0:00

As the administration of President George W.

0:02

Bush prepared to leave office, it

0:04

composed detailed memoranda on foreign

0:07

policy for the incoming Obama

0:09

administration. Now those memos

0:11

have been collected in a new book entitled,

0:14

Handoff, the Bush Administration's Summing

0:17

Up. To discuss the book, former

0:19

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and

0:22

former National Security Advisor Stephen

0:24

Hadley. Uncommon Knowledge,

0:32

now. Welcome

0:37

to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Born

0:40

in Birmingham, Alabama, Condoleezza Rice

0:42

wanted to become a concert pianist and

0:44

ended up as Secretary of State. Before

0:47

reaching that position, she served as Provost

0:50

of Stanford and during President George

0:52

W. Bush's first term as

0:54

National Security Advisor. Today,

0:56

Dr. Rice serves as Director of the Hoover

0:58

Institution where we are filming this conversation.

1:02

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Stephen

1:04

Hadley pursued a career that took him back and

1:06

forth from the private practice of law

1:08

to government positions. During

1:10

President George W. Bush's first term,

1:13

Mr. Hadley served as Dr. Rice's

1:15

Deputy National Security Advisor.

1:18

When she went to state in the second term,

1:20

Mr. Hadley became National Security Advisor

1:23

himself.

1:24

Mr. Hadley is the principal editor

1:26

of Handoff. As

1:29

you note in your joint preface

1:32

to Handoff, quoting you both,

1:35

President Bush did not take office intending

1:38

to be a wartime president,

1:40

which of course brings us to September 11th, It

1:45

is impossible to understand the Bush

1:47

foreign policy without first

1:49

grasping what that day meant

1:52

to the country. I want to get to the book

1:55

and to the substance of foreign policy, but very

1:57

briefly, just to establish that.

1:59

where were you

2:03

and how did you respond when you first heard

2:05

of the terrorist attacks on 9-11? Condi?

2:08

Well, first of all, Peter, thank you very much for having us. And

2:10

Steve, it's great to have you here at the Hoover Institution.

2:13

So, I was at my desk. I

2:15

had gotten in early that morning. Steve

2:18

was also at his desk, which is very interesting

2:20

because it meant that neither the National Security

2:22

Advisor nor the Deputy National Security

2:24

Advisor was with the President that day. It

2:27

was a domestic trip to Florida,

2:30

and that was our pre-9-11 thinking. I

2:32

don't think there was ever another time when

2:34

the President was out without either

2:37

the National

2:37

Security Advisor or the Deputy.

2:39

And it meant that we thought

2:41

about attacks coming from the outside.

2:44

And so the real shock was that

2:46

this was on the territory of the United

2:49

States of America, the first time since

2:51

the War of 1812 that we'd had an attack like

2:53

that. It

2:56

was a shock to the system. There

2:58

was a lot to do that day. But

3:01

if I think just a little bit further

3:03

into it, two things really emerged.

3:06

The first was that the President really

3:09

at that moment became a wartime

3:11

President. He had not intended to be, but

3:13

now his overriding

3:16

consideration had to be to protect the country. He

3:18

was first and foremost now Commander-in-Chief.

3:21

And secondly, we had very

3:23

few

3:25

institutions, very few strategies

3:28

for dealing with an attack on the territory

3:30

of the United States. We had no military

3:32

command for the United States. We

3:35

actually borrowed the combat

3:37

air patrol from NATO at that

3:39

moment. We had no

3:41

Homeland Security Department. We

3:44

had no way to talk to governors. We

3:46

had to make some of it up. But

3:48

we knew right away that what

3:51

this would mean is that we had to take

3:53

the fight to the terrorist.

3:55

And that became, of course, the

3:57

Bush Doctrine. I

4:00

can remember watching this on television and having

4:02

just a terrible time grasping,

4:05

making myself believe what had happened. But

4:08

you're there as deputy national security adviser.

4:11

You have to assimilate the facts

4:13

as they take place and

4:16

presumably put together some kind of action.

4:19

It was your responsibility. What

4:21

was that like? You

4:24

know, Connie mentioned sometimes

4:27

after the fact, we sort of saw the planes

4:29

hit the building. And at that

4:32

point, we become operational. Our

4:34

job then is to help the president and the vice

4:36

president, since the president was out

4:38

of town, out of Washington,

4:41

manage the crisis. And that's what

4:43

we did for the rest of the day. We're very operational.

4:46

We go down in the president's emergency

4:48

operation center, supporting the vice

4:50

president who's in contact with the president, managing

4:53

the crisis, getting the airplanes out of the air,

4:56

making sure that this is not the first

4:58

step of a series of attacks, so

5:01

making sure that we're in a position to

5:03

deter or defend against any subsequent

5:05

follow-up attacks. You

5:08

know, I'm a lawyer, and I've sort

5:10

of been making notes about what

5:13

I'm doing in the

5:15

course of any day. And at the end of

5:17

9-11, they said, everybody sort

5:19

of get your notes and submit your notes,

5:21

because we need for the historical record what happened

5:24

on 9-11. I didn't have a single note on

5:26

a single piece of paper. It was an

5:29

operational intensity that

5:31

you could not really underestimate,

5:33

because this was an attack on

5:36

the country.

5:37

From the intensity of

5:39

that moment, I'd like to step back

5:42

and ask about the

5:45

structure in which you found yourselves,

5:48

you as national security adviser, eventually

5:51

as secretary of state, you as deputy national

5:53

security, and then as national security

5:55

adviser yourself. And

5:58

here's the picture. George

6:01

W. Bush is president. Outside

6:04

the White House we have the Pentagon, which has 2.3 million uniform personnel,

6:10

another 640,000 civilian personnel, 750 bases

6:14

and

6:14

installations around the world, the

6:19

State Department, 30,000 employees at state, another

6:23

some tens of thousands

6:25

in the 260 embassies and

6:28

consulates around the world. And

6:30

I am not even including in the foreign policy

6:33

apparatus our intelligence agencies

6:35

because of course their budgets and personnel are

6:38

secret. It is a vast

6:41

apparatus, and

6:44

yet the democracy vests

6:46

all executive authority in

6:48

one man. It fell

6:50

to the two of you somehow to

6:53

mediate this structure,

6:56

this institutional setup.

6:59

Did it work? Well,

7:02

most of the time. Most of the time.

7:06

We hear now about the deep state. The

7:09

deep state is a term that's,

7:12

it sounds as though it's

7:14

malicious. At a minimum,

7:16

in olden times when I was in the Reagan administration

7:19

the term was permanent bureaucracy to indicate that

7:21

they had their own interests.

7:22

Well, there's no doubt that

7:24

the president is

7:26

looking over and trying

7:28

to get to respond to his concerns,

7:33

to his agenda, this

7:36

vast bureaucracy. Now,

7:39

one of the things that this book tells you

7:42

is that a substantial part of the U.S. government

7:45

that is responsible for foreign policy

7:48

will change with the change in president. That's

7:50

the political appointees that come in. And

7:53

in our system, those political appointees

7:56

are not largely

7:56

politicians. They are people

7:59

appointed by the president.

7:59

with Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense,

8:02

etc., the presidential

8:04

staff, and it really then

8:07

falls to those people to

8:09

make sure that the permanent

8:12

bureaucracy, it's kind

8:14

of like turning an aircraft carrier. They've been

8:16

told to do a certain set of things with one person,

8:18

particularly difficult when you're changing parties

8:21

and therefore, changing agendas

8:23

pretty dramatically. And

8:26

so, it does fall to those political

8:28

appointees to make sure that that permanent bureaucracy

8:31

is responsive to the president's concerns.

