trying to infiltrate those
systems, take the language that
the U.S. has historically pushed forward,
and make it their own.
So while they undermine the
laws and the rule of law
they undermine basic rights.
They impose a massively
oppressive system at home.
China, in particular is also
exporting the very tools
they're using to clamp
down on their own citizens.
So it's no longer just about
defending their ability to do
what they want to do
inside their own borders.
It's also about the adventurism,
their interest in exporting
what they're trying to do,
and get other governments to do the same.
So what does that lead to?
Number four, atrocities are the new norm.
Here I find this really interesting,
and there's a bit of a tension
here there's two sides.
The first side is that you
have governments like Hungary,
which to me is one of the best examples
of a democratic country
gone completely awry,
and, frankly, the country
I think President Trump
would like to emulate if he could.
You have governments attacking the press,
denying people of their rights,
running smear campaigns against activists,
setting up peril or
alternative judicial systems
so they can do what they want to do,
but they're still covering it up sort of.
If you go to Hungary, or you go to
I'm trying to think of another country
that is really sort of, Greece or Italy,
you don't see blood in the streets.
It's not quite like the Philippines,
but it's this steady
erosion of the basic norms
that we know to be true,
but the abuse is constant.
I met a woman from Hungary recently
she runs the Helsinki Commission there,
and to hear her talk of how
she had been smeared in the
media, and smeared in the press
made her absolutely
terrified to go outside
because she's afraid
that if the government
doesn't come after her
it's going to be Hungarians
who have been fed these lies,
and think she's doing something she's not.
We see something similar
happening here in the U.S.,
but then the flip side
with abuse as the new norm
is groups like ISIS who
have totally reversed
the understanding of hiding abuse,
and, in fact, have used the brutality
to radicalize and recruit.
They have made that the new norm,
and they have shown it and
used it to great effect
to bring people in, to expand their power,
and to hold on to territory.
There's an argument now
with the president saying
they're totally gone and defeated.
They don't know territory,
but I don't think they're
defeated sufficiently
for anybody to feel comfortable
that they're not likely to
come back at some point,
perhaps in an even more brutal way.
If you don't have governments
and institutions that can
pushback against these outright
atrocities what do you do?
How do you respond?
The rules and the regulations
and the access to information,
and the ability to
express yourself are gone.
What's the answer?
Challenge number five,
the harmful rules of
companies and technology.
Here I'm going to have to say
that while I still am on Facebook
I have huge problems with the way Facebook
is promoting misinformation,
disinformation,
and pretending that the
Internet exists over here.
For a while it did.
Maybe some of your remember Friendster,
or those early websites
that you could join
they just existed over here.
They didn't have any
impact in the real world.
What we're seeing time and
time again is that they do.
Not only has the social media space
become really virulent and angry,
it has enabled and encouraged
horrifically discriminatory
anti-Semitic brutal actions.
You see so many of the
shooters in this country
posting messages and notes
that you can finally
look and see the pattern,
and see what they were going
to do before they do it,
but in the case of Burma or Myanmar,
whichever you chose to call it
where there's been a
horrific ethnic cleansing
of the Muslim population
what we found when Facebook
actually started to explore
the pages by some of the generals
is that the Burmese
military known for some of
the most horrific brutality
I've even seen in my life,
and I've seen a fair bit
is that they were using
Facebook to promote brutality,
to encourage hatred,
and to create communities
that thought the same.
Facebook was so unaware
that this was happening,
in part because it was
in a different language,
but because they didn't
have anybody watching.
That's not acceptable
given the number of people
around the globe that are on Facebook,
and that are using
Facebook to communicate,
and talk to each other.
Twitter I was pleased to see recently said
it would take down political ads,
particularly those that
were misinformational,
but Facebook has not said it
would do anything like that.
That's just the social media space.
You can also think a
little bit about companies,
and what they're doing,
and perhaps the best
example here is China.
There was a company called Thermo Fisher.
Maybe some of you have heard of it.
It is a DNA blood sequencing company
based out of Massachusetts.
They were selling their technology
to the Chinese government
that was using it to
ostensibly provide health care
for all in the western
province of Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is a mostly Muslim province
where the Chinese for decades
have been repressing the people,
and most recently decided
the best way to cleanse them
of their Muslim problem was to
throw them into labor camps,
and surveil them to the point
where it's basically a totalitarian state.
In lining them up,
and trying to get people
to get health care for all
they were using Thermo Fisher's
DNA sequencing technology
to identify individuals.
When this was finally exposed
both in "The New York Times"
and with a report the Human
Rights Watch did, actually,
Thermo Fisher never admitted it,
but suddenly stopped selling
their technology to China,
but think about this as
China continues to be kind of
the great I think of it like
a great technological stomach
with the number of the people there,
and the needs that the
country and government have,
companies want to sell to China,
but nobody has any idea
what the information is being
used for, how it's being used.
The thing is it's not just China.
We're seeing this with Israeli companies.
We're seeing this with American companies.
We're seeing this in technology
that Saudi Arabia is buying.
In fact, Saudi Arabia
bought Israeli technology
to surveil Saudi women.
So this is another example
where you need a global community.
You need a basic roadmap
for the private sector
to actually know what it's doing,
and they need rules of the
road and they don't have them.
So we're building it
as we're walking on it
at the same time that we're
looking at the global community
being separated and
shattered as competitors
as opposed to community members.
I'll also put out there
just in case anyone's paying attention
to hard national security challenges
that we might be facing.
North Korea has recently
launched a number of bombs.
The Iran deal is totally failing
even despite Trump's promise
that he wants the U.S. pulled out.
Hard sanctions would make
them change their behavior.
There's a terrorist problem of creeping,
and unsatisfactory understanding.
The UK is in disarray.
The EU is in shambles.
The UN Security Council is frozen.
African leaders are
changing their constitutions
to extend their constitutional terms,
but doing so without violence.
And next year's G20 meeting
is supposed to be held in Saudi Arabia.
Oh, and there's more refugees,
and internally displaced people
than we have ever seen in
the history of the world,
and less countries willing to accept them,
and give them resettlement.
It's a pretty picture, right?
Things look good.
So where do we go from here?
I'm a baseline optimist, I am, actually.
Justin knows this.
I couldn't do this work if I wasn't
if I didn't see small steps forward
as an important indicator of
where we can go as a people.
I'm not a doomsday person.
I see silver linings,
and I think there's a possible
better way forward right now.
It's just that the debate is ongoing.
The debate is ongoing in two ways
in both structure and substance.
So here I want to talk a
little bit about the substance.
Does the U.S. remain the
great hegemon of the world?
Is the U.S. unilateral global power?
Should we still be?
Does it make sense if Trump stays?
If Trump doesn't stay?
What about how the U.S. engages?
Is military intervention the way to do it?
