Politics and Government

Eric Doucette, captain in the U.S. Coast Guard and visiting military fellow at CFR, discusses the primary missions of the coast guard including disaster management, protecting U.S. ports and shorelines, and other areas where the coast guard cooperates with local officials both domestically and internationally. A question-and-answer session follows his opening remarks. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Through our State and Local Officials Initiative, CFR serves as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments by providing analysis on a wide range of policy topics. Thank you all for being with us today for this discussion. We’re delighted to have over 400 participants from forty-seven U.S. states and territories. And as a reminder, this webinar is on the record, and the video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact at CFR.org. Each year, CFR awards five military fellowships to outstanding officers from each branch of the U.S. armed services. The Visiting Fellowship Program enables selected officers to broaden their understanding of International Relations while on active duty by spending a year in residence at CFR’s headquarters in New York. Our military fellows conduct individual research, contribute their knowledge and experience of their military service, and participate extensively in CFR meetings and events. So with that, we are pleased to have Captain Eric Doucette from the U.S. Coast Guard with us today. He is CFR’s 2024 U.S. Coast Guard military fellow. Prior to this role, he served as the chief of staff for the Coast Guard’s Ninth Coast District, which encompasses the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway, eight states, and a 1,500-mile international border with Canada. Captain Doucette also previously served in the White House as special advisor to both Vice President Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence from 2016 to 2018. So, Captain Doucette, thanks very much for being with us today for this conversation on the Coast Guard’s cooperation with state and local officials to protect U.S. coastlines, waterways, and maritime infrastructure. The U.S. Coast Guard obviously serves many functions. I thought it would be great if you could begin by talking about your—or, the Coast Guard’s primary missions, and discuss the areas where the Coast Guard is cooperating with local officials both domestically and internationally, and where there are areas of opportunity for further growth. DOUCETTE: Well, thank you. Thank you, Irina. The Coast Guard, we’re a 50,000-plus person organization. And we’re spread all around the country. So we’re embedded with local communities within the states. And most other first responders think of the Coast Guard as part of their local team, because we happen to be there. So search and rescue operations is one of those areas, rescue mariners in distress or people that are out for recreational boating. And law enforcement goes hand in glove with that mission. Working with state police or other maritime or harbormasters. So the Coast Guard finds itself work law enforcement issues domestically in all the small communities around the country. Environmental protection, that’s a big area that not only do we work with the EPA on the federal side, we work with the state arms that do environmental protection. We work with industry and private sector to address spill response plans or hazardous material response plans. We support FEMA during natural disasters with dealing with hazardous materials. But port security and safety, looking at the overall port operations that happen in our major ports and in our smaller ports, the Coast Guard worked closely with the Army Corps and also with state port authorities to make sure that the waterways operate just as safely as the highways and the byways of our country. And then training and exercise. The Coast Guard is another force multiplier with local agencies, state agencies, and other federal agencies. They all do a great job shoreside, but also you have to do that operation in the maritime. The Coast Guard expertise with small boat operations, working in a maritime environment, we can help local hazmat teams, firefighters, in how to address issues that may be offshore. And then maritime planning and regulations. Working with development plans with port authorities or working with expansion or changes in how ports may operate. We are heavily involved, with our captain, the port authorities, working with state regulators and managing, again, those waterways. Just like similar to how the FAA would work with airports, and how to manage that type of change over the years. And we do a lot of public outreach and education. We do partnerships in education. We do events with the local community. We try to get involved as much as we can, so that the community has free access to the Coast Guard in their community. On the international cooperation side, counter-narcotics and antipiracy operations. Capacity building with other nations. Most navies in the world look like a U.S. Coast Guard. And they don’t look—they don’t have aircraft carriers and destroyers, but enforcing fishery regulations, enforcing environmental regulations, boat and safety for their—or helping their fishermen of their—of their nation-state is an area that the Coast Guard has unique skills where we can help other nations trying to build their capacity. Environmental protection. We definitely have a lot of expertise in that area that we can go around the world and help other nations that may have oil spills or their environmental disasters from ships. And then search and rescue, which is, again, our—one of our bread-and-butter pillars of what we do with domestically. It’s something that we can bring overseas and help develop capacities for other countries if they want to have a twenty-five mile—nautical mile offshore capacity for search and rescue. And you do that with helicopters. You do that with small boats. You do it with cutters and other—when I say cutters, that ship—that’s the Coast Guard term for a ship. And so, it’s a global Coast Guard. Again, we’re everywhere in the country, even on inland rivers. So, if some of the listeners are of a landlocked state, you might not think that the Coast Guard’s part—we operate our ship inspectors and work with your local agencies along a lot of the byways where barges are—up and down the Mississippi, or in other—the Ohio River, and other locations throughout the country. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. That’s great. And are you—what are you doing to enforce illegal fishing regulations? DOUCETTE: Well, I mean, so domestically we work, again, with the state wildlife officials, enforcement officials, that making sure that fishery—the state fishery laws, and the Federal fishery laws are enforced. International, one of the terms out there is IUU—illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. So, in fact, just this week, an agreement was signed with Samoa—the country of Samoa, not American Samoa—but where the U.S. Coast Guard could help enforce regulations within their exclusive economic zone. So, we can look for other state actors, or sometimes vessels that are stateless, that are they’re trying to fish in their EEZ. And no one’s regulating them, or inspecting what they’re catching, or how much they’re catching, or if they’re catching juvenile species, or protected species. So, we can board those vessels. And we have those cooperative agreements with a number of countries. But now, in this day and age, you know, we’re using a lot of satellite technology and working with other partners to help target some of these actors that are out there, because those fish resources are protein sources for a lot of these countries that don’t have a robust coast guard, or a way to protect what they need for their fishermen and for their own populations. FASKIANOS: Mmm hmm. Fascinating. I can continue on with questions, but I want to give people the opportunity to raise their hand. You can click on the raise-hand icon. And I will call on you to ask your question. Or you can type your question in the Q&A box. And we’d love to hear—for you to also share best practices or your experience, because this is a forum where you can exchange, and we hope that you’ll exchange, ideas and resources. So, we’re going to see if anybody has raised their hand. We have one raised hand. If you could identify yourself too, that would be fantastic. Going first to Kelly Bartlett. Q: Kelly Bartlett, Michigan Department of Transportation. Thank you for putting this out. Thank you for taking your time. I have two questions, one kind of immediate and one farther out there. The first, the immediate question, been on everyone’s mind lately with the—you know, the tragic incident in Baltimore with the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I’m just wondering, what’s the role of the Coast Guard in a situation like that? You know, where there’s a critical waterway that all of a sudden has this event and it affects, you know, all sorts of shipping and land-based movements. So just wondering if you could walk through what your role in that would be. And then, more abstract, farther out, Michigan Tech University is doing some work on leading to, we hope, autonomous freighters around the Great Lakes. And I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on what pops first in your mind in terms of, whoa—we’d be really anxious about that or, you know, bring it on. So two wildly different questions, if I could. DOUCETTE: Great. No, thank you for asking both those questions. So just to, you know, step back, before the event in Baltimore happened, in all the ports around the country there’s—you know, there are port authorities, to varying degree, that are regulated, managed by the state. There’s pilots. And then the Coast Guard itself, we have a number of committees, going back to our planning function, that we involve. And we bring all private and public sector together to discuss issues like safety of the port. And so there are harbor safety committees. There’s area maritime security committees. And there’s area committees. The area committee deals more with environmental issues and threats, air and maritime security, that came out of the post-9/11 environment, brings a lot of law enforcement community together. And then the harbor safety committees, again, that’s the pilots, the operators, you know, the people that are operating that waterway to make the port safe, to make sure that dinner boat cruises can operate, that container ships or oil tankers or other ships that may carry hazardous materials, or if there’s visiting U.S. Navy ships, or even ships from other countries, that everyone is aware of how the port is operated. And in some ports that are busier, they have these vessel traffic services just like air traffic control. So those committees would have said things like under-keel clearance, they would have set things—what that means is that when a ship comes in, it can’t touch the bottom of the harbor. And that might sound funny, but a lot of our harbors are silted. They require the Army Corps to dredge them. And so it—sometimes the ships actually do touch bottom when they come in. But most ports, it’s set at two feet below those vessels when they come in. And there’s tidal differences. So these are some of the safety things that get discussed. Other things that get discussed in different ports where there may be some infrastructure at risk, maybe there’s a requirement. And, again, the Coast Guard Captain of the port in those different ports would help enforce those regulations or set those regulations through a rulemaking. But it would be a tug assist. So I was the captain of the port in Boston, prior to my time in the Great Lakes. And there—were there were liquefied natural gas ships would come in. And they had a big security footprint around them, with all sorts of states and local agencies. But at the same time, we had safety assist tugs that would help navigate them under the Mystic River Bridge and under some other some other tight spaces that they would operate. Now, jumping to your other question—or, actually, before I do that, and so then, when you see the event that happened in Baltimore, there’s a number of other plans—the National Response Plan, the National Contingency