>>Paul Mason: What is your best guess as to the answer to the question what kind of an
epoch is this we are living through with all that happening?
>>Bernard Kouchner: They were all young.
Well, you have seen Tahrir or somewhere else.
They were all young.
Not only it was a revolution because of Twitter, because of Google, because of -- but it was
a young revolution.
And it was really unprovisable like it is unprovisable now, but they start to stop supporting
dictatorship.
And they were young, and they were absolutely brave and courageous.
So that's the idea, the general idea, because the nations were different, the countries
were different, the people were different, but the movement was --
>>Paul Mason: Youth is the coordinating factor.
It's the common factor.
But we have had revolutions in your lifetime.
We all remember 1989 when youth played a part, but in a way the inheritors of power were
often the old, the hierarchical structures didn't break.
Do you think we are going through something different this time?
>>Bernard Kouchner: Yes, because of the electronic time.
Because they were able to know what happened somewhere else, close country or very far.
This time it happens in Burma, in Myanmar, and nobody was talking about revolution.
It was a big change.
And so all your examples are, of course, very different one from the other.
Communist revolution was in that time, 1917, a sort of hope, but it became a horrible situation.
So sometimes we don't know.
So there is an unknown world facing us after this Arab Spring.
And I underline another time.
All the countries are not the same.
I mean, it was not the same situation in Tunisia than in Egypt, in Yemen, then in Morocco.
And something is uniting the all people.
This is hope for the future.
>>Paul Mason: How difficult is it for those in power in the political and business elite
to experience what is really going on?
Are they -- I mean, we saw, of course, the leaden footed dictatorships of the Middle
East fail and still fail to respond.
But for people who call themselves democrats, how hard is it to keep up with what the young
and what the masses of these countries actually want?
>>Bernard Kouchner: This is very difficult because despite of the so-called immediate
future, we all know that it is impossible to judge and to know what's going on before
some years, and sometimes one or two generations.
But we no perfectly that it was for freedom.
It was for more freedom that they were in the street and that they revolted.
So we'll see.
You know, there is a -- The speed is different in between the press and the electronic time,
and the reality.
The reality of politics, the reality of the people.
It's completely different.
It takes not only overnight to change dictatorship and democracy.
Certainly not.
It takes another time.
I repeat what I've said.
Generation.
But it's certainly for the better.
>>Paul Mason: This, too, was also a feature of previous revolutions, the mismatch between
official time and the time on the streets.
But isn't there a problem here in the sense that, you know, when you meet some of these
activists, some of the university educated people I've met in Cairo, some of the people
in the Occupy movement in America, they are almost like social entrepreneurs.
They are not passive masses.
They can make things happen.
They want this to happen.
They know how to do it.
They have the technological expertise, often.
And so maybe that excuse doesn't wash anymore, the idea that everything takes a long time.
Maybe it just doesn't wash.
>>Bernard Kouchner: But we are not talking about the same people.
The youngsters who are in the street were not following anybody.
They were following their deep sense of coming democracy.
They were rebel against dictatorship, and they supported dictatorship, not the young
people because they were too young, for 40 years.
Why now?
Because of the sacrifice of this young Tunisian who burned himself.
And because also -- this is impossible to say it was time, impossible because nobody,
neither one expert told us in that time it was coming and the Arab Spring was growing.
Not at all.
And it was the same time, before -- it was the same thing before the falling of the Berlin
wall or the end of communism.
The expert are very good in expertise, but not in politics.
>>Paul Mason: Yeah.
So what is the challenge for state craft?
What is the challenge for the major powers who are going to have to pick up the pieces
when things go wrong?
We already saw in Libya, we will probably see something in Syria.
What would you say for politicians is the key thing they have to learn from what's happened
so far?
>>Bernard Kouchner: I repeat, in Libya, this is not the same situation than now in Yemen
and in the Gaza, it's not the same situation like in Egypt, et cetera.
But the main thing is certainly not to stop pushing in the direction of human rights,
rule of flow.
We were not attentive, and precisely we were not supporting enough human rights under dictatorship.
And there is a big -- a good way to judge or have a real -- this is the women condition.
>>Paul Mason: Women.
>>Bernard Kouchner: Women condition.
Must not be abandoned because of the -- I mean, the movement in the streets.
On the contrary, it must be looked at very precisely.
Otherwise, it will take another time.
We don't know about the coming presidential election in Egypt.
We will see.
But something also is different.
When we were meeting, you and me, the intellectual in New York and somewhere else, they were
more extremist than they are now.
Especially the Muslim brothers.
Especially the Muslim brothers, they have changed because the reality changed them.
