WHY FREE TRADE WILL COME UNDER ATTACK.

Mexico has benefited from Nafta. In the current global financial crisis, of course, a lot of people are going to be questioning free trade and international integration and all of those things. . . . Yes, the financial system clearly got out of kilter, and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the president and Congress are dealing with that. But it shouldn’t go to the core principles of markets, the importance of open trade, the fact of globalization — which is not going to go backwards.

IV. THE MIDDLE EAST AND BEYOND

HOW WE CHANGED THE CONVERSATION.

There have been some real gains, but there also has been a complete change in the conversation, particularly in the Middle East, where some form of popular legitimacy is being sought in almost every country. The American voice has got to stay strong in that conversation.

HOW TO MOVE THE CONVERSATION FORWARD.

I really think we have the best atmosphere between Palestinians and Israelis since the mid-’90s, so I’m very gratified that that has come into place. The Palestinian leadership is avowedly in favor of negotiations, renounces violence, recognizes the right of Israel to exist. There is a robust negotiating process, and they have made a lot of progress on how to get to a two-state solution. There is now broad Israeli acceptance of the need for a Palestinian state. After all, Kadima came out of Likud (6) with that in mind. And we have a process on the ground that is beginning to make some progress in terms of making life better for people who live on the West Bank. Palestinian security forces are becoming competent enough that they’re now about to move into Nablus, one of the toughest areas, with Israeli consent.

WHY SPEED IS ESSENTIAL TO DEALING WITH HAMAS.

The Hamas takeover of Gaza is a problem, but thanks to good Egyptian work, at least there is calm for now. One reason to try and get an agreement done pretty quickly is that I think Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas needs to be able to take an agreement to the Palestinian people through either referendum or elections in order to sideline Hamas politically or to have Hamas buy in, which I think is unlikely, or to sideline Hamas by demonstrating that they don’t have a solution for the Palestinian problem. So that’s another reason to do it quickly. But I think the structure is there, I think the Annapolis structure is a very powerful structure . . . On the Palestinian-Israeli issue, we will leave this in a much, much better place, agreement or no.

HOW TO CHANGE A REGIME  SLOWLY.

We have said to Iran that this is about changing your regime’s behavior, not changing your regime. That has been the message all along. Would we hope that the Iranian people . . . do they deserve to have a different regime than they’ve got? Absolutely. But the way that we have tried to help with democracy in Iran is to help indigenous forces there — to bring everyone from people who do disaster relief to artists to sending our wrestlers there. You know, it’s why the question of an interests section continues to be important to us.(7)

FINDING PRO-AMERICANISM IN IRAN.

There’s a very pro-American feeling among most Iranians not because of our policies but because of who we are and because we have stood for democracy. Iranians are sophisticated people — that’s a sophisticated and great culture — and we need to be able to reach out to them. But in terms of dealing with the regime, I think we’ve made it very, very clear that we’re prepared to deal with the regime; we just don’t want them to use negotiations as a cover while they improve their nuclear-weapons capability.

V. TWILIGHT OF THE INSTITUTIONS?

DISCOVERING WHETHER THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” MEANS ANYTHING.

I think we thought the Responsibility to Protect meant something.(8) I remember when the responsibility-to-protect language came up at the 2006 United Nations General Assembly, and I remember thinking at the time: If this turns out to be nothing but words, the Security Council is going to have a real black eye, and in the Darfur case it has turned out to be nothing but words. I think it has been an enormous embarrassment for the Security Council and for multilateral diplomacy.