The United States must prove its willingness to remain engaged in the world, says Condoleezza Rice

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Speakers

Condoleezza Rice
Sixty-sixth US Secretary of State

Introduction

Robert Abernethy
Vice Chairman, Atlantic Council

Moderator

Frederick Kempe
President and CEO, Atlantic Council

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

ROBERT ABERNETHY: Good afternoon. Welcome back to the Global Future Forum, and to our audience in New York and around the world for this special edition of AC Front Page, the Atlantic Council’s flagship convening platform. I’m Bob Abernethy, vice chairman of the Atlantic Council.

Today’s discussion focuses on the critical matter of the United States’ role in foreign affairs as we face the increasing difficult challenge of fighting against the temptation to turn inward. Resistance to isolation is directly aligned with the Atlantic Council’s commitment to making connections and fostering cooperation among leaders in international governments and societies to address our common challenges and towards our mission of creating a more free, secure, and prosperous world.

Today’s Global Future Forum, and the Council’s other ambitious programming in New York this week, reflect the organization’s spectacular growth in scale, scope, and the achievement of over two decades since I joined the board in 2004, particularly under the leadership of Fred Kempe. Since Fred became president and CEO in the year 2007, the Atlantic Council’s annual revenue has increased from two million [dollars] to a projected 65 million [dollars] this year. And its staff has increased from twelve people to nearly three full-time employees and more than 550 fellows. And it has evolved from a transatlantic NATO-focused think tank with four programs to a global action-oriented think tank with sixteen programs and centers, convening topics ranging from energy to technology, along with regions from Asia to Latin America, and taking on the world’s most pressing challenges.

So it’s fitting that this Front Page conversation features Fred in dialog with one of our foremost authorities on how to address the world’s defining challenges. Our speaker needs no introduction, but I’m going to give her one anyway. Condoleezza Rice was the sixty-sixth US secretary of state under George W. Bush, having served as national security advisor during President Bush’s first term. She is currently the director of the Hoover Institution. And the Atlantic Council is privileged to have her as an honorary board director. There’s no one better to speak to the consequential times we are all living through.

Fred, over to you.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Thank you, Bob, and thank you for your service to the Atlantic Council as vice chair these many years.

Secretary Rice, I can’t tell you what a joy it is to see you here in the room and see you on the screen. Bob hit all the bio material about how you seem to always hit the right diplomatic notes, but you also play a mean piano. So I hope we’ll get you on stage doing that at some point.

A note to our audience, [you] can join the conversation on social media by following Atlantic Council and using the hashtags #ACFrontPage and hashtag #ACGlobalFutureForum.

So Secretary Rice, you have a new essay in Foreign Affairs magazine titled “The Perils of Isolationism.” I urge everyone here to read it. Some of my questions are going to be drawn from it, but it is really worth reading in full.

A few days ago, something was published that was really a first, which is the director of the [Central Intelligence Agency], Bill Burns, and the director of [the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)], Richard Moore, talked about the biggest threats to global order since the end of the Cold War—some people maybe even think since the end of World War II.

You wrote in your article the current period is not a Cold War redux. It’s more dangerous. So I’d love if you could tell us what do you believe makes it more dangerous? And you’ve searched for historic analogs for other periods. Is there one for the period we’re going into?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, first of all, thank you very much. It’s great to be with you. And thanks for all the great work that the Atlantic Council does. It’s really a preeminent institution in helping America continue its role in the world. And I think the dangers of this current period can really be summed up as the following.

First of all, we’re in a period of great-power conflict again. We’re in a period in which that conflict between Russia, China, middle powers like Iran, is actually territorial in its content—China in the South China Sea, around the Philippines and the Second Thomas Shoals. When we look at Russia actually having old-style nineteenth century invade a neighbor for imperial ambitions, we’re really in a different world.

Secondly, we’re in a different world because the overarching technologies are—have us in a kind of technological arms race with authoritarians. And as I say in the piece, there are reasons to think there’s great promise in these technologies, like AI and robotics and synthetic biology, but there’s also great peril. And I would rather that the race be led by democracies, where we will debate and have congressional hearings and investigative reporting, as opposed to what authoritarians will do with these transformative technologies.

Third, we’re in a period in which the—what I call the four horsemen of the apocalypse—populism, nativism, isolationism and protectionism—seem to be riding again.

