[FANFARE PLAYS]
- Good morning, I am Liz Cohen.
I'm dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,
and I am delighted to welcome you to Radcliffe Day 2018.
Radcliffe Day is always exciting and a highlight of the year.
But it is especially so for me this year.
I will be stepping down at the end of June
to return to the History Department
after seven wonderful years as dean of the Radcliffe
Institute.
Recognizing--
[APPLAUSE]
OK.
Thank you very much.
Recognizing inspiring leaders with a Radcliffe medal
has been one of the very best parts of my job.
Today we honor a remarkable public servant, Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
[APPLAUSE]
And I am pleased to have such a fantastic crowd
joining me to do that.
There are nearly 2,000 of us here today in two tents, one
in Radcliffe Yard, the other across the street
in Greenleaf Yard, making this our largest Radcliffe Day ever.
Many others are watching online, and I'd
like to extend a special welcome to them.
This afternoon starting at 12:30,
we will celebrate Secretary Clinton's achievements
and award her the Radcliffe Medal.
Former Secretary of State and 2001 Radcliffe medalist
Madeleine Albright will offer a personal tribute.
And Secretary Clinton will then engage in conversation
with our own Maura Healey, a graduate of the Harvard
Radcliffe Class of 1992.
[APPLAUSE]
And for those of you not from Massachusetts, our attorney
general.
But first it is our tradition to kick off
Radcliffe Day with a panel discussion on a topic close
to our honoree's head and heart.
This morning's theme in recognition
of Hillary Clinton's service as US Secretary of State
from 2009 to 2013 is America's role in the world.
What has it been, what is it now, and what should it be?
We titled our panel Toward a New Global Architecture
to recall major policy speeches that Secretary Clinton
delivered in 2009 and 2010 at the Council
on Foreign Relations.
In those speeches, Clinton enumerated important challenges
that face the United States, including conflicts
in the Middle East, violent extremism,
nuclear proliferation, climate change, and disease.
And she called for a new global architecture
that would enable solutions to those issues
through collective action on a global scale with the United
States taking a bold leadership role.
These challenges demanded an architecture in which,
and I quote her, "States have clear incentives
to cooperate and live up to their responsibilities
as well as strong disincentives to sit on the sidelines
or sow discord and division," end quote.
In constructing this new architecture,
Clinton argued, "the United States
can, must, and will lead in this new century," end quote.
Resharpening its tools to undertake
what she called a smart power approach that
transcends simplistic distinctions
between hard and soft power.
Instead, the US should implement a nimble statecraft
that strategically combines goals like economic development
with, in her words, "good old-fashioned diplomacy."
The challenges Secretary Clinton grappled
with almost 10 years ago are still very much with us.
And many of them feel only more urgent today.
All of them require global solutions
in a world that is more interconnected than ever
before.
As a result of our interdependence,
even challenges that once seem solidly domestic
have become increasingly global in nature.
Diseases don't respect national borders.
We have seen this in the cases of H1N1, SARS, MIRS, Zika,
and the 2013 to 2016 Ebola epidemic.
Climate change has been a global issue since we first
started talking about it.
We know that we share a single atmosphere,
but global cooperation to reduce emissions
continues to prove challenging.
The threat posed by non-state violent extremist
groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, al-Qaeda,
and al-shabaab similarly transcends political frontiers
and demands global cooperation.
So, too, does the massive displacement
of millions of people who are refugees from conflicts
in Syria, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
In the face of these and many other new and still evolving
global challenges, it is imperative to return
to Secretary Clinton's question and probe the current state
of the global architecture and the role
the United States is playing in it hopefully
as a force for peaceful stability,
for moral leadership, and human including women's rights,
for greater worldwide prosperity,
and for solving formidable world problems.
In seeking solutions moreover, we
must also avoid a growing danger that Madeleine Albright
recently warned about, the rising tide of authoritarianism
around the world from Russia to the Philippines to Venezuela.
As Albright wrote last month, we may
be encouraged that most people in most countries
still want to live freely and in peace,
but there is no ignoring the storm
clouds that have gathered.
And she continued, "If one were to draft a script chronicling
fascism's resurrection, the abdication
of America's moral leadership would
make a credible first scene," end quote.
Recently, it seems that the United States
is lurching from one crisis to another
whether it's the war in Syria, the nuclear standoffs
with North Korea and Iran, or the US
exit from international agreements like the Paris
Climate Change Accord and trade alliances.
The president has called for an America First foreign policy,
but it bears asking what America first means in today's world.
Over a century since Woodrow Wilson used the slogan
in his 1916 re-election campaign to assuage fears
of US involvement in World War I and so many decades
since the America First committee
promoted its opposition to the US's entry into World War II.
In today's environment of global challenges,
massive international trade, population mobility,
technological transfer, and high-tech threats,
can United States really go it alone?
And if and when it does, what does America First
convey to the rest of the world, friends and foes alike.
Our panel this morning provides an exceptional opportunity
to step back and begin to piece together
the current state of the global architecture and the role
that the United States is assuming within it.
What do recent American actions and reactions add up to?
Where are we headed?
What kind of expertise is needed?
And how should we as individuals and as a country
think about America's role and responsibilities
in this seemingly ever more precarious world?
We could have no better guide to this important discussion
than Nicholas Burns, who is the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family
Professor of the practice of diplomacy
and international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School
where he also leads the future of diplomacy project
and the project on Europe and the Transatlantic relationship.
Nicks Burns is director of the Aspen Strategy Group,
and he sits on too many boards and advisory groups to name.
But before joining the Kennedy School,
Burns was a member of the US Foreign Service for 27 years,
including as US ambassador to Greece,
US ambassador to NATO, and from 2005 to 2008 as undersecretary
of state for Political Affairs where he led negotiations
on the US India civil nuclear agreement,
Iran's nuclear program, and much more.
I am enormously grateful to Nick for taking on this assignment
today and for all the help he has given me over the past year
as we plan together for today.
He will introduce our panelists and then he
will engage them in discussion, so please join me
in warmly welcoming Nicholas Burns.
[APPLAUSE]
- Liz, thank you.
Good morning, everybody on this beautiful morning
in Radcliffe Yard.
We have a lot of people to thank for this tremendous day.
But there is one woman who has led this Institute,
and she's walking right in front of me.
[APPLAUSE]
She has led it with strength and dynamism and passion
and an unfailing belief that reason and empirical thought
and the pursuit of knowledge represent the highest values
of Radcliffe Institute and of Harvard University .
She has expanded Radcliffe's public programs.
She has added new professorships.
If you take a look around this glorious Radcliffe Yard,
she's brought art and art installations
into the heart of the yard.
And she's embraced our president Drew Faust vision of one
Harvard may it ever be so.