Plan. And I would—my best guess is that those are the type of plans that help provide the framework for all the agencies to work together down there in Baltimore. And when that actual incident happened, you saw the Coast Guard performing search and rescue. But we don’t do that by ourselves. The state of Maryland, the local harbormaster, and other local police forces and fire departments were all involved in that effort. And then one point is the dive teams. So those are integrated dive teams with state police, local fire departments, and then there’s the broader operation of working with the Department of—I mean, excuse me—Department of Transportation and FEMA to help get funding and assets. I think there was a presidential declaration. And I think at least the initial $60 million that helped get some of the operations funded. But—and then bringing in large cranes and other apparatus. That is a whole East Coast, you know, nation effort to bring the right equipment there. And when you see the pictures of the people cutting steel, and you think about how big that steel girder is, or if you drive over any large bridge, just how big that structure is. It may seem like it’s taken a lot of time to open that port up again, but it is a big structure and it takes time to lift each piece out, and to do it the right way. And they’re also doing it when there’s a natural high-pressure gas pipeline that’s right underneath a lot of that debris. So I know that a lot of care and effort’s going there to try to get that open quickly, but open safely. On your question of autonomous vessels, that has come up. Again, back when I was captain of the port in Boston, I approved a small vessel—it was called a Datamaran. It was a catamaran, but someone mistyped D, and it stuck. And it operated—MIT was operating it. And collected data for offshore wind. But this little vessel could tack like a small sailboat. And it didn’t require any people on board. And we also had the Mayflower II that was coming—it was before COVID. It was supposed to be here for the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower coming. And that vessel too had—it was a larger vessel. Didn’t have anybody on it. But even when it got close to shore, there was still—it was big enough that we would have to have some requirement that would have an assist vessel or someone that was with it. But throughout the country, there’s all these efforts for autonomous vessels. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, they have offshore—large, autonomous vessels that go offshore for the space launch. And they would love for those to operate without people on board, or assist people. And we know it’s—we know that it’s coming. But it’s still—the rules of the road still require a human eye to be there, to intervene given any type of situation that could happen at a moment’s notice, and alert. And going back to Baltimore, though there will be an investigation to why that took place, but it appears that there was some sort of power outage. The pilot on board taking quick action, notifying their response network to stop other vehicles from coming on board that bridge, you know, saved lives. And so that human operator being involved, I think that’s going to be the trick with autonomous vessels, is how do we ensure that there’s still someone that can make quick action. They may or may not be on the vessel, but they’re going to need to be able to react quickly and operate with people in that local environment. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next—we have lots of hands raised—going next to Linda Grisby. Q: There we go. Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: Yes. DOUCETTE: Yes. Q: Good afternoon, everybody. I’m curious about the invasive species in— FASKIANOS: Linda, can you identify yourself? Q: Oh, yes. I’m Linda Grigsby town of La Plata. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Q: You’re welcome. But I’m curious about the invasive species within the rivers. What are we doing to—what can we do to get rid of those more on a local level? DOUCETTE: Yeah. So I just came from the Great Lakes. And invasive species are a big issue. And so there’s different places that we work in partnership. Again, a lot of it will be, like, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the state and local fish and wildlife entities. But there’s places where we will help with monitoring. We also do a ballast water program. So when foreign vessels come from other countries, they have to shift their ballast water, because sometimes that’s how invasive species came to our country in the past. And we test for salinity, to make sure that they shift—they shifted that water, so they’re not taking port water from a foreign country and bringing it to our country. That they’re actually shifting that at sea. Excuse me, one second. And then there’s also a number of other devices, especially up in the Great Lakes, in the rivers where they have the invasive carp. Excuse me. And they have electric fences, and have other detection crews that will go out and try to harvest those invasive species so they don’t get into the Great Lakes. And we—again, we will work with any agency. One of one of the agencies we work with the most is NOAA. And they will help us with a lot of scientific support coordination with other species that we’re trying to protect. But invasive species is a big issue. I think if anyone is a recreational boater on domestic lakes a lot, there’ll be a lot of invasive plants, other issues, that they try to control going from lake to lake. But in the coastal environment, there are different species—green crab, a number of other—zebra mussels, that we’ll work with water authorities and other entities, in any capacity to help, you know, retard or slow down the growth of these invasive species. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question, a written question from Massachusetts Representative David Biele: Is the U.S. Coast Guard involved in any fisheries enforcement with foreign nations in the North Atlantic, like that in the Pacific? DOUCETTE: Yes. We have ship rider programs. And so, you know, Canada being our closest partner, we will, in that neck of the woods, a lot of times U.S. Coast Guard vessels will be patrolling Canadian waters, and a lot of times apprehending U.S. fishermen that are operating in Canadian waters, to bring them back because. And it’s usually not the other way around, where the Canadians are coming into our waters. So we work—we have an agreement with Canada. And then we also have ship rider programs in the Caribbean and other locations, other countries. And we’ll bring their officers on board our vessels. they can see how our folks operate, to provide some education. We’ll take some of our best practices, like—things like fisherman’s nets, where they may be catching fish that have, like, turtle exclusion devices. So if the turtle gets caught in the net, the turtle can get out—has a way to get out. And then also, we’ll inspect the hulls of the catch to make sure they’re not catching any species that are—that are protected or undersized. A lot of times we’ll do those fishery boardings at sea, but we can also work with other agencies to do those boardings at the pier as they’re offloading or trying to sell the fish. And then a number of the vessels also have beacons or—that they have to display. And, you know, we can track those by satellite, and make sure that they’re fishing in the right zones, in the right areas, that are open for fishing, versus the regulated or closed areas. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to James Murley with a raised hand. If you could identify yourself. Unmute yourself. There you go. Q: Thank you, Irina. My name is Jim Murley. I’m the chief resilience officer in Miami-Dade County, where we have a deep water port. The largest cruise ship port. And we also have a shallow Miami River Port. I would like to start by saying Sector Miami is a fantastic organization, the Coast Guard are professionals. We are a maritime border state and the interdiction responsibilities they carry out in multiple ways keep our citizens safe. So thank you, sir, for that service. My question has to do with derelict vessels. I’m charged along the Miami River right as we speak with a vessel that the Coast Guard interdicted, and brought on, and found a place to tie it up. And, you know, if there’s a car on the street, I can get rid of that car. Because the derelict vessel’s tied up to—it’s a headache. You got any good practices we can do to deal with derelict vessels? Thank you, sir. DOUCETTE: Absolutely. And I’ve come across that that conundrum and problem throughout the country. Even here in New York during Hurricane Sandy, we had a similar situation. A lot of the local laws on the books can be helpful about derelict property. And, again, it does get involved with the courts. And sometimes that can be sped up. But the biggest thing, if this vessel is in the water and it’s tied up, the biggest thing is we want to make sure that it’s not causing any type of environmental harm, you know, leaking oil or discharging. At the same time that it’s safe, that it’s being tied up, and that’s it’s being maintained and checked. Because in a way this sounds like this vessel—I don’t know the particular case of it—but it sounds like there’s no owner or operator. It was seized. And it was probably used for some nefarious activity. So it does become a conundrum on that part. The particular case I had here in New York that I worked with, it was a large vessel, about a 300-foot vessel, very similar with some owners that just did not have the wherewithal to follow through. And when Hurricane Sandy caused that vessel to wash up on a—almost on a—on a street in Staten Island, we were able to, because of the pollution threat, remove it and lift it. That actually, one of the same cranes that’s down there in Baltimore now, it’s one of the Donjon cranes, lifted it up. In that case, we put the—we put this ship up on land, where it could be scrapped and cut up into steel. But that took a lot of time working with the City of New York. And they used one of their abandoned property laws, similar to what you’re talking about with vehicles. We were able to use that as a way to get into the courts, and then have that vessel salvaged. And in the end, the city got a check back for like $75,000 for the worth of the steel from the scrap yard. But it is not always a successful solution, like, in that case. There’s a number of the cases that, you know, we’ve had to come in and, you know, clamshell or kind of dig the vessel out after it’s sank, in different situations. But I would definitely pursue the courts, and the property, and then the disposal method. And usually that’s going to involve hauling it up or putting it on land where it can be cut up. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to a written question from Trustee Wayne Domke of Roselle Village in Illinois: Do you work with Homeland Security on immigration? And if so, how? DOUCETTE: Yes. So a number of times we’ll have encounters. One, the Coast Guard is part of Homeland Security, so we work with our cousin agencies on a day-to-day basis. So there’s some at the planning level, but if it’s a situation where we encounter a vessel, and it may be in the maritime in the offshore of the East Coast, if it’s a fishing vessel with either folks without documentation that are here—sometimes they’ll end up—as a job of last resort, they’ll end up as a fisherman. There are some rules in place that there’s a certain percentage—I think it’s 25/75—like 25 percent of the crew has to be a U.S. citizen if it’s a U.S. vessel, on these fishing vessels. And if they have documentation, it’ll be fine and they’ll just continue working. But a lot of times, we’ll find folks that just do not have the proper documentation. Then we’ll work with the other Homeland Security, Immigration, and other agencies to determine whether or not they have a desire to have these people be brought in and processed. And that can take some time. But to say that we may also encounter people on a regular recreational boat and law enforcement activity. Up in the Great Lakes, it wouldn’t be unusual for us to come across people doing human smuggling as well, just trying to enter our country via recreational boat, coming from Canada. They found some way to get to Canada, and they wanted to get to the United States. And we also see people going the other way, leaving the United States trying to go to Canada. And so we’ll work with both countries’ the immigration services to try to process the people, make sure that at least they’re documented and known to be present in either country. