Printable Version
The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy
A CNP Conversation With Madeleine Albright
July 27, 2005
Summary
Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State from 1997-2001. She is a founder and past president of the Center for National Policy.
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Transcript
CNP President Tim Roemer: I would like to thank everyone for coming today, and making it through the heat. I would like to introduce one of the most distinguished public servants in the history of the country, Madeleine Albright. During Secretary Albright’s distinguished career, she tackled many tough issues—none more difficult than the global threat posed by militant jihadists. Today, hope she will get into a global strategy to combat this new threat, and perhaps take some questions from you all on whatever topics you’d like.
Albright: I really do think of CNP as my family. I’m really happy to be here. Thank you, Tim and Mo for having me here. A lot of my connection to CNP really did come from Ed Muskie, who was my political patron. I think the thing that I learned from him was a real sense of bipartisanship. When he took over the Budget Committee, with Senator Henry Belman, they worked in a bipartisan basis despite the fact that he didn’t like President Carter because there was a rather peculiar process for the selection of the vice presidency. The thing that I learned from him was that we have one president at a time, and in Carter’s case, he said, “And this one is a Democrat and we are going to work with him.” I learned a lot from Ed Muskie, and when he was Chairman of the Board here, and started really with somebody that gave us a lot of impetus, it was just an honor to work with him. It’s a lot more elegant here now than it was then. And Peter who has been fantastic. As I said, I am not a monogamist in terms of my participation in various organizations, and neither is Peter. We have worked together on many things.
What I would like to do is just make some very brief opening remarks to set a framework, and then I would love to answer your various questions on whatever subject. One of the things that I wrote in the paperback version of my books was that the people who have never had the high level government jobs do not know how hard they are, and the people who have left have forgotten. And so it’s very easy to sit around and be very critical of everything that is going on, and the whole question that we all have to address ourselves to is, “what is the role of the opposition party, and how do you serve as a loyal opposition?” And, I am Chairman of the Board of the National Democratic Institute, and when we started that organization we didn’t know how you defined democracy. And people said elections, and everyone agrees that elections are important, but as we know from many places you can get 96% of the vote or the Supreme Court to help you. So, it isn’t elections. We talked about a lot of different things: rule of law, role of the media. Ultimately, the key to it is an opposition party because it gives people the choice that if they don’t like who’s in, that they can switch and also it provides accountability for the ruling party or the party in power is actually doing. So I have felt that it is something very important, and while I’m not being partisan, the sense that as an opposition party, many people have a responsibility to talk about things. And as citizens of this country, I always think that our most patriotic duty is to ask questions. So, it is in that spirit that I offer my remarks.
I am very worried about the role of the United States currently. I was not born in the United States. I came here in 1948, as a result of the fact that the Communists had taken over Czechoslovakia. We originally left in 1939 as a result of the fact that the Germans had taken over, and so for me, my whole life has been centered on the importance of American involvement [in the world] and American power. I am a believer in the goodness of American power. So, that’s my gestalt. And so when I see what has happened to how the United States is regarded, it makes me very sad. I just came from a conference in France, and I know that there was a great deal of nostalgia involved in this, and they were basically looking back to when President Clinton was in office, and even though we disagreed about things, there were so many things that we did agree about, so we managed to do Kosovo together and a whole host of other things. So now, the U.S. is in a particularly lonely and difficult position, because we are the most powerful country in the world. We will continue to be so for the foreseeable future with a defense budget that is larger than all other defense budgets in the world combined, and a very strong economy, and a consumer of most of the oil in the world, and the victim of terrorist attacks. So the question is, what is this perfect storm—what is it made up of? There are many points in it, but I’d like to just mention a few.
I think in terms of geographical aspects of the perfect storm, there is no question that Iraq continues to be the major point. I myself have said about Iraq that it was a war of choice--not of necessity. I spent more time saying terrible things about Saddam Hussein than anybody even in this Administration because I did it for eight years—first at the UN and then as Secretary. So, the fact that he’s gone is very good. I actually did believe that there were weapons of mass destruction by deduction because when the weapons inspectors were kicked out in 1998, we had not accounted for all of the weapons. But I did not believe that those weapons were an imminent threat, and I thought it was a real mistake to turn away from Afghanistan. So, I’ve said, it was a war of choice—not of necessity. And getting it right, is a necessity and not a choice Because we are deeply involved in it, it has created a chaotic whirlpool that has very large effects beyond Iraq. There are a lot of people that compare it to Vietnam. I think it’s worse than Vietnam because its effects within the Middle East region, which is itself, a very difficult place has created a completely chaotic situation. I do not know what the facts are on Iraq. I have said this in public and gotten a letter from Secretary Rumsfeld saying, “I’m sorry you’re confused about Iraq. These are the facts.” I was surprised that he has the time to do this. But basically, I think we don’t know. Everyday, there is something different about the number of Iraqis that are trained or not trained, the number of Iraqis that have died, who the insurgents are. And we just had a general say, “the training is going well.” I maintain that the Administration is going to pull out, so they are setting up all of these things, so that they can pull out. But it‘s a mess.
