Condoleezza Rice

if you were seated at a piano which would be more fun performing for Queen Elizabeth or backing up Aretha Franklin with us today former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Queen Elizabeth the Queen of Soul and the state of the world uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson be sure to visit us at our website by the way Hoover dot o-r-g /uk Hoover dot o-r-g slash UK a former Provost of Stanford University Condoleezza Rice served during George HW Bush's administration as a Soviet expert on the National Security Council and during george w bush's first term as national security adviser then during george w bush's second term as the nation's 66th Secretary of State now back at Stanford and a fellow at the Hoover Institution dr. rice has written a number of books most recently no higher honor a memoir of my years in Washington Secretary Rice welcome pleasure to be with you Queen Elizabeth or Aretha Franklin very different experiences I'd have to say but I loved doing both and Aretha Franklin knows what she's doing she didn't really meet me on the piano but it was great fun anyway segment one Iraq what did you believe to be true about American foreign policy on September 12 2011 that you did not on September 10th on September 12th we suddenly realized that the United States was not just vulnerable but vulnerable to a terrorist network stateless network that had come out of a failed state called Afghanistan and had probably used maybe $300,000 to blow a hole in the Pentagon and bring down the twin towers it completely changes your concept of physical security and suddenly we had to worry about the protection of the homeland from disasters like 9/11 but in many for us the most vexing possibility was that you could have 911 on a grander scale with weapons of mass destruction so as of September 12 you mentioned fiza's physical security at that point you mentioned and no higher honor that the one time you raise your voice to the President of the United States was when he was in Florida he'd just been informed of a terrorist attack he is impulse was to come back to Washington and you said I said I did something I never did again and had never done before I raised my voice the president United States I said stay where you are you can't come back here I said we are I mean the United States is under attack and he did stay of course and and went to an undisclosed location and I went then to the bunker because the Secret Service when the Secret Service wants to lead you someplace they don't so much as lead you as they sort of pick you up and push you in that direction that day meant that every other day was going to be September 12 so you felt in those first moments again you mentioned physical security wasn't the physical security of the nation you felt everybody in the White House itself felt physically to expose well we knew we were physically exposed but you didn't have time to think about that you only had to think about the nation and it's very funny Peter you mentioned in the intro that I had been on the White House staff is the Soviet specialist right and of course in those days everybody prepared for earlier prepared for the possibility of the unthinkable nuclear war what would you do if the United States was about to experience that decapitating attack and almost immediately those impulses kicked in for me on September really yes and so I went to the bunker the Vice President was there and he was on the phone with the president getting an unimaginable order to have the Air Force shoot down a civilian aircraft that was not responding because after all civilian aircraft had now all become potential missiles against the country and the first thing that I thought was to get in touch with Vladimir Putin and to make sure that the Russians understood that our military forces would be going upon alert so that we didn't get into what was called in the old days a spiral of alerts between the two military forces and I and Putin was actually on the phone trying to reach President Bush and so I got on with him I said the president is not available he's going to an undisclosed location but I want you to know our military forces are going on alert he said I know hours are coming down and is there anything else we can do and I thought wow the Cold War really is over and the other thing that I did was to have the State Department send out a cable to every post in the world to say the United States of America has not been decapitated we are functioning and you want it friend and foe to know that we were not suddenly vulnerable um from that day march 2003 when we invade Iraq the war went very well for about three weeks in some ways astonishingly well a rapid march to Baghdad the fall of Saddam Hussein's government and then for four years it went about four years it went badly this is a book of more than 700 pages historians will be writing about it for years to come but if you put on your cap as an educator what is the when the war went wrong what went wrong well any any big event like war especially any big event in in a country like Iraq that had been so broken by the tyranny of Saddam Hussein it was going to be hard and one of the things that I try to dispel in the book is that we thought this was going to be a cakewalk you know we were somehow going to overthrow Saddam Hussein and then the Iraqis would greet us as liberators and it would all be very very easy no one thought that but we did have some faulty assumptions about what would be possible I think we had faulty assumptions about how solid the institution's the governmental institutions were beneath the baddest Saddam Hussein infrastructure so I can remember Peter standing at my desk a few days after the overthrow the statue had come down as everybody remembers and saying where are the oil workers because they had suddenly just disappeared the army seemed to disintegrate the police seemed to disintegrate all of that civil service that we thought would be able to run the country with new leadership was suddenly not there I'm just what wondering if you you're a Russian expert did you think of parallels of the 1917 revolution of the way that entire country seemed to dissolve once the Czar abdicated right yeah you know I wish I had frankly I wish I had thought about it I think we really underestimated how the fabric of a society can be just completely torn apart by a cult of personality like Saddam Hussein in in many ways it's not too much of a stretch to say Saddam Hussein was Iraq and Iraq was Saddam Hussein and so there was very little there and we found ourselves than in a situation of having to administer the country much more thoroughly than I think we thought would be the case military historian Frederick Kagan quoted in Bob Woodward's book the war within quote a reason why Napoleon did so well for so long is because his opponents were having counsels of war and Napoleon was just doing stuff alright your National Security Advisor through the first term you're in charge of the counsels of war so to speak and I'm a layman out here in California it looked to me the way it looked to a lot of people Don Rumsfeld at the Pentagon seems to be at sideways of secretary Powell at the State Department you've got the CIA the CIA I wrote this down I was so struck 2003 Daniel Dresner of the New Republic wrote the CIA is an open revolt why did it seem first of all what's the substance was there dysfunction that ought not to have taken place is this simply the kind of thing that you expect when the whole world is being reinvented when all the assumptions and administer how do we again Rumsfeld Cheney 10 all these people have their own