Condoleezza Rice on the Future of American Power in the World

thank you there are some pluses from the point of view of the United States and American power in this period if you look at Europe Europe is going to be transformed by this war Russia will probably be isolated for a very long time to come and that's sad because Russians at least since the time of Gorbachev had begun to break out of their isolation they traveled you had them in classes you you know they worked in foreign companies and now he's threatening to make it a just a big North Korea Russia has lost 1 million people have fled the country and it's sad because this is a really terrific people they are creative they are Innovative they're really smart and the world would be better out with them than without them and so one question is can you separate Russians from putinism and save that but the rest of Europe uh Europe has responded in a way that I think most people find even surprising the energy landscape will change dramatically in Europe because the Germans who were told from the time of Ronald Reagan not to become dependent on Russian natural gas now recognize it was a bad idea to be dependent on Russian national gas you will see them go to other sources be interesting to see to the degree that hydrocarbons are a part of our future for a long time to come and they are we'd all like to see a carbon transition from uh to a less carbon intensive world but where will those hydrocarbons come from will it be through investment in the North American platform in the United States there are fields in places like Mozambique and Algeria that we're not being able to get investment they will Russia on the other hand because they no longer will have access to the the to the technology from the exons and the BPS of the world those fields in places like socklin which are very hard to get to and very old Russian production will decline on the other hand who would have thought it Finland and and Sweden I used to worry about the Arctic well we're kind of there at this point and so the uh the expansion of NATO as a friend of mine put it Vladimir Putin managed to end German pacifism and Swedish neutrality in a matter of months and so from the point of view of American alliances they couldn't be stronger true also in the Asia Pacific in response to China the indo-pacific you know whether it's Australia or August with Great Britain or Japan which has begun to reassess its role in the world to India which is a complicated place but a place where we have had a I think steady development of better relations over time uh you know the Indians just as the example they have trouble buying our military equipment because we have all of these end user requirements but they're buying from Australia and from Great Britain and from Israel my view is that's okay team blue is good and so relations with India are I think solidifying and improving and then when you look at the rest of the world uh the so-called Global South as people call it I think the real issue for the United States there is going to be to be careful not to have loyalty tests with people this is even true with India we Americans have a kind of uh you know force that are against us mentality sometimes when actually if you will let countries go with their natural uh their their natural interest particularly in the case of in India for instance they'll come your way because does India really want to continue to be reliant on that Russian junk called military equipment do they really want to be reliant on the Russians when the Russians are in relation ship with the Chinese who's India's biggest problem and so I hear a lot about the global South um and and you know whose side are they on it would be good if we didn't repeat the mistake of that led to the non-aligned movement of insisting that you have to be in one camp or the other the other final thing that I'll say um and then we'll get to questions is uh you know we've been through tougher times before actually and uh we have managed to get through them because the United States has a lot of strengths I think the biggest issue we face right now is probably ourselves so I'm asked to talk about global hot spots but any Global hotspot can be dealt with if the United States has the confidence to deal with them and right now we're not too confident a country and it comes it thinks from kind of internal pressures and we can talk more about those but getting to the place that Americans again are focused on what unites them focused again on that sense that you know it doesn't matter where you came from Madison where you're going everybody can be a part of the dream you will have a stronger impulse among American leaders to want to lead because when I hear the American people actually don't want to be involved in international politics there are two things Americans carry in their heads simultaneously and they're somewhat contradictory one is can't somebody else do this finally we've been at this for a long time why can't somebody else step up the other is we can't live in a world where one country just tries to extinguish its smaller neighbor or where Syrian children are choking on gas and the president who decides to play to the impulse that says well yes it would be nice if somebody else did it there isn't anybody else to do it it will have to be us I think that's what I'm looking for when I listen to the upcoming debates okay with that let's go oh yeah we got plenty of questions good okay we're gonna go one two right here and then I'll come