What Does America Stand For? | Drell Lecture 2024 with Condoleezza Rice

good afternoon I'm Scott San professor of political science co-director here at the center for International Security and cooperation senior fellow at the Freeman spoley Institute before we begin I've been asked to state that we as a university recognize and value the rights of individuals to express their views which is why today we do not permit the disruption of the effective carrying out of this event freedom of speech is a core value of Stanford University our goal today is to create a respectful space for the exchange of ideas those who engage in disruption of the effective carrying out of this event are subject to University sanctions and possible legal action let me turn to the event though 40 years ago through a generous endowment gift from the Ford Foundation matched by Stanford University the program on International Security and arms control officially became the center for International Security and arms control or seesac in this picture you see the celebration with the co-founders John Lewis and in the center Sid Dr cunder Rice our first fellow and assistant director of the center and a good friend later co-director and later Secretary of Defense Bill Perry who is with us today we have for many years had had an annual lecture in honor of sidr past lectures have included recently Joanne louu the president of Doctors Without Borders Ted louu the congressman who wrote his senior honors paper at seesac about the Nagasaki decision not the Hiroshima decision he came back and gave the lecture two years ago and Rose godam mu former deputy director General uh Secretary General of NATO who is also with us today today it's wonderful to have cond laser rice come back Kandi needs no introduction and normally when people say someone needs no introduction they give a really long introduction so I'm not going to do that she's the Tad and Diane to director of the Hoover institution the Denning professor of global business and the econom at the Stanford Graduate School of Business professor of political science and Senior fellow by courtesy here at FSI she served as the 66th secretary of state of the United States and prior to that was George W Bush's assistant to the president for National Security Affairs otherwise known as a national security adviser please join me in welcoming back gandi rice thank you Scott um I want to say if it was 40 years ago uh you need to know that they hired me when I was 12 uh I'd also like to just acknowledge that Pur is drill uh our past Provost uh we Provost stick together um and also Sid's daughter is uh here and I just have to start with a story about how I got to know sidr so I actually got a a national Fellowship that was to take young specialists in International Security particularly those who understood the Soviet Union uh and to bring them to one of Ford foundation's centers of excellence to get training in let's say the hardcore kind of bombs and bullets of National Security and it was the nuclear age it was uh the beginning of the 80s when there was a lot of concern about where we were going with the Soviet Union and so um I had an offer from the Ford Foundation I could go to one of five places go to UCLA Rand while I had been at Rand as an intern decided not to go there um I could go to MIT uh my best friend who also got the fellowship was dating an MIT Professor we just decided she should go there that's how you make those decisions when you're younger um the one was Colombia my father said that's in New York it's dangerous you can't go there and so it came down to Harvard and Stanford and Harvard didn't answer my letter and so uh I came to Stanford now after afterwards they said of course we they didn't it all right so I came to Stanford but when I came to Stanford I was supposed to start to understand the physics of nuclear weapons and I had gone to a very good Prep School in Denver St Mary's Academy but when I got to my senior year and was supposed to take physics the regular physics teacher was on maternity leave and they brought back sister Dominica who was uh well into her eighth decade and sister Dominica had long since forgotten any physics that she knew and so we spent the whole year playing with a ripple tank so I knew no physics by the time I got here there was this great physicist sidr and I said Sid do you think you could teach me physics and so sidr was my physics tutor and that's how I first got to know sidr uh he was an extraordinary figure a world-renowned scientist but who in many ways gave his life to public policy and to the betterment of the world right up until very uh late in his uh career very late in his life when along with friends like George Schultz and and Henry Kissinger and Sam nun and others they tried to come to terms with what nuclear weapons meant for the world and so I'm especially honored to give the drw lecture and I see one of those people who helped them Bill Perry sitting right in front of me uh it was an extraordinary group of people that founded this um the uh seesac the center for International Security and arms control and so um I've been asked uh in celebration of Sid in this lecture to talk about a subject that I think is very much on all of our minds this day these days and that is um here in the 21st century what does America stand for uh we could also put it where does America stand and I want to start with that about with that question uh in describing why it's important that we are very precise in what we mean by what is commonly called America's role in the world we can talk about uh the role of many countries in the world uh countries that play a role regionally countries that play a big role in trade countries that play a big role in technological development but there have been few few powers like the United States of America that had a vision for what the International System would be and was willing to defend it for more than five decades largely bringing peace and prosperity to large parts of the world uh after World War II uh the United States and some of its allies but particularly the United States looked back on that Carnage and they looked back to what had caused that Carnage how in the interwar period countries had gone to war over resources how in that period there had been beggar Thy Neighbor trading policies that led to currency manipulation that ultimately led to a great depression and eventually to a war uh they looked at the fact that authoritarian regimes had Arisen actually in Quad Democratic circumstances like in uh with Nazi Germany and they thought the United States had also perhaps not kept its responsibilities because after World War I the United States had returned to its Shores had left Europe to its own devices the United States would not even ratify an idea by its President woodro Wilson for a League of Nations to try to bring some San to the world we had left the world in a Hobson state of nature this time we would do it differently and this American view of what the world might look like had three really important elements the first was a belief that the international economy did not have to be Zero Sum that you could build a positive sum economy in which everybody traded in Freedom in which capital moved uh in which you didn't have a circumstance in which if I grew it was at your expense and this positive sum notion of the international economy took root in actual institutions that the United States sponsored the Breton Woods institutions the international monetary fund which would bring exchange rates back into some kind of logic so that you didn't have the currency man ulation of the inner War period a bank that would eventually be called the World Bank but that was initially for the Reconstruction of Europe and the Reconstruction of countries that had suffered as a result of the war and remarkably as a part of that separate from it but as a part of that rebuilding a commitment from the United States to rebuild the economies of even its enemies so that you would not have a repeat of their side with an angry and oppressed population in Germany perhaps most interestingly a general agreement on tariffs and trade which understood that if Nations could find their place in the international economy you wouldn't have to be violent about getting to resources they would become Commodities you would trade for them and when you think about that support for free trade it's