memoirs out at some of the passages or a little testy people still feel a little raw about it I don't care about that what's the lesson the lesson is that in hard times personalities will become more what they are not less what they are and we had real substantive differences the fact is people had different views of how some of this ought to be proceeding but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that the State Department was off doing film thing and defense now the Defense Department had responsibility for post-war reconstruction because the president wanted a single chain of command unity of command between the military forces and what was going on in the civilian side and so through the Coalition Provisional Authority under Gerry Burma reporting up to Don Rumsfeld and the military chain reporting up to Don Rumsfeld the Pentagon had responsibility for this now to be fair to the Pentagon I don't think anybody had ever undertaken a rebuilding of this magnitude and the real lesson is and we got it right by the time of the surge there really a couple of lessons the first is we simply didn't have enough forces on the ground and so all of the chaos that breaks out shortly after the statue comes down makes it difficult to do even the simplest task of reconstruction and we simply didn't have enough forces secondly I in here I think it was a bit of an intelligence problem we did not really fundamentally understand the tribal structures in Iraq we could have made much better use of the tribes we could have built Iraq from the outside in instead of from the inside out in the provinces and the kind of thing that happened with the Anbar awakening then in 2005 when we made common cause with the sheiks and really started to get this on a better footing perhaps that could have happened earlier but war is like that as someone said when you when you go to war plans have a tendency to go out of the window and you're inventing on the ground mm-hmm last question about the lesson of it all as I said historians will be writing about this for decades but for the purposes at this table in front of these cameras today the surge this layman's understanding which I'm sure is crude corrected if I make a substantive error here the Wars going sideways at best for almost four years and the plan for a surge seems to pop up in a couple what strike me as odd places Ludi at the National Security Council was working on a plan for a surge it seemed to make sense to him he was quietly building support for it but one of the places it also seemed to emerge or Khoa kind of crystallized was Fred keg and then a young military historian just pulled a few people together and started meeting in the offices of the American Enterprise Institute they got a retired General Jack Kane involved Jack Kane went to the vice pres odd that here we have the Pentagon on which we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year and the war goes sideways under those guys and the thing that turns it around is this new strategy that pops up almost in a kind of ad hoc fashion well I think it's fair yeah it wasn't so ad hoc not at all or not at all and in fact as the war is going badly in 2006 Steve Hadley goes the president says mr. president what we are doing isn't working we have to do something different he starts then an internal review I said to the president Ludi reported to to Steve Hadley and I said to the president things are not going well we started to look at state and what else we could do Pete pace draws together a group of Colonels and says why are these numbers going up on the numbers of internal Joint Chiefs of Staff why are these numbers going up on numbers of security forces that we're training and the security situation is getting worse and so people across the administration are asking questions about what we're doing and can we do something differently I do think there was some resistance in some corners of the Pentagon to the notion that this might actually mean a doubling down as some people have put it on forces and and frankly I was skeptical on two fronts and I told the president I it's not that I don't think we should have more troops I've seen that for a long time but if we have more troops doing the same thing we've been doing then we're just going to get more Americans killed and if the Iraqis are not ready to put aside their own sectarian feuds blood feuds then we can't save them from themselves and so once we were able to satisfy those conditions and once Bob Gates came to the Pentagon and and Petraeus General Petraeus comes to command to be the new commander of forces you begin to get I think a pentagon that sees the war differently so it's a more logical train I do think that the outside people like Fred Kagan okay Fred King and Jack Kane were important to this but it would be I think not correct to say that this was not there was no genesis of this in the administration all right simple last question on Iraq we invade in 2003 the last troops came home in December to 11 there are different ways of accounting for it but between those two dates we spend at least 800 billion dollars we suffer 4,400 more than 4,400 killed more than 31,000 wounded estimates of Iraqis killed vary widely but they seem to Center on about a hundred thousand it is an immensely expensive and bloody conflict was it worth it when you look at Iraq today you see an Iraq that is still struggling with its new democratic institutions but that has actually undergone the revolution already that you're seeing in the rest of the Middle East there's a reason that Iraqi citizens were not out in the streets protesting there that their government be overthrown as they were in Egypt as they are in Syria it's because Iraqis know that that is their representative government they may not be happy with the electricity that they're providing I love it but they brought lumps man and those purple thumbs mattered and secondly we have succeeded in replacing a homicidal murderer who put four hundred thousand of his own people in mass graves you want to talk about a humanitarian disaster who sought and had used weapons of mass destruction had invaded his neighbours was an implacable enemy of the United States he's been replaced with admittedly a fragile government in Iraq that will not invade its neighbors that will not seek weapons of mass destruction that will not be a cancer in the Middle East and will be favorably disposed to the United States becoming for instance the fourth largest purchaser of American military equipment in the Middle East that's called a strategic trade up and in the Middle East which after all was the source from which the hatred that actually brought about the al-qaida's of the world that was a middle-eastern source yeah it was worth segment two rogue states Condoleezza Rice during the 2005 hearings at the end of it of which the Senate would confirm you as Secretary of State quote the time for diplomacy is now close quote now in review after review after review of no higher honor reviewers point to that as you're saying folks the second term will be different from the first did you mean it to be taken quite that dramatically I meant it to be taken as a continuum from where we had been after all I've been very much a part of the first term very much a part of the policies of the first term I mean no sense was I saying while those policies were wrong now we'll do something different but we were in a different phase we had had the war it wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq we were now in a phase of what I believed to be the beginning of a consolidation of some of those gains and in war it's difficult to think about how to build