The other thing that we don’t fully understand, and is also part of the perfect storm, is the involvement of Iran. The Iranians won, this is what happened, the Iranians and the Shia won. Iran is a very complicated story, one of which goes way back. Many Administrations have played a part, some responsibly and some irresponsibly, but we certainly set it up as an important country to us a long time ago. I was in the Carter White House during the hostage crisis. We were completely paralyzed by it. Then, when we were in office, we tried very hard to change our relationship with Iran. It was right after Katami had been elected, and one of the more interesting diplomatic games that we were involved in was trying to change our relationship with Iran. Very difficult because the conditions are always the same. They have to give up their support of Hezbollah. They have to give up their desire to have nuclear weapons, and they have to be supportive of the Mideast Peace process. Those are very high hurdles to clear. I think we are less and less clear about what is happening in Iran, and clearly the threat of them having nuclear weapons is big.
I think Afghanistan continues to be a point in the perfect storm, which goes to the original problem which is that the Bush Administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan, felt it was done, made an artificial linkage between Usama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and decided to switch their emphasis on fighting terror to Iraq basically creating more terrorists than dealing with them. So, everyday, we are reading more and more about the fact that Afghanistan is not really pacified, or that President Karzai is in control. He’s a terrific guy, but he’s mayor of Kabul. So, the warlords are out there. The Taliban is out there resurging. I just read that Mullah Omar is suggesting a meeting of various factions, so he’s not gone. And Americans are dying in Afghanistan, so it continues to be a point on the perfect storm.
Moving on, I think North Korea is definitely the most dangerous place in the world. I have the very dubious honor of being the highest level American official to meet with Kim Jong Il. HE IS NOT CRAZY! Our intelligence on him said he was crazy and a pervert. He may be a pervert, but he is not crazy. We based our policy on [South Korean President] Kim Dae Jung’s desire at the time to the Sunshine Policy. He had met with Kim Jong Il before I went, and debriefed and said, “you can have very rational conversations with him.” And I did. 12 hours worth of conversations in which he was very knowledgeable about missile technology and aspects of the whole question of his military prowess and the forces that we had in South Korea. We had done the Agreed Framework with him. I have no grief for him, but the truth is that we were very slow in fulfilling part of the deal, which was to provided light water nuclear reactors—mainly because I think that people hadn’t focused enough on the fact that both South Korea and Japan are democracies and their Diets and Parliaments had to vote money for paying for the light water reactors. But, confusion when this Administration took over because we were in the middle of talks.
While there were Americans that were confused about the election of 2000, you can be sure that Kim Jong Il was. He didn’t understand that everything was off the table, and everything would be restarted. And so now we are in a position where they have nuclear weapons. So, if I were Kim Jong Il, and I read the Iraq scene, I would say that the message is, “if you don’t have nuclear weapons, you get invaded and if you do have nuclear weapons you don’t.” We didn’t invade the Soviet Union or China. So, I think it has made things worse. I hope very much that these current talks [Six Party talks to end the North Korean nuclear program] have some success, but we…the intelligence…I don’t see any intelligence anymore, but I have read that in fact when we were in office, we thought they had…well, this I know…the potential for one or two nuclear weapons, and since this Administration has been in office, they now say it is anywhere between 6 and 10. And, if this Agreed Framework were not in place, they could have anywhere between 50 and 100 nuclear weapons. So, there are those who say that dealing with North Korea is blackmail, and I repeat that you don’t make arms control agreements with your friends, you make them with your enemies. And they provide a regime for checking on cheating. They do cheat. The Soviets cheated. They thought we cheated. But, under the SALT and START agreements, there were various mechanisms for dealing with that. So, that’s another part of the perfect storm.