8:34

The people who do that are well served

8:37

and should, in fact, take into consideration

8:40

the experience and the background

8:43

of that permanent bureaucracy. I can speak to this as

8:45

Secretary of State. You have a foreign service

8:49

of people who've served all over the world in

8:51

difficult circumstances. They're completely

8:53

committed to the country. They've

8:56

given up what could

8:58

have been many more lucrative careers

9:00

to do this, and you would be foolhardy

9:02

not to listen to them and take advantage of

9:05

their experience. And yet, you

9:07

have to make sure that the experience doesn't

9:09

become a, quote, block to the president's

9:12

agenda. Now, when you have something like 9-11, no

9:15

one has experienced that. And so,

9:17

all of a sudden, you're trying

9:19

to create a

9:22

new set of dynamics. The

9:24

institutions that we know

9:26

so well, the Secretary of State, Defense,

9:29

National Security Advisor, et cetera,

9:31

the so-called National Security Council, was

9:34

created in 1947 out of the National Security Act. It

9:38

was an institution that grew

9:40

up thinking about external threats, essentially.

9:43

On the day after 9-11,

9:46

we had in the room the Transportation

9:48

Secretary, the

9:50

Treasury Secretary, the people who

9:53

handled the borders. All of a sudden,

9:55

this National Security apparatus was

9:58

not adequate.

9:59

to what the new reality

10:02

was. And the new reality was that there was an

10:04

enemy within. This

10:06

may seem extremely hard because of highway

10:08

safety. The

10:11

energy folks who had to worry about

10:13

the threats against the grid. And

10:16

so what you suddenly realize is

10:18

this thing is completely inadequate. And I remember

10:20

Peter sitting in the room on September

10:23

12th and the group was now

10:25

too big to have the meeting in the situation

10:27

room. So we actually had it in the cabinet

10:30

room. We have a huge number

10:32

of people around the table. And I'm looking around, I don't

10:35

know half of these people because they do domestic

10:37

affairs. And I remember

10:39

thinking to myself, oh my goodness, this

10:41

is never going to work.

10:43

We have all of these institutions. And we started creating

10:45

things on the fly. And so

10:48

one of the things that we did was to ask

10:50

Governor Tom Rich of Pennsylvania

10:53

to come and be the first

10:56

homeland security secretary,

10:58

homeland security advisor for the president.

11:01

And so suddenly you had to worry about things that

11:04

you never thought you would be worrying about as

11:07

the national security advisor. Kind

11:09

of a funny story about this. One of the

11:11

big threat lines out there was against

11:14

critical infrastructure. Now

11:16

to be fair, none of us really knew what critical

11:19

infrastructure might entail

11:21

because we'd never been asked to think about it before.

11:23

So we asked the deputy attorney general,

11:25

Larry Thompson, to do

11:28

a pod, as we call them, on critical

11:31

infrastructure protection. Several

11:33

years later, Larry said to me, I didn't know

11:35

anything about critical infrastructure protection.

11:38

I said, Larry, nobody knew anything about critical. We

11:40

just needed somebody who was competent. And

11:44

so in a crisis like that, you

11:46

do tend to start to

11:48

just invent on the

11:51

fly. Later on, you have a chance

11:53

to go back and try to rationalize

11:56

it. But I can't overemphasize

11:58

to you the degree to which which these were

12:01

problems for which we were not really

12:03

prepared as a country. And

12:05

in fact, the very attack itself

12:08

was because our intelligence agencies

12:10

were split between external

12:13

intelligence, which is what the CIA did, and

12:16

internal intelligence, which is what the FBI

12:18

did, and they had a wall between them.

12:21

Steve? You know, the other thing is

12:24

it wasn't just the trauma of 9-11,

12:26

because the intelligence community after 9-11

12:29

came to the president and said, we think that

12:32

this is going to be the first of

12:34

a series of mass casualty

12:36

attacks on the United States by

12:38

al-Qaeda, some of which could involve

12:41

weapons of mass destruction. That's

12:44

kind of a bad news morning when your intelligence

12:47

community comes and gives you that. And within

12:49

two weeks,

12:50

envelopes containing white powder that

12:53

turned out to be anthrax powder

12:55

start showing up

12:57

in the Congress at offices of senators

12:59

and in media centers

13:02

in Washington and elsewhere in the country. Nobody

13:05

knows, and some people were killed by that

13:07

anthrax. Nobody knew who was responsible

13:09

where it came from. And

13:12

over the course of that year, we again forget,

13:15

between then and the end of 2002, there

13:21

were 38 terrorist attacks around

13:23

the world in 13 countries. It

13:25

was like every couple weeks there was another

13:27

terrorist attack that killed a dozen or two,

13:31

a lot of kids, a lot of folks

13:33

on vacation, a lot of different sides. So

13:36

this war, you know, there's

13:38

a lot of criticism of the Bush administration about

13:40

the war on terror. If you sat where

13:43

we sat,

13:44

it felt like a war,

13:46

and we were on the defensive, and we didn't

13:48

know enough about who was coming

13:50

after us, and we certainly didn't have the structures

13:53

that we needed in order to keep the country safe.

13:55

And that became the president's first responsibility.

14:00

We start with 9-11, we

14:02

have the war on terror, and

14:05

pretty quickly, 18 months

14:09

perhaps, needless

14:11

to say, feel free to correct me, you were there, it

14:14

turns into something larger and becomes

14:17

the freedom agenda. Now

14:21

I'm going to quote you again from this

14:23

joint preface, you both signed this, you both worked

14:25

on this preface in the book in Handoff,

14:29

and you talk about Henry Kissinger

14:32

who draws the distinction

14:34

between the idealist tradition

14:37

in American foreign policy, which

14:39

tends to dominate American foreign policy,

14:41

and the realist tradition. Now I'm going to quote

14:43

you, the idealist tradition

14:45

saw the principles on which a regime was founded

14:48

as a central determinant of the nation's

14:51

international behavior.

14:53

By contrast, what mattered to the realist

14:55

tradition was raw power

14:57

and national interests. Then

15:00

comes what I take as one of the most important sentences

15:02

in this book. The

15:04

Bush administration rejected the idea

15:07

that it had to choose between these two

15:10

alternatives. Steve, could you explain

15:12

that? Sure. One

15:16

of the things that

15:17

the war on terror really had two

15:19

aspects to it, there was the,

15:21

if you will, the operational aspect

15:23

of going after the terrorists and making sure

15:26

and confronting them abroad so we didn't have to fight

15:28

them here at all. But the other one

15:30

was to counter the ideology

15:32

of the terrorists, this dark vision,

15:35

this twisted view of Islam

15:37

that was used to reach out to people

15:40

who were in despair about

15:42

their situations and recruit them to

15:44

terrorism. The president said

15:46

that part of the war on terror has to be war

15:48

of ideas, we have to have an alternative

15:51

to the vision offered by the terrorists

15:54

as they recruited in the Middle East

15:56

and elsewhere. And that alternative was democracy

15:59

and freedom,

15:59

rule of law. and

16:00

respect for human rights.

16:03

And the reason we reject the

16:05

choice between the two, because

16:09

the realistic objective, which

16:12

was to keep the country safe by terrorists, could

16:15

not really be accomplished unless

16:17

we had an idealistic vision to

16:20

give to people who were in societies

16:22

which were not working for them to

16:25

say, rather than go with the terrorists and

16:27

blow things up, why don't you try to build

16:29

a free democratic society that

16:31

can provide prosperity

16:33

and stability and freedom for your people?

16:35

So in this case, idealism

16:38

became a vehicle for achieving

16:40

the realistic objective of keeping

16:42

the country safe.

