Good evening everyone, can you hear me okay?
Welcome tonight it's great to see so many people here because I think it really
demonstrates just how the level of interest in foreign affairs is large,
especially since we're competing with super Tuesday.
And people are obviously quite passionate about the issues that we're going to talk
about tonight.
They're complex and they demand a serious discussion, and I think we join here
in this conversation in a time that to me feels particularly unsettling though,
I know obviously historically we've had far more dangerous and deadly times.
Still, as we watch the Middle East in free fall,
borders disappearing, state authority collapsing, massive death tolls and
overwhelming refugee crisis, humanitarian disasters,
really, I feel like our international order is quite tested.
And so I think, and also we are coming at a time on these issues
when I would say our national discourse on foreign policy is often impassioned,
but too often too hostile and too simplistic.
And so in the spirit of this year's open exchange initiative, we're gonna
focus tonight on the value of dialogue, and of talking with people with whom you
disagree, and certainly the three former diplomats that we have with us tonight,
have all had their share of those kinds of conversations in government.
>> And we all disagree with each other.
No, just kidding!
>> [LAUGH] Might help if you give a punchline, right?
And I'm sure you have those discussions also in the university, as well,
right among those disagreements.
But sometimes this interlocutor could've been a dictator with whom the US differed,
or maybe it was a friend.
And unfortunately, and this pains me as a reporter, believe me,
we are not going to be able to solve all those crises that I identified.
But I'm hoping that we can at least set as a goal an achievable goal
that we can come away equipped with a new way of talking about these issues, and
maybe offer some suggestions to the next U.S. president, whoever he or she may be.
So tonight, you all should have gotten your cards, did you get your cards?
So we're gonna start integrating those questions in a little bit.
So be thinking about what you wanna ask.
In the beginning I'm going to have sort of guided conversation here.
And first I would like to just, you've got the longer bios but, of course,
they need no introduction but let me just read a short introduction.
Immediately to my left, Condoleezza Rice, is the Denning Professor in
Global Business and the Economy at the Graduate School of Business.
The Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at
the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science.
From 2005 to 2009, Conde served as Secretary of State, and before that,
of course, as President George W Bush's National Security Advisor.
She was Standford's Provost here from '93 to '99, and
before that President George HW Bush's Chief Soviet Affairs Advisor on
the National Security Council.
Michael McFaul, a professor of political science, and director and
senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and
the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Michael served for five years in the Obama administration,
first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for
Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, and
then as U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.
Jeremy Weinstein is professor of political science and
a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogley Institute of International Studies.
Between 2013 and 2015 Jeremy served as deputy to the US Ambassador
to the United Nations.
And before as the Chief of Staff at the US mission to the UN and from 2009 to 11,
he served as the director for development and
democracy at the Whitehouse security Council Staff.
So, in the spirit of open exchange I want to start with a question everyone about
dialogue.
And as I mentioned in my intro all of you
have had to sit across the table from people with whom you deeply disagreed.
Conde I've seen you do this myself when we traveled, when I covered you in Egypt and
elsewhere.
Michael as US Embassador to Russia,
of course you've had your share of run ins with Vladimir Putin and Jeremy at the UN.
I can't imagine there ever was any dissent that you had to mediate there,
but whether it was peace keeping forces commitments, or whatever and
I wonder if you could just start on a personal note.
Because so often these things can go immediately wonking, it's my tendency, but
I want to start on a personal note about, a particularly difficult moment where
you had to use dialogue for diplomacy, and where you think it worked or
where you were disappointed it failed Conde do you wanna start?
>> Sure well I.
First of all Janine thanks for doing this and for your long service in the press.
Janine actually covered me when I was Secretary of State and
always did it with a deep interest in the issues, not just the moment of the day.
So I will give you the example of dealing with someone that Mike knows very well,
Sergei The Russian Foreign Minister.
Surrey and I were sort of natural debaters,
and when we were often in multilateral settings with the Europeans and
others, it made others a bit nervous that we were Natural debaters.
They wanted to kinda calm us down but
in fact I always found him a very good because I knew where he stood.
I believed he was a good diplomat on behalf of his country and
so I think we developed a relationship respect.
I won't say necessarily trust but I would say respect, and the one thing
that I learned about Sergei is if you were willing to actually listen closely.
Sometimes, there were cues as to where you might have an intersection,
because what you're looking for in diplomacy is places that you intersect.
You're looking for that one little overlap that might seem.
It might seem that your interests are this far apart but you're looking for
that one little place that they overlap, and I remember we were discussing
the Iranian situation and we were talking about the Iranian nuclear program.
The Russians had been building a nuclear reactor in Iran called Busheer.
And we had the idea that the United States had the idea that we
would be better off if the Iranians got their fuel from someone else.
Or perhaps the fuel was reprocessed in Iran but taken back to another country.
And And the surrogate said, well that's exactly what we're proposing to do.
But you've been against our reactor and you're always speaking out against
the reactor, and I said, are you saying that if we support
it that reactor, you might be willing to go along with what and he said, well yes.
I don't think he really expected me to then deliver on the deal but I did.
And for me that was just an example that if you listen to
the other person, we have a tendency as Americans to always talk first and
listen less, and I found in diplomacy that just listening for
that moment of overlap was extremely important to dialogue.
>> So do you,
we already talked about Russia but that's the case I know the best.
>> [LAUGH] I'll say.
>> I have two cases, all right?
Russia and Kurdistan and they're both disappointments, not instances of success.
Because sometimes you can negotiate and listen and not achieve an outcome.
And I think that's an important thing to understand about diplomacy.
For me without question the greatest disappointment in diplomacy was our
engagement with first Medvedev, President Medvedev, and then President Putin.
On Arab Spring, Syria and ultimately demonstrations in Russia.
And what happened was, it was two very different kinds of conversations.
With President Medvedev, and I wanna be clear about this,
the interlocutor in these meetings is President Obama, I'm with him.
I'm gonna get to the other one, where I was across the table from a dictator and
felt really bad about it.
Actually I felt bad about being across the table from Putin from time to time too.
But what we learn, to make a long story short,
is that Medvedev actually had a different theory of the world than Putin did.
When we talked about the Arab spring in the spring of 2011 with Medvedev,
he said to our interlocutors, the president, and the vice president,
particular two meetings I remember vividly.
These regimes have to change.
We understand that they can't last forever, what they've been doing.
That was interesting, I mean, to listen to him and to listen back.
We heard glimpses that we might be able to cooperate.
And dramatically, we did cooperate for a while.
Most memorably, we got two Security Council resolutions about Libya through.
They abstained, but that was a vote that they were with us on that.
Several months later, we went back to Russia,
actually it was Los Cabos, of all weird places, to meet Putin.
He was 45 minutes late, by the way, to the meeting with the President.
And we had a big discussion about regime change and opposition mobilization.
And it went on for about two hours actually, mostly about Syria, but
not only, also about Russia.
And the president said, look, he likes that word by the way.
Look, we didn't start any of this,
these are people in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Syria, and
in your own country, mobilizing because they want a different world.
Now we have a choice, Vladimir.
I think he called him Vladimir.
Whether we just sit back and let this become revolutionary violent change, or
do we try to get in front of it and edge it in a peaceful evolutionary change.
That was Obama's theory about how do we react to these events.
Putin had a different theory of international relations.
Putin has a theory that the United States goes around the world using covert and
overt power to overthrow regimes we don't like.
By the way, there's a lot of empirical data that supports that hypothesis about
American foreign policy.
