Politics and Government

Dr. Haass, author of the New York Times best seller The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, discusses how to reenvision citizenship if American democracy is to thrive or even survive. His guide is particularly relevant for college students who are learning how to navigate and participate fully in life on campus and in civic society. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today’s Educators Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have CFR President Richard Haass with us to discuss the themes in his new book, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. Dr. Haass needs no introduction, but of course I will say a few words. He is in his twentieth year as president of CFR. He has served as special assistant and senior Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush, served in the U.S. State Department as a director of policy planning under Secretary of State Colin Powell, and held various positions in the Defense and State Departments during the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is the author or editor of fourteen books on U.S. foreign policy, one book on management and, of course, this one on American democracy. So, Richard, thank you very much for being with us today to discuss this book. I thought we could begin with you giving us an overview of your book, why you wrote it and, more specifically, why the focus on obligations rather than on rights. HAASS: Well, thank you, Irina. Thank you all for giving us some of your time. So really two separate questions—why the book and why the focus on obligations. Why the book is, look, I’m a foreign policy guy, for better and for worse. But increasingly, when I thought about all the challenges this country faced in the world, they all presume that we would have a functioning democracy that others in the world might want to emulate, others in the world would feel comfortable depending on, relying on. Our foes in the world might be deterred by. That we would generate the resources we needed and the political unity we needed to act in the world. Increasingly all that came under—has come under question. So I don’t see how you can talk about American national security and just talk about the sort of stuff that the Pentagon or State Department do, but increasingly our ability to have a working democracy, to have a society that has the bandwidth and the unity to carry out our foreign policy. That’s in question. And that’s one of the lessons of the last few years. We assume these things are just fine at our peril. So, you know, that’s what led me to write this book. And I actually have come to see the state of American democracy as, in many ways, the biggest threat to our national security. More than China, or Russia, or climate change, or anything else, because this is the foundation of our ability to contend with all these external threats. Moving to the question of “why obligations,” look, no one should get me wrong here. Rights are central to this American experiment, as I expect all of you know. You know, the Bill of Rights was politically essential in order to get several states that were holding out to ratify the new Constitution. A lot of people understood that the Articles of Confederation were woefully inadequate, but it was something very different to say they were prepared to sign on for a much stronger federal government and a much stronger executive. And the condition that several states set then was, hey, we need this Bill of Rights which protects states and individuals from the reach of the federal government. Over the last nearly two and a half centuries, we’ve lived with the reality that there’s often a gap between our political realities and the Bill of Rights, you know, what Lincoln called the “unfinished work” of this country remains unfinished. I fully appreciate that. But just try a thought experiment: Just imagine that somehow we managed to close the gap between our reality and the Declaration of Independence, and suddenly rights were 100 percent what they ought to be. Then the question you have to ask yourself, if we were to reach that point, would American foreign policy be on safe, firm ground? And the answer is no. Because what would happen is someone would say, hey, the mother has an absolute right to choose. And someone else would say, no, the unborn, they have absolute rights. Or someone would say, I have all sorts of rights under the Second Amendment to bear arms and someone else would say, oh, hold on a minute, I’ve got rights to public safety, to physical safety, and so on and so forth. You know, it wasn’t by accident that Justice Steve Breyer said that the toughest cases before the court are right versus wrong, but rights versus rights. So what do we do? How do we avoid the clash of rights which, at a minimum, would mean gridlock, and worse yet, in all sorts of situations, one could imagine things descending into violence. If people felt that adamantly about their rights, and if their rights were not adequately recognized, from their point of view, what’s holding them back from political violence? And that’s what led me to this book. And that’s what led me to obligations. Obligation is the other side of the citizenship coin. Rights are essential. To use the political science idea, they are necessary, but they’re not sufficient. We need obligations. We need to complement rights, supplement rights with—we need obligations to one another—you to me, me to you, Irina, me to everybody on this Zoom—and vice versa. And then, second of all, we all need to think about our obligations to the country. What do we—in the spirit of John F. Kennedy—what do we owe this country? Only if we balance or complement rights with obligations do I think this experiment of American democracy has a good chance of surviving another two and a half centuries. FASKIANOS: So when you were writing this book, Richard—clearly we all need to read it—but what was your target audience? HAASS: It’s a good question. Let me give you a couple of answers. One is, and it’s something you and I know from our work here, I’m always interested in finding multipliers in American society. So in this case, it’s a lot of the kinds of people on this call, educators, because they all have students. So whether they’re administrators, classroom teachers, you know, university, four-year schools, two-year schools, colleges, at the high school level, what have you. So educators are my principal—if not THE principal audience, as the principal multiplier. Obviously, students as well because, you know, particularly if you think about it, college students by—well, we can talk about this more—but they’re a perfect audience for this. I’m also, though, interested in other multipliers in this society. One is journalists. They have tremendous reach. They have obligations. Religious authorities, the people who give the sermons. You know, tens if not even more than a hundred million Americans hear sermons every week. Well, why can’t religious authorities do things like discourage political violence, say nothing justifies violence, or civility is always called for, or compromise ought to always be considered. Or, how about this, you are your brother’s and sister’s keeper. You have an obligation to look out for the common good. Who better than a religious authority to do that? I think parents have certain special opportunities, if you will, to carry out these obligations, to model certain behavior. So I’m interested in all of them. And what I found is a lot of—you know, and the good news is I think it’s resonating. Particularly a lot of older people know there’s something amiss in this country. And what they want to make sure is that younger people get a chance to take this in. FASKIANOS: Right. So in your book, you have laid out ten principles. And under the ten principles— HAASS: We call them obligations, Irina. FASKIANOS: Ten obligations, yes. So what are the key insights that you would want, or the obligations that you would want educators and students to take away from reading this book, and that you would want educators to promote or to share with their students? HAASS: Well, first of all, all ten I think are valuable. You know, if we were in a religious context and you say which of the commandments would you jettison, you know, we all might have our favorite for jettisoning, but—Mel Brooks had his ideas in one of his movies. But I think all ten are necessary, in this case. I’d begin with being informed, which I think is particularly relevant to this kind of a group. You know, Jefferson’s notion of the informed citizen is basic to a democracy. And then I think it immediately then calls for a conversation on exactly what is it we mean by being informed in terms of the basics. What do we mean in terms of current issues that come and go? How then do you get informed? How do you avoid being misinformed? I think it’s a really rich conversation. Again, with students, we want to urge them, once they are informed, to get involved. To use an old quote of Ronald Reagan’s, we don’t just want patriotism we want informed patriotism. So we want people to be involved, but we want them to be involved once they are informed. You know, we can go through all of them, just things like behaviors, civility, compromise, observation of norms. Those are all important. Just kind of attitudes and behaviors become important. Then there’s more specific things. I’d love for younger people to get involved in public service. Several states have instituted, like California, a large public service program. I think it’s great. I think too many of us in this country are now leading very separate lives defined by geography, educational attainment, wealth, race, religion, gender, what have you. I love things that produce a bit of common experience, I think would be good. I’m obviously big, and we’ll probably get to this, about teaching civics. I think it’s simply wrong that anybody should leave a campus without having been exposed to civics. We wouldn’t let them leave the campus if they couldn’t read or write. Why would we want them to leave a campus if they didn’t have—if they weren’t, essentially, literate about citizenship, given how important that is. So, you know, I thought hard about the obligations. And I just think that this is what is required if American democracy is going to prosper. FASKIANOS: We’ve talked a lot about how this book is a perfect fit for the first-year experience and for incoming students to college campuses. And I thought you could talk a little bit about the connection of this book, and why it would be such a perfect fit. HAASS: Couple of things. One is, the average freshman is pretty close to eighteen. So what a perfect time to be doing this, because they’re going to have the right to vote. And we want them to vote. And we want them to be informed voters. So that’s one thing. But this is—the timing is perfect for people stepping onto campus. Second of all, in addition to voting, campuses, like any other, if you will, environment are political environments. And so over the course of their two, three, four, however many years on campus, students are going to be in all sorts of formal and informal, structured and unstructured, settings in which politics are going to come up. So I believe they need some help in navigating what they’re going to experience on a—in classrooms, over drinks, over coffee, study groups, what have you. I think it’s really essential there. I also like the idea of first-year experiences—and first principles—I love the idea that people read something and have it in common and they can talk about it. So whether you’re a flute major, or a physics major, or a computer sciences major, I love the fact that everybody’s reading something. And this is something with real, I think, practical payoffs, again, for the years on campus, and for life afterwards. So I actually think it’s a good thing. And, just to be clear, the book doesn’t tell them about what’s the, quote/unquote, “right” or “wrong” policy on any issue. It’s simply about how one approaches political life, whether it’s on campus or beyond. And I just think it’s—for eighteen-year-olds about to embark on a college experience and on a life experience, I think the timing’s pretty good. FASKIANOS: So we have a written question from Jim Zaffiro, who is a professor of political science at Central College. And he asks along the same lines— HAASS: Central College in Iowa? FASKIANOS: Yes. HAASS: I got a—I was lucky enough to get an honorary degree from Central College in Iowa. It’s a wonderful, wonderful place. FASKIANOS: So he would like to know, how would you present the nature and significance of this as a common reading for eighteen-year-olds? Like, how would pitch it to an incoming freshman about why they should read it? So from the student’s perspective? HAASS: It’s a good question. Like it or not, government is essential to our lives. And indeed, both whether you like it or not, that makes the case for learning about it. It’s going to affect you. But, more important, government is not some impersonal force. Government is affected by citizens. So I want students to understand that government is what we make of it. And it’s who we vote for. It’s who we reward or penalize politically. It’s who they work for. I’d love them to get involved themselves. Not just in campaigns, one day some of them may choose that as a career—I did for a long time—in public service. And it could be—in my case it was working on the policy side. It could be the military. It could be intelligence. I’ve got a daughter who works for the Department of Sanitation here in the City of New York. There’s all sorts of ways to have a public service kind of career. But even if you don’t, we still, as citizens, have the right—and I would say, the obligation—to vote. And if they don’t, well, that’s just another way of saying you’re going to let this other person decide what your future is. Why would anybody want to abdicate the chance to influence their own future and lets the person sitting in the seat next to them make choices that would affect them? So I would want students—I would want to remind them that government is responsive. That we’ve made enormous changes. I think a lot of young people have a really negative view of government. They see what’s happened in recent years—whether it’s the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or economic crises, or pandemics, or climate. And a lot of them are very down on government. And I get it. I get it. But government also, over the decades, has delivered in important ways. And even when it’s failed, the failure wasn’t inevitable. So I want to give students a sense of possibility. And that government is really important. And the good news, in a non-authoritarian, democratic system, is governments are potentially responsive, and that there are real opportunities to make an impact that will affect their future and the futures of others they care about. And, you know, as I’ve learned in life, for better and for worse, not acting—you know, if you will, omissions—are just as important as acting in commission. And so I want students to understand that it’s consequential not to get involved. And it’s probably consequential and bad in ways that are most – more likely than not, not to be good for them. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. So I’m just going to—people are already writing questions in the Q&A box. Love to see that. So if you do that, please also include your affiliation or I will try to pull out your affiliation. You can always also raise your hand on the screen to ask a question. And on an iPad and tablet, you can click the “more” button. For those of you who have written your question, if you want to ask it yourself please do raise your hand because we love to hear your voices. The first person, Miriam Kerzner, wants to know what you mean by “civics.” And I think that’s a good jumping off point for you to talk about civics and why it needs to be—how you think about it. HAASS: No, it’s a great—yeah, in a funny sort of way, everyone—well, not everyone—but almost everyone is in favor of civics until you drill down a little bit. (Laughs.) And then they go, oh, I didn’t mean that. So it’s not enough to be in favor of it in principle, but you’ve also got to be in favor of it in practice. So it seems to me, and it’s complicated, I get it. It ain’t going to be easy. I get it. But I think there’s certain things about our history, about certain documents people should be exposed to, certain, you know, dates and events that people should be exposed to, certain understandings about how government works at the national, the state, and then the local level people should be exposed to. Certain behaviors and attitudes that are consistent with a democracy that people should be exposed to. I think civics has got to do all of that. And I also think modern civics has to also take into account or include what is increasingly known as information literacy, to teach students to be critical consumers of this flood of information that’s coming at them. And it’s ironic. It’s almost strange that in an age in which we’re deluged with information, it’s also harder than ever to be informed. But there you have it. So I think modern civics has to teach elements of history, teach some of the elements or basics of the American political system. Probably teach some basic elements of American society, the economy, and so forth, foreign policy. Talk about attitudes, behaviors, almost the culture of democracy, get into things about rights and obligations, talk about information literacy. And it’s demanding. It’s going to be very hard to—it’s going to be impossible to satisfy not just everybody, probably anybody. This has now become a politicized terrain, probably a minefield’s a better metaphor. Again, I’m not naïve about that. But I don’t think we can throw up our hands and say it’s too hard. It’s probably impossible to get anything done at the national level just now, but not at the state level. I’ve already talked to several governors who are willing to take a try. I see certain schools are willing to take a try. I mean, Stanford’s going to introduce a civics module for all of its freshmen starting next winter term. Other schools have some things like it. The service academies have been doing work in this area for quite a while. I don’t mean to leave anybody out, but I know that schools like Purdue and Virginia, some others, have elements of this. Johns Hopkins is debating it. And so I just think it’s also that universities have far more flexibility because, you know, I think it’s tougher for public high schools, given the roles of state legislatures and politics. It’s probably somewhat tough also, obviously, for public universities, given the way they’re funded and the oversight. I think private colleges and universities have enormous discretion. There’s nothing stopping them. They could do it tomorrow. There are resource issues. I get it. And not everybody has the, shall we say, resource advantages of a Stanford. So I think, you know, for a lot of schools, they’re going to have to look at what’s not just desirable, but you’ve always got to ask what’s doable, what’s feasible. I get it. But I think every—I think this is a conversation faculties, administrators, boards, students, and others need to have. Which is, one, whether civics? I would say the answer to that is yes. And then, OK, then let’s have a follow-on conversation. What should go into it? And we can talk more about it, but I think particularly when it comes to history, which is probably the most controversial area, my own advice is to simply say there’s got to be certain things about history which are not terribly controversial. There are certain documents that are essential, certain Supreme Court decisions, certain speeches, certain commentaries. Certain things happen. There’s the factual spine of American history. Then there’s interpretations of what caused certain things, what are the consequences of certain things. OK. Well, there, I think the lesson is not to teach a single history, not to impose a vision of history, but to expose students to a range of responsible historical analyses and interpretations. And then maybe in the classroom provide mechanisms for debating them in a civics course. And, indeed, I could imagine lots of other ideas—and there’s teaching notes we just produced. One could imagine all sorts of model or mock legislatures where people—students would introduce certain legislation. One of the ideas I proposed was a model constitutional convention, and students would have a chance to propose amendments to the current Constitution and debate it out. So I think things like that. I think there’s all sorts of participatory things that one could introduce or incorporate into a civics curriculum without imposing a single vision or interpretation of history, which would obviously be unacceptable to, you know, significant constituencies. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. And Miriam’s at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington. So I’m going to go next to Larry Mead, who has raised his hand. And if you could identify yourself and accept the unmute prompt, that would be fantastic. HAASS: Or not. FASKIANOS: Larry, you still need to unmute, or not. All right, I will go next to Laura Tedesco, and we’ll come back to Larry. Or, we’ll try. Laura. There you go, Laura first, OK. Laura, you just muted yourself again. Q: OK, now? FASKIANOS: You’ve got it. Q: OK. Thank you very much. My name is Laura Tedesco. I’m working from Madrid, Spain, working at St. Louis University, in the campus that they have here in Madrid. And my question is basically how we are going to—I agree with you about, you know, the education of citizenship here. But how are we going to really make people understand—not only students in universities, but everybody else, you know—about the right and the need to act as citizens? For instance, in a country like the United States, where your vote is not obligatory, yeah? You know, how can we make people understand that, you know, democracy should not be taken for granted, and we should all work to improve democracy from the different positions we are? Thank you. HAASS: No, it’s a great question. How do we incentivize people not to take democracy for granted? One is to teach them in a civics curriculum a little bit about what are the structural strengths and advantages for democracy in terms of everything from the freedoms and rights they tend to provide and protect, to democracy’s ability to adapt and innovate. We also got a pretty good historical record. I mean, yes, this democracy and other democracies have made serious mistakes, and they’re imperfect to say the least, but there’s a lot that they have accomplished and a lot that they have provided and delivered. So I think we need to remind people about the record of democracies to—and to also—I’d be more than comfortable pointing out some of the shortcomings of the alternatives, because obviously the alternatives do have, shall we say, more than their share of flaws. And I—again, to encourage, you know, informed participation—I think you have to make the case that democracies are responsive, that individuals and groups can make a difference. There’s almost nothing that’s inevitable. And history is, in many ways, what we make it. And that’s what I want students to come away with, the sense of possibility and empowerment. I mean, what I came to conclude in writing this is if we wait for democracies to be delivered, if you will, or saved by someone at the top, it’s going to be a long wait. And what we really need to think about is empowerment, whether it’s young people or, again, these critical constituencies in American society from business to religious leaders, to teachers, to journalists, officials, and so forth. You know, we all have a chance to make a difference. And I want students to get excited about both why democracies are worth saving and the difference that individuals can make. And I think if we do that, we can generate some greater political involvement. And what the last two elections show is even minute amounts—you know, 1 percent here or there—of greater political involvement can have enormous impact. And that’s what I want, again, students to come away with. The, yeah, well my vote won’t matter. Well, probably not, if you’re talking about one vote. But it doesn’t take a whole lot of people getting involved in order to tip the scales. And so I want students