16:43

I would add another point, which

16:45

is that it's not as if we

16:47

were unaware that there's something called a balance

16:49

of power,

16:50

and that power matters,

16:52

assets matter, your military power,

16:55

your economic power. We studied

16:57

international relations, most of us, so we were

16:59

not unaware of that. But we talked

17:01

about a balance of power that favors freedom.

17:04

So the United States,

17:07

with its great power,

17:09

could use the verb that

17:11

you wish, insist, attempt

17:13

to impose. Great powers don't mind

17:16

their own business. Great powers try to shape the

17:18

international system. And so shaping,

17:21

using our power to shape

17:23

the system in a way that you

17:25

would create more opportunity,

17:28

more space, for democratic

17:30

states to emerge became an important

17:32

part of the freedom agenda. Now,

17:36

where we had direct effort,

17:39

Afghanistan, Iraq, so forth, you

17:41

could be more involved

17:44

in the creation of those institutions and the like, but

17:46

in some places it was really giving

17:49

voice to those who wanted to have

17:51

freedom, who wanted to

17:53

have the basic rights that we have, which

17:55

is why, for instance, we had in the Middle East

17:58

an effort to encourage women. rights to encourage

18:00

civil society and et cetera. But I want

18:03

to just follow one further

18:05

thing about this. We had an experience

18:07

with this in the past. So after World

18:10

War II,

18:11

if you had taken a pure realist

18:13

perspective,

18:15

you might have done what

18:17

supposedly Churchill once suggested,

18:20

which is to have as many

18:22

Germanies as possible.

18:24

Why not break it into Bavaria

18:27

and Prussia and that

18:29

way they're never a threat.

18:29

I like Germany so much I'd

18:32

like to have as many of them as possible. That

18:34

would have actually been a realist because

18:37

you're now going to just think about the

18:39

balance of power.

18:41

But in fact, the United States and a man

18:43

named Conrad Adler had a different view,

18:45

which was that if you could actually have a democratic

18:47

Germany

18:48

within a democratic union,

18:51

eventually the European Union, within

18:53

a democratic collective security

18:55

organization called NATO, it

18:57

would never threaten its neighbors again.

19:00

It would become prosperous and in fact

19:03

in 1990 it would not just

19:05

be prosperous, it would be reunited with

19:07

that part of Germany that had

19:09

not followed those democratic principles. And

19:12

so when I hear people say that this was somehow idealistic

19:15

or not realistic, I think,

19:17

you know, actually maybe the

19:19

lack of realism is to suggest that

19:23

the more authoritarian states you have, the

19:26

safer we will be. I don't really think

19:28

that plays

19:28

out. Okay, you just threw a punch

19:31

and I'm happy to see that because

19:33

I am now going to assume the role

19:35

of a skeptic and I'm going to

19:38

give you the arguments. It's

19:40

not as if the two of you haven't heard

19:42

these over the years.

19:44

But let's go through the arguments and

19:47

I'd like to go sort of region by region by

19:50

region very quickly. I mean,

19:52

we have a book of hundreds of pages. This

19:54

is a brief conversation by contrast.

19:57

So

19:58

let's start with... Iraq. I'm

20:01

going to quote from the memorandum in this book

20:04

on Iraq prepared by Deputy National

20:06

Security Advisor, your deputy I gather,

20:08

Megan O'Sullivan. President

20:11

Bush,

20:11

this comes from the memorandum for the Obama

20:14

people, President Bush could have chosen, quote,

20:17

a Western friendly autocrat,

20:19

quote, to establish order in

20:21

Iraq.

20:22

He chose instead, quote, to build

20:24

a democratic political system

20:27

as the only way a traumatized

20:29

nation

20:30

could peacefully manage the competition

20:32

for power and resources, close

20:35

quote. All right, here

20:38

we go. The only

20:40

way, come on, you

20:43

have the Arab world and in the

20:45

Arab Muslim world we have 700 years

20:49

in which there has been only one democracy, very

20:52

briefly Lebanon and that was when the Christian

20:54

Drew's minority was running Lebanon.

20:57

There's just no historical precedent

20:59

for this at all

21:02

and the argument is, the rap

21:05

is, oh my goodness,

21:08

how naive could you be and you

21:10

got us into, now this is, it

21:12

is impossible to look at these events of some two

21:15

decades ago

21:16

without thinking of them in

21:18

terms of the intellectual apparatus we have now.

21:20

So the phrase now is the never ending

21:22

war. You got us into a never ending war.

21:25

There, that's the rap. Let's start with you, Steve.

21:27

Okay, so

21:29

the realist. Oh, come on, don't you get a little angry?

21:32

No, no, we've been around this block. The

21:36

realist view was the

21:38

Middle East is not congenial

21:40

for democracy. So let's support

21:43

the authoritarians and at least they'll

21:45

give us stability. Right. Well, it didn't

21:47

give us stability. What it made was,

21:50

and we saw on 9-11 the fruits

21:52

of that policy, which was a very

21:55

interesting UN development report

21:57

came out in 2002, which basically said

21:59

the The problem in the Middle East, which

22:01

is stagnant economically and

22:06

discouraged politically, is that

22:08

there isn't enough freedom of democracy

22:10

and not supported women's rights. That was written

22:12

by Arab intellectuals, by the way. Was it really?

22:15

Yes, it was. Written by Arabs intellectuals.

22:17

So their view was the Middle East is stuck. The

22:19

wave of freedom and democracy that you saw

22:21

in Europe, that you saw in Latin America and in some

22:23

sense even in Africa, had bypassed

22:25

the Middle East in the 20th century. And

22:28

we accepted the autocrats in

22:30

the name of stability. And we did

22:32

not get stability. What we got was 9-11. We

22:35

got a Middle East that became a breeding ground

22:37

for terrorism. So the realistic

22:40

objective then is, so how can you help

22:43

states

22:44

become states that will not be breeding

22:46

grounds for terrorists that will kill Americans

22:48

and kill our friends and allies? And

22:51

the solution for that,

22:52

in the President's view, was you have

22:54

to have a framework in which

22:57

these people can work together

22:59

for a common vision of a future and try to build

23:01

a prosperous democratic society that provides

23:04

services and satisfaction to their

23:06

people. And the only way you're going to do

23:08

that is in a democratic framework.

23:10

Because in the Middle East, the model was when

23:13

the Sunnis are dominated, they

23:15

oppress the Shia. Where the Shia dominate, they

23:17

oppress the Sunnis. And both of them beat up

23:19

in the currents. And our view was

23:22

the realistic objective of

23:24

an Iraq that would be stable, that

23:26

would not be a continuing source of terror,

23:29

was it had to be a democratic structure

23:32

in which Sunni Shia and Kurds could work together

23:34

for a common future. And that was what

23:36

the Iraqis, after Saddam

23:38

Hussein was deposed,

23:42

said they wanted. So it wasn't imposed

23:44

by us. This was what they said they

23:46

wanted. It was consistent with our values,

23:49

and it was a way to achieve the realistic

23:51

objective to make sure the Middle

23:53

East would no longer be an incubator of terror.

24:00

He still almost came out of his chair there.

24:02

But I have to add one thing. Politics

24:05

was going on in the Middle East.

24:07

It just wasn't going on at the ballot

24:09

box and in legislatures. It was going on

24:11

in radical mosques and radical madrasas.

24:15

So the idea that people were

24:17

not expressing themselves politically

24:20

is simply wrong. When I talked to

24:22

Hosni Mubarak about this in

24:25

Egypt, he kept saying, well,

24:27

the problem is if we have democracy,

24:29

the Muslim Brotherhood will come to power. He was

24:31

probably right about that. Why? Because

24:33

he had systematically destroyed all

24:36

liberal elements in his

24:38

society. And so, of course,

24:42

because the Muslim

24:44

Brotherhood could hide in the radical mosques

24:47

and in the radical madrasas and create

24:49

their power, there was no alternative.

