Overseas hot spots Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Syria were among the topics CBS newsman Bob Schieffer ’59 explored with another quartet of national and international journalists in April at his annual conversation on the news. Joining him were Fred Barnes, co-founder and executive editor of The Weekly Standard; Charlie Rose, co-host of CBS This Morning and PBS’ Person to Person; Clarissa Ward, CBS News foreign correspondent; and Nancy Youssef, Cairo-based Middle East bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers.

Has the United States’ push to foster democracy in the Middle East and northern Africa created chaos? 

YOUSSEF: There seems to be this repeated mistake by the U.S. of unintended consequences. It’s the idea that if you liberate Egypt from [now deposed dictator Hosni] Mubarak and bring democracy, that they’ll be better off. And they’re not better off. In fact, the consistent threat now is because of these miscalculations there is actually less U.S. influence in the entire region.

What is the impact of the Arab Spring on how the U.S. interacts with that part of the world?

WARD: The Arab Spring has set off a chain of dominoes. What we’re watching now are the consequences of those miscalculations and misreadings. No-fly zone strategies have backfired and resulted in Libya hitting civilian targets The U.S. just doesn’t have the influence it did a few years ago. The things that were leveraged before just don’t matter to people the way they did. It’s breathtaking how much U.S. influence has diminished just this last year. Aid packages aren’t as effective. American ability to negotiate talks is weaker than before.

Can the U.S. maintain its fragile relationship with Pakistan? 

BARNES: They have nuclear weapons. We don’t have the luxury of pulling out of Pakistan. There are countries that we may not like, and they may not like us, but we need to have influence in that region and have them be dependent on the U.S. for aid and defense.

In North Korea, the world has seen new nuclear tests after the emergence of its new leader Kim Jong Un? How real is that threat? 

ROSE: The worry is that there will be a repeat of World War I. Somebody miscalculates and takes the wrong step and somebody reacts and then you’re off to the races.

Syria is probably the most tense of all right now. What should the U.S. do there? 

WARD: Unfortunately, the hand that’s been grabbed is the hand of radical Islamists. As a journalist, I can’t propagate one course of action or another, but I can say that this could have been avoided. … Not having a policy has consequences too.

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