I think after seven extraordinary years,
she deserves another rousing round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
It is a privilege for all of us to be here
with the most extraordinary, most accomplished public
servant that we have had in this country in a long, long time,
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
[APPLAUSE]
As an attorney from another law school, as a civic leader,
as an advocate for children for the poor
and for women, as First Lady, as United States senator,
as our secretary of state, she has
served with exemplary determination and intelligence
and resilience and courage.
And as we begin our discussion today
of a very complex subject--
what is America's relationship to the rest of the world, what
is America trying to achieve in that world--
we will have Secretary Clinton's prodigious record
of accomplishment to help guide us.
From her first national speech on a stage 10 miles west
of here at Wellesley College in 1969
to her pathbreaking exhortation in Beijing
at a seminal conference in 1995 that human rights are
women's rights and women's rights are human rights--
[APPLAUSE]
To her untiring support for the United States military
when she was a senator from the state of New York
to her four a challenging consequential
and often, I'm sure, exhausting years
as our 67th secretary of state, she
has given with every ounce of persistence and hope
and determination, she showed us how America can
be great on the world stage.
And I think she may exemplify better than just
about anybody I know Theodore Roosevelt's belief that it's
not the critic who counts, that the credit belongs,
in this case, to the woman who is in the arena, who
is in the public square, who is in the middle of the action,
and, in Roosevelt's words, who knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotions, who spends herself in a worthy cause
so, as TR said so memorably, her place shall never
be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory
nor defeat.
She has been in the arena for all of us
for the United States for her entire adult life.
As secretary of state, she steered America's response
to the Arab revolutions.
She stood up to the Chinese in 2010 on the South China Sea.
She stood up to a truculent Vladimir Putin
in Eastern Europe.
She ended--
[APPLAUSE]
And read her memoirs and you'll get the detail on that.
She ended a bitter and bloody rocket war
between Israel and Hezbollah.
And she managed nuclear arms reductions
to make this a safer world.
She also-- and Anne-Marie will talk about this I'm sure today
because Anne-Marie was a big part of it--
she pioneered an important conceptual change
about how we should think about diplomacy.
It was her insight that American diplomacy,
American development, and American defense
must all be linked in one cohesive national strategy.
And in contrast to the absolutely deplorable lack
of support for our diplomats over the last year,
she inspired our diplomats to represent the United
States, our young women, our young men,
all around the world.
So this panel's meeting at an important moment
where America's greatness on the global stage
is being challenged as never before, what has made America
an exceptional nation, the indispensable nation
as President Clinton and Secretary Albright used
to remind us, what has made us the undisputed global nation,
a great nation since the Second World War to 9/11 and the years
since?
We had to be an outward looking people.
We had to understand that we had to be
part of the global comments, engage
with the rest of the world, not digging
a moat around the country and pulling up
the drawbridge bridges but actually being in the world
as a leader.
Our closest friends and our allies
lament the fact that we are very far from that vision now.
And it's important to remember a little bit of history.
After World War II, every president--
until President Trump-- every president, Republican
and Democrat, believed that our power and purpose was based
on enduring foundations, our alliances
like NATO, free trade, a willingness
to keep America's doors open to immigration and refugees,
a willingness to lead in the defense of human rights
and of democracy and of democratic ideals
when they're challenged as Madeleine
has written about in her new book.
But the cruel reality is this.
We are now retreating in all of those areas.
Our government has abandoned the Paris Climate Change Accords,
abandoned three major trade agreements,
abandoned the Iran nuclear deal, abandoned our historic position
on Jerusalem, and may now be abandoning the pursuit
of diplomacy in North Korea.
We're no longer leading in the tradition of Marshall
and Acheson, of Dulles and Herter, of James A. Baker,
of Madeleine Albright, of Colin Powell, of Condoleezza Rice,
and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Winston Churchill visited Harvard and Radcliffe
in September 1943, and he addressed the students here
at this university.
And it was an epochal time in a terrible war.
It was just after the Allied victories at Stalingrad and El
Alamein just after the commencement
of the Italian campaign.
The US was taking the metaphorical baton
of leadership from Britain as the world's strongest power.
And at that critical moment when so much rested
on our shoulders, here's what Churchill
said to the students of Harvard and Radcliffe.
He said, "The price of greatness is responsibility."
The price of greatness responsibility.
To be truly great in our time, the United States
needs to lead with strategic purpose,
with respect for other countries and other peoples,
with dignity, with dedication to help
advance justice and democracy and peace in the world.
And we have strayed so far from that mission
under Donald Trump's chaotic, weak, and fearful leadership
of our country.
But in her life and work, Hillary Clinton
has been all about responsibility.
We're fortunate to have the example
of that responsible leadership today to help guide us
and to renew America's greatness as we move forward.
Such an honor to be here.
And we have four very distinguished panelists.
Starting at the far end of the table on my left,
Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Director of Policy
Planning at the State Department for Secretary Clinton,
a graduate of Harvard Law School, now president and CEO
of the New America Foundation.
Meghan O'Sullivan, former Deputy National Security Adviser
to President George W. Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan.
How's that for a tough challenge.
Now the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice
of international affairs and my colleague
at the Harvard Kennedy School.
David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist,
foreign policy thought leader, spy novelist--
read The Quantum Spy, his latest--
a graduate of Harvard College.
And Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary
of defense for policy, a graduate of Harvard College
back in a reunion year, now managing director
of west exec advisors.
Let's get to our discussion.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
So, Anne-Marie, we'll lead with you.
We'll have a discussion here for the next hour or so.
We're going to arrange widely.
We also have a lot of questions from you.
Liz and her staff solicited your questions.
I have them here.
I will inject those questions, Liz, at the right moment.
I thought it was right to lead with Anne-Marie.
In her position as state working for Secretary Clinton,
she had to look out over the whole world
and think about our broad national strategy.
I just suggested, Anne-Marie, that we are--
that we've fallen from grace, that we
don't have a strategic purpose, that we're not leading,
that we've abandoned allies and trade
and immigration and refugees.
Agree?
Disagree?
[LAUGHS]
- Well, when I was a law professor here,
that would have been known as a leading question.
- Yes.
- But let me just begin by saying
how honored I am to be here.
And I have to say when I walked in with that trumpet fanfare,
I thought I was at the royal wedding.
But the hats aren't quite as good.
I also am here as an example of a glass ceiling
that Secretary Clinton broke.
I was the first woman Director of Policy Planning, which
is the big think job in the State Department,
and it was founded when George Marshall asked
George Kennan to take it on, which
is the legacy none of us have ever lived up to.
But Secretary Clinton very deliberately
wanted to prove to the world--
I hope she did, I'm not going to claim that-- but she
wanted to prove that a woman could hold that job,
and that's why I'm sitting here today.
I would go anywhere.
[APPLAUSE]
So, Nick, to answer your question,
we are not leading in the world.
But I want to frame my answer in the context
of a message the American people have been sending us
and we in this room and this great university
and all the great universities I've been part of
and Washington are not listening.