to get a sense of empowerment. FASKIANOS: So you can build on—that starts to answer Robert McCoy’s question, who is at the University of Montana, in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center in Missoula, Montana. He says: Read the book. Think it ought to be mandatory reading for all, not just students. However, your opening chapters paint such a dire picture that I fail to see how today’s issues can be rectified. Can you speak to that? HAASS: Hmm. I’ll have to go back and reread the opening chapters. I thought the first chapter was kind of about the— is really neutral. It’s kind of the march of American history—American political history. It’s kind of how we got to where we are. You know, the second chapter is on backsliding. And the reason it’s that way is if things weren’t in a bad way, I wouldn’t have needed to write the book and I could have focused on my golf game and lowering my handicap. But because democratic backsliding in this country—and, by the way, in others—is a reality, I felt compelled to write this book. So I didn’t have confidence that it would just sort itself out by itself. I actually think very few things just sort themselves out by themselves, whether we’re talking about domestic political systems or international systems. I think it takes agency. And but again, small numbers could have really large impact. I mean, we just had a midterm here where roughly, I don’t know, 45 percent of the eligible voters voted. And which was, you know, slightly higher than traditional midterms. Still disappointing. But some of the outcomes were pretty impressive. And in terms of stabilizing American democracy. Very easily, though, there could have been other outcomes. And think of the consequences there. So the whole argument for making—you know, for obligations is that nothing’s baked into the cake, for better and for worse. So we shouldn’t assume that everything’s just going to turn out just fine. And we shouldn’t assume that it won’t. And I think, again, small numbers could have real impact. And, again, it’s an empowerment argument. And I think there’s a lot—there’s a lot of distributed authority—obligation, or authority, or potential for various groups within the society, various constituencies, as well as with individuals writ large. And I think possibly reminding people about how government over the years has adapted, I think people need to, in some ways, rediscover a bit of respect and admiration for government. And I look at some of the changes we’ve had over the course of, say, the last—take my last seventy-five years, or even, you know, from on domestic things. Civil rights, you know, extension of the vote to eighteen-year-olds, what we’ve recently done on gay marriage, and so forth. The degree of adaptability and change, government turns out to be quite flexible in this society. So I want students to get jazzed about the potential here, about the possibility, but to remind them it just doesn’t happen by itself. And people have to get involved. And politics is not dirty. It’s a calling. And so I want the best and brightest to do this. You know, I’ve had a career that’s been in and out of government, and I wouldn’t trade it for just about anything. And it’s really satisfying. I talk to them about careers and other things also. So I mean, not just people that are going to become doctors, and lawyers, and plumbers, and electricians, and whatever. And I want them to be involved, informed citizens. But I would love a chunk of the best and brightest to go into government and choose that as a calling. So again, one of the reasons I love the idea of a public service experience, say, for a year or two years after high school, before college, or during college, or after college, not only do would I think a lot of people come into contact with one another who ordinarily wouldn’t meet where people grow up, but I think they would see what government could do. They would see that public service can actually accomplish some things that are good for the public. So I think students need to realize that. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next back to Larry Mead. And let’s see if we can get your technology—there we go. Q: Can you hear me now? OK. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Yes, we can. And identify yourself, please. Q: What I wrote was, I thought I was the only political scientist to write about obligation. I wrote a book about that back in the 1960s. It was about domestic policy, mainly. I think your book is—I think the second book to really focus on obligation. And my question is this: In fact, our system presumes a very high level of civic obligation. We are, in fact, one of the most civic countries in the world, one of the best governed in the world. And that all depends on that civic culture. So why then do we talk only about rights? HAASS: Great question. First of all, what’s your book? My research was inadequate. Tell me about your book. Q: (Laughs.) OK. It was called Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship. It’s about welfare, poverty, and reform of welfare. It makes a case for work requirements. And later on, I became the theorist of welfare reform. But the general argument is that freedom depends on obligation. And actually, freedom is a form of obligation. But people aren’t thoughtful about that. They somehow think that freedom is simply liberation from all sets of outside expectations. No. Our heaviest obligations are the obligations we set for ourselves in our own lives. We work very hard to achieve those things. So freedom isn’t free, and yet we don’t talk about it. HAASS: I agree. And good for you. Thank you. I will now make up for my impoverished scholarship and researching skills. Q: Well, I’m going to read your book, and I will write you a reaction, I promise you. HAASS: Thank you. Be kind. Look, there’s a lot of—in the course of writing this, I read some religious and political philosophers. And that was their argument, that freedom without obligation is dangerous. It actually leads you to anarchy. And but obligation and the rest without freedom denies you basic rights. And you’ve got to—you got to get both. Find it infused in religious and philosophical literature. I found it in some educational literature after World War II. So I’ve asked myself, to your question, how did we kind of lose the balance? Because if you go to early American history, there was such an emphasis on rights, and my hunch is people were much more conscious of rights because the entire context was not reimposing tyranny after getting out from under the yoke of Britain. I also think our culture was different. That a lot of obligations, or the notion of obligations, was assumed. It was implicit. It wasn’t missing. It was there. And when you go back—when I went back and read de Tocqueville, and Bryce, and others, you re-read a lot of this—even the Federalist Papers, they didn’t spend a lot of time hammering away on obligations. I think they saw it all around them. I think what’s happened, and it’s probably beyond my paygrade, or at least beyond my intellectual understanding—because I’m not an anthropologist or a sociologist—was somehow this notion of the balance between rights and obligations in American society, to use a technical phrase, has gotten out of whack. We’ve become much more rights focused, almost rights obsessed. What are we owed? Whether they’re political rights or economic rights. And we’ve lost a sense of what do we owe in turn. And, you know, how that happened is an interesting conversation. And it’s something I’ve been meditating about and thinking about. But however it happened, it happened. And that’s why I think we need something of a corrective. And I’m no longer confident it’ll just happen. The ship won’t right itself. And I think that we have to now be conscious about advocating for obligations, because they have the coin of citizenship has lost its balance there. And it’s gone way too much in one direction. So what I’m trying to do is by talking so much about obligations, decades after you did—is in some ways resurrect the idea and strengthen a recognition that we’ve somewhat lost our way. And, by the way, I think people know that. I got to tell you, I’ve been on the road a lot the last six weeks, talking about this book to all sorts of citizen groups. I did one last night about fifty miles from here. And people know it. I got to tell you, particularly people who are middle-aged and older, they look out their window, they get up and they look out at this society, and they go: This isn’t the American I remember. There is something amiss. There is something wrong. I’m not saying the old America was perfect. It was obviously flawed in some significant ways. But there is something wrong about our culture. I think if de Tocqueville were to come back, he would not be happy, in some ways. He would see things that were missing a little bit from the relationship between individuals and society, and particularly the obligation I have, say, about the common good. I think there’s a degree now of selfishness and individualism. And I think it’s gotten out of hand in American society. We saw a lot of that during the pandemic. And that, to me, was yet another message that we’ve got some work here to do. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Louis Caldera, who is a professor of law at American University. Can you talk about our democracy as an example to the world that is foundational to achieving our foreign policy and national security goals? Do you agree? Do we undermine our leadership in the world if our own democracy is undermined by things like gerrymandering, vote suppressing laws, unchecked special interest money, and so on? HAASS: In a word, yes, we do. We certainly undermine the appeal of democracy. It’s very hard to talk the talk if you don’t walk the walk. And January 6 was probably the low point. But again, when people look at American democracy or look not just at democracy but American society, I think our ability—and, how do I put this—we’re not quite the shining city on the hill we should be or could be. So, we can have—we can arm every diplomat with talking points about preaching democratic reform, but it’s not going to have any traction if it’s done against the backdrop of what we now have in this country. So I think that’s just a fact of life. So you’re spot on. And I also think the divisions in our society and the lurches, increasingly, in our politics have made us much less influential in the world, because we’re no longer seen as predictable or reliable. And allies, by definition, what have they done? They have essentially made a security choice to put a big chunk of their security in our hands. If our hands are no longer seen as reliable, predictable, or safe, they’re either going to put security in their own hands—and that’s a world of much more proliferation or something like that—or they’re going to defer to some powerful neighbors. That is not a pretty world. I also worry that our—my own guess, I can’t prove it—but Vladimir Putin was somewhat encouraged to do what did in Ukraine because he didn’t think the United States had the will to come together to resist. And so I take these things seriously. So, yeah. So I think, again, this is directly—what’s going on here, you know, to use the old line about Las Vegas, it doesn’t stay here. This isn’t Las Vegas. And it’s—if anybody’s on this from Nevada, I apologize. But it does have real foreign policy consequences. So I think you’re spot on. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Collette Mazzucelli, who has raised her hand. Q: Hello. Good afternoon, Dr. Haass. And I just wanted to ask you if you think that there’s a need for a new model of citizenship because of the evolution of the internet, the next phase that’s coming, the prevalence and, you know, omnipresent nature of misinformation, disinformation in our society, and also across the world. Thank you. HAASS: It’s a really thoughtful question. It was about, what, two weeks ago the Supreme Court had two days of oral hearings—or arguments on Section 230 of the 1996 law, the Communications Decency Act. I think we’re struggling with the internet, because these companies, or the pipes that they operate, are carrying millions and millions of messages from millions and millions of people. So the question is, can we—and if so, how, and the rest—can we in any way regulate the content? So I think there’s real issues. And social media is, in many cases, inflaming divisions within a society. It is encouraging some bad behaviors in many cases. But it’s not quite clear to me what the remedies are, what’s practical, and what’s desirable. Some things are simply impractical given the number of users, the volume of messaging. And some things may not be desirable because where do you draw the line on First Amendment rights, free speech, and so forth. And who does the drawing? Who’s in charge of line drawing? And do we want to necessarily delegate the ability to draw certain lines to some individuals who may be working for Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or what have you? So I think these are really tough issues. My guess is the Supreme Court will probably punt to Congress. Congress will not pick up the ball, would be my guess. There might be some movement. If you look at one of the cases heard before the court now, I think they’ll issue their decision in, say, June or so. Where it’s one thing for the companies to say they’re neutral, they can’t be expected to regulate content. OK. I think it’s different, though, when they highlight, or accelerate, or intensify certain content through algorithms or what have you. So I think there might be some pushback there, that they can’t necessarily police or regulate all the content. But they can be held accountable for not—or, regulator-required, not to highlight certain content. I think it might get at their business model, but I can live with that, to say the least. And then the other half of the coin is how do we make ourselves more critical consumers? And that gets at the whole information literacy movement that we’re seeing in New Jersey at the high school level, and other places. But I would think, again, on university campuses, the idea—if I had my way, there would be a mandatory civics course. And, again, one dimension of it would be information literacy. So even if we’ll never succeed in totally regulating what goes on social media, in whatever form. But I do think we can improve our ability to be critical consumers of it. And I think that is out there. But, look, when I look at democratic backsliding around the world, not just in the United States. We’re seeing it in Mexico, we’re seeing it in India, we’re seeing it in Israel. We’re seeing it in lots of places. The proliferation of media, social media, you know, my word for it is narrowcasting. We now live in an era of narrowcasting. And people are no longer exposed to common things, and they increasingly go into various social and regular media outlets, which tend to either confirm certain views or prejudices, what have you. I think it’s a real challenge for democracy. FASKIANOS: So we have a written question from Victoria Powers, who’s at Capital University in Ohio. I agree with you that teaching civics is critical, and I understand that it’s complex in the current environment for some high schools to teach civics. Although I hate to give up requiring civics in K-12 schools. Do you have ideas about what we could do to help provide an education in civics for all those young people who will not be headed to two- or four-year college or universities or community colleges, obviously. And, sorry, she is an adjunct at the Capital University Law School in Ohio. HAASS: Well, I think the takeaway I take from that question, and it’s a good one, is what we do on two- and four-year college and university campuses is part of the answer, it’s not the totality of it. And we’ve got to get to citizens younger. So that gets at what you do at high school, junior high school, even middle school. I mean, iCivics has been active in middle schools for a long time. And it also raises questions of what we do away from school. And that’s where, again, I think that those who give the sermons have a certain responsibility, media has a larger responsibility than it is often willing to carry out. Businesses, corporations have a responsibility. I think there’s got to be distributed obligations here. And I believe each one of these segments of society has obligations and should be pressured by citizens to carry it out. But I do think, yes, we ought to be pushing civics down younger, but we also—we need—as important as classrooms are, we’ve also got to do things beyond—outside the classroom. But the basic point is right, particularly since the only thing most Americans have to do is attend school through the age of sixteen. So we can’t afford to miss that opportunity. Irina, you’re on mute. FASKIANOS: Right. How long have I been doing this? OK. (Laughs.) HAASS: For about half an hour, but we’ve been waiting for you. (Laughter.) FASKIANOS: I’m going to go next to Jody McBrien, who is a professor of social sciences at the University of South Florida. I understand why young people feel powerless, especially when you consider gerrymandering voting and using misinformation. You mentioned state level, she lives in Florida, enough said. How do you suggest getting students engaged in spite of these issues that understandably cause a feeling of helplessness. HAASS: Well, again, you know, the people who are in power passing certain laws now, or redrawing lines, they weren’t always in those positions. They got there. So my view is if one disagrees with them, then one has to get them out of there and put other people in there. And that’s what political involvement is all about. There’s nothing inevitable. There’s nothing permanent. These things go in cycles and so forth. So I would tell students, yeah, channel your frustration. Channel your anger. But channel it in ways that will change the political realities. Don’t just protest. Don’t just get—certainly don’t give up. I mean, I think the worst thing is to walk away from it and saying it’s hopeless. That becomes self-fulfilling, because then, again, you leave your political future in the hands of others who are unlikely to have your best interests at heart. So I think the best thing is to sit down with students and talk about how politics have changed American time, and time, and time again. And they ought to essentially think about collective action. And that’s the history of American political life. FASKIANOS: I will take the next written question from Ali Abootalebi, who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Would you comment on implications of your civic education argument for U.S. foreign policy? The American public is fundamentally divorced from U.S. foreign relations, leaving the foreign policy establishment free from certain obligations and in pursuit of narrowed interests. HAASS: Well, the latter we can have a debate about, to what extent does American foreign policy always served American interests. And I would say, at times it has and at times it hasn’t. I’m often a critic of what we do in the name of the national interest, which at times to me seems to be anything but. But that’s almost a case-by-case type thing. But, look, I would say that one part of being an informed citizen is understanding the world and understanding foreign policy. It’s one of the reasons about a decade ago here, at the Council on Foreign Relations, we made it a real priority to promote literacy in matters of the world and matters of foreign policy. And we’ve got an entire curriculum. We’ve got simulation resources. We’ve got resources aimed at younger students. We do now all sorts of public fora on our website, CFR.org. The most trafficked items tend to be the explainers of these complicated issues to give people a basic understanding of these issues. I think it’s part of being an informed citizen. So my own view is we want to have what we call global literacy, in addition to having what I would call civics literacy. I think they are both—since we live in a global world, where everything we do or don’t do affects the world and vice versa, everything that goes on the world affects us, for better and for worse, we want citizens to be aware of that loop, and to think about the consequences of certain policies or actions for that. So I think that as an extension of informed civic involvement. It’s just the content, in some cases, has to involve things international, and not just things domestic. FASKIANOS: All right. I’m going to take the next question from David Cheney. And I’m trying to pull up affiliation. While I am: How can young people stay accurately informed, given their reliance on social media? And how would you have them balance right-wing with left-wing media sources to arrive at a closer approximation of the truth? And he is at NYU. HAASS: I’ve heard of NYU. Look, a couple things. Yeah, I know what is not in my answer. TikTok is not the answer. Let me say that. A couple of things. One is, and in the book I have a whole section on where to go for more. And I also think—you know, because there are certain quality publications. Certain newspapers just tend to be good, or better than others. They’re not perfect, but they’re better. Certain magazines, certain television and radio shows, certain websites. So there are quality places to steer people to. I think as a rule of thumb we ought to encourage multi-sourcing, not to put all your—not to depend on a single source. It’s almost like a journalist. A journalist would never write a story based on a single source. They have to double-source it. And I almost feel as citizens we ought to double-source our information, and not just depend on one. I used to have a rule when I went to the gym in my pre-COVID life, when I went on the elliptical, I would divide my time among Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. And I’ll admit, I did cheat and ESPN would get a chunk of it as well. But the whole idea was the be exposed. It was just—it was interesting just to see the different “realities,” quote/unquote, that were put forward. But I think it’s important to—if you read a national newspaper, then read a local newspaper, maybe. Or if you do something of the left, do something of the right. Or if you read this book, as a professor or teacher, you’d encourage someone to read something else to—so you’re not, again, single sourcing. And I think that’s the—if I had a single rule of thumb, it would probably be that, to protect yourself from the structural biases. Because all authors or publications have a bias either in what they cover or how they cover it. I take that for granted. So the only way—the best way to protect yourself from it is a degree of multiple exposure. FASKIANOS: OK. I think we have time for one more. Dana Radcliffe at Syracuse University. President Obama in his farewell address referred to the citizen as “the most important office in a democracy.” The philosopher Joseph Tussman in 1960 offered an insightful characterization of “the office of the citizen.” Might the suggestion that citizen is a public office help advance the thesis that citizenship entails obligations as well as rights? HAASS: An interesting construct. I like it. It kind of adds a bit of heft, because we tend to sort of just talk about citizenship, almost dismiss it at times. Well, he’s just an ordinary person. But I like the idea of an office, that it’s—that you’re—because that suggests a degree of empowerment and a degree, again, of obligation. So I like the idea. I think it kind of—kind of it gets people to take the potential to make a difference a little bit more seriously. And I really like it. So that’s a useful construct. So thank you for that. FASKIANOS: OK. We have a few more minutes. Richard, is there anything you want to leave the group with that we haven’t covered? HAASS: I know I’m always supposed to say yes at this point, but no. It’s been a really wide-ranging conversation. No, and I think what I’m hoping is that people on a call such as this will think about how to promote—you know, particularly on campuses and schools—the teaching of civics. Both to create a mandate for it, and then we can debate the content. But the idea that—you know, one of the arguments often used that I encounter—I’m not in a position to judge its accuracy—is that too many of the constituencies on campus oppose this, particularly it’s often said to