Latest / Pod Save the World / Trump's Delusional Election Rant

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Trump's Delusional Election Rant · Pod Save the World

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  Speaker 1: Welcome patvid World. I'm Tommy Beswarren, I'm Ben Roods.
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  Speaker 2: We are kind of token lefty crazy liberals that this
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: year's ask been security form.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for having us. We've got the margin time slot. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks, everyone had asked been for inviting us to be here,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: and for all of you for coming out this morning.
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  Speaker 1: I know it's early.
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  Speaker 2: We got a two part session for you, So Ben
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: and I are going to talk a bit about President
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Trump's primetime address last night and claims of election interference.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: We're going to step back and do a little naval
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: gazing about US foreign policy, in particular the role it
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: may have played in the fact that Americans no longer
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: trust their government or trust institutions. And we'll talk about
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: foreign policies role in that erosion of trust, and talk
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: about the blob phrase coined by my.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Co host here.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break, reset the stage,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: and then start the official programming for today, and then
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Ben and I are going to interview you and General
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Assembly at President and Alina Bierbach.
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  Speaker 1: So excited for that as well. But first let's talk
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: about Trump's speech. Ben.
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  Speaker 2: Last night, he demanded time from the major networks for
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: a primetime address to talk about the top issue on
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: the minds of every voter, an election that happened six
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: years ago. Senator Bernie Moreno previewed the speech as possibly
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: the most important Oval Office address since the Cuban missile crisis.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think it delivered on that easily? Easily? It
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: probably exceeded it.
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  Speaker 2: Remember when you didn't want to raise expectations in advance
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: of his speech.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that very well. What happened with that? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: So the speech started with Trump bragging about some accomplishments
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  Speaker 2: about the economy. It's clear like the domestic advisors got
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  Speaker 2: to him and they were like, please, sir, don't make
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  Speaker 2: this all about twenty twenty.
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  Speaker 1: Like talk about the economy.
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  Speaker 2: But the bulk of it was about election security, with
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  Speaker 2: the goal of drumming up political spot for the Save Act,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: which is stuck in the Senate. So the election security
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  Speaker 2: section ranged from like standard concerns you could hear from
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  Speaker 2: any president about voting machines and technology, to what seemed
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: like almost attacks on his old intelligence team from the
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  Speaker 2: first term, to these like vague demands for investigations and indictments,
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  Speaker 2: and then he declassified a bunch of intelligence about election
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  Speaker 2: systems vulnerabilities and electronic voting, a bunch of stuff about
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  Speaker 2: China and an investigation into voter registration groups in Michigan,
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  Speaker 2: and then claims about non citizens.
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  Speaker 1: So, Ben, let's just get your reaction to.
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  Speaker 2: The speech, and then I'll talk about some of the
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: stuff I noticed within the documents.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think it is
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  Speaker 1: relevant to talk about this at the Asmensecurity Forum because
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  Speaker 1: it's at the nexus of the security of American democracy,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and also his claims of fraud and interference often have
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: a kind of foreign nexus to them. My overall takeaway is,
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  Speaker 1: first of all, not surprising. There wasn't really any there
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: there there was, Like, I spent a lot of time
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: last night just trying to figure out what he was
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: talking about and reading documents that didn't in any way
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  Speaker 1: validate what he had said. I do think that the
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  Speaker 1: two main takeaways I would leave people with, though, are
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  Speaker 1: First of all, it bears noting that he has systematically
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  Speaker 1: dismantled all of the tools of government that had been
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  Speaker 1: put in place to prevent against foreign interference. So all
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  Speaker 1: the capabilities of the intelligence community, the capabilities within the
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  Speaker 1: Justice Department that designed to detect, disrupt, report on foreign
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  Speaker 1: interference have been removed, and so he was complaining about
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  Speaker 1: a lack of capacity that he himself brought about. I
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  Speaker 1: think the second and more important thing that we all
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: have to bear in mind is all of this is
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: just to create a pretext to preemptively so doubt not
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty election, but about the upcoming midterm election.
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  Speaker 1: And so we remember Telsea Gabbard, D and I at
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the time participating over the seizing of ballot boxes in
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  Speaker 1: Fulton County. The intelligence community is being brought into this
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  Speaker 1: effort by Trump to kind of create some pretexts to
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  Speaker 1: sow doubt in the minds of at least his supporters
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  Speaker 1: around those midterm elections. And so I think, unfortunately, what
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  Speaker 1: this speech tells us is that we should expect a
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  Speaker 1: lot of effort and misinformation around foreign interference, around domestic threats,
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  Speaker 1: around the need to securitize and federalize what should be
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  Speaker 1: state elections, potentially pretext to seize ballot boxes before votes
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  Speaker 1: have been counted. Like, I see this as a warning
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  Speaker 1: sign that we are going to be in it in
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  Speaker 1: terms of a potential democratic crisis around these midrums.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I assume the speech itself will be rhetoric.
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  Speaker 2: I did, you know, kind of like approach the documents
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  Speaker 2: with an open mind, because you know, they're declassified documents.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe there's something interesting there. But as I went through,
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  Speaker 2: a lot of it looked old. I mean, a lot
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  Speaker 2: of experts I follow who who studied this stuff closely say,
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  Speaker 2: there's just not a lot of new emails or information there.
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  Speaker 2: Like there's some declassified emails, there's some raw intelligence documents,
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  Speaker 2: but the overall assessments haven't changed and they've been publicly disclosed.
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  Speaker 2: So the key document regarding claims of election interference in
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty is this National Intelligence Council report that was
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: released in twenty twenty one, so it was prepared by
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Trump's staff, released by the Biden administration. It found that
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: like there were a handful of countries kind of running
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: influence operations in support of various candidates, but none tried
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: to change voter registration, vote counting, the vote reporting, you know,
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  Speaker 2: nothing to materially impact the results or to manipulate the results.
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  Speaker 2: That assessment found Russia tried to hurt Biden help Trump,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Ron tried to hurt Trump. China like probed various systems
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  Speaker 2: but decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze if they
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: got caught. And then there were some other like the
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Cubans of Venezuelans were like kind of mucking around, but
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  Speaker 2: nothing of note. But again Trump kind of released these
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: raw documents like these emails. They're hard to vet for accuracy.
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  Speaker 2: There's a redacted PDB piece, there's a CIA wire report,
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  Speaker 2: but nothing that challenges that consensus opinion. But also the
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  Speaker 2: existence of those documents undercut his broader claim that this
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  Speaker 2: was suppressed somehow, Like it went up in the PDB.
