Transcript prepared from a tape recording



Proceedings:



MR. LEDEEN: It's a great pleasure for me to have Daniele Capezzone here at AEI because, of all the various mysterious things that go on in Italy--a country that was once, I think, best described by a famous Italian journalist as a country of no secrets but many mysteries--one of the most delightful of the mysteries of Italy has been the Radical Party, to which I have been a closet adherent for God only knows how long--30 years, 35 years, something like that. Because contrary to the usual picture of Italy, which is a country divided between two big blocs--one right, one left; one Catholic, one Communist, and so forth--the Italian political organization which is almost singlehandedly responsible for the bulk of reforms, civil, legal, political reforms in Italy over the course of the last 30-plus years has been the Radical Party--not the Communists, which was one of the most reactionary political parties in 20th century Europe, and certainly not the Christian Democrats, who were opposed to many of the things that were accomplished in those years, from abortion to divorce to more tolerant attitudes toward use of certain kinds of drugs and so forth, and to a more open and free civil society.

These were the Radicals who basically advanced this agenda. And the presence of Daniele, all you have to do is look at him and realize what a radical phenomenon this party is. Because as everybody has seen over the years, most Italian political leaders are old, stuffy, formal, pretentious, and so forth. And Daniele, as you will soon see--well, you can see already--is informal, certainly not old, in fact, almost annoyingly young, if you'll permit me, to be the head of a political party. But this, too, is part of the tradition of the Radical Party.

And of my memories of the Radical Party, my happiest one--because it's the only political party in Europe that I know of with a sense of humor--and years ago, during the Cold War--if I remember right, this would have happened in the, what, early '80s or thereabouts--the Radical Party produced an entire phony issue of the leading Polish daily newspaper with a big picture of the pope on the front page and a headline that said, "Voytilla Proclaimed King." And they distributed this thing all over Poland, which produced, as you can imagine, an enormous effect, because people were celebrating, dancing and carrying on and so forth.

So, I mean, this kind if thing is typical of their attitude. But the great thing about the Radical Party and the reason why they are indeed radical is because they are uncompromising supporters of freedom and liberty and have no patience and no tolerance, as one should not have, for dictatorships, tyrannies, and so forth. And of the many good ideas that they have had over the years, the one that Daniele at the moment is trying to advance most vigorously, is the creation of a Community of Democracies, because it is clear, as he will lay out, that most of the international organizations have failed and that there must be some better way to do it.

One is always accused--all countries are accused of unilateralism whenever they act to defend their own interests outside the context of whatever organization they are unlucky enough to be bound to at that moment, whether it's the United Nations or NATO or Europe or ASEAN or whatever it may be. And it is entertaining today to find the former corrupt president of Haiti accusing France of unilateralism and about to sue Chirac in French court for this sin.

But Daniele is one of the few people in the Radical Party, one of the few organizations that accidentally has in mind what to do about this. And that is to focus our attention on the creation of an organization that brings together the democratic countries. And while we will all agree that it's not a perfect solution, it's certainly an enormous step forward because at least it would unite the countries that have a common vision of what kind of world we want to live in.

So Daniele will tell us about this concept and will brandish his book "Radical Shock for the 21st Century" at us, and then Radek Sikorski, who's here at AEI and is the director of the New Atlantic Initiative, will comment on it. And then we can all talk about it.

So, Daniele, if you want to come here, or you can stay there.

MR. CAPEZZONE: First, thank you, Michael; thank you, Mr. Sikorski; and let me thank all of you of the AEI for this opportunity. I feel at home here in the headquarters of this cabal. I come from the headquarters of another little, smaller Italian cabal, which is Radical Party.

Let me tell you that I really know what to be described in a different way from what you really are means. Let me tell you that I know what to be hated means. Our left-wing haters say that we are wildly pro-American, wildly pro-market economy. And at the same moment, our right-wing haters say that we are wildly pro-civil rights, wildly liberal. Always wild and wildly. Wild and wildly what, why, and how is less important. And so I feel at home, I feel warm and comfortable here.

And also, let me tell you that I am very pleased to leave for awhile the political debate in Europe, which, in my opinion, looks like--how can I say?--a long, uninterrupted meeting held by Noam Chomsky or Gore Vidal. Of course, Mr. Vidal is in his charming house by the sea; Mr. Chomsky must be in another comfortable place, I presume. On the contrary, we are on the ground, we are in the streets, where we meet hundreds of thousands of boys and girls shouting Peace, Peace, Peace, as if they were taking part in a collective exorcism. I must confess that I haven't understood yet what they mean by "Peace." In my opinion, peace cannot be only absence of war. Real peace can only exist alongside rights, freedom, and democracy, of course, but it is not easy to get this point across to them, thanks to Vidal, Chomsky, and many other friends of theirs.

I'm here to ask for your help. It is not easy to figure out what's going to happen in Italy, what's going to happen in Europe, and perhaps what's going to happen here with the next presidential elections. I think that we need a common strategy. I really agree with Michael Ledeen when he says and when he writes that we--I hope you won't mind if I use the word "we"--we are making a terrible mistake focusing all our attention only on Iraq. Baghdad will never have peace, freedom, and democracy if and when and until [inaudible] masters will be in charge of Damascus, of Teheran, of many other places.