24:51

He was absolutely right. But it was his fault,

24:54

not that of the Egyptian people.

24:56

Okay, now, you know

24:58

what? The two of you, surprisingly

25:00

enough, are very persuasive. And

25:04

not only that, listen to this. This is the late

25:07

Bernard Lewis, writing in Foreign Affairs

25:09

in 2005. Bernard Lewis may

25:11

have been the preeminent

25:14

scholar of the Islamic world of the entire 20th

25:16

century. Quote,

25:19

the creation of a democratic and

25:22

political and social order in Iraq or elsewhere

25:24

in the Middle East will not be easy, but it is possible.

25:27

This is 2005. You're working

25:29

at it. And you have the greatest scholar of the

25:31

Islamic world saying, it's

25:34

possible.

25:35

The end of World War II opened the way for democracy

25:38

and the former Axis powers. As you said,

25:40

Steve, the end of the Cold War brought a measure of freedom

25:42

and a movement toward democracy in much of the former Soviet

25:44

domains.

25:45

With steadfastness and patience, it

25:48

may be possible to at last bring both

25:50

justice and freedom to the long tormented

25:53

peoples of the Middle East. Close quote.

25:56

To read that today is

25:59

heartbreaking. Yes and no. Didn't

26:01

you work? Yes and no. I mean, look,

26:03

hold on. I just said, excuse me. I just said

26:05

one thing. Peter just said. Should we go tag team? Go

26:08

ahead. I'll flip this off. Yeah, I'll flip this off.

26:11

Right, right, right. All right. No,

26:13

go ahead. Go ahead.

26:15

Twenty years.

26:16

How long is that really

26:18

in the fourth march of democratic

26:21

states? How long was it before

26:23

South Korea was democratic?

26:26

How long was it before the United

26:28

States of America

26:29

was actually truly democratic in

26:32

that it was born as a slave-only state. A

26:36

hundred and fifty years or so later, it freed

26:38

its slaves. But

26:41

in 1960, in

26:43

Birmingham, Alabama,

26:44

my parents and I couldn't go to a movie theater. So

26:48

democracy actually takes time

26:51

because it's actually a kind of unnatural thing.

26:54

I'm often asked, you know, why do democracies

26:57

fail? I want to know why in the world

26:59

do they succeed?

27:00

You ask people to leave behind tribalism

27:03

and family and violence

27:05

and we'll solve it in the streets for these abstractions

27:08

called institutions, elections

27:10

and legislatures and constitutions.

27:13

And you say, now you have to believe that

27:15

your rights are going to be protected

27:18

by this. Your interests are going to be protected

27:20

by this. That takes some time.

27:23

And oh, by the way, in the meantime, while

27:25

that is evolving, you

27:28

don't have an autocrat or dictator

27:30

who is leading you into a senseless

27:33

war against your

27:35

Ukrainian brothers or

27:38

who's putting you in

27:40

mass graves at about a million

27:43

in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

27:47

And so maybe even if you're struggling

27:49

to get to that democratic

27:51

peace, as political scientists

27:54

now call it, it

27:56

might be a better ride than what happens to you

27:58

under-authoritarians.

28:01

You know, it's, we,

28:03

I think it's fair to say our reach probably

28:05

exceeded our graphs. The president thought

28:08

that if we could build a, help

28:10

the Iraqi people build a democratic

28:12

Iraq,

28:13

if we could get a democratic Palestinian

28:16

state able to live in peace and security

28:18

with Israel, they

28:21

would be the catalyst for the transformation

28:24

of the Middle East the way Bernard Luz talked about

28:26

it. We like every other administration

28:28

that strided, did not get a Palestinian

28:31

state able to live in peace and security beside

28:34

Israel.

28:35

The Iraq is a very interesting case

28:39

because it's had now about six democratic

28:41

elections and peaceful transfers of power.

28:44

And it is a fragile democracy. I would

28:46

grant a lot of problems, but

28:48

it is held together in a region

28:50

that has put a lot of pressure on it and

28:52

the war against the uprising

28:55

in Syria that destabilized Iraq.

28:58

It's got Iran, which is meddling. This

29:01

is not an easy neighborhood in which to try

29:03

to build a democratic state. And the Iraqis

29:05

are doing pretty well.

29:09

And everybody points to 2011 in

29:12

the Arab uprising, which resulted not

29:14

in the burst of freedom that we had hoped.

29:17

It did raise hopes. Raised hope and resulted

29:19

mostly in authoritarianisms or failed

29:22

states. But the spark

29:24

of the vision of a democratic,

29:27

more prosperous, more free future

29:30

in the Middle East is not dead. 2018, 2019, Boudaflika

29:33

gets thrown out of Algeria. Al-Bashir

29:38

gets thrown out of Sudan. There are uprisings,

29:41

popular uprisings in Iraq,

29:44

in Lebanon, and elsewhere.

29:47

And they result in

29:48

changing of prime ministers and new governments.

29:51

So let's see

29:53

what happens. The seeds of freedom

29:55

and democracy have been planted in the Middle

29:58

East. Let's...

29:59

Give it some time and see if they come to

30:01

flow. That's how a nation of democracy takes a while.

30:04

It takes a while. From the transition

30:06

memo in handoff on Russia, Russia

30:08

perceived U.S. efforts to promote democracy

30:11

in former Soviet countries, in particular

30:13

Georgia and Ukraine, as a smokescreen

30:16

for advancing U.S. interests at Russia's expense.

30:18

This is already clear in 2008, as

30:21

you're about to leave office.

30:22

Russia had, again I'm quoting the memorandum,

30:25

Russia by now had stepped up its campaign

30:28

to undermine our presence throughout the former Soviet

30:30

space, close quote. Okay,

30:33

here we go again. It

30:36

falls to me to put the argument that you were naive,

30:40

that you weren't paying enough attention to history, and then

30:42

I will duck and bob and weave as you throw punches

30:44

at it. But here's the argument.

30:47

For goodness sake, people, a

30:49

thousand years ago Russia starts in

30:51

Kiev, and for a thousand

30:54

years they expand and expand and

30:56

expand, and being

30:59

imperial, running

31:01

the Eurasian land mass is what

31:04

Russians do. It is every

31:07

decade of their history for a thousand

31:10

years.

31:12

And you thought they'd step back and

31:15

let a democracy flourish in Georgia and

31:17

let Ukraine drift off to the West?

31:20

What were you thinking? Well,

31:23

how's it looking? So goes the argument. Yeah, right, right. How's

31:25

it working out for them today that they

31:28

haven't found something to replace

31:30

empire?

31:31

For me, this is very sad. You

31:33

know that I, in some

31:36

ways Russia is my adopted

31:37

culture. Of course. I

31:39

love the place, I love the people. They've

31:43

just had the worst politics

31:45

for 300 plus years. But

31:48

as a people, they're creative and they are

31:50

warm.

31:51

And if I

31:53

had a hope for them, it

31:56

would be that there

31:59

isn't something in their DNA. I don't

32:01

believe there's something in their DNA. But

32:04

that somehow changes

32:06

institutionally, changes over time,

32:09

that Russia and Russians would finally start

32:12

to realize their potential.

32:14

Not as imperial conquerors,

32:17

but as people who could be integrated into

32:19

a Europe that was transforming

32:21

into a Europe that was changing.