Ever since the end of the Cold War,
the candidate that said I don't want
to continue being the global hegemon
and spending our money that way has won.
In 1992, President George HW Bush,
the hero of ending the Cold War, the most literate
foreign policy president we had had in a very long time,
lost to this governor from the south
who didn't really talk about foreign policy a lot
in his election.
He said, "It's the economy, stupid."
And I as a governor of Arkansas know
what to do for this country.
In 2000, his vice president, another southerner,
who was an extraordinary global diplomat--
he had led the work with Russia.
He had been all over the world, and he
ran against another southern governor, who basically
said I don't know much about the world,
but we need a kinder, gentler nation.
Guess who won?
In 2004, similar pattern.
2008, John McCain ran.
I am not of John McCain's party, but I have enormous respect
for John McCain.
John McCain has stood up for the best of our traditions.
He stood up against--
[APPLAUSE]
I will never forget in the aughts
when I was here teaching at the time--
when suddenly people were actually talking about torture
was OK for our country.
It was necessary, and we're hearing that again.
And John McCain led that fight, and he
had been obviously a participant in the great--
in great global events of our time.
But against Barack Obama, he was the globalist,
and there was a senator from Illinois
who talked about bringing this country together,
who rejected the Iraq war.
Guess who won.
And I don't think I have to tell you the story of 2016,
but it is the most horrific example of somebody saying
it's--
I don't want this role in the world and somebody else
saying we must have this role in the world,
and we're not winning.
So I just want to say a couple of things
about how it is time to stopped--
to stop rejecting that message or trying
to instruct those who send it on how they really are misguided.
It's time to listen to that message.
And in many ways they're telling us
something Secretary Clinton taught me
because one of the things I had the privilege of doing
was working with her on her first big development speech.
And she said to us--
she tasked a group of us to think about what should
American development policy be.
And she said it cannot be charity.
I need to tell the person in Detroit
why I am spending American taxpayers' dollars
in Africa and not in Detroit.
And I must have an account that makes sense to that person.
We need to think about how we can lead in the world
and in a different way.
And we-- to start, we have to recognize that right now, we
are less the global hegemon than the global hypocrite.
We are preaching values of democracy and universal values
we are not practicing at home.
We are preaching prosperity and our country is falling apart.
I live on Amtrak.
I know of what I speak.
But second, we need to make foreign policy and diplomacy
the work of many, many more people
than those of us on this panel and in this university
and in Washington.
LA appointed the first deputy mayor
for International Affairs that person--
I'm proud to say she's a woman-- is
former ambassador in the Obama administration Nina Hachigian,
she's in Los Angeles doing foreign affairs.
Chicago has 28 sister city relationships.
If you ever walk from O'Hare to the Hilton, which
I've done many, many, many times,
it's a Hall of United Nations.
28 nations flags hang in that walkway.
Cities across the country are playing as important role
in fighting terrorism in climate change.
President Trump pulled out, but the cities
of the United States, led by Mayor Bloomberg, stood up.
And we are going to meet our commitments
through those city's efforts and the efforts of universities,
businesses, nonprofit leaders, faith leaders, all of us.
So what I would say to come back to Nick's questions--
just a slight digression--
we have to first of all listen to Americans
who are saying when we were under mortal threat in the Cold
War fighting the Soviet Union nuclear weapon
to nuclear weapon--
and let us hope that day doesn't come fully again.
We're back to fighting Russia but
in a different configuration.
In those days, we would bear any price--
pay any price and bear any burden,
but today we need to pay more attention to what is happening
in the United States.
So we need to learn how to lead because I deeply believe--
to paraphrase Secretary Albright--
we are an indispensable nation.
We are not the only one, but we are
a nation that needs to be at the global table.
And when we are, the world is a better place.
But to get there, we have to listen to Americans.
We have to learn how to lead in a different way
and to not only have the great diplomats like Nick Burns
but to have all those people who are not in the Foreign Service
but who are representing America in the world
be a part of who we are and what we do in the world.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
- Meghan, another way to ask this question--
I wanted you to speak to this as well as you are a Republican.
There's been a consensus since the late 40s
among Republicans and Democrats in foreign and defense policy
the way we haven't had in domestic policy.
It's all those things that Anne-Marie and I
have talked about that Madeline has written in her new book.
What's happened to that consensus, and--
can I just-- and to your party?
And is your party divided on that?
- Great.
Thanks for the softball.
[LAUGHS]
Good morning, everyone.
And like others, I'd like to begin
by saying what an honor it is to be here today
for such a great day for Radcliffe
and for such a wonderful occasion
to honor Secretary Clinton.
Unlike many others on this stage,
I have not had the opportunity to work for Secretary Clinton,
but I have benefited from her career as a citizen most
importantly and all the good that she's done but also
as a woman because she has fought many fights that I
will not have to fight because she did that.
So I want to thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
And I hope that I can answer your question, Nick,
and inject a little bit of optimism
simply because there is the risk that we're going to depress
ourselves on this topic.
To state what others have stated--
but I think it's very important to note--
is that over the last 70 years, the world has really prospered.
This has been a period of unprecedented prosperity
and peace on large account because
of the web of institutions and norms
that have underpinned a lot of what has gone on in the world,
and the US has just been the most critical actor,
not only in constructing that web of institutions and norms
but in defending it.
And I think any president at this moment
would have a challenge with this order, with rejuvenating it,
with bringing it up to the moment.
The world is very different than it was 70 years ago,
and I think any president would have
the challenge of modernizing this international order as we
call it and dealing with new challenges
to that order be it China, be it global disease, whatever
the case may be.
Unfortunately, we're not having that conversation, which
would be much wonkier but much more welcome
and that would be how to reform this international order.
We're having a conversation about
are we still invested in it.
And as others have suggested, we really--
despite Anne-Marie's laying out the electoral map over the last
couple of decades--
we have the first president in office
who has questioned openly whether it
is in America's interest to continue
to be the defender of this particular role in the world.
So others maybe didn't campaign on it,
but once that person came into the Oval Office,
the imperative of American leadership, I think,
has always been clear.
So we are at a unique moment with a president who
does question whether this as good for America.
And this is concerning because it takes leadership,
particularly in a moment where there are lots of anxieties
about globalization.
It takes leadership not only from the Oval Office
but I would say most importantly from the Oval Office
to build and maintain a consensus
within our own country about the importance of America
playing this role and to make sure
that consensus is not based just on people on the stage
or people in this tent but that it is one that
embraces elites and non-elites.
It embraces, as Anne-Maria said, all parts of our country.
To get to your question specifically
about the Republican Party, and here's
where I'm injecting optimism, I would
say it is still important to distinguish
between the president and the Republican Party.
Many Republicans-- and I would consider myself one of them--
don't really see him as a Republican.
And he has departed from very traditional
core Republican values and policies
in very, very fundamental ways.
Now I think this is a little disguised
by the tax cuts because you have seen the Republican leadership
and really rallied behind the president in this regard.