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  Speaker 2: It went in the CIA Wire report, which is widely disseminated.
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  Speaker 2: With respect to China, the documents show some debate in
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  Speaker 2: the intelligence community about what China did. Like the overall
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: ic assessment is that China considered interfering but didn't. But
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  Speaker 2: there's this one intelligence officer who dissented and said, quote,
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  Speaker 2: Beijing has taken at least some low level exploratory steps,
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  Speaker 2: but not the most aggressive options. But again, we knew
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  Speaker 2: that that was in this twenty twenty one report that
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: was released. Kind of hilariously, Trump undercut his own claim
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  Speaker 2: that Russia never interfered in our elections. He released documents
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  Speaker 2: that confirm Russia tried to interfere in twenty twenty to
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  Speaker 2: hurt Biden. It says Russia tried to quote orchestrate a
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  Speaker 2: high profile corruption scandal and then pushed narratives about voter
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  Speaker 2: fraud resulting from mail in balloting. That's like Beisma Hunter,
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  Speaker 2: Biden all that stuff. And then John Solomon, who's this
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  Speaker 2: right wing journalist who has brought in to kind of
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  Speaker 2: create all this material, was interviewed afterward by Von Hilliard
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  Speaker 2: at MS NOW and he said, quote, the intelligence community
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  Speaker 2: has zero evidence that a foreign power flipped a vote
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  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty twenty two or twenty twenty four, and
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  Speaker 2: so it kind of undercut Trump's entire claim here. So
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  Speaker 2: I guess, I guess this is why they brought in
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Bill Polti to be the Director of National Intelligence. I
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: wouldn't say he's delivered yet.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, look, I two reflections, Like one is on
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  Speaker 1: this issue of election interference itself, and another is on
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  Speaker 1: what the purpose of this was election interference. I think
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  Speaker 1: one thing, because the documents show that there's not been
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  Speaker 1: any successful or even really concerted effort to affect the
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  Speaker 1: outcome of an election, right the vote tabulation, the functioning
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  Speaker 1: of the electoral system. So all of this era of
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  Speaker 1: election interference, including twenty sixteen, by the way, has been
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: principally about interference in the form of you know, misinformation, disinformation,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: or just outright overt messaging from foreign governments or their
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: kind of cutouts. I do think twenty sixteen was a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: little bit different in that you also had hack and
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: release operations, right, So the reason they jump at US
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen felt materially different to me is that you
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: had efforts to hack into people's emails and release them.
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  Speaker 1: So you have a kind of criminal activity on behalf
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  Speaker 1: of an interference effort. But I'd freely acknowledge, as we
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: did at the time, despite what Trump has said, we
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: didn't determine that Russia materially affected the vote count in
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Now, when you look at these reports, none
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of this is surprising every you know, government with an interest.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: They're just reflecting their positions, right, Like Russia doesn't like Biden,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: China kind of you know, doesn't really have a favorite,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and they just want to kind of undermine trust institutions,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: you know, Arond and like Trump, none of this is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: a surprise. That's what those governments actually would say if
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: they were speaking openly, right. And so we're living in
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: an era where countries regularly interfere in the politics of
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: other countries because social media makes it easy and low
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: cost to do so. And that's just something we live with.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: What is a different question is whether you are literally
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: trying to interfere in the vote count, and we see
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: no evidence to that that case. But that leads me
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: to again, what is he doing here? It's it's tried
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: into playbook where he doesn't need to actually have a
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: there there, He doesn't actually need to have some smoking gun.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: He just needs to create enough of an appearance of
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: discrediting the electoral system of some semblance of a scandal
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that can then ricochet around his media ecosystem. It doesn't
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: matter if people like us are persuaded or not. He
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: just has to kind of create enough energy and doubt
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and distrust among his core supporters to provide a basis
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: for again, if we get to a place where there
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: ice or military at polling stations or efforts to seize
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: voting machines. So nobody should take comfort in the fact
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: that this didn't land well, because the purpose of this
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: is just to create a smoke screen ys long term.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: A White House official told Politico it was as on
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  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk go apart to the blob. Ben
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: you want to define the blob for everyone here, Well,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I we thought we had to kind of go right
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: at this question. I think what I was getting at
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen was a kind of group think
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: mentality that I freely acknowledge, like as someone who was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: at the upper echelons of the national security apparatus of
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: this country, like at times I was a participant in
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: where you tend to have a bias towards intervention, be
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it military intervention or the imposition of sanctions. You tend
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: to not question what you've done or own up to mistakes,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and you therefore tend to kind of repeat patterns of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: behavior that are not working and that have been losing
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: credibility with the public. I was doing this particularly in
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the context at that time of the debate over the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Row nuclear agreement, which is because I was basically referring
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: to the adversaries of that agreement. It was a pretty
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: pitched battle at that time. Politically, I should say it
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: was harder to do a nuclear agreement than it was
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to take this country to war, which is something I
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: think we all need to reflect on. Wise, it harder
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: to get a JCPOA through Congress than it is to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: launch a war against Iran or Libya or another country.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: And so that was kind of what I was trying
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: to identify.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the problems with the BLOB, and
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: the thesis here is that the BLOB is helping hasten
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: this erosion of trust and faith in institutions, and it
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: needs to be.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Reformed and changed. And so we'll unpack some of the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: reasons why.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the reasons, I think people
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: have frustrations with the kind of permanent foreign policy classes.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: It feels like there's no accountability, there's no accountability for
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: bad policies, bad decision making, and people just kind of
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: hang on forever. Like take John Bolton for example. Guy's
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: been in Washington for decades. There's no country he does
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: not want to invade, there's no threat he won't hype,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: and yet he kind of Fox News hidded himself into
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: becoming the National Security Advisor again until he was indicted
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: by the President. And you know, I think that gets
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: at this lack of accountability. I think the primary policy
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: example is still the Iraq War. It was, I think
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: self evidently a catastrophic disaster. Hundreds of thousands of rocks
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: were killed, thousands of US service members, we wasted trillions
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: of dollars, and yet it feels like the architects of
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: that war have faced no professional consequences that are often
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: treated as kind of foreign policy luminaries, while there are
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: these lonely voices who opposed the war, or great journalists
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: like the team at Night Ritter that were reporting on
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: the truth and undercutting the administration's claim, and they are
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: hardly celebrated, like in fact, they're largely forgotten. And so
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: there were a couple of examples. Frankly, you know, not
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: to pick on anyone, but here at Aspen this week,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Condolle's Rice offered some comments about Iran that I wanted
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: to highlight.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: She said about the threat.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: From Iran, when I hear it wasn't imminent, do you
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: really want to wait until it's imminent of the nuclear deal,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: of cutting a nuclear deal. I wouldn't buy a nuclear
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: agreement under any circumstances. I just let them Iran sit
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: there and stewing their lousy economy. And then of Europe's
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: refusal to join Trump's war with Iran, quote with Americans fighting,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: whatever you say about it, this isn't our war is
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: not really a very smart thing to say. Then recounted
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: a story about Jacques Scharac and Gerrard and George Schroeder
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: opposing the Iraq war and how much it pissed off
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: George Bush. And again I don't want to pick on
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: doctor Rice, but I would just say, like, first of all,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: that comment about the threat from Iran sounds nearly identical
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: to the infamous we don't want the smoking gun to
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: be a mushroom cloud line about Iraq WMD, which was
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: discredited with respect to the JCPOA which I believe she opposed.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Trump tore it up. That's the problem.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And now we're in the war that everyone was trying
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: to avoid, and Trump himself is billing it as a
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: new forever war. And then again when we talk about
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: like Iran stewing in its bad economy, I think we
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: should be clear that ninety million people get to then
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: stew in that bad economy and suffer, and then finally, like,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I'm sure Bush was frustrated with Schroeder and Shirack, but
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: they were right and he was wrong. So I'm like,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: I just I don't know the value of that anecdote
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: all these years later.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: So Ben, again, not.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Trying to be a jerk, but if we can't learn
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: from a mistake as obvious as a rock, what can
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: we learn from?