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Andrew Parks, who has raised his hand. You can accept the unmute and tell us who you are. Q: Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. Q: Andrew Parks, director, Texas Senate Committee on Water, Agricultural and Rural Affairs. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. And I’ll echo the earlier sentiment, all of my interactions with the Coast Guard to date have been very professional. Really respect the guys you’ve got working for you. So all of my interactions with the Coast Guard up to this point have centered on disaster response. We’ve had several hurricanes in Texas over the last twenty years—Rita, Ike, Harvey, and others. Can you walk me through, first of all, how you plan for hurricanes and other natural disasters in abstract, and then in the—in the run-up to an actual hurricane, when you’ve got one off the coast, the kind of staging you do, the resources that you do, how you deploy them, et cetera? DOUCETTE: Absolutely. Every year we’ll—because the Coast Guard, we’re the military, we move our people around. So every year, prior to hurricane season, we’ll have a national exercise which tests our Coast Guard internal capacity to communicate up and down the chain of command, all the way back to Washington. And we also test our ability for the different captain report zones—the different—like, the Port of Houston or the Port of Miami—that they can set hurricane conditions. And what’s meant by that, is it’s a way that we communicate with the port authority and industry that we’re forty-eight hours, or ninety-six hours out from a hurricane. You know, if your vessel can get underway and avoid the hurricane, we want them out of the harbor. If they can’t get underway because they’re in the middle of some sort of repair or fixing the engine, then we’re going to have to—you have to double up lines. We want you to remove any type of debris that can be washed over shore. And so, we try to tighten up the port so it’s more resilient, given the nature—especially in the Gulf Coast, where you have these very large hurricanes. And then, going back to some of that planning that I mentioned before that we do with oil pollution, and we work with FEMA, this umbrella of plans that’s out there. Our National Contingency Plan, which deals with—you know, anyone can have a spill or hazmat release any day. That same skillset that we practice day in and day out with local, and state, and the commercial industry, we can use that during a hurricane. It’s the same people, we just fall under different plans, the National Response Framework. And that’s the FEMA plan, where all the different federal agencies line up. Like, the first thing in disaster would be transportation, get people out of there. So, the Department of Transportation takes the lead. But with Coast Guard, we’ll jump and do Department of Transportation support, because you can move a lot of people on cruise ships, you can move a lot of people on barges, or use our maritime highways to move folks. At Coast Guard, EPA, we’ll do ESF 10, which is hazard material and oil spills, a lot of times household hazardous waste, industrial wastes after a big hurricane, and ESF 9, search and rescue. So, again, we’re using a lot of skills that we use every day, but we are underneath this National Response Framework. And then the states, we work hand-in-glove with them with their emergency operations centers. But I think where the Coast Guard really adds a value is that we’re working with industry every day, inspecting their ships, inspecting their facilities. We know each other on a—we’re probably on our rolodex or on our cellphones, and we call each other when other events happen throughout the year. So, when the big event happens, like a big disaster, there’s a lot of commonalities where they would have been in the same committee meetings that I talked about before. And one other thing, just to add, we have another group. It’s not as well known. It’s more of an economic group. But they prioritize when the—when the harbors get back open, what ships have the priority to come back in. And industry gets together and works with us. And it may be that this particular industry, certain name, they’re low on gasoline. So, the first ship coming in is going to have to be gasoline. And so there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes when we do get the port restored. And I’m sure that they’re doing that in Baltimore, too. What are the first—what’s the first vessel coming in and what’s the first vessel going out. And so there’s a lot of collaboration that helps prioritize—even though these industries may be competing with each other, when it comes to disaster we find that they all work hand-in-glove with each other, to try to take care of each other’s needs, even though they’re competitors. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I’m going to go next to a written question from Paul Brierley, who is with the Arizona Department of Agriculture: My son serves in the Coast Guard as part of a deployable strike force created after 9/11. I describe some of the unexpected roles the Coast Guard plays as giving us a military presence where we aren’t allowed to have a military presence. Can you talk about some of the joint and support roles that the Coast Guard plays to our other military services? DOUCETTE: Absolutely. In fact, I was part of the deployable support forces. And we brought the team here from New York, CFR, down to visit the Atlantic strike team. Sounds like your son, and thank you for raising a great American servant, and it sounds like he might be with the MSRT, or one of the MSSTs, which are these—it’s probably one of our—the MSRT’s closest to what we have to special forces. They deploy around the world. They deal with piracy issues. They can deal with a vessel that’s been hijacked, just like an aircraft. They can do what they call an opposed boarding, and they can board these ships via helicopter or other means and neutralize any threat or risk that might be on that vessel and take the vessel back under control. Those teams, when they’re not doing actual operations to respond, they train other nations. You know, their SWAT teams, or their specialized force teams that exist. And, again you can take one from shore and try to put them out in the maritime, but there’s a lot of different skills that are involved, and the equipment that—oh, did we lock up? Oh there we go. But then the equipment that you carry, you have to have buoyancy too. If you end up in the water, it’s not the time to find out that you have too much gear weighing you down. So there’s special equipment or kit that that they train with and that they use during those operations. You mentioned about how we work with other countries. One of my jobs was out at U.S. Pacific Command. And I worked in Southeast Asia. And Vietnam has some—back a decade or so ago—had some really strict controls about foreign navies coming to their country. But when the Coast Guard would show up they’re, like, oh, you guys, you can come too. And you can even come back again, because the white ships, or even our C-130s are white with an orange stripe. So it doesn’t really give that warfighter impression to a lot of countries that may not allow the military to be present, or other agencies of our government present. They see the Coast Guard as a humanitarian organization. We’re lifesavers, and that’s—they resonate with that, and they invite us back. And that goes back to my statement about where most navies and other type of maritime forces in the world resemble a U.S. Coast Guard than an armed service that just is a warfighting machine. FASKIANOS: Great. Raised hand from John Jaszewski. If you could unmute yourself and identify yourself. We’re still waiting for unmute. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do on our end. Probably not. All right. Q: Can you hear me now? FASKIANOS: Oh, we can. It worked. Q: OK. I’m John Jaszewski, calling from Mason City, Iowa. I’m curious about flood control and mitigation. How does the Coast Guard interact, especially, you know, here in Iowa, we’re too far from the coast to be—you know, see much of Coast Guard. But I know you’re on the Mississippi. And what are things that you help local governments do to plan or mitigate the flood situations? DOUCETTE: Yeah. Thanks for the question. And we—I mentioned before these strike teams that we’re on. And a lot of the Coast Guard on the rivers too, they have deployable teams that can go up normally—to places normally where the Coast Guard would not be, but now it’s a flood environment. And you have folks trapped in homes, trapped up in attics. Sometimes that happens, people climbing to the higher levels to get out of a flood, but they get trapped in their attics. So, we can—with FEMA and with state agencies—they can request the mission assignment. And, in fact, there’s not too much bureaucracy involved. If there’s lives at hand, the Coast Guard’s going to get there, and work, and figure out how to get there and save people. But we’ll work, you know, hand-in-glove with your local sheriffs, your fire departments. And if they need, you know, flood response capacity, we have some deployable capacity. I mentioned before about hazardous materials. When I was on the Pacific Strike Team, Atlantic Strike Team, we would deploy teams to all sorts of landlocked states that had these floods. And the household hazardous waste would pile up wherever that kind of floods tsunami would end. And we would work with environmental arms to help recover all that material so it’s not sitting there seeping into the ground or the groundwater after the event. But, yeah, the Coast Guard does deploy. There’s a lot of places I’ve had my Coast Guard jacket on or coveralls and be up in the high mountains of Colorado helping with a wildfire or helping with other disasters. And people would never think that they would have saw the Coast Guard present there, but—and we also have these incident management assist teams. And they can help out during the disaster. They were there in Baltimore. But they can also help our before the disaster with incident command system training and other planning and exercises ahead of an event. FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the next question from Pam Wetherbee, city councilman from the city of Beacon, New York: What is the status of adding anchorages for barges on the Hudson River, and why is this needed? DOUCETTE: Yeah. I do know that there’s an effort underway, rulemaking. And I don’t have the particulars. So the captain of the port in New York will have the final details on anchorages. But from time to time, it’s—from my experience, whenever we determine anchorage locations it’s for safety, so that these barges—whether it’s the port of Boston or port San Francisco—it’s a place that’s designated where—whether it’s a fuel barge or it’s a gravel barge, a hopper barge that is there, we want industry to put them in a certain place that when they put the anchor down has the chain that goes to it, that barge will swing, around based on the winds or the current—in a river should be going in one direction but might not be as tidal up there like a harbor. But by defining that anchorage, what you don’t want is someone with their sailboat or recreational boat anchoring their boat, fish or go to sleep, and then, without having designated anchorage, that barge swings around and hits that vessel, from a safety standpoint. So having it designated, be on a chart, people would be—you’d be able to notify people or ask people to leave that area where the barge is anchored for safety or during some sort of construction operation, or other event. So that way the barges aren’t just being put anywhere. There’s a designated spot for them to be, that’s safe for the—for all people that use the waterway. And protects the ship channel. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going next to Leslie Brosnan, who has a raised hand. Q: Yes. This is Leslie Brosnan. I’m Titus County clerk for Mount Pleasant, Texas. And with the power plants that have been shutting down in the last few years, does the Coast Guard work with the areas that have the lakes they will now need to be returned back to a natural state, on the EPA part of it? DOUCETTE: Yeah, so early in my career I had some—there were a lot of coal-fired plants. And as those were torn down, we would put a lot of safety or security—safety zones around them while they were imploding them and protected them. But when that site becomes, like, a remediation site or, like, a brownfield site, that will usually switch from the emergency response side of what the Coast Guard would do, and it’s more of a remediation. And our authorities are limited there. We would rely on the EPA. We would rely on the state environmental arm that’s dealing with that remediation work. But we do pay attention to those facilities that are in the maritime environment, especially the ones that do—that operate with vessels, foreign vessels, or any U.S. vessels. But there are a number of power plants that are now fed by pipelines, by LNG or direct fuel. And so then are—they’re not so much a regulated facility anymore, that the Coast Guard has authority over, per say, unless they have something that affects the waterway, like a spill or another event. FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the next written question from Councilmember Alan Mitchell, who’s in Greenville County, South Carolina: Thank you for your presentation today. Understanding that invasive species and waterways is a very important issue to tackle, does the U.S. Coast Guard ideally take the lead in identification and control? Or does Coast Guard take more of a cooperative support role? And what’s the best way for local government entities to support your efforts? DOUCETTE: Yeah. I would—I would describe our role in that as support, because we’re not setting the laws or the regulations about the species. But when it gets into an operational, like, we’re going to go out—like a task force, and we’re going to pursue—we want to be aware of it, and then we would publicize—help publicize that, and help make sure that the operators who are out there can do their work without being impeded by recreational boating traffic, or whatever it may be. And, again, the Coast Guard work would tend to be in the offshore maritime environment. Inland rivers or waterways, in a lake environment, we may not have a jurisdiction there, unless there’s some sort of vessels operated there. But again, our limitations would be the vessels that are carrying passengers for hire. You know, if it was a lake that bordered two states, or some like that. But one of the areas that we could certainly help is if you’re standing up teams, and it’s just—they’re going to be on boats, and you want to look at safety and what type of safety equipment—that’s a place that our Coast Guard Auxiliary, and I’m sure there are local Coast Guard stations, would be more than happy to help to make sure that your boat operators and the folks that you may be sending out in the field, that may be college students, that they have some awareness of the environment they’re going to operate in, so it’s safe for them to do the work that they have to do to tackle invasive species. FASKIANOS: Thank you. And I’ll take the next written question from Rob Cole, who’s in the Florida Keys, I believe: I’m curious to know what the staffing trend has been in the Florida Keys. We note, and are thankful for, what appears to be an appropriately increased level of support for open water surveillance and interdiction efforts. And are curious if nearshore routine safety missions involving recreational boaters and the like have experienced reduced coverage due to other resource redeployment or staffing reductions/unfilled vacancies. DOUCETTE: Yeah. So, the Florida region, just similar to the southwest border, but there’s a migration—we always, over the decades, have had maritime migration that happens from a number of the Caribbean islands. And so as those—the weather environment is suitable for people to transport to the United States via maritime means, we will surge staff from around the country. So when I was up in the Great Lakes, we would donate a lot of our resources, look for volunteers, but it was very common. I would send a pretty high percentage of our staff. And not just the Great Lakes. Throughout the country, we would send resources down to support the district in Florida, in the Florida Keys area. And these folks would be down there for a number of months to help support those operations. And then when the maritime migration would slow, we’d obviously bring those folks back. We are nationwide, like a number of the services. And encounter a period of time where—there used to be a time that 90 percent of people that joined the Coast Guard would just walk into the recruiting office, and we had a constant supply of Coast Guard personnel. We’re a small service. As I said, we’re 50,000 people. We recruit about 3,000 people a year. That doesn’t sound like a big number, but we—our people are ambidextrous, and they do a lot of different missions. So once we get them trained up with a four, five, or six year, to have that type of person lead the organization, most people in the Coast Guard, about 40 percent, stay in for twenty years. So when we start losing with retention, it does hurt us. We’re not used to—like I said, we recruit 3,000 people a year. The Department of Defense, big Army, big Navy, they recruit 3,000 people a day. And we just don’t have that type of throughput. So we are experiencing a challenging period right now. The way that we’re managing that is we have a number of seasonal stations. And that we may not open that seasonal station and put the staff there, but we’ll concentrate the staff at the main station nearby and provide the same amount of coverage by keeping the boats offshore patrolling that area. We may add additional cutter, larger ships, offshore, or helicopter patrols to make sure that we’re providing that same surveillance and mitigating any type of search and rescue or law enforcement event that may appear throughout the day. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. We are coming near the end of our time. So if you have final questions, please raise your hand or write your question. And I do have one: How does the Coast Guard coordinate with other federal and international agencies to stop illegal drug trafficking? DOUCETTE: Yeah. So actually not too far from our where our last questioner was is SOUTHCOM, and also at U.S. Pacific Command. And they have these joint interagency task forces. So there’s Joint Interagency Task Force South. And there’s an office within that command. And there’s probably seventy to 100 different agents and representatives, not just from the United States but from all the other countries. They’ll have other representatives, foreign representatives there. And they are from their version of the DEA or their customs agencies. And they work as a joint interagency team to address counternarcotics. And then the same thing goes out in the Pacific too. There’s a Pacific task force. So there’s Australian DEA agents that are right there in Hawaii working to help break down any type of bureaucracy between agencies. And one of the interesting facts that years ago our ships would go offshore, and they would do patrols, and maybe they would come across drug runners, and they’d have a big capture. But now, all our ships when they go offshore they’re informed by intelligence. We were tracking the information. And so we’re having large hauls of drugs and contraband. And if you added up all the drugs and contraband that’s seized by domestic law enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard seizes is more of drugs and contraband at sea than all of the domestic agencies combined. FASKIANOS: I was curious, I think we touched upon this earlier, but if you could talk about the role that surveillance technology plays in U.S. Coast Guard missions? And also, how is the Coast Guard now thinking about and repositioning—and thinking about the use of artificial intelligence? DOUCETTE: So I’ve had the opportunity to be here at CFR and attend a number of artificial—so that’s where my thoughts have been this year, is how that can transform our service. So surveillance, to answer that question, the first part, satellite technology and being able to monitor offshore fishing in the Pacific, where maybe it takes weeks to get a vessel to, the fact that we can do that by satellite every day, or constant surveillance, or by having cameras or other radar arrays set up in different ports as ships come in and out to sell those catches of fish, or to take all the data and analyze that, again, AI’s ability to look at a mountain of data, whether it’s imagery, whether it’s sonar images, whether it’s audio—whatever that is out there that can be brought to the attention of the human, because the AI algorithm can be built to sift through and filter through that information to provide operators with better decision-making intelligence or information that this particular vessel may be operated in a shady way. And, again, sometimes we do this analysis by what fuel vessels consume, and what parts they’re not consuming, might give us indicators to investigate further. But I see AI being very instrumental, even in our bread-and-butter mission of search and rescue. You know, right now throughout the country there’s a young Coast Guard third-class petty officer, with a headset that looks like this, listening for that mayday call. And we’re still mandate to listen to mayday calls. Which is—and it’s through audio. And they’re listening to everyone talk in that Marine band radio. But if you had an AI device that could pick up: I’m in distress, I need help, or calling out for the Coast Guard. We do have some other technology where they just click their mic and we know where they’re at, and it takes the search out of rescue. But I can see where AI could get involved and, again, provide that information to the operator in a quicker way, and go through reams of photos and satellite images and make those vessels that we send offshore more effective in the missions that they’re pursuing. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. There’s a written question from Chris Cho, who’s a councilman in Closter, New Jersey: I just recently joined Flotilla 10-8, Bergen County, as an auxiliary member. I’m involved with an environmental group called Paddle World. It’s mainly a high school student volunteer group. Are there any programs with the U.S. Coast Guard that these high schoolers can donate their time doing volunteer work? And I thank you for your service. DOUCETTE: Yeah. Well, one, thank you for being part of the Coast Guard, part of the auxiliary. So, for everyone else on the line, we have a—similar to the Civil Air Patrol—but we have a volunteer force. And they’re almost just as big as the Coast Guard that we pay. And there’s a lot of works that we’re—like, safety, recreational boater safety, that we’re not funded for but it’s one of the missions we do. And the Coast Guard Auxiliary does that by visiting marinas, and when people buy their boats, to educate them on what life jackets and how to outfit their boat properly, how to—how to read a chart, and all that. So the auxiliary does a ton of work to help basically do preventative search and rescue, make sure that people don’t get into a situation offshore where there’s a problem. I forget the age, though, that people can join the auxiliary, but I have seen high school kids involved with the auxiliary. We also are starting—we were a little bit later than other services—but we have JROTC programs. And our goal is to have multiple JROTC programs in every district. There’s nine districts in the Coast Guard. And especially at inner city schools and other environments there. But that’s a way that we’re getting high school aged kids acclimated or aware of the Coast Guard mission. And I think you mentioned a paddle craft. So, again, that there’s been a growth in these paddle boards, kayaks, you know, other types of—that aren’t your traditional recreational boat, like, a motorboat, or a canoe, or a rowboat. Those things are regulated, and in some places they’re not regulated, and they’re not a requirement for people to wear life jackets. And I have