Should global conflicts and
challenges be solved primarily
with military intervention
if things get sticky?
Should we think more about
competition and trade?
Should that be part of foreign policy?
What about labor rights?
What about women?
Interests, values, both,
together, separate, combined,
one after the other?
These are really live and hot debates
that people in Washington are having.
I know they're not quite as relevant
to the rest of the country,
to people who aren't paying attention
to the intricacies of policy
in the way that those of us
who live inside and
suffer inside the Beltway
are paying attention to them,
but they're important when you think about
the U.S. being a global actor.
The presidential campaign which
nothing is lost on me here
we have basically one year,
is going to play out
tremendously in this space.
If Trump wins, but there's
Democratic Congress, possible,
I think we may see an angry
Trump start to act globally
in different ways, here's why.
He has more freedom to do that.
He is not constrained in the same way,
and the separation of
ostensibly co-equal branches
of government means he's going
to want a free space to play.
We just saw this.
You may remember seeing
in the news that Trump
picked up the phone and called
Turkish President Erdoğan,
and green-lighted what became
a violently brutal operation
in northeastern Syria.
There's a really good argument to be made
that he made that phone call
just around the same time
when the impeachment inquiry was happening
because it would cover the media,
and people might start
paying attention to that.
If you think about a new president
there's so many things a new
president is going to have to do
both at home and abroad.
And fixing things at home is
going to be a critical part,
but it doesn't mean you forget about
what's happening overseas.
By going back to the Obama foreign policy,
don't take offense Dan,
in my mind is not what we should be doing.
We need to think bigger,
we need to think better,
and the U.S.'s role
globally has been shattered,
and in the meanwhile
the world has changed.
So the good news is that
there's reason to go forward.
We can't go back.
I believe pretty seriously
that the international
institutions, the frameworks,
the laws, the treaties,
the norms, the standards,
all the things I said
don't have enough air in
them right now are important.
They're being massively tested,
but I do think that they can recover.
If they don't you end up
having a Turkey or a Brazil,
or a Hungary running them.
You have hospitals in a
conflict zone as a free-for-all
where they can get bombed with
absolutely no accountability.
You have no free press.
You have no freedom of association.
You have no free expression.
You might have some of that
here in the United States,
but it won't be the standard
by which the international
community tries to move forward.
And there's good reason
to believe more democracy,
actually, is good for individuals.
Democracies bring historically security,
stability, and more
prosperity it's pretty proven.
Yes, we're in a tough place
right now, but I think
there's good reason to
believe that it will work,
but, also, look at what's
happening around the globe.
It's not just about governments anymore.
It's also about people,
Hong Kong, Lebanon, Iraq,
the United States.
Look at the people who have come out
to mostly peacefully say, "No."
Chile, I don't want this anymore.
I don't want your economic restrictions.
I don't want these social injustices.
I don't want you running
my country you're corrupt.
You're not giving me what I want.
You're not making me
part of your government.
They're in their 23rd week
of protesting in Hong Kong,
ostensibly over an extradition
treaty with the Chinese,
but, actually, it's about so much more.
It's about the fundamental
rights of the people of Hong Kong
who have experienced lots of
of rights as part of the UK,
and are moving towards a space
where they'll have many more.
Here in the U.S. Americans
have been so engaged.
I mean, I think, Jus, when
you came down to our house
in Washington and we went,
you know, everybody marched,
and the number of people.
I remember getting out of the Metro
at the Women's March in Washington,
and sort of getting knocked on my heels
seeing how many people were out there,
women and men and kids to peacefully say,
"No, I don't want this kind of government.
"I don't want these kinds of actions."
You could argue that it's working
since the midterm election
showed a massive change
not just more than 100 women,
but women of different
colors, from different places,
from different communities.
A much more dynamic fabric
of what America looks like
than what had historically been there.
So I think the good news
is we can breathe new life
into the institutions,
and the architecture that is at our core.
The question is how?
So I want to give a couple of domestic,
and international examples very quickly.
At the domestic level Congress.
Now I am biased because I
used to work in the Senate,
but I also believe that
Congress has a tremendously
important role in standing up
to what I have been calling
the imperial presidency.
They do this on domestic issues,
but they're fraught, they're more divided.
On foreign policy and national security
there's so much more Congress can do,
and they're not doing it.
Yes, they're very busy right now
at the impeachment inquiry,
and that's going to keep them busy,
but that's not the only thing they can do.
Here's three other options
that Congress could move on
that would change overall
the president's authorities.
It would rein them in as part
of the check and the balance
that they're supposed to be
as a co-equal branch of government.
Number one, endless wars.
You've probably seen a lot of
news about the endless wars.
"The New York Times" had
a piece this past weekend
about Vets who were feeling
frustrated that they had served
for a war that they didn't see any end to.
They said they were proud
of their military service,
but they didn't know where it was going,
and they would like to
see the U.S. stop fighting
in the same way that it has.
I thought that was a
pretty remarkable piece.
So it's Congress that decides war.
It's Congress that
declares not the president.
So the war powers resolution,
which some of you may
remember from after 1973
in the Vietnam era is very controversial,
but there are efforts
underway to start to reform
this resolution and rein in the president,
so that he or she can no
longer have a free-for-all
when it comes to declaring war.
This is hugely important
because it can change
how the U.S. goes to war,
when the U.S. goes to
war, and for how long.
Arms-sales, the president
works with the defense industry
to sell weapons all over the world.
And in doing so Congress has a role,
but it is not an
affirmative engagement role.
This is another piece of legislation
that if Congress were to reform
the president would be reined in.
This would mean no more weapons to Saudi,
which is killing lots of people in Yemen
with U.S. active support,
but, also, to every and any other country
that receives weapons
from the United States,
and uses them to an ill end.
This is not just a Saudi problem,
although, that's the most obvious.
We see it in Egypt.
We see it in Afghanistan.
It is constant and often
something that I have worked on
in the last 15 years
trying to rein in U.S.
arms-sales overseas.
The last one is limiting
presidential executive authorities
so they can't be used in
a discriminatory manner.
This is super wonky,
and I'm not going to go
into all the detailed ways
in which the Emergency Powers Act
can be reined in, and changed,
but the basic point is that the president
has extraordinary authority
to do things like the travel ban,
the Muslim ban, and the asylum ban.
By changing this emergency
power legislation
Congress will be saying, uh-uh,
you cannot be discriminatory.
You need to check with us
before you do things like that.
We are a nation of immigrants,
and we believe in continuing
to move forward in that vein.
The other piece is support for people.
Like I mentioned Hong
Kong, Lebanon, Iraq, Chile,
allover the world we're seeing this,
but this also means supporting Americans.
This is something that the
Open Society Foundation
has just started doing, and
which six weeks into my new job,
I'm really excited to build on.
It's basically starting
a constituency fund.