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'll turn internal here because the Democratic Party
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: has its own problems in this regard. I mean, you
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: not are shotting last night. We've kind of defaulted to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: a certain perspective at times. You take like a Bob Menendez,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: for instance, hawkish guy, you know, pro rock war, anti JCPA,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: obviously corrupt, and yet was allowed to continue to be
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the lead Democrat on the sen Farm Relations Committee after
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: narrowly averting one corruption investigation. And so to me, the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: question is because if you take a rock, I think
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: sometimes they're often these conversations about why do Americans not
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: appreciate enough the role we play in the world, or
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: do they not understand that the United States has a
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: central role to play in underpinning an international order which
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: has now frankly unraveled. When the message from the electorate
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: for successive presidential elections is been we want accountability over
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the Rock War. Like Barack Obama, our first boss, would
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: never have become President of the United States without his
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: opposition to the Iraq War. There was the single policy
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: difference with Hillary Clinton in twos and eight primary that
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: allowed him to win. Donald Trump in twenty sixteen ran
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: against Jeb Bush and the legacy of the Iraq War.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: That is when he caught fire. And so the message
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: from the public is we want accountability for these foreign
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: policy disasters and for these forever wars. I would say
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: that one way to do that. There are a couple
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: ways to do that. One is, I think the people
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that participate in American farm policy have to be more
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: willing to acknowledge error. You know, when I look back
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: on the Libya intervention in the Obomba years, which I supported,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I have to acknowledge that that turned out to be
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the wrong decision, and it turned out to be a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: decision that perpetuated aspects of American farm policy that have
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: alienated people in this and around the world because while
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I can defend it on the basis that had succeeded
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: in a near term objective of averting Kadafi from massacring
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: some civilians, it created through regime change effects that have
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: destabilized North Africa and the Sahell ever since. And I
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: think people like yes, they want to see different people
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and positions of power and authority when it comes to
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: feign policy. They want to see generational change, just as
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: we want to see generational change with politicians. They want
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: to see generational change with the people who are responsible
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: for American farm policy. But they also want to see
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: people And I think would show some grace to people
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: if they were willing to reckon with error and and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: didn't feel like they had to dig in and defend everything,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: and particularly it's intervention that we've failed to reckon with
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: like the we we've now had Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Iran,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: which was an attempt at regime change where none of
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: these have worked. And instead of questioning whether we can
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: do it better, we need to be questioning why we
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: continue to try to engage in regime change wars in
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the first place.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Right, the problem wasn't just the intelligence about a rock WMD.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: The problem was engagement or didn't.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Send enough troops or whatever, an other challenge with the blob.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: This one gets out.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: What you're just talking about is this Some members of
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: the kind of permanent foreign policy establishment class act like
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: foreign policy is somehow above or separate from or immune
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: from politics. And you and I would often go to
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: meetings in the situation room and someone would sort of
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: performatively say, like, politics has no place in these walls,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and like they had good intentions. They were trying to
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: signal that we are making national security determinations, not you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: decisions of political expediency.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: But of course, you know, politics was.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: In that room. We were only allowed in that room
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: because Barack Obama won a couple elections. But you know,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: the mentality you hear in DC is often that, you know,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: foreign policy and national security these are matters that are
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: discussed decided by small groups of elites, inner matters, you know,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: without real input from the rest of the country. And
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I think that can lead to the establishment in both
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: parties making mistakes and ignoring the will of voters. That's
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: how you end up with the Democratic Party ripping itself
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: apart over Gaza, which is happening today, or how you
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: end up with Trump running on not starting any new
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: regime change wars and then launching one with run nevermind
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Venezuela and so bent. How do you think about how
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: to better incorporate the will of the people democratize these
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: decisions while also acknowledging that populism, nativism, isolationism, those are
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: powerful political forces that can lead to really, really bad
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: foreign policy outcomes.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is such an important question. First of all,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the things that I think a lot of us can
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: agree on right, that you would want to function in
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: international order, that you would want to sustain alliances, that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: you would want to sustain certain overseas commitments, foreign assistants
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: among them, That you need to have a credible intelligence community.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Those things depend on maintaining trust. The way to defend
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: those things is not to pull up the drawbridge from
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: politics and public opinion and say we know better. That's
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: been a recipe for essentially the dismantling of those things,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: because you become so distant from the people that it
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: opens up a space for populism to kind of come
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: directly at you. And in a time of anti establishment sentiment,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that we've been living through for not just a decade,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: but I would argue since two thousand and six. I
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: mean Obama ran as a populace, We've been living through that.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: I think the second thing is you do need to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: incorporate some respect for public opinion into your decision making
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: because this is a democracy, and if you cannot sustain
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: your policies, because you lack public support for those policies,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: nothing you do is going to succeed. And to take
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: it sometimes by the way, the public has it right.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And if you look at Gaza as we were experiencing
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: that through late twenty twenty three into twenty twenty four,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: there was just no way to explain to democratic voters
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: why this policy made sense. The machine had been built
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: to provide a certain amount of military assistance and kind
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of an open spigot to the Israeli government. The Israeli
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: government was clearly ignoring the Council of the Bid Administration.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: The Bide administration was even putting out, hey, we really
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: aren't happy with what Nanya is doing, or we know
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Biyen had a really tough phone call with them, and
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: yet all the public sies is their tax dollars funding
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: all of these weapons going to an Israeli government that
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: is using them to destroy civilians inside of Gaza, right,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: And that it's not just like when people talk about