pretty remarkable for a United States of America that probably enjoyed someplace between 60 and 65% of the world's GDP because everybody else was flat on their back maybe even more but why not just protect that GDP no try to create prosperity for all through a positive sum International economy oh did it work it worked brilliant and of course as countries came out of colonialism the World Bank would become a source of funding for their rebuilding it worked so well uh that it lasted and outlasted the the uh primary competitor the Soviet Union and so today the international in the international economy we could talk about trade with Poland or trade with uh aan at one point we could also talk about trade with Russia but that International economy was so powerful that a Chinese leader named D shaing decided I think I need some of that for my people and so China would enter the international economy as well what a remarkable story for a country like the United States of America that throughout its history had really been rather shy about or shall we say uh rather negative about integration into the International System to decide no this time we'll build an international economy that is positive sum a second element was uh a part of that Global Commons that would be military security from the United States and so this time instead of leaving and coming back to our Shores we gave a guarantee to Europe an attack upon one is an attack upon all perhaps even more remarkably we did it in 1949 in the Washington treaty after the Soviet Union had exploded a nuclear weapon 5 years ahead of schedule and we were still willing to say yes we will if necessary trade Washington for London that guarantee an attack upon one an attack upon all also what was embedded in a remarkable organization called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and because of the democratic part of that in of that NATO we were able to in incorporate Germany into it as well and if you had taken the bet in 1949 that Germany and France would never fight again you probably would have lost a lot but in fact Germany and France would not fight again under the offices Under the Umbrella of a democratic Collective alliance called NATO we of course gave a similar guarantee to Japan through the Japan defense treaty with the United States and there the idea was a little bit different Japan was not trusted among its neighbors for very good reason given what Imperial Japan had done and so the rearming of Japan would have had unintended consequences in Asia and so why not give Japan a guarantee as the United States did and then Japan would be able to build self-defense forces that would not have to leave their territory that would not threaten their neighbors but together with the American guarantee would secure Japan and that milit AR Commons that security Commons would continue to spread as the United States tried to after the Suz uh crisis to take up the defense of the ceilings and did so and to this day does so and in what would turn out to be an ill- fated attempt to extend that security guarantee to Southeast Asia when the French had to leave Indochina that security guarantee would of course extend to South Korea after the Korean War and so the United States would provide a security Commons to marry with its economic Commons which would bring peace and stability and prosperity across the world that was the idea and oh by the way just for good measure let's try that League of Nations thing again but this time we would do it with what was supposed to be an actual security mechanism the security Council within the uh United Nations that would help to keep the peace now there was a third element to this Str to this structure an economic and security comons and a fundamental belief in what political scientists now call the Democratic peace that democracies don't fight one another and so the United States and its allies took a pretty big gamble on the Democratic peace there is a perhaps apocryphal story that Churchill when asked what should we do with the defeated Germany said I like Germany so much that I'd like as many of them as possible in other words break it up make it weak Germany had only been unified in 1871 why not a Bavaria and a Prussia but the United States with allies like con Conrad otau decided instead to build Germany into on the territory that it held into a democratic Germany and that was the way that it would never threaten its neighbors again I was told by President George HW Bush that he went to Germany as vice president when things were pretty hot about the installation of Persian to in uh in Germany this would have been around uh 1981 that he went and and he was pelted with all kinds of uh eggs and fruit and all kinds of things and he came back and he apparently said I now know that Germany is a secure democracy because it's citizens have the right to protest their government's decision many years years later when we were faced with the task of unifying Germany George HW Bush would repeat that story to helmet Cole and say I trust completely that a democratic Germany has emerged that can unify and that will never threaten Europe we took a similar bet on the Democratic peace with Japan to make Imperial Japan Japan with a constitutional Monarch and to believe also that Japan would not threaten its neighbors because it was a vibrant democracy now we can argue about whether or not this part of the commons the economic the security the Democratic Values part of the commons has always worked and worked well it most certainly has not always worked well the United States made different choices in Latin America about who it would support in order to uh to to Stand Tall against the Soviet Union it made different choices in Africa about who it would support and most especially it made different choices in the Middle East about who it would support but the value remained there at the core and to this day I think remained a core to American foreign policy well that system is now under a lot of pressure the economic com Commons is breaking down under terms like friend Shoring and onshoring terms like decoupling and from the Chinese a word that we haven't heard since Joseph Stalin autarchy the idea that somehow the international economy as a whole will not prosper and of course the inclusion of China the bet that the integration of China would create a more prosperous economy even though the international economy did grow that is now under pressure as we watch particularly the policies of xiin ping which are not to put too fine a point on it Marxist leninist in its orientation and therefore a not very good fit for an international economy that expected to move if not toward democracy in China toward more liberalization in fact we had a saying you cannot have both economic liberalization and political control and xinping said that's absolutely right thank you very much I'll take political control and so there is pressure on the economic Commons there's pressure on on the military Commons and here I have some personal experience and perhaps even some personal responsibility because after September 11th the United States in the effort to protect itself from what had been a shocking attack on our territory the first attack on our territory since the War of 1812 decided that military force was the only answer to Afghanistan and ultimately ly to Iraq whatever you think of those circumstances whatever you think of those decisions they were security decisions from the point of view of the Bush Administration not decisions to try to make Iraq and Afghanistan Democratic but there was a hope that after the tyrants had gone those countries would find their way to a more democratic future the jury may still be out in Iraq it's most certainly not out in Afghanistan but those Wars gave the American people a sense of exhaustion a sense that we don't want to do that again and whenever I hear our longest war in relationship to Afghanistan I think about the think back on the patience that we actually had our longest war is actually Korea which is still an armistice where you still have tens of thousands of American forces deployed because even the powerful and sophisticated Korean army South Korean army cannot deal with that crazy man to the north and so on the military side the commons has also begun to break down but there are still very very strong elements of it and some have emerged a new the commons the military