32:24

Gorbachev said to me at one

32:26

point, and it was, again, it was rather

32:28

said. He said, you know, actually,

32:32

when I talk about a common European home,

32:34

which was his phrase,

32:35

what I mean is

32:37

that the Soviet Union will be a

32:39

normal country.

32:41

And it will be the far

32:43

left end. You know, you'll have us,

32:46

and then you'll have social democrats,

32:48

and then you'll have CDU in places like

32:50

Germany. And he had this notion

32:53

that Russia was going to, or the Soviet Union

32:55

was going to find its place in

32:57

the common home of humanity.

33:00

That we tried to help to make

33:02

that true

33:03

for some period of time, including

33:07

even

33:08

trying to hope that Vladimir Putin might

33:10

be encouraged in that direction.

33:12

I don't apologize for that. Was it

33:15

always a long shot, particularly

33:17

given the kind of failed consolidation

33:19

of democratic institutions in Russia,

33:21

which by the way goes back to Boris Yeltsin. It

33:24

was really Boris Yeltsin that ruled

33:26

by decree that crippled the

33:29

Russian legislature in its infancy. But

33:34

sometimes you have

33:37

to proceed from the possibilities

33:39

that are there. It's not naivete.

33:42

I know the history of Russia as well as anyone.

33:45

But it is a hope that not every

33:47

people on the face of the earth are condemned

33:50

to be just vassals of

33:52

their history. If that were the case,

33:54

Japan would not be a great democracy today.

33:57

If that were the case, Germany would not be

33:59

a great democracy.

33:59

of the democracy of today. If

34:02

that were the case, Latin Americans would

34:05

still be preferring cadeos

34:07

to the democracies that are emerging there.

34:10

And so I've always been resistant to this notion.

34:13

You know, with all due

34:15

respect to my historian colleagues and

34:18

the audience, you know, the Norman

34:21

Neymarx and the Steve Kotkins and others, I

34:24

just don't believe that people are necessarily trapped

34:26

in their history.

34:28

I'll have a non-Russian expert

34:32

slant on this one. So

34:34

my sense is, and Connie's

34:36

the expert here, for 400 years Russia

34:38

has had this struggle with how

34:41

to define its relationship with the West. Sometimes

34:43

it brings the West in, sometimes it pushes the

34:45

West out. We thought that after

34:47

the trauma

34:49

of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end

34:52

of communism, there was a chance

34:55

that in this historic

34:57

struggle of how Russia finds its position

34:59

with the West, that Russia would actually come

35:01

West in a more permanent way. And Bush

35:03

would talk explicitly to Putin about

35:05

this. He would say, Vladimir, you

35:08

have a historic opportunity to bring Russia

35:11

permanently into the West. And Putin

35:13

would say,

35:15

George, that's what I want to

35:17

do. But there are dark forces in Russia

35:20

that must not be awakened and therefore

35:22

you need to do it my way

35:24

and in my time.

35:26

And what we found over the eight years, so our

35:28

strategy was, look, let's try

35:30

and see if we can integrate Russia in

35:33

Western institutions and help bring

35:35

it permanently into the West. And

35:37

we did and we built a remarkable

35:39

amount of constructive relationships with

35:41

Russia over the eight-year period. But over that

35:44

eight-year period, Putin got more

35:46

and more authoritarian. So

35:48

we were not naive. We thought it

35:50

was worth an effort. But

35:52

we hedged our bets.

35:54

And that's why NATO enlargement and

35:56

NATO expansion was so important because

35:59

we wanted to...

35:59

respond to the demand

36:02

and desire of those countries that had been

36:04

under the Russian thumb as part of the Warsaw

36:06

Pact to become West. We

36:08

thought we couldn't say, no, you're

36:11

not admissible. But also,

36:13

that was the hedge to build a platform

36:15

from which Russia, if it had become revanchist,

36:18

it could be effectively resisted. It

36:20

is interesting that the only two countries

36:23

that Russia has invaded, Ukraine and Georgia, are

36:25

not members of NATO. It

36:29

is also interesting that the platform that

36:32

President Biden is now using to

36:34

deal with Russian aggression in Ukraine

36:36

is exactly those alliance relationships

36:39

which we strengthened, and the NATO

36:41

that we strengthened in the Bush administration. All right. On

36:44

Russia,

36:45

may I ask, if you apply

36:47

the same kind

36:49

of hopeful analysis to Russia that

36:51

you mentioned just now with regard to the Arab

36:53

world, this takes decades.

36:57

Putin is—he still looks

37:00

pretty vigorous, but he's an old man. This

37:02

is a game for the grandchildren. What

37:07

you did, maybe

37:10

it will take some decades, but

37:12

there was a demonstration of goodwill.

37:15

There was institution building, and

37:18

that will not be lost on Russians someday.

37:21

That's the hope. That's

37:23

the hope. Is it a grounded hope? You're

37:25

the Russian expert. It's

37:28

very hard right now to

37:31

know what the institutional

37:34

landscape

37:36

post-Putin would look

37:38

like. We just don't know. We're supposed

37:40

to have very good intel, but we don't know about—

37:42

But authoritarians destroy institutions.

37:45

That's what they do. And so it's

37:48

very hard to see what might emerge. I

37:50

will say this toward the end of

37:52

our time, my

37:55

hope that this kind of imperial

37:58

instinct that we

38:00

overcome really did start to diminish.

38:02

And it really goes to one

38:05

conversation that I had with Putin, me

38:07

personally, alone with him.

38:10

Where I think it must have been

38:12

sometime in 2007. It was

38:15

well before the invasion of Georgia. And he said,

38:18

Kandy, you know us. Russia's only been great

38:20

when it's been ruled by great men. Like

38:23

Peter the Great and Alexander the Second.

38:26

And I had known

38:28

for a long time that all of his instincts,

38:31

all of his

38:32

sense of glory was

38:34

somehow tied up in the Russian Empire.

38:36

By the way, not in the Soviet Union.

38:39

He actually told President Bush that the

38:41

reason he'd made that statement about the collapse

38:44

of the Soviet Union being the greatest tragedy of the 21st

38:46

century was because 25

38:48

million Russians had been left outside

38:50

of Mother Russia.

38:51

So you could sense

38:54

this coming. And

38:56

so- He's a 19th century man. He's a 19th

38:59

century man. And perhaps reinforced

39:01

as a KGB officer

39:03

because what did the Soviet

39:05

Union do? The Soviet Union

39:09

allowed the collapse of

39:11

the Russian Empire within it.

39:14

And stranded 25 million

39:16

Russians outside of Mother Russia.

39:19

In fact, you know, with that speech,

39:22

that weird speech that he gave upon the

39:24

invasion of Ukraine that blames

39:27

Lenin for the creation

39:30

of Ukraine, it gives you a sense of where he

39:32

thinks

39:33

the real fault

39:36

for the collapse of the Soviet Union rests.

39:39

But it didn't mean also that

39:41

we shouldn't have tried to have a decent

39:43

relationship with them. I will tell you, I think

39:46

early on going back to 9-11, he

39:48

was the first head of state

39:50

with whom I spoke, the president was on his way

39:53

to try to get to a safe location and

39:56

Putin was trying to reach him. So I took the phone

39:58

call.

39:59

And I-

39:59

essentially wanted to say to Putin, our forces

40:02

are going up on alert, because we didn't

40:04

want to get into a spiral of alert with the

40:06

Russians. And Putin said, I can

40:08

see that, and I thought, of course you can. He said,

40:11

I can see that our forces are coming down,

40:13

we're canceling all exercises. Toward

40:16

the end, he came to NATO at

40:18

the last summit that we attended in Bucharest,

40:21

and he gave this talk about

40:24

how Ukraine was a made-up country.