to this section yeah right thank you so much for your talk secretary rice we really appreciate having you here I don't know if you remember me but I was here for your fireside chat last year with Betsy DeVos okay all right they got a question about Charter Schools but yeah that's for another day yeah my main question is concerning the influence um of social media on the culture of the United States I know that when uh Tick Tock and especially the pandemic came about many Americans were concerned about the National Security risk that came with the usage of tick tock yeah I wanted to know your perspective on tick tocks um I suppose security threats on the national level as well as its influence on the the culture of Americans and their I suppose impotence on the national state yeah well uh look I'm really glad that there wasn't social media when I was secretary because it makes life a lot harder um and I think it has look it has a lot of a lot of value and let's be real Mark Zuckerberg just wanted to talk to his friends at Harvard he didn't think he was going to be part of the infrastructure picture of the country and so I think social media is beginning to adjust to its role in the world and we have to help it adjust when it comes to I'm going to come back to one other point by the way but Tick Tock I I'm probably as a national security person I'm probably less worried about Tick Tock than most people um I I don't I yeah it doesn't dull people's brains yes but if it weren't Tick Tock something else would be dulling people's brains and so our answer has to be how do we get those little things out of our kids hands so that they're not getting their brains dulled not is it tick tock that's doing it I don't think the Chinese are sending subliminal messages through Tick Tock I will say on the social media piece one thing that worries me a lot is when we start talking about disinformation and you know I we we accept things as fact way too quickly and incredible sometimes fact becomes just you don't agree with me so you aren't you aren't following the facts and so I've been encouraging people to be a lot more a lot more careful about what they declare effect and uh and go ahead and debate people who may disagree right here yes hi I'm rafina from the University of Hong Kong and I'm actually from Hong Kong so when you talk about China Taiwan and Hong Kong I feel that in person the question I want to ask you because your main theme of the book democracy stories from the long world to Freedom it's about democracy that's some title I wonder do you think democracy is the right question to ask about Russia yes well I do think democracy is the right question to ask about any country and there are a couple of reasons for one is the moral issue right um people ought to have a say in how their lives are going to develop and I believe that the values of saying what you think worshiping as you please being free of the knock of the secret police at night and being able to choose those who are going to cover you is universal right so that's the moral case when it comes to the Practical case I just said it about authoritarians authoritarians don't uh democracies don't do what Vladimir Putin just did democracies don't do what Xi Jinping is doing inside democracies make mistakes but authoritarians when you have one person who can decide the fate of his people that's when you start to get the kinds of impacts that you have democracies don't employ child soldiers because it would be all over the Free Press democracies don't um don't threaten their neighbors because it would be all over the Free Press and so I think there's both the Practical case for democracy and a moral case for democracy and usually the people who say well those people don't want democracy are the people who are lucky enough to live in one and then can talk about those people so I don't think there is any people on the face of the Earth and I'm being very honest with you I don't think there's any people on the face of the Earth who would rather live in tyranny and when you see what's happening in Chinese autocracy at this point which is the one thing that China was delivering which was prosperity but they were of course delivering without rule of law and so now Prosperity is under or undermined I think we would be better off with democracies oh thank you for your speech I do have two questions so I'm Ray from Taiwan an incoming student at Georgetown so my first question my my two questions actually not about Taiwan I am sure someone else may ask that so you might be aware of there's a lot of sign on a shift on U.S foreign policy part of that it's the shift from the Middle East to potentially Asia and this given a time that uh Russia is have their decline influence due to the war so I wonder you know such scenario is leave a strategic void for China so how the United States foreign policies to deal with such situation and how to manage the trail of informed policy thank you you can just take one question okay and so others can ask so I never liked the idea of the pivot to Asia uh away from other parts of the world the United States is a global power and we actually have to be able to exercise our interests and our values globally and so when you think about the Middle East I understand that there was concern about you know two Wars and and you know the lack of democracy there and the Palestinians and Israelis and I understand all that but there's actually a new opportunity in the Middle East right now thanks to the Abraham Accords I think that