If you think about engaging
Americans on governance issues
in general the piece that
never gets any attention
is foreign policy.
I was in Kansas last week
with an amazing group of people
of all ages talking about
global exchange, peace building,
human rights, war, national security,
and it struck me as
it's struck me each time
I travel outside the Beltway
Americans do care about foreign policy.
They do care about how the
U.S. is seen in the world,
and they do want the U.S. to do better.
So by supporting these programs
in this constituency building
not only is Open Society
starting to build that group of people,
but we're also saying now is the moment
when Congress is actually paying attention
to the people that listen to
them more than they ever have.
The point is to reengage Americans,
and build political power
around foreign policy issue,
not just domestic ones like health care,
which is a little easier to do
because it relates directly to you.
So if we get to the international level
I'll move very quickly
through three points.
Most importantly this would
require a new government,
but it's in a sense a plan
for the next administration
if in a year there is
actually a new administration.
The first one is what I call
a coalition of the willing,
but I call it coalition
of the willing cautiously
because I don't want anyone
to think I'm trying to
get a bunch of countries
together and go to war.
If the U.S. is no longer going to be
the dominant global entity, global leader
they need to work with others.
We've seen this happen in Geneva
around the Human Rights Council,
so it's a very small effort
to get countries like
the Netherlands, or
Liechtenstein, or Iceland,
to lead coalitions on big global issues,
to build strength in numbers,
and then to get out and move an issue.
Yes, this was a small initial effort,
but we have seen over
the last couple of years
that there's interest in doing this,
and here, frankly, it
would be good for the U.S.
to join some of these coalitions
because a little national
humility is not a bad thing.
We don't always have to lead.
The second is more active
support for diplomacy,
the institutions, and the
mechanisms that support
all of these issues that
I've been talking about.
There has been for the
last decade a conversation
in Washington about development,
diplomacy and defense.
And everybody talks about
defense getting lots of money.
Development and diplomacy
not getting enough,
particularly, I won't put up that finger,
particularly the diplomacy piece.
We're in a moment now where
the damage that Trump is doing
to the State Department
and to the Foreign Service
is so dramatic that a massive
investment in diplomacy
is going to be essential for
the U.S. to actually have
a strong diplomatic core.
That's going to take some work,
some coordination with Congress.
So far all of the Democratic
candidates that I've seen
have expressed interest,
but it's tremendously important
because it will be norm setting
for the rest of the world
to see that rebuilding.
And then, finally, supporting
civil society in the media.
The U.S. has had programs
that do that for years,
but they haven't always been as robust,
or thoughtfully applied as
they could be in countries
where it's difficult to do that
like Egypt and Ethiopia until recently.
They kind of did it an ad hoc way,
but there's a new generation of people
who are looking at ways to
support different kinds of media,
different kinds of civil society groups,
so that if you're looking
at a closed society,
or if you don't have
access to a certain country
because of wacky funding restrictions,
the U.S. government can
still find ways to do that.
So, George Soros was recently
profiled in "The Guardian."
He wrote a bunch of essays,
and he's been getting some
attention again recently.
He's 89 years old, and he recently noted
the well-known Martin Luther King quote.
The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.
This is a quote I think
President Obama used.
Many people use this,
but Soros went onto say in
sort of a classically Soros way
I don't believe that's true.
I think you need to bend the arc.
So that's my challenge to all of you,
and to everybody you see and
talk to and spend time with,
everybody you teach, your family members,
help me bend it, thank you.
(applause)
Oh, there's one over there, thanks.
- Well, thank you
for that intense tour of the landscape.
I guess the first question
I wanted to ask is
sort of a Washington question,
but also a really, I think,
important one for all of us and that is,
at the end of the Obama administration,
well, let's say it was
before the election,
I think we would have said
that there was something
that hadn't been there 15 years earlier,
and that was a consensus on the importance
of international development.
And we would have said
as well that there was
probably more agreement across
the aisle on human rights
than there had been at
any time in our history.
You and I, well, certainly
me, you're younger,
but you can correct me
if I'm wrong, you know,
got to Washington when there
was a guy named Jesse Helms,
who was still enormously
powerful in the Senate,
and he wasn't alone, and he thought
American money should not
go down foreign rat holes,
and that human rights was not a worthy
subject for promotion
by the U.S. government.
What is under the lid now
in terms of that consensus?
So let's stipulate for the record
that lots of Congressmen and women
are afraid of primary challenges,
are afraid of being tweeted,
are afraid of being subject to
a kind of,
I got to find a word that's
acceptable for families here.
The kind of treatment that
has just been unimaginable
in other parts of our history,
but what is left there
and what would it take
to get back more or less to where we were?
- They used to say that partisan
differences stopped, right?
At the shore, and that
once you went overseas
Democrats and Republicans
would work together.
- [Daniel] That was always a lie.
- It was kind of a lie, but
kind of not that's the thing.
The human rights realm sort of
like working on Africa issues
has always been very bipartisan,
and I have always really enjoyed that work
because it has required,
it's been a bit of a strategic challenge
because it means I have
to leave some stuff
at the front door to work on other issues.
That's hard for me, but
I've learned how to do it,
so I can work with Senator Rubio on Egypt
even though I really don't
agree with him in any way
on immigration issues.
I can work with Senator Graham
on refugee issues
even though I really don't
agree with him on anything else.
So it's still there.
I think we've hit the most
polarized moment I've ever seen
between Democrats and Republicans,
and what I'm finding is the silos
are getting more significant.
The bipartisan collaboration
is getting smaller.
I will say that I had to walk in,
I've done a lot of work on Saudi
over the last couple of years
since the Saudi-led
conflict began in 2015,
but even before that when
Obama went to Saudi Arabia
at the end of his second term
I was sort of trying to figure out
what kinds of things could
President Obama ask of the Saudis
that would actually bring some change.
He's not going to change the system.
He's not going to get them to do that,
but what are the small
things that Obama could do
that would bring a better
life for people in Saudi
who are living in pretty
repressive conditions.
I was thinking so small at that time
because there wasn't a lot to do,
but since 2015 the door has been open
in terms of pushing for change.
It's been really interesting
to see how Republicans
have engaged a lot on the domestic issues,
repression of women, the right to drive,
torture in the prisons,
but around Jamal Khashoggi's killing
there was this renewed interest
from both sides of the aisle
to stop selling arms to Saudi.
Somehow it didn't matter
that all of these children
had been killed in Yemen
for the three years prior,
the killing of Jamal Khashoggi
kind of woke them up,
and got their attention.
While that was frustrating
to me I said, "Fine,
"let's just be really practical
and use the opportunity
"to stop the weapon sales."
I walked into Senator Graham's office
with three of Jamal Khashoggi's children
the week after the Senate voted on
Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation.