me, you know, faculty, or whatever. And I think the faculty could make an important difference by basically saying: Actually, no. We don’t oppose this. We think this is a swell idea. And we’re prepared to work with administrators, students, and the rest, to make it happen. And I think that would be fantastic. So, again, you’re the multipliers. And I think you’re in a special position to do this. So, again, I think freshman year experience is a good place to get the kids going, the students going with this. But I do think, whether it’s a course or a module at some point, it needs—but we need advocates for it. So I hope some of you on this call will be advocates, because I just think we’re missing not just an opportunity but, if you’ll pardon the expression, we’re missing an obligation to see that—to make sure that our students are prepared to do their bit, to do their share, for upholding democracy in this country. And so I just think universities and colleges have, again, a special opportunity and obligation both. And you’re all so instrumental to do that. So Godspeed in that effort. FASKIANOS: Well, with that, thank you very much, Richard. Thank you for writing, authoring, this book, The Bill of Obligations. Richard has also written teaching notes to go with the book that we will be posting on the website alter this week. If you’re interested in an exam copy, either digital or print, we can—we can honor that request. And if you want to try to make—put his book on the common reading list or incorporate it into your first-year experience, we can also think about having Richard address the incoming class virtually or perhaps in person. We appreciate all that you have done, Richard. He has really transformed CFR into an educational institution. You should check out Model Diplomacy and World 101. You can follow Richard on Twitter at @richardhaass, subscribe to his Substack newsletter which he just launched, called Home and Away, by going to richardhaass.substack.com. We’ll include those links in our follow-up note with the link to this video and transcript. We will include the teaching notes as well. And I also encourage you to follow @CFR_Academic, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, thank you all for being with us today, for the work that you do on your college campuses. And, Richard Haass, again, thank you for being with us. HAASS: Thank you, Irina. Thank you, all. I appreciate it. (END)

CFR experts discuss Nigeria’s recent general elections, including the significance of voting delays and polling station attacks, the domestic policy challenges facing the new leader, and what the outcome could mean for political and business relations between the United States and Nigeria. CAMPBELL: Thank you. Good morning. My name John Campbell, and with me to discuss Nigeria’s recent elections are the Council’s senior fellows, Michelle Gavin and Ebenezer Obadare. You have biographic notes, so I will only remind that Michelle has had a distinguished career working African policy issues, including on the Hill and at the National Security Council, and she served as ambassador to Botswana. Ebenezer is an academic who has published multiple well-received books on Nigeria, especially on the intersection of religion and politics. Nigeria is the giant of Africa, with a population likely to exceed that of the United States in the coming decades. It has the largest or the second-largest economy in Africa, depending on the metric you use, and it styles itself as a democracy. It is, de facto, the most important African country in an international context. But it is bedeviled by escalating security challenges ranging from jihadist assaults in the north to a nationwide epidemic of kidnapping. Nigerians complain about dysfunctional governance and suffer from massive unemployment, and a likely growth in poverty. With climate change, sea levels are rising, and desertification is spreading. There is plenty of evidence that most Nigerians think the country is moving in the wrong direction, want profound change, and look to elections to bring it about. There is also a huge brain drain. At the same time, there is extraordinary cultural efflorescence in the arts, literature, and music that is recognized internationally. And Nigeria is home to a dynamic tech sector and Africa’s largest film industry. Yet, Nigeria is largely ignored by Americans, except when there are atrocities, such as the Chibok schoolgirl kidnapping, and every four years when there are national elections, such as last Saturday’s. Ebenezer, could you start us by walking through the leading presidential candidates this year, and who won the elections? OBADARE: Thank you, Ambassador Campbell. Happy to do that. But before doing that, let me make a couple of preparatory remarks to sort of frame what I’m going to say. The first one is that, all along, I have been in a minority in my reading of the Nigerian situation, in my predictions as to what might happen with the election, and in my understanding of what took place and what we should expect in the immediate and long-term future. The second thing is that in talking about Nigeria today, I think it’s important to think historically, and that we avoid seeing the election in isolation but, one, within the general context of Nigerian history and the history of the democratic process since 1999. And then finally, I think it’s also important to pay attention to the concrete material circumstances in which the election was held. I think all those things ought to be taken into consideration in answering this question. First, the leading candidates. The leading candidates were Peter Obi, Abubakar Atiku, and Bola Tinubu, who has been declared the winner. In terms of their economic vision of the world, they are all broadly similar, which is interesting because Peter Obi is a candidate of the Labour Party, an explicitly socialist party. But that tension has always been there. And I think it will be interesting to explore that tension as Obi emerged as the presidential candidate. But all of them believe in the free market, though with a tinge of patronage. Who won this election? Let’s talk about the winners in the following order. Tinubu won, but this is one of those victories where you say another victory like that and we’re all done for. He won, but he sacrificed his political fiefdom in Lagos state. I’m not sure that in planning out things when he was trying to run for the presidency, that ever in his wildest imagination would have imagined, you know, giving up Lagos, which he has singlehandedly ruled since 1999, when he became governor of the state. The other person who won, Obi won. Peter Obi. He won for the following reasons: He has helped us definitively answer the question as to the viability of a third-party candidacy. He has helped broken out—he has broken out the PDP thus, more or less, ending the duopoly that has been in place since 1999. He has injected new life into the political process by harnessing the energy of young people within and outside the country, the Obidients. Civil society won. Civil society, organized primarily around the Obidients, revitalized and energized by—and drawing on the people who mobilized End SARS, Labour or whatever is left of it, the student body, or whatever is left of it. Another winner? The political process. It faced its most severe test and appears to have survived thus far. But more important, at the senatorial and house representative levels, it’s interesting we’ve not been talking about that because of the focus on the presidency. A new generation of leaders has been quietly onboarded, many of them significantly are women. We can have more of women in the political process, but we are having more than we used to have. Another winner, INEC. INEC, because it prevailed and organized an election under very extreme material circumstances. The BVAS, the mechanism for determining, you know, the authenticity of a voter, it actually worked. It worked, because it worked in 88 percent of cases, according to observers. It failed in 12 percent of cases. I will take that record anytime. If you were to give me that four years from now in Nigeria, I’m going to take it. CAMPBELL: INEC is the Independent National Electoral Commission. And it is charged with conducting the elections. OBADARE: Exactly. So it’s important to assess—not to judge INEC in an institutional vacuum, but to see it in the context of its evolution since 1999. It also has to be compared with previous iterations of itself—the second republic version, FEDECO, Federal Electoral Commission of Nigeria; the third republic version, NEC, National Electoral Commission. And to think about how INEC has performed over time, not to judge it on the basis of its performance in one single election. Now, let’s talk about the losers. The greatest loser from this election is Abubakar Atiku. It’s probably the end of the road for him, at 76. And I don’t think he’s going to run again, though I’m not going to put money on it. Two more losers, and then I’ll give it back to you. The PDP. It lost its status as one of the country’s main political parties since 1999. And the Western media. The Western media, for not doing its own work yet again, for putting—(inaudible)—for a particular candidate ahead of the reality on the ground, for worshiping at the altar of polling, for willfully locking itself in an echo chamber, and for its very perverse obduracy in the face of contrary facts. Those are the candidates. Those are the winners. Those are the losers. CAMPBELL: Your assessment then of the elections is really quite positive, looking at the whole trajectory of Nigerian governance since the restoration of civilian governance in 1999. OBADARE: That’s one way to put it. CAMPBELL: Now, Michelle, Peter Obi was seen as the candidate of the youth, the hope for the future. There were reports of massive youth registration to vote. Some estimates were as many as 90 million Nigerians actually registered to vote. As Ebenezer has pointed out, Western media sources, many of them, predicted that Obi would win, or at least force a runoff. Yet less than 30 percent of those registered actually voted. And an establishment warhorse, Tinubu, won. What happened? GAVIN: I actually think that’s the most important question we should be asking right now. What is going on with these turnout numbers? So I think it really is important to understand how hard it is to vote if you’re a Nigerian. It asks a lot of you, right? To go and register to vote as, you know, first-time voters, newly enfranchised voters, which is a huge chunk of the Nigerian population as the demographics skew so young, you have to basically show up in the place where you—or near the place where your polling unit might be assigned to register. Then you have to go back physically again, and show up, to collect your PVC, your permanent voters card. You can’t vote without that card, right? So twice now already you’ve had to perhaps even take a trip, right, to be able to exercise your franchise. So about 93.5 million Nigerians were registered for this election. That includes about 10 million brand-new voters who went through this exercise. The yield on picking up PVCs was actually incredibly good. Eight-seven-point-two million PVCs collected. That’s the number that they used to define turnout, right? So of the PVCs distributed, how many people actually came with that card to vote? So somehow we got from 87.2 million PVCs collected to 24.9 million people voting. This is really strange. If you’ve made that much effort to be able to go exercise your franchise, the day finally comes to go do it, really? That many people didn’t? And there are some troubling indications around this election. I actually think that Ebenezer makes a lot of sense in much of his analysis, but I would argue that Nigerian democracy was—and trust, critically—public trust in Nigerian democracy, lost. There were very significant delays in many polling places. And these are correlated with lower than expected turnout. So some people got tired of waiting and turned around, right? There was violence in a number of places. This too is correlated with lower turnout. But there are also really troubling reports in at least two states of observer-verified outright manipulation of results. We don’t