If you look at it over the course of 70 years,
100 years, come take my course, we talk about it.
When the president in a very pointed moment said,
we're not seeking to overthrow your regime Mr President.
And I was an ambassador at the time and
Mike here was not sent by me to foment regime change against you.
>> Putin never believed that by the way.
>> And he never [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH] >> But
he wouldn't, no matter how much we argued about Syria or Russia,
we never came to an agreement about how to deal with those problems.
And so Obama's a really good listener.
And yet on this particular issue, and Syria's the most troubling to me because
of the disaster there that was a consequence of it.
We could not come to an agreement about how to move forward.
Last smaller story, there was a guy named President Bakiyev from Kyrgyzstan.
You've never heard of him, but he was a real thuggish dictator.
Maybe you dealt with him Condi, you did, okay.
So right before I joined the government, as an academic here,
I wrote an article called The False Promise of Autocratic Stability,
where I went through history and talked about different
dictators that were allies of the United States in the short run, but
in the long run turned out to be not very good partners for us.
And about a year after I published that,
I found myself in Bishkek sitting across the table from President Bakiyev,
begging him to keep open our air base there, Manaz airbase, which you know well.
Eating goat's eyes, by the way, in the process.
That was part of the tradition you had to do to show respect.
And it felt horrible, the goats [LAUGH],
I don't recommend the eyes, that didn't taste that well either.
But I was there just contradicting what I'd just written a year before.
And feeling like, this is our policy, right?
And I didn't get to make the policy,
my job was to be the diplomat to implement it.
And it left me with this terrible feeling because
I was doing exactly the opposite of what I'd written about just a year ago.
But that's part of negotiations because in the short run we got what we wanted,
a vital base to our operations in Afghanistan.
And at the end of the day that trade-off was an important one for us.
Because at the end of the day we had made a determination,
which I supported at the time, that we needed that in the short run.
And part of doing diplomacy sometimes is sitting down with bad guys and
eating eyes of goats in the name of the national interest.
>> [LAUGH] >> Jeremy did you ever have to
eat eyes of goats?
>> I was gonna say no goat eyes at the UN, although a variety of dishes of course.
I wanted to also give two examples on this front,
one more successful and one where we ran into some struggles.
Let me start with the success.
And here, while both have talked about the importance of listening,
I want to underscore the importance of pressing, and
pressing in respectful and responsible ways.
I'm going to take an issue that, we worked Iran, we worked Syria,
we worked this range of issues at the United Nations.
But I want to surface something that doesn't get much of the headlines,
which is the push for the rights of LGBT peoples around the world.
One of the reasons that we have the UN system and a set of charters,
and treaties, and the body of the general assembly to surface the challenges that we
face around the world, is so we can push to expand the normative commitments
around human rights, civil liberties, and political liberties.
Although our coming to terms with LGBT rights as a country is something that
has taken a very long time.
I think the President's view over the course of this administration was
just because it took us a long time in the United States doesn't mean we shouldn't be
looking for ways to advance LGBT rights around the world.
And to push back against the violence and repression in the LGBT people
are on the receiving end of in countries around the globe.
This is a tough issue, a hugely tough issue, not only for our own domestic
politics, but you can imagine for the politics of countries around the world,
especially in the African region where I'm a scholarly expert.
Where you have laws on the books banning homosexual acts and
holding people accountable with the death penalty in many places.
But the President went to the United Nations in 2011, was the first head of
state to declare a right of people to love whoever they want in a speech to the UN.
And we began to look for these little bureaucratic ways.
These are the things that one really celebrates inside their government when
you can make progress to get the UN Human Rights Council to
pass the first resolution on LGBT rights.
To get a regular report to the UN Human Rights Council
about attacks on LGBT people around the world.
To have the first ever Security Council meeting on the threat posed by ISIL to
LGBT communities in Iraq and Syria, which was something that happened last August.
But it was a very micro example of this sort of debate where
the diplomacy really came to the fore.
We had been pushing since the moment that Samantha Power and
I arrived in New York to get the UN to treat its same-sex couples with the same
benefits as any other couple in the UN system.
Why? This is the UN,
it's our highest expression of our aspirations in terms of human rights
around the world.
And Bon Key Moon,
realizing that this was going to bring about tremendous pressure on him,
made the very courageous decision to move forward and set in place a new policy.
But Mike's friend,
the Russians, came back at us about six months after this policy was in place.
And began to mobilize the general assembly to strip these new provisions.
To strip these new benefits that had been provided to same sex couples
around the world.
And in some sense, we thought from the outset
that we were going to be destroyed on this front, right?
Given the anti LGBT sentiment around the world,
that there was no chance that we were going to be able to
preserve this very important achievement that we had obtained in the UN system.
And so, what we did was draw on the personal relationships
of our entire foreign policy apparatus from our ambassadors
to our assistant secretaries of the state department, to our teams inside New York.
And mobilized a diplomatic campaign.
With every country in the world to minimize the number of votes that
the Russians could actually organize to strip this provision
that Bon Key Moon had so courageously put in place.
And what was central, I think, was that we were guided by principle, but
that we recognize the complexity of this decision for
each of the countries that we were engaging.
And in some cases we need to give them reasons to be for
our view even if they couldn't embrace wholeheartedly
the notion of protecting the human rights of LGBT people.
So for example,
one thing that gave many of the diplomats who may have been quietly aligned with us,
but knew that this was difficult for their own governments a safe space to go
was the importance of preserving the authority of the secretary general.
Something that many countries around the world care a great deal about.
Because they're interested in ensuring that the secretary general has some
autonomy from the p5 and so you have to find the arguments that work, but
importantly you have to draw on the personal relationships.
This couldn't have been a cold call, it was very difficult call to make.
And we had to put it in context with people, but ultimately we managed to hold
the Russians off and sustain something that I think is a really important part
of this administrations commitment to promoting LGBT rights around the world.
The second thing I want to say, and I'll just say it super quickly which is that
Janine started with disagreements that we might have with adversaries and dictators.
Often our toughest disagreements inside the US government.
I think that's an important thing that I think both Condie and Mike can speak to.
You've got a ton of well-meaning people.
Around the table with tremendous uncertainty about the likely returns
on any policy option, and Mike and I experienced this I think a lot
between 2009 and 2011 in particular as we grappled with the instability
unleashed by the Arab spring, but finding ways to disagree respectfully.
Finding ways to hear to view points of others to challenge them,
to think about what kinds of empirical evidence you can bring to the table,
what kinds of lived experience you can bring to the table, putting yourself in
the shoes of different agencies that have a seat at the decision-making table,
whether it's the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the Department of Defense or
the intelligence community.
These are all entirely different perspectives on this set of issues
that we have to confront around the decision making table.
And the best way that one wants to be remembered coming out of government is
someone who fought hard for
the set of beliefs that you have about the right policy.
But ultimately, someone who was respected by everyone.
In that contest and in that battle and
I think not everyone achieves that coming out of government.
But disagreeing inside government and figuring out how to do it effectively
I think is one of the keys to making our foreign policy process work.
>> And I wanna come back to those internal deliberations because obviously you all
have a lot to say about that.
And I know Jeremy you've got some interesting ideas about how
universities like Standford can make those kinds of deliberations more constructive.
But I wanna pick up on what you said about,
really you were talking there about empathy, I think, and
in terms of what happens putting yourself in someone else's shoes?
What happens when empathy bucks up against national interest or perhaps politics?
And what I wanna talk about is the refugee crisis that we're witnessing right now
that for many in this room, it will be the greatest in your lifetimes.