And that was maybe the
most difficult moment
of my career in Washington
because as a woman I often
have to walk into the Senate,
and sort of put on my
armor and bust around,
and pretend that I'm just
as tough as everybody else,
and have no feelings and
don't care about anything
except exactly what I'm going to do.
I walked into Graham's door
and I sort of looked up,
and I was like, ooh, I feel
really small right now.
And then I looked in the
hallway, and I thought,
maybe I'll let the kids go in and I won't.
I'll just wait outside for them.
And then I looked back
at these three children
of Jamal Khashoggi who had
just lost their father,
and had found out about it in the media,
and weren't sure what had happened to him.
They were trying to get their
oldest brother out of Saudi.
He was under a travel ban,
and the Saudis didn't want him to leave.
I took a deep breath and
I put my armor back on,
and I said, "Let's go,
we got to get in there."
So we went in and we had a great meeting,
and Graham was really helpful,
and he continues to be a champion
of stopping the arms-sales,
and also sanctioning Mohammad
Bin Salman, the crown prince,
and basically the person
who called for the murder
of Jamal Khashoggi,
and has basically been the
architect of the war in Yemen.
So he's actually been a champion,
but it's tough because he's alone,
and there's only so many
times as an advocate
you can keep putting your armor
on before you get shot down.
- Let me ask another part of that question
from a different angle which is
you have watched election after election.
To what extent
are the newer cohorts
of Congressmen and women
representing shall we
say the president's base,
which I think we can stipulate
is not huge on human rights?
- They're interested in human rights
when they apply to them,
but they're not interested
in the universality of human rights.
It's not pie like if I
give you more rights,
I don't get less rights, right?
They don't understand
that everybody can have the same amount
that's sort of how it works.
I mean, what an interesting moment.
The Republicans are not really
willing to let go of Trump
on a whole bunch of issues, I mean,
I'm sort of trying not to follow
the impeachment proceedings that closely
because it drives me crazy,
and it's very frustrating and upsetting,
but I have found on foreign policy issues
that they are willing
and able to go at him.
We saw this on Saudi where Trump
would not let go of the crown prince.
A number of Republicans led by Graham
were absolutely willing
to pushback and say,
no, we need to stop this,
and then many of them voted
to stop the U.S. support
for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen,
which was kind of amazing,
it was a bipartisan vote,
but, also, on the most recent
Turkish operation in Syria
the Republicans were also very,
very, very angry about that,
and they felt that the Kurds
a longtime ally of the U.S.,
but often thrown under the
bus by a number of presidents
were being treated horrifically,
and they were really worried
about, depending on who it was,
anything from an ethnic cleansing
to a full-scale genocide.
So they were willing to
stand up, I don't see that--
- [Daniel] Briefly.
- Sorry.
- [Daniel] Briefly.
- Briefly, they've sat down again
because Trump has fixed it,
but the point is is that you
can sort of start to see,
and build some momentum.
I haven't seen it translate
from the foreign policy arena
to the domestic arena.
- So you travel a lot outside
of the country as well.
One of the questions that
really interests me is
what will it take to recoup our losses?
If President Trump is reelected
then that's almost it's
an unanswerable question,
and probably not worth asking,
but let's assume that there's
a change of administration.
In the Obama administration
we very much felt that
we had a lot of work to do
after the invasion of Iraq,
and Guantanamo and
waterboarding black sites.
It is really hard for me
to wrap my mind around
what the requirements will
be the next time around,
and, of course, you never step
into the same stream twice.
And in many cases other
countries have gone in a way
that will make it very hard for us to
regain the influence with
them that we would like,
but I'm curious as to what you think are
not the quid pro quos,
but the sine qua non?
- [Sarah] Excluding pro quos?
- Yes.
- Secretary Clinton was an amazing choice
for President Obama for
a number of reasons,
but in part because
she could do that tour,
and build on those relationships she had,
and say, we're back, we're here,
and I think there was
a trust there globally.
Domestically is another story,
but globally there was a trust.
I think now it depends
on a couple of things.
If Trump wins again,
if we elect Trump to be president
of the United States again
we're stepping into a new era.
If he's defeated I think
the global community
because I do still believe in one,
will say, okay, they made a giant mistake.
He screwed up a lot of things.
He made things worse.
He was damaging.
He undermined our alliances,
jeopardized our collective security,
aligned himself with dictators,
but they got it and they voted him out.
So it kind of depends what happens
next year on November 3rd,
but then it also depends
who it is that's in there
because I think in a lot of ways
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
kind of want to blow up the system too,
and that's going to make allies
not in the same way Trump has done it,
but that makes allies nervous too.
I think Elizabeth Warren wants
to keep NATO and support it.
I'm not sure with Bernie.
And I think some of those
traditional alliances
could be threatened not in
the same aggressive way,
but they could be under
threat in a different way
if Bernie becomes president.
So there's a lot of
work the U.S. has to do.
I place a lot of emphasis on
the American people right now
doing a lot of that work.
I don't see foreign policy
as a government to
government thing anymore.
It really is about people.
Just before a new ambassador
came to Washington
about 18 months ago
I got a phone call from
her chief of staff,
or political counsel,
or whatever they're called in the Embassy.
And she said, "Listen, our
new ambassador is coming,
"and usually she presents her credentials.
"We present our credentials
to the White House,
"and then we give a speech
about shared values,
"shared interests.
"We've always done it it's
kind of a stock speech."
I said, "Yeah, why are you calling me?"
And she said, "Well, we don't feel that
"we can give it this year.
"We don't feel that we can
talk about shared interests,
"and shared values when
so much is at stake,
"and the president has run
roughshod over alliance.
"And this is not a big country,
"but an important ally of the U.S."
And I said, "Well, do you want to slam him
"in your public speech? "Like
what do you want to do?"
And they said, "No, no,
but we don't really want to
"commend him for anything,
or talk about that."
So my response was talk
about the American people.
Talk to the American people.
Let them know that you are here,
that you value them, that
you want to engage with them,
but you're not so thrilled
about the government.
You don't have to say a negative word
about the Trump administration.
Just talk to the American people.
And she was like, "Oh, we can do that."
So I think that's a
lot of what I see being
a critical part of regaining any place
in the international
community and regaining trust.
Yes, the government's going
to have to play a role,
but the American people
have to play a role too.
- So I'm probably less of a
baseline optimist than you are.
- It's not hard.
- And I would submit
that one of the dominant
concerns out there was the
one voiced by Angela Merkel
when she said essentially,
and I'm paraphrasing,
we just have to accept the fact
that America is going through
a period of instability
when it's really not going
to be picking up the phone.
And the thing is as you know
people with political preferences
you and I probably think
that if we put a better,
a different person in the Oval Office
that that will take care of our problems,
but the rest of the world
is still going to say,
hey, what's to prevent
this from happening again
with that wacky electoral
college and all the rest,
and more to the point
there is an opposition
to this new sainted president
that has been created, that has energized,
that it's really going to
cause a lot of problems.