I think that we should stop speaking of an Iraqi democratic revolution and we should start speaking of a global democratic revolution. I think that it is democracy--it's easy to say it here; it's difficult to say it somewhere else--it is democracy which has always really shocked new- and old-style tyrants. Last year in Cuba, it took only 11,000 heroes of freedom to sign a petition -- for Fidel Castro to launch a counter-petition and to unleash repression by resorting to summary executions, kangaroo courts, and so on.

Tyrants know that the democratic virus could be lethal for them and their overreactions are a sign of their own insecurity--the same insecurity which was felt, I presume, by many Middle Eastern autocrats when watching on television the jubilant Iraqis celebrating the fall of Saddam's regime. I think that it is not difficult to follow the despot's logic: If my subjects were to discover that millions of men and women in their same conditions had their lives changed by those American pigs, one of these fine days also my subjects will invite those pigs to come here and to take over from me.

I think that we must start from this point. I think we should make the regime change the alpha and omega of what used to be known as foreign policy. For decades the West, and also the U.S.--I am not speaking about Europe, for other reasons--have appeased tyrants in a shortsighted and morally and unjust search for stability. Now, thanks to the determination of the U.S. and of the United Kingdom, something has changed in Iraq. I think we should work to make this change definitive, irreversible.

And let me tell you, in brackets, that it may be understandable to involve, for example, Vladimir Putin or the Chinese autocrats in the actions immediately overtaken after the 11th of September. But these tactical agreements cannot become strategy. Otherwise, I'm afraid that we will continue to contain the seed of evil that we would like to uproot, and that I think we will have a high price paid for by millions of faceless and nameless men and women.

The strategy, the radical strategy to use and [inaudible], three points: First of all, no more money for dictators. In the last few years, the political debate, especially in Europe, has been scared by an ideologic, populist approach to the question of Third World debts toward rich countries. Many have given wholehearted support to a complete, unconditional cancellation of those debts, often forgetting who the real beneficiaries will be--military dictatorships, which would be able to purchase new weapons; or as I often say, the new Imelda Marcoses would be able to buy themselves new pairs of shoes.

The time has come to open a serious debate on these endless cooperation agreements between single nations or international organizations on the one hand and, on the other hand, developing countries. These agreements often include human rights clauses, but unfortunately, no matter how often those clauses are violated, in any case the well of money never seems to run dry. To quote only one example. A tiny, almost forgotten corner of Southeast Asia--Laos--has received the equivalent of 126 million euros since 1986. All this money has served to make a dictatorship flourish, to make hopes for freedom die, and to oppress more effectively--I will say with Communist effectiveness--millions of men and women.

The time has come to introduce a different principle, which we call democratic blackmail. Do you want us to cut down your debts? Do you want our aid? Well, you have to provide your citizens with freedom and democracy, you have to let them watch CNN or Fox News or to search with Google and Alta Vista, to be free. In the absence of those conditions, I think that every euro or every dollar would be badly spent, and voters would do well to ask their politicians to account. I think that, for example, American voters should ask Mr. Kerry to account about what he has done on the Vietnam Human Rights Act. This is a very important point, in my opinion.

Secondly, we have to destabilize dictatorship by using the most destructive bombs of all, which are the information bombs. I am a nonviolent. I think that any sincere nonviolent--of course, I'm not talking about a pacifist, who chose to defend the status quo in Munich 1938 as well as in Paris 2003--but any sincere nonviolent is aware that a new international order based on the rule of law cannot exist without a well regulated use of force, without an efficient international police force.

Okay. But sometimes we also need other weapons. When faced with the drama of millions of men and women brought up by their imams, their regimes, their ayatollahs, their parents to kill and to kill themselves, I think that something else is required. We shouldn't forget that the most terrible loss ever experienced by a democratic country, the deaths of thousands of men and women in the attacks on the Twin Towers, in a way--I underline "in a way"--have been inflicted with cheap weapons. The [inaudible] knives which the terrorists used to take control of the planes, which they hijacked and crashed, cost no more than a few dollars.

So we also need something else to eradicate from their hearts and minds what has been inculcated in them since birth. I agree with Michael when he writes that, for example, Iranian imams are absolutely aware of this when they tell their faithful not to believe what they listen to or see on the radio or on the satellite televisions, tools of the Great Satan to corrupt them. They are in the same boat as the Nazis and the Fascists when faced with London Radio, now the present BBC, of course.

I think that we should work on this. I think that before, during, and after the Iraqi Freedom mission, many other weapons have been used, and I think that we should follow this example. Before, during, and after the military action, we add the use of many other weapons--for example, TV or radio broadcasts in Arabic directed to local populations, sheets or leaflets. And also, times with loudspeakers to broadcast messages in the streets. And at a different level but with the same aim, the use of e-mails and text messages directed to Saddam's oligarchs, to ask them to surrender.

I think that it is a good piece of news, the launch of the new television in Arabic. I think that it is a good piece of news also, the Greater Middle East Initiative. I think that it would be a good piece of news--work more with Voice of America. I think that we should universalize the use of those weapons to create a sort of global media belt to be tightened around these regimes, to disempower them, to let people listen to other voices. I think that in Europe, for example, we should appropriate provisions in our national defense budgets. And I think that everywhere, perhaps also here, we should revise the ratio between funds destined to traditional military expenditure and resources made available for this kind of permanent preventive war. I think that the cost-benefit ratio of such an operation would be beyond compare.

The third point, last point, is represented by the Community of Democracies and the connection between these and the situation of the United Nations more than half a century ago in the light of the horrors which caused the Second World War. In a way--the United Nations succeeded in ratifying the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--the United Nations set themselves and all peoples of the world the target of globally promoting freedom, democracy, the rule of law.