This is, I mean, I don't know how to call this anything but
an epic fail of the international community.
Maybe you wanna disagree with me on this and
I think it relates to Syria which we'll talk about Syria and
the mideast obviously, but when it comes to the refugee crisis.
And maybe there's some parallel on how we talk about immigration in this country.
How do we talk about this?
How do we resolve it?
It touches our, Russia obviously.
I mean, this is one where we have to do a little bit bit about the policy.
But I'm also interested in how we talk about the refugees.
And can we find a way to talk about a more constructive way.
I don't know who wants to talk about this first, maybe.
>> Thanks. >> Condie?
>> Once a refugee crisis has gotten to this magnitude,
it is extremely difficult to resolve.
And I don't think we get anywhere by vilifying
people on different sides of how to resolve it.
This is a hard issue.
I think Aunkle Merkel for
whom I have enormous respect, I think she's one of the great leaders.
She did the right thing from the point of view of empathy and
I think from the point of view of her beliefs about Germany's
historical responsibility given Germany's past.
But it was done without, really,
an understanding of how they were gonna manage the problem.
And systems do get overwhelmed.
I ran refugee policy as Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State is in charge of refugee policy for the United States.
The United States is the most generous recipient of refugees in the world.
We always take more refugees than most places in the world,
than any place in the world, on a systematic basis.
The only report that the Secretary of State has to give to the Congress in
person is the report on refugee numbers that we're going to receive every year.
And we have some wonderful congressional supporters of refugee policy.
Ted Kennedy was a lion in this regard.
Zoe Lundgren from right down the street here, a lioness in this regard.
But, I would go and I would report how many refugees are we gonna take worldwide.
The largest number we ever took worldwide in my four years as secretary was 7,500,
worldwide.
And that's because our system of refugee settlement
is not one that leaves people in camps for extended period of time.
Janine you and
I have seen some of the worst refugee camps in the world and just leaving
people in refugee camps is really one of the saddest existences you can imagine.
So, the United States has had a policy of relocating people into communities.
It relies on an infrastructure of non governmental organizations often
faith based institutions, often cultural institutions that will take people.
One of the first jobs I had when I came back from studying Russian language in
the Soviet Union was helping Russian emigres relocate in Denver.
Because Denver had a very active Jewish community center.
And it would take these families it would for
two help people get jobs help people get language training.
Help the kids in school, help them deal with medical problems mind
vocabulary about medical problems in Russian is endless.
Because that's what I helped people with most of the time.
And then they would be relocated into the community.
That's how our system works.
It's not possible to suddenly take a huge infusion of refugees and
make that system work.
And so I thought the Problem with saying we're gonna take 10,000 more refugees,
which I would support just on humanitarian grounds,
is to imply that we could do it within the current system.
Rather say, we're going to do that, but here are some of the ways we're going to
have to look differently at how we receive refugees.
Because the truth of the matter is, after Paris, after Cologne,
people were scared, and you can't simply say, don't be scared.
You have to say, here's why you shouldn't be scared.
Here's what we're doing to make sure that people are properly vetted,
here's what we're doing to relocate people.
So I think the refugee issue is a very hard one.
It doesn't help to vilify people on different sides of it, and
once it got to this level we have an almost irresolvable problem.
It should had never gotten to this level.
We really need to find a way even today for
Syrians to feel safe in their country or
in places like Jordan or Turkey or other places.
I have favored a safe-zone for them, a no-fly zone for them, so
that they can stay in place.
Because large numbers of migrants on the move
easily overwhelms systems and you simply can't ignore that fact.
Even though I'm a very firm believer that the United States
has a moral obligation to take people, let's remember that we have to
have a way to take them that is actually gonna work within our system.
>> We can't do more than 10,000, Condi?
>> As I said, Janine, not the way that we relocate refugees.
We relocate refugees in communities.
We use faith-based and non-governmental institutions.
We don't have a large US government refugee apparatus, we don't.
So if you wanna keep the system, which I do think works, maybe you could
give more resources to larger number of NGOs and
faith-based people and try to mobilize our system.
But you'd have to do that.
You can't just overwhelm the system that's there.
>> Jeremy, Condi says the system works.
Does it work?
>> First of all, Condi's absolutely right that
the refugee resettlement program is one of the most extraordinary contributions that
the United States has made historically.
It was founded in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s we were resettling up to
200,000 people a year through that program.
Then after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s,
it was about 100,000 per year, 125,000, and then it has shrunk over time.
And that means that grappling with a refugee crisis of absolutely historic
proportions is difficult to do with the architecture that we have.
I lived these debates inside the West Wing
over the summer before the refugee crisis had really taken off.
When we were trying to figure out what the refugee quotas would be and
how to address the needs, in particular of the Syrian refugees.
But the truth of the matter is that our politics make addressing this, so
we have bureaucratic challenge and then we have a political challenge.
The political challenge is that the refugee architecture that we've built
depends upon congressional funding.
And what that means is that growing the account,
the resources that we use to support refugee resettlement in the United States,
means getting support from Congress to do so.
And in the absence of that, you're forced into the kinds of extraordinary
trade-offs that I'm sure Condi had to face on a regular basis, where you're choosing
between one need and another need with very limited funds on the table.
In the case of refugee resettlement,
that means resettling one family in the United States or
financing hundreds of people living in a refugee camp in Kenya, or in Chad, or
wherever it might be because it's all coming from the same pool of funds.
For me, the big takeaway is this is a moment where we have to take a fresh look
at our refugee resettlement architecture.
The problem that we have is not going away.
The problem that we have is going to be with us for decades, and
we have a humanitarian architecture that simply isn't up to the task.
But we are gonna need a bipartisan consensus about how to do that.
>> But Jeremy, I actually think, just to follow up on this, I actually think you
could get that consensus, but you have to start with the line that you uttered.
We need to rethink the architecture.
The architecture as it exists now can't handle what we're looking at.
And so, I think if you start with the premise that we
all want to resettle people.
Because Angelina Jolie is actually the UN refugee ambassador,
and she is amazing in that role.
I mean, she knows the issues.
She works hard at it.
She's not one of those celebrities who just kinda shows up once in a while.
She really works the issue.
It's the saddest thing in the world to see refugees.
They are stateless people.
Often, you lose whole generations of people.
One of the saddest places I was ever was the Darfur refugee camps outside of Sudan,
where women who simply went to get water would be raped, sometimes,
by UN peacekeepers.
Refuge life is very, very sad.
So you want to be able to relocate people in ways that they can continue their
lives, but it does require a rethinking of our architecture.
75,000 plus 10,000 more, we couldn't take it.
And so, I think the conversation had to start, let's figure out how
to reform our architecture to make it more responsive to the current problem.
>> Michael, a few thoughts?
>> Just a couple of thoughts.
It's not just that,
I wanna add another political dimension, which is, I agree with both.
We need to reform the architecture of our refugee program and
then sell it to Capitol Hill.
We also have to have a more empirically-based
conversation about the nature of the threat that comes with this, right?
So I think 10,000 is a pathetic number compared to the other countries there.
And I also agree with my colleagues who know more,
to do more than that requires a new system.
And we also have to talk about the threat that comes from expanding that.
Cuz let's be honest,
the debate we're having right now has nothing to do with the facts.
I'm not an expert on terrorism, right?
So I used this thing called Google, I looked it up.
>> [LAUGH] >> And
I'm gonna cite a Harvard colleague of ours that says the annual risk of
an American of being killed by a terrorist right now is 1 in 3.5 million.