I mean, Americans complained
about gridlock before.
Just imagine what it's
going to be like after.
I'm one of those people that
thinks that the Russians
were meddling in our
elections to ensure that
when Hillary Clinton became president
that America was ungovernable.
- You really are not a baseline optimist.
- It's an ethnic thing, I
don't know what else to say.
- We're from the same ethnicity.
- Yeah, but anyway, so I put that to you.
Tell me why I'm wrong.
Give me a reason to put
the spring back in my step,
to hug my dog and pat my
wife and all the rest.
- Well, I'm also a
realist I should say that.
I'm an optimist, but I'm a realist.
This is not getting fixed
January 20th, 20 and 21,
like we have a lot of work to do.
Trump is leaving behind,
and then, frankly, the
Republicans are unfortunately
leaving behind a legacy
by not pushing back on him
in the interest of the American people.
That is going to take a long time to fix.
Look at the decimation
of the Foreign Service
alone as an issue, right?
I failed the Foreign Service test
because I don't think like that.
I think like spirals and crazy lines,
but there are so many good
people that have left.
There are so few people.
I'm sure you see this at Dartmouth
that want to enter the Foreign Service
because they don't want
to be branded as American
with the current institutional
architecture in place,
and if the current president remains.
There is going to be so much work to do,
and it's not just going to
be up to a new president.
I remember Obama sort of coming in,
and everyone think he's
going to fix it, he's here,
and then I sort of sat there like
it's like turning the Titanic
five seconds before
you get to the iceberg.
You're not going to get there.
You got to do it earlier, you need a plan.
The good news is the Democrats
are all sitting around
trying to figure out
what it means to have progressive policy,
what it means to be Democratic
in New Hampshire, Montana,
California, and even Mississippi.
The good news is that outside
donors are engaging in
trying to support
alternative centers of power
so that you have black
and brown communities
at a level of engagement
where their voices resonate
in a way where they just haven't,
to pushback on the
institutionalized racism
that has really plagued
this country over centuries.
So I think what we're
seeing is a recognition
that we all have to engage
in the American project.
My husband, who many of you
know likes to talk about
how we all have an
overdeveloped sense of rights,
and an underdeveloped
sense of responsibility
is also a phrase I used with
my 10-year-old child last week.
- [Daniel] How did that work for you?
- Not well, not well at all,
he stormed out of the car,
but I actually think it's true.
We don't know what it means
to participate in governance
in a way that we're supposed to
I think that the founding
fathers wanted us to.
And I say that because
I think what can give
other governments hope is
when they see Americans
engaging in the project as
well because it says, look,
they were really more
screwed by this than we were,
and they want to help bring it back.
I will also just say that I was in Berlin
about three weeks ago,
and I have been trying to figure out
why Berlin is not doing more.
Like come on lead us
like you're the leader of the
free world, do it, come on.
And all of the German
think-tankers I met with were like,
no, no.
Don't you know the German history?
And I was like, well, yeah,
I do, I'm Jewish, I do.
They're like, no, not that history,
well, that history, but
also what came next,
which is we want to work
collectively in a community
part of a multilateral institution.
We're not going to go it alone.
We're not going to lead.
And it was really interesting
because the Germans
are going through their
own internal conversation
because the younger German
generation is sort of saying,
hey, get up there like this is our moment.
Angela, you're it, and the
rest of Germany is like,
nope, too many problems here,
and also we've got the AfD,
which is the highly anti-Semitic party
that has now gotten a very
strong foothold across Germany.
There's a great article
that anyone who wants
to read about Germany,
and sort of their own
dramas I can recommend,
but the point is is that
my expectation was that,
of course, the Germans would step up.
And Macron in France
with all of his language,
but he can't get his
government to do anything.
He's got great rhetoric
and not a lot of action.
It's not going to be fixed
by any one government,
or any one person.
It's about institutions not individuals.
So I go back to my point about
re-breathing new air
into the institutions,
and the frameworks that exist.
- So you said something
interesting a second ago,
and this will be my last question,
and then I'll throw it up into the crowd
at least momentarily before
taking the mic back, but about
how Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
view the international system,
and what they would want to do.
You know, the phrase that
continues to ring in my ears is
Elizabeth Warren saying in the debate
pulling us out of the Middle East.
So I'm kind of curious
where the human rights
community is on this
because there's a lot up for
grabs in the near future.
My guess is that there's
going to be a big division
in the human rights community
between robust engagement,
which is a dirty business sometimes,
and requires dealing with actors
that we really don't like,
and others who will say
it's the only way we
make the world better,
and dirty hands are a
requirement of global leadership.
So I'm kind of curious at your assessment
of where this is all going to go?
- This was like the seven year
argument that I used to have
with my colleague at Human Rights Watch.
For most of my colleagues who work in,
or on the Middle East Human Rights Watch
have been kicked out of most
countries in the Middle East.
We were just banned so
we couldn't get there,
and not allowed to travel or live there.
They saw the U.S. as a
really nefarious actor,
and that's what I meant.
Post 9/11 they only see the
U.S. as a negative entity,
a harmful actor whose making
things worse not better,
but there's a flip side.
John McCain, actually, really
represents a lot of this,
and I think it's sort of the tortured side
of the human rights community.
On the one hand, John
McCain was very pro war.
He did walk around singing,
bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
And that represented for
people of the Middle East
everything that was bad
about the United States.
At the same time almost
every single Middle Eastern
human rights activist I would meet with
asked me the way to John
McCain's office on Capitol Hill
because at the same time that they saw him
as a complete and
unnecessary interventionist,
they also saw him as
someone who really believed
in individual voices and
human rights defending.
I think it was sort of amazing to see
how they would from Libya to
Egypt to Syria it was crazy.
It was like a parade of
activists from the Middle East
through his office.
Russians, of course, as well.
So that question of
is the U.S. going to pull
out of the Middle East
is a real live one.
The Open Society Foundation
just started funding something
called the Quincy Institute
with the Koch brothers,
which I'm sure you've seen,
which is a very interesting
PR campaign if nothing else,
but the point of the Quincy Institute,
which is just getting up
and running is to look at
U.S. military intervention
and encourage restraint.
I think that's really the
piece of this question.
I am not a peacenik.
I do believe there are
instances, personally,
where the U.S. should be intervening,
but the way it has been
done over the last 15 years
has been manipulated, weaponized,
and deeply problematic.
Human rights promotion
by the United States
is very often seen as being
done at the tip of the sword,
and that has to change
in order for the U.S.
to engage constructively.
We aren't there yet.
We, I think, are all
starting to talk about
what does restraint mean?
How do we build up diplomacy?