Commons that is growing up in the indopacific as you look at Japan's emergence the ra prma between Japan and South Korea I had the great pleasure of having the South Korean and Japanese the Japanese prime minister and the South Korean president on stage together at Hoover not too long ago I had to flash back to when I was Secretary of State and landed in South Korea to talk about the great Democratic alliances that we had only to find that the South Koreans and the Japanese were scrambling Jets against one another so we've come a long way in that relationship and a relationship with India that is if not Alliance likee a growing friendship based on technology cooperation defense cooperation and to a certain extent shared values and of course NATO who would have ever thought it that Vladimir Putin's Adventure in Ukraine would lead Sweden and Finland to secure the northern flank of NATO if anything the Baltic states need not ever worry again and so the commons has broken apart in some ways and gotten stronger in others that leads me to the final question that I wish to raise which is why then given America's commitment to that extraordinary comment given the fact that elements of it are still in place given the growth in the American economy given American technological dominance why are we having this argument about whether the United States has the will to protect the extraordinary system that it created well there is no doubt that there is a question of will and I want to suggest that it has less to do with what we have done abroad than what we have failed to do at home if I go back to the ideas of globalization and I look at their personification I'm often led to think about a student that I might have at The Graduate School of Business that student would have been educated at a for would have had his first job in Shanghai would have then come to The Graduate School of Business at Stanford and the next job will be in Dubai moves easily around the world the global Elite of which quite frankly we are all a part but most people never move 25 miles from where they were born and their prospects and their sense of disaffection it's deepening and when you have people for whom globalization seems to have backfired the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia the unemployed steel worker in Great Britain when you have that there is no doubt that it will be vertile ground for populist who say let me tell you why you are not succeeding and it's the other The Immigrant the global Elite the banks the technology company pick your other but for people for whom it really didn't work it's not enough to say oh you could have cheap Goods at Walmart when they don't have a job and so unless we pay attention to that question of human development the United States will not be a confident country and it took an incredibly confident country to say an attack upon one is an attack upon all it took an incredibly confident country to say we will share our GDP with the rest of the world so that everybody might be more prosperous and that confidence is gone and in its place the populist have put the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse popul ISM nativism isolationism and protectionism and that it seems to me is the reason that we even have this question of where will America stand in the world but I will say this if the United States can get through this moment we have technological dominance we have economic dominance it's the only economy left standing we have the most remarkable set of allies that any great power has ever enjoyed and if we don't get into loyalty tests you're for us or against us that number of allies will continue to grow and friends will become a part of it but it requires a sense of national mission to make things better here at home first and to at the same time call on Americans in the following way when I'm trying to make the argument that America cannot withdraw from the world I draw on three points the first is to the American people if you really do believe that we can withdraw let me give you three dates 1914 when we tried to avoid a war and by 1917 we were drawn in with greater costs than if we had tried to help early in 1941 when we were drawn in when when there was a war that began in 1938 1939 and we were drawn in in 1941 at greater cost and 2001 when we thought that security problems were out there and then learned that they were actually in Washington at at at the Pentagon in Virginia at the Twin Towers in New York and in a field in Pennsylvania every time we have tried to avoid entanglement we have had to be entangled later at greater cost the second point that I would make is if you really do believe that what is happening in the world today in Ukraine is not your business then think about what will happen if Vladimir Putin decides to go further and then you have to live up to your word that an attack upon one is an attack upon all and oh by the way do you really want to continue to see shipping wrecked by Iranian proxies do you really think that that won't eventually have economic consequences for America and then I want to say to leaders the American people carry two ideas in their heads that are cont contradictory and they carry them simultaneously on the one hand we're tired of this haven't we done enough didn't we unify Germany didn't we defeat the Soviet Union didn't we defeat Al-Qaeda can't somebody else do it this time the other side of the American brain is I can't watch a big country extinguish its smaller neighbor I can't watch people beheaded on TV I can't watch syri children choking on gas I guess if nobody else will do it we will have to do it and I say to those leaders I would not want to be the American president who has to explain to the American people when Jan ping and Vladimir Putin are on their Victory Tour having defeated Ukraine and therefore the greatest Alliance of all time NATO I wouldn't want to have to explain that I could stop that not with American forces which are not asked for but with money and equipment so that the ukrainians can fight their war against oppression and keep our war of our involvement in war from ever happening and so I think there is an argument to the American people about where America should stand but it's not an argument about an America that's in and out an America that is not confident an America that is not predictable it is about an America that once again decides that great Powers don't mind their own business they shape the future and that should be the answer to where America stands thank you very much well thank you I hope many of you uh have already written down questions on the cards and while we're sorting through them I'm going to start out with asking coni a few questions um first I very much liked your analogizing back to the world that we're in today with the dangers uh of of 1914 and in the 1930s and you we should remember that America First was the motto of the isolationists of of that period um as well um but when you think about a lesson there is that it took a major attack to get us off of that isolationist stance um what can do that short of an actual attack because cuz that you didn't add that part of your analogy but it's a depressing yeah it is interesting point but I would say Scott that um I still believe that in our national DNA let me call it that uh after 70 years of International Leadership uh that we still have that impulse uh to try and deal with problems in the world that we did not have in 1914 or in 1938 1939 remembering that in 1914 1939 you there's a a saying that goes around oh the United States was um isolationist until we entered the War uh in in uh Europe and I think no actually we we weren't isolationist uh we were just trying to consolidate the continent so we were very uh much involved in Wars as the Spanish as the Mexicans ask Native Americans we were consolidating continent but that didn't give us a kind of great power view of the world and so when things happened in uh in 1938 1939 when things happened in uh in 1914 1915 I think we didn't really think it was our business so to speak now there are those today who don't think it's our business but I think there's enough of that DNA enough of that memory left from the 70 years uh of prosperity that we created that we can tap into that um there may be enough of that memory in in the DNA but there's a younger generation that may not have that same view and may not have the