Now, 60 years later, we have to see what has really happened, and I think that those good intentions are not even worth the paper they were written on. Libya is in charge of the Human Rights Commission. We have year after year the ritual--because now it is a ritual--of passing anti-Israeli and anti-American resolutions. And the U.N. are the first victim, on the one hand, of the role played by dictatorships; on the other hand, of its anachronistic procedures, starting from the right of veto, of course.

So everybody sees that there is a pressing need to reform the U.N. The problem is to choose the criteria to carry out this project. Someone speaks about the population of a country, the size of a country--I'm not interested in this. We think that the only worthy criterion is the democratic parameter, if a country is a democratic country or not.

In view of this, I think that we should consider as an example to follow what has happened with the setting up of the coalition of the willing. I think that this should be considered as a turning point to reform the U.N. and, at the same time, to bring them back to their original charter. We should create in the U.N.--I want to underline this--not as a body of the U.N., of course, but in the U.N. as an independent body: in the U.N., not of the U.N.--a group of democratic countries. If you want to join the club, you have to meet certain requirements. And you will be able to join the club if and when and until you will meet those requirements. It is not a question of exporting values, let alone Western ones. It is a question of removing obstacles to the individual's right to freedom and democracy all over the world.

We have something we can build on. In Warsaw in 2000 and then, two years later, in South Korea, in Seoul, 107 democratic countries launched a project called Community of Democracies. Now the problem is to create a democratic caucus in the U.N. I don't know whether we will be able to do it in the next Human Rights Commission session in Geneva. I don't think so. But I think that we should work for the next United Nations General Assembly. It is a good piece of news that last year we had, in the United States Foreign Affairs Committee, several bipartisan amendments approved asking the government to work toward this.

I think we should try. So far, too many times the United Nations have been used for the evil. Let's use them for the good. I don't like the word "multilateralism," which brings back to me a certain Italian use of the word "pluralism," which looks like something of Lebanon, the factions and so on. But we must say that we don't hate the United Nations, we hate this United Nations. And we have the only project to reform them and to bring them back to their original charter. I think this is a good point we should stress.

Let me tell you one more thing. Two groups of countries--the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement--have succeeded in blocking the work of the United Nations so many times. Why shouldn't we do the same for the good and not for the evil? Some democratic countries working together, voting together, creating an agenda together should be an incredible army--also in the U.N., as I said, to bring them back to their original charter.

Of course, we need a tool to carry out this project. We cannot expect the United States and the United Kingdom to carry out or to take up this challenge alone, and we cannot go on considering that all these projects should be paid for with American and British money and blood while all other countries will get their liberation days without lifting a finger. More specifically, in Europe we cannot go on, when faced with a crisis we cannot deal with, making America the scapegoat of our own impotence--so when America does intervene, they are "imperialist;" when they do not intervene, they are "isolationist." We cannot go on like this.

After the 11th of September, the celebrated--by others--editor of the French daily, Le Monde, Jean-Marie Colombani, wrote "We must support the U.S. in the hope they will change." The time has come to say that we have to support the U.S. in the hope they will not change and that Europe will. The time has come for a new alliance, which we call United States of Europe and America. Europe has to change a lot. I hope that the United States will give Europe another opportunity in this way, with this project. We'll see.

I am here to listen to you, first of all. I think we can do it, as Michael often writes, faster.

Thank you very much.

MR. SIKORSKI: Michael asked me to comment on our speaker's last point, namely, the idea for a Community of Democracies. I was in Warsaw at the congress which called it into being, and I have written on the subject since then.

And I think it's important to explain to an American audience why people around the world do feel some kind of sympathy to the United Nations and why governments around the world feel that they cannot carry out certain actions, such as, for example, intervening in Iraq, without the agreement of the United Nations. And that, I think, is because many people around the world, when they think of the U.N., they think of the Kantian pure form of the U.N., of what the U.N. should be.

And there are some very good things that the U.N. could indeed be. It could be a court of global public opinion in which competing views are heard. It could be a place to moderate and adjudicate disputes among nations. The U.N. can take care of issues that go beyond the scope of any nation state, such as environmental hazards and transnational terrorism. The U.N. could be a global watchdog for the minimum standards of human rights--decent government and international behavior. Could be a convenient and cost-effective conduit for international acts of solidarity in combatting famine, disease, and natural disasters. And also, it could vigorously enforce its decisions through its own agencies and by delegating those decisions to mandated nation states.

The trouble, of course, is that the real, existing United Nations, as opposed to its Kantian form, is nothing like this. I could elaborate on your description of the iniquities of the Human Rights Commission, particularly last year's performance in Geneva, which was particularly egregious. Under the chairmanship of Libya, Cuba was reelected to the council with the votes of such well-known democracies as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and China. And that was just three days after Cuba summarily executed several dissidents whose only crime was to try to leave the country.

And the trouble with this is that the Human Rights Commission is really the U.N. in a nutshell, because it shows you how the system works. We, of course, have the antiquated Security Council, with major democracies such as Japan, Brazil, and India not represented on it. And of course that is unreformable, too, because reform would imply that some of the current members would have to vote themselves out of permanent membership, which is hardly likely.

And we could see how unlikely it is at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That was the moment to reform the Security Council, because one of the founding members simply ceased to exist. But instead of having a debate about this very important issue, what happened was that, literally, a U.N. janitor came and exchanged the label which said "The Soviet Union" for a label which said "Russian Federation," and the whole discussion was avoided.