the diplomatic framework and foundation for what should be sustained going forward so I thought of it the continuum bard North Korea October I'm going to read to you arguments that I've found in some reviews of the book yeah that frankly attack you from the right yes I think you can handle yourself October ninth two thousand six the North Koreans detonate a nuclear device President Bush promises a tough response Steve Hays writing in his review of no higher honor in The Wall Street Journal quote instead the North Koreans got what they wanted the attention of the world are returned to the negotiating table with the United States and the legitimacy that such talks confer close quote what the North Koreans got was a six-party framework with all of the states that might have any chance of doing something about a nuclear program that was progressing China Russia Japan South Korea we used the moment of maximum anger at the North Koreans for what they had done in that test to bring those parties together to say to the North Koreans we now need to have a chance to get a handle on your nuclear program we need inspectors on the ground we need you to stop producing plutonium we need you to blow up the cooling tower because yeah we could have made ourselves feel good and sit in Washington and say yeah we're going to punish the North Koreans you tell me how tell me how we're gonna do it was too late it was too late no military option not even I don't think anybody really believes that there was a serious military option against North Korea with North Korean artillery able to to bring a tremendous damage to Seoul within a matter of minutes okay so tell me is a layman and this is one of those rare questions when I'm not trying to I actually want to know the answer actually that's not as rare as aim so I'm in your undergraduate class here's what happened in North Korea they tested a nuclear weapon right talks got held and they still have the nuclear weapon so how do i how do I know that things are better how do you judge what's the alternative history that might have happened they all demonstrate the reality alternative history is that we have a crisis with our South Korean alive for instance over North Korea that instead of finding a way to actually cooperate with the Chinese about North Korea we find ourselves in a crisis with China or we find ourselves in a situation in which we actually have no knowledge of what's going on in the North Korean program on the ground I was struck Peter by the fact that if you ask the intelligence agencies prior to our getting on the ground through the six-party talks what's going on in the North Korean nuclear program they really knew nothing the only way to penetrate that opaque closed society was to actually get people on the ground and much of what we learned about the troubling developments on the highly enriched uranium side we learned because the diplomacy had actually gotten inspectors on the ground who were to put it as one newspaper article put it crawling all over the North Korean nuclear program so even if you don't minimum we've got extremely valuable in firmly you know what's going on at a minimum you get information that you get no other way now we could sit in Washington and continue to say oh we're just going to we're not going to deal with them we're going to continue to sanction them which by the way we didn't remove our real sanctions against North Koreans they remain the most sanctioned regime in the whole world but what we did do was take the opportunity to get on the ground improve our knowledge slow some of the aspects of their program and for that we gave up some fuel oil that was it okay Iran the Bush Doctrine in Iran the Bush Doctrine as far as I can tell it was only used by a person in the administration once the thief oh you're wrong okay so the Bush Doctrine I don't I don't think President Bush much like the notion of doctrine so anyway the idea is that we go into Iraq and we say to the world anybody who wishes a serious harm we reserve the right to do you harm first and Dick Cheney did say in June 2003 if they're quote I'm quoting him if there's anyone in the world today who doubts the seriousness of the Bush Doctrine I would urge that person to consider the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq close quote okay by 2005 we know beyond doubt and in detail that Iran is supporting bad guys in Iraq and in Afghanistan who are killing our troops and yet that's the year in which we choose to open negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program and Steve Hayes I'm quoting him again because Steve throws punches quote this decision represented an abandonment of the Bush Doctrine close quote oh you know look I Steve Hays is a great writer but Steve Hays wasn't a policymaker with responsibility for trying to make something happen and that's the difference the fact is if you're dealing with the Iranian so clear with me you know I'm a jab remember the time you do is try to because all right but if you are trying to actually get a handle on the Iranian nuclear program if you're actually trying to get not just US sanctions Iran heavily sanctioned by the United States but actually trying to get multilateral sanctions and I don't mean by the way through the UN I mean to get the Europeans for instance to go along with sanctions if you're trying to establish that if Iran misbehaves then the world will in fact sanction Iran then you aren't going to do that by sitting in your corner and saying well we'll just carry out our policy the way we want to carry out our policy and the rest of you do what you want to do what we did was to say and it garnered support from the international community particularly from the Europeans was to say alright we'll make the Iranians a deal suspend your nuclear program suspend your enrichment and reprocessing and we'll negotiate the Iranians actually never suspended their program and so we didn't negotiate but we did get rounds of sanctions at the UN we did get what is now continuing and accelerating financial institutions leaving Iran companies leaving Iran the Europeans Lovering their own sanctions we don't get that without an offer to negotiate which by the way if the Iranians had taken it up and they had suspended their program we would have been in very good shape so what is it that we gave up and one other thing about the Iranians we did something else that sometimes not noted President Bush said if we catch Iranians in Iraq any of your agents in Iraq passing technology that might threaten our troops or do we they are subject to capture or kill and we picked up the deputy cuts Force Commander and we took him up to Erbil and we let it be known that he was up there and he was singing like a little bird and it's amazing the degree to which the Iranians started to pull in their horns because they believed that their operations were being compromised so in addition to making the Iranians an offer that frankly I wish they had taken we were also and it cost us very and the cost is nothing we were in the process of making life pretty miserable for the Iranians inside the rock all right so you and President Bush start talking with the Iranians in 2005 just did we never talked with the Iranians about their nuclear program what we did do was to allow a couple of meetings at the level of ambassador to say to the Iranians here's what you're doing knock it off or here are the consequences that was the extent of the conversations between Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterparts all right so engagement even if only at a very low level begins in 2005 and here we are at 2012 we're taping this in early February