I do think that there are very many other points that one can point out. Some that have to do with humanitarian issues and you have to make your own assessment as to whether you think that dealing with humanitarian issues is a matter of national interest. I happen to think it is because Americans do not like to see people starving or being ethnically cleansed, so I would say that what is happening in the Sudan and Darfur is a point in the perfect storm because it shows who we are and how we think about things. President Clinton and I, I was at the UN at the time and not Secretary of State, but we have accepted responsibility for not having done enough on Rwanda. That was volcanic genocide, Darfur is rolling genocide, and we’re watching it and nobody’s doing anything about it. And there are events in Africa that we are not even paying attention to. More people are dying in the Democratic Republic of Congo than are dying in anyplace else in Africa or anyplace. So, there are many aspects to what is going on in Africa. We have forgotten about Latin America completely. And then, there are areas of opportunity in the Middle East Peace process. This is a genuine moment of opportunity, but it requires day to day work. It does not require drop-ins and there needs to be a high-level envoy. On our Administration, you had Dennis Ross working on it full time with a full peace team. And I went there, and met the people in the region, and President Clinton knew every detail of everything and it still was very hard. So, not enough attention has been paid to it.
Now, the major problem that we have in this storm is the devil’s marriage between these terrorist groups and the availability of weapons of mass destruction. And that is the various component parts of nuclear weapons, chemical and biological, and our lack of understanding about what really makes terrorists. And I think that we truly do not know. I have been asked many times, Tim I’m sure you’ve dealt with this a lot, clearly poverty is part of it, which is why it is clearly very important to deal with issues in countries where there is poverty. Lack of dignity is part of it. The kind of crusade atmosphere in terms of religious extremism---all three religions have been hijacked by extremists. But we don’t know. And the most recent problems in London and Egypt raised a whole other set of questions about this. What I find very interesting is that I never thought we should call it a War on Terrorism because it is not something that is going to end in a particularly ticker tape parade.
Well, the Bush Administration has now decided in their typical way of changing terminology, that they are not going to call it a War on Terrorism anymore. It is now a “global struggle against violent extremism” which is actually what it is. But, it’s part of being told one thing and then changing, saying, “no, I really didn’t say that, this is what I’ve been saying all along.” So, I think a big mistake was to call Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the axis of evil. They are three very bad countries, but they are not related to each other. But there is a real axis of evil, and that is poverty, disease, and lack of education. That is the real axis of evil. And I think that there has to be more stress on that. It is a very difficult time in foreign policy and national security policy. I know there are people who think that one should not talk about terrorism as the central problem of our time because it takes sustenance to those who take away civil liberties, or decide that that’s all we should focus on. It’s a little hard to say that it isn’t the central problem, and I think there’s a question about whether we are safer or not safer. But, I am very troubled by the priorities that have been chosen by this Administration because I don’t think they make good national security policy. So, what I think we need to do, generally people that are interested in these subjects, which you all are, is to try to find where in various parts of this perfect storm there can be changes that people can make rational suggestions about.
Additional aspects of this, is what is the layout of the world power situation? Clearly, as I said earlier, the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world, but China is rising. And it’s very important for us to decide what our relationship with China should be. I happen to believe in engagement. Engagement is not endorsement. But I think what we did in bringing them into the World Trade Organization was very important. The Chinese have to be viewed or worked on in order to be a responsible global power. They are going to be a global power. Passing strange when the Chinese President praises President Mugabe, but clearly they are trying to figure out how to have an influence to deal with their own resource space.
The Russians are a serious problem. I don’t say this only because that’s my area of expertise. I used to say that as a Soviet expert, I was really an archaeologist. But, the truth is that a lot of the things that I learned are true in terms of Russia is not a democracy, and Putin is working very hard to make sure that it isn’t. And the relationship that Russia has with its former Republics is directly contradictory to the things that the United States is interested in. And they also are the repository of weapons of mass destruction. Whereas I spent most of my life worrying about the strength of the Soviet Union, we now have to be worried about the weakness of Russia—the threat of the weak. And so I think those are huge issues to deal with and we are unclear about our alliance partners. And so the various tools that we have to deal with the perfect storm I think are questionable, so on that note…
Roemer: I know we’ll have many questions. What a terrific way to frame this. Why don’t we get right to the questions. Lester, do you want to start off?
Question: Yes, I know that you have spent a lot of time going around our country trying to tell people about how important it is for foreign aid. And it seems to me that it’s still a terrible problem that while 1% of budget goes to foreign aid, we need to do more. What was your conclusion after your travels among the American people? Did you feel that people were supportive of it? Or do they still feel it’s throwing money down a well?