the um the um War of the the gulf Arabs are in the process of actually ending the state of war with Israel and they're doing it not because they've suddenly awakened and loved the Jewish Democratic state of Israel they're doing it because they recognize that they have to diversify their economies they the the 800 pound gorilla in the Middle East in terms of technology is Israel and the number of business military even intelligence relationships that are growing up in the Middle East that web that's growing up I think that's something that we ought to be actively supporting with our diplomacy I've read that maybe the Biden Administration is thinking about something like that they should be and that's why the great the way the United States can't pivot to one place when you're Secretary of State you don't come in and say okay I think I'll just do Asia today that's not how it works you might plan your be planning your trip to Asia and all of a sudden there's a problem in Lebanon and you've got to be there to deal with it and so a great Global power has to be able to do more than one thing and when it comes to our military capabilities um I I we do need to rebuild our military-industrial base which is has I think continued to to suffer and we do need to make sure that for instance we are that the carrier battle groups are able to deploy you know right now apparently we can only deploy one that's a that's a problem but I don't think this is a matter of choosing I don't think the United States has that has that luxury and you're right if the United States tries to exercise that luxury it will open up a path for somebody else okay I'm gonna go all the way to the back back there yeah so thank you for your talk I really appreciated it um I do have one question um whenever we're talking about the liberal International order that is kind of um characterized the post-war um History of the World um I was just wondering do you think it's based more on the ideas of the liberal International order or based more on the power economic military even diplomatic of the United States and how can it be maintained if it's the latter how can it be maintained as the US's share of GDP um kind of continues to decline over time yeah uh well I think you have the idea first and then if you don't have the power the idea doesn't matter so I wrote an article once called a balance of power that favors freedom and the point was that um it's not you know people want to distinguish you you've studied political science many of you between realist and uh and um some people call it idealism that's not what they really mean but between realist and uh liberalism or the search for what the internal character State should look like now um I think American policy foreign policy when it's at its best has both of those elements so it has a set of ideas about how it wants the International System to look and by the way great powers are not they don't mind their own business right great Powers want to shape the International System and if you're shaping it around the set of ideas you have to have the power and the assets to do that military power economic power Etc I know this the arguments about declining GDP but um you know it's still the dominant GDP it now looks like China will not surpass and I never worried that even if China did surpass it was going to surpass in a way that really mattered and when you look at things that we don't measure in GDP like Innovation uh for instance like how many new companies are getting started you can't measure that I think the United States is still Far and Away uh the dominant power uh what I do worry about is that some of our strategic allies I worry a lot about Europe in this regard so if you look at where most of the innovation technology is taking place it's not in Europe they're kind of two centers it's the United States and it's it's China and I don't think that's a good place to be so I probably worry more about the um stagnation in European economies than about uh our own I mean we have a lot of problems that we have to resolve and we shouldn't be borrowing so much money and spending money we know all that all of that but when you look in the kind of aggregate and when you look uh you take a 30 000 foot view the United States still looks looks pretty powerful I think the liberal order uh is giving way because of other things largely because I think internally a lot of countries haven't been able to deliver and that's caused this kind of populist revolt and you know populism protectionism nationalism uh nativism kind of all come together I just call them a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse so they tend to come together yes right there morning secretary rice my name is Kate See Jane Kiest and it's such an honor to hear from you this morning thank you I was curious with your expertise on foreign policy what are your current thoughts on the U.S giving more Aid to Ukraine with the American people currently struggling border crisis cities in ruin et cetera yes thank you yeah again I think great Powers have to be able to do a lot and on Ukraine it's it's uh we we are giving a lot of Aid and we should be giving a lot of aid but the ukrainians are doing the fighting and uh they're doing the fighting to establish an extremely important principle that none of us want to live without which is that small big countries shouldn't extinguish their neighbors and if it ever becomes okay that big powers can extinguish their neighbors that's not a world that's going to be very attractive