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: the election, it's not just whether or not there was
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: support for that policy. It's whether you could believe anything
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: else that the administration was saying because they had lost
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: such credibility in a space. So the second point is,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the public opinion is telling you something
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: that you need to listen to, or frankly, is giving
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you space to change. It may have seemed hard to
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: break from an Israeli government in that context, but when
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you have your voters telling you to do it, there's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: your basis for doing it. The last thing I want
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: to say is a policy solution is I actually think
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: it means that Congress should be more involved than foreign policy.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: If Congress had to vote to authorize these wars, they
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: wouldn't happen, Like Congress never would have voted to authorize
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the war and ir on right. And so if we
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: get back to a place as intended by the founders
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: of this country, where Congress is actually the decision maker
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: on matters of going to war or not, you would
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: end these wars right quick, because after the Iraq War,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: which ended a lot of congressional careers, ever since then,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: nobody has wanted to take a vote to authorize the war.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're running loan and I will do one
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: more complaints and then we have some thoughts on how
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: to fix things. The last kind of grievance with the
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: blob is I think there's a tendency in Washington to
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: treat pro war people as realistic and serious and anti
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: war pro peace voices and as fringe and unserious. You
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: see this a lot in establishment media. Lindsay Graham, who
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: recently passed away, appeared on Meet the Press sixty three times.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: This would have been a sixty fourth appearance. The record
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: for the most appearances is held by John McCain. I
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: would wager that the overwhelming majority of those media appearances
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: focused on advocacy for war or US intervention Somewhere and
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: on the flip side, I'm sure folks. Some folks might
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: remember a congressman named Dennis Kasinch. He was a congressman
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: from Ohio, something of a gadfly kind of perennial presidential candidate,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: ultimately ended up working for RFK Junior somehow. I don't
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: know what happened with him, but his signature idea was
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: the bit of Journey Journey.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: His signature idea was.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: The creation of a Department of Peace, and it was
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: treated like a joke. And I remember thinking that he
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: was a joke and that idea was a joke, and
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: what a silly notion. But I went through the bill
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: text yesterday. The mission of the Department was to make
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: peace an organizing principle of US foreign policy, to promote justice,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: democratic principles, and expand human rights and promote conflict prevention
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: through diplomacy. I don't really get why that's a joke,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: and why the Department of War, which exists and is
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: run by Pete Hegseth, is a real thing that exists
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: in this world. You mentioned the example the jcpoa band
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: was nitpicked to death by Congress. They passed a lot
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: to make it harder to cut a deal with Iran,
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: while these wars just could kind of race through. So
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: thoughts on this sort of like frustration around anti war
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: voices being treated as unserious before it's solutions.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's two quick points on this. I mean,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: one is just the idea that, like I started in
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a think tank in DC. And part of the issue
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: here is that intervention is often presented as a solution
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to the problem. But then that can create a situation
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: where every problem is in ale and so you reach
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: for the hammer, right, and so the way you should
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you're trying to solve a problem of a government doing
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: something we don't like is to bomb it, invade it,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: or sanction it. And so therefore these are the people
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: with the solutions and so their platform where it's someone saying,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: wait a second, we shouldn't do this. I mean, if
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you look at the people that voted against the Iraq
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: war in Congress, they tend to be the people that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: are not taken seriously in certain elite media debates about
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: these things. So part of this is you've got to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: change the paradigm where there needs to be more skepticism
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: that intervention is always a solution, and the person coming
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and arguing for bombing a country is therefore offering a
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: solution that is more credible than someone who's saying, hey,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't do that. I would argue on our progressive side,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: we need to get more involved in foreign policy. Though,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: like part of the issue is that progressive is often
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: in the past and this is changing now, have focused
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: on domestic policy and they've kind of seeded the terrain
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party on national security to more hawkish
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: people that end up running committees. Right, we had Menendez
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: an laed Angle running the foreign affairs committees. You know,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: these are the hawkish parts of the party and so
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: part of and this is happening now, but I want
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: like an AOC to have more of a foreign policy profile. Right.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders when he moved after the twenty sixteen election
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: to have more of a foreign policy voice was very
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: healthy for the party. And so a part of the
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: way you do this is you have progressives and you
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: have to kind of create permission structures for that to
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: happen and give them committe assignments and things like that.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: But you need to democratize the discourse so that it
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: reflects the American people. Right.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I real criticism of Bernie and sixteen was that
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: he didn't really have a foreign policy agenda that he
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: was running on, and that changed quickly after he lost. So, look,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: we complained about the blob. Let's talk about how to
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: fix it. I'm gonna throw out a few thought starters
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: and then you offer your own. I just think you
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: need generational change within the kind of staffer class and
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: more diversity of voices.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: One way to get at that is we need.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: More transparency and oversight when it comes to foreign policy
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: think tanks in Washington. There is a revolving door between
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of these think tanks and institutions and the government.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: A lot of them have you know, funding from right
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: wing billionaires or whatever. We need fewer of those voices
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: constantly coming in out of government and more new people.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: I think we need stronger lobbying bands, disclosure rules, enforcement
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: of Farrah, and just you know, camping finance reformed too,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: But that's a panel for a different day. We need
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: a bigger state Department. We need to build back a
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: modernized version of USAAD. We need to rethink and shrink
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: the US military footprints and spending so that we aren't
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: just constantly adding and adding and adding without subtracting anything.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: You know what, the currently Trump wants a one point
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: five trillion dollar Pentagon budget.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: That is crazy. You mentioned this the AOMF.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: We need to repeal the Post nine only alive and
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: authorizations for the use of military force. And then Congress
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: needs to put some real teeth into the War Powers