Now, Americans are more likely to die of an accident in a bathtub,
three times more likely to die in a bathtub, or by a deer, or
by a home appliance, or by lightning.
But nobody's talking that way.
We don't talk that way.
We all talk about the one time and
that's gonna come in because our system doesn't work.
So, and that's unpopular to say those kinds of things.
And I understand the one time is tragic.
But we're not having a rational debate about this, in my opinion.
And that's our fault, by the way.
It's our fault as well as the candidates' fault, in my opinion.
We need to fill that debate with empirical facts and
not just watch the debate on TV.
It's also the Obama administration's fault, in my opinion,
that did not make the case, that did not make the argument.
Put that number out there and then backed away for
reasons I don't know, you were there more recently than I was, Jeremy.
But I saw that big number and then I saw no follow-through, and
I would say Thinking retrospectively on some of the other rollouts we did when I
was in the government.
That's one of our problems.
And then the last thing I would say is, let's go on.
>> Yeah, I think.
>> I was about to get in to immigration.
>> Yeah. >> Let's leave that for later.
>> Okay, we'll come back to it.
We've spent a lot of time on each of these, but fundamentally Connie's right,
if we could get the people to stay in country or
stay it would be easier than absorbing 11 million displaced people from Syria
alone never mind everybody who's coming from North Africa.
>> Afghanistan or [CROSSTALK].
>> Which leads to a Syria question but I want to come at it from the Russian angle
because this is becoming really, I mean they are talking about a new cold war.
And we're really are we,
is it hyperbolic to say we are one downed US jet away from some kind of real war?
I mean we are getting close with Turkey flying and
Russia flying in the same air space.
And I don't want to go too into the policy, like I said.
But, the refugee issue was related to this, Micheal you were
trying to do the reset with the Russian is the next president whoever she or
he maybe I say again going to have to reset again?
I mean, can we talk to the Russian this is a conversation about
dialogue we are not doing a great job talking the Russians right now,
they are dictating policy in Syria as far I can tell.
>> So, I remember the last thing I want to say and I wanted to say, which is,
don't just wait for the government to help Syrian refugees.
We just had the Deputy Secretary of State out here, Tony Blankon, who came with
the plea to Silicon Valley to say, help us, educate those kids in those camps.
And everyone here, you can do that.
You don't have to wait for this, we need to rethink our refugee policy, yes we do.
But you don't have to wait if you wanna get engaged.
Email me or tweet at me @MacFarlane.
I'll hope you get in the games.
That's what I wanted to say.
Cuz you don't have to wait.
You can do something about that right now, right tonight.
>> Well I think it's important though,
cuz I wanna do something besides post it on Facebook, right?
>> Yeah. >> You wanna be able to do something.
>> [CROSSTALK] >> You can help.
And the government's looking for help the government came to us looking for help.
You all can be part of the solution if you want to be.
Russia, Syria.
>> We can't solve the whole thing, so
we just- >> We'll just do things on the reset and
then the specifics of Syria, so the reset.
To remind you all when we came into government in January 2009.
When I came into government I shouldn't say we.
You left and we came in.
>> That's right.
So it was my policy you were resetting.
[LAUGH] Wanna explain that?
Yeah. >> [LAUGH]
>> See, open exchange here.
>> We look for continuity too, Condi, just so you know.
In fact if we had longer I think there was a lot more continuity there because in
terms of engagement It wasn't like these folks were not engaged.
We were engaged.
>> We went to Moscow I think more than anywhere else.
>> Yeah.
Other than Israel.
And which we'll get there next don't worry.
>> Palestine and territories and Israel 24 times.
>> Okay. I stand corrected.
>> [LAUGH] >> But
because it's about exchange I want to talk about a little bit.
So the reset was a policy based on what Connie said earlier In her dialogues,
with Sergey Lavrov.
Which is, we're new, let's use the moment to find ways to engage with the Russians,
and at the highest levels, because things were pretty broken at other levels,
to look for what the president called win win outcomes, right.
It was good for Russia, good for the United States.
There was no eventually it kind of, we lost control of it.
I lost control of it.
So it was not about making friends with the Russians.
I want to make that clear.
It wasn't about we need to correct the wrongs from this previous period.
It was about very cold headed,
do the Russians have an interest in the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon.
Our answer was no, let's work with them to prevent that.
By the way, a lot of continuity.
The P5+1, in sanctions, continuity with the Bush administration.
Do the Russians have an interest in the Taliban and
Al Qaeda winning in Afghanistan?
Our answer was no, let's find out a way to cooperate with them.
Do we have an interest in doing more trade?
Having more investment between our two countries, our answer was yes,
let's look for a way to engage on that.
And during the period, from 2009 to 2011, we got a lot of those things done.
We got a start treaty done, we got them into the WTO, we got
a new round of sanctions, and I could go on and on in terms of achievements.
And then things changed.
And that's an important thing about engagement, and dialogue, and diplomacy.
Two big things changed, and one I already mentioned.
There was this election.
It was falsified, about at the same rate that most elections in
post-communist Russia had been falsified by the way.
We thought it was no big deal.
I was still working at the White House at the time.
But a bunch of crazy,
young people in Russia actually wanted to make a big deal out of it.
And they documented it with their phones, and went on Twitter,
and Vkontakte, and Facebook.
And then demonstrated in the largest demonstrations that had
been in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And Putin therefore reacted to that.
He needed us as an enemy.
He wanted to blame these people, to say they were our marionettes, our puppets.
And then when I got to be Ambassador a couple months later, my puppets.
And slowly over that period of time,
it was clear to me we were not going to be able to cooperate.
And I was one of those that said stop trying to cooperate.
That's important.
Stop trying to cooperate on arms control or missile defense or
even there, I say Syria.
I think one of our mistakes in 2011, 2012 is we
chase the Russians too long Looking for a security counsel resolution to try to do
that with them when it was clear to me that they weren't going to do that.
So that's a long way of saying and then Russia, Putin, and
his regime annexed Ukraine.
And then you know started this proxy in Eastern Ukraine.
So to me, until he changes those policies.
It would be bad policy to start a new reset.
I'm the author of the reset, I don't believe in a second reset.
Beside all that I wanna say two other things, and
yet, in the margins you can look at- >> We got a lot of questions now.
>> I just wanna talk about this one, cuz I know those are gonna be harder questions.
But even in that, you can- >> We're throwing softballs.
>> You can cooperate on a run, you can cooperate on the chemical weapons.
In other words, it's not black and white.
And on specific issues,
just like Secretary Kerry is trying to do right now with the Russians,
we can seek to cooperate, but also agree that we're not gonna have a kind
of fundamental new relationship with Russia until Putin changes his policies.
>> Can I just have one forward looking point?
I agree that this is not the time to try and engage the Russians.
And by the way, you did have a new president in Medvedev, and
I don't think you were wrong to try to make it work with Medvedev.
The problem was that Medvedev was never very powerful.
It was always about Vladimir Putin, and that was the problem.
But, I think the challenge is actually to recognize that we don't really
have much to say to the Putin regime right now without isolating Russians.
I'm very concerned that the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the rise of Vladimir Putin produced a different kind of Russian citizen.
Many of them young, many of them traveled, many of them outward looking.
They are in our graduate schools of business.
They're in our law firms.
They are in our communities, venture capitalist communities.
And I would really hate to see the isolation of Vladimir Putin become
the isolation of the, of Russians, particularly young Russians,
and so you've asked what can the university do.
I've said to universities, keep inviting Russian students to be a part of us.
Keep reaching out to Russian scholars.