late last month the New York Times ran a heavily reported piece entitled will Israel attack Iran in which accorded Israeli official after official after official including the Defense Minister a hood Barack former Prime Minister someone you know well and have dealt with repeatedly and they say this is now a question of months and they seem to be implying that it's a single-digit number of months before Iran passes the point of I don't know what to call it the point the point at which that North Korea had passed by the time you made the decision to deal with North Korea as you did that is to say they acquire a nuclear weapon does this mean that all of that diplomacy failed again how do we that was still knowing what you know now that was still the best course for the bush and the Obama administration's to pursue well I think you always want to try to make the diplomacy work before you countenance a military action with Iran which has enormous potential for unintended consequences throughout the region and you don't just use military force as a people say it should be a last resort I've never said that but it certainly isn't the first resort you try other things I do think the Iranians are pretty isolated I think that regime is in pretty deep trouble internally you see I I don't know but I suspect that a lot of these assassinations and killings are actually internal Iraqi Iranian politics and so they're in a worse position now but it may well be and President Bush always said the American president should keep his option for military strike on the table and it may well be that the time is approaching when that's going to be a necessity all right let me ask you you've just I feel a little like Chris Matthews although that wasn't a thrill exactly it was more of a chill that's rough for a former Secretary of State to say a little bit of game theory here we know that in Congress completely different matter but similar in some ways in Congress deals get done at the last moment Yeah right correct is that likely to be the case in diplomacy are the Israelis in talking to the reporter for the New York Times is this the kind of thing where years of slow-moving sanctions suddenly get serious what what is like well I think the sanctions have been getting progressively more serious I think there's actually more that the Obama administration could do they should just sanction the central bank and remember any time the United States does something like that it makes it impossible for any other financial institution to deal with the Iranians because so many capital flows goes well exactly well because because you then cannot do business with the United States on it and so you choose between your Iranian business and your net US business that's not a fair fight but I do think that the Iranians will now say they want to talk they will say they want a deal but at this point we've got them in a corner at this point I think the military option is becoming more likely and at this point the only deal that you take with the Iranians is total suspension for for good the military option you're talking about an attack by Israel or do you suppose that the Obama administration might countenance an American attack direct participation I'm not in the the council's here as they discuss this let me be the first to say the Israelis are not going to ask permission and we should understood that nor should they all right segment three the Mideast in no higher honor you describe a conversation that you had with President Bush before accepting his appointment as Secretary of State which I sort of liked the idea that you negotiated with him a little bit before you accept the appointment let me quote you condi secretary rice quote the one substantive issue that was on my mind was the Mideast mr. president we need to get an agreement and establish a Palestinian state you said and the president of the United States replied quote we'll get it done close quote now in the fascinating account that follows at to me a surprising number of points you write about what is in his in essence your own education this was the first time I discovered that the Arabs believed this this was the first time I discover for example you arranged for the 2007 and appleís conference and you write in no higher honor after years of quote begging for a peace conference the arab suddenly had all kinds of reservations worries and demands close quote so the first question here is excuse me I have to include one it you also write about a meeting that you had with a hood Olmert who was then the Prime Minister of Israel who presented to you a proposal that you write about again in no higher honor you call it remarkable and extraordinary he's ready to offer the Palestinians 94% of the West Bank make up for the remaining 6% with land swaps permit them to establish a capital in East Jerusalem and Palestinian Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to entertain the offer well yeah so we didn't get a Palestinian I have to say I think they wish they'd taken the offer do they real oh yeah my wish didn't there what is the psychology the psychology it strikes one is sheer perversity well unfortunately I've said to Peter this is a it seems to be one of the unluckiest processes in the world by the time over it makes the alt offer unfortunately he's in political trouble he's in legal trouble in Israel as a result of the corruption charges yes and we tried to present Bush tried I tried to prevail upon Abbas and the Palestinians to say you have an Israeli Prime Minister on record as being willing to give you a capital in Jerusalem you may never see that day again I don't care if he's in trouble take it I think there were actually Israelis who were telling them you'll get a better deal if you wait until the elections are over remember also that we were close to an election in the United States they may well have thought well we'll have a Democratic administration maybe they'll be willing it was sheer folly it was a terrible mistake Abbas himself has said these were these were highly intelligent people on the Arab side yes who knew what they were dealing doing wanted a deal but made series of specific miscalculation I think that's that's all it's not a kind of sheer boneheaded Mis or perverse oh no no it's not although I did say to President Abbas who I personally like like that I said you know you should have taken the deal in 48 you should have taken the deal in 67 you should have taken the deal in 2000 now take the deal because every time you don't take the deal your state gets smaller and the frustration actually was yes with the Palestinians but the truth of the matter is we left this entire negotiating record for the Obama administration and they decided that they didn't want to continue on that path they wanted to start over they wanted to insist that the Israelis have a settlement freeze no Israeli Prime Minister I don't care where he or she is on the political spectrum and can't agree to a settlement freeze and once the Americans wanted a settlement freeze now a boss can't be less Palestinian than the Americans and this whole thing then goes off and we're in worse shape now than we've been in the israeli-palestinian issue for maybe a couple of decades okay so here's a layman's response read all of this it's absolutely fascinating but this book belongs on a shelf with George Shultz's book Henry Kissinger's couple of volumes the amount of intelligence treasure American prestige that we have invested in attempting to achieve some kind of settlement in the Middle East isn't it the case that when it comes right down to it we've got a workable peace and it's insured by