it's also the case that because of what I talked about earlier you know I really would ask any American politician who doesn't want to Aid Ukraine to the point that they can um and and you know how they win or what when means I think is a is is a question but anybody who wants to make that argument I would say how are you going to feel on the day when Vladimir Putin is on his Victory lap with Xi Jinping um and you could have stopped it I want to see you make that speech to the American people uh that will make the speech after the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan looked like Child's Play so um I don't think uh that they have a choice we have a choice um we will see just you know we'll see where this war is um permafrost will start to set in late October early November uh you know Hitler and Napoleon learned that you can't fight in that territory you don't start a war in September in that territory so I think it will be a question of where the battle lines are drawn then um if the ukrainians are able to break through to the Sea of Azeroth because you can't what Russians tried to do was to bisect Ukraine and leave it landlocked and it's not viable if it's landlocked it's viable if it can get through to the Black Sea and so at that point I think we'll have a sense but for now I think we just have to give the ukrainians the um what they need I I think the Biden administration's done uh done that I would have done it faster it seems that every time you know first well you know we won't give them um long-range artillery well than we did uh we won't give them missile defense than we did we won't give them tanks then we did uh how about you just sort of decide okay whatever is we're going to need because the idea that you were somehow causing escalation with Putin always seemed not very smart to me yeah let's see I'm going to go to the middle in right here you've got on the yeah active duty army officer station in Hawaii so dealing with a lot of the issues of course in the indo-pacific my question is a little bit different so there's this theory that I've heard in the past that benevolent dictatorship can establish the steps to maybe a genuine democracy so Singapore uh maybe a little bit further than the past turkey without a Turk to what extent do you believe in that and how should the United States interact and integrate with countries in the developing World especially in light of some of the geopolitics we're facing now the problem with benevolent dictators is they don't tend to stay benevolent and they don't tend to know when to leave office right so if I could absolutely make a bed that um you know I actually probably the closest uh in in some ways was Singapore uh where uh you know and it's a city state right it's very small it's uh not all that complicated although ethnically it's complicated and I don't think that there's any doubt that um uh the leadership there uh was extraordinary but you don't get that many leaders like that and so usually what you get with dictators is you get people who rape and wreck the country on their own behalf and then the country has to be has to recover from them before they start to get decent governments so I as a general principle I don't think it works in very specific circumstances it may work and so I wouldn't encourage it because I don't know the circumstances and which is going to work in the circumstances in which it's not I'll give you a very good example of this museveni in in Uganda we worked really well with museveni around AIDS and he was a great partner and and then he got older and he got more entrenched and now he's just a dictator and so I think that's more often the path then you know I mean like I said League one use don't come along that often and so um I think we have to be careful in encouraging it Stoke and just long story short I'm from Russia and thank you for having me here I really appreciate that you do involve people like me me too yes but I study in London so basically I do some politics there and I have a question I don't want to ask any precise questions I do have a lot but here in this extraordinary setting like a lot of people from different contexts with different expertise and everything like incredible people what can we do what how could we act and what's our mission here like maybe we should collaborate maybe we should come up with something what can we do yes thank you well the first thing that you're doing is that you're showing interest and you're getting educated about it you're learning you're developing expertise um I think with your Generation Um and it was probably true with my generation too you're in a hurry to do things right you want you want to make a difference and you will you'll make a difference because some of you will go and serve in uh in governments at some point in time some of you will go and hopefully take up the cause of people in your country who can't take up their own costs in fact that may be the most important thing that people can do which is to speak for the voiceless and you do that by uh of course if you can work in an organization that does that and so forth but there's nothing wrong with mobilizing other people to do that as well petitioning governments on behalf of having that happen but at some point in time and I'll speak specifically to Russia at some point in time the weight of the innovativeness and the creativity and the intelligence of the Russian people is going to create another opening for a different Russia it was there a couple of times and it