Keep reaching out to Russian liberals to bring them among us,
because one day Vladimir Putin and his oil syndicate are gonna fall from power.
One day, the fact that they are 80% dependent on oil,
gas and minerals for exports is going to crash that economy.
And when it changes, you want to have that layer of a different
kind of Russian population that is comfortable in the West,
that is comfortable with liberal values, that does want many of the things we have.
Finding ways to continue to engage the Russian people,
even if you isolate the regime, I think is extremely important.
Most of that's gonna have to be done by what we call civil society, the business
community, the faith-based communities, the universities, and the like.
>> I totally agree with Condi on that.
>> Condi, there's questions about how this really compares to the Cold War era
actually, to get some perspective.
I mean, because it looks pretty bad right now.
>> It's bad, but it's not the Cold War.
For one thing, the Cold War was a clash of systems.
Was the Soviet Union believing that it had an answer to how
human history ought to unfold, that was a counter to the American and
Western view of how history ought to unfold.
You know how you can tell when somebody has a view?
They try to make little replicas of themselves around the world.
In Czechoslovakia or in Romania or in Poland,
you have little Soviet Communist parties everywhere and so it was a system.
We had very little with which we cooperated with the Soviet Union,
except we didn't want to annihilate each other.
The only thing was about nuclear weapons.
Only during the Cold War, no more than 1% of Soviet GDP was ever accounted for
by international trade, was completely isolated from the international system.
This isn't a clash of systems, this isn't a clash of ideologies.
I'm old enough to remember when the Soviet hockey team was defeated by
the United States amateur hockey team, it was like we defeated communism.
It was like a very different category.
What you have now is an international system based largely
on liberal economics of which, by the way, China is an important part.
And a Russia that isn't quite capable of competing in that system.
So it's sort of chomping at the heels of that system and making trouble.
But I don't think it would be fair to think of it as a cold war.
I think there are still some common interests that we can pursue in ways that
we never could with the Soviet Union.
>> Jeremy, you had a [INAUDIBLE] >> Just one thing I wanted to add to this
conversation.
From the perspective of the Security Council, where not only are you engaging
the Russians literally every day on every issue, as a permanent
member of the Council, but you've also got to find a lot of things to cooperate on.
Sixty percent plus of the business of the Security Council is African-related
conflicts.
Russia still has an interest, despite some of our disagreements, in being
seen as a constructive participant in some aspects of the international system.
We were always in New York looking for
ways to identify those arenas where we could work together.
But the second thing that I was gonna say and
I think it builds very much on Condi's last point.
Things are tough with Russia, they're tough with China and
we may come to China as well.
People often look at the international order that we've built since 1945 and
say, this international order is struggling to
deal with the new challenges of this day and age.
But if there's anything that's causing people to double down on the international
order that we've constructed, it's concern about Russia's annexation of Crimea and
invasion of the territorial integrity of the country of Ukraine.
It's China's behavior in the South China Sea.
These are things that at this day and age when we are still struggling
to make the Security Council a functioning body, to make sure that the UN and
other multilateral mechanisms are vehicles for peacefully resolving challenges.
We could go to the General Assembly and
have 100 countries vote with us to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
When Russia invaded Georgia, we got 13 countries to vote with us.
This is a dramatic shift, and I think it reflects a continuing investment as
power is changing in the world and the set of rules and
standards and institutions that we have constructed so diligently since 1945.
The next president, Democratic or Republican,
needs to see that desire from our allies, from partners around the world for
doubling down on the system and figuring out how to use this system to constrain
some of the expansionist and most dangerous tendencies of our adversaries.
>> There's a couple of questions here about Syria, but I think it relates to
Russia, one questioner wants to know about ground troops in Syria.
I want to relate it to this Russia discussion because right now,
it's good that we can play the long game and cultivate people to be on our side in
the long run, but the Russians are bombing rebels that we are equipping.
>> Yeah, and it's too late, Jeanine.
>> Tactically, we have to deal with that if we're ever gonna,
forget a ground invasion.
>> Sometimes when you don't make a decision, you've made decision.
The decision three or so years ago, not to arm the rebels, the decision three or
so years ago, not to use serious American air power in support of those rebels
meant that there was a vacuum and Russia has now filled that vacuum.
They have succeeded, at least, for
the time being in stabilizing the Assad regime.
They can now call for a ceasefire because they own the facts on the ground
along with the Iranians and they can now dictate the peace.
And that peace will, for the time being, have Assad as a part of it and
that will be a tragedy for the people of Syria.
But I don't see now a way that we get back in the game in Syria in a serious way.
We might be able to do something about the refugees,
through cooperation with Jordan and the Turks, and others.
But in terms of how the politics of Syria will unfold now,
the Russians understand something.
Diplomacy follows, as they would put it,
the correlation of forces on the ground, not the other way around.
They created facts on the ground, and they can now reap the benefit of those facts of
the ground at the diplomatic table.
Now eventually, Vladimir Putin is not a sentimental man and
when Assad is worth nothing to him, he will throw Assad aside.
But, all of those people who were saying he's gonna be in a quagmire in Syria and
they'll never succeed in Syria.
Actually, all he wanted to do was strike on Assad, on his strongholds,
so that he had an argument that Assad was the president of Syria.
He's got that argument and I think we have no way to change those facts.
>> This has been a policy that has struggled around a fundamental mismatch
between the ends that we're seeking and the means that we're willing to deploy.
And there have been multiple steps at which that gulf I think is visible.
But fundamentally, in August 2011, when the decision was made
to say publicly that Assad had lost the legitimacy to lead,
that was the moment at which ISIL didn't exist in both Iraq and Syria.
It was a moment at which the democratic protest that had
been organized around Syria were led by doctors and teachers and farmers.
Where there was a domestic mobilization to deal with the inequities and
the fundamental oppression of the Assad regime.
And the challenge was that by choosing that policy direction, but
not taking ownership of the set of steps that might be required to bring it about.
And there are lots of reasons that I think ultimately the president and
others didn't want to go down that path that we can discuss.
But it was an invitation to the rest of the world
to begin to play games in that environment as well.
And, ultimately, the challenge that the Russians face,
they have succeeded in many ways in strengthening the hands of the Assad
regime and that gives them leverage at the diplomatic table.
But the idea of putting Assad back in charge of the rest of Syria
isn't practical either.
Right? And so what their outcome is,
what their end game is, what cost they're willing to bear, we still don't know.
>> Jeremy, I can give you an idea.
They don't mind frozen conflicts.
>> Exactly. >> They don't mind
countries that basically don't function.
Ukraine, so you have eastern Ukraine that doesn't function,
Crimea that doesn't function, and Kiev That also doesn't function.
You have a [INAUDIBLE], high from Georgia, that don't function.
You have which doesn't function.
You have Chechnya which kind of doesn't function.
And so, I think from the point of view of Putin,
as long as you can call it You can say that your guy's in charge.
It doesn't matter if a country doesn't function.
And that, I think been our mistake.
To assume that Putin has the same definition of success in Syria that we do.
And I think a stable functioning Syria was never his definition of success.
I agree.
I spoke a lot on Russia later, so >> [LAUGHTER]
>> it's all set.
>> Condie, are you saying that we have wielded the end game to Russians in Syria?
There is nothing we can do?
>> Yes. You?
>> I think we're playing defense.
>> We're playing defense?
We're playing defense?
>> There's no endgame.
That's the point.
Not that we [?] the endgame.
This is an observation as the noodle head from Stanford goes to
Washington and I come back.
What did I learn?