tolerance of debates that um they were having and so I'm acutely aware what's going on outside um can you reflect on as a professor here what does it mean among students how much of the international DNA do they have yeah you cited a a great example of a a business school student but they're not always the average undergraduate no well in part I think our um if if you have foreign students International students among the undergraduate population they will help our students see this because they do understand this piece and it's one reason I've always kind of watched how much of an international population do we have among Stanford undergraduates and hope that it would get larger because I think that's a very important and sobering for American kids also when they study abroad they have a tendency to see what is going on out there and I think that's another important way that we educate about the world but you know we have to teach history uh we have to teach what happened I had an experience um with my class that I said something about you know getting colleag shik Muhammad would have been like having raml under lock and key in in World War II and I got some a lot of blank stairs and I thought oh my goodness we don't actually know who raml was and so they didn't know who shik Muhammad was either yeah so I think we we somehow have to teach history in a way that we go back to what were the key complex and they were complex they weren't simple complex events that led us to where we are now you cannot understand what's going on in Russ with Russia and Ukraine unless you know something about Russian history you can't know understand what's going on with xiin ping unless you know something about what xiin Ping is talking about when he talks about the need to restore China but we somehow want to skip to doing it to doing today without that background and so uh I don't blame them uh you know I I wonder how many of our students actually know how the state of Israel was formed for what reasons and when well there was a interesting question right there's a Wall Street Journal article recently by uh former Stanford student now Professor Berkeley Ron hassner called from which river to which sea um in which he got a nationwide sample of American college students and asked how many support The Motto free Palestine from The River To The Sea 60% said they supported that then he asked them from which river to which sea is this about and less than half of the people who supported it could answer that in International Security and a changing world the seasat course I did the same thing to them it was interesting it was I'd say about 40% supported the motto and then I asked him from which river to which sea um about half got that right and half didn't answer yeah and that's because they knew that they didn't know they didn't know so this is a teaching moment the problems that we're having the challenges that we're having it's really important and it's absolutely essential that we keep teaching in a um calm and and clarifying manner the very serious problems that we're facing today well and we have to teach um history in all of its complexity uh you know when it just becomes about oppressed and oppressors or colonizers and and uh colonized uh you don't get to really talk about how incredibly complicated history has been I said in my class uh teaching course with Steve cotkin and I said um you know I had uh ancestors who were slaves and I had ancestors who were slave owners and there was a gasp right well you know yeah how do you think I got 40% European DNA uh that's the that's the truth of of slavery but it's very hard these days for everybody to want to go after this in a way that doesn't create historical villains there were some historical villains every time I was in on mahogany row at the state department and I had to pass by John C Calhoun who was of course a secretary of state at one point I would think why is he still there right he tried to destroy the country yes I would love to have removed his portrait but at some level because I had to pass by John C Calhoun every day I was reminded of what it took to sustain the United States of America and so somehow we have to teach in a different way and I don't blame our students I blame us yeah um speaking of of villains um I wanted if you could comment about um Putin and Kim Jong-un because it seems to me that one of the big differences today is not just having multiple potential adversaries but having some who apparently make decisions on a whim yeah who are surround themselves with the Yes Men um the famous picture of Putin with the long table with gamasa and and Shu at the other end announcing the war in Ukraine is symbolic of something that's really dangerous in the world today um lavro was reported to have been asked um did Putin consult with you before The Invasion and he said no he consulted with only three people Katherine the Great Ian the terrible and Peter the Great um how much does that make a difference in your view compared to the leaders that you had to deal with uh in opposition in the past now it's one of the great dangers of authoritarianism yeah right that uh nobody will tell the authoritarian uh leader uh you've made a mistake or you're about to make a mistake or no that's not a very good idea and you know it's not just Vladimir Putin I mean just can you say zero co uh or can you think about uh the one child policy you know brutally enforced and now 34 million Chinese men don't have mates so whenever I hear kind of authoritarian Envy I think you know having one guy because if if you're going to be omnipotent you'd better be omniscient too and very few you human beings are and so uh Putin in particular um once he he always had bad information right I remember him asking President Bush at one point we were having a dispute about of all things chickens getting chickens into the Russian market and uh I want to hear the story behind that but that's yeah well you know trade trade policy spend a lot of time with them on trade policy chickens and uh he said well he said uh we all know that you have two kinds of chicken you have chickens that you sell in America and you have sick chickens that you send abroad pres said what and you know he said it with all kinds of authority right and so I he always got bad information but he seems now not to even take in information he just seems to me to be living in his own head and you're right it if if in fact Ser said that because um I remember talking to him one day and he said to me you know Ki you know us Russia's only been great when it's been ruled by great men like Peter the Great and Alexander II and you know every bone in your body want to say wants to say do you mean Vladimir the Great but your secretary of state that would be rude so you can't say it but that's who he thinks he is and so this desire for Russian Empire is driving all out all sense of uh what might work all sense of what's happening to his country this is Mission this is a this is this is Messianic stuff and one of the hard things we have as uh As Americans westerners um you know people in democracies is recognizing uh when somebody gets driven by a Messianic um kind of Messianic sense that they don't always act what we would consider logically right right um and Kim Kim Jun is even worse I mean Kim why don't you reflect on that a little bit um you've talked about the importance of the NATO alliance you didn't say much about the Korean South Korean us Alliance um to what degree is that uh being challenged uh today uh are the Koreans uh occasionally you'll see polls and occasionally you'll see even a presidential candidate talking about getting their own nuclear weapons um it's quite concerning it is concerning um and and maybe it's not well known that um South Korea actually once had the ability to reprocess and and uh enrich yeah and gave it up basically uh so it's not without pressure on them do without pressure that's right but it's not a technological problem for them at they could do it uh at any time uh I I do think the stronger our alliance is that's why I'm glad to see Japan and South Korea in some kind of RMA um we we're going to have to keep working on the South Korean Alliance you know there there are some things that we sit here and we don't really recognize uh for a long time our forces were actually awfully close to soul and uh there was there were kind of constant problems with 18 and 19 