So I agree that we need something better than the U.N., something closer to the ideal of what the U.N. should be and less similar to the bloated bureaucracy--a bureaucracy with very ambitious aims to be a kind of world government.

But I think I disagree with you when you say that we can create this caucus inside the U.N. And that's because, since the Warsaw congress and then the Seoul meeting, there's been virtually no movement on this. If a hundred foreign ministers gather in the names of their governments, they gather again, they proclaim an idea, and the idea doesn't get anywhere, that suggests to me that it's not very realistic. And the Community of Democracies has not yet been recognized by the U.N. even at the NGO level, let alone at the General Assembly level.

So it's only an idea, and the democracies have got nowhere. And that's because there are countries in whose interests it is not to pursue this process. The system of regional voting is still firmly embedded, and those countries will simply--the non-democracies will simply not permit the Community of Democracies process to become the dominant process in the U.N.

So I think, if we want to get anywhere, we need to take it outside of the U.N. process. The Canadian former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, has proposed a San Francisco II--a new treaty, a new charter for democracies only. This would not imply getting rid of the U.N. The U.N. could still continue as long as members would pay for its operations. It could even be useful in handling some of the soft issues--say, combatting disease through the World Health Organization, some of the gathering of statistics. Perhaps we even need a body where democracies and non-democracies could meet and debate their disputes. But if we really want a community of democracies, we have to start from scratch--a new treaty, new rules of membership, and new rules of legitimacy. Such a body would make sense if it gained the powers to do the things that the U.N., as currently constituted, cannot do.

So for example, we could pronounce that only democracies are sovereign, only democracies agree not to interfere in one another's internal affairs, but that dictatorships are fair game because they do not represent their own people. We, as the majority of the world's countries and the democracies of the world, we grant ourselves the right to intervene on behalf of the peoples of those countries against the dictatorships that oppress them. In fact, it's been done already. We've done it in Kosovo. It was the first humanitarian intervention--of course, without U.N. blessing, because the U.N. is simply incapable of making such an argument.

So we would intervene militarily in the affairs of dictatorships that try to obtain or proliferate weapons of mass destruction, that deny their people human rights, or that gave succor to terrorists. So we would have a body that would legitimate action to prevent the biggest threats that now face us.

There are, of course, some problems with creating such a body. First of all, what do we do about disputes among democracies--famously, over Iraq? It was not just China or Russia that opposed the United States, but well established democracies such as Germany and France. My argument is that, while democracies may disagree about tactics, as they did in this case, they don't usually disagree about ends, about liberal free-market outcomes. And I think the dispute over Iraq comes under that heading.

We would have to devise rules of membership. First of all, define democracy. We have an excellent Index of Freedom in the World, published by Freedom House in New York, but I think it's risky to ask nation states to abide by the rulings of a private U.S. foundation. We would have to have a generally accepted definition of what democracy is. It's actually trickier than first meets the eye.

We would then have to have rules not only of admission to the club, but also of expulsion from the club, because many worthy institutions, such as the Council of Europe, such as, indeed, the U.N. itself, have been corrupted over time by the well known tendency of any institution's unwillingness to turn on one of its own. Some interests manage it. Funnily enough, the British Commonwealth sometimes suspends or expels members. But it doesn't carry many consequences.

We would then have to worry also about the relationship between the Community of Democracies and some of the major non-democracies. I mean, an organization that would not clearly include China would still need to have relations with China, because you just cannot ignore it.

I personally think that organizations, just like countries and people, reform themselves when it's almost too late. So taking this process outside of the U.N. process would be useful because it would put pressure on the U.N. itself. Even if we didn't get to what we are aiming for, I think some of the bureaucrats and diplomats so comfortably ensconced in New York would take note that there is competition, that the major countries of the world might actually start shifting resources and their sense of legitimacy to a new organization and might then start reforming the United Nations seriously.

So I would be in favor of your idea, but, if I may say so, make it even more radical.

MR. LEDEEN: Okay. Questions? Comments? Cries of anger?

My favorite U.N. anecdote--because it takes awhile before one understands, really, how these things work and I think there's a low level of understanding of exactly how these places work--I was for some years a personal advisor to various African dictators. And at one point, one of these African dictators, an extremely smart and simpatico person, by the way, called me in and said, Who do you think that we should send as our ambassador to the United Nations? So I pondered this for a bit. And they had a very good ambassador to another African country and I'd gotten to know him a bit. And I said, Why not Ambassador So-and-So, because he's really very good? And the president looked at me with horror and said, Are you crazy? He's really good. I need him here. He said, I want to send someone to New York to get rid of him from here; people are causing me trouble here.

Now, every time I tell this story, people are shocked. Because it does not enter the head of a sort of normal Western person that a significant number of ambassadors at the United Nations are there because their country hates them and they want to send them away. And yet it's true. I mean, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's not trivial. And consequently, I mean, all these votes and so forth, I mean, bad as they are, they're even worse than one thinks they are because they're not even representative of what their country thinks, necessarily.

So anyway, I wanted to brighten up your morning with this happy little story.

Please identify yourself, Mark.

QUESTION: Mark Plattner, Journal of Democracy.

With both versions of the plan you put forward, it seems to me the real practical problem is will European governments ever endorse it? It would be very difficult, but one could imagine, conceivably, the United States vigorously backing one version or other of the plan. But, you know, having spent a little time at the U.S. mission to the United Nations myself, it's clear that there are reasons why Western governments have not been united on these kinds of issues. They generally come down to various interests of European governments that work at cross-purposes.