closed but that doesn't mean it will close forever and so I hope that more people like you will continue to be in our universities whether they're in London or here so that you can prepare for that time now I was as I said I was in the government when the Soviet Union fell when uh the Baltic states which had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union uh and in 1941 and had lived in captivity for all those years when conditions changed they were ready they had a strong diaspora the first presidents of the Baltic states actually had lived in places like Canada and the United States and other places but they were ready to go back and so I know that being in Exile in a sense is not a pretty picture but I just want to give you confidence that I think the time for Russia will come again and that's why we've got to keep bringing I have many Russian students I've trained many Russian students got to keep coming and being a part of the world here so that they are prepared to go back uh good morning Dr Rice thank you for coming it's a privilege to uh see you today your friend and colleague Dr Madeline Albright once remarked that uh foreign policy is much like a game of Billiards you know causes and many effects recently on uncommon knowledge which is produced here of course with Peter Robinson you said and it's a rough quote I was thinking of it as it was sitting here but you know Russia has been plagued by 300 years of bad politics and that has led to their aversion to democracy um given that you know that view what can we do as Americans as a great power to promote democracy in our interest and in the interests of the Russian people um in Russia yeah well um 300 years of bad politics of by political leaders not by the Russian people who don't deserve what they've gotten in political leadership you know I continue to think that um we have to keep pressure on the Putin regime there is a story I think it was yesterday that um you know the ruble is really now finally finally sinking uh this really really good Central Banker that they've had uh navalina uh he's now turned to blaming her saying it was loose money that's causing the problem um and so you have to keep pressure on the Putin regime because ultimately they can't he won't be able to fight this war forever I used to say that he uh time was on his side I I don't think so anymore both by the turbulence inside his own Inner Circle and because of what's starting to happen to the economy but I think we help Russians or ukrainians or any people who are particularly those who are trying to find their way toward democracy in two ways one is as I said have people I keep saying we have to have Russian students here we have to have Russian phds in our programs we have to bring Russian scientists we that people-to-people piece is important but the second I'll make an argument is more philosophical the United States of America gets impatient with people who are trying to make the journey to democracy we got impatient with the Afghans we get impatient with the Iraqis we get impatient with the Russians well maybe they just don't have the DNA and uh there are no people on the face of the Earth who don't have the DNA right there was there was once a time when Germans were too martial they seem to have done all right with democracy when I used to teach a course in the back in the 1980s believe it or not on civil military relations I could always teach about some Latin American junta they don't have hunters anymore people used to say Latin Americans preferred good deals oh uh Africans we're supposed to be too tribal well there's some functioning flourishing democracies in Africa and so and and by the way Asian Society is you know took confusion into well you know a few of them are doing okay including Taiwan and so I think you have to uh as as an American leader as an American government recognize that democracy is actually really hard I'm often asked why do democracies fail I think it's more interesting that they succeed because you're asking human beings to set aside Clan and family and and individual and trust these abstractions institutions elections and constitutions and and rule of law and that takes time and oh by the way the United States of America more than any country on the face of the Earth ought to recognize this because it's taken us a really long time and we're still trying to live up to the words of 1776 and 1789 and so why we become so impatient with others I remember doing a um I was uh testifying in before Congress and we were talking about the Afghan Constitution and the Afghan Constitution starts out by saying we will obey both individual rights and Sharia law right so everybody goes uh what does that mean and the senator says well you know he says that's a terrible compromise how could you ever have agreed to that compromise and I said you know Senator it's not half as bad as the compromise that made my ancestors three-fifths of a man so that you could go ahead and sign a constitution so the United States may be more than any country in the world ought to be patient and prepare and help people prepare for the day when that opening comes okay thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 213,354

Keywords: Hoover institution, Condoleezza rice, summer policy boot camp, tiktok, national security risks, US foreign policy, middle east, asia, liberal, GDP, china, Ukraine, domestic issues, dictatorships, democracy, russia

Id: fhMX2AB8mjA

Length: 31min 17sec (1877 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023