What does it mean to build relationships
with universities in the region,
or some of those people
to people exchanges,
so we better understand what's going on.
I think Libya showed that the U.S.
had a terrible understanding
of closed countries,
and that you can't just go
in from the air and get out
without thinking about what happens next.
So it's a pretty heated conversation
with a lot of different answers,
and I don't think it's going to result
in one collective position.
I think there's going to be debate,
and discussion endlessly about it.
- Well, we could continue that,
but right now I'll give
you all an opportunity.
Please raise your hand,
wait for the microphone,
and make sure there's a question mark
at the end of your question.
- Sarah, thank you for
coming up here today.
I read everything I could
find about you online
before I came up because--
- [Sarah] Oh, dear.
- You're moving along fast,
and you've established
some strong positions.
I do want to say thank you
for being absolutely naive as you are,
and as a person that served in Vietnam,
so I was lied to by the
Nixon administration,
Nixon and his gang,
by Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara.
We saw ourselves
deceived by
Vice President Cheney,
and his administration,
but at the same time I wonder how a person
like Lindsey Graham
that you've referred to a couple of times
could change so much
from the way he is now
to what he was with John McCain living.
I took the initiative and
everything I get it done,
but I called his daughter
who I thought delivered a terrific address
in her father's service to ask her,
and I got through to her and to ask her
how she felt about the way.
She said, "I will never talk against him."
She said, "He is family."
But at the same time I
think we hear it a lot,
but I think we are coming
up a truly defining moment
in our history if you're
a 10-year-old child
from my three grandchildren
I really am concerned about this,
and I'm concerned that if we
find a way to get Trump out,
if we don't find a way to get Trump out
maybe it truly is time as
we talked back in Vietnam
as a country to move to
Canda, move somewhere else,
because the country is not
going to be the same again.
So if you're the optimist
I am the pessimist.
One last thing I want to say is
I've spent the last four weeks,
weekends and as much
during the weekend as I can
knocking on doors and making phone calls.
I have a candidate.
I'd like to see Joe Biden get elected,
but much more than Joe Biden
getting elected, I want to see
Trump defeated.
Could you react to what I've said?
Well, let me add just one more thing,
if I could, Sarah, and
that is, I'm sorry my--
- [Daniel] Briefly please.
- 78-year-old mind
is not what it used to
be when a few years ago.
And that is I am really frightened
not by the reaction of people
slam the door in my face,
or slam the telephone down,
but I'm really concerned
about the ill-informed people
whether it's Cornish,
Plainfield, Claremont,
or Charlestown, New Hampshire,
that I've been going to of
them being ill-informed,
but also not thinking Trump
has done a bad job at all,
some much stronger than that.
Could you react to a few of those things?
Thank you.
- Sure, I mean, let me be really clear,
and thanks for the work you're doing.
I mean, I think that work
to sort of get out there
for whatever candidate is so important.
I try in my work even though I work
at the Soros Foundation now
to be as nonpartisan as I can,
which means I have to work
with a lot of bad actors.
It's been deeply, deeply
upsetting to me to see
where Lindsey Graham has
moved in the aftermath
of McCain's death.
I work with him on far
less things than I used to,
but I'm a practical person in a sense that
I have a goal I need to get done,
and in Washington you need to sort of put
those strange bedfellows together,
and as I said put on your
armor so I don't like it,
but I do it if I think it's
going to move the ball forward.
Sometimes it's ball forward, ball back,
ball forward, ball back,
but the point is that
you've got to figure out
when the moment is
to work with some of those
unsavory actors and keep at it.
Facts, and figures, and
research are not the sole way
to gets things done anymore.
It's much more about telling stories,
and making a relationship
that can create an opening
for facts and figures,
and that's harder than ever
because people are so
polarized and so divided.
Look, I'm scared too.
I was on sabbatical this summer,
and my family and I went to Europe,
and I took a news blackout
and it was pretty amazing.
I didn't realize sort of
how ground down I was,
and I was talking to my mother
at some point and she said,
"You know most people do that.
"They take like a week long news break,
"and they just don't
pay attention anymore.
"They go out in their garden,
or they do other things.
"They stop paying attention to the news,
"but I guess you can't do that."
And I was like, "No, mom, I can't do that.
"My work requires that I pay attention
"to all of these details and
all these disturbing things,"
which is why the sabbatical was so useful,
but we're in a really scary moment,
and I think what Trump has
exposed that is important for us
to think about as a society
is the polarization,
fragmentation, and deep
inequality that exists,
and existed before him.
He is not the symptom, or the
cause, he benefits from it,
so I go back to the question
of how do we as communities
whether it's at the small
level here in Hanover,
whether it's in other New
Hampshire communities,
or whether it's at the
national or the global level
how do we begin to fix these
injustices, this polarization?
What kind of commitments
do we need to show people
to make them feel like
they're not being left behind,
they're not going to be alienated,
and that we are going
to rebalance the system
so they can have a fair share too.
That isn't happening.
I'm not convinced that that's
going to happen in four years
if we have a different president,
but we do need to start looking at ways
that that can happen,
and that to me is part of
what keeps me motivated
is thinking, all right, we
can do better than this.
We're kind of hitting rock bottom,
but we all got to pitch
in in our own ways,
and we all have to think
constructively about
how can we get this to a better place?
So you can bet I'm getting
on the road with my kids
in the coming year and we're
going to be knocking on doors.
You're all welcome to come
down to DC and do it with us,
but I'm also cognizant of the fact
that the parties are changing.
The Republican party is kind
of like two parties in one,
and the ones that I used to work with
when I was in the Senate
seem increasingly gone.
Those are people that I could work with.
We had some fundamental differences,
but they weren't shattering the system,
and running roughshod over people.
There wasn't a policy of cruelty
that was being implemented
on a consistent basis so
I hear you, and I get it,
but I got to do my job too.
- [Daniel] Okay, how about right here?
- [Woman] Hi.
- This is my stepmother-in-law,
for those of you who don't know.
- We usually have a policy of
not calling on family members.
We're going to break that today.
- [Woman] I went to my first
political event on Sunday,
and it was a presentation of
a group I had never heard of,
but there were 15 Congress
people, men and one woman,
and 14 Congressmen who took the stage,
and talked about this caucus
that they're all committed to
called the Problem Solvers.
We sat in a room of hundreds.
I don't know how many hundreds.
Mostly undecided,
but Republicans, Democrats,
same with the Congress,
these Problem Solvers who were there.
There were 15 or 48 of them,
and they're committed to working together.
When they hash out an issue
they get 75% agreement
on this they vote as a block.
I've never heard of them,
but it gave me great hope.
Is that a caucus have
you ever heard of them?