And that brings me to the reason that I think this period is very dangerous, which is that the United States has got to make both a statement and a reality of America’s willingness to remain engaged in the world, because great powers don’t mind their own business. And if we don’t shape the international environment, then others will. And they are others that we do not want to cede the territory for our values and our interests, powers like China and powers like Russia.

And so it’s a complicated time. It’s a dangerous time. And I just hope that we in the United States can recognize it as such and not fall into a sense that we can simply leave the world to itself.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Thank you for that very clear answer. Now, you’ve advised presidents in the role you played with George W. Bush; Bob Abernethy talked about. Imagine sitting in the room with whomever gets elected in November and you’ve got wars in the Middle East and Europe, and they’re not going to be over by then. And the war in the Middle East is threatening to escalate, and the war with Ukraine threatening to be intense, tensions with China. You talked about the artificial intelligence race you were talking about. There’s some concerns about the US role in the Global South. There’s a lot going on.

I’m not sure in my lifetime I’ve ever seen this collection of dangers. What do you advise him? How does he prioritize, she prioritize, depending? What would you say to the new president?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, I would say consider the near-term issues of how you help to end the current conflict in the Middle East.

Fred, I had five different Gaza crises as secretary but nothing quite like this. How do you help Israel, our ally, make certain that Israel is secure and prosperous, going forward? How do you find a place for the Palestinian people? How do you resume the normalization of relations between the Gulf Arabs and Israel, which had the promise of ending the state of war in the Middle East.

So those are nearer-term considerations. How do you make sure that Ukraine ends up in a more beneficial position and that Vladimir Putin pays a price for his aggression, and with China how do you let Xi know that any move toward our allies or toward Taiwan would be met with American resolve because we have established a deterrent?

So those are near term. But I also think we have to think about our own strategic assets. This is not a good time from the point of view of the American defense base. Our defense industrial base needs attention and we are going to have to spend the defense—the money on defense that we need to secure our defense industrial base because that’s ultimately our deterrent.

You don’t deter with words. You deter with capabilities. Our shipbuilding capability—we currently are not really able to keep two carrier strike groups simultaneously in the Asia Pacific and in the Middle East and so there are just some real military capabilities.

I think part of that is the Pentagon has got to be better at using the technological advances that are happening in places like I sit—Silicon Valley—and opening up the process of acquisition to new technologies that may be from small companies that can help us to lower the cost of defense.

I think we have to really reinforce our relationships with allies. We are so fortunate to have allies in the Indo-Pacific, to have friends like India in the Indo-Pacific, to have a NATO that has been strengthened with Finland and Sweden’s accession. And so we very much need to pay attention to our allies.

You mentioned the Global South. We have to have an answer for the Global South that is not, oh, we’re only interested if China is there. One of the things that I’m most grateful for in the Bush administration is we had a very active program with Africa with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief with the Millennium Challenge to bring financial resources to countries that were trying to govern wisely.

And so we need an answer for the Global South and we need also to make sure that we are running hard and fast on those technologies so that we win the technological race.

And I would make just one final point. You know, those of us, Fred, and I think you would consider yourself one of them—I certainly would consider myself one of them—who believed in the integrationist narrative, who believed in the power of globalization.

Yes, I think it achieved a lot in a macro sense. Even the integration of China, which grew the international economy.

But we left behind an awful lot of Americans who didn’t benefit from globalization. If you were the unemployed coal miner, if you were the unemployed steel worker, we have got to have a human capital part to what we do, going forward, because America will not be confident if Americans are not confident in the American dream.

FREDERICK KEMPE: So let’s stay there for just a minute and touch on artificial intelligence. Is there a—obviously, you talked about in your opening benefits and problems a surveillance state—authoritarian state—can use this much differently than someone trying to cure cancer but it’s going to help both of them, and you also talked about the problem of lost jobs and what this can do to your society.

As you know, Henry Kissinger was quite worried about artificial intelligence. Where do you stand on that?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I’m probably a little bit more of a techno-optimist, to be honest. Now, it maybe where I live. I live in Silicon Valley. I’m quite aware that human beings have tended to be way better at the knowledge part of technology than at the wisdom part. If we think about the splitting of the atom, it made it possible to turn on the lights with civil nuclear power. It made it possible to do medical isotopes. We also built the bomb. So we shouldn’t be unaware of our sometimes inability to use these technologies for the common good. But I still believe that, in part because the technological race is underway, we should run hard and fast.