40:27

And so it was perhaps beginning

40:29

to become clearer and clearer where

40:32

his true sympathies were.

40:34

China, again

40:37

the transition memo,

40:39

the core of the administration's strategy

40:41

was to build a security and trade

40:43

architecture with regional allies that

40:46

would reinforce the role of the United States

40:48

as a Pacific power,

40:50

encourage China to play a responsible

40:52

role in East Asia, and hedge

40:55

against the emergence of a more

40:57

aggressive China. So far so

40:59

good. President

41:02

Bush chose to, quote, from the memorandum

41:04

again, deal with China as a friend,

41:07

not an enemy, close quote. Now there's

41:09

a sentence that doesn't age so well. So

41:16

however, I will say, beginning

41:20

with Reagan. I was

41:22

in the Reagan White House from Reagan all

41:25

the way through to Donald

41:27

Trump. So from Reagan through

41:29

Obama, we hoped

41:31

the Chinese could

41:34

be our friends. We had the example

41:36

of South Korea, which becomes economically vibrant,

41:39

and then a democracy. Taiwan becomes

41:41

economically vibrant, and then a democracy.

41:45

Why were we wrong about China? Well,

41:47

you know, I think one of the interesting things

41:50

about the book, if you read the transition memo, and

41:52

I'm sure it struck you, the dominant

41:54

thing that comes across is how different

41:57

the China

41:58

President Bush faced was the. China

42:00

of today. The China President

42:02

Bush faced under

42:05

two separate presidents,

42:08

John Zeman and Hu Jintao, was a China that wanted

42:10

a benign international environment

42:13

so he'd focus on his own economic development.

42:16

It was a China that didn't want to overturn the

42:18

international order but was desperate

42:20

to be a part of the international order and

42:23

it was a China that wanted a constructive

42:25

relationship with the United States.

42:27

That's the message we got

42:29

with China and we thought that the

42:31

proper course was to try to respond

42:34

to that to see if we could integrate

42:36

China into the international system. Why?

42:38

So

42:39

that China would be a supporter of that system.

42:41

Remember that system is based on our

42:44

values of freedom, democracy, human

42:46

rights, and rule of law and that as part

42:49

of that international system China was less

42:51

likely to act in a way that was harmful to

42:54

our interests. So that was the policy

42:56

the president

42:59

pursued.

43:00

This is the same president by the way who early in

43:02

the campaign said he thinks

43:04

of China less as a strategic

43:06

partner and more as a strategic competitor

43:08

so in some sense Bush was ahead of his time

43:10

but he decided to treat it like

43:12

a friend to see if we could bring

43:15

it into the international system for the

43:17

reasons we described but as the portion

43:19

you read described and well

43:22

states we hedged. We

43:25

strengthened our alliance relations

43:27

with South Korea and Japan

43:30

and Australia. We enhanced

43:32

our own diplomatic, economic, and military

43:34

presence in the region. We started

43:37

a strategic relationship with India

43:39

which could serve as part of a counter

43:41

to an emerging China so that if

43:45

our efforts with China failed we

43:47

would have a platform to deal with

43:49

a much more aggressive China which

43:51

is the platform Joe Biden is using

43:54

today and I would say

43:55

to you that if we had not

43:57

tried to do that we

43:59

would be here and you would be saying to us,

44:02

you know China actually there was an opportunity

44:04

to bring China into the West but you,

44:06

you aggressive

44:09

warmongering Bush administration

44:11

people, you alienated China,

44:13

you pushed them away, you lost the

44:16

opportunity to bring China West.

44:18

So I would say we had the right policy. We made

44:20

an effort to do it, it was what and

44:23

all the data suggested it was possible.

44:26

We hedged a case it would failed

44:28

and I would say to you I think that

44:31

if instead of Xi Jinping

44:33

in 2012, if we had gotten another leader like

44:37

John

44:40

C. Amanda, Hu Xintao

44:42

and had the last ten years been a

44:44

China under that kind of leader,

44:47

we would be in a different place with China

44:49

today and China would be in a very

44:51

different place than it is today.

44:53

I think the people, I'm not usually

44:55

one for the great man theory that there's a

44:57

single explanation and it's the leader

45:00

but the closest I can come to that is Xi Jinping.

45:03

I think that he not only

45:05

decided to change

45:07

the rules of the game internationally, he decided

45:09

to change the rules of the game in China.

45:12

So that for instance something that worked very

45:14

well for the Communist Party which was that you had term

45:16

limits, you had an empowered premier

45:19

who took care of the economy while you

45:21

did the politics and

45:24

you would hide

45:26

and bite so you could do things domestically

45:29

and you would not have more than two terms.

45:32

Remember that all that gets wiped away. He

45:35

also of course decides that you'd

45:37

have no alternative power centers so the kind

45:39

of geese that were laying the golden eggs,

45:42

the Ten Cents and the Alibaba's of the world

45:44

get suddenly get

45:46

pulled in. So I think

45:49

he's a really kind of transformative and

45:50

different figure. We didn't misread China.

45:53

China changed. I think China

45:55

changed. I will say that you

45:57

have to be a little bit careful in that I

45:59

I never am quite, I'm very careful

46:02

about causal explanations and

46:04

that's why just Xi Jinping makes

46:06

me a little bit nervous. Things were evolving

46:09

underneath. I remember in 2007

46:12

when the Chinese had an anti-satellite

46:14

test that surprised everybody in terms

46:16

of its sophistication. We

46:18

were seeing increases in

46:21

Chinese military spending in the construction

46:23

of what looked like a blue water navy.

46:26

So one could say maybe they were preparing

46:28

the ground for Xi Jinping, but I do think

46:30

Xi Jinping more quickly than

46:32

perhaps a Hu Jintao would have done,

46:35

took advantage of that growing power.

46:39

Things were happening underneath and there's one

46:42

other point. Steve mentioned that

46:44

South Korea, Taiwan, other places

46:46

had become democratic as economic

46:49

liberalization took place. We

46:51

always had this notion. Economic

46:53

liberalization and political control cannot

46:56

coexist.

46:57

And I think Xi Jinping has said, you're absolutely

46:59

right. I'll take political control. And

47:02

that's the piece that perhaps we got counted

47:05

on, that there would be a Chinese leader

47:07

who would be willing to sacrifice so

47:09

much of internal development

47:11

for party and political control.

47:13

May I ask a kind of throwback Cold War-y

47:15

question?

47:16

Our friend and colleague, Steven Kotkin,

47:19

when I asked Steven after a lifetime

47:22

of examining the Soviet archives, what's your one

47:24

finding?

47:25

Steven replied without hesitation, they were communist.

47:29

This is not a great power struggle. They really believe

47:31

that stuff. The

47:34

Chinese are communists. Or am I just using

47:36

terms that are icky and old fashioned

47:38

and don't apply? They choose power

47:40

because they're communist. They're Leninists. They

47:43

want power. Well, definitely the

47:46

piece that I think is absolutely true is that

47:48

the primacy of the Communist Party

47:50

has been the driving

47:52

force for every

47:54

leader in China. But

47:56

what that has meant has

47:58

differed from leader to leader.

47:59

And with Xi Jinping, it means

48:02

that the survival

48:05

of the Communist Party is one, two,

48:07

three, four and five. He sees

48:09

that in his survival, in

48:12

controlling everything around him, including,

48:14

by the way, reintroducing, you know, I'm a musician, reintroducing

48:17

the red arts into China,

48:21

whereas perhaps people like Hu Jintao

48:23

and others saw the survival

48:25

of the Communist Party as needing to have more

48:28

liberalizing tendencies. So

48:30

you can say they're communist and

48:32

the survival of the party is the most important

48:34

thing. But then the next sentence,

48:37

what does that mean and how they actually operationalize

48:40

that matters a lot to what kind of China

48:42

you are actually facing?