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Act and clarify it so that it doesn't just get
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: ignored over an over again, including bi Barack Obama.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And then arm sales.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: I just would love to see Congress vote up or
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: down on arm sales. Why is there not more scrutiny
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: of like massive, major arms packages to countries around the world.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: But then your thoughts, I think that's a really good list,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: and we're shut in time because and I don't just
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: echo it. I will say just a couple of things
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: on this. The first is the democratizing who does farm policy.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: It's generational change, but it is very much like different
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: recruitment pipelines. It is both older, but it's also a
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: very white establishment. And if you were able to diversify
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the voices and the perspectives that are informing American farm policy,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: you would get different outcomes as well. And then I
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: think critically important is I just say that a lot
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: of the common threads to what you said, because I
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: throw into that the permanent sanctions regimes. We say ancient countries,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and the sanctions never go away, you know, so we're
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: just building sanction upon sanction top sanction until by the way,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: we're going to lose the dollars or reserve currency and
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: things are going to get real here very fast, because
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: we cannot sustain our standards of living without that. But
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: in order to do things like repealed AOMF, get Congress
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: involved in the declaration or authorization of the use of
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: military force, restrict arm sales countries engaged in human rights violations,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: you need to end this mindset where it is more
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: of a political risk to take those positions than it
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: is to advocate for sanctions and for military intervention. And
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the reason that should not be hard is that is
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: where public opinion is. Yet political leaders are often far
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: too afraid of being called weak on national security than
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: they are and taking principal positions against those things. Public
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: opinion keeps telling us you will be rewarded for doing this.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Don't be afraid to have fights on these issues, because
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: if you do and start to win those fights, that's
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: how the type is in facts.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Have fights because it draws attention to these issues, as
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: we saw with Barack Obama and we saw it with
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's it for this section of the show.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being here. We're going to take a
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: quick break, reset the stage, and then we come back.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: You'll hear our conversation with an Alina Bierbach, so please
• 34:13
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Madam President, for joining us with
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: this conversation. I have admired your work as leader of
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the German Greens and as Foreign Minister. I want to
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: start by just talking a little bit about the role
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: of the United Nations and and then later we'll get
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to some some specific things you're working on. I speak
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: as a huge supporter of the UN system, and I
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of frame this around the fact
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: that we I've been watching, like everybody else, the negotiations
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: around UH the Iran war play out, and it kind
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of fairly improvisational is a word you might use manner,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: you know, in Islamabad and Cutter and other places. And
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I've noticed the kind of absence of a u N
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: participation in those talks, whereas during the j c p
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: O the u N kind of had a formal role
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: because it was UN Security Council Permanent five that were
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: in the negotiations along with Germany. What what does that say?
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: How how do we get to a place where the
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: UN is kind of reinserted into international diplomacy on the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: leading piece and security issues. You've looked at this as
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the perspective of foreign minister, now as a perspective of you,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: an officer. How can we revitalize the role of the
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: UN international diplomacy?
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Good morning, and thank you for having me in this
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: wonderful and beautiful landscape.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: Well, Obviously the world is.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Not in a good shape, to put it very diplomatic,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: and obviously it's a huge challenge for the United Nations.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: And third point, obviously the UN needs a deep reform and.
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: We come back to that later.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: So don't get me wrong that I want to sugarcoat
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: anything with regard to the United Nations. However, I think
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: we always have to get the context right because context
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: matter a lot, if we all know so. In a
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: situation where key drivers of the Security Council are not
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: only challenging the Charter, but attacking the Charter, it is
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: impossible for an institution like the UN of one hundred
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: ninety three member states and five permanent members of the
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Security Council who do have a beta power to solve
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: a war where some becha powers are involved. So in
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: the end, the UN is always the sum of its
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety three. But this does not mean
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: at all that the UN cannot do anything, and we
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: might come back to that later as well. I mean,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: there's now a total revitalization of the General Assembly and
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: the narrative of saying we live in a polarized world,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: one against the other.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: And my point of view is totally under complex.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: We are in a multipolarized world and we have a
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: two thirds majority for kind of everything what holds this
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: world together, from the SDG to fighting climate crisis, to
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: governance structure for AI and also on peace and security
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: because most of the countries in the world know the
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: UN Charter is their life insurance. If we would exact
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: that might is right again, this would be the death
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: sentence for almost everybody my country, including and I would
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: even say for those strongest armies. As we can see
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: right now with the strait of Hermuse. You cannot end
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: this alone with military force, and obviously this has a
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: deep effect for your own economy. So in a nutshell, yes,
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: the Charters are under pressure. The UN is working in
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: very challenging times. We have to do better and this
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: would only work. So put pressure in the Security Council
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: if this two thirds majority dares. And this comes to
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: a deeper point. Now you mentioned the War of Iran.
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: We know the effects. We saw it yesterday night.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Again, not all the neighboring countries, very strong Gulf countries.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: But when we had the.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Discussions about resolution, be it on Gaza, be it on
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: the Board of Peace, be it on the strait of
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: hermus who dares to stand up and speak up.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: I leave it there.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Because I'm the President of the General Assembly, was one
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: hundred and ninety three members states. But individual leadership matters,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: I would say more than ever. And if individual leaders
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: joined forces, if two thirds majority in individual leaders joined forces,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: I would say, then can move hardly anything. But obviously
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: for some of the big prices at the moment, it's
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: not possible. And this is why we have to keep
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: on not only reforming the UN, but also asking every
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: individual country, do you step up in your own interest
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: for the principles of the Charter every day?