But if we look at the menu of policies and attitudes
and orientations, I still think there
is a pretty significant gap between the president
and the bulk of the party when it
comes to international affairs.
I could go through the long list,
but in the interest of time I won't.
I'll simply say, take trade for instance.
The president's been very vocal about trade.
This is one of the things that has been very consistent,
one of the few things that has been very consistent
in his policy agenda.
He is not someone who extols the value of free trade.
He openly embraced protectionism in his inaugural speech.
But I think there's still a very strong support
for free trade among Republicans,
among American business.
And I would say, if you look at polls,
most Americans still are more in favor of free trade
than they are against it.
And so I think there is still a lot to work with.
And that's true for alliances as well.
Americans like alliances, Democrat, Republican.
And just because the president doesn't
seem to value them as much as many of us would like
doesn't mean that we no longer have a national foundation
for these things.
So again I won't go through the whole list of areas in which I
think we still have a strong foundation
and a strong national interest, but I
do think we are at a moment of a crisis of leadership, which
is why it's such a wonderful day to honor
some national leadership in this tent.
- Meghan, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Just to support something that Meghan
said about Republican leadership in Congress,
it was Ed Royce, Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham,
who stood up to President Trump on funding
for the State Department, for instance, over the last year.
Republicans restored the funding,
so I think there is this dynamic on the Hill.
A lot of questions here from the audience, Michele,
about our challenges with Vladimir Putin.
And you've been a leading defense official
for our country for a long time.
He invaded Georgia in 2008.
He invaded, occupied, and annexed Crimea in 2014.
8,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine
pressuring the Baltic states.
Are we back to containment?
We're rebuilding American armored presence in Eastern
Europe, and what would you advise President Trump
to do about Putin, Eastern Europe,
the defense of democracy?
- Well, let me just say it's a pleasure
to be back at Radcliffe where I have many fond memories.
I was saying particularly rowing for under Radcliffe colors
on the Charles River.
[APPLAUSE]
And such an honor to be a part of a panel honoring Secretary
Clinton.
I had the great good fortune of being trapped
in a windowless room with her for many, many hours,
The Situation Room, and just such a privilege
to watch such an extraordinary public servant guide
US foreign policy to be smart and strategic and in the best
interests of America and Americans,
so thank you for being here and thank you for letting
me to be part of this.
So Vladimir Putin and Russia.
I think it's important to understand
where Putin is coming from.
Putin represents a deep sense of grievance in Russia,
that Russia since the end of the Cold War
has lost its geopolitical position,
has presided over a declining economy,
has had a failed experiment in democracy,
has really become a middling power as opposed
to a great power.
And so Putin is determined to reassert
Russia as a great power using just about any means necessary.
He is determined to recreate a sphere of influence
around Russia's borders.
And most importantly for us, he is also
determined to undermine democracy as a model,
be it in Central and Eastern Europe
or here in the United States, because the biggest
threat to Vladimir Putin is the potential for true democracy
to re-emerge in Russia.
Despite the relative economic weakness
of Russia compared to its European counterparts,
Putin has actually played a limited hand very well.
He is reverted to the KGB playbook
and used a whole range of asymmetric means
to try to advance Russian interests and influence--
intelligence operations, propaganda, disinformation,
cyber attacks, little green men, meaning
paid Russian proxies, and so forth.
And we've seen this in Crimea, in Ukraine, previously
in Georgia.
We've seen it in the meddling that
preceded the meddling in our elections
the meddling in Eastern and Central European elections
and so forth.
So I think-- to answer your question--
I think unfortunately despite some very serious work
at resetting the relationship with by investing in areas
where we had common interests like arms
control, nonproliferation, counter-terrorism, climate
change, and so many others, Putin has really
taken a very sharp turn.
And now Russia is presenting real challenges
to the United States, if not in some cases, an actual threat.
So what do we do.
I think the most important step we need to take
is to reestablish a very clear policy of deterrence.
We need to clarify where the lines are
with Putin with regard to us and with regard
to our European allies.
First and foremost, we have to deter meddling
in the next round of elections being--
this fall in 2018 where there's already evidence of preparation
of that and certainly in 2020.
One of the challenges of President Trump's denial
of this issue is for his own personal reasons
and his own concerns about the legitimacy of his election
is that the United States does not
have a strategy for preventing this from happening again.
This is the biggest threat to our democracy that exists.
We cannot go through an election where Russian meddling actually
calls into question the results of the vote tallies.
Although they didn't do that last time,
we know that they surveyed at least 30 to 35 of our state
electoral systems to know how to do it if they needed to.
We need to prevent that.
It means investing in the resilience
of our electoral systems at the state and local level.
Fortunately, Congress has finally
allocated some funds for that, but we
need to really engage the best of the private sector
to help state and local electoral officials improve
the strength of their system.
But we also need to clearly communicate to Putin
that there will be no kidding costs if he
crosses that line again.
We also need to clarify deterrents in Europe.
It is completely unfathomable and unacceptable that a United
States president would go to his first NATO summit
and refuse to re-articulate America's security
commitment to NATO.
This is the alliance that invoked
Article V for the first time in our history
because we were under attack on 9/11 by al-Qaeda.
How is it possible that an American president would
hesitate to make a commitment to the most important set
of allies we have in the world and a huge source
of strategic advantage for the United States.
So we need to clarify in word and in deed
that we are there to support deterrence
and reassurance in Europe.
We also need to make sure that we
continue to support democracy programs and resilience
programs.
There's real threat to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
We need to do better at countering Russian propaganda
and information operations in Europe and here.
And lastly, we need to invest to ensure that we maintain
the military edge that we will need
in certain critical areas like cyber and electronic warfare
and precision strike to again underwrite deterrence and make
sure that Vladimir Putin does not miscalculate and think
that he can cross the border into Europe or cross a border
and threaten us militarily.
So let me stop there.
- Michele, a quick follow up before we--
[APPLAUSE]
Before we talk about the Middle East and North Korea,
two perilous subjects.
Last week, really one of the only bipartisan committees
these days in Congress, the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, led by a Republican,
Richard Burr of North Carolina, and a Democrat, the vice chair,
Mark Warner of Virginia, issued a report after more than a year
of study and hearings saying they
had no doubt the Russians interfered in the elections,
no doubt they interfered on behalf of candidate Trump.
Are we ready for 2018?
You talked about-- are we ready for 2020?
Is it up to the attorney generals
have our states to try to fashion these defense policies?
Are we going to get leadership from Washington?
- We are not ready, particularly for 2018.
I think that there will be some candidates who
take the steps necessary to make sure their own cyber
security is up to speed, but my biggest worry
is again our electoral infrastructure
is operated at the state and local level it
is as diverse and differentiate as you could possibly imagine.
There's been no leadership on the part
of the federal government.
Until now, there's been very little money available to help.