know how many polling units were cancelled. INEC has yet to release this information. If one voter goes—if there’s one overvote in a polling unit, the whole unit gets cancelled. And so it is important to find out how many people’s votes were essentially nullified because of this. But the turnout numbers are quite curious. And they’re not likely to build trust in the electoral process. Going into this election, about 90 percent of Nigerians thought their country was headed in the wrong direction. And about 77 percent of Nigerians were dissatisfied with the way democracy works. This election is not likely to improve those numbers. Final point that I think people should be aware of in just assessing going forward what does this mean for public trust in Nigeria’s democracy? And this is around what should have been a bright spot. The electoral reforms that Nigeria passed in 2022 were designed to promote public trust and allow for more transparency. And Ebenezer referenced the BVAS, the bimodal voter verification system, something to this effect, that should eliminate, you know, malfeasance at the polling place. The other important technical fix was something called the IReV, the INEC Results Verification platform. So what was supposed to happen was that at each polling station the results, signed off by all the party representatives, were to be immediately transmitted to the IReV, so there was not a set of steps in between where people could speculate that maybe manipulation could have happened. The IReV worked for the house and senate races. This is really important, especially when we look at the fact that the house and senate races look a little more like you’d expect a change election to look. It didn’t work for the presidential races. For some reason, in polling units when they would go to transmit these results, the presidential race was not—they would get an error message. INEC has had a very tortured explanation about why presidential results went through a different process, but essentially you didn’t have this transparency. And YIAGA, which is an important civil society organization in Nigeria, did a parallel vote tabulation that suggests things aren’t matching up. So I have a—you know, no particular view on whether or not ultimately the announced results reflected the will of the Nigerian people. But I can’t tell, and that is troubling. CAMPBELL: It’s interesting that the celebrated Nigerian author, Ngozi Adichie, emphasizes voter suppression. I think you have raised a couple of very important points about how just difficult it is to vote in Nigeria, even when everything goes right. I mean, you’re standing in line often for hours in the hot sun. It’s just hard. The elections have been done. What happens next? Peter Obi, I believe Atiku Abubakar, have both said that they are going to appeal the election results to the courts. They have both called on their supporters to be peaceful and to avoid violence. Ebenezer, could you walk us through how a court challenge will work? OBADARE: It’s working right now the way it would work. If you have a legitimate grievance, you should approach the court and file those grievances. The expectation is that those—whatever grievance you file, will be dealt with before inauguration, on May 29th. Significantly, though, we should point out, Obi addressed a press conference and he spoke briefly. He had a—he had a—you know, a prepared statement. And he basically said: We won this election and we’re going to show that—we’re going to prove that in court. I say “significantly” because he came to the conference that he organized with a prepared statement. Abubakar Atiku hasn’t done that. His representatives have been speaking on his behalf. So I don’t know what that means in terms of, you know, body language, whether he might be permitted—he might be prevailed upon to congratulate the president-elect and say let bygones be bygones. I don’t know what that means. But in terms of the challenge, this is the way, you know, the challenge ought to be. And my own expectation is that the legal process will take place, and that we’ll have a determination before May 29th. CAMPBELL: This puts a heavy burden on the judiciary. OBADARE: It does. CAMPBELL: If I recall correctly, every single election, presidential election, has resulted in an appeal to the courts. And in no case, have the courts decided for the plaintiffs. There is widespread criticism in Nigeria about the independence of the judiciary. Is it reasonable to expect that the plaintiffs in this case are going to get a fair hearing? Michelle, do you have any views on this? GAVIN: I think it’s not impossible, but highly unlikely. (Laughs.) I think, you know, there’s—again, if you look at polling data, there isn’t a great deal of trust in Nigerian society in the independence of the judiciary. CAMPBELL: That’s right. There is not. GAVIN: And so I think that it’s unlikely that you would—you may get a fair hearing. If a fair hearing were to result in a decision that would be kind of fundamentally threatening to the victorious party here, would that ultimately be the decision? I think that is—you know, Nigerians have reason to question that. There have been a lot of struggles again in this new Electoral Reform Act that was passed, which was a real step forward in sort of creating the institutional structure for Nigerian democracy. And you did, at least in the preelection climate, see the deployment of some of these reforms in a way that’s redounded well for Nigerian democracy. But what was totally ignored, even in the preelection environment in which you did have some elections happening at the state level that gave kind of a chance to test some of this out, was all of the provisions regarding, for example, transparency around campaign financing and accountability for violations of the electoral laws were largely totally ignored. So this has not been a strong suit in the past. OBADARE: If I may add a quick emendation to that? That’s absolutely correct. There is very low trust in the judiciary. Actually, there’s very low trust in most Nigerian institutions, including the Nigerian state. But two things—maybe two, on a brighter note. One is that it is true that in the presidential races the decision has been mostly—has been in one direction. But if you look just below that—if you look at senatorial races, if you look at gubernatorial races, races for the National Assembly, the judiciary has been, in a good way, all over the map. So that’s a good thing. And there is no better testimony to that, interestingly, than Mr. Peter Obi himself, who initially lost an election and then went to court and got a good judgement in this favor in court. CAMPBELL: It’s interesting. The Nigerian author that I have previously referred to, Ngozi Adiche, she was asked what the likelihood was of the judiciary doing the right thing. And her response was: Well, perhaps, after all there may also be unicorns. So I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Ebenezer, what would you predict as the timeframe? When do you expect the courts to actually rule? OBADARE: Because inauguration day is May 29th, and everybody knows that, I would—I mean, so this is first week of March. Probably by the last week of April or first week of May we should know, you know, whether the legal challenge has succeeded or not. CAMPBELL: So within a month? OBADARE: A month or thereabouts, yes. CAMPBELL: OK, now, this leads—this leads to what, to me, is an enormously important question. And that is, what is the likelihood of widespread violence when the process is completed? Michelle, do you have a view on this? GAVIN: I would be—I think I would be a bit surprised were it widespread. But some localized violence potentially in some specific places. But I don’t think—I want to be clear—I don’t think that means that this isn’t damaging, potentially, because of these concerns that I’ve voiced about sort of trust in the process. And I want to be clear that I think the damage goes beyond Nigeria’s borders. As you so aptly set the scene, Nigeria’s an incredibly important country in West Africa and, more broadly, on the continent. And there was a tremendous amount of African attention to what was going on in this election, and youth attention to what was happening with this youth movement of new voters. And I am concerned that the notion that, well, maybe democracy just doesn’t really work, and this is not the mechanism for effecting political change that we should pursue—I am concerned that that idea gains more currency, not just in Nigeria but elsewhere. And so I don’t think, you know, measuring, well, how much violence might occur is—and I’m not suggesting that you said this. But I do sometimes think in conversations, perhaps at the U.S. government level, when they decided to issue this warm, congratulatory statement to the Nigerian people—I do think that sometimes that the notion is, well, it’s violence or everything is OK. And in the absence of widespread violence, I’m not so sure that everything is OK. CAMPBELL: Right. So you’re reminding us that the consequences of these elections are really Africa-wide, as opposed to just Nigeria. GAVIN: And even beyond, right? I mean, if you believe this argument the Biden administration’s been making, that they are—the U.S. is going to push for democratic resurgence in the face of rising authoritarianism and democratic decline, you know, this is—I’m not sure that this is a helpful set of developments, to have an election that gives people reasons to mistrust the system. CAMPBELL: OK. Ebenezer, you know Lagos well. And of course, the last really major publicized outbreak of violence occurred at the Lekki toll plaza. What’s going to happen in Lagos? Do you think Lagos will remain quiet? It is, after all, where Peter Obi did best. And there is a tradition in Lagos of opposition to the national government, no matter who controls it. OBADARE: Exactly. So let’s say the court ruling comes out and Obi or Atiku—it’s also going to be interesting whether both of them eventually end up, you know, pursuing their case in the courts. But my sense is that if you are an Obidient, if you voted for Peter Obi, or if you don’t like Tinubu or Atiku, which would be—you know, could be a combination of that—I don’t see how you protest going out in Lagos, because people are going to say, oh, well, you won Lagos. What’s the problem? And I think that’s a wrinkle on this—you know, on this landscape that I think is going to be interesting going forward. The thing is, Lagos has all these energies converging in it at the same time. You know, a huge Igbo population that is extremely entrepreneurial and that are sticking to all the charms of Lagos. The Pentecostals are there. Many of them abstained. Those who voted went for Obi. But the other thing is, the Obidient will also have to be careful not to be seen to be overplaying their hand, because— CAMPBELL: And by “Obidients,” you’re talking about the supporters of Peter Obi. OBADARE: The supporters of Peter Obi, because there’s a very interesting evolution to the movement itself. When it started, it was a pan-Nigerian thing, focused on the credible candidacy of Peter Obi. Over time, and understandably, it’s incorporated an Igbo ethnic element to it, right? So there’s that tension between the Obidient movement as a liberal pan-Nigerian project, and as an ethno-identarian project. You have to be careful you don’t lose the liberals in that—under that tent. So if you were to go in the street and start destroying things simply because you don’t like the ruling of the courts, people are going to quickly say you’re doing that not because you actually like Peter Obi as a liberal, but because you are Igbo who want your way, you know, at all costs. So I’ll be very surprised—and you have to give credit to Peter Obi in this situation, and Atiku too. Both of them have sued for calm. Peter Obi has refused to play the ethnic game. He’s always told his followers that this is not about ethnicity. This is not about religion. This is about something that is broader than that. So I expect if the ruling does not go in his favor, at the end of the day, he’s been a member of the political class, you know, over the course of his career. So he has to play that game. CAMPBELL: Yes, no, that’s right. The other