pictures of people paddle boarding up in the Great Lakes and there’s a floe of ice next to them. And they fell in that water, they would not have a long survival time without either a wetsuit or a proper life jacket. So, again, the auxiliary can get out there. And the other message, to everyone that’s on the line, you may think that you’re too old, or it might be, to join the Coast Guard. Or you can join the auxiliary. You can be part of the Coast Guard. And it’s a lot of fun. And there’s—and if you’re into boating or the paddle craft, there’s an opportunity to get involved. So that’s a good point to bring up. FASKIANOS: I’m going to go— back to John Dizuki—Jaszewski. Excuse me. Q: Can you hear me now? FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: OK. I’m John Jaszewski, calling from Mason City, Iowa. Talk about recruitment. What kind of young men and women are you looking for? And what kind of requirements would they need to join the regular Coast Guard? DOUCETTE: Yeah. That’s a great question. Thanks for bringing it up. I tell you—you know, and I’m biased because I’ve been in Coast Guard thirty-five years, and I just wore my son into the Coast Guard last week. So it’s the high point of my career. And, you know, I would tell you that if you have access and know a lot of young, talented kids, whether they’re going to be high school graduates, they’re in college, and if they don’t know what they want to do, and they’re remotely interested in service to their country, environmental issues. I mean, we’ll take everyone. I think there’s—I think there’s a carve-out or there’s a mission in the Coast Guard, you can find something to do. And it maybe it’s—like, even with my son, it was let’s get in the Coast Guard. And maybe he’ll get exposed to cybersecurity, something that he wasn’t planning to do. But by joining the Coast Guard he’ll get a security clearance. That’s going to help him with other jobs—he’s going to join the reserves. And I joined the reserves when I was in college. And that’s how—and now I’ve been in for thirty-five years. But, again, I think it’s a great—if you’re an interested in law enforcement, you know, we’re a law enforcement agency. If you’re interested in environmental oil spill response, working with the EPA one day, there’s a lot of skills you will acquire with the Coast Guard. We have medical professionals. There are so many different ways that we’re bringing people into the Coast Guard. We have an electrician mate. So, we—and if someone’s already a qualified electrician, we’ll look at what credentials they have and say, you don’t need to go to our ten-week school, but maybe go to this week and this week, that gives you the marine portion of all the things you already know. And if someone has a medical background, we have medical professionals, and we’ll look at their credentials. And we’ll kind of—we’ll now custom to—this is very new. It wasn’t this way until recently. But—and they’ll even bring people in at advanced rate or rank based on their skills. So, if people were remotely interested, they should talk to recruiters. They should look at the Coast Guard website. I’m happy to take any calls any day for anyone that’s interested in joining the Coast Guard. And, again, you don’t have to do it for life, like me. You can just come in for a couple years and be in the reserves or be on active duty and call that good and move on with your life. But I joined the Coast Guard, you know, I was either going to be a state trooper or I was going to be in the Coast Guard. And now I’ve traveled to seventy countries, I’ve had twenty moves, lived all over the country. And it’s been a phenomenal career of opportunity. So, I would encourage anyone that wants to have an opportunity, look at the Coast Guard, consider the Coast Guard. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. We are at the end of our time. And I think that’s the perfect note on which to end. So, Captain Eric Doucette, thank you very much for your time today and for your service to our country. And, of course, we have really enjoyed having you at the Council this year. You have a few more months left before your fellowship comes to an end here. Thanks to all of you for your terrific questions. We will send out a link to this webinar recording and transcript. And you can learn more about CFR’s military fellows and browse their work by going to CFR.org and, as always, for other research and analysis on many issues and topics. Please also go to ForeignAffairs.com and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for other developments and analysis on international trends and how they’re affecting the United States. And, of course, do share your suggestions for future webinars by emailing [email protected]. So, again, thank you. And we hope you enjoy the rest of your day. END

Panelists discuss the escalating economic and political situation in Haiti with a focus on the humanitarian crisis, how the destabilization of the region has impacted Haitian people both domestically and across the diaspora, and policy options to help de-escalate and stabilize the nation. If you wish to attend virtually, log-in information and instructions on how to participate during the question and answer portion will be provided the evening before the event to those who register. Please note the audio, video, and transcript of this hybrid meeting will be posted on the CFR website.  

Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, leads the conversation on authoritarianism. CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the Winter/Spring 2024 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach Department at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be made available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Moisés Naím with us for a discussion on power and authoritarianism. Moisés Naím is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. Dr. Naím’s experience in public service includes his tenure as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry, director of Venezuela’s central bank, and executive director of the World Bank. He has held appointments as a professor at IESA, Venezuela’s leading business school, and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Naím is the host and producer of Efecto Naím, an Emmy-winning weekly television program on international affairs that airs throughout the Americas on Direct TV. He was the editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine for fourteen years, and is the author of many scholarly articles, and more than ten books on international economics and politics. Welcome, Dr. Naím. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. NAÍM: Thanks for inviting me. Delighted to be with you. CASA: You have been reflecting on the nature of power, authoritarianism, and autocracy for many years, and have written a series of books that focused on these themes. Could we begin with you telling us a little bit about your current thinking on the subject? NAÍM: Of course. I am as concerned, as many other people are, about the fact that democracy is in retreat and authoritarianism is moving. This is not just an opinion; this is solid data from Freedom House, which is an institution that analyzes and surveys the world in terms of its propensities towards freedom or not. And in the most recent report about the state of freedom in the world, they show that it has—global freedom has declined for the eighteenth consecutive year. So for every year in the last eighteen years, democracy was declining and authoritarian regimes, of different stripes and forms, were taking over. Political rights and civil liberties were diminished in fifty-two countries, and the fact is that the majority of the people in the world today live in authoritarian regimes, or regimes where the checks and balances that define a democracy are not functioning—fully functioning and are limited and constrained. This is a very complex, surprising world in which a lot is happening for the first time—or a lot that we believe is happening for the first time, in fact, has happened before. I have here a phrase—a couple of phrases by European thinkers in the 1930s. After the First World War and before the Second World War, they saw it coming. They did not know exactly what form would it take. But José Ortega y Gasset is a famous Spanish thinker of that time, and in 1930 he wrote a book, and one of the phrases in the book is, “we don’t know what is happening to us.” And that is exactly what is happening to us—that we don’t know what’s going on. We know that something big is going on, but we don’t know exactly how is it going to affect our jobs, our companies, our politics, our life, our society, and so on. Another politician, at the same time—an Italian this time—in the 1930s, wrote a book. Antonio Gramsci was his name. He was in jail for political reasons, and Gramsci wrote, “the old is dying and the new is yet to be born. In this interregnum, monsters are hatched.” I repeat: “The old is dying and the new is yet to be born. In this interregnum, monsters are hatched.” And we have the same feeling now, that first, yes, there is a lot that we don’t know, and that surprise us all the time, and happens for the first time. It’s almost—I wrote a column recently about that, the unprecedented planet, in which a lot of things were happening for the first time, typical in most—a well-known example of this is climate change, right? It’s creating all sorts of unprecedented situations and points of view. I have been tracking the world from this perspective, as you said, for a long time, and there are two books of mine—or three books of mine that I think do not answer all the questions, but do answer most of the important questions of our time. They are thirty years in the making. There was one in 2005, another ten years later, and another ten years. The first one is Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy (2005). And the book showed how, at the time in which everyone was globalizing and—going global it was called—very fashionable. The group that—you know, that took most advantage early on and were early adopters were criminal cartels, and they were very good at using borders as ways of leveraging their capacities, possibilities, and goals. So Illicit—the role of illicit, the role of criminalize, and governments is something that I’m sure we’ll have speak today. But looking at this, what’s happening was also that the governments were waging war on all these criminal activities, in the trafficking of people, of drugs, of narcotics, of money, of weapons, of—even human organs, and art, and everything else. And governments were losing this battle. You know, they won some skirmishes here and there with the cartels and the criminals, but all in all, they were losing. So that led me to my following book, The End of Power (2013), in which I analyzed—I started with thinking that this is a government thing only to discover that this was happening everywhere; not that power was disappearing, but yes, power was more constrained. People that had power had now more limits, more restrictions on how it can use power. And the central theme of that book was that, in the twenty-first century, power had become easier to obtain, harder to use, and easier to lose. And that is directly relevant to the subject of authoritarianism that we’re discussing here. Ten years later, I wrote a book called The Revenge of Power (2022), which is what we’re—those who have power in massive quantities, what we are doing to limit the erosion of the power, and the ways, and the sharing of power, and the distribution of power, the sources, the origins, the usages, the possibilities of power at this time. And I came up with the idea, recognizing that what the revenge of power is is that some authoritarian regimes were using the three Ps to retain government. The three Ps are populism, polarization, and post-truth. The three are very well-known characteristics, but they have acquired unprecedented potency under the new circumstances, and they define very quickly what are the new breed of authoritarian regime that appear to look like democrats, but in fact, they are undermining democracy from the inside. We have a long list of leaders that were elected, some in fair and free elections; others by just stealing the elections, but once they got in government, they started