the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States Sixth Fleet why not just leave it alone for a decade well because in the long run I don't think it's sustainable it's not sustainable for demographic reasons it's not sustainable because Israelis and Palestinians shouldn't have to live that way now I was I watched so many times the rocket fire coming out of Gaza and Israeli citizens scrambling into into bomb shelter I watched so many times innocent Palestinians with women dying in childbirth or children dying because they can't cross a checkpoint that takes too long now people shouldn't have to live that way and there are I think still very strong reasons for the for a two-state solution but you're right that it's not going to happen because the United States wants it it's only going to happen because the Israelis and the Palestinians finally come to an agreement and the sad thing is many people blame the Israelis I have to say I think that it's been the Palestinians who've more often walked away from deals than these rings I want to talk about the Arab Spring in a moment from the point of view of the future of the Arab world but the immediate effect again I put this this is an assertion in the form of a question the immediate effect of the Arab Spring is to replace Mubarak a regime for which no one shed tears but that more or less abided by the Camp David peace agreement and kept the Sinai out of play in a military sense to replace Mubarak with a new regime it's now emerging the Muslim Brotherhood is powerful the Egyptian army is powerful whatever is the case it's less certain and now that long border of the Sinai becomes a military problem doesn't it hasn't the immediate effect of the Arab Spring on Israel isn't it to complicate their situation enormously or am i though the immediate effect has certainly been to complicate the situation of the Middle East in general and Israel in particular yes but the assumption is that there was another option the problem is authoritarianism isn't stable in the long run and we tried through what came to be called the freedom agenda to get our friends to understand that they should start to reform before their people were in the streets that was the idea between the Cairo speech that I gave in in 2005 it was my conversation with the BART before your people in the streets give them reforms allow them to have a voice don't make the only strong political institutions in the country the Muslim Brotherhood because they cannot they can operate and organize in the radical mosque and the radical madrasas while you hound decent political forces out of the public square don't allow this freedom gap to produce even more radical forces and the president of Egypt replied you don't know my country my people don't like foreign interference and they need a strong hand it's me or the Muslim Brotherhood and then he engaged in policies that made it so and it's too bad because as you say Mubarak did a lot of good things Ben Ali did a lot of good things but these authoritarian regimes are not stable in the modern world where either people are going to be given a chance to exercise their rights or they're going to take the right special case authoritarian regime close ally of the United States the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia we know has been funding madrasahs if you had to say what is the financial source most directly responsible for the rise of radical Islam it would be Saudi Arabia and yet we know that perhaps one of the most successful diplomats in Washington in the last half century was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia we know that the Bush family in particular felt a certain closeness to Prince Bandar and to the Saudi royal family and there is that photograph of the south President Bush on the Truman balcony I think it's called a couple of days after September 11th having a chat with Prince Bandar I don't get it why are those folks still our alum well why can't we get them to knock off the misbehave which has been going on for decades well others like complicate write it it's complete the United States isn't an NGO right so sometimes we have to deal with regimes right with which we don't actually share values but we might share interest but Saudi Arabia is an interesting tell because you are absolutely right prior to 9/11 the Saudis made account of the house Assad made a kind of Faustian bargain after the 1979 78 79 events in Iran right they saw the power of religion there and so they kind of made a deal all right the politics will be ours and the Alima are the religious groups the religious clerics will have control of religious thought and sulfur and this kind of philosophy WOB ism which is the most extreme form of Islam they allowed to be exported the madrasahs were built wasn't always the government of Saudi Arabia it was very often wealthy families who were exporting this and then it came back to haunt them because it turns out that al Qaeda which is then born of that atmosphere al Qaeda is great a hope was to overthrow what they considered the corrupt regime of the House of Saud by driving the United States out of the Middle East and so all of a sudden this Faustian bargain comes back to haunt them and I can tell you that when there's an attack on the kingdom in May of 2003 in Riyadh they suddenly realize what has happened to them and Saudi Arabia then becomes a pretty fierce fighter in the war on terrorism I think any terrorism expert anybody who was actually trying to do this will tell you the Saudis became pretty good at the counterterrorism and acceptable to us I will trade them I would say indispensable to us now the regime still needs to make reforms the king I think is actually within his own very conservative context a kind of reformer he's someone who receives women who's someone who's actually said women will one day have the right to vote I know this sounds pretty oh no I'm but this is a very gaudy range I can remember your mentioning this I can remember that you got to wear a magnificent dress when you all the way down to your ankles as I recall you so this is the king of Saudi Arabia saying well women will vote and receiving women to hear their views and building a university that is going to be a technical university not a university given over to just religious thought so in his own context he's something of a reformer the problem is he's 88 years old or whatever he is I don't think that there are particularly good options after he dies and one has to worry then about the future of Saudi Arabia I would hope that these monarchies not just in Saudi Arabia but in Jordan in Morocco would find a way to become more constitutional monarchies give real authority to the parliaments they actually are pretty popular these monarchs but you could so you've got a message for them but you also have a message for us which is the world beyond our shores is a remarkably difficult and nasty place and it's so difficult and so nasty that one of our best friends an indispensable ally is this strangely medieval rich with petrodollar Kingdom of Saudi Arabia yes but I would also say to us the reason the United States has been so important to the international to the international system is that we have always been willing to deal with the world as it is right but we've had a very strong vision of the world as it ought to be great powers that want to imprint a set of values on the international system great powers that have a view of how human history ought to unfold those are the great powers that ultimately really matter in the United States particularly since world war ii has had a view that as democracy spreads as freedom spreads even if it's in