It means that government has to find a proper role for an institutional answer to how these technologies should affect or can affect the economy, society, democracy. How it can affect national security. But I’m probably on the light side of the restrictions, the light side of regulation because regulators will sometimes regulate even if they don’t understand what they’re regulating. And we’re in a period right now where we’re in a kind of unknown about these technologies. So I would like to make this a time when we educate ourselves better, particularly policymakers educate themselves better, about the potential for these technologies, about what’s over the horizon.

Here at Hoover, we have joined forces with our computer scientists, with our robotics engineers and scientists, with people who study space, who study synthetic biology, to create something called the Stanford Emerging Technology Review. And the idea is, let’s look at the frontiers with the scientists who are in the labs and let’s talk about those policy implications as an educational process. I would also say that we need to work hard with our allies, people who share our values about these technologies.

I’m a little worried, Fred, and here I think the Atlantic Council can perhaps help because of the long transatlantic tradition of the Atlantic Council. We have a bit of a problem in that the innovation is largely in the United States, to a certain extent in Great Britain because of their—because of Oxford and what they’re doing, but a lot of the regulation is in Europe. And we need to come to a better understanding of how we promote the promise of these technologies while being cognizant of where this could go wrong.

But just to repeat, we will—as this emerges, we will have debates. We will have congressional hearings. We will have investigative reportings. We saw what authoritarians do during COVID. They hide the facts, they won’t answer questions. And so let’s make sure that we win this race.

FREDERICK KEMPE: So thank you for that answer. And we admire, I admire, your leadership at Hoover and the work that they’re doing, not just in this field but across the board. Since you mentioned authoritarianism, you’ve met Vladimir Putin. In your memoir, “No Higher Honor,” you note that you first met him in 1992 in St. Petersburg, when he was deputy mayor. You’re an expert on the Soviet Union, then Russia. You dealt with him directly during the George W. Bush administration. I’m not going to ask you to peer into his soul, but what should our audience understand about what it’s like to deal with him?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Vladimir Putin has kind of two speeds. One is try to humiliate, the other is try to intimidate. And so when you go into a conversation with him, you have to recognize that. In a funny sort of way, we had a reasonably good relationship because he knew that I was a Russianist. He thought that I understood them better. He told me when I became secretary, now we will get the—because you’re a Russianist—we will get the attention that Russia deserves. And I remember thinking, you don’t think I spend a lot of time on Russia?

But it said something about the sense of insecurity about Russia’s place in the world. And that is a long historical story about Russia’s—between the East and the West trying to carve out a special place in the world. And I think it explains some of who Vladimir Putin is. I think it explains some of his appeal to Russians—not all Russians, by the way. A million of them have left in response to this war. They are the most educated, the most Western-facing. But you just have to understand that sense of insecurity.

The other piece of it, of course, is that he once told me Russia has only been great when it’s been ruled by great men, like Alexander II and Peter the Great. Now he didn’t say Stalin. He didn’t say Lenin. He’s a nationalist. And he wants to reestablish the Russian Empire. And you can’t have a Russian Empire if there’s an independent Ukraine. And so understanding that this is a kind of messianic state in which he finds himself is also important.

I think, Fred, that was always there. One question is, why now, in 2022, given that the impulse was always there? And perhaps we have to be a little bit aware that our credibility is awfully important in stopping Putin’s ambitions. And so I do think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a problem for American credibility. I think the underreaction in 2014 to Crimea was a problem for credibility. Some would say even 2008 in Georgia, when it was hard in the middle of a financial crisis to get an international response. So when you’re dealing with somebody whose modes are, you know, intimidate, you have to be sure that you are credible. And building our credibility through Western response to the Ukrainian aggression is important to stopping him going forward.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Thank you for that, Secretary Rice. In that spirit, you note in your Foreign Affairs essay that US support for Ukraine has been incremental, you called it, and that has given Moscow breathing room. Why is it so important to give Ukraine what it needs to win, not just to continue to fight? And what would it take to do that? Is it—is it freeing up the targeting? You know, that’s still a debate, whether or not the Ukraine can use us and even British weaponry to hit the targets from which they’re being hit inside the country. Or are there other things that you would suggest?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Yeah. I just I think that at the beginning of the war, you know, we would debate tanks, and then we’d give them tanks. We’d debate long-range artillery, and then we’d give them long—we’d debate high-performance aircraft, and then. And if you just kind of do a thought experiment, what if we had given Ukraine what it needed at the beginning so that when the Russians were really on their back foot—you know, they thought this was war was going to be five days. They went with five days provisions and their dress uniforms for the parade in Kyiv. So they were on their back foot.