I've been part of an effort to mobilize the tech
community to-- on a pro bono basis
to go out and offer advice, services, counsel,
help to any candidate, any state election
official, any local election official who wants to build
the resilience of their system.
The most important thing we need to do
is to have an audit trail no matter what happens.
Whether we go back to a paper audit
trail or an encrypted electronic audit trail,
we must ensure that when we have an election in 2020,
we actually know with confidence who won.
And we need to also communicate to Vladimir Putin
that we will be coming after the things that he care-- he
and his oligarchs care about most
if he crosses that line again.
- Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
So now we're going to take on the Middle East.
At Harvard, we have courses where we
do this over 3 and 1/2 months.
We're going to do this and ask Meg and David, who
both know a lot after decades of experience in the Middle East.
And here's the question I pose to both of you.
I think, Meghan, are going to take the lead,
and David will speak second.
We've just come out of a very bloody war in Iraq.
We're back in the fight against the Islamic State, which
is ending.
We're in Syria.
Iran's a regional troublemaker.
We're out of the Iran nuclear deal.
The question is, is there an overarching strategy
that our government should have to deal with this because we've
been the most important outside power since the 1970s
in the Middle East?
I keep asking you the most challenging questions,
but I know you can answer them.
- Well, there's plenty to go around I think.
Let me say there--
it's interesting-- your question is interesting because it
implies really two things.
One, does the US still have an interest in being in the Middle
East in the way that it has been for the previous decades,
and, two, are we capable of devising
a strategy that meets the enormous challenges
of that part of the world.
So let me take him both quickly and turn first this question
of is it really in the US interest for us to be there.
And I get this question a lot.
I'm sure many of you do.
And I understand that people are hoping
you'll say no, it's no longer in our interest to be there.
One, there's the fatigue that has
gone on as a result of the engagements in Iraq
and elsewhere.
But also there's this new idea that we're
more self-sufficient in energy, and therefore we
don't need to be in the Middle East
because we don't need their energy.
And that is a big change in the relationship.
And I hate to throw cold water on these ideas,
but, in fact, it still is very much in the US interests
to be engaged in the Middle East and to be
invested in a better outcome for that part of the world.
There are energy reasons why that still is true
regardless of how much oil the US produces,
which I could go into, but I'll save that for another time.
But there's also a broad range of non-energy interests
that are going to keep us there.
And there's also a need to throw cold water on a related idea,
and that is maybe the Middle East
would be better off without American engagement.
We certainly have demonstrated that we
are capable of making many serious mistakes in that part
of the world, and wouldn't that region be better
without the United States.
I can say pretty definitively when we look at Syria today,
despite the great advice of Secretary Clinton and others,
that is with the Middle East looks like without a lot of US
engagement.
It is not obviously a better place
either from the perspective of people living in the Middle
East or for US interests.
You think about how destabilizing
that conflict has been to our European allies, the risks
that it has posed to the United States.
So I very squarely put myself in the camp
of people who believe it is still very much in America's
interests regardless of how difficult it is to stay engaged
in that part of the world.
The question about strategy is harder.
And I know David will go into this in even greater detail.
But let me just say, of course, this
is a very, very heterogeneous part of the world
despite maybe some of the stereotypes.
It's a very varied part of the world.
So we're not going to have one strategy that
actually addresses all of the challenges
in that part of the world.
But we do need two things, which are currently
in very short supply, if we are going to be better positioned
to respond to the challenges in that part of the world
and to meet them.
And those two things are first, I would say,
is a much greater appreciation for how interconnected
the challenges are there.
So they're not the same, but they're very related.
So take, for example, the decision
to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
Now, this decision, whatever you think of it,
it makes our challenges in other parts of the region,
not just in Iran but in other parts of the region,
much, much harder because Iran is all over the region.
So if we give a reason for Iran to oppose American interests,
not just on this narrow but very significant
question of Iran's nuclear ambitions,
this gives Iran the incentive to challenge us
more in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen, vis a vis Saudi Arabia.
Really this creates more obstacles to success.
So again, we need a greater appreciation
for how these things are all interrelated,
and that the assessments that happen in this windowless room
really need to reflect that.
And secondly in a category of potentially unpopular things
I will say today, I think Americans need to get over--
and I know this is impossible, which
is why I'm not a politician--
their aversion to-- call it whatever we want--
but helping other countries build institutions.
What has happened in the Middle East in the last 10 years
is really the collapse of the Arab state.
And to the extent that there is such a thing
as a solution for that part of the world,
it will be the rebuilding of states in the Arab world.
Now, this is not to say America should be rebuilding
these states, but America has a real interest
and these states are rebuilt in a way that reflects
the interest both of their people
and of stability in the region.
And America has know how and resources and a diplomatic heft
that's very important in the rebuilding of these countries.
So again the aversion to getting involved
in things that are difficult, that require resources,
and that take a long time, we will have
to tackle that head on if we are going to be able to help a very
critical part of the world have a better future,
which is essential to our own future as well.
- Thank you, Meghan.
[APPLAUSE]
Meghan has written a great new book
called A Windfall, which looks at transformations
in the energy industry worldwide,
which we highly recommend.
- I was going to complain that you gave David's spy novel--
- I'm just trying to be--
I'm trying to be fair and balanced.
Fair and balanced.
David, it's so great to have you here.
I think all of us recognize your deep experience in the Middle
East.
You were a foreign correspondent there several decades ago.
You go back.
You've been in Syria.
You've been tracking this unbelievable human tragedy
of the 12 million homeless, the fractured state.
How do you make sense of this.
If you were to advise President Trump, what should he be doing?
- Thank you, Nick, and the first thing to say is that Syria--
but so much of the Middle East--
it's a tragedy.
We watch it.
We feel a sense of horror for what's happened to people.
We struggle to think of how we can affect that,
reduce the human cost, and we have failed again and again.
And it's painful and poignant so,
that's the first starting point.
In covering Secretary Clinton when she was Secretary of State
and her Middle East views, I was struck by two things
that I want to mention.
First, I think she was always ready to use American power
to try to maintain the conditions of security
and stability that that region needs.
She understood that however tired the United States
might be of its involvement there,
the consequence of our withdrawal
would be only greater loss of life.
And that's what we've seen.
She also, as I remember, was cautious about what
she wanted us to do.
She-- when the Arab Spring swept,
the Arab world moved from Tunisia and Egypt.
Secretary Clinton was within the Obama administration
a voice for let's be careful.
Let's see if we can get an orderly transition in Egypt
away from Hosni Mubarak, then the president,
maybe let's take yes for an answer when
he said on February 1, 2011, that he was prepared to resign.
As I read that record, I think Secretary Clinton
and her caution--
let's not go over the waterfall here,
let's not throw this up for revolution--
I think it looks very sensible.
A second thing that sticks in my mind
is Secretary Clinton's views about Syria
as this great tragedy began to roll forward
as this country began to come apart.