limiting, constraining, and diminishing the powers that constrain, the power of the public chief executive. So that is a context in which we are moving. And one of the themes that I would like to—hope to chat with you all has to be with what I mentioned before: the criminalized nature of the state, and how this is related to authoritarianism, and to globalization. Let me stop here and start the conversation, Maria. CASA: Oh, thank you so much for that introduction. Now let’s open it up to questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) We’ll start with a raised hand from Carl Gilmour, an undergraduate student at Stanford University. Carl? (Pause.) We’ll give Carl another second—otherwise we can come back to him. Well, let’s move on to a written question. It’s from Michael Strmiska, professor of world history at SUNY Orange in New York state, who writes, “I see a dilemma with the need to restrict communications and mis- and disinformation from extremists and authoritarians, though this would seem to mean a restriction of free speech. However, free speech is never an absolute right. What can governments do to prevent authoritarians and extremists from taking power through manipulation of the information and social media sphere? I no longer believe the argument that the solution to hate speech or other such disinformation is more speech because, with social media, lies and hate can be spread at lightning speed in great mass and force. NAÍM: Well, the question has many good answers embedded in it. It’s hard to disagree with the professor’s perspective, and his caution. We have been surprised by what’s happening in social media and how that has changed a lot in the world of politics and so on. That, we should remember, was driven by technology. It was driven by all sorts of innovations. I think his question is the question for our time: how do we protect free speech and democracy while at the same time limiting the impact of the wrongdoers, or the people that are abusing the system, or using the system for very nefarious goals. We don’t know; nobody knows. That question is at the core of the great debate of our time. All I want to stress—perhaps in addition—is that expect surprises, and it’s very likely that the surprises will come more from the world of politics and from the world of technological innovation. But we don’t know what those are. CASA: Next we’ll go to Buba Misawa, who is professor of political science at Washington and Jefferson College. Please go ahead, Buba. Q: Can you hear me? CASA: Yes. Q: OK. Professor Naím, that was a great conversation you started. But let me ask a simpler question, and I know, between you and Gramsci you can answer. Why are we attracted to this new model or this old model of authoritarianism? Is it because democracy has failed, or why? NAÍM: Another great question at the core of a lot of the debates that are going on, so thank you very much, Professor Misawa. The answer has a lot to do with the underperformance of governments and the—you know, broken expectations. The expectations of people—very justifiably—grow much faster than the capacity of the state to respond to their needs, and hopes, and ambitions, and expectations for a better life. That is happening. That was also always happening, and somehow I think the famous professor identified it, that the gap between the expectations of the voters, or the people, and the capacity of the state to deliver on that, that has always existed, but now it has been amplified with technology, and with the globalization, and with all kinds of new ways of doing things, and changing the regime. The essence of the story is that we will have to deal with the non-performance of governments, and what is happening is that we need to—I don’t think we have to relaunch everything and throw the baby with the bath water, but capitalism in the twenty-first century and democracy in the twenty-first century need adjustment. The world and assumptions that were—on which these were based are no longer with us, and we have not replaced them yet. And that’s where Gramsci is so relevant, you know. In this interregnum—he called it—a lot of very bad things can happen, but also very good things can happen. But the essence of the story is that expectations are making governments very hard to function and very—there is a need to—as I said, and I’m repeating myself—there is a need to adjust our capitalism and democracy that we have until now to the new realities. And we all know the long list of new things that are happening that need a response; climate change being, you know, very important in this story. CASA: Our next question is from Bernard Haykel, professor at Princeton University. Q: Thank you, and I hope you can hear me. Thank you, Professor Naím. I’m a great admirer of your work. NAÍM: Thank you. Q: I have two questions, so one is that you have different petrostates, both of which are authoritarian, but they deliver very different goods and services to their populations. So take, for example, the UAE or Saudi Arabia, on the one hand, and Venezuela, on the other. So what accounts for that difference? And the second is that in countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, they tell you, you know, we’re a tribal society. If we had democracy we would have inefficient government, we would have chaos, we would have Islamists who would come to power, as you can see, for example, in Kuwait where they have a parliament. And so, therefore, there is an argument that authoritarianism is really the best way to contend with the global problems and with providing services to their populations. Thank you. NAÍM: Yes, yes, Professor Haykel, that’s absolutely right, and we don’t know—there is a respect for authoritarianism that is essentially grounded on the performance, and so we now give very—a lot of importance to governance and to the capacity to govern. And they are doing a good job down there in the Gulf countries, surely. But it is so specific—their set of circumstances, their origins, their history, their society, the geopolitics, their economy—is so specific to them that it’s hard to replicate elsewhere. We have not seen it. And then we don’t know how resilient these governments are like that without starting in the route of repression in, you know, the underlying assumption in this conversation. The elephant in the room, of course, is the capacity of these governments to be repressive, and then what happens. We saw, for example, the admiration for the Chinese model and its capacity to build infrastructure and to build all kinds of things. And it was presented to us as an example to follow. And remember the Beijing Olympics. It was this perfect display of organization and performance, but we—as you know now, that China has been entangled in all kinds of problems and all kinds of difficulties. So yes, we need to look at other examples, but remember the context and understand that this is a picture in a moment, but over time the sustainability of this governance is going to change. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Rodrigo Moura, who is an undergraduate student at the University of Essex. He asks: You have mentioned the three Ps that authoritarians use to gain and consolidate power and influence. What about money? How do you see the use of economic incentives by authoritarian regimes, mainly abroad, to gain influence? NAÍM: Yes, there are two themes there. One is the economic performance of a nation and a regime, and can it provide the prosperity that people need, want, and fight poverty, and fight inequality, and so on. That’s one dimension on the theme of power. The other dimension on the theme of power is one that is a very complicated one, and it has to do with money and politics, and how money can replace the will of the voters. And we are seeing that even in democratic societies in which money defines political outcomes with the negligible contribution of participation of the rest of the people. So money has many dimensions, but the two main ones are that money and politics, and the necessity to provide for a better life for as many of the people in the country as possible, and those are two challenges that a lot of governments are not meeting. CASA: Our next question—let’s take our next question from Lindsey McCormack, a graduate student at Baruch College. Lindsey? Q: Thank you. Professor Naím, I have a question—a follow-up to your piece in El País from—it was included in the background materials for this webinar. You discussed how today’s dictators don’t really have an out like maybe a generation ago that they could, you know, take a lot of money, and go somewhere and retire in luxury. (Laughs.) That was a very interesting point, and you suggested that’s a reason—a reason it can be so difficult to transition away from authoritarian regimes, that essentially their leaders are trapped in the situation of their own making. And I was wondering if you have any idea what to do about that? It wasn’t a good situation in the past where you could steal a bunch of money and go to the French Riviera, but at least it gave an out and the possibility of change. NAÍM: Yes, that’s a very thorny issue, as Ms. McCormack indicated—as she—as you mentioned. The challenge here is what do you do with dictators. And most of them cannot run the risk of not being in power because if they are not in power, they are in jail. So government is not just for service or for corruption, but also for protection. And unless you can provide an exit ramp out, it’s going to be very difficult for these people to go anywhere because no other governments would protect them as much as their own government and their own—typically their own military. So that is going to be with us for a while. An international coalition of democracies could do something, but as we know, multilateral work is as desirable as it is often ineffective—too ineffective, in fact. That’s a good question. Thank you. CASA: Our next question is written. It’s from Alfredo Toro Carnevali, professor of political science at Montclair State University. He writes: I was perplexed by the speed with which Ecuador, a relatively stable country a few years ago, was overtaken by organized criminal organizations from Mexico and Armenia, competing for access to the port in Guayaquil. How could this happen so quickly and so dramatically? What can Ecuador do? Could you comment on this? NAÍM: Yeah, it’s an incredible situation. Ecuador was one of the most stable of countries in that tough neighborhood of high political volatility and instability. And then it fell into the trap that met—so many other countries in that neighborhood are having, which is being complacent with the presence of drug cartels and criminals, and that have infiltrated the government, have infiltrated society, that have access to huge quantities of money. And we saw, you know, the globalization of organized crime because a lot of these things—for example, you saw a lot of the Mexican cartels operating in El Salvador—in Ecuador, sorry—and that is part of the answer. It was—it always existed, but never at the speed and scope that it exists now. CASA: We’ll take our next question from Björn Krondorfer, director of the Martin Springer Institute and an endowed professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University. Björn? Q: Can you hear me? CASA: Yes. Q: Yeah. I brought my question. It’s about the role of religion in authoritarian regimes. We see this with white Christian nationalism in the United States, with Putin’s embrace of Russian orthodoxy, in Orbán’s Hungary—I mean really across the world at different—in different religious traditions. What is your sense of the religious power or the religious force in relationship to political authoritarian power? NAÍM: Thank you for the question, Professor Krondorfer. The magic word in global politics or politics today, everywhere, is legitimacy, legitimacy, and legitimacy. There is a huge deficit of legitimacy in which governments are not legitimate, either because they acquired power through sham elections or because they had a coup. But the need to have legitimacy, to be respected, to be recognized as a valid regime is there. And one of the tools for legitimacy is religion, as you well said. And yes, in the same way that money in politics is a very important thorny issue, money in religion to fund and support a specific