We gave this behemoth of a country time to mobilize its defense industries, seek help from the Irans and the Pyongyangs of the world, even a little bit from China in nonlethal—although I want to say that, you know, that line between what’s lethal and nonlethal is a pretty thin one, and we need to keep pressing the Chinese on that. And most importantly, it gave them a chance to mobilize their superior numbers in population, those young men that they’re throwing at the front almost as cannon fodder. And by the way, they’re not those nice boys from Moscow and St. Petersburg. That would cause a revolution. So they’re the poor kids from Dagestan. They’re prisoners. And so it gave them a recovery opportunity.

I think now we will see after this fighting season, which is pretty soon, where everybody stands. The Ukrainians have achieved some remarkable things. Without a navy they have neutralized the Russian Navy in Sevastopol and in the Black Sea, which have been a part of Russian military power since Catherine the Great. And so we need to look at where we are. I do think Ukraine—we and Ukraine, should start to think about what constitutes a prosperous, secure, united Ukraine? What does that take?

And I do think, Fred, that the big debate we’re going to have here in the United States after January is what is the character of the American security guarantee to Ukraine? I can think of a lot of countries that we have secured even if they didn’t have full territorial integrity. The Federal Republic of Germany, South Korea today. But they have something in common, which is an American security guarantee. And I think we’re going to have to think hard about what we’re willing to do so that Ukraine can be prosperous and secure.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Thank you, Secretary Rice. I think you know that your views on this are pretty consistent with where the Atlantic Council has been on these issues as well. And so I thank you for that very clear statement. Let’s move to China. One of the most important points you make in your essay is one that goes overlooked. And that is the current tensions with Beijing are largely a result of China changing the status quo. We sometimes blame ourselves. I’d like you to talk about that.

But there’s another issue here, too. And I talked to a very senior Biden administration official about what concerns him most right now, and he’s deeply concerned by how China has really doubled down in its support for [Russia]. At a moment when logic would have said maybe they want to pull back, they’re actually pushing forward.

He even talked about a thousand tanks are being produced a year that would not be able to be produced without the components, without the chips, without the machine tools of the Chinese. And then he went on and talked about Iran as well with the ballistic missiles that are coming, the short-range ballistic missiles, the armed drones. You know, this is—this is a group of authoritarians working more closely in defense-industrial terms than maybe ever.

So start with China, if you could, and talk about that. But I’d really like to hear you about China and Russia as well.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Of course. Well, on China, I do think that Xi Jinping—I’m not usually one for the great-man theory of policy in history, but I think Xi Jinping really did change the character of China’s interaction with the world. And it came partly from a domestic response.

You know, we used to say that you can’t have economic liberalization and political control. And we saw a China that was evolving, that had a very powerful private sector with the Tencents and the Alibabas of the world. And Xi Jinping comes along and says, you’re right. You can’t have economic liberalization and political control. Thank you very much. I’ll take political control.

And that has affected the economy, where he’s been much more supportive of inferior state-owned enterprises. It has affected the way that they view technology, which is to try to surpass the United States. It has affected the way we have to view supply chains. And it has affected the way that China behaves in the South China Sea, around the Philippines, around Japan.

The Indo-Pacific is a much more dangerous place, not because of American policy but because of Chinese policy. And when I hear people say, well, what can we do to improve the US-China relationship, I definitely want to put a floor under it. But I say that has to start in Beijing. And it starts with are you going to back off from this aggressive behavior, not to mention the aggressive behavior in and around Taiwan.

Now, when I then look at this kind of axis—China, Russia, Iran, to a certain extent Pyongyang—I hear people saying, well, what can we do to pull them apart? Well, my view is slam them together instead and make them deal with the consequences of the fact that they don’t actually have all that much in common.

Do you really think that the Russians are pleased to see China essentially supplanting them in Central Asia? None of them trust Pyongyang, although hearing Vladimir Putin say that Russian children are going to go to camp in Pyongyang was almost sad. And do you think that they really like what the Houthis are doing to sea lanes, with Iranian help?

