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The past year has been one of intense engagement in U.S -India relations with several high-level visits exchanged and working-level dialogues held between the two countries. Most recently, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met at the Paris climate change summit and Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will visit the United States to discuss the bilateral defense relationship.

On December 11, The India Project at Brookings hosted a conversation with U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma to reflect on developments in U.S.-India relations in 2015. He also discussed the recent high-level engagements on defense policy and climate change, as well as the road ahead for the bilateral relationship. Tanvi Madan, director of the India Project and fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings moderated the discussion. Bruce Jones, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings provided introductory remarks.

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• U.S.–India relations: A conversation with U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma

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• U.S.–India relations: A conversation with U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20151211_india_verma_transcript

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Recent events in Ukraine have raised important questions about Russian ambitions in the former Soviet space and the future political perspectives of the countries caught between Russia and the European Union. These countries are facing substantial obstacles in their efforts to maintain balanced relations with the United States, the European Union and the Russian Federation because of increased Russian political, economic and military pressures. In Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and the ongoing turmoil in the East threaten the Ukrainian government's ability to maintain its independence and the sovereignty of Ukraine. Georgia and Moldova have expressed their intention to sign Association Agreements with the European Union, but increasingly face the prospects of destabilizing Russian economic sanctions and even the possible rekindling of their “frozen conflicts” in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria.

On April 29, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE) will host the ambassadors of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine—Ambassadors Archil Gegeshidze, Olexander Motsyk and Igor Munteanu—as well as Eric Rubin, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, to discuss the dilemmas of these countries and possible solutions. Fiona Hill, director of CUSE, will introduce the speakers and moderate the discussion.

After opening remarks, panelists will take questions from the audience.

Audio

• A Discussion with the Ambassadors of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20140429_ambassadors_transcript

Editor's Note: In September of this year Visiting Fellow Norman Eisen was featured in the Council on Government Ethics Law (COGEL) members-only magazine, The Guardian. An abbreviated version of his interview is featured below.

Interview conducted by Wesley Bizzell, Assistant General Counsel, Altria Client Services LLC.

Recently, you addressed the Italian Parliament to discuss ethics in government, as that legislative body considers adopting its own code of ethical conduct. In that speech, you noted you believe there are four key concepts at the center of Federal U.S. ethics laws. What are those four concepts and why they are important?

Firstly, I’d like to note the importance of focusing on four concepts. The House of Representatives Ethics manual is 456 pages long; too long to be of any real use in creating an ethics system. Instead, these four principles serve as a foundation upon which different governments can build their own sets of rules based on their own unique needs.

I focused on just four to make a point about priorities. The first is “conflicts”—that is, problems that arise when an individual’s personal interests and parliamentary duties may be at odds with one another. The second is “gifts”. Even if there isn’t an explicit quid-pro-quo style agreement involved, when a political figure accepts a gift from someone with a demonstrated interest in government decision-making, the suspicion of misconduct will always be there. “Revolving door” is the third core concept. When individuals rotate from the private sector to the public sector over and over again, they are naturally going to form relationships that tempt them toward unethical behavior. Finally, “use official resources.” Officials must be careful to use official resources only for official purposes, being particularly careful not to conduct any campaign activity on the taxpayer’s dime. The goal with these four priorities is not only to keep people from behaving unethically, but also to make sure it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing anything unethical either.

In that speech, you said that focusing on these four areas keeps you from losing the forest for the trees when working with ethics codes. Can you elaborate on that?

There’s always a danger for members of the executive branch, because the system of rules and regulations that governs ethical behavior is itself so complex. When it’s imbedded in equally complicated and overlapping sets of statute you risk creating rules so specific that they’re practically useless. The same is true in the legislative branch and I dare say in the federal judicial branch, as well as at the state and local levels. You’re always on the edge of being lost in the minutiae.

In fact, you can often make wrong decisions if you focus in too much on the specifics, because you lose sight of the larger picture that guides the rules. There are always options in ethical dilemmas, and the big picture needs to be kept in focus.

While at the White House serving as Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform you oversaw numerous significant changes in the area of open government—including helping craft and implement President Obama’s Open Government Directive; publishing White House visitor logs on the internet; and generally improving the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. What change in the area of open government are you most proud?

I was struck when we began the interview by the list of topics—campaign finance, lobbying, ethics, elections, and FOIA issues—because all of those were part of my portfolio as Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform during the first two years of the Obama administration. I would have to say that I’m most proud of my role in the President’s decision to put all of the White House visitor records on the internet.