In 2012 as a columnist, I was struggling to figure out
what do I think about this?
What's the right thing to recommend?
I honestly didn't know.
So I did what journalists do.
I decided to do the reporting, and I
snuck across the Turkish border, was
smuggled by the Free Syrian Army, as it was called,
and traveled to Aleppo.
It was the craziest thing I've ever done as a journalist.
My wife still hasn't really forgiven me for it.
But when I got out, it was obvious to me
that the policies-- it was not then known
that Secretary Clinton was advocating them
in secret in the situation room-- but those policies
were correct.
What I wrote and what she was arguing inside
was first Bashar al-assad will never govern all of Syria
again.
It's not going to happen.
He's gone to war with his own people.
Second, the Free Syrian Army, these peoples
trying to create a new country need help.
They're a mess and they need the kind of help
that the US military special forces can provide.
And three if we don't do that, the extremists
who I already saw all over Aleppo in northern Syria
will only get stronger.
And, of course, that was before there was anything called ISIS.
And ISIS came and we were then plunged into a much darker war,
but I think Secretary Clinton got that right.
She argued it in the administration.
I will believe till my last breath
that this awful story might have been different
if her advice had been followed.
Let me conclude just by offering a brief snapshot of where
we are now in a part of this policy.
Syria as a whole is in catastrophic state failure.
But in the east of Syria-- east of the Euphrates
where our special forces have delivered almost completely
on their commitment to destroy ISIS,
you do see conditions of stability.
The United States found a way to deploy military power
with very few people.
It's basically been 2000 special forces in Syria,
motivated allies who want to do the fighting themselves,
a small footprint an extraordinary success.
East of the Euphrates, I've traveled there three times
in the last two years, you see people fleeing toward America
and its allies for security.
I'll close with just a deeply disturbing image of what
we have done probably without an alternative,
but we don't want to do again.
Traveling through Raqqa, which was the capital
of the Islamic State, you see--
I was there two months ago-- you see a level of destruction
I have never seen covering wars, conflicts
for more than 30 years.
It looks like the pictures we remember
of the battle of Berlin at the end of World War II.
It's a nightmare.
It tells you two things.
If you really mess with the United States to the point
that we say we're going to make a commitment
to degrade and destroy your movement, we mean it.
And we have the ability to bring to bear
a level of military power that people just
have to take seriously.
And second, we don't want to do that again.
And what I've come to think is once a determined adversary is
in an urban area like Raqqa, like these cities,
there really is no good humane way to get them out.
So we have to with our allies prevent that
from happening in the first place,
but I think on these questions, Secretary Clinton
came as close to getting it right as anybody
I know at the top of government.
[APPLAUSE]
- Nick, if you'll just allow me to make a very quick two
finger about this, I think your point about Raqqa
and the devastation not only in Syria but also in northern Iraq
is just incredible.
And your point saying that America
has made the point to the world if we
say we're going to destroy your movement, this is what happens,
I think an even stronger point would
be to be able to point to those parts of the world
and say but we can help you rebuild because that is where I
think the future of this conflict in Syria and in Iraq
is going to go.
If those places are not rebuilt in some fashion,
then we're going to see this movie again.
Again, that doesn't mean America going in and doing
all of the rebuilding but marshaling
a lot of the diplomatic effort, the economic resources I think
is going to be absolutely critical.
- Anne-Marie.
- Just quickly, I want again to tie
this back to domestic politics.
And again my thesis is it is so important
to have these conversations, but if we're not
thinking about domestic policy politics,
we will continue having these conversations
where we are lamenting what is happening
and we're not connected to the American people.
So just on Meghan's point about state building,
and it goes to David's point equally about the kind
of destruction and what Secretary Clinton I think saw
was that we must focus on the people as well
as the chessboard of politics.
But to Meghan's point about who wants us out
of state building, who wants us out of the Middle East,
it's not just the people you might expect.
It is at least in my organization,
which is 46% under 30 and extremely diverse,
it is the young people of color, who in part inherit a sort
of post-colonial view that America in these places has
done nothing but bad but who also--
they look at the Middle East and they
see an analogy between American power oppressing people there
and American power oppressing people here.
And so to really build the kind of consensus we want--
and I totally agree with you--
we have to change the way we talk about it
and think about it.
We need to explain why actually in the first place
we are just enabling the people of the region
to rebuild their own countries.
We are not rebuilding anything.
And you said this.
But we have to do it in a way that
brings us very, very different group of Americans along.
- Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
We could go on for days, months, years on the Middle East.
I want to ask a question on North Korea,
then we're going to leave you with some hope.
I'm going to ask the panel what are
you strategically hopeful about because we don't want to have--
depress this entire audience.
David, until yesterday morning at 10:00 AM--
and I've been an opponent of Donald Trump--
I thought he's done OK on North Korea.
He turned away from war towards diplomacy, the big summit
June 12, coins minted, but seriously he
was going to meet him.
Mike Pompeo twice to Pyongyang first ever
meetings of an American diplomat with Kim Jong Un, first ever
meetings.
I thought good for Donald Trump.
We should support him in this.
Then it was this letter, the most unique breakup
letter of all time--
diplomatic breakup letter-- and are we in?
Are we out?
Is this just part of the diplomacy?
Is this a tactical move?
Are we going back to the use of force?
Where are we on North Korea?
- The extraordinary truth is we don't know.
Covering foreign policy these last 18 months, whatever it is,
I sometimes liken to vertigo.
You just literally-- it's like falling
through space, something I never remember feeling
covering Secretary Clinton.
The breakup letter was a classic,
I mean a classic of passive aggressive wounded
you said such hurtful things about me.
I just can't see you anymore.
But maybe we could get together again.
It's-- just try reading it as a letter,
like letters that people send.
I think as I stand back and look at this, the message
that I take is that it probably isn't a bad thing
that this summit is postponed.
I hope it's not gone forever and that we're not
back to fire and fury.
But I think we were heading toward a summit that in a sense
that was burdened by over-expectation.
The president wanted a favorable outcome too much
but had planned for it too little.
The two sides couldn't really begin
to write the communique because on the question
of denuclearization, they had fundamentally different
definitions of what that meant.
And so I think it's not a terrible thing that people
take a little more time.
I know with great interest that after
this amazing coy flattering, threatening letter
from Donald Trump that the North Koreans responded this morning
their time with a very measured highroads statement
praising Donald Trump, talking about the Trump process.
It's been incredibly important to work with him.
They've really got the counter-messaging down.
So who can say where this is going.
But I think a little more time is appropriate.
I hope the lesson for this president
is that while there are values to the disruptive style what
he adopts, suddenly rearranging chairs,
does create space sometimes, and we need to be honest.
We can see some of that with North Korea.
But the disruptive approach carried
to this extreme where literally you
don't know from one news cycle to the next which way are we're
going.
Are we go for the Libyan model?
Are we against it?