Is it something that
I'm wondering why there were only 48,
but they were pretty passionate,
and it was very exciting to see
that at least in a small way
they're people from all walks of life,
all kinds of experiences
who even on the day of
the impeachment vote
still kept their meeting because
they had an important item
that they themselves as
a caucus had to meet on.
So they demonstrated over and over again.
This room was silent and
we were all like what?
I wasn't the only one who'd
never heard of them before,
but have you?
- I have not, but I do
see people coming together
in really interesting
ways across the aisle.
I think when it comes to
Congress certainly in the Senate
there is this sort of weird
feeling that even though
we are on different sides of the aisle,
we also are in it together.
I think it's a little
different in the House,
but they like to find things
that they can come together on.
The question for me with
a group like that is
how much do they have to compromise
to get to a common position,
or get to agreement,
because sometimes you see
things get so watered down
that it's not worth it,
but, I mean, I think
what you're seeing are
representatives who are tired
of having everything blocked,
and want to be able to work together.
It's sort of like a figure eight
they've got another one to come back in,
and it's exciting that
you were able to be there,
and to hear it,
and I think more like that
is probably a good idea.
- [Daniel] Let's go over here.
Yeah, but we need the mic.
- Okay, welcome home, Sarah.
I'm very impressed with how you wrapped up
like the last three years so well there.
- [Sarah] Thank you.
- It's frightening.
I lived in Russia in 1990,
and I feel like you were
describing what I was living,
which is obviously very frightening.
I'm wondering what you
think about if Trump loses
the peaceful transfer of power?
That's something I worry about.
I'm wondering if you
have thoughts on that?
I'm going home to my 13-year-old
with the sense of responsibility
the underdeveloped.
We'll see how that goes.
- It's a really good one.
Oh, gosh, peaceful transfer of power.
I'd like to say it's not
going to be a problem.
That's sort of where I come out on top,
but I think we have seen
from the White House
the president encourage and
enable so much violence,
so much discrimination.
I think it was in the last
month where there was sort of
the whole conversation about
civil war and the militia.
So it is very, very,
very frightening to me.
Being so close to Charlottesville
I followed that very closely.
Actually, one of my friends
was the guy who took the video
of the car that ran over the woman.
His life got totally taken down
by a lot of very violent
sort of nihilist actors.
I think it's going to be peaceful,
but I think it's going to
be intense if we get there.
That's the first part.
- Right here, right here.
Okay, you first, you've already
got the mic you're next.
Thank you for coming.
- So forgive me if I
mischaracterize some of,
and forgive me for coming
a couple of minutes late,
but it seems like the
majority of this stuff
where you talked about was sort of,
oh, where do we go from
here in terms of how
the United States is going
to engage internationally,
post Trump, or just in the future,
whether that's militarily
or diplomatically,
and then politically at home what
are we going to do with this.
Because of your human rights
background I'm just curious
if you could also speak to
what the United States could do
when we're sort of reassessing
and picking up the pieces,
hopefully soon, legally in
the human rights sphere?
We might have this leadership
posture on the global stage
just by virtually being
big and rich and mighty,
but we have not really shown
that same level of engagement
in terms of all the
human rights instruments
we derogate from all the
meaningful provisions.
We never ratified the
economic and cultural rights.
We never signed the Treaty of Rome.
We don't consent to the
jurisdiction of ICC.
If we had new leadership
and new administration,
and we're doing all these other things.
We never signed any movement
on those issues under Obama
having thought, oh, I
burned political capital
in other ways I'm not going to get there.
Moving forward seeing how
much we do need to lead
on the global stage what
do you see happening?
What would be some ways
that a new administration
could actually make
strides in those areas?
- We, I think, are one
of three governments
that has not ratified the
convention on the child.
It's like us, Somalia and
Saudi or something like that.
It's ridiculous.
So that's a really big
ask and requires, I think,
the White House and the Senate
to be democratic, right?
So that's the first piece.
You can't ratify a treaty with,
and, frankly, you can't even ratify,
I don't think you'd be
able to ratify a treaty
with a Senate that was
modestly Democratic.
You would need something of a margin,
which if it does flip in the next election
I don't think the margin
isn't going to be that big
because I think a lot of the Democrats
are going to be pretty conservative,
and those scary international treaties
that are going to come get you,
and take over your U.S. law
are not things that they're
going to want to talk about.
Incidentally, if you don't
know international law,
and human rights law in particular
is often called unicorn law,
which is sort of one of my
favorite phrases as a non-lawyer
because there's nothing
to do about it really
because the U.S. hasn't
turned them into national laws
for the most part.
So if let's say good news all around.
You've got a Democrat in the White House.
You've got a good majority in the Senate,
and this becomes a priority.
I think it's possible to see re-engagement
on the Paris agreement.
I think it's possible to see re-engagement
on the Rome treaty,
which is what underpins the
International Criminal Court.
The problem there is that you have
a potential investigation into
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan
looking at their torture and abuse,
which a lot of the lawmakers
would not want to see,
and then you have a potential
investigation into Israel
for abuse in Palestinian territories,
which a lot of pro Israel,
in the traditional sense
of pro Israel lawmakers
do not want to support,
so there's a lot of landmines there,
but I do think you can at
least get a better posture,
and support of the ICC.
Even if you can't get full
ratification of the treaty
I think you could end up where
the Obama administration was
at the end of their time
which was in a great place,
not ratifying but sharing information,
working collaboratively, encouraging them,
and, frankly, even at
one point helping them
airlift a war criminal out
of Rwanda to The Hague.
That was that U.S. that did that,
so I think you could at least
see that kind of relationship,
and that would be important
because the court is in
a tough spot right now
to put it mildly.
Also, the prosecutor got a visa ban
by the Trump administration,
but that's another story.
On the other ones I don't
think you're going to see
ratification of the social,
cultural, and economic rights
that kind of hits at the
core of some of the issues
that the U.S. sees as rights, right?
Like right to health
care, right to education.
That's not going to happen.
That would be a very, very heated debate.
I don't expect to see
a lot of legal instruments turned around.
I mean, the fact that we could get
the disabilities treaties ratified
with Bob Dole on the Senate floor
was sort of an astounding indication to me
of where the U.S. has gone
in terms of its support
for these international treaties, come on.
Domestic law still
trumps international law,
no pun intended, and it always will,
and I think that's sort
of where we are right now.
- I wouldn't hold my breath
for the Law of the Sea either.
That's only been waiting since 1981.
- I worked on that one
every year in the Senate
I worked on that one it hadn't moved.
- Yeah, no, I think there's
a lot of work to be done
before the White House feels
like it has the leisure
to push for treaties, so,
questions, questions, yes?
- [Man] Thank you again, Sarah,
for coming and presenting.
You brought up Israel and my
question is in regards to that.
Yesterday was the 24th anniversary
of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin,
which led to kind of a sea change
in terms of Israeli politics.