Remember, in previous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, plaintiffs had to litigate for years just to get a handful of visitor records. To have all of the visitor records on the internet, categorized into various types, opens access to the White House to an unprecedented degree. There are now over four-and-a-half million visitor records available on the White House website, with more added every month. I think that that is remarkable.

Truthfully, I was torn between that accomplishment and a second one, which is that the President and his staff in the White House have had the longest run in presidential history (knock on wood) without a major ethics scandal or a grand jury investigation, indictment, or conviction. I was tempted to list that second fact as the accomplishment of which I was most proud. But it occurred to me that the death of White House scandal is actually a function of the exceptional level of transparency that the visitor records represent. Transparency helps ensure people don’t have meetings they shouldn’t be having, which keeps them out of trouble. So I’ll offer that second accomplishment as a part of the first one.

In your view, what was the most significant lobbying and ethics reform during your tenure at the White House?

No doubt about it: reversing the revolving door. Craig Holman of Public Citizen, who studies these issues, says we were the first in the world to create a reverse revolving door. I think it is absolutely critical to slow the revolving door in both directions—both coming out of government and going in.

I should also note that the comprehensive nature of the ethics system we put into place in the Obama administration bears a responsibility for the good results. The first rule, of course, of any ethics system is “tone at the top.” The president exemplifies that. He has the highest standards of ethics himself, and as a result everyone around him feels he will be personally let down if they don’t embrace the ethics system. Good results flow from that. Looking back, we can identify certain aspects that have more and less successful, but it’s important to recognize that the positive results are owed to the gestalt. Our transparency and ethics system was one of the most through and transparent that I’ve seen in any government, and the result speak for themselves.

The eurozone has three problems: national debt obligations that cannot be met, medium-term imbalances in trade competitiveness, and long-term structural flaws.

The short-run problem requires more of the monetary easing that Germany has, with appalling shortsightedness, been resisting, and less of the near-term fiscal restraint that Germany has, with equally appalling shortsightedness, been seeking. To insist that Greece meet all of its near-term current debt service obligations makes about as much sense as did French and British insistence that Germany honor its reparations obligations after World War I. The latter could not be and were not honored. The former cannot and will not be honored either.

The medium-term problem is that, given a single currency, labor costs are too high in Greece and too low in Germany and some other northern European countries. Because adjustments in currency values cannot correct these imbalances, differences in growth of wages must do the job—either wage deflation and continued depression in Greece and other peripheral countries, wage inflation in Germany, or both. The former is a recipe for intense and sustained misery. The latter, however politically improbable it may now seem, is the better alternative.

The long-term problem is that the eurozone lacks the fiscal transfer mechanisms necessary to soften the effects of competitiveness imbalances while other forms of adjustment take effect. This lack places extraordinary demands on the willingness of individual nations to undertake internal policies to reduce such imbalances. Until such fiscal transfer mechanisms are created, crises such as the current one are bound to recur.

Present circumstances call for a combination of short-term expansionary policies that have to be led or accepted by the surplus nations, notably Germany, who will also have to recognize and accept that not all Greek debts will be paid or that debt service payments will not be made on time and at originally negotiated interest rates. The price for those concessions will be a current and credible commitment eventually to restore and maintain fiscal balance by the peripheral countries, notably Greece.

Today’s announcement of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana replaces over five decades of mutual hostility and aggressive name-calling with a new atmosphere of diplomatic civility. The re-opening of embassies in both capitals establishes platforms upon which to build more normal working relations. Now, the hard work begins, as the two nations gradually dismantle the comprehensive wall of restrictions separating them for two generations.

Expectations are running high, especially in Cuba, that diplomatic engagement will catalyze economic betterment on the island. To stimulate more travel and trade, the U.S. government needs to clarify rules for engaging with the emerging Cuban private sector, and make it clear to U.S. banks that they are permitted to support the use of credit cards by U.S. visitors in Cuba. The administration should also begin to consider another round of liberalizing initiatives, some under consideration in the U.S. Congress, to further relax travel restrictions, and to enable more U.S. firms—beyond agriculture and medicines—to assist the Cuban people.

For its part, the Cuban government should open efficient channels to facilitate the commercial exchanges now authorized by the Obama administration. Cuban entrepreneurs should be permitted ready access to U.S. firms wishing to sell building equipment for construction cooperatives, restaurant supplies for private-owned restaurants, and automotive spare parts for private taxis. Micro-enterprise lending should be authorized to support these emerging non-state enterprises.

If both nations build upon today’s welcome announcement by further opening these channels to travel and commerce, Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro can help to safeguard their joint legacy. By fortifying and expanding constituencies on both sides of the Florida Straits, immersed in daily exchanges to mutual benefit, the two governments can render their diplomatic accomplishment politically irreversible in both capitals.