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let me ask you one fallow up on reform then,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: because and it's an interesting point about the democratic body,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the General Assembly kind of taking more of a role
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: given the divisions in the Security Council. I have often
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: defended the UN by suggesting to people that if the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: member States, particularly on the Security Council, particularly the veto
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: wielding members of the Security Council, disagree, the system can't
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: really function the way that we would want it to.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: That said, we are kind of living in a reality
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: in which that doesn't feel like it's changing anytime soon.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And so when you talk about reform, essentially the way
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: in which the UN has a voice, the way in
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: which component parts of the United Nations are functioning, How
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: can the UN reform absent any kind of consensus among
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: particularly the United States, Russian and China. What can be
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: done by the UN itself as an organization in a
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: context when it's kind of leading board members to take
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: a phrase, are at odds with each other.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: So they are different parts of reform. Let me start
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: with the political one.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: First.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: We saw what Member States can do a year ago
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: at the beginning of the High Level Week where I
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: took over the presidency where one day before the official
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: opening happened. This was on Tuesday morning. We had the
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Money morning first, celebrating thirty years of Bijing. Women rights
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: and security also very important topic. Maybe you could touch
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: it later as well. But then we had the Two
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: State Solution Conference organized and set up by Saudi Arabia
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: and France. Interesting again coalition in these times, and the
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: US was totally against it. They didn't even participate yet,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: and here comes my two thirds majority example. One hundred
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: and forty two Member States adopted a resolution which was
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: a detailed plan for how to end the war in Gaza,
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: actually something I've worked before for a couple of years,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: since the seven off October with the core group again
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: a core group. This is why I'm such a fan
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: in these times of front runners and.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: Collisions, not of the willing. This is a bit.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: Synochrome from another time, but a collision of those who
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: believe that they can really do something. So it has
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: concrete steps, disarmament of harmas withdrawal from the Israeli armor
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: from Gaza, access of humanitarian steps towards the governings, from
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: the Palestinian themselves.
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: So it's all in there.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: And this was adopted and if you would look at
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: the video from that day again, it was the celebration
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: of the UN itself. I've never felt an atmosphere like
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: this in this room because it really showed to memistate
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: while this is our house, this is our house of humanity,
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: and we can do something if we do something together.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: And this mood and again politics and these times is
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: different than in nineteen seventy. It's all over social media.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: I think some who weren't there have watched that very carefully. Also,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: how too, one president was there and the other was
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: the foreign minister. Two persons were celebrated at this event
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: because then the next day we had the official speeches
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: by heads of states, and then we.
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: Had a meeting in the Security Council.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: Now, at first we had an invitation to DC, and
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: then we had a meeting in the Security Council, and
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: then we.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: Had the steps towards the Board of Peace.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: But this last step would not have happened if we
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: wouldn't have that that Monday and the two state solutions,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: and there you see all the power. Yeah, and there
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: you see also that And this is my theory. No
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: single country in the world in these times can move
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: in total isolation. So if there is the strength. So
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: this is not an institutional reform. We don't have to
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: change anything in the Security Council for that. We just
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: need leadership and we just need coalitions for projecting the Charter.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Having said this, obviously many things would be way easier
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: if we would have an institutional reform of.
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: The Security Council. If I were a professor.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: And sometimes journalists pretend they are professors and then they say,
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: but Madame President, yeah, don't you see that we need
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: a reform of the Security Council that the VETO is
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: totally blocking peace.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: Well, obviously I see it.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: But then I asked back to them, since you're also
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: having eyes, don't you see in the world that it's
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: almost impossible at this moment to take away the we
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: TO right and all of those who said maybe the
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: UN has fall has failed, we have to build something new. Yeah,
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: there was an effort to build something new. It was
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: called Board of Peace. Did you see that the VTA
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: power was taken away? Well, the v TO power was
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: even increased because there is now a single veto power
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: that not only one country, but one person has an
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: individual VTU power. So all these theoretical discussions about maybe
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: we just build something new, I mean, this would be
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: the end of multileatterism. Bringing me to the third point
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: of the reform. Reform is boring being a national politics
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: before nobody applauds you of saying, you know what, I've
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: had wonderful idea. We just changed the rules of procedures,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: and please vote for me at the next election for
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: that one. But as you also now those in administrations,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: these reforms and rules of pri procedures matter heavily.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: So this is what we are working on. Nobody reports
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: about it.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: This is also good because then nobody is like making
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: fake news on social media about it. But the deep reform,
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: obviously of the Security Council. The first steps are right, Now,
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: how do we get more justice of Africa having a seat,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: for example, at the Security Council. Yeah, this would open
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: slightly the door. It would not change the weed to power,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: but at least it would give more credibility to this institution.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Other reforms even more boring but heavily crucial. How do
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: we take away this overload? I mean, this is where
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: especially the US is definitely right. There's an inefficiency which
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: I could not believe as a German because we love
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: bureaucracy in Germany.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but now.
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: I've found a place where I don't love it anymore.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: So we really have to do something about it. And
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: this is again a deep structural challenge which is not
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: so easy to solve. You don't have any checks and
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: balances within the UN. Yeah, so there is no finance
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: committee challenging the government saying well this is a bit inefficient.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: It's all the member states. And again in theory it's
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: very easy. Just get rid of.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Many many of the USG's and ahegs for those who
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: are experts in the United Nations. Yeah, the highest positions
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: in the security in the UN. Yet they are all political.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: You gave one to that country, you gave another one
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: through that country. So every individual post is already a
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: geopolitical challenge.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: Yet this is what we have to do.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: Also the next Secretary of joennal and ye, maybe we
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: can go into that deeper. But if we are not
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: reforming this house from inside, it will collapse given the
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: challenges from outside.
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  Speaker 2: dot com slash World. I want to follow up on
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Gaza and threats to the UN Charter because it seems
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: like the announcement of the Board of Peace it was
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: ostensibly to deal with long term reconstruction in Gaza, but
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: it does seem like it's trying to supplant or replace
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: some of the core functions.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Of the UN.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: And so far the Board of Piece has been a failure.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Almost none of the pledge money is materialized. I read
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: recently that the International Security Force that they're pulling together
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: currently has four members. I believe they're supposed to provide
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: security within Gaza. So I was wondering what you make
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: of the Board of Piece's brief tenure and whether it's
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: making your job harder at the UN.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: Well, after a couple of months, no, because it proved
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: what I just said that obviously it's not so easy
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: to build another institution, and for sure it can never
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: ever ever replace the United Nations. Yet, in the moments
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: when we had the discussions, and again my role is
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: now President of the General Assembly and I represent one
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: hundred ninety three, obviously there's hardly any consensus. So I
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: always say I swore my o's on the Charter and
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: I speak on the Charter because this is the base
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: for one hundred ninety three and in the frame of
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: the charter. I said at the beginning, when they were
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: discussion about the Boarder of Peace, there's a reason why
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: we do have a body for peace and security where
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: every country, no matter how big or small, how powerful
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: or rich, has a seat at the table and an
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: equal voice and vote at the table. So you can
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: understand this, and obviously something else hasn't.