government is also a big issue for which we don’t have a lot of good answers. But yes, your point is excellent. CASA: Going back to Carl Gilmour, who is a student at Stanford University. He has written his question: Many journalists appear to perish or become confined when confronted with the consequence of publishing truth to the people that expose the abuse of power. What is your recommendation to these beacons of truth when weighing the heavy cost of careers in journalism? Do you foresee that there will be any remedy to this assault on free speech or censorship through fear and violence? NAÍM: Yeah, what a problem, right? And we know that, you know, there are governments, there are countries that have the most journalists in jail. Turkey, Mexico are horrible situations in terms of persecution and the repression of journalists. And I don’t have any answer other than admiring, recognizing, and honoring the work of these journalists who every day go out in the street, not knowing if they’re going to go back at home later in the evening. It is a global situation. We are already seeing how some of these authoritarian regimes are using them—captured journalists—are using them as exchange in deals. There is a very well-known journalist from the Wall Street Journal that has been incarcerated unjustly in Russia, and he is just one of the most visible ones, but for each one of them, there are hundreds that are being repressed everywhere. And trying to generate—the most important prescription is to continue to generate visibility and don’t let them disappear from our information ecosystem. CASA: Our next question is from an executive-in-residence at the IESE Business School, Alex Wallace. Alex? Q: Hello. Thank you for this; so interesting. I wonder if there are any examples of authoritarian regimes where the populace is actually thriving and/or the standard of living is high. I looked at the World Happiness Index, and America is pretty far down there. There’s probably one or two above it that are not democracies. I just wonder if there is any place where authoritarianism has actually not been bad for the populace. NAÍM: Well, yeah, of course, Ms. Wallace. That’s very important. What we don’t know is for how long and how sustainable, you know. Look at the sustainability of these things, and it’s not clear that they are—in the long run, they will have the same format or the same face. But yes, there are places—Hungary is an example of places where the economy is doing relatively well, but that needs support and subsidies. And at the same time, there has been some progress. And let’s not forget the progress that had been taking place in China where literally millions—hundreds of millions of people were lifted out of poverty. And that is a performance that is unrivaled in terms of success. But at the same time, as I mentioned in my answer to another question prior, is that now the highly admired system in Russia is beginning to crack. CASA: We have many, many written questions, but we would love to hear your voices, so please don’t be shy and click the raise hand icon if you would like to ask your question orally. In the meantime, we’ll take a question—a written question from Chip Pitts, who is a lecturer at Stanford University. He writes: I worked with a number of NGOs concerned about the expansion of unchecked surveillance technologies by governments and companies, surveillance capitalism. What’s your view on the trends regarding surveillance and how excesses can be corrected? NAÍM:: They are horrible. The threats regarding surveillance are horrible. And becoming more common around the world. Again, China is probably the world champion in terms of surveillance. But it’s also in Switzerland you can find it, and other European countries. Even in very well-functioning democracies you see these technologies that are being used. And, you know, there’s a violation of privacy. There is use to repress movements and organizations. And, again, the only hope we have, I think, is two. One is having a knowledge and understanding, recognizing, keeping in mind that this is happening. Don’t forget that this is going on. And the second is that, again, I think the world of technology may give us some positive surprises in terms of how to protect ourselves from this excessive, abusive, authoritarian kind of behavior in terms of surveillance. CASA: Our next raised hand is from Katie Laatikainen, who is associate professor at Adelphi University. Katie. Q: Hi. Thanks very much. I also wrote my question in the Q&A. I’m interested in what you think an international order premised upon authoritarianism would look like. For most of the post-World War II era liberalism and liberal concepts, universal human rights, rule of law sort of defined the operating system of the—operating system of international relations. Given what you’ve said about authoritarianism and the internal and domestic focus of it, what would be the elements of the operating system if there’s a shift toward authoritarianism as the operating system in international relations? Thanks so much. NAÍM: Mutual protection. What these countries that are authoritarian and beginning—we have evidence they’re working together internationally to ensure that they are protected. That they will not have some color revolution, or some invasion, or some other social political dynamic that puts them at risk. So each one of them has a dense web of international connections with likeminded governments. And we should expect more than that. But always remembering the phrase that says that countries don’t have friends, they have interests. And so the interests of these authoritarian governments are converging for now. But we don’t know if there’s going to be—what’s going to happen in reality there. CASA: Our next question is a written one. It comes from Patrick Duddy, senior advisor for global affairs at Duke University, and former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. He asks: Dr. Naím, could you cite a recent example of a situation in which the international community or local democracy advocates have been able to rollback authoritarianism and restore democracy? NAÍM: Yes, first, let me say hello to Patrick, who’s an old friend of mine. Nice to hear from you. Yes, fortunately, we have examples. I think the most recent example is Guatemala. Guatemala had a government that essentially was voted out of power. But NGOs, and civil society, and the media, and the private sector, and the church, they all got together in a fantastic way and were able, with the support of the United States, by the way—with an important role on the part of the United States. The leadership was, in Guatemala, and Guatemalan democratic politicians were so successful. And so, yes, there is hope. And there’s always opportunity that a good leader, together with a good organization and the support of the international community, can stop the decline towards the autocracy in some—and protect democracies. CASA: We’ll take our next question from Andrea Cuervo Prados, who is adjunct instructor at Dickinson State University. Andrea. Q: Hi, Mr. Naím. Thank you so much for your insights and knowledge. I also wrote my question on the chat, and it is related to Colombia. I would love to hear your thoughts about that country, about Colombia, which right now seems to be moving to an authoritarian regime, recalling some of the initial stages you know very well, Venezuela live under Chavez tenure. So what’s your view on the Colombian case? And do you believe an authoritarian regime is emerging in Colombia? Thank you. NAÍM: Yes, I am worried, and I think there is—there are good reasons to be worried about what happens in Colombia. Colombia used to be a solid democracy. Colombia showed the way on how to combat drug trafficking, how to reclaim neighborhoods that were untouchable by the police and others, because they were controlled by the drug traffickers. So there was a long list that make Colombia a country worth looking at. But then a combination of toxic polarization in which the country were—like many others, by the way—got entangled in all kinds of highly polarizing debates, behaviors, created—weakened the state in Colombia. And now they have a president that is surely frustrating the hopes of the people that voted for him. And he is displaying behaviors that are not democratic. And all, you know, in the mix of showing and trying to present himself and his policies as democracy. But they’re not. So, yes. But at the same time, perhaps the good news is that what’s remaining of democracy in Colombia, and especially in the legislative branch, can curtail and limit the advances—the antidemocratic advances that that are taking place there. But it’s worth watching and crossing fingers. CASA: Our next question is from Jose David Valbuena, an undergraduate student at Buffalo State University. He asks: How does the rise of authoritarianism in certain countries affect the global balance of power? And what implications does this have for international relations? NAÍM: Yeah. Well, the central answer there is the hegemony, and the nature of hegemony, and who has it, and how it sustains it, is a central theme. Hegemony and, you know, dominate—the idea that, for example, the superpowers, that the United States, will continue to be a hegemon, I think it’s true. It will continue to be the hegemon, probably more than anything in some areas of the military, of military affairs, of military organizations. But yet, the hegemony will be—is on—is on the plate to be debated, discussed, eventually adapted at what are the realities of geopolitics in these times. CASA: Let’s see. We’ll take our next question from Rita Kiki Edozie, who is a professor and associate dean at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Q: Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Naím. Very interesting conversation. So about a year and a half ago, you participated in a debate around the same subject, you with Julian Waller. And your thesis was, of course, the rise of authoritarianism; and Julian’s thesis was that authoritarianism would not emerge in the U.S., despite, you know, your thesis about sort of Trump’s authoritarianism. And that’s because the U.S. had institutions at the national, local, and institutional level that sort of—would mute or, sort of, soften the blow of authoritarianism. Assuming both of you are right in that, you know, both there is an authoritarianism on the rise but so is there a pushback against authoritarianism, especially in the U.S., my question to you is: Don’t you think that democratic regimes are sort of embedded with the contradictions of authoritarian thrusts and pulses as well? And that, you know, they go one in hand, and we ought to acknowledge how they sort of coexist together? Thank you. NAÍM: Yes, Professor Edozie. I think the answer to that question will hinge quite a bit on the results of the U.S. elections this year. I do believe that Mr. Donald Trump is a threat to democracy in the United States, in a variety of ways. Because democracy is not just what happens when you go to vote, as you know, but is what happens in between periods in which—the days in which you go to vote, in which you really want the checks and balances to be autonomous, independent, objective, honest, and incorruptible, and all of that. And that is not what President Trump showed us in his time in government, nor what he’s saying these days. So I think whatever generalization one wants to make at this point, it has to be centered on the consequences at home and internationally of an electoral win by Donald Trump, if that happens. CASA: Our next question is a written one. It’s from Harry Mellor, political science student at Wheaton College, who writes: I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding whether the current Russian state reaction to recent terrorist attacks may be employed or used by the Putin regime to push an anti-Islamic authoritarian view, similar to the U.S. during 9/11. Or, in relation to earlier questions, used to bolster the hegemony of Russian Orthodoxy? NAÍM: Yes. I think Putin is already doing it. Of course, he has mentioned a little bit the Muslim theme, but mostly he’s blaming Ukraine. And he’s using the attack to show that—essentially arguing, which is not true, that the attack—the terrorist attack was, you know, the doing of the Ukrainians. And, again, we