year old boys too close to soul and so we actually moved them back uh under Don Rell it was a really I think smart thing to do so there are some irritants in the relationship with South Korea um but I think it's a stronger Alliance today than it was uh several years ago and I also think that they understand the North Korea problem um and there isn't much Kim Jong-un has not left much room for a uh I won't even call it a pro-north Korean policy that's not what I mean but a policy that was more accommodating to North Korea uh Kim Jong-un has not left that open in ways that his father did you talked a lot about International institutions that the United States set up you didn't talk much about the US military as an institution yeah um for a long period of time in recent polling the US military by far was the most respected institution among the American public um do you see that wavering given um what some people would view the politicalization of the military While others say no that's the military standing up to um some illegal orders or inappropriate orders um well I I think the look one of the great gifts that we have is a civilian controlled military that we don't actually even have to control on the civilian side I mean it is so deeply ingrained in our military that the military stays out of politics and it it's it's funny because you know at the at the Inception of the um of the Republic uh the founders were kind of nervous about this whole thing with a professional military uh Thomas Jefferson uh once said that uh a professional military is uh a threat to Republican values of course he then went and founded West Point um so you know Jefferson was never great on the consistency part but uh but he really but one of the reasons that we have the structure that we have have which is we have a National Guard and Reserve which is the Citizen Soldier it's the minute man uh it's the the soldier who lives in the community and is a dentist by day and if there's a threat puts on the uniform and goes to defend uh and then you have the professional military which is very much treated as a different organization by different rules by different laws by different legal system and that was part of the normative way of deal de with you don't want the military ever in politics the military understands that they don't vote in uniform they don't uh engage in election airing but I think there are kind of two threats to it three threats to it one is um I don't much like it when generals take off their uniform and uh and get in and decide they're going to play politics I think uh it's a it's not a great thing uh for the country because um that and I mean serious I don't mean having National Security views or economic views or whatever I mean running for office well I don't run if you want to take off your uniform and run for office fine but don't lend your name to political candidates as part of a political campaign I think that's that's a problem how about becoming secretaries of defense well there's a reason there's a reason that you need a special dispensation to do that and we've been fortunate the people who did Marshall and our very own Jim Mattis there was never any question about it and now I think with Lloyd Austin there's not a question but there's a reason that we have a special dispensation for that the second is that I think uh politicians try to drag them in so we saw that with the visit to the church which was not a great idea um and I felt bad for Mark Millie who realized he'd made a mistake but uh politicians shouldn't drag the military in and you know taking polls about what the military thinks about this and that I I stay clear of that and the final thing is it is a difference system and trying to make it live up to whatever our whims are about what is politically correct today is I think probably a mistake um it's not that I don't believe strongly in diversification in the military I believe in giving I was an advocate of women being able to have so-called combat roles because it's the only way to get committed to get uh to get uh promoted and oh by the way uh who knows where the lines of combat are when you're playing when you're in the kinds of War circumstances we're in so all of that I'm a big advocate of but you know you have to be a little careful um extremism in the military really uh you know a few kids look at websites that they probably shouldn't I I'd be very careful about how I think about those issues and we are having uh we are having trouble recruiting uh the uh the for the first time in a long time well the last couple couple years the volunteer force is having trouble meeting it started sure sure and ex-military were over representative in the January 6th Insurrection which is why Lloyd Austin started a extremism in military campaign to try to figure out what could be done to reduce that so they were over represented fine Let It Go all right punish them as civilians right right take them to court put them in jail punish them as civilians but don't tar the entire milit with the idea that they're extremists cuz they because a few bad apples yeah uh storm the capital Fair Point fair point one of the audience members asks what's your prediction about the war in Ukraine and obviously your prediction will be different depending on what happens here in November uh no actually it won't be okay good good so um so the first thing I would say is I do worry about um when the per Frost breaks because uh right now nobody can really move very much in that part of the the world uh but the Russians are massive they're 500,000 of them massing uh they've mobilized those poor boys from dagistan uh this won't be blonde boys from uh you know from St Petersburg who are Canon fodder they'll be those uh ethnic minorities uh they um have you mentioned the North Koreans they've resupplied themselves with North Korean ammunition and the like and um I worried that they're going to make a push um and that even if it's not terribly successful that it'll have a a a bad effect on morale in Ukraine This Is War has been going on for a long time with Ukraine uh it's why I'm hoping that when we get this package for Ukraine and I think we will I'm hopeful that we will that it will be the ammunition that they need and the but also uh perhaps somewhat more sophisticated Weaponry which might give them a chance to ship the battlefield um so uh that's a long range attam would be an example of that um and then uh the ukrainians are going to have to fire up their own defense Industries you know they were the Arsenal of the Soviet Union and I understand that a lot of it's been destroyed but what you probably can't keep depending on is a $41 billion package from the United States every six months it's that that well is going to run dry and so I think the ukrainians are going to have to start to figure out how to help Supply themselves but we could really help them with a a push to give them more strategic uh capability in this next round why don't you spell that out what that would be me many people here have been in the United States have been concerned that if you give the ukrainians too much it might lead to escalation uh by Vladimir Putin argue no he has not escalated he's permitted lots of increases in what we've given without further escalation how how you well I I think he's kind of high on the escalatory L ladder right now I mean I I don't buy the argument that he hasn't escalated uh he's escalated the terrorist tactics against Ukrainian population for instance uh but when I look at for instance would he the people people argue would he go after uh Article 5 countries for instance you know supply lines in Poland or the like I don't think he wants any part of Article 5 um and I think we've seen that and to the degree that we self-d deter we allow him to keep escalating and so uh if the ukrainians can't at least change the the um the the character of this war um even a little bit threaten what matters to Russia uh then I don't know how you ever get to any kind of solution including any kind of ceasefire you've got to raise the cost for Vladimir Putin we thought by raising the cost to his economy we might do it we thought by destroying large parts of his military we might do it but the only time he seems to notice is when the Black Sea Fleet is hit then he notices and so um I'm not suggesting that you start you know throwing bombs at Moscow but I do think that there are strategic