Are we for it again, it literally
has been like that over the last week.
But in the end, that's counterproductive.
One thing again--
I come back to Secretary Clinton--
I watched with great interest the way
she sometimes used secret diplomacy in particular
in setting the--
setting sail on our initiative with Iran
that led to the Iran nuclear agreement.
But she sent her most private emissaries to Oman
to begin meetings.
Nobody knew about it.
As a journalist, I'm supposed to say that's a terrible thing.
And I always want more information than less,
but I do think Secretary Clinton understood that sometimes doing
it carefully-- doing it quietly, not disruptively,
is the way to get the results that the country wants.
So I hope we're back on that track with North Korea.
I must say I'm impressed by Secretary Pompeo's management
of the quiet side of this.
He obviously has the president's confidence.
If you were going to make a positive bet,
you'd say that Pompeo will think strategically
and will end up a little more time back in this conversation.
- And that's a relatively hopeful thing to say.
Michele, do you share that, and when the president
turned towards diplomacy, I think a lot of us
breathed a sigh of relief because the military options
you were undersecretary of defense for policy.
Someday you may be Secretary of Defense,
just to put you on the spot.
What-- are there degree of any good--
- We can only hope.
- We all hope this.
We all hope this.
Are there any good military options?
If we had to go there and none of us want to go there?
- Yep.
Short answer is no.
But I'll expand.
I agree that I think this opportunity, which
was an important opportunity for diplomacy,
fell apart because the administration was not
serious in its preparation, really taking the time
to have-- bring in experts to understand
what do we think Kim Jong Un is really trying to achieve here?
What do we think we're trying to achieve?
What are our objectives?
What are we willing to give?
What are they willing to give?
What are we willing to hold in reserve?
How do you sequence these things?
The lack of serious diplomatic preparation
that has been needed in every--
historically in every single time
where we've had a breakthrough and success,
it just wasn't done.
So I hope that Mike Pompeo now has the assignment
to get that going, but he will have a challenge.
We don't have an ambassador.
We don't have the right State Department jobs
filled to give him much help.
And you certainly can't expect this kind of leadership
to come from John Bolton.
So I hope--
I think the best case is that they
focus on some serious planning and preparation.
They exert some message discipline
so they don't have random officials saying random things
that the North Koreans have to react to
and that they get back on a more serious attempt at diplomacy.
And this brings me to answer to a question
because the alternative is that if diplomacy truly fails,
this administration has talked about using
the military option.
And I want to just be very clear about what
that would look like.
The first thing is we know that North Korea has
dozens of nuclear weapons.
We know they are distributed at hidden and underground
facilities.
We know they have hundreds and hundreds of missiles that
can hit regional allies or now intercontinental-- hit
United States.
Those are also hidden.
Many are mobile.
There is no military strike that can denuclearize North
Korea as a military operation.
You may get some of it.
You won't get all of it.
The second thing, Kim Jong Un's not
going to sit there and take a large military strike when
it would have to be large to try to get most of this.
He is going to respond.
How is he likely to respond?
He has tens of thousands of rock-- short-range rockets
and artillery shells that can be fired in seconds on their way
to Seoul, the city with a population of 25
million civilians, including a lot of Americans.
This-- any kind of military strike
would almost certainly quickly escalate
into an actual conflict.
If we actually saw war in Korea, this is not Iraq.
This is not Afghanistan.
Part of my job was as undersecretary
was helping the secretary provide civilian oversight
of war planning.
We went through the Korea plans dozens of times.
This is a very intensive, bloody, long war
that the American people are not prepared for,
and we should never undertake without exhausting
every possibility including diplomacy, containment,
and all of the tools that have worked
for us throughout the Cold War.
Lastly, there's a real risk of nuclear use.
Kim Jong Un has these weapons as his survival card.
If we truly in a position to threaten his regime,
I can't imagine a situation where
he wouldn't try to use these.
And then we're in the world of a nuclear conflict.
So we all have to hope and pray that we get back
on the diplomatic track and that this time the administration
learned some lessons from its recent experience
and gets much more serious about pursuing it.
- Thank you, Michele
[APPLAUSE]
So after Putin, the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, Kim Jong Un,
we need a little uplifting.
So, Liz, we have 11 minutes left,
and I want to do two lightning rounds
where I pose two questions, brief answers from the four
panelists.
The first one is are we living in the age of pessimism,
social media, the dueling cable TV channels, all
the pessimism about America.
I'd framed it this way-- my wife Libby is here.
A couple of years ago, she came to one of my talks here.
She made a huge mistake of doing that.
And it was about all of these problems.
And on the way home here in Cambridge,
I said how'd that go, and there was a pause.
And she said you're depressing everybody.
And she said what are you hopeful about?
Where are the big trend lines?
And that was a really good observation and question,
so this semester I asked my class of 75 students from 22
countries don't tell me what you wish for
but analytically where are the big positive global trends--
economic, technological, political
that we can all try to push forward
on as a human community.
So maybe I'll just go in reverse order, Anne-Marie,
and start with you.
What are you hopeful about?
- I'm hugely hopeful because we're
living in an age of renewal.
So two things.
One, everyone here who has anybody in their life
who is graduating, go buy a book called Our Towns--
A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America by Jim and Deb
Fallows, and I want to emphasize it's Radcliffe Day.
Jim Fallows, we know him.
He's great.
He's a Harvard grad.
And Deb Fallows, his wife who's a linguistics PhD from Harvard,
they spent five years flying around this country going
to large towns, small cities.
Columbus, Ohio to Sioux Falls to Eastport, Maine,
across this country.
And they tell you what I have also seen,
that at the national level I've never been as depressed.
But as-- at the local level, at the level where people know
each other and know that we're broken and know that we have
to fix it, as--
they say and they document people
are coming together and working together and solving
problems who would never work together at the national level.
So go and think about it but go buy it.
And then here's the larger part.
Renewal is the American way.
If you just look back to the end of the 19th century,
go back and read your Upton Sinclair.
Go back and look at the Gini coefficient
for the late 19th century, the inequality--
the unbelievable inequality for the historians present.
We-- the-- it was machine politics.
It was close to violence, and who renewed us?
It was the folks from the heartland out.
It was the progressives and the populace
and people from across the country, Republicans
and Democrats or more importantly right and left,
who said we are America.
We have these values.
We fall short, so far short, but when we do,
we remind ourselves of who we are and what we stand for,
and we pick ourselves back up.
And we renew this country, and it is happening now.
[APPLAUSE]
- Like Anne-Marie I refuse to live in an age of pessimism,
so just quickly two things.
One, obvious this week, anyone who's here in Cambridge
is just watching our students graduate.
You cannot help but be optimistic.
Yesterday I-- with Nick, we lined the corridor
where our graduates marched in before the ceremony,
and no matter how many times I do it
I will never fail to be moved by their faces,
by the enthusiasm that they all have for going out and making
the world a different place.