48:44

So there are critics who would sit up here

48:46

and say that we were naive

48:49

because they will and some wonderful

48:51

scholars who are in command of

48:54

the written records of the Communist Party,

48:56

they would say all through this period

48:58

of John Zimina Hu Jintao. If

49:00

you read the party documents, they have

49:02

a Marxist communist.

49:05

Ask our colleague Frank Tugger. And

49:08

that is true. That is true. But

49:11

in that period of time, what you saw was

49:13

people played less who

49:15

were in power,

49:17

paid less attention to the party. Government

49:20

figures had more authority. Party

49:22

figures had diminished authority.

49:25

I remember going being in Beijing, a

49:27

colleague Paul Hanley's house, and he had some

49:30

young entrepreneurs and folks over

49:32

for dinner. And this was 2011, 2012, right

49:35

before she comes to power.

49:37

And they were all basically saying the Communist

49:39

Party is finished. It has no legitimacy.

49:42

We are reforming, moving in the direction of government,

49:46

government institutions taking the

49:48

place of the party. Communist Party

49:50

is finished.

49:51

Xi Jinping has changed all of that. We're

49:55

going to run long because this is

49:57

too good to stop. Just a little

49:59

announcement for you. Africa,

50:03

may I?

50:04

The President's Emergency Plan for

50:06

AIDS Relief or PEPFAR. The

50:08

President announced the initiative in his 2003

50:11

State of the Union Address. By the time

50:13

he leaves office, we've spent some 15 billion

50:16

in Africa on AIDS treatments

50:18

from the postscript in this case to

50:20

the transition memo. In just five years,

50:23

the United States had supported life-saving treatment

50:25

for 2 million people,

50:27

provided care for 10 million, including orphans

50:29

and vulnerable children, and produced

50:32

a substantial reduction in new infections, meeting

50:34

the Bush administration's goals on time and

50:36

on budget, close quote.

50:38

Okay, I can't

50:40

find any argument to

50:43

use against healing

50:45

sick people. But I can find a question

50:48

to ask, and the question is, how

50:51

did that advance this country's

50:54

interests? Well, it

50:56

certainly advanced this

50:59

country's values.

51:01

The United States has always been best

51:03

when it leads from both power and principle.

51:06

And here, the principle was that

51:09

there was a continent that was essentially

51:11

being ravaged by a pandemic,

51:13

a continent that looked like it was

51:15

going to lose millions

51:18

and millions and millions of people,

51:20

particularly women and the young. And

51:23

the United States of America,

51:25

which has also always been the largest donor

51:28

of food aid, which is also

51:30

the country that always shows up when somebody has

51:32

an earthquake or a tsunami, that

51:35

the United States doesn't just care about

51:37

its own interests. It actually does care

51:40

about relief of humanitarian

51:43

disaster and human suffering.

51:45

Now, I would argue that not

51:47

only did that demonstrate

51:50

American compassion and

51:52

principle, but it also

51:55

gave enormous great will across

51:58

the country.

51:59

the continent,

52:01

it actually organized the rest

52:03

of the world to try to do something about this

52:05

pandemic.

52:07

And if you

52:09

don't think that increasing

52:13

America's image

52:16

and the sense that America is an important and

52:18

good player

52:19

matters in a continent that is going to demographically

52:22

dominate in the future,

52:26

then you wouldn't do this. But

52:28

I don't want to confuse this with

52:30

the quote, interest of the United States, because

52:34

I was in those meetings with President Bush,

52:37

and this was driven

52:39

purely

52:41

by a sense, as he quoted from the

52:43

Bible, that to those

52:46

whom much is given, much

52:48

is expected. It really was

52:51

for him a question of the United

52:53

States having to do the right thing.

52:55

25 million

52:57

lives saved by

52:59

that program. And

53:03

when COVID hit, a

53:05

number of African leaders told us that

53:08

they used the infrastructure of

53:10

PEPFAR

53:12

to manage COVID, because we didn't

53:14

just deliver antiretrovirals.

53:17

We actually had to help these countries build an entire

53:21

health infrastructure to be

53:23

able to deliver and so clinics

53:25

and research

53:28

labs and the like, and they were able then to use

53:30

that going forward. But sometimes

53:33

great powers really ought to just try to do the right

53:35

thing.

53:36

This is just a great power trying to do the right

53:38

thing. I would say, and I'm

53:42

supporting everything Condi said, I have

53:44

always thought that

53:46

a world that reflects Americans'

53:49

values is very much an American's

53:51

interest, because that will be a world in which

53:53

Americans will be safer, more secure,

53:56

and more prosperous.

53:57

And also the realists now are telling us

53:59

that

53:59

China is eating our lunch

54:02

in Africa with their Belt and

54:04

Road initiative, with their fairly

54:06

corrupt and coercive diplomacy.

54:09

Where is the United States? Well, if

54:12

and they say that to have China

54:15

dominate Africa is very much not in American

54:17

interests, well I would say from that

54:20

framework the kind of thing the President Bush did

54:22

with PEPFAR and malaria and neglected

54:24

tropical diseases is very much

54:26

something that would advance America's

54:28

interest in

54:29

checking China's

54:31

bid for dominance in Africa. Okay,

54:34

a couple of last questions. By

54:38

which I mean let me take a couple of final shots

54:42

and if you want to come up out of your chairs. Rhetorical questions.

54:44

Are you having fun here? A

54:48

little bit. So

54:51

here's at the time and here's 20

54:56

years later. Two

54:58

quotations for the time, for at the time, at the

55:00

moment. This is President Bush and his second inaugural

55:03

address. Their survival of liberty

55:05

in our land increasingly depends on the success

55:07

of liberty in other lands. So

55:09

it is the policy of the United States to seek and

55:12

support the growth of democratic movements and institutions

55:14

in every nation and culture. As you explained,

55:17

this was the realistic approach.

55:22

Renewed in our strength, tested but not weary,

55:24

we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history

55:27

of freedom. Close quote. Here's what Peggy

55:29

Noonan said one day later

55:31

in the Wall Street Journal. This

55:33

is, how else to put it, over

55:36

the top. It

55:38

is the kind of sentence that makes you this sentence of

55:40

the greatest achievements that makes you wonder if this White

55:42

House did not have a case of mission inebriation.

55:46

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm

55:49

down and breathe deep. The most moving speech

55:51

is some of us to the cause of what is actually

55:53

possible.

55:54

Perfection in the life of man on earth

55:57

is not. Okay.

56:00

So there you have it right there and then from

56:02

someone who was broadly speaking on your

56:04

side. Come on.

56:07

You guys are being naive. You're getting drunk with your

56:09

own. Hold that thought.

56:12

Now we come to the current moment in

56:15

which both parties are

56:18

tired of nation building. Joe

56:21

Biden gets us out of Afghanistan. The

56:24

Democrats want out. And

56:27

what do the Republicans say? They

56:29

don't say we should stay there. They say

56:32

you did a lousy job of getting us out. We

56:34

would have gotten out sooner. We would have gotten

56:36

out.

56:37

They both agree

56:39

that 20 years in Afghanistan needed

56:41

to come to an end and got us

56:44

nothing much. This is a bipartisan

56:47

agreement right now. OK.

56:51

You produced this book. This is not a beach read.

56:53

I don't think you intended this as a beach read. But

56:57

you grow up in Birmingham Alabama and

57:00

find yourself drawn to thinking about foreign policy.