assets uh particularly for instance perhaps in Crimea that you could use to uh hold hostage some of the things that he CES about that's been widely reported in the times um uh this past week that the US intelligence community's estimates of the likelihood of Putin using nuclear weapons in an escalatory move went from very low probabilities to 5050 in October and November 2022 yeah I I would really like understand why well I why make that estimate because I think they were hearing they were I think they were listening in to conversations I I understand that piece of it but but you know for Vladimir Putin to do that turns this country into a large North Korea and I think it may be hard to believe but Vladimir Putin still cares what people think of him that's why he wants leaders to come and visit that's why it's important that Modi and shishin ping and others keep saying nobody should talk about using a nuclear weapon not to mention the actual value of doing such uh certainly no military value to doing such um would he do it for what for shock effect well what he said was that there's a precedent for using nuclear weapons to end a war citing Nagasaki and Hiroshima yeah so he's going to use a couple tactical nuclear weapons that can't tell the difference between a Ukrainian and a Russian so and winds blow East yeah that's his idea of winning the war well I hope he's Consulting with you rather than Peter the Great and and and and Ivan the Terrible uh I think maybe even Peter the Great would tell him that wasn't a very good idea what what what would hope so um but according to uh what we know now is that the US and France and the British all threatened that we might get direct ly involved if nuclear weapons are used and exactly what kind of threat it was is not clear but it was conventional rather than nuclear and it was to respond and potentially to take out the Black Sea I actually don't know why people would want to speculate about this particularly leaders of countries that's probably the kind of thing that's better left and said apparently it was said to people in Russia and the question is it's probably best unsaid uh uh in the Press today best unset in any kind of public way yeah absolutely so how do you think about the another question the economic side of this how important is it that the United States uh maintains its current uh standing economically in the world as opposed to um uh having more equal economic growth between the Us and other places well the US is outperforming everybody you know with the exception of India uh the US is outperforming all big economies uh in fact the the surprise among economists that uh the so-called soft Landing was just a soft Landing it was like a gliding thing um and so you have to ask why is that and there's just a kind of resilience to the American economy there's a resilience and Innovation that is just very very powerful and so the question I would ask is not how important is it that we maintain this economic U strength but how do we maintain that economic strength and what are the things that we're doing that might actually threaten that economic strength and I think in the short term uh you do um have to be certain that you're not doing things you know would hate to see further tariffs and the like that just start to squeeze the life out of the economy you certainly would want to be very careful about uh in I almost said involvement in but that's not really the right word The Innovation ecosystem will be regulated but could we actually do it in a way that understands it rather than just what Regulators sometimes do which is regulating even if they don't understand what they're regulating so uh a light hand for regulation and oh by the way that one worries me a little little bit because the Innovations going on in the United States and to a certain State a certain extent Great Britain and the regulations going on in Europe and so there's a mismatch between the regulators and the innovators and that's not good and then the final thing is we have longer term problems with infrastructure we have longer term problems with our educational system uh those are issues that we will have to deal with and we have longer term problems with the debt which by the way nobody talks about anymore uh when is the last time time you heard a political candidate say anything about the debt all long time so these are the sorts of things that we have to be concerned about but my goodness we uh are very very fortunate uh that the United States has the kind of economic resilience that it does and one other thing that I would put a lot of weight on um I am a great believer that we need to make the energy transition right because of climate change and because we want to protect the pal the uh Planet but hydrocarbons are going to be a part of the transition for a long time they just are and I would rather have the hydrocarbons developed on the North American platform in the United States than in Iran Russia Saudi Arabia and uh Venezuela and so uh if we are not careful we will undermine one of the great economic gifts that we have been given which is our energy um platform here in the North America okay and that also is a part of the economic piece sure sure we have a question here about the Middle East which you mentioned but not in great detail what should be the role of the United States uh as a peace broker in the Middle East broadly um and if not what kind of vacuum does this lead for China or others to to fill in the Chinese foreign minister wants to go to 24 times to the Middle East like I did and try to get a Palestinian State be my guest you know good luck um I don't worry about China in the Middle East not CH China and Saudi Arabia uh the Saudis know what they're doing and the Saudis are always going to keep their options open but I'm not too worried about Saudi Arabia bringing China in to bring peace in the Middle East uh if Saudi was able to keep the Iranians and the Saudis uh from Waring with one another that's also great I don't I don't think everything has to be a competition that you know if the Chinese are doing it we should have been doing it I I think that's the wrong way to think if they've got the capability for instance to do something about North Korea I'd be delighted if they wanted to do something about North Korea so and not everything has to be competitive about who got their first to make peace on the Middle East though I I think there are layers here uh the first layer is that this war uh in Gaza uh will hopefully come to an end uh relatively soon I think Hamas has actually been hurt uh but it is Hamas that is uh continuing to as I understand it refuse terms that would lead to a ceasefire and it seems to me that maybe the military wing of Hamas is making a bet that uh if sometime here in Ramadan there are incidents at Al Al oxa uh incidents around Jerusalem that you will set off trouble in the West Bank that perhaps the northern front will get lit uh with Hezbollah and uh that they'll be bailed out in some way and so I think the American role is uh of course to do whatever we can about the humanitarian situation in Gaza but also to try to help the Israelis understand that a wider War here is in nobody's interest and that this thing needs to therefore wrap up uh as soon as it can the Israelis also need their their Manpower back into the economy um and so I understand the tremendous anger after October 7th and any of us would have would have had that the goal was to hurt Hamas as much as possible don't lose sight of that goal and start going into other areas I've heard from some uh in um more hawkish elements uh in the Israeli War cabinet about the northern front and pushing uh Hezbollah back to Across the Lani this is probably not a great idea uh so uh the US has to play the role of not letting this war get W wider and then um at some point uh the United States will need to help with the Rev ization or remaking of the Palestinian Authority because it needs remaking at this point so that there's somebody to perhaps go govern uh the Palestinian territories that probably also means playing a role in making sure that Israeli settlements don't continue to expand which has been a traditional us role uh and then finally um once the temperature allows it trying to get back to what the Abraham Accords had made possible which was the potential to end the state of war between Israel and the gulf Arab states um so I think of it