So I guess my question would be, first for Daniele Capezzone, what kind of backing do you have now for this in Europe and what do you see the prospects as being that you can really build support for this kind of idea?

MR. CAPEZZONE: A few short remarks, and then my answer.

I think I will be the last person here to defend the U.N. To tell you only one little story. The Transnational Radical Party has earned 10 years ago a consultative status at the U.N. And we are using it to allow those representatives of oppressed people to speak out and to denounce violations of human rights. And many of them have become members of our party and also of members of our executive.

To quote only one example, I will tell you about Mr. Kok Ksor, the president of the Montagnard Foundation. Now, they are undergoing a persecution in Vietnam. Their lands are confiscated, they are subject to martial courts. There are summary executions. And so on. Thanks to our radio in Italy, Mr. Kok Ksor sends home clandestine broadcasts. Well, on account of this, Vietnam has repeated a request for the Transnational Radical Party to be expelled from the U.N.

So this is our situation in the U.N., to make things clear. As I was saying, I think that, for example, we should ask Mr. Kerry to account about the Vietnam Human Rights Act. I think he is very dangerous in his behavior on this.

But then, democracy. I agree entirely with Mr. Sikorski when he says that it is not easy to have a definition of democracy. I confess that I was a little shocked last September when I was here, not very far from here at the [inaudible], but very far from here in another sense, in a way. And they were asking, But what is this democracy? We need free trade, and then we'll see.

I don't like this way of seeing things. Democracy is a process. And we need to get up something to make other countries join the club. We have to fix up the rules of the club, to be in or not. But I think we must do something in this.

I don't think that the Community of Democracies should only work in the U.N. It should work outside the U.N. but also in the international organizations. I wouldn't like other people to say that we are isolationist. I wouldn't like to let them say that we don't want to work in the international organizations. And we can't leave the international organizations in this condition and in their hands. So I think we should think it over.

And I think that, for example, this proposal is not very far from one of three proposals that you put forward as the Transatlantic Initiative of the AEI. There was the [inaudible] proposal and then one named Community of Democracies. I think we could find the path to work outside but also inside to have this position also there.

Europe. The situation in Europe is depressing. Only a few know what happened during the Iraqi Freedom mission. I'm not talking about irresponsible conduct of France, Germany, but I want to quote you just one example about the European Parliament. On the 27th of March 2003, in the midst of the Iraqi crisis, Brussels simply had to discuss some motions about the war--pro-war, anti-war, I'm not interested in this now. Well, they rejected every motion, one after the other. A continent unable to take any position, to reach any consensus.

And it is exactly what has happened before with the Balkan crisis. For 15 years, we have tolerated and supported the Milosevic regime. We waited until the Americans and the British took the responsibility of stopping him. When the war was over and the time has come to offer a political contribution--for example, by including the Balkans in our enlargement process--the only thing we were able to do was to rush at [inaudible]'s funeral. This was our political action.

But in any case, this is the situation in Europe, and I don't want to close my eyes about this. But we must put them in difficulties. We have to put Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schroeder in difficulties. We want to work with the U.S., of course, with Mr. Blair, of course, with many personalities in a bipartisan way, of course, but I don't want us to let them say that we don't want a multilateralist approach. I think we must find a difficult path, but this is the path, in my opinion.

QUESTION: Joshua Galvo [ph], World Bank Group.

Daniele, welcome back to Washington, first of all. Thank you for such a stimulating presentation. I am so proud to be Italian, thanks to your ideas--which is not very typical of Italian political leaders, so I'm very thankful for that.

As every good Italian, I consider myself an expert on corruption and miracles. I happen to think that most--

MR. CAPEZZONE: These things are often connected.

QUESTION: Sometimes, right. But in this case, I feel that most Italian politics seem to fall under the former category, whereas the Radical Party certainly falls under the latter, meaning it is a miracle to me that a party with such little means, hardly an institutional representation, can put forward such actions and good-quality politics at such high level. It's amazing.

But this is where I have my problem, and I would like to solicit your input on. Every political party offers leadership, offers a vision. Paradoxically, I think this is one constraint that our party faces; in other words, the fact that it projects a vision to some 20, 25 years ahead of its times, which is the reason why I'm a member of this party. On the other hand, I see that people, the perception of the political electorate, our counterpart, our ability to engage in alliances is hampered by the fact that the moment people get closer to our vision, we again push forward this vision another 20 years. And this becomes almost an end in itself, a method more than just, you know, a firm bar against which to measure our progress. And as long as this works against our own agenda, I would consider that something to be possibly redefined.

I don't know exactly why, but I wonder whether you see this as a limitation as well as an asset for our party. Thank you.

MR. CAPEZZONE: First of all, thank you. I have often listened to this, that we are ahead of our times. I don't think so. And I don't think that people are not ready, as we often hear. I think that many political leaders are not ready for this. I think that we should carry on in Italy, in Europe, in the U.S. this double path--global promotion of democracy and monitoring of Western democracies. And I think that there is also another dividing line we must draw up. Many right-wing movements, for example, are more open on the economic front but very closed when it comes to civil rights. And the opposite happens with left-wing movements. I think there is a strong majority of individuals in Italy, in Europe, in the world who don't want an excessive state intervention in the economy but at the same time don't want to give an inch in terms of individual liberty.