live in a world in which there are millions of people that don’t know who to believe, what to believe, and where to—you know, how to think about these issues. And I think this is an example. CASA: We’ll take our next question from Susan King, dean at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Susan. Q: Hi. Just to clarify, dean emeritus. So I’m no longer sitting dean. I want to ask a question with that plays off what you’ve just said about the U.S. And you’ve talked about the importance of government. There’s been a lot written just recently about the pandemic sort of overhang, that there’s PTSD, you know, in many communities; and that, reviewing it, that many felt the ambiguity of the guidance that they got has left people really desirous of more clear answers, and some worry that will lead to authoritarianism. Do you see the COVID experience, the pandemic, as sort of a backdrop for the United States elections? NAÍM: I don’t know. That is high expectations, right? Is assuming the government agencies in the United States are infallible and knew what they were doing. And the fact of the matter is, that they were doing it for the first time, without precedents. They surprised us—the scientists surprised us when they came up with a vaccine in record time, because everybody had been saying it takes a couple of years or more to get a vaccine through the system. Well, the scientists collaborating internationally were able to do it. But what I don’t think is that one should expect governments to have that capacity of dealing with a pandemic of the global scale and doing everything effectively, or doing things in service of certain ideology or political interests. I think there was room for mistakes and an ignorance about how to deal with the situation and doing as much as possible with the information they had. And the political context. Just remember the debates and how difficult they were. And the long-term consequences of COVID, of course, there is—long-term COVID is an issue and is becoming an important issue. But there is a new pandemic which is mental health, as you know. The global—the world has seen an increased level of mental health problems. And the United States is significantly there. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Alex Beltran, an undergraduate student at University of Houston-Downtown: I would like to ask you about your thoughts regarding Mexico and its current national issues, where there is a president who attempted to eliminate several national agencies including the ones in charge of elections. In addition, the current president is very clear on letting the corruption of cartels continue. Is Mexico on its way to becoming more authoritarian? Considering they have elections soon it might be early to talk about that. But I would like to hear what your—what you understand about the subject. NAÍM: Well, I understand that, yes, it’s too—in a normal democracy, it’s too early to be—to talk about what’s going to happen, because you don’t know who’s going to win. In the case of Mexico, everybody knows now who’s going to win, because there’s going to be an election that is heavily influenced by government intervention in favor of the candidate of the government. So that’s one thing. And the government of Mexico, and in particular President López Obrador, are important examples of what I call political necrophilia. You know, necrophilia is this perversion that some human beings have, you know, a strong attachment to cadavers—that they like cadavers. Well, there is a political manifestation of that, people that are deeply, deeply attached to bad ideas, ideas that have been tried and tested in the country once and again, in different countries, with different circumstances. Ideas that always end in more corruption, more inequality, more poverty, and so on. And President—if you look at the initiatives of President López Obrador, you will see that there are all kinds of examples of political necrophilia in which he is doing things that have been tested in the past. And there are clear mistakes to do it again that he’s undertaking. CASA: Our next question comes from Michael C. Davis, professor of law and international affairs at Jindal Global University. Michael. Q: OK, can you hear me? CASA: Yes. Q: OK. I’ve just written a book on Hong Kong called Freedom Undone. And one of the things I constantly run into in talking about the book is a criticism, well, it’s pointless to talk about Hong Kong. China’s not going to listen. And so you’re just—it’s a waste of our time even to host an event on it. And so the question I have is, does—in the cases like this, where a very successful authoritarian regimes is in charge, what’s the best response when you’re told that sort of naming and shaming really doesn’t matter, you’re just going to be called anti-China for this, and they’re going to ignore it? NAÍM: Well, but the rest of the world is not. The rest of the world will clearly benefit from a group of independent, objective, reliable, trusted analysts, professors, journalists, politicians, policymakers that said that—you know, that put the light on what’s going on. As you know better than I, this—recently there was already the decision to pass the law in Hong Kong that clearly curtailed any hopes of a more democratic—to retain some of the Hong Kong’s democratic values, and behaviors, and institutions. So it’s already happened. But I think there is the possibility that you find people that understand what’s going on, and how this backsliding towards authoritarianism in Hong Kong can be—still being formed, or used to be—to inform the rest of the world how to think about China, by the way to look at how they have dealt with Hong Kong. And then the next stage of the conversation, as you know, will have to do with Taiwan. President Xi Jinping constantly repeats that there is no debate there. Taiwan is part of China. And it will become integrated with China. And that creates, of course, all kinds of anxieties because of the role of the United States in the treaty. There is a mutual protection military treaty between China and the United States, as you know. So don’t stop it. Don’t leave it there. Insist. CASA: Our next question is written one from Hunter Shields, undergraduate student at Davis and Elkins College. He writes: If social media acts as a significant factor in the spread of authoritarian government models, does it become the responsibility of nonauthoritarian governments, who may see how such systems can cause chaos, to censor or limit the exposure of authoritarian ideals? Would censoring authoritarian governments make the nonauthoritarian governments act in the same way as they—as they try to maintain the political status quo? NAÍM: Well, I don’t know that censoring is for anything that I would ever recommend. But there is no doubt that we need a regulatory system that, for example, to contain the spread of disinformation that is now happening and that he’s being, as the question said, you know, there’s a lot going on there. And it’s important that the fight is—continues, the fight against misinformation, distortion, lies, hate continues. That we will need to find ways to contain that. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Wilson Wameyo, a graduate student at the Jagiellonian University in Poland. He asked: How is the new conflict between Russia and the West emboldening authoritarian leaders in Africa and South America? NAÍM: Yeah. That is the fear. And that is why so many leaders, so many democratic leaders, are saying that the outcome of the war between Russia and Ukraine, as a result of Russia’s invasion, will define the prospects for democracy around the world. If Ukraine falls, you know, loses the war, and it becomes a province of Russia, all bets are off in a variety of ways. I don’t think that will happen. But I also think that a victory of the Ukrainian forces is—at this point, is on the table. So negotiations will ensue. And let’s hope that through these negotiations one can preserve the independence of Ukraine, and also stimulates the creation of an international coalition, prodemocracy coalition, that has some tooth and can work on that in support of countries that are fighting the good fight in terms of protecting democracy. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Azzedine Layachi, professor of politics at St. John’s University: You said earlier that we need to adjust capitalism and democracy to the new reality. First, what are some of the specific dimensions of this new reality? Second, what kind of adjustments do you suggest? NAÍM: Well, it’s obvious that the economy as it now works is not aligned to the realities of climate change that we’re facing. The climate emergency requires action and requires sound economic thinking, and action, and policies. Inequality. Inequality around the world has increased in significant ways. And, again, the economy, as it now stands, is—has a peaceful coexistence with inequality that has to be shattered. And if—you know, the fight against monopolies, the concentration of power, and all that has to be very effective. The whole regulation of free speech and speech in general, and disinformation and all that, has to be aligned to democracy and to what we have as a democracy political system. So there is a list of things that can be done, but that require political will that he was going to be very hard to get. CASA: Our next question comes from Mietek Boduszynski, associate professor of politics at Pomona College. The question is: From a U.S. foreign policy perspective, can the logic of great power competition be reconciled with democracy promotion? NAÍM: It depends how the promotion is done. Remember that under the banner of democracy, you know, promotion a lot of bad governments have been maintained. I understand the question. It’s a good question in terms of how to make it possible for democracy in the United States—for the United States to be effective at democracy promotion. I think that is going to be reviewed and is going to change. And I think the way we have been thinking about foreign aid is going to be adjusted. CASA: Our next question is from Diego Abente Brun, professor of the practice and program director, Latin American and hemispheric studies at George Washington University. He asks: Why are some authoritarian Latin American leaders popular—AMLO, Bukele, Milei, and so on? How can we restore faith and trust in democracy? NAÍM: Fandom. In my book, The Revenge Of Power, I talk about the new quality that has politics. You know, you always wanted a politician have to have some sort of attractiveness, the magic, that magnetism that attracts followers. Now it’s more than that. Now it’s a fandom. And it has to do with identity politics. It has to do with how do you feel you belong to a group that is like you and you are like them. And all of that has is having immense political consequences that we have not seen before? CASA: Thank you. I don’t know if we have—maybe we have time for one more question. We’ll take it from Robin Bittick, professor of political science at Sam Houston State University in Texas. Democracy is about self-rule and majority voting. Yet, populism employs something that can be—implies something that can be democratic but can become authoritarian. What can be done to ensure democracy does not result in suicide? NAÍM: Wow. Well—(laughs)—but I understand the feeling, you know, that democracy will be underperforming in some areas that are critical for people. And, again, performance and transparency are two important conditions for all of this. Transparency, and paying attention, and participating. CASA: OK. We have many more questions. We’ve covered an enormous amount of ground. So I’d like to thank you so much, Dr. Naím, for your time with us today. And to all of you, for your questions and comments. The final Winter/Spring Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, April 10, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at CFR, and Rebecca Katz, professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University, will lead a conversation on global health security and diplomacy. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. Follow @CFR_Academic on X. And visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, thank you all for joining us today and we look forward to you tuning in on April 10. (END)