in those tiers uh but first and foremost uh while you're dealing with humanitarian situation try not to let this thing get wider one area where there was concern that might get wider would be if Iran used the war to uh to develop its own nuclear weapons capabil and um Iran now has a very different relationship with Russia than it did recently because Russia depends so much on Iranian absolutely military capabilities um but Iran has been surprisingly cautious during this and um yeah I don't know whether that is because they think that Netanyahu would attack if and expand the war or whether they think that there's no reason to do this now because they have a cap ability and they could just sit on that capability and wait it wait it out for another day they don't need weapons they just need enriched Uranium on IR yeah I don't think it's about um nuclear actually I look the Iranians are not a terribly Brave Bunch uh have you ever noticed that they fight most of their Wars through proxies yeah and um I can tell you personally that when you challenge the Iranians they have a tendency to back off so in 2006 uh they were uh making those uh enhanced explosive devices uh in Iraq and we told them uh if we catch you on the Iraqi side of the Border we won't enter Iran but if we catch you we will we will kill your people or we will uh or we will uh capture them and we captured the deputy KS Force Commander and he told us a lot and we told them that we knew a lot and they backed off so the Iranians um I'm hoping that this is a sign that maybe somebody in our Administration told the Iranians by the way we sent that message through the Russians because at that time we could do that okay I would hope that somebody uh told the Iranians um you know uh your proxies had better stop killing our soldiers in Iraq and somebody got those militias to announce that they were stopping the attacks on American soldiers uh I wouldn't trusted as far as I can throw it but it suggests to me that maybe the Iranians are a little are a little nervous about what they're uh what their proxies are doing and so I think we need to keep them nervous about it um I think that they don't want further sanctions because the economy is already a mess and so I would reward them with further sanctions um because ultimately that regime has to be backed off there Bob Gates often says that many an American Administration has been hoisted on its own patar trying to find the moderates in Iran uh let's just say there aren't any and uh that means that the relationship with that regime has to be largely confrontational and I think you'll find that they behave better when you're confrontational interesting um there's a question here um about an area that you did not talk about much which was um Africa especially East Africa um the audience members says um that they're very concerned about the lack of us presence um can you comment about what US policy should be towards States in in East Africa especially given that China is doing so much there now yeah I I think this is not just because of China we I I will say I think this is one place where we made a difference in the Bush Administration was in support Africa um first of all there was the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief which uh saved 25 million lives in Africa and is still celebrated across uh Africa uh there was the four-fold increase in financial assistance uh and and foreign assistance to Africa there was the Millennium challenge which put U huge money into Ghana and Tanzania into well-governed countries and we ended a few civil wars in Liberia for instance which is now a decent State uh in Sudan even though though it is not always held um and so the most important thing is we paid attention to Africa and uh the reason we paid attention to Africa just tells shows you my Personnel matters first of all President Bush was believed that he liked meeting the African leaders they were trying to do things especially ones who were trying to do good work but uh jindai Frasier who was assistant secretary for Africa had been South Africa ambassador to South Africa and was a us uh PhD a Stanford PhD way and who Mentor my student but uh student but she got the ear of the president and uh she designed really along with others an Africa policy that was really coherent and that there are places that they still call him Bush the African all right so my point about that is instead of saying we have to challenge China we should have an engagement policy with Africa that tries to create and sustain well-governed States in Africa and oh by the way there are fewer uh presidents for life in Africa today than there have been we should as partners with Africa take on problems that are African problems like when we did pepar and malaria and so forth we should build security relationships uh we did them around the world war on terror you need one in the sahal in a very serious way right now but you do that with African Partners so that when we wanted to end the war in Liberia it was actually uh eoos the West African organization along with uh John kufor who was the president of Ghana uh who went to Nigeria put Charles Taylor on an airplane brought him out uh of of uh Liberia a peacekeeping force with Nigerian lead went in kept the peace for two years until they could have elections and they elected Ellen Johnson sirleaf and Liberia has been more or less stable ever since and uh what did we contribute 100 Marines at the port and 100 Marines at the air at the airport and a destroyer floating around so Charles Taylor would be scared right that's what we contributed so you can have a policy in Africa that isn't just always responding to the Chinese the Chinese the Chinese because the Chinese are making a mess of their policy in Africa right now these the you know the debt traps that they've set people are starting to notice you know maybe that loan for own thing worked in the 19th century it doesn't work so well in the 21st century they have a terrible reputation for things like uh Labor uh safety and environmental standards and so if we just have a positive policy there and help create circumstances for investment for foreign direct investment uh I think we're going to go a long way to having African Partners um that isn't just dependent on we're just challenging the the Chinese we we need not to make the mistake that we made in the Cold War which is that the reason we wanted to be in the developing world was because the Soviet Union was in the developing world and that led us to to to support all kinds of governments that were bad for their people could we not do that again just because we're trying to challenge the Chinese I'd like to take advantage of the last set of questions to get you um to talk about Stanford and and what changes you see here um you're mentioning of gendia Fraser as as your student um you said that with with a twinkle in your eye and and a sense of Pride which I think is wonderful um how do you view the changes in the student body and and and what they're doing with their lives um today uh I see that a lot in um the seesac fellows uh you you scratch the NSC today or the defense department you'll see all sorts of seesac people there which I I'm really proud of but I also think that there are fewer people in the University r large who go into this area than was true in the past well what's your sense give give these supporters of of Stanford and students here a sense of what you're seeing in yeah your students well um I know that this generation kind of gets a bad rap sometimes right but I actually have never taught in my 40 years at Stanford I've never taught a more public-minded generation than this generation they they want to do things bigger than themselves now our job our responsibility is to say okay but before you go try to solve that problem how about you know something about it right so uh you don't just get to have a an opinion you actually you're in a university which means go take a class about what it is you want to solve and then maybe we can talk about how you do that secondly uh just CU you Googled it doesn't mean you researched it so let's do a little indepth on some of these IIA is not the source of all knowledge in the world not really um and then you know to learn to uh test your ideas against people with whom you disagree that's probably the most important because just because you think it it might not be so and so you have to