So I think that instead of speaking, for example, of right wing, left wing--a geography un-understandable for the Radicals--we should draw up another dividing line which is represented by those who want to widen and those who want to narrow the sphere of individual private choice as against a public or collective one. I think that we should discuss in this way also in foreign affairs, and even more if we are talking about Italian politics, of course.

MR. SIKORSKI: Well, let me tell you my favorite joke to do with the U.N., but it's actually--you can have a look at it yourself by going on to the U.N. webpage. And you may live in blissful ignorance of the fact that we are living in the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, which was proclaimed by the General Assembly in the year 2000. And of course colonialism is a terrible thing, which the U.N. defines quite sensibly as a state in which people live in non-self-governing territories.

The trouble is that the elite non-self-governing territories that the U.N. recognizes are the former remaining colonies of the Western nations. So for example, Bermuda, with the purchasing parity per capita income of $35,000, suffers under colonialism, and even Gibraltar, whose people so famously do not want to be decolonized, fall under this heading. But of course the Kurds, the Tamils, the Chechens don't. And that, of course, seems to me to be ridiculous.

Now, to come back to Mark's point about how we need just to press forward, I mean, it would take American leadership, like most things. Major-plus countries--not all of them, but some in addition--could be a good start. It doesn't have to be a huge international act to begin with. You could start small and then grow it by slowly shifting resources and your political attention to the new organization.

And lastly, let me say that the participant that we had to eject is completely wrong that this is some kind of neoconservative idea. The Community of Democracies was conceived at Freedom House, which is a bipartisan institution, and originally put forward on the international scene by Madeleine Albright--hardly a neocon. And in fact, I would say that it's only in the last few months that Republicans are beginning to embrace the idea, with President Bush's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy and in London. If the country's on a democratic crusade, then having an international institution for democracies only begins to make sense. But I think it's a recent phenomenon.

And lastly, perhaps the occasion when we might be able to reform the U.N., or alternatively, create something in its place, is the moment when Europe adopts its constitution and becomes a more substantial agent in foreign affairs. Because it will one day want to convert those two seats at the U.N. into an EU seat, and that might then start the discussion about what to do.

MR. LEDEEN: I just want to add something. Questions like are we ahead of our time with these ideas always amuse me because no one ever knows whether they're ahead or behind the times because we don't know what's going to happen. So I mean, it's just not a question that anybody can answer. The great thing about this project, it seems to me, is that it's important, very important, even if it fails. And a lot of people like to shy away from projects that they think are doomed to failure, right, I mean, the Europeans will never go for it or, you know, the Republicans are late in arriving and they're suspicious of anything that compromises sovereignty, and so forth and so on.

Okay. All true. But this is an issue that desperately needs raising. Simply by raising it in various international settings accomplishes one of the main objectives of the organization itself, which is to put pressure on dictators. This is what we want. Dictators are under enormous pressure right now. I mean, it's quite amazing that people refuse to look at this. But the effect of Afghanistan plus Iraq are quite astonishing. And I'm willing to wager that the effect of the new constitution in Iraq, interim constitution--

It's funny, you know, how everybody--the critics of the liberation of Iraq have for months been saying, But they'll never agree on a constitution because Suni, Shiites, Kurds, blah, blah, tribes, impossible, never happen, Sistani, et cetera. Then it came along and they said, Aha, you see, they'll never be willing to ratify it. And then it was ratified, and they said, But it's only interim, It's only temporary--so that every advance of good news is gainsaid. But the people in the region know full well what is going on, and that this is a revolutionary document, and that what has happened in Iraq and in Afghanistan is revolutionary and holds promise for everybody in the region.

And why do you think all of a sudden Farid Ghadry is getting support, popular support in Syria? There are popular demonstrations in favor of democracy inside Syria. When is the last time you heard that? In Saudi Arabia, when did you hear that? And the more we talk about ways to advance democracy, the more the contagion is likely to spread.

And one thing is for sure, if we don't talk about it and we don't advocate it and we don't look at ways to do it in proper fora in which to advance it, then we're going to lose. That's a certainty. Because then the tyrants will gain hope and they'll say, aha, well, it's over, thank God. They did Iraq, they did Afghanistan, but they don't want to do any more and that's that, and now we can go back to normal. And so on.

Sorry. I didn't mean to cut into your time.

QUESTION: My name is Neil Haram [ph], I'm from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, around the corner.

My question is for our esteemed speaker, Mr. Capezzone. Part of a very interesting aspect of this exercise would be, as you said, to try to come to a sort of generally accepted understanding of what democracy means. And I wonder--my question is, you know, there would be some, I think, tensions at this point between the EU and the U.S. over how civil rights play a role. Things like abortion and gay marriage and so on have--they've been treated a bit different in the EU democracies than in the U.S. And I just wonder, if a discussion were to take place about a generally accepted understanding, how do you think these tensions would be resolved?

MR. CAPEZZONE: First of all, I thank you for this question because it's very amusing. In Europe, everybody is absolutely out of his mind because of this problem of gay marriage banned. Well, someone here is against gay marriage, but no one is against the present laws on civil rights, you know, civil unions and so on. I would like Italian right-wing and Italian left-wing party to be in favor of a civil partnership union. They are against them in Italy. Well, otherwise, when speaking about marriage, they are not enough, it is not enough also a civil partnership union law. This is very amusing.