We are engineers, we Americans.
There's a problem that needs to be solved.
That's how we think, and by the way, I really admire that about our diplomacy.
And our country by the way.
It's the way we look at problems.
Russians and Mr. Putin in particular doesn't look at it that way.
He doesn't look at Syria as a problem to solve.
His main mission was to not let his guy fall.
And by the way, the reason he intervened
Because remember that conversation I was talking about in Los Pablos and
we said, "If you just prop up this guy there's going to be more violence there.
There's going to be more radicals there.
Assad will stimulate them." That's exactly what happened by the way.
Our analysis was correct and that's why he had to intervene to not.
I mean Assad was in big trouble 6 months ago.
But to have an endgame he's perfectly happy, let ISIS be here, Assad here,
we'll talk for a long time about peace and stability but
he can live comfortably with those kinds of problems that are not solved.
>> There's a couple questions from students here about Iraq and
ISIS and >> We talked about people
not being able to assess risk, but this is another set of problems that have emerged.
Some would argue from a vacuum that was left in Iraq after the Iraq war.
And so now we are faced with ISIS spreading across Syria and Iraq.
How do you all view this threat?
>> And is this another area where we have lost agency?
>> I don't think we've lost the agency on ISIS.
And look, there is no doubt that there was a vacuum in Iraq.
And the vacuum in Iraq was both because of the war and
because of the withdrawal of American forces in 2011.
Because in 2011, as President Obama himself said Iraq was stable.
I think that the Iraqis, the Kurds, the the trusted us more than they trusted
each other, and when we left, they went at each other.
But, there is a vacuum.
Syria then exploded.
And those forces that had been pushed out of Iraq into Syria were able,
then, to re-occupy the area between Iraq and Syria.
And now you have, essentially, an un-governed territory between Iraq and
Syria that ISIS operates within.
Now I do not think we've lost agency because
I don't think we can do anything about Syria.
But I do think we've got an opportunity with Iraqi forces, whether it's their
special forces which are not bad, the Kurds, the Peshmerga of the Kurds,
the Sunni tribes To actually support them with air power and
they demonstrated that they can take back territory.
They took Ramadi back.
It will be tougher to take back Mosul.
But somebody has got to defeat ISIS in its crib.
The then DNI, the Director of National Intelligence,
has said that the numbers of core fighters are somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000.
One day that will be a lot more.
But let's just say for now its 40,000.
They march in columns.
They, they don't hide in caves like al-Qaeda.
They march in columns.
They have command and control that is visible.
They have something that they call a state.
If CBS news can find them, the American military can find them.
And so going after them now, With air power.
The ground forces are the Iraqis and the Peshmerga and others.
We don't need a ground presence beyond advisors and
special forces probably not much beyond the numbers that we have now.
But military people will tell you we have to be willing to forward deploy our people
with the Kurds, with the Iraqis and with others.
Why do we have to defeat them?
Three very important reasons.
Number one, I understand, Mike, that I might slip in the bathtub, but
the fact is as long as they are inspiring lone wolves like San Bernardino,
people are going to feel unsafe.
And they are right to feel unsafe.
And the way that you keep them from inspiring people is you defeat them.
And once you defeat them, they won't inspire anybody.
Secondly, they are destroying the fabric of the middle east
by their threats to the various states of the middle east.
And third, can we really in the 21st century tolerate?
A force in the center of the Middle East that rapes seven year old girls,
that beheads people on social media, and
that is destroying the Christians in the Middle East.
Can we really live with that in the 21st century as a civilized state?
And I would say we can't.
And so that's why they have to be defeated.
I know they have tentacles in places like Libya and alike.
But if you can defeat them in their core, which is that territory between Syria and
Iraq, they will be less of a problem and we'll all sleep better.
And I do think this is one within Within our grasp, unlike Syria.
You're gonna hear from all the candidates one day one I will.
Well let me tell you something, on day one they won't.
Because they have no idea what is gonna happen when the walk into the Oval Office.
But the person that says one day I will ask the military For
a comprehensive plan to destroy ISIS.
That I'm going to listen to.
>> Jerry. >> I agree with everything Condi said
in terms of our agency and
in fact the progress that we are making in our efforts to counter ISIS' expansion.
Taking territory back, standing up the Iraqi forces.
Disrupting key financial networks.
The list goes on and on.
And I think despite what you hear out of Washington there's actually quite a bit of
bipartisan support for the core elements of the counter ISIL strategy.
What's hardest, I think,
is not going after a terrorist group that has taken space in ungoverned spaces.
What is hardest for us to figure out how to influence is a sectarian politics
that is characteristic of Iraq, characteristic of Syria and
now more broadly playing out in the region.
At the root of the emergence of ISIL, was an inability in the post-iraqi context.
The post-war context to figure out a bargain that
could bring the Shia and the Sunni together in a centralized state.
And we began to see progress between the Shiite in Baghdad and
the Kurds with respect to revenue sharing, with respect to oil resources.
But ultimately, the Sunnis have the short end of the stick,
the part of the country without the same infrastructural investment,
without the same natural resources.
And ultimately, it has been a real challenge, I think First with Maliki and
now with Amadi, to get the kinds of political reforms and policy reforms,
whether it relates to the security sector, whether it relates to creating
opportunities to work again in government, which is a major employer in Iraq,
to figure out Iraq as a central state.
That can really be a place that treats people with respect and
gives them opportunity regardless of their sectarian background.
>> But it's very hard.
It takes a long time for institutions to take whole, and
which people can do exactly what you said.
Which is make bargains between ethnic groups, or tribes,
or confessional sectarian groups.
But really the only answer is ultimately they do
have to have something that looks like democratic institutions or
somebody is going to have to oppress somebody else and that's not stable.
And so I'm willing to take a bet on the Iraqs of the world that if you
give it time and nurture it maybe people being to start to use those institutions.
And why do I say It takes time, because you know, I took an oath of office,
to the Constitution as the sixty sixth secretary of state.
A constitution that counted my ancestors as three fifths of a man
a couple centuries ago.
So, It takes time to make that transition.
I fear that we've lost faith.
In this process of giving people that chance, there was a really compelling
report by a group of Arab intellectuals in 2002 about the problems
of the Middle East and how to think about the problems in the Arab world.
And they said there were three gaps.
They said there was a knowledge gap, and
they cited extraordinary statistics about how many patents had been in Korea.
At some 500 times more than in the entire middle east in the same period of time,
the knowledge gap.
Secondly, they talked about the gap for women's rights.
That you could not have decent societies in which women were treated
as second class citizens and third, they talked about the freedom gap.
That in the time when authoritarians in places like Egypt and
authoritarians and dictators like people in like Saddam in Iraq.
Were holding these places with an iron fist.
What they were actually suppressing was healthy political forces.
People that might have run for office, people that might have been in civil
society, and what took its place, what was the most organized forces,
it was the most radical Islamist forces like Hezbollah and
Hamas and so I think we have to keep our eye on
the long term in the Middle East to address those three gaps.
The knowledge gap, the gap for women's rights, and the gap for freedom.
It isn't gonna be pretty in the short term.
But if we don't keep that long-term vision in place I don't think we'll ever
solve this problem.
>> So when, Condi, when one student asks, if forced,
who asserts that forced democratization in the Middle East has empirically failed,
you're saying, take a longer view.
>> I'm saying, first of all, you don't have to impose democracy.
You impose tyranny.
And anybody who thinks, I think when you think that those people
don't want the same freedoms that we have.
They don't want to be able to say what they think.
They don't want to be able to worship as they please.