place that I would wonder about is Igboland, where Peter Obi carried every state in which the Igbo were a majority, and where there is already a secessionist movement, the strength of which is hard to determine. I would worry about the possibility that secessionism might accelerate, even without the support of Peter Obi. One final question before we throw this open to our audience. Governance. Michelle, do you think that the elections will have any impact at all on the improvement of governance in Nigeria, which most Nigerians appear to believe is very poor? GAVIN: Yes. They do, by all indicators. Nigerians are frustrated with the state, right? And for good reason. The security situation is dire for a shocking number of Nigerians, and for different reasons in different parts of the country. The economic situation, exacerbated by this latest currency crisis, has got people struggling on a daily basis, fuel shortages— CAMPBELL: Kidnapping. GAVIN: Just the drumbeat of corruption in the PDP. So do I think that any of this will change? I sure hope so. I don’t think it’s possible, right—(laughs)—to kind of continue going forward precisely as things are. But I think some of the big reforms that everyone talks about, like reforming on fuel subsidies for example, these are really hard political projects, right? CAMPBELL: Yes. GAVIN: And if you’ve got a head of state with a fairly shaky mandate, right—what, something like 33 percent— CAMPBELL: Of those who voted. GAVIN: Yeah. It’s a hard—it’s a tall order. It’s a tall order, so I think—I certainly hope that any new administration would be trying something new and, you know, Tinubu was at pains on the campaign trail to try and distance himself from the Buhari administration despite, you know, being representatives of the same party, to suggest that it wasn’t going to be just continuity. But these politically very, very difficult things. And I think his capacity to get things done will depend a little bit, too, on the outcome of the gubernatorial races coming up later this month. CAMPBELL: Ebenezer, you made the point in your opening remarks that, in effect, the traditional mold of Nigerian politics has been broken, with the number of votes that Peter Obi received. It’s no longer a diarchy. I mean, there were three leading candidates. Does this breaking open of the political system—is this a basis for hope for the future of governance? OBADARE: Absolutely. And that’s why I—again, I am a minority in this—if you’re a supporter of Peter Obi, you won. You’ve broken up a duopoly. The game has changed. Now we know that a third-party candidacy is viable. And with the result of the election, we now know what that third-party candidate precisely has to do, right? So that’s number one. There is a road to power now for a third-party candidate. That’s number one. But sometimes the more things change, the more they remain the same. CAMPBELL: Yes. OBADARE: It’s true that that duopoly has been broken, but religion remains salient. One way to look at the way in—to disaggregate this vote is—I mean, Obi won the Christian vote in the Catholic Igbo outland, in the majority Christian southwest, in not-central Nasarawa Plateau; did extremely well in southern Kaduna, which is majority Muslim. So he took the Christian vote, but he lost the Muslim vote. Had he been able to win a couple of the core modern Muslim states, we would be talking about President Peter Obi right now. CAMPBELL: So, at the end of the day, the election outcome reflected the ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria— OBADARE: Absolutely. CAMPBELL: —which have always been there. OBADARE: Nigeria prevailed, as I predicted from the get-go. CAMPBELL: (Laughs.) OK. Now it’s time for our audience to have their say. Could we have the first question, please? OPERATOR: As a reminder, to ask a question, please click on the raised hand icon on your Zoom window. When you are called on, please accept the unmute now button and proceed with your name, affiliation, and your question. You may also submit a written question via the Q&A icon on your Zoom window at any time. As a reminder, today’s discussion is on the record. We will take our first question as a written question from Matias Silvani at GoldenTree Asset Management, who asks, “Do you have a sense or view on what Tinubu’s cabinet will look like? When should we expect a cabinet names to be announced?” CAMPBELL: Good question. Buhari took forever. (Laughs.) Michelle, do you have any idea? GAVIN: I was going to say faster than the last—(laughs)—the last time this happened, but I don’t have more insight. I suspect Ebenezer does. CAMPBELL: Ebenezer, do you? OBADARE: I kind of have a sense of the kind of people he is going to surround himself with. Excuse me. He’s a businessman at the end of the day. He’s a power broker. He is going to choose people from across the country. Some of that selection is also going to be determined by politics. If he becomes president, he’ll want to win the election. Politicians often choose not with their eye on the present, but with their eye on the future. But for a moment let’s think what a Tinubu presidency might look like more generally, and in order to give—to understand that, we have to understand how he sees himself in the context of Nigerian history. And the one point I would like to put out there, I want people to keep in mind is this. Tinubu was on the ballot for the first time this year but really has been running since 1999, since—he ended his—he started his tenure as government. He had always—and why is this important? Tinubu wants to do everything in his capacity to succeed because of a fundamental strain in Yoruba history. The most important political figure in Yoruba history, bar none, is the late Obafemi Awolowo. He is the gold standard. Obasanjo wants to be compared to him. Adeola Akinfala (ph) wanted to be like him. The late M.K.O. Abiola wanted to be like him. Tinubu wants to be like him. He wants Yorubas—not Nigerians—he wants Yorubas to remember him as the person who took the baton and ran with it. So I am saying that because it makes me understand that he is going to do everything in his power to cobble together a competent cabinet and try to run with it. Whether he is going to succeed or not, I think that’s a totally different thing. CAMPBELL: So Tinubu’s Yoruba ethnic identity paradoxically will drive him to try to put together a government that is successful. OBADARE: Precisely. Not because he wants to impress Nigerians; because he wants to be spoken of in the same breath as Obafemi Awolowo. CAMPBELL: In other words, to reinforce the Yoruba. OBADARE: Yes. CAMPBELL: Good. Could we have the next question? OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Patricia Rosenfield. Q: Thanks to this—excuse me. I hope you can hear me. I have a poor speaker here. Warmest thanks to the three of you for a fabulous discussion and also for keeping, as John mentioned at the beginning—for having a very different kind of discourse on African countries and the African continent. It really make the CFR outstanding in this way. I wanted to mention one thing, though, that none of you has mentioned, and that is something that you raised, Professor Obadare, in your excellent PBS interview, at the beginning, and that is that, for the first time, these three candidates were not coming from the military. So we haven’t talked about the military at all, and this is possibly the first time a discussion on Nigerian presidential elections has not talked about the role of the military. So we did talk about violence possibly, but the role of the military—I would like to hear the perspectives of the three of you on what the role of the military might be now and in the future, given this sort of shift to politics not as usual, but politics rather than military leadership. CAMPBELL: Michelle, do you want to start us off? GAVIN: That’s a great question and a great observation, and it—for someone who has been, you know, sounding notes of pessimism, a good thing for me to remember. Although I wonder, right, for your Nigerians who don’t really have much lived experience under military rule, how salient that is for them. I think that—frankly, that declining capacity and stature of the Nigerian military is a really kind of interesting story that intersects with this—with this, you know, moment where we can have a political discussion that doesn’t reference potential military intervention, you know. I guess where I think about this is the incredibly difficult job that the Tinubu administration, any administration would have in trying to address the real rot at the heart of the security services that has allowed for such widespread violence and instability in the country, which also speaks to the police. So I just don’t see the Nigerian military as the same kind of potent force or threat that I—in the way that I used to think of them. CAMPBELL: Ebenezer? OBADARE: So I’m of a particular vintage. I grew up early ’90s in Nigeria. I practiced journalism. The military was the single-most worrisome ogre in our lives. It was a monster. I was an underground journalist. I was in Lagos on the day that General Sani Abacha killed more than 400 protesters. I haven’t forgotten that. It’s a thing of joy for me to be able to wake up and talk about a democratic Nigeria—imperfectly democratic, elections that are characterized with irregularities. But for me, for us to look back—you know, since 1999 up to now, if somebody had told me in 1999: So I’m going to give you this deal. You are going to have this stretch of time where there will be no—officially, there will be no soldiers on the street. There will be no military. It will just be people are running for office. Elections will be characterized by all sorts of irregularities, but you continue to monitor. And I would say: Which of my toes do you want me to give up? So—and which is why I said earlier that it’s important to think historically and put this particular election in a historical context, and to think not just about where Nigeria is going, but to think more about where Nigeria is coming from and how much we’ve been able to achieve. So we’ve had four presidents. We had Obasanjo, we had Yar’Adua, we had Goodluck Jonathan, we had Buhari—two former military generals, two civilians. And we’re now at the point where, for the first time, there was no soldier on the ballot, and if you look on, there are no—you know, octogenarian, no nonagenarian army generals willing to take over. I will take that deal any day. It’s a good place to be. GAVIN: So can I— CAMPBELL: Let me put my two— GAVIN: Ebenezer, can I just come in? Because I’m really curious, and you make such a great point. Do you think that that conclusion that you come to and that sense of relief, right, that this is—and wonder that things have come so far on that front? Do you think that could possibly be shared by the millions of first-time voters in this election cycle, who—again, whose lives, right, they just reached the age of enfranchisement in the last few years? So they’ve been living under democratic dispensations—democratic—their whole lives. OBADARE: Thank you, Michelle. It’s a great question. And this is why—look, to answer this, you have to talk about the sociology of, you know, post-military politics. One of the things that has happened—which doesn’t really get talked about—is the fact that the military chased away from the country a particular generation of Nigerians. I was a journalist in the early 1990s. There were about twenty, twenty-five of us—political reporters, economic reporters—all of us in our early twenties, all looking forward to a good life, all of us secure in our conviction, one, that we would be immortal; two, that we would never die; like, oh, we’re just going to live forever. But what happened? Over a five-year period, following the abrogation of the election and a crackdown by the military, I can tell you nearly a hundred percent of everybody in that newsroom currently lives in the West. Why is that important? The important work of cultural transmission, how you hand it off to the next generation, the books you write, the informal conversations you have—like, guys, military rule is bad; no formal military rule is to be entertained. Free, liberal democracies, despite all their