Everything you need to know about the world from one of its bona fide heroes, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohamed El Baradei

December 22nd, 2009

Threat

is in the eye of the

beholder.

I came here

in the sixties to see the land

of the free. I was living in Greenwich Village,

going through the counterculture, the culture of love,

going to an Irish bar at the end of the day, and getting The New York

Times at three in the morning. I was able to go anywhere, accepted

anywhere, nobody cared where I came from, what religion

I have. It was a fantastic experience. I thought,

This is the world as it

ought to be.

You cannot

build trust until you

sit together.

I once

got a full lecture from

the foreign minister of North Korea

that since 1850, the U. S. is after the Korean peninsula.

Saddam Hussein, he always believed that he was being targeted by the

West. In Iran, they’ll give you stories on how the West is trying to

manipulate the Iranian system. I find the only way to do

it is say, All right, here is the reality, whether

it’s fictional reality or actual

reality.

I achieve

a level of trust by making

them understand that I am a professional,

I have a job to do, I have no

hidden agenda.

The oil did not help.

Music

gives me a lot of peace,

either classic music with its structure or

the spontaneity of Miles Davis.

It brings the best

in you.

Iraq has

been pulverized. North Korea

has been treated with kid gloves. The difference

is that North Korea has nuclear weapons —

and this lesson does not pass

unnoticed.

Threatening

with sanctions or using

force will simply empower

the hard-liners.

I think

one country with

nuclear weapons is one

country too

many.

People wake

up every morning and see who

is being killed — it’s all Muslims. It’s easy then

for a populist to tell them there

is a conspiracy.

There are

always absolutely ruthless people

who are ready to crush their people for their own

self-aggrandizement, but it doesn’t mean they are mad. They

look to their own personal interests, they look to

their own survival. In that, they are

quite rational.

Everyone

in the Middle East pretty much

wants to come and be an American citizen,

but pretty much everybody is angry with

the U. S. foreign policy. At least

until recently.

Borders,

nationalities have no meaning

to me right now, frankly. I live in the European Union.

I go from one country to another without a visa. It’s a domestic flight.

Whether they speak French or Greek, it doesn’t really

matter. Can you expand that to be

the world?

Yes.

Psychology

is as important as substance.

If you treat people with respect, they will go out

of their way to accommodate you. If you treat them in

a patronizing way, they will go out of their

way to make your life

difficult.

Once you

give every person the right

to live in freedom, peace, and dignity,

a lot of the problems we see

today are going to

evaporate.

We are

now in the middle

of two wars, in Afghanistan and

Iraq, Somalia is a failing state, the Palestinian

issue is getting from bad to worse, so I’d like to see

where our friends the neocons have gotten

us any better in any part of

the world.

People talk

about Islamofascism. You had Red

Brigade, you had Shining Path — you don’t

usually say these are Catholic

and Protestant.

We need

to isolate the extremists,

but we also need to address their issues.

We need to understand why they

became, as you said,

crazy.

I still

believe that any country

understands that if they use nuclear weapons,

they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational

in many ways, but I don’t think they’re irrational to the

point that they’re ready to annihilate

their own country.

My wife

used to be a kindergarten

teacher. Remember this book, All I Really

Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? It’s basically

about how to share, how to deal with a bully, how to understand

that working together, we achieve synergy. A lot of her

experiences with the three-year-olds are

not different from mine. She is my

best advisor.

How are

we going to have peace

when we still have two billion people

living on less than two dollars a day?

Forget governments. Focus on

the individuals.

Barack

Obama is stretching

his hand to them — I said to them yesterday,

“This is a unique opportunity. You have to reach back, because

that’s not going to last forever. Unless he shows

that this policy pays, you’ll get back

the alternative.”

Democracy

is not an instant

coffee.

There

is nothing about

nuclear that does not

have a political

dimension.

In 2005,

I was accused by Mr. Bolton

and company because we’re not saying Iran

has a nuclear-weapon program. Well, in 2007 the same

U. S. government said Iran does not have a

nuclear-weapon program. I think we

avoided a war by sticking to

our guns.

I have hope.

I think we’ve reached

rock bottom in the Middle East

right now, and it can only

get better.

I don’t

think there is a single

person who is not corrigible.

There is always hope. Maybe I’m

mistaken, but at least one

should try.

I play

some golf when I

have time.

I am

a Knicks fan. Unfortunately,

they have disappointed me for over thirty

years. But I’m still rooting

for them.

Mohamed ElBaradei