If there were a rejuvenated
American diplomacy
what might American
foreign policy look like
toward improving the situation
in that neck of the woods?
- Oh, this one's tough.
This one's tough because we fight about it
at my Thanksgiving table
sometimes, but also--
- [Daniel] There's still
time for Thanksgiving,
I mean, you can work this out.
- Maybe we can solve it,
and then I can go home for
Thanksgiving it will be fixed.
I mean, Netanyahu has made,
Israel in my mind is not
moving in the right direction
not just because of BB,
but explicitly because Netanyahu
has taken up some of that
creeping authoritarianism,
those tendencies that I was talking about,
and really driven home
the support for a vision
of Israel that does
not actually align with
the demographics of Israel.
At the same time his
comments about annexing,
and taking over the West Bank,
and continue to expand the settlements
does nothing to help the
ostensible two-state solution.
I'm basically of the mind
that the two-state solution,
which would be really
nice if it could happen
is all but dead.
Like a lot of people
have been talking about
it's on life support I
don't even think it's there.
I don't actually know what comes next.
You have an occupation.
There is law about how
people need to be treated
under occupation and by all
accounts the Israeli government
has violated those laws
time and time again.
So I don't know where we go from here.
In fact, many people
are trying to figure out
what frame can we think about
in re-engaging U.S. policy to Israel
given the many landmines that exist
within the Jewish community,
within the younger generation,
within the lawmakers,
within the private sector,
within concerns in
multiple executive branches
about leaving and letting go
of the special U.S. Israeli relationship,
how does this get managed?
And don't forget there's
millions of Palestinians
who are either locked in an open air box,
and have been denied
their fundamental rights for a long time
many of whom are seen as terrorists
simply because they're Palestinian.
So we definitely need a better approach.
We definitely need a
more balanced approach.
Actually, Open Society
is supporting a task force
run out of the Carnegie
for international peace in Washington
to take a look at this question.
There's one or two more
in Washington right now
that are starting to say what's next?
Where do we go?
What do we want to see the U.S. doing?
- [Daniel] Do you want to address
the issue of conditionality
that you and I were just talking about?
- Sure.
One of the hot button issues
right now in Washington is,
well, there's two, one is
BDS, which is divestment,
probably relevant on
this campus at some level
should businesses and
colleges and others divest,
but, also, the question
of vague conditionality.
The U.S. sends $1.6
billion annually to Israel
totally unconditioned.
It's part of the Peace Treaty
that was signed in 1980?
- [Daniel] 1977.
- '77, thank you, but there's
a really good argument
that actually that incentivizing
money is no longer needed
because Israel and Egypt
would like to continue
the peace on their own.
They don't need the U.S. to
continue paying them to do it.
So one of the conversations
that's been underway
that the Jewish groups are
all trying to figure out,
and that most of the Democratic
candidates have supported
is that Israel should no
longer get unconditioned aid.
If the Israelis violate U.S. law,
which includes supporting security forces
that are torturing Palestinian children,
something Human Rights
Watch had reported on
they shouldn't get a free pass
just because they're Israel.
That seems fair to me,
that seems balanced.
That is a massive uphill battle to fight.
Lawmakers are not totally ready to do it.
Some Democratic candidates
are supporting it,
and the Jewish groups are all over the map
when it comes to supporting it or not.
- Well, one would expect no less.
Okay, last question.
- You mentioned the Quincy Institute.
Well, another member of that,
one of the founding members,
is a guy named Andy Bacevich,
who is an army Veteran,
whose son was killed in Iraq.
And one of the things
that I remember him saying
in one of his books was,
well, over the years
so America has approximately
8% of the world's population,
but controls or owns up to
70% of the asset,
the financial assets in the
world, the wealth of the world,
and basically our foreign
policy over the years
has been designed to keep it that way.
Now we have a president who
says he wants to withdraw
the military from a lot
of places on the globe,
but anytime anyone does
something he doesn't like
he wages economic war with sanctions
that basically starve people to death.
And then I listened to your description
of the ills of the world,
and yet Wall Street seems to love it,
and institutions like
Dartmouth are being enriched,
and anyone that owns a 401(k)
is doing really well right now.
And I'm wondering if you
think that those things
might have something to
do with our next election?
- Oh, yes, we talked a
lot about people power,
but we didn't talk about the
role of money in elections.
We didn't talk about the role
of lobbyists in Washington.
That's a whole other talk that
would be really fascinating.
I often feel like I'm one
woman working on an issue,
and I'm up against like
four different lobby shops
that have been hired by any
number of nefarious governments
that I'm sort of trying to
outrace them with facts,
and figures and stories,
and will tell the staffers
don't let the lobbyists in.
Don't see them, please, they're
horrible, they're corrupt.
Yes, I think it has a
tremendous amount to do.
I think part of the reason
that you're seeing defense
sales up is because
it benefits the defense industry.
The argument that it
benefits American jobs
is not quite right.
The argument that it lines
the pockets of a lot of people
working at the top echelons
in the defense industry
is quite right.
So I think this overplay or
this connection between policy,
domestic as well as foreign
and the private sector,
and Wall Street is huge.
I mean, I think that has been separated
from policy decision-making
for a long time.
I've been really focused
recently on trade,
and how do we engage in a
conversation about trade
as it's interlinked to foreign policy.
Historically they've been very separate,
but if you want to talk about something
that matters to Americans
the question of jobs and labor issues
as it is impacted by trade
agreements will obviously
play a role in their thinking
about foreign policy.
So, yes, I think it
has a huge, huge place.
There's been efforts to
uncover a lot of that money.
I'd love to see restrictions
on money in elections,
but I may not work for someone
who feels the same way.
I often wonder what would happen
if nobody funded elections
outside of a couple of
$100,000 from the DCC.
So, yes, I absolutely think
it's a huge piece of it.
I don't have a ton more
to say other than sort of
there's dark money, not dark money,
there's weak restrictions,
there's a way to get around restrictions,
and it's clear that if you
have money you can succeed.
If you have money you can influence,
and if you have money you can
do a lot of nefarious things
that include getting the
president to do bad things.
- Okay, well, we're already
past the witching hour I'm afraid.
Before I thank our speaker
I just wanted to say that
on Thursday right in this
very room at 4:30 p.m.
I will be in conversation
with Jake Sullivan,
formerly director of policy planning
at the State Department,
and top policy aide to Secretary Clinton
when she ran for president.
Also, former national security advisor
to Vice President Biden.
- And a great guy.
- An all-around great
guy, which you all know
because you've seen him here before,
but I hope you'll come again,
and it will be an interesting
conversation about
the utility and the merits of impeachment,
foreign policy, and after Trump,
so I hope you will join us for that.
And in the meantime I hope
you will join me in thanking
Sarah for a fabulous efficaciously
depressing conversation.
- Thank you.
(applause)