And also about many other things. For example, I agree entirely with Andrew Sullivan's remarks -- President Bush about these or other subjects. Sullivan writes, "We are in favor of the war on terrorism not only to defend ourselves, but to defend the Constitution. We can't defend the Constitution abroad and undermine it at home." Well.

But to quote just another example, Patriot Act and other things. Mr. Macacci [sp], who is here, who is an important member of our party, found out that in the year 2000 in the U.S., the states and the courts have authorized 1,000 telephone taps. In Italy, in the same year--and we have one-fifth of the American population, only 57 million people--in the same year, magistrates authorized 44,000 telephone taps.

So I am very happy that many Europeans carry out a [inaudible] campaign. And I agree with this campaign against emergency legislation here, but I hope they will not forget to do the same at home.

QUESTION: Michael Allen [sp], visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Two points -- one, to pick up on this question of the differences between democracies, the Iraq war aside, we're starting to see similar tensions arising now in relation to the Greater Middle East Initiative and, of course, just in the last few days, not only Jacques Chirac, of course, but also Silvio Berlusconi and those--Hosni Mubarak's criticisms of the Greater Middle East Initiative. These tensions are not going to go away.

My point, really, is that surely one of the ways in which we start to shift the terms of debate, particularly as regards the state of affairs in Europe, is to develop--and I hate this phrase, which has suddenly been appropriated by the global left--but to think in terms of a global civil society as well as the intergovernmental dimension.

And again, I'm one of these people obsessed with the Cold War. If one looks at the Cold War, you know, these groups like the Congress of Cultural Freedom and so on, emerged not from a mere [inaudible] but were genuinely spontaneous grass-roots initiatives that mobilized opinion on a bipartisan basis and shifted the terms of debate in the Cold War and forged a genuine unity in that respect. So I wonder if you'd like to comment on that in the context of the Greater Middle East Initiative.

But secondly, and related to this, I'm one of these people, in my own kind of mental thesaurus the phrase "intergovernmental" sits alongside "bureaucracy" and "organizational atrophy" and "inertia" and so on. For the same reason, this is a reason why it's important to have--not necessarily as a complement, maybe even as a precondition for this initiative, some vibrant civil society dimension which cannot only change opinion but also serve as a catalyst for governments, not least that in Europe.

MR. CAPEZZONE: A few remarks and I hope to answer your question.

First of all, a step behind the constitution in Europe, of course, Afghanistan and Iraq now have a constitution; Europe doesn't. And I am very worried, for example, about the institutional reforms which are currently started by the European Convention. I think Radek agrees on this. Now we have a situation in which the only body directly elected by citizens, the European Parliament, is absolutely deprived of any relevant power. All the most important decisions are made by the Council of Europe in a situation where you cannot have any democratic consult. They decide behind closed doors.

The paradox is that if now the European Union itself should ask to join the European Union, we wouldn't have the requirements that we ask other countries which are involved in the enlargement process. And now the European window has become the back door to pass measures that would never pass, would never get through the front door of national parliaments.

This Europe is, of course, a good friend of the status quo. There is a link between our institutional situation and our nonexistent foreign policy. And that's why we speak about United States of Europe and America. I agree entirely with your remark--we should create a first bloc. When we speak about the United States of Europe and America, I mean that you should help us, for example, to abandon the institutional reforms that European Union is now starting, which would confirm rather than modify the present situation; and move to a clear American system, with the election of a president with clear powers of government; and then a typical checks-and-balances mechanism with the power of the president and, on the other hand, a real parliament and a renewed council with an equal representation of every state as it happens in the U.S. Senate. So that's Europe.

Please?

MR. : The Iraqi constitution will be better than what Giscard has cooked.

MR. CAPEZZONE: Also the Afghan one. The Afghan is very American, from an institutional point of view. Absolutely. On the contrary, we have a Baroque system in which the only clear thing is that things will stay the way they are now. On the contrary, who wouldn't like to be given the possibility to choosing to be governed for four or five years by the left of Tony Blair or the right of [inaudible]--to be more realistic, by a ticket [inaudible] on the one hand, and a ticket [inaudible] Chirac, for example. It would be a Europe-wide campaign able to interest someone.

I agree entirely with your question about [inaudible] Chirac contradictions, yes. For example, they are always speaking about Islamic moderates. I don't know who they really are. For example. This is an important point.

And a third remark. I am very proud that here in the U.S., we have different areas which back up these ideas, with Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and on the other hand there is [inaudible], for example. They will never drink coffee together, but they will sign this document. And they think it is very important. And I think that--

In short, I have to thank you for this opportunity. I think we can work together on this, also with other people, which we don't like very much.

MR. LEDEEN: We've got just a few minutes left. I want to hear from Mark Palmer, and I know there are some questions over here.

I just want to pick up on one thing that Daniele said before, which I think is enormously important. And that is that in an awful lot of this--I mean, not all of it, but in a surprising amount, what you have is popular support for these ideas. People support them. I mean, if you put it out as a kind of referendum or, you know, whatever, it would get substantial support. The elites are against it. The elites are much more reactionary than the people, I mean, in an awful lot of--you know, in many places. And it's logical and, you know, you don't need Engels to understand it. But that is the way it is. And it is true also in the democratic countries. The elites by and large are much less radical than the people, and the people, if they get the prospect to support real change, more often than not will do it, especially in this area. People understand intuitively that the more democracy spreads, the more peaceful the worlds will be. It's not a panacea, but it's a huge improvement. People understand that.