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: But I was.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: One of the few who said anything about it, also
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: from the UN family. And this is I think, I
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: mean some things. As I said, we cannot change. We
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: cannot change the veto power at the moment, but we
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: can change every day if we dare to speak up,
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: and if in a situation where the UN is so
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: heavily under pressure, because obviously it was a momentum where
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: some thought we show now.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: How easy peace and security can be built.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: And those from different countries here, yeah, I mean there
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: was an invitation and I was not the Foreign minister anymore,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: but I just said, by the way, this is a.
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: Good thing when you have media access.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to remind that in the German constitution,
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: I don't even see how Germany could participate in this
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: because of our history. We are bound to act for
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: peace and security only within international organization, regional ones, European Union,
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Council of Europe, and international ones obviously the United Nations.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: But I felt it was a need for saying this,
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: that we do have a constitution. But people were really
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: searching for argus because they, my point of view, could
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: not just say the simple thing of saying, well, there's
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: a Security Council, there's a General Assembly.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Just take these forums.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: And I think this is also when we speak about
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: Iran again, it's not as easy as we see in
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: the headlines. Yeah, the UN failed because they didn't deal
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: with it. The topic of Iran was not even brought
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: to the Security Council. When remember Iraq, there was a
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: heavy debate in the Security Council. Again, you can have
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: different political opinions about who was right and who was
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: wrong in this. One of the foreign ministers from my
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: country back then said, with all due respect, I'm not convinced,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: but he could only say that because the topic was
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: in the Security Council. This time, it wasn't even in
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: the Security Council. And I think this is really the point.
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: If we just start off bypassing an institution obviously cannot act.
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: It can still fail in their action. But the biggest
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: threat is that we pretend we have an easy way
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: out and as you now, we're a couple months afterwards.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: Even the funding is not there because all the complexity
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: and sometimes also bureaucracy of the YEN with all the
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: different agencies has a region, because we have specialized agencies
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: who can go into Gaza, we have specialized agencies for health,
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: for education, and obviously a new setup where you just
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: say we just collect money and somehow we throw it
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: into an area does not work at all because you
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: need the structures in the ground, and it's even there
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: you don't even have the money. I mean we need
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: billions and I think we have what twenty three millions
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: so far collected.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Not enough.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: You guys were right about it Rock, by the way,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: we were wrong there. I want to ask you a
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: question about with putting on your hat as a former
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: German lawmaker. I mean there's the far right AfD party
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: some would say, you know, extremeist or neo Nazi party
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: seems to send it in Germany. It's polling at record
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: levels in a number of different opinion polls. Now, several
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: German states have elections in twenty twenty six. There's concern
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: that the AfD could win outright in some of those regions.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: As historically speaking, as you know, you know, other German
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: parties have kept the AfD out of party, out of
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: power by refusing to work with them to keep the
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: so called firewall up. But there's also concern that the
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: firewall may be breaking down. How worried are you and
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: should we be about the AfD's rise and potential of
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: attaining real power in Germany.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: Because I'm not a fan of claiming that politicians are
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: presidents of the General Assembly of ancestair thing. I don't
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: have an answer, and this is my biggest fear. I
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: really don't understand in many parts of the world, especially
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: in democracies, especially in countries like mine, where you have everything, even.
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: Health access for everybody in your countries.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: So this narrative about everything is falling apart. And I'm
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: such a deep fan about mighty letter about an interconnected
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: world because it broadens your horizon so much.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: Obviously, you learn when you travel and.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: When you're in international context, and this is again at
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: the UN you're seeing and understanding the cultural background from
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: every country, but now more any easy way. Yeah, when
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: you travel abroad, and I think the best answer to
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: fight extremism and facism is you enable every school kid
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: at the age of sixteen to spend half a year
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: in a different country. Not only that you understand the
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: culture there, you feel what it means to.
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: Be a feigner.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: I was with sixteen in the US and now I'm
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: back obviously. Yeah, and I totally remember the first time
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: I had to go to a doctor how shy I was. Yeah,
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: because I didn't know the system, I didn't know what
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: to say.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: Then I was making friends.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: With the journe who I would have hardly spoken to
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: in Germany because I didn't like her at all.
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: But at least she understood my problems. Yeah.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: So when you have sometimes here in your own country people.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: Saying, so why don't they speak German?
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, while they come from Turkey and they don't speak
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: German in our subway. I mean, I don't speak English
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: with my children because they say it's very embarrassing with
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: your German accents.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: If you people hear that. So all these.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: Kind of experience what it means, I mean, totally changes
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: your mindset that now coming to Germany in the extreme right,
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: also how you see your own country. I mean when
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: I'm abroad taking the doctor's example again, yeah, even though
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: I would be paid back at my situation right now,
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking if I call me as my kid to
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: the doctor to put cash on the table. So I
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: value our health system a lot, even though I would
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: complain in Germany again, So I think this attitude of
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: really trying to educate global citizens is crucial and we
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: should never give up on this. And if it's low,
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: every the narrative of my country first, also in the
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: European continent, this is a toxic folk step, but it
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: takes time. And now coming to your concrete questions right now,
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: this is obviously a challenge because we cannot do the
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: education right now on spots. And this is why at
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: the moment we have to hold this firewalls as we
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: call it currently in Germany. And we had a discussion
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: with a couple of colleagues yesterday night. There's a difference
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: with the extreme right party in Germany. I mean, this
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: is based on the facism we had eighty years ago. Yeah,
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: this is a tradition because we.
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: Have also other extreme right parties in other countries.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: I discussed also a lot of with other European colleagues
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: about it. In some for example, in Finland with the
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: True Finns, they formed a collision with a theory of
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: if they are in government, maybe they show that they
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: are not so anteu because and most of them actually
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: did it in government. But this is really different with
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: at least part of the AfD. But they are the core.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: They are anti constitutional. We have set up because of
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: our horrible crimes in the past. We have a body
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: called Fafassenschutz, so protection of our constitution.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: I mean there reports.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: About this party that this is against our constitution.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: We have in our constitution.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: If this happens, you have to defend your constitution that
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: never ever something happens again like the Holocaust and all
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: the crimes like the Second World War before.