the short-term difficult in the long term it's going to be so much better and my concern as I sit here in 2012 is that the United States doesn't have an option to go to the sidelines and say alright we're done with that work of trying to make the world as it should be not just as it is because one of two things will happen either there will be chaos or somebody else will take up that work and the British Empire collapsed they had us to hand it over to that's right we have no one to handle no and the most likely outcome is that the next major imprint err on the international system is somebody who doesn't believe in a balance of power that favors freedom and that would be very bad for us alright let me get to a couple of those likely successors should we choose to let them succeed as segments for Russia and China Russia first you're a Russian expert you speak the language you devoted your early academic life to the study of this country you made it your professional calling in the White House during the first the administration of the first president Bush 1991 you're in the White House in 1991 when the Soviet Union ceases to exist and Boris Yeltsin a democratically elected president arranges quickly to spread democracy through the Russian Federation for the first time in a thousand years of Russian history democracy suddenly blossoms and the economy contracts and alcoholism shoots up and living standards shrink what went wrong well I'm not really sure that one can call what happened democracy you know we have to remember when totalitarians fall tyranny has ended freedom breaks up but democracy is not the same thing as freedom democracy is the institutionalization of freedom democracy is the building of rule of law the reliable institutions that people can actually depend on to defend their freedom private property independent property independent judiciary property rights that are considered to be actually equal instance of access what happened I think in Russia was unfortunately first of all is the privatization of a lot of Russian assets into people's pockets who became many of them the oligarchs there was a breakdown of state institutions and Vladimir Putin is a direct result of that because I used to go to Russia a lot after I left the government in 92 93 94 and you would go and we were trumpeting and heralding the new democracy in Russia the great freedoms in Russia and you would go and the Russian people were feeling humiliation deprivation and chaos there were drive-by shootings I actually wanted a strong they need it they believed they needed something to end Putin comes to power in 99 and he says I will give you stability I will give you respect and I will give you prosperity and two out of three FS and for a while he does and then of course he moves from being arrogant to megalomaniacal but in the meantime the Russians do get a sense of stability they get more personal freedoms than in any other time in their history but that institutionalization of freedom the rule of law the independent judiciary the independent press all of that is run over by Vladimir Putin and his drive to bring order well okay so so how bad is he really if you've got a thousand years of authoritarianism and 70 years of totalitarianism Putin comes along the situation is chaotic here II asserts strongman government but even if it's only pro forma even it's if it's only in a kind of silly observance of the letter of the constitution he does step down from the presidency at the end of his two terms big deal yes it is but then he undid it and by the way angered the Russian people you see the Russian people I think had actually begun to believe that maybe something to these democratic institutions that work out it's my work out I would I first went Peter when I first went to Russia in 1979 to the language training Russians wouldn't look you in the eye they looked at their feet they were terrified of their government they were terrified of everything some several decades later this is a different Russia Russians travel they do speak out they're not so fearful okay so here are the large strategic problems that Russia faces over decades a rising China and pressure all along their southern tier from an energized and in some cases radical Islam same problems yes we face why can't we be friends well in in fact on most global issues we were kind of friends but the truth is that this notion that relations were so bad with the Russians in the Bush administration simply isn't true we had very good cooperation on North Korea we had excellent cooperation actually on terrorism the fact is Putin saw very early on that the al Qaeda fight could we could somehow cooperate if we could understand that he had a similar problem in the south and while we didn't want to be associated with the repression of Chechens the truth is that the Chechens were in pretty bad containers and so on terrorism we did very well on a number of issues we did very well nuclear proliferation we did very well the Russians helped us with the India civil nuclear lots of things when we ran into Russia Russia trouble with the Russians it was on two fronts democratization in Russia itself because Putin didn't like the notion that the ultimate answer to the end of terrorism was freedom and democracy that wasn't exactly alright and the other was whenever we dealt with the periphery are what they consider to be the former Soviet Union or the former Russian Empire so Georgia Ukraine that's when we are putting missile defense in Poland and so those lives it was theirs and how dare we encroach and we had a different view these were independent states they had a right to pick their friends they had a right to choose their military strategies etc so that's inherently Russian Russians are always going to feel proprietorial toward Georgia to the south and Poland to the west these Russians what these Russians so could there could that change is that a generation I have a sense that younger Russians don't for the most part don't have the same attachment but I'll tell you something one of the slightly disturbing things about what is currently going on in Russia where we're watching a challenge to putinism where we're watching Russians expressed that they really didn't like the fact that he stood up one day and said oh I think I'll be president again and oh by the way it'll be another 16 years before you get anybody else some of that opposition though is coming from pretty hardcore nationalist forces and it may well be that the first implication the first wave against putinism will not come from liberal democratic forces or as the russians call them right forces right-wing forces they have the reversed right spectrum but from these left forces nationalist Mother Russia communists and the like China I'm trying to find thumbs give you an opportunity to cheer us all up here in 2008 let's just I'll ask you about China through a passage in no higher honor 2008 you visited China after a massive earthquake I'll quote you we had to pass through a village on the way to the relocation camp it was right out of the 19th century just a few miles from the gleaming modern metropolis of Chengdu that's the problem I thought they've pulled more than 500 million people out of poverty but they have so many more to go and inequality is widening how does a Marxist government handle that close quote well how are they handling it not very well I would say because the Chinese government has based its legitimacy on prosperity its legitimacy based on press Baron and that's hard because eventually people's expectations start growing and it's a little bit tough to keep up with rising expectations and when they go to this 2012 