be willing to put forward your arguments and have them rebutted and oh by the way I've got it I've got news for you uh you don't have a constitutional right not to be offended nobody wrote that into the Constitution so maybe if you're offended by something you can say to the person you know that was offensive let me tell you why and you can have a conversation about it right so some kind of basic ideas I think there's some basic skills that we need to equip our students with uh the ability to write clearly and I don't mean make subject and verb agree I mean to be able to sustain an argument I I used to teach a class where they wrote five-page paper every week and I would say you know did you plan to just kind of wander to the end of this and hope the best or did you do what I used to do called an outline so you knew where it was going to end up and you know so teaching that I think every student needs to know something about coding you don't have to be a coder you but you ought to take CS 106 because that world is all around you you need to know something about it you need to take statistics because uh you need to know the difference between causality and correlation you know and people going to confuse it all the time take a course on just one course on uh a civilization that roseen fell it will tell you more about Hubers than anything else that you could do and you know there's some basic things and I'm really glad we have college now for the Freshman because uh I I think if you before this you'd put 10 Stanford uh uh transcripts together um and looked at them there would have been no commonality between them at all and that isn't good there ought to could be some things that all of our students do so the audience college is the Freshman set of courses that all Stanford students in the fall and winter take with common syllabi yes so they have a set of books and and set of debates um and then in the spring they take a global course right that may be different but it still focuses them on something outside the United States which is great and and the and in college they read things like Plato who who knew uh that that might be important so um I think that we owe them that and then finally you mentioned Public Service careers um I this is a two-way problem um I I do think that uh we don't talk enough about public service in a positive way that's a national problem you know it's almost as if public servants are all going there because they're somehow self-aggrandizing crooked people who want to get aeit there a lot better ways to make money than going into public service and so you know I don't know 95% of the people that I met in government maybe higher percent were really people who were were trying they wanted to make the world better you know and just CU they made mistakes or but we don't speak about public servants in that way so if you're 22 years old why would you want to go be a public servant and be uh subjected to the kind of abuse that we uh that we put people through and so I think that's one element of it uh secondly we make it kind of hard particularly the federal government have you ever looked at a federal government website about getting a job uh it makes no sense whatsoever and uh you know unless you're going to commit to something like the Foreign Service where there's actually a pathway uh I couldn't wouldn't be able to figure out how to go get a job in the US government so we've somehow got to have a better front door uh for students who really do want to do Public Service I think how long it takes them to get a security clearance if they're going clearance and and and so there's that and then the final thing I'll say about it is not everything has to be a job in in Washington DC I'm encouraging students these days to go do a state house or a Governor's uh Mansion or a a local you know work with a mayor uh that's also public service and so much is happening at State and localities that maybe that's even a better experience um so uh that and you know and yes think about service in the military think about service in the intelligence agencies but we we have to make it uh somewhat easier and we have to say to our students you don't have to do it forever know uh it may be that you'll serve for a while come out go back in serve for a while come out that's one of the great yeah I know people have done that too and it's uh it's one of the great advantages of the American system yeah I would add that um your point about so many Americans not moving 25 mies away from home we we underestimate um uh that the degree to which this can be a problem even among Stanford students some of them are Global that's a great thing that we have more um International students here um and some of them aren't and um it really behooves us to get fellowships abroad to encourage them to encourage them through the Stanford and Washington program and I just wanted to note for um people who are not aware of the class that seesac teaches we had in this room a month ago 120 students pretending to be International diplomats for 18 different countries to have a discussion of the npt the nonproliferation treaty to have a review conference what could they do better and then they compared what they did to to what happened in the real world uh in the real world there was no agreement um in this case the students were able to reach an agreement um and then seesac fellows and faculty were playing all the heads of state would give instructions via classified email to the different students Professor Alan Wier played the UN Secretary General pounding the hammer to get them negotiations going um and they got an agreement and then the next day when they showed up at class all the classified emails from the head of state to their delegations got leaked yeah and their assignment was to read The Archives and write a history of why this happened not write a a memoir about what they did but rather a history about what happened and why and it was a wonderful experience but I think that one thing that we need to do with even more determination at Stanford is to get Stanford kids off the farm either literally sometimes going to foreign campuses but also mentally by thinking we need to find out what's going on in the world and have understandings that we normally don't get in the American context no I agree completely and and I think our students uh crave it actually um I also teach from simulation quite a lot and uh they really I it was one way to get them to really go deeper right because uh the even deeper than you ask them if they're going to be the foreign minister from wherever they're going to really want to know all about that foreign minister and so I do think there are ways that we can teach uh but I think the most important thing that we can do is to say to our students this is your time to prepare for uh your first job right not my students will say you know I I my first job should be meaningful no actually your first job may not be meaningful uh you you probably won't be whispering in the ear of the CEO or the senator so kind of put that out of your mind but you can have that first opportunity that stretches you to do something that you haven't done well before but you have to prepare in your time in and at Stanford to do things that are hard for you know I I really do believe if our students learn that it's okay and you know they're all such high Achievers right such high Achievers that oh my goodness if it was hard for me or I I got less than an a because maybe I wasn't don't be afraid to take that course because it's hard for you you will find I think that you get more fulfillment from conquering something that was hard from you for you than just constantly doing things that were easy for you and then if you do that when you're in college you learn that when you're on the job and you're asked to stretch you're not afraid you're not afraid to fail so uh there there are a lot of lessons that we can can teach here and uh for me it's been a great privilege to be a part of a great University but the the best part of it is the students that we have I agree before we think honey rice we have a tradition of um passing out a poster oh and the poster is behind your chair I've been [Laughter] told so both the speaker and the seesac on its walls will display the poster for the drill lecture that's great that's great where does America stand Dr C is a rice well that's great thank you thank you