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: So yes, we at a crucial moment.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: And again it needs backbone leadership or just moral human
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: sense to say whatever the outcome is, the good thing
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: is again in a democracy, yeah, you need a majority,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: even if they are running first in some of the
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: federal states. You're saying now in Germany you still need
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: at least fifty percent, so then you would need a
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: collision from all of the other party. This is not
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: a nice at all. I was in a coalition with
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: three parties. Obviously it didn't ended a bit early.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but then we have to do it.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I always say the un was not built for
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: the easy times. It will build for the hard times,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: exactly for right now. And it's the same for democracy.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: Democracy is easy and easy times, yeah, but it's tested
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: in challenging times and this is when you really see
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: if you are a true democratic leader.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: So one last question, because I know, you know we
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: were chatting and you want to mentioned the Secretary General
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: selection process. But one way to kind of frame the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: question coming off this is I could argue one of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: the reasons why there's been a loss of faith in
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: democracy in the international order that has kind of created
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: an opening for the AfD and other parties is because
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: there's this sense that decisions are now made in an
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: opaque way, that corruption has really entered decision making inside
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: of governments, you know, whether we're here in the United
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: States or inside the international community itself in terms of
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: how decisions are made, that people don't feel like these
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: institutions that are supposed to be responsive to them, have
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: their interest in mind that rather there's some backroom somewhere
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: where somebody is making a judgment. And so in that context,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the main ways in which the
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: UN presents itself to the world is in the selection
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: of a Secretary General. What can you tell us about
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: the process that is underway of selecting the next Secretary
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: General and what can be done to the maximum extent
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: possible within the kind of rules of the UN to
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: democratize that, to make it feel like a selection process
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: is not either corrupt or just some very powerful countries
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: getting together and kind of forcing their candidate through.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: First of all, I would disagree that the rise of
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: the right is related to corruption.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm speaking for my own country. Yeah you can.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: Obviously, good leadership is the best promotion for democratic parties.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: So if you're not a good leader, and if you're
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: even corrupted, it's even worse.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: People don't trust you.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: But if you would look maybe also a bit here
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: or in another reason, the opposite not always the same, true. Yeah,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: you could also spread a fake news, if not to
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: say lie, which is obviously also not a good leadership.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: But still people follow it, but I.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: Mean we cannot change people's minds. And again I would
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: also give responsibility to citizens. Yeah, I mean democracy depends
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: on active citizenship.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: And if you don't want to live in a dictatorship,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: you have to support democracy.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: And I heard always in Germany.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't like this party because the Greens
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: they are way too much on climate change here. And
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: I don't like the Conservatives because they don't take the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: best met with the old companies, and I don't like
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: the ones in the middle.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: And I always say, well, this is democracy. It's a compromise.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: If you want to wash your clothes, they don't have
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: dirty clothes, you go to this supermarket.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: I also could say I don't like this washing powder
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: because it's too expensive.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: I don't like the others because it's not biological.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: As a green politician, But then if I take the
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: other one, my children say it doesn't smell right. In
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: the end, I have to find a compromise because I
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: need washing powder for my clothes.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: And it's the same for democracy.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you want democracy, you have to decide in
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: this sen what is the compromise you take for yourself
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: in this moment. And the good thing is at the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: next election, yeah, you could take the other party because
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: you said, well, obviously this doesn't wash as I wished
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: for four years or five years long. So now coming
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: to the UN, obviously there we have also now different
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: candidates and the promotion here. We have a town hall
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: which is kind of like a presidential debate next week
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: in the General Assembly.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: It is being.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: Broadcasted also by a big broadcaster television show, so you
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: can see it. And again the question is so or
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: which the Secretary General do the people eight billion people want?
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: And the broader membership made very clear two years ago
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: that after eighty years it should be time for a
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: women because in eighty years we didn't have a female
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: secretary joanneal and not only because I am a woman,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: which I obviously am, but because I defend the credibility
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: and here comes your point, the credibility of the UN.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: I think it's really hard to explain if by consensus
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: two years ago the broader membership called for a female
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: secretary channel and then suddenly two years later when we
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: have four women all in national leadership presidents for a
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: minute on and two men for the moment, and then
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: you explain afterwards, like many male politicians did in the past,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: unfortunately we could not find a qualified woman. Yeah, I
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: mean it was wrong already ten years ago, but these
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: times I think it's really really difficult. And this comes
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: to the point of trust. I think even the strongest
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: supporter of the UN, which are most of the time
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: younger people, people who are really engaged in human rights,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: also many in women rights, because UN has done so
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: many things also for women. I mean, if then member
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: states would have to explain how they could not find
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: a qualified women, if, in theory have four billion potential
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: candidates out there in the world, I think this will
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: be a challenge of credibility, which many, especially governments and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: PRS ambassadors at the moment don't really see. And this
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: is why I'm addressing it here. I'm addressing it every
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: time in the General Assembly. Obviously it's in the hand
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: of member states, obviously as a president ummutual. But obviously
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: I'm only describing facts that four billion people are women,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: and it's very hard to explain why after eighty years
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: still they are not at the top of this helmet.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: And this comes also to other points.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Here.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: Now is a moment where member States could say, well,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: for us, it's crystal clear because the General Assembly has
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: the last say. Again, in theory you would say it's
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: a security Council, the p five, they have to make
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: the proposal. But if you say very clearly, we as
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: a broader membership, we as Africans, Europeans, Latin Americans, or
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: just we who believe in the UN, cannot vote for
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: a person who is not supporting the Charter that you're
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: not allowed to invade another country if it's not based
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: on international law. We cannot support a person who is
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: denying climate change if we see that half of the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: forest is dying.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: Right in in front of our eyes.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: We cannot support a person who's questioning the sustainable development
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: goals because they well, then we.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: Won't have any peace and security.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: So there's a deep power within the General Assembly and
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: it has shown that before. When Kofi Annan was being
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: appointed as Secretary General, the African Group made very clear
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: if this is not an African because it was their turn, yeah,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: then we won't vote for that person.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: So you see, the so called soft.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: Power, if you really join forces again, is a very
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: very strong power, and this is what we need at
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: this moment that we are not sitting here next year again,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: and then you would ask me, I'm not in office
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: then anymore.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: But if you would ask me.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: While you said that the un is not perfect, but
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: it's the only institution which can stand up for peace
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: and security for everybody in the world, and I would say, unfortunately,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: they didn't select a Secretary General who believes in it.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: So I trust on the broader wisdom of the General
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: Assembly and the broader membership to understand that. Obviously we
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: need a candidate, which is a compromise for many people.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: This is also very clear we won't.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: Have the perfect person, but we need a person who
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: is standing with those of her feats on the Charter
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: of the United Nations.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Madam President for being here today. Thank
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: you to the Asmin Institute for having us. We're at
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: a time so see you the next panel. Pods of
• 1:08:17
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• 1:08:19
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• 1:08:29
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