It's the foreign ministries that don't get this, the foreign ministries and the intelligence services. They're violently opposed to this very idea; they hate it. They dread it. They don't want it. They want to deal with these people, because that's what they've been trained to do.

So, Mark?

QUESTION: I'm Mark Palmer. Let me say, I loved your departure point and I liked your three framework ideas.

It seems to me that one of the central problems with the Community of Democracies is that it has no existence; that is, it has no staff, no building, no budget, and no project. That is, no clear project. Madeleine, in working with your government, early on decided not to press forward on the question of dictatorship but rather to focus internally on the problems of enhancing democracy within existing democracies; though she regretted that and says that in her memoirs.

I think the central project for the Community of Democracies going ahead should in fact be, as I gather you feel, the dictatorships. And one idea that I've been promoting would be to start with a center on dictatorship, a center headed by somebody like Radek or Germach [sp] or somebody from a country that had gone through this and knew first-hand what it was to oust a dictator, to have regime change, hopefully peacefully, and staffed by people who had experience doing that--from many countries, so this would not be a U.S. project; it would not even be located in the U.S. Ideally, it would be located in a country that had itself gone through this, where the culture and ethos of the center would therefore not be New York, would not be Michael's concern, which I share, about the culture of foreign ministries and intelligence services, but would be the popular culture of a country that had gone through this first-hand and as passionate about helping others go through it.

What would the function of such a center be? In my judgment, it would have two purposes. One would be to work with existing democratic movements in Libya, in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other places, to help them--financially, training, radios, all the things you mentioned, Daniele.

The other function would be to do what the World Bank does shamelessly on the economic side, which is to intervene and insist on a plan--you know, here's a five-year, three-year, whatever plan to get political development--and would be very rough about insisting that that had to be implemented or--as you said, Daniele--no money, no debt forgiveness, no nothing.

Anyway, that's my suggestion for, in a certain sense, walking between the U.N. line and community working outside the U.N. Because of course in Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Commission doesn't do any of this, really. It's hopeless.

MR. CAPEZZONE: I agree entirely, and let me congratulate you on your marvelous book, which I read, of course.

Two remarks. I agree, when you say that we need to prove that a community of democracy really exists. And we need that. Also countries, developing countries, must feel that they could be part of something that exists. I don't know whether we will be able in Geneva in the next session of the Human Rights Commission to do something useful. I think we should work especially for the next General Assembly. But we'll see.

The last remark you were making was very important, in my opinion. I agree entirely with, for example, a [inaudible] article came out a few months ago in the New Republic. He wrote like this: We don't have to speak. We must let them speak. Democratic movements exist everywhere. We must let them take the floor.

I think this is a good idea. Also for the global media belt I was describing before. It is very important that they can speak to their peoples, instead of us.

QUESTION: Ira Strauss, Committee on Easter Europe and Russia and NATO. I'd like to associate myself with the moderator's remark, that if we don't talk about these things we'll never know when the times catch up with us or get ahead of us. So it's good that we talk about them. And I would almost say that it's disappointing, but when we talk about them, we spend more than 50 percent of our time talking about the U.N. rather than talking about the subjects we're really here to talk about, which is organization of democracies. Because it's easier to talk about the U.N. It's more difficult, we're afraid of being called idealists, if we talk about the things we really think are worth talking about.

So if I could say a word about the history of the things we're talking about and why we're not out of reality. The idea of organizing on more than one level, not just the U.N. level, didn't begin in 1990-something. The Community of Democracies was invented around 1980 by a group called Committee of the Community of Democracies, supported by some people from Freedom House but also other people. In my misbegotten youth I was a part of that. And in due course, something like it began to come into being, whether ahead of its time or behind the times, who knows?

The idea of a second level of international organization actually goes back to the League of Free Nations Association in 1918, which was a splinter group within the League to enforce peace. One wanted a league of nations, the other wanted a league of the victorious democracies in World War I. That idea was then developed by Clarence Streit into a Union of the North Atlantic Democracies in 1939. His followers proceeded to create the second level, to a NATO and the OECD, which were not all that he wanted it to be or that they wanted it to be. But they exist. They are certainly a reality. Not ahead of the times; perhaps behind the times.

The CCD idea came into being in 1980. It will continue to develop. If we can learn anything from this history, it will come into existence, it will be less than we hoped from it, but it will do significant things. And all of these institutions will continue to need working upon even after their creation--including the Atlantic [inaudible], that still exists and still is not all that we want it to be. And we have a new Atlantic Initiative, whose purpose is to make more of it, and has on occasion contributed to making more of it, including the expansion into Eastern Europe. There's more to be done here.

Certainly, the title of your book, "The United States of Europe and of America,"--the Italian name has a very nice grammar that makes it clear it's the United States of Europe and America combined. It's a great title. It goes back to the idea Clarence Streit. It implies that we need to do more on the Atlantic level as well as on the Community of Democracies level [inaudible] democracies. And it seems to me there is room for doing that. We are far from where we want to be in terms of organizing cooperation on the Atlantic level.

And it would be very nice if we could have more of these sessions in which we're not afraid to talk about these things, because there will be more progress on the Atlantic level in the future history, if there is to be a future history. It's hard to avoid it. We are very interdependent. It won't be all we want it to be, but it will certainly not be nothing.

MR. LEDEEN: Thanks. Can't think of a better way to end the session.

Thank you all for coming; it's been really terrific. We will certainly have more of these, not to worry about that. Thanks.

[End of conference.]