57:03

Steve grows up in Toledo Ohio. In

57:05

this country we have this strange

57:08

foreign policy apparatus by self

57:10

selection.

57:11

It's kids who get drawn to big

57:14

books and big ideas.

57:18

So what do you want kids to know

57:20

about the freedom agenda

57:22

all these years later? Well

57:25

Peggy Noonan is one of my very close

57:27

friends. Mr.

57:29

Gorbachev tear down that wall. That

57:32

was somehow not over the top.

57:37

So sometimes

57:40

that at the time seems over the top

57:42

later on just seems inevitable. The

57:45

second point that I would make

57:47

that was vicious actually. No no

57:49

really good. Peggy will appreciate

57:51

it. She will appreciate it. If

57:54

I tell her that I said it which I may

57:56

not. But in any case the

57:58

second point that I would.

57:59

make

58:01

is I can't account for nor

58:03

can I condone

58:05

our lack of patience with

58:07

others who are trying to make the same democratic

58:10

journey that we have made where

58:13

we've stumbled, where we've fallen,

58:15

where we fought a civil war, and

58:17

where yet we've still come out okay.

58:20

And so, yes, if I

58:22

had thought

58:24

at the time of what we launched

58:26

in Afghanistan or maybe Iraq that

58:29

we were just going to lose patience, I

58:31

would have had perhaps second thoughts about

58:33

what we were trying to do in helping the Afghans

58:36

build a decent society where

58:38

women could actually go to school and could

58:40

come out of their homes. But

58:45

I thought that the

58:47

United States of America is a great power, might

58:50

actually realize that sometimes we have

58:52

to have staying power. And oh, by the way,

58:54

Afghanistan was not our longest

58:57

war. Our longest war is Korea.

59:00

We're still in an armistice.

59:02

We still have tens of thousands of American

59:04

forces in South Korea

59:07

trying to prevent that little man from the north

59:09

from destroying our Korean ally. And

59:12

oh, by the way, South Korea wasn't a democracy

59:15

for quite a long time when we

59:17

were supporting it. As a matter of

59:19

fact, it was a military dictatorship at a certain point in time. But

59:22

bringing back this question of realism

59:24

and idealism and

59:27

balance of power, even

59:29

if you want to argue that nation

59:32

building, yeah, we retired,

59:35

the war should have been over, I'll just ask

59:37

you one balance of power question. What

59:40

you not like from a purely

59:42

realist balance of power perspective to

59:45

have military bases in a country

59:47

that has a 900 kilometer border

59:50

with the most

59:52

active and the most aggressive

59:54

country in the region, that would be Iran.

59:56

So even if you were a balance

59:58

of power kind of person. And I think you might have

1:00:00

kept those bases in Afghanistan.

1:00:04

I think you might have done it with the support

1:00:06

of allies who were willing to stay.

1:00:09

I think you might have realized that the United States

1:00:11

of America had lost very few people over

1:00:14

a period of 18 months. And

1:00:16

so whether you wanted to take the argument that

1:00:18

we owed something to the Afghan people, that

1:00:20

they could have a decent life, or we owed something

1:00:22

to American interests that we might have stayed in

1:00:24

Afghanistan for our own purposes, so

1:00:27

that the war that we fought from there that has

1:00:29

not allowed another attack on the territory of the United

1:00:31

States in that 20 years,

1:00:33

I can argue both sides of that, and we

1:00:35

shouldn't have left under either argument.

1:00:38

Steve? I would make three

1:00:40

points. One is a historical point. I went

1:00:42

to see the president after he gave that

1:00:44

freedom agenda speech, and I said, Mr. President,

1:00:47

do you think this was a little over the top? Why didn't

1:00:49

you give- You said that to him? You did. Do

1:00:52

you want to give a second speech that talks about how we

1:00:54

operationalize the freedom agenda,

1:00:57

to make it concrete? He said, okay,

1:00:59

but don't take one

1:01:01

step back from the commitment

1:01:04

to the freedom agenda. So we gave that speech,

1:01:07

National Endowment for Democracy. I think it

1:01:09

was May

1:01:09

or June of that year, which

1:01:12

operationalized this concept

1:01:14

and made it concrete. Nobody pays any

1:01:16

attention to that speech.

1:01:18

Second,

1:01:21

there's this notion out there that

1:01:23

these were endless wars.

1:01:26

The point is that these wars ended

1:01:29

for American combat troops in 2011

1:01:31

when

1:01:32

President Obama took the troops out of

1:01:35

Iraq, and they ended in terms of Afghanistan

1:01:39

in 2012, 2013, when President

1:01:42

Obama said and ordered

1:01:44

that U.S. troops would stop any offensive

1:01:47

operations in Afghanistan. So

1:01:49

for us,

1:01:51

those wars were over some time ago.

1:01:53

They continued for Iraqis.

1:01:55

They continued for Afghans. But

1:01:57

we had this by, with, and through notion where

1:01:59

with the-

1:01:59

a modest commitment of a couple thousand troops,

1:02:02

we would support local forces

1:02:04

to

1:02:05

fight the terrorists and bring stability. So

1:02:07

this notion that these were 20 year long

1:02:10

wars, endless wars for our combat

1:02:12

troops, it's just not true. It makes

1:02:14

great rhetoric,

1:02:16

but it is not the case. Finally,

1:02:19

on the freedom agenda,

1:02:21

one of the things that happened on the freedom agenda is it got

1:02:23

so associated with the

1:02:25

efforts in the Middle East that

1:02:28

when Americans soured on the

1:02:30

Middle East, they soured on the freedom

1:02:32

agenda.

1:02:33

And if Iraq, if we had been

1:02:35

able to stabilize Iraq in 2003 and 2004, instead

1:02:37

of having to wait until

1:02:40

the surge in 2007 and 2008, people

1:02:43

in this country would feel a lot different

1:02:46

about the Iraq War. But even while

1:02:48

people turned away from the Middle East and

1:02:50

therefore turned away from the freedom agenda, guess

1:02:53

what happened?

1:02:54

Russia goes into Ukraine and suddenly

1:02:57

Joe Biden is talking about dividing

1:02:59

the world among the authoritarians and

1:03:02

the democracies and how we need to

1:03:04

be on the side of the Ukrainians as

1:03:06

they fight for what?

1:03:08

For their freedom, for democracy.

1:03:10

So freedom agenda, oddly enough, is

1:03:13

back in a different form. And

1:03:15

I think the reason is because it's indigenous

1:03:19

to Americans and Americans foreign

1:03:21

policy in the world. Our country was formed

1:03:24

not on ethnic identity or

1:03:26

linguistic identity, but on a set

1:03:29

of principles that involve freedom,

1:03:31

democracy, rule of law, and human rights. And

1:03:33

every war and every major international

1:03:36

effort we've made in the name

1:03:39

of advancing freedom, democracy, human

1:03:41

rights, and rule of law, it's who we

1:03:43

are. So it will rise

1:03:45

and fall in prominence, but it's

1:03:47

always going to be a piece of America

1:03:50

and American foreign policy.

1:03:51

And I would only add the following.

1:03:53

And as long as there are authoritarians,

1:03:56

we will have plenty of opportunities to fight for

1:03:58

freedom.

1:03:59

That's another thing to remember,

1:04:01

is that authoritarians

1:04:03

are the ones

1:04:06

who make certain that

1:04:09

people are going to have to fight for their freedom. We're

1:04:11

seeing it in Ukraine today. The

1:04:14

book is Handoff,

1:04:17

Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley. Thank

1:04:20

you. Thank you. Thank

1:04:23

you. Thank you. For

1:04:27

Uncommon Knowledge and the Hoover Institution,

1:04:29

I'm Peter Robinson.