They'd like to have the secret police knock on their houses,
their doors in the middle of the night and take their husbands, or sons away, yeah.
Those people, no.
They want the same liberties that we enjoy.
And so you don't have to impose democracy.
Now, if you say you can't, quote,
impose democracy at bayonet point, I'm right there.
That's absolutely true.
But the idea that somehow the west is giving these people something
that they otherwise would not want, I think is really pretty patronizing.
>> We have a lot of democracy experts here so.
>> Well, so we're four for 17.
In terms of military interventions,
what ten years after a military intervention Is there democracy?
We're 4 for 17.
Go buy my book.
It's called Advancing Democracy Abroad.
>> [LAUGH] >> The data is, we're actually four for
18 if you count Libya.
It depends how you code Libya, okay?
So that's, but that's not very interesting conversation right?
This notion that, and by the way, although I'm sitting next to Secretary, I'm
going to call her Secretary Rice Conde, >> [LAUGH]
>> I wrote in that
book, >> With,
I think Panama's the only exception, this is a while ago that I wrote this.
But we never invade a country to promote democracy, or
advance democracy, including Iraq.
That is a bit of, and then we never leave because we're different.
Going all the way back to earlier interventions a hundred years ago,
without trying.
And that's just kind of the nature of how we do these kinds of things.
So that's our first thing.
I think we should disaggregate that.
Second, to underscore the data shows what,
now I'll call her Condy, cuz she agreed with me.
The data showed what she said about public attitudes around the world.
That data's all available.
You can get it.
Most people think it's a good thing to choose your leaders rather
than have them appointed or come from God or have a religious leader.
And the data is all there, that's true number two.
But the third piece, the hard part is the interaction between those
people thinking that and our means for fighting for these other things.
And here is where I'm a little.
I'm nervous about our war against ISIS.
It's called Operation Inherent Resolve by the way.
Go Google it and look up the numbers.
If you wanna track it they update it every other day.
And here's what I would say so far about this operation.
You were still in the government when it started, Jeremy,
so maybe you wanna add to this.
But, number one, it started too slowly.
It took us a long time, I remember very vividly,
the fall of Mosul and the debate about, you know, we should begin air strikes.
And we began to slowly in my view.
But now we're in 11,000 strikes folks, 11,000.
You have spent or the government has spent on your behalf about $6 billion.
And the public, when I go talk about these things in other places besides Stanford
they think one, we're not doing anything and two it's been ineffective.
So, I worry.
I actually think we're making progress, like both of my colleagues.
But, I worry about finishing the job.
I'm not quite sure who does that.
I don't think you're going to do it with air power alone, so
who actually does that?
And I'm worried about us, our country, wanting to be there for
the long haul in terms of these kinds of engagements.
I sense, when I talk about these things in places like Montana,
just cuz I was there recently.
I'm from there, just so you know.
People are like, that's not our problem.
We wanna protect the border, right?
This is the argument here.
We wanna protect the border.
But what ISIS does over there, why are we involved?
>> Mike, they might be saying that in Montana, but
they're not saying it in Alabama, where I'm from.
>> Okay.
Alright, alright. >> Because I hear something very
different.
I hear contradictory thoughts.
>> Okay.
>> And people can hold contradictory thoughts.
One is, boy we don't want anything to do with the Middle East,
because they need to solve their own problems, and the sectarian, and so forth.
But boy, we cannot allow ISIS to do what it's doing.
And every time somebody's beheaded, or
every time somebody's- >> But they say let's bomb more.
That's what they say in Montana, what do they say in Alabama?
>> In Alabama they just- >> Do they say send in the 82nd Airborne?
>> No, but nobody wants to send in the 82nd Airborne.
>> But that's the problem!
>> No, Mike that isn't.
What I said is, that you could say to the military on day one,
give me a plan to defeat the 40,000 core fighters of ISIS.
Not ISIS the tentacles, the 40,000 core fighters.
And I think what you would get from the military,
if you listen to people who now are talking as they've come out.
>> Why do you think the president hasn't asked our friend Ash Carter for
exactly that deployment?
>> What I understand from people who have come out is that they give a coherent
plan and it gets cherry picked.
One from column a, one from column b.
Not, let's do the whole thing because, for
instance, the idea that we would forward deploy American forces
on raids, on operations with the Iraqi forces or
with the Kurds, people are afraid of casualties.
So, they don't wanna do that.
And if you don't forward deploy, if you don't have spotters for air power,
you can have 11,000 times 11,000 raids, air raids and they won't be effective.
And so,
I think if you asked for an effective way to deal with ISIS you would get one.
But then you have to do the whole package.
I actually think the American people, and I think Jeremy is right about this,
there would be a lot of bipartisan support for defeating them.
Otherwise, you let them sit there, metastasize, get bigger, and
now it's a 100,000 fighters.
>> But I actually wanna make the point that I think Jeremy was making.
We all wanna destroy ISIS, but the resources to do it,
we're not prepared to do.
Who wants the Taliban to win in Afghanistan?
Raise your hand.
Okay, who wants to deploy their resources to win that fight against
the Taliban that we started in 2001?
There's a difference between what we want objectively and what we're willing to do?
>> Mike, ISIS is not the Taliban.
It doesn't live off the land in the way the Taliban does.
The Taliban, people will tell you, my cousin's in the Taliban in Afghanistan.
>> Okay, [INAUDIBLE]. ISIS is a foreign occupying force in
the middle of the Middle East that is brutal.
These people are so brutal Al Qaeda expelled them, right?
>> [LAUGH] >> So, I think probably you can get some
agreement to try to get rid of them.
>> Jeremy, do you [INAUDIBLE] thought, and
then were only gonna unfortunately have time for a final question, so Jeremy?
>> So the one addition to this exchange, I think,
just brings us back to the point that Condi was making about how long it takes
to bring about the transformation in institutions, that's actually required to
give us stability, whether it's in Iraq, or Syria, or anywhere in the Middle East.
And the challenge in Syria and Iraq,
because I've been in these meetings where the options are laid out and
sort of people are making these choices, the President included,
is that there's broad agreement that we need a ground force.
It won't be an American ground force, whether it's to take back Iraqi cities or
to take back Raqqa in Syria.
The challenge is, who's in that ground force?
And what we experienced when Mosul fell, and
as ISIL made its advance on Baghdad, was the total collapse of
an Iraqi military that we had invested billions of dollars in creating.
We know how to equip, we know how to train,
we know how to create headquarters structures and intel structures.
But when all was said and done, it wasn't a military that was prepared to fight for
the Iraqi state.
And so, ultimately, our challenge is a slight
disconnect between, again, the means that we need on the ground,
whether it's in Syria and Iraq, and the timeline for getting those means.
A capable and effective fighting force.
Whether it's in Iraq, that's invested in the state that isn't a set of Shia
militias, backed by Iran that sort of
tweak all of the concerns of the Sunni populations that have been marginalized.
And of course, our challenge in Syria is that the ground force that we needed was
the ground force that was challenging Asad In 2011.
The ground force that we have now or could potentially partner with includes a whole
set of organizations that are funded from outsiders with disparate agendas.
And most of them don't care that much about ISIS,
what they care about is the barrel bombs from Assad.
They care about the chemical weapons used by Assad.
And so, we found ourselves in a fundamentally difficult position,
whereby figuring out how to mesh our capabilities with the partners
that we need on the ground has a real disconnect because of
the timelines that you're absolutely right, we need to be patient for.
>> You're absolutely right, Jeremy.