Party Congress you have to think that there are people in those halls who are saying is this ultimately stable you starting to get anger against the people called the princelings these are the the grandchildren of the revolutionaries who now drive around in Ferraris you're getting people who are unhappy that their land is being confiscated by developers and you're actually having the overthrow of local communist officials as a result and there's got to be people saying and I think this is why when Joe bells started talking about well maybe we need political reform as well people who are saying you know before this prosperity our legitimacy based on prosperity runs out should we be looking at something else is there even a pathway to legitimacy based on consent without becoming Gorbachev mm-hmm because every communist leader ends with that phrase without becoming Gorbachev who tried to reform and the whole thing collapsed okay so China his story we've been talking about a thousand years of Russian history there's a lot more recognizably Chinese history but what you get is the broadly speaking over those many centuries a certain contentedness to be the Middle Kingdom it's not expansionist like when you start with a little duchy of kia and you end up with a country that stretches across two continents it's not expansionist in the same way it happened so okay so the question is this Chinese history that's not expansionist plus their internal problems do we get a pass with China are they going to be our ad I I don't think so because I tell it well there will be challenges first of all because I would I would say that Chinese foreign policy is mercantilist at this point which is just the wild search for resources in support of Chinese economic growth in Africa in Latin America you see the Chinese everywhere actually really well they're doing very well but ah but the Australians can defend themselves in since in Africa this has a different character where the Chinese are willing to deal with any old corrupt African regime and that's not doing very well for Africans who are actually starting to emerge from these corrupt regimes but I think the real question with China is it's not will they somehow overtake us I'm quite quite confident that China has a very very long way to go they are experiencing a lot of internal tensions and that they that any country that is as terrified of the internet as they are hacking into people's servers to find one last human rights advocate out in Shinzon that country isn't going to lead the knowledge-based revolution so I don't see that kind of challenge from China and I'm also confident that if we don't do something stupid in terms of our own military capability then we're going to be able to check China militarily or strategically the real question is how internally the United States deals with our own difficulties so that we're strong enough and confident enough and optimistic enough to continue to lead okay last segment then and now no higher honor in May 2011 the United States finally got bin Laden I felt a great sense of relief and pride as well as gratitude to President Obama for the bold decision to launch the raid that led to that killing and I felt vindication for putting into place many of the tools that had led to that day close quote now that one passage is worth pondering in my opinion first of all why did you feel relieved did bin Laden's still represent a threat or was it just a hanging unfinished piece of business well I think he represented the face of the soul of al Qaeda I all Qaeda is not today the organization that it wasn't September 11th I I've always felt that when we when we killed a lot of our captured or killed a lot of their field generals people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed which was like getting Rommel in the middle of the world that we really weakened that organization and every successive generation of leadership was not as good as the former and so they I'm quite sure weren't aren't capable of carrying out a 9/11 they can still get lucky they can still do swallow tax so it wasn't that we need it to get bin Laden for those reasons but al-qaeda the soul of al-qaeda has now died has now been killed and with the Arab Spring the sense that somehow al-qaeda had an answer to how to deal with these corrupt regimes is also made to a lie and so I the organization is now tremendously we could you touched on something that I want to make explicit back during the Cold War we placed all kinds of pressures on this there were proxy wars economic pressures diplomatic pressures in the war with radical Islam that began on September 11th 2001 we've killed a lot of people and there's no way around it that in your judgment was necessary absolutely alright that's the kind of thing undergraduates need to pay attention to because this wasn't even it's just to expound for my moment this wasn't a law enforcement action right this was a war I actually had this discussion with my undergraduates a couple weeks ago in class and we talked about the war terminology I think we can safely say you're the only former Secretary of State now teaching underground I said to them I said you know why why the war and they said what was it a metaphor I said no it said did you did you think about what they did they went after the financial center of the country they went after the military it's nerve center of the country they were going after either the White House or the Capitol a they tried to kill professor rice they tried to kill the government and the authority of the United States they went after the integrity of the state that's war this isn't just some criminal action so that's why when you think about killing their field generals it was very critical all right why was President Obama's decision bold part of this has to do with Pakistan doesn't it some of it has to do with Pakistan and also I'm quite sure that they were telling him well there's a pic of number fifty percent sixty percent chance that he's there there's a chance that this could go the way of the rescue effort in Iran which went so badly and and presidents are looking at when they are these presentations are made they're looking at every bad possibility and yet he said let's do it that's what presidents should do all right and now this point you make I felt vindication for putting into place many of the tools yes that day because those tools because he would not have had that opportunity for a bold decision if we had not had the information that we gleaned from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed through enhanced interrogation he would not have had the drones that were able to establish the whereabouts he would not have had the intelligence network and he would not have had the military and intelligence cooperation so thoroughly and completely integrated in the way that they were without the decisions that George W Bush took in 2001 all right former Attorney General Michael Mukasey your colleague on the Bush cabinet writing in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the raid that killed bin Laden quote but policies put in place by the very administration that presided over this splendid success that is the Obama administration promised fewer such successes in the future close quote so the question that cannot be avoided has Barack Obama the man who boldly sent in the special force to kill bin Laden made the United States safer or has he undone some of the important work of the Bush administration well I think he has actually kept in place most of the important work of the Bush administration did not still open Gitmo is still open and turns out it's very hard close it