So extremist, leftist, et cetera, we don't know.
But I remember something precisely because I was a member of the government and President
Mitterrand, and we had in '92 to face the Algerian election.
And the Algerian election, the first round was precisely the success of the Muslim brother,
so-called.
>>Paul Mason: The fist.
>>Bernard Kouchner: And we stop, we.
Not we.
The Algierian.
But we were supporting.
Not me.
Because something, it must be understood.
Democracy is also by advance to accept that your enemies will win.
Not only your friends.
And it was the case in Algeria, as the extremis or so-called extremists were on the verge
of having the power, getting the power on the second round, we suppressed the second
round.
It must not be done another time.
>>Paul Mason: You all argued against it at the time but you know history vindicates you
and this is just not an option.
>>Bernard Kouchner: Yes.
Otherwise, we don't have to talk about democracy.
If democracy is reserved to our friends or the people who are sharing our opinion, this
is not democracy.
>>Paul Mason: We saw a whole montage of events there in the introductory film right back
to 1789 in your country.
Class was always an issue in the European revolutions.
Class has been an issue in Tunisia, certainly, and in Egypt.
Do you think, however, that these revolutions that we are living through are in some way
fundamentally different from everything else we have lived through?
Is class gone now?
Is social status gone?
>>Bernard Kouchner: Yeah, because we were not expecting that because we were used to
these people accepting dictatorship and it was feeling extremism in that time, you know?
But, yes, this is very different.
First, this is in Arab world, and our Arab friends were known, badly known, by their
acceptance of this dictatorship.
But it was not true.
We were absolutely not enough attentive to their behavior.
And, second, you know this is very dangerous because extremism must, should be, would be
eventually coming out of this demonstration.
And, look, the Greeks, last election were on the northern side of Mediterranea.
So this is very dangerous.
Nationalism is hidden, certainly, and extremism and nationalism, going together, it remind
us, the world before the second world war, the time of nationalism and Fascism.
I don't want to compare.
It's not the same situation, but we have to be very conscious about that.
Is it possible in our country also not to have to interfere too much.
So that's why I am talking about an unknown world facing us.
>>Paul Mason: Those of you who are lucky enough to be able to watch live and unleashed as
it goes out Fox News and who are also lucky enough to be able to watch Glenn Beck in his
prime on that channel may remember Glenn doing a famous chalkboard experience where he places
a series of stickers of explosions that go on Tunisia, Egypt, and then the explosion
crosses the Mediterranean to Greece, Italy, Spain, and eventually Europe is consumed by
the same revolutionary conflagration.
Now, do you buy that?
Do you buy that?
Why not?
>>Bernard Kouchner: Because it was a farce.
It was an expression of -- >>Paul Mason: But Greece itself -- Greece
voted -- >>Bernard Kouchner: This is not the same thing.
The result of that -- to summarize, we are in a very difficult period for Europe.
Europe is a solution, not a problem.
And Europe, it's made of people, nations.
They were fighting each other.
We fought each other during centuries and centuries.
And this is the beginning of something else, despite of the crisis.
The crisis is economical more than political?
No, the crisis is political.
Europe is a solution.
And, certainly, this -- I don't know when, in 50 years, 40 years, I believe that all
these people in the southern part of Mediterranea and certainly going to the Arab world entirely,
they will try to be together and to join a sort of union, union of Mediterranea.
>>Paul Mason: One of the parallels people have drawn, Bernard, is with 1848 which, of
course, started in Paris and spread throughout the capitals of Europe.
And within two or three years of 1848, the revolution was over.
But economic stability and growth were not.
And in some sense dictators, Napoleon III in your country, delivered modernity.
What happens if the people who rule Egypt, Tunisia and eventually Syria, what happens
if they don't deliver modernity and growth?
>>Bernard Kouchner: Because they were coming from -- from the nightmare of dictatorship
and the people from Central Europe were also coming from the nightmare.
But we were there to support, to accept.
It was not easy to let them come in the European Union as a sort of -- not a reward but partly
a reward because they were out of Communism and also to be partners.
And we have to certainly facing the Arab Spring, we have to be partners with them, to offer
them projects, to offer to be with them working together, not as post-Colonialist peoples
but as friends.
>>Paul Mason: Before we finish and invite some of the other speakers forward, what is
the thing right now you are the most worried about in this situation?
>>Bernard Kouchner: I told you about the condition of women, and I hope that it will be not a
delusion because I insist it is easy to talk about coming democracy, to ask for democracy,
but to realize democracy takes years and years.
And we don't have to be impatient too much.
>>Paul Mason: Bernard Kouchner, thank you.
[ Applause ]