But we all know too,
that there are no perfect solutions to any of these problems.
And so, our job as academics is to analyze, and analyze, and analyze.
Policy makers actually then have to do something.
And we've all been in positions where we were in policy positions and
now you have to do something.
And yes the Iraqi forces are not the Iraqi forces that we thought we had trained.
But again, they did succeed in one small way in taking Ramadi.
Build on that.
It may take time.
You know, if somebody had said the Russians have lost
World War II because they nearly fell back to Moscow in 1941.
You'd have said, yeah, they did.
But ultimately, actually they got their act together and won it.
And so, I think this is a matter of investing in what you have.
We don't have the perfect solution, but you have to invest in what you have.
>> And to make the argument to support it.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> I think we're in a period of retrenchment in America right now, and
I think it started with President Obama, right?
What did he promise?
He promised to get us out of two wars.
And he won that election in terms of the debate that we're talking about on that.
I don't see a lot of people, I haven't seen the results tonight,
but I have a feeling of who won.
I don't see a lot of people making the argument the way we're making the argument
and that's what worries me.
The idea that this is going to be simple, that we're going to solve it.
>> Yeah. >> I mean,
Afghanistan has been a long time with some pretty meager results.
>> Right.
>> So, how do you make the case to the American people for the long haul part?
>> And second, to get to what Condi was talking about earlier,
about we've been focused on the military piece, but
the real fight is about the ideological fight, the hearts and minds piece.
How do you make the case to the American people to be re-engaged in that,
we got work to do as a country,
and by the way, we got work to do in our country to help make those arguments.
>> Yeah, and I hope to be able to get to that other component, especially now that
we're in Silicon Valley and talking about how we combat that.
But unfortunately, we are just about out of time.
But there were a lot of questions.
By the way, we modeled open exchange here.
This is what this was.
>> [LAUGH] >> The kind of dialogue I don't think
we're seeing enough, perhaps, in the political campaign.
But there were several questions from students, and
maybe you guys could just briefly, in a word or two, who were asking,
what do I do if I wanna be involved in international affairs and diplomacy?
What's the one thing I can do while I'm here at Stanford to equip me to do that?
Maybe just some brief Run recommendation to leave the students here with.
>> So two quick reactions to that.
Number one, know something about something.
>> [LAUGH] >> Mm-hm.
>> One of the interesting things, I think,
about the three of us sitting on this stage, all of whom are professors who
found our way into government, is that >> We had our
origins as scholars of comparative politics, which is interesting.
Not as scholars of international relations, but
ultimately, each of us invested in getting to know places, and
understanding personalities and understanding processes and institutions.
And I think that is less true in this day and age whether it's at Stanford or
whether in our government that we invest in that kind of knowledge and capability.
But absolutely, when you're making policy decisions at the table,
people who understand these places, who understand the political personalities,
who are able to think through the dynamics of a particular policy choice
As it might be refracted through a particular context.
Those are the people whose voices are second to none around the table and
so use your time at Stanford to know something about the places
you care about in the world.
And the second is don't write off government.
I think there's a tendency in this part of the country
having just moved back a couple of months ago.
>> To see government as what's wrong.
To see government as standing in the way of solving any problem.
To see government as the thing that needs to be disrupted.
But part of the reason I went to government twice over the last 6 years
Is government is one of the most powerful instruments for
affecting the outcomes that everyone in this room cares about in the world.
If we can attract the right people to it and energize people around it.
I lived right before, during one of my two years at the UN,
the response to the Ebola epidemic And
I can tell you that the level of fear and demonization and non
science based political responses rivals what we've seen on the refugee response.
But the US government mobilized its capabilities and
enlisted the world in stopping an epidemic
that could have been hundreds of thousands of people instead of ten thousand people.
That's something government can do.
And there are lots of things like that,
and I think people need to expose themselves to those possibilities.
To know that this is an option for having an impact.
>> So two quick things.
Jeremy said you need to know something, I think the challenge for
our university is to help you know something.
Okay? Which is to say, I think we We as
professors, I as the director of FSI, our department of political science and
we at Stanford University have a role to play on this.
You can't take a course on Russian politics at Stanford University
right now, yeah.
You and I can teach one.
>> Yeah. [LAUGH]
>> I'll bet you you can't take a class
on policy.
Well, actually, there's a few.
In other words, we need to get into
preparing you to do these things in a more robust way.
And if you have ideas on that, Be in touch with me because I'm quite focused on this.
We need to create the idea that you can do these things and go to government and
not just try to solve the world's problems by developing an app down the street.
Because I firmly believe the second thing which is
to just echo what Jeremy said I met some incredibly fantastic.
Stanford students, when I worked in the government, both at the White House and
and out in Moscow.
The tragedy was that there was just too few of them.
It was shocking how, compared to other universities,
how we are just underrepresented in the government.
And we got to do a better job of showing you the way you can make an impact.
Just like the story that Jeremy just said, but
I also want you to think about it in terms of career choices.
There was nothing greater,
sometimes I would get goose pimples when I would stand in front of
Russians with the American flag behind me representing the United States of America.
By the way, being an ambassador is also a cool job.
Like Herbie Hancock comes to your house and performs.
So if you get the job to be ambassador, do it.
>> [LAUGH] >> But that experience,
if you don't get anything done, to be part of the team.
>> [LAUGH] >> Seriously.
We academics we sit in front of our computers by ourselves.
It's a lonely enterprise sometimes.
Being on the team called United States of America, called the U.S.
Government, and representing our fantastic country abroad
was the most fantastic experience i've ever had so far professionally.
And, i'm a professor at Stanford University.
That's a great job!
And yet, I really.
Want to encourage you to think about it.
And I think it's our responsibility to help you think about it and
help you do it.
>> Conde, a final word.
>> Yeah. I'd just make two points.
One is sometimes the way into international relations in a really
compelling and personal way is to have a cause.
Figure out what you care about in the international system.
Do you care about refugees?
Do you care about human trafficking?
To care about the Palestinian/Israeli issue.
But then, recognize that these are actually really complex issues.
And so you may have strong opinions, you might also not be right.
And so, spend time with people who actually don't agree with you.
One of the worst things about our system of Getting knowledge these days.
Is I can go to my aggregator, my cable news channel, my bloggers, and
I never encounter anybody who thinks differently.
And you know what happens when you don't encounter people who think differently and
then you meet one?
You think they are either venal or stupid.
Okay.
So, make sure that when you take your calls,
you actually know something about it.
Facts matter and secondly that you actually take the time
to hone your opinions by debating them with people who think differently.
Don't vilify them, they may just think differently.
The second thing is a really very practical thing.
Learning languages, taking courses, all of that is really important part of
the fabric But it's also great to have experiences that are international.
So study abroad.
Spend some time in a summer working for
a non-governmental organization in Botswana or in Peru or, because
there is nothing like being in another culture and being in another environment.
And by the way,
if you speak the language too, That's really extraordinary experience.
I think we've all had the experience where, for Mike and
me, where you've uttered something and you're third year Russian, and
somebody actually said something back, and you though wow, that's really something.
>> [LAUGH] >> Because they actually understood me.
It's a great, It's great to study it in the classroom.
Know your facts, but it's also great to experience it and
Stanford gives you a lot of opportunities to experience it.
Go experience it.
It's a good note to end on.
I apologize that we ran over time.
I apologize for those who may have gotten cut off during the live stream.
But this is the first of what I think will
be many conversations on these foreign policy issues.
We couldn't get through it all tonight.
But please join me in thanking our panelists.
>> [APPLAUSE]
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