the surveillance programs of the Patriot Act or is still in program in in place I do think that there is a bit of a law enforcement mentality creeping back in but when you find that they are willing to use drones far more and to take out an American citizen by the way I'll walkie was a bad guy and it was the right thing to do but you know the same administration the Obama administration who said oh the terrible things that the Bush administration did in the name of the war on terrorism you know this is pretty far out there as a decision without quote due process or trial to blow away a terrorist from the sky and so actually I think they have sustained most of the programs but to the degree that a little bit of a law enforcement mentality starts to creep in like the very ill-fated decision to quote try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the city of New York one of the most ridiculous notions I think I've heard I took them about what 48 hours to go to back down but I think to the degree that that starts to creep in to the degree that you start to think that a terrorist is just like a suspect that you're going to mirandize and and give all that and then you start to get into trouble because it may not be al Qaeda to do another 9/11 but there will be a terrorist there is a terrorist threat out there and one day they might get lucky if you don't have sufficient information to stop them okay so we're in an election year presidential election year and it sounds to me as though I want to separate very sharply the direct defense of the nation from the question your moment you mentioned a moment ago when we were discussing China which is to say how we will behave handling our own domestic problems first the direct defense of the nation it sounds to me as though if Barack Obama were reelected next November that might not be your ideal outcome but you don't feel that the nation would be placed at threat during those four years well I think presidents of the United States tend to act in a certain way when the country's threatened but let me say this I think that the idea that somehow the United States doesn't have a special role in the world and somehow the United States is just like any country we're not really exceptional you know we're going to do everything through the UN you'll find that offensive I don't find it offensive because if you want to tell the American people they're not exceptional then tell them why they ought to continue to bear the burdens of international leadership why not just let somebody else do it I think leading from behind is an oxymoron and I do think that there is a sense out there somehow that the United States is not really respected these days we have it's one thing I said I don't like the North Koreans I'd rather that the North Korean regime were gone but yeah I actually have to try and get a handle on their nuclear program that's different than saying you know I'm going to engage the North Koreans or I might have to offer the Iranians to sit down and talk about their nuclear program if they're prepared to suspend but you know I'm not actually going to reach out a hand to friendship to the Iranians so that they can bite it off as they did President Obama and I'm not going to hug you or Travis at the first summit of the Americas with Lula and rebase standing there who actually are merrily friends really put themselves at risk to be friends at risk I'm going to know the difference between our friends and our foes I'm going to know that putting Israel in a position where we begin to question whether or not what they're doing is legal somehow in the international system in the building of settlements I'm not going to put that kind of distance between myself in the one true democracy in the Middle East okay I have only two more questions because frankly because I know that you have to get someplace else but here's here's the penultimate question for a former Secretary of State you sure like democracy I found myself thinking several times during our conversation that you're nothing at all like George Kennan whose writings throughout his extremely long career what was he 102 when he died but again and again you see him bristling that diplomacy isn't left to the Chanel's that the politicians keep coming in with they're huge oh fish feet and stamping on the delicate work of the professionals in Henry Kissinger who I think would have to rank among the great secretaries of state but again and again you get the feeling in the memoirs that all of this would have been easier if the Secretary of State had had a professional corps of aristocrats the way Bismarck did to handle the diplomacy for him and you know you don't seem to have even you've described that the difficulties that's achieving a settlement in the Middle East part of the problem you felt was that Israel had an election coming up and then we had analyte democracy got in the way you could have cut a deal maybe I get that few but yours you don't mind no because if I think about what democracy has led to in the long arc of history I think what anybody had believed a couple hundred years ago maybe a hundred years ago that France and Germany wouldn't actually fight again would anybody have believed that latin america which was supposedly given over to candido's you would actually have strong democracies like Brazil Colombia would anybody have believed that that even in places like Africa you would begin to have a demand that that people hold their governments accountable and I believe we're going to be saying that about the Middle East one day because yeah it's it's really kind of troubling right now what when you see a Hezbollah Muslim Brotherhood do you know ultimately if their electoral slogan is elect us and we'll make your kid's suicide bombers and impose Sharia law I don't think they're going to do so well and so I understand that the real gift are the real genius of democracy is that it gives men and women a way to resolve their differences peacefully and if they get too mad and too angry they can throw the bombs out peacefully and no other form of government provides that and therefore no other government form of government is ultimately stable last question Clare Boothe Luce diplomat congresswoman journalist playwright used to say that history would give even the greatest figures only one sentence Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and freed the slaves Churchill defeated Hitler what is the one sentence for george w bush that freedom is in inalienable right of every man woman and child and that we have to look to an tyranny Condoleezza Rice former Secretary of State Hoover Institution Fellow and teacher of undergraduates at Stanford University and the author most recently of no higher honor thank you very much thank you I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge thanks for joining us

Channel: Hoover Institution

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Keywords: HooverInstitutionUK, president, Condoleezza, 9/11, Iraq

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Length: 69min 43sec (4183 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2012

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Condoleezza Rice, senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University, discusses the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, her days as George Bush's national security adviser and secretary of state, and the current state of the world, including Israel, Iran, and China. "The real question is how internally the United States deals with our own difficulties so that we are strong enough and confident enough and optimistic enough to continue to lead."