So if you're ever feeling down, just pop on a video of that.
Second, more in the policy side, I
would say I'm optimistic about the age of energy abundance.
So if we were meeting 10 years ago,
we could have got into a conversation
about potential nodes of conflict,
and we might have focused on energy scarcity
as being one of those nodes.
Because 10 years ago, the global energy landscape
looked completely different from what it looks like today.
Today we really are living in a world
where people are worried about energy rightly
from a perspective of climate change
and other potential environmental issues
but much less worried about energy
from the perspective of being a source of conflict.
So I have a former colleague who in 2006 said he could not
imagine any future scenario that did not
involve conflict between the United States and China
over energy.
Nobody will make that statement today because China
and the US are not competing for energy.
In fact, China is exporting energy to--
no, the US is exporting energy to China, pretty remarkable.
And there are a number of other examples
I could give you how this new energy landscape actually
provides some opportunities for more peaceful engagement,
be it from undermining one of Russia's real potent foreign
policy tools to actually potentially creating reasons
for new relationships such as between Israelis
and their Arab neighbors because Israel has huge new natural gas
finds, a resource that its neighbors really need and want.
So that's one good reason to be optimistic--
two good reasons.
- David.
- I'll also offer two quick reasons.
I'm optimistic because we still live in a country
where citizens get to decide what kind of government
they want.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm not happy about the choices that people sometimes make,
but-- and I want people to fight to preserve their ability
to choose despite outside interference
and apprise that citizenship.
But we still are special in that respect.
Second, and this sounds so corny,
but I'm optimistic every time I walk
into the newsroom of the Washington
Post and any other major news organization.
[APPLAUSE]
Sometimes in my business you wonder
what's the point of it all?
Do we really make a difference?
I don't think anybody in the Washington Post,
the New York Times, any of these organizations
thinks that today we know we make a difference,
and we're really trying hard to tell the truth.
- Here here.
[APPLAUSE]
- I, too, refuse to be too pessimistic.
So a couple of things give me hope
even though they've come out of very tragic,
upsetting circumstances.
The one first is the mobilization
of women in this country in the #MeToo movement
and the example to finally end behavior that should have been
seen as completely unacceptable decades ago but to--
and to hold people accountable and to change norms
and behaviors and expectations.
It just gives me a great hope, and it's actually inspiring.
I'm on the board of CARE and NGO,
and it's actually inspiring now a global #MeToo
movement, which is just incredible
for women around the world.
Second is young people.
Look at how the students of Parkland
and all over this country have stood up
and said this has to stop.
This gun violence has to stop, and we're not
going to stop until it changes.
And lastly look at how many women and how many
young people are like first responders running
toward the flames.
They are going to go run for office and change the system.
[APPLAUSE]
- So my 75 students said poverty alleviation,
the greatest in the history of the world last
30 years, global health, the eradication of polio
in two to three years, malaria in 20 to 25.
They hope for technology, too.
They see the double edge on AI, on quantum computing,
on gene editing, but they see that's a hopeful tool.
And lastly-- and this was really high on the class poll--
leadership opportunities for women, 75 students
from 22 countries.
So, Liz, can we do a lightning round of 30 seconds each
because the last question, Madame Secretary, is about you?
And it's about you.
You don't have to say anything now.
To all of you in 30 seconds, what
do you most admire about Secretary Clinton?
- Yes, Anne-Marie.
- I've got books on that subject.
What I admire about Secretary Clinton
is that she has an extraordinarily expansive
vision of how America should be in the world.
I thought-- I'll make a confession--
that I was going to teach her more than she taught me.
I'd done-- been doing foreign policy for 30 years,
and she was relatively new to it.
She taught me to think about a world
not only in terms of states and diplomacy
and coercion and defense, all the things you've heard,
but also a world in which we equally focus on the people
and on poverty and education and health and resource security
and food security and anti-corruption, what
makes a difference to people how they live every day.
Our security in this world and our morality in this world
lies in that just as much as classic diplomacy.
Secretary Clinton taught me that,
and it is a lesson that will guide the rest of my life.
[APPLAUSE]
- OK.
Two points in 30 seconds.
So first is an idea and one is a policy.
What I admire most is the big idea behind I
think everything that we've seen Secretary Clinton do,
especially on the world stage, and that
is that the objective of US foreign policy
is to make the world a better place.
Reading back over speeches she's made, in 2013,
she said to the Council on Foreign Relations
we, the United States, are the force for progress, prosperity,
and peace, unabashedly embracing that role of the US
and the responsibility that comes with that.
So I have-- I admired that and I admire that today
more than ever.
On policy I would say one country that surprisingly we
didn't talk about is China.
And this is a very--
this is the would say the most important
bilateral relationship that the US has,
maybe the most or certainly the most important
bilateral relationship in the world and obviously very,
very complex.
And I feel like Secretary Clinton,
she really understood the importance of that
and the challenge that China posed both in terms
of its power and its ambitions.
But I also felt like her approach towards China
recognized that it is essential we find an accommodation--
accommodation is a wrong word I guess--
essential that we find a way to work with China
and that it is possible for us to do this.
We have sufficient common interest
that we can find a way.
And that I think is so critical to the US success in the world
and really to global success going forward.
And that is something which is easier said
than actually implemented, and I give her a lot of credit
for advancing those ideas.
[APPLAUSE]
- I'm a journalist, so I don't want to get too gee
whiz an answer here.
So I'll just say two things.
In covering Secretary Clinton for a long time,
I think she consistently gets the big things right,
and that matters.
She's strategic.
And the second thing is that she's tough.
There is a reason why Vladimir Putin was so determined
that she not be our president.
[APPLAUSE]
- I have a long list, so I'm going to try to be quick.
Number one, Hillary Clinton is an amazing role model
not only for women but for any American
who wants to serve their country.
Her leadership, her toughness, her resilience,
this woman cannot be stopped from serving her country.
[APPLAUSE]
And second, her strategic focus, as you
said, whether it was having the foresight to realize
that the most consequential region for the United
States for America in terms of our prosperity and our security
long term was going to be Asia and we
needed to start moving more of our strategic bandwidth
towards Asia, whether it was the insight
of the power of empowering women for every dimension
of foreign policy and development
for us and for around the world.
And the last thing I'll say is I've never
seen anyone more fully understand
how to integrate the different instruments of American power,
the military, sanctions, economics, trade in service
of diplomacy to achieve strategic ends,
it was like a master class in the use of American power
and influence.
And we all had a great deal to learn from her,
so thank you for your example and your service.
[APPLAUSE]
- And, Madam Secretary, I admire your faith and diplomacy.
We need that leadership.
I admire your courage in Teddy Roosevelt's arena.
And I admire your resilience and faith in our country.
Thank you for everything you've done for us.
[APPLAUSE]
- And I want to add my thanks to Nick
and the panelists for a truly fascinating conversation.
[APPLAUSE]
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