problems, are always going to be preferred. I think we failed to convey that because many of us had to leave the country under duress. So like you, I worry that people see all these things happening and they think, oh, woe is us, the country is going to collapse. We’re in trouble. No. Democracy is a long-term project. A single election is just an event in the life of a country. When you fail as a coalition, don’t pull out. Understand why you failed, and then reorganize so that you can succeed. CAMPBELL: If I may put my own two cents in, I was first assigned to Nigeria in 1988 during the period of General Babangida’s dictatorship. At that time, the military was commonly regarded as the last guarantor, the final guarantor of an independent Nigeria, of the Nigerian state. A repressive regime, at the same time in 1988, three female officers from the embassy then in Lagos, with an embassy car and driver, and no security whatsoever, spent two weeks traveling all over the north for a familiarity exercise. In other words, there was security in the countryside. Now, of course, the military has failed to restore security in the north, and one might argue in much of the rest of the country, and I think that is a major reason for the decline of the prestige and also the power of the military in the political sphere, to which both of you have referred. Could we have another question? OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Richard Joseph. Q: Yes, hello. Thank you very much. Greetings to all of you. This is a wonderful conversation, a lot of discussions taking place. So let me just come in with a few points here. I’m sorry, I kept losing my connection so I dropped down with you. All right, first is that Ambassador Campbell, he has made the immortal statement that the Nigerian election in 2007 was an election-like event. That is something that now entered our lexicon about Nigeria. So in that contrast, where is Nigeria—2023 is not yet over? My second question has to do with Michelle saying that she was curious about the 29 percent—approximately—turnout for this election. My sense is that, given the context of Nigeria, which you all well know—(laughs)—all of the impediments, it’s almost like walking through mud, I would assume, for most of the participants. And I think it has to be judged against those really extremely conditions, especially becoming cashless in a very short space. My third point is this question, this big word of legitimacy. Ambassador Campbell referred to that op-ed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and toward the end he said some curious things, really calling into question the legitimacy of what had occurred, and also summing up the idea of dictatorship. Now, at a meeting that I attended just yesterday with Professor Darwin Cue (ph). Professor Adekei Adebajo really cautioned about delegitimizing the Tinubu government, you know, based on—especially considering, you know, other elections—even President Obasanjo—former President Obasanjo issuing the statement he did. So I think that question about legitimacy—of course, the U.S. government has come down very strongly in recognizing the government. OK, my last point is about the differential levels of performance that we see even on February 25 at the presidential level and at these other levels. I mean, that’s very interesting, and I think we need to probe it a little bit more in terms of the senatorial and legislative and how it took place. And then let me just add a last one about Obi, and here I’m thinking not about—just about Obi’s obedience, his movement supposedly, but really about the Obi effect on the Nigerian political system, and the possibility that we could have a more invigorated National Assembly going forward. Thank you. More to follow in our conversations, but thank you. CAMPBELL: Absolutely, there is much to talk about. Ebenezer do you want to start us off? OBADARE: Yeah, I can—I can—I mean, all those are extremely interesting points, but I want to—at the risk of taking on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I read that piece, and I felt that she was being clever by half. Again, look, we can save some of this for a different day, but she did it—actually put or revealed the most interesting thing about herself, which is that from the get-go she declared for Peter Obi. Look, it’s important. So she wasn’t a disinterested participant. She wasn’t just a spectator watching, but she gave the impression in that New York Times piece—a terrible piece, politically illiterate piece—basically saying, oh, this election was basically skewed in favor of a particular candidate. She did not name names. And she basically said President Biden, please come and help us. I thought that was really, really disrespectful to the Nigerian political process. Again, I am not suggesting that there were no problems with the election, but to ask for this deus ex machina to come and intervene, smooth things over, and not allow the institutional processes in Nigeria to work themselves out, I just thought that was irresponsible on her part. CAMPBELL: Michelle? GAVIN: I won’t comment on that piece, but I will say this. I agree with you that it’s not surprising that turnout is a challenge in Nigeria, but I don’t think that the currency crisis can explain what happened. And if you look at some of the differentials, right, where—for example, where polling stations opened significantly later than they were supposed to, it wasn’t the same throughout the country where there was most election violence. It wasn’t the same throughout the country, and these problems occurred less in APC strongholds. A currency crisis should affect turnout everywhere, right, but turnout seemed to be particularly suppressed in places that were not traditionally APC strongholds. So I am not—I’m not trying to, you know, sort of intimate shadowy conspiracies; I’m trying to be very blunt about where I think there are important questions that the Nigerian people deserve answers to, particularly around this very strange process for reporting presidential results in the IReV, and some of these discrepancies where the election was just run differently in different parts of the country. CAMPBELL: You made reference to the currency crisis. The currency crisis occurred when the government, in essence, called in old currency and issued new notes, but in the process, not enough notes were—new notes were produced, leading to massive cash shortages. By the way, it’s interesting. In one of the news feeds this morning, the courts have essentially not supported the whole process of currency exchange. What that will actually mean, I don’t know. Do we have another question? OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Robbie Gramer. Q: Hi, Robbie Gramer, reporter at Foreign Policy magazine. Thanks very much for doing this, guys. The U.S. State Department put out a statement congratulating Tinubu on his victory already, and it seems like a stark contrast from other elections, like in Kenya where they waited until the courts had litigated the decision to congratulate Ruto. I’m just wondering what you make of that since it seems like what the U.S. government has done is different than what the EU and other independent election observers have done here, and what type of impact that has if we, early on, you know, declare a victor. Does that—I mean, does that alter some of these challenges or what’s going on in the fallout from the initial election results? Thanks. CAMPBELL: Michelle? OBADARE: This is Michelle’s question. (Laughter.) CAMPBELL: Yes. GAVIN: I do not understand that statement. I don’t understand the timing or the tone. I don’t—you know, this is not an electoral exercise that appears to have inspired confidence in the process among the Nigerian people, so a kind of congratulatory tone seems strange. The timing, I agree, seemed quite, perhaps, premature, and I don’t understand it. I’m not going to speculate as to why. Do I think it matters? I do. I think, you know, an important international partner sending signals that this is done and dusted, and we’re moving on—you know, nothing is more important than what Nigerian institutions and the Nigerian people decide. But in terms of atmospherics, it certainly suggests that whatever questions remain, whether or not they get answered isn’t very important to the rest of the world. CAMPBELL: Ebenezer, do you have anything to add? OBADARE: Two sentences, maybe. I think that it signals American readiness to support peaceful transition of the power—of power in Nigeria. I think it’s to be welcome. And I also think that, yes, it’s—many people don’t like it. They would have preferred that the United States waited just a little bit, have no opinion either way. But let’s also be clear that a State Department—you know, from—a statement from the State Department does not in any way affect the process—the judicial process in Nigeria. The United States is not saying, please stop with the arbitration; you know, move on to swearing in. So that’s important to put on the table. CAMPBELL: That’s an extremely good point. I am puzzled by the timing of the statement, particularly given the very cautious comments made American election observers. Do we have another question? OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Tami Hultman. Q: Sorry, I did not mean to raise my hand, but I’m enjoying the discussion. Thank you very much. (Laughs.) CAMPBELL: Thank you. (Laughs.) OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Witney Schneidman. Q: Hello, all. Great conversation. I want to pick up on a point, Ebenezer, that you made, and that Richard Joseph alluded to, and that’s sort of the difference between what seems to be the credibility of the state-level elections and the federal level. Can you please drill down on that because it really—I just sort of don’t get it? How can we have something that seems to work at one level but it’s just not working at another? Thanks. OBADARE: Yeah, this is a very—so I would encourage you, afterwards let’s have maybe an email exchange or coffee. But let me just try and say maybe, you know, two sentences because of time. One is that not all elections are created alike in Nigeria, not just in terms of outcome, but in terms of resources, mobilization, logistics, people’s attention, deployment of executive power—all those things affect how elections are conducted and the outcome of the election. But what you do find on a regular basis is that there’s—you know, there’s more attention towards the presidential election because people understand that that’s where the leverage, you know, of power lies. And that’s what explains, you know—basically, these facts that you find, which, you know, Ambassador Campbell mentioned that the ruling has always been in the same direction in all the court cases. But just below that, you really don’t know how the courts are going to rule. And there have been—there have been many upsets. There have been many affirmations. But all of these, for me, speaks to the liveliness of the process itself, the increasing robustness of the process. And the way in which—I might be the only who still—who remains hopeful about this because I’m not just looking at this single election. I’m putting this single election in the context of all the elections we’ve been having since 1999. And if you do that, you know, you are going to be more optimistic, you know, than the average person. CAMPBELL: Michelle, do you have a last word? GAVIN: No, just to say I’ve actually really enjoyed this discussion, and it’s always a pleasure to hear from two real Nigeria experts who are here. That’s—I am—(inaudible)—of the two Nigeria experts. (Laughs.) CAMPBELL: Well, I’ll take the prerogative of the chair and have a last word. And that is, one thing that has been very positive is that we have American policymakers and opinion formers focusing on Nigeria, focusing on Africa, and countering the normal—I’m afraid—lack of attention that Americans give to what is such an important part of the world, and one that is directly related to our own wellbeing as Americans. With that, let me thank our audience for joining today’s virtual meeting, and also let me give my thanks and the thanks of the audience to our two speakers today. Thank you, and good morning. (END)