So, in a sense, let’s expose what they’re doing for each other. Let’s make clear that if you’re doing this, you can’t have it both ways.

I’ll give you two quick examples. One is the South Koreans were being rather reticent about what they were willing to do in support of Ukraine. I’m told—I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m told that even when they were providing ammunition, they were trying to do it from a distance. Well, when Vladimir Putin goes to Pyongyang, he’s made his choice between South Korea and North Korea. And so let’s slam them into that relationship.

Chinese banks that are supporting what the Chinese are doing in support of the Russian effort, let’s not let them get away with that.

And so I think we have to start to impose consequences on this collaboration. To be sure, they don’t have a Monday-morning meeting every day, every Monday, and say what can we do to make life miserable for the United States and its allies. But they are coordinating because they have one thing in common. They want to see the revisionist powers, they want to see American power pushed out of these regions, and they want a different kind of international order.

We’ve seen that before. I don’t think that Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan and Mussolini’s Italy were all that friendly, really. But they made a lot of trouble in the meantime. And so I think making sure that China, Russia and Iran are held accountable for what they’re doing is extremely important.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Thank you. So we’re down to our final minute, final question—final minutes, final question. You write in your essay: “The main question hanging over the international system today is where does America stand.” I had a conversation with a leading foreign minister of an allied state, and he thinks it’s unfair that they don’t get to vote in our election because so much is at stake in our election for countries all around the world. It would be unfair for me to ask you to handicap the election or to say whether you support one candidate or the other. If you’d like to do that, I won’t stop you. But it would be unfair for me to ask that.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Fred, you know I don’t do American politics, all right? I do foreign policy.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Well, but some people would say that American politics is our biggest national security danger, potentially, you know—the Pogo “we’ve met the enemy and he is us.” What’s at stake in November? And when you say the main question is where does America stand, what’s the question that is going to be answered then or should be answered?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, I think whoever inhabits the White House after—in January needs to recognize that the United States doesn’t have a choice but to be involved in the world and to try to shape the international environment. As I said, great powers don’t mind their own business. So the real question is, do you want Russia and China to shape the international environment, or do we want to shape the international environment with our allies?

I would say to whomever is in office: Strengthen the American defense industrial base. We really have to do that. Work hard with our allies. And, yes, our allies have to do more. We can’t have any more free riders as allies. And I think they understand that, as you’re starting to see countries take on their responsibilities.

I would say also: Let’s be very clear that we are going to oppose aggression. But we can do that with a strong deterrent message, but we have to be credible, which means we can’t on the one hand with Iran say they’re the most troubling country in the region—which they are—and give them back assets—unfreeze assets for them in pursuit of what I think is a kind of impossible dream of a nuclear agreement with them. What you say at this point is if you dare to be an—to be a nuclear power, you will pay for that. And so it’s a toughness of attitude, but it also comes from really strengthening our assets.

And I would say one other to the American president as of January: Yes, don’t leave other Americans behind. The populists have a point, in a sense, that global elites don’t always think about the people for whom globalization didn’t work. I’m a big advocate for K-12 education, for finding ways to make people who might not go to college have a decent career path, for retraining thirty-five year olds whose skills are out of—out of favor. We’ve just got to get Americans back in the game. If we can do that, we’ll be confident.

Fred, you know, it was a growing middle class after World War II that was so confident about America that John Kennedy could say “bear any burden, pay any price.” I don’t think we’ll say that again, but let’s remember one final thing. Every time we have tried to withdraw, we’ve paid a price for it. There was a war that started in Europe in 1914, 1915; we thought we could sit it out. By 1917, we were in at higher cost. There was a war that began in Europe in 1938, 1939. By 1941, we had no choice. And in 2001, I was in the White House when we thought that the security threat was out there, and it turned out to be at the Pentagon and at the Twin Towers and in a field in Pennsylvania. And so the lesson is that America cannot withdraw from the world. Let’s not pretend that we can. And let’s ready ourselves for what may be a long struggle—but like the last time around, it’s one that we can win.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Secretary Rice, I cannot imagine a more powerful keynote for our inaugural Global Future Forum. So thank you for your time, bless you for your public service, but really profound thanks for your farsighted, principled, and compelling voice.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Thank you very much, and again to the Atlantic Council. Thank you all. Thanks for all the work you do.

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Further reading

Image: Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepares to deliver a speech concerning transatlantic relations at Chatham House, London.