Albright: Well, first of all, I think people don’t have facts on foreign aid. If you were, in fact we had a CNP panel on this, people actually think that something like 25% of our budget goes to foreign aid when it’s less than 1% and when you actually tell them that, that is a help. But there are so many misnomers and misjudgments. When I was in the Carter White House, my job was to do Congressional relations and to basically try to sell Administration programs. I determined at that time that trying to explain foreign aid to Members of Congress, with due apologies, was like trying to sell leprosy or something. So, I don’t think that we should ever link foreign and aid together. In order to sell this, it should be call national security support. People will do a lot in the name of national security, and the truth is that if you look at what the problems are, and whether we are talking about poverty or development projects of different kinds, that it is ultimately that deals with our national security. This is money that is very well spent in order to support the national security of the United States because we cannot exist in the world where people…since we don’t know where terrorism comes from, that certain aspects of the problem can be mitigated if there is money properly spent.
Now, I think people were kind of fascinated by the Millennium Challenge Account, and the possibility of getting money into the right places so that there was not corruption. The problem is that the Millennium Challenge Account was not spent out. I find interesting what happened at the G8, and real sense that the money should go through, the question is how much double counting went on. But it has to be explained to people as something that is good for Americans. There is no other way [to sell foreign aid], except that there are certain people who really are do-gooders who are willing to do this, and one of the things that I am working on now, because this came out of…you were talking about Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms after he met Bono actually talked about the need to address HIV/AIDS. What has happened is that there are some Christian Evangelical groups that are actually interested in humanitarian work, and I think that there is a way to get the [U.S. political] right and left together on this. And these are things that I think, in terms of trying to be positive instead of just complaining all the time, I think we should be looking at as ways to try to get some assistance.
Question: You were talking about Russia earlier. Russia is also my specialty. While the Administration would like to see Russia move more toward Democracy, they are probably more concerned about their external behavior as well as their behavior on weapons of mass destruction and Democracy although rhetorically they are saying the right thing, they’re really not pushing that. Your critique would presume that there are ways that we can contribute more to the Democratization of Russia or at least prevent the rollback of democratization in Russia. I wasn’t sure what kind of mechanisms you were thinking of besides the work that you are doing with NDI.
Albright: Well, there are not a lot, frankly. The sentence that I started with this presentation with is very important. I teach now or I talk like this and it’s a lot easier than actually doing it. And one of the really hard parts is trying to weigh what it is you want. Foreign policy is really just trying to get some other country to do what you want. And the question is, which priorities do you weigh? And the Bush people are in a very hard position because what we have done is decide that fighting terrorism is our major foreign policy issue, and it means allowing Putin to say, “whatever I’m doing here is fighting terrorists.” And it’s very hard to separate out what he does have to do in the name of fighting terrorism and what he doesn’t. They did have apartment buildings blow up in Moscow. They did have the problems at the theatre. They do have problems in Chechnya. And so I think he gets a pass most of the time, and people are afraid to push him.
The argument that one has to make is that a most stable society is one that actually allows people to voice their concerns, but how you get from here to there is very difficult. In many ways, despite my love of democracy, I think that what has to happen when you go in to talk to Putin is to have, this is a diplomatic term when you don’t know what you’re doing, is to have a multifaceted policy. So, what you do is say, “we care about democracy and human rights and that Chechnya has no military solution, and you should worry that we want to have bases in Kirkistan and that we think Georgia should be independent.” And you have to say all of that, and at the same time, you have to focus on what you need from them. I think at the moment, one of the things that we really need out of them is to secure their loose nukes. And their various pieces of that that are floating around. I think that at the same time, one does need to say publicly that Kassyanov should be allowed to run for president without being accused of something. And NDI frankly, has had a lot of problems in Russia. And I think you need to press the case but you also have to do the other things at the same time.
Question: Madame Secretary, you went through a list of countries where you said you felt this Administration has not dealt with appropriately. What about Pakistan? I believe that they are one of the potential instigators of an Islamic nuclear bomb, if there is one. In the Carter Administration, there was engagement, however it wasn’t from the standpoint of putting the pressure on them not to keep developing their nuclear capability, their missile capability, and their relationship with China. And I think with the War on Terrorism, that pressure has been kept at bay. What is your view on their role? What would happen if Musharraf were deposed?
Albright: I think that this is another difficult issue. The thing that I think we found. First of all, the India-Pakistan story goes on. We are in a new phase, especially with this recent nuclear agreement. I think that generally what happened over the years, was that there was much more of a tilt toward Pakistan for any number of reasons. President Clinton tried to develop a better relationship with India. But I think the thing that we were really disappointed in was when the Pakistanis had a nuclear test, even though we tried all kinds of things to help them not do it. I think one of the things that certainly came out in some of the discussions with the 9/11 Commission were that there were people who were critical of the fact that we had been so concerned with the nuclear issue and there are those who thought that we didn’t press enough on the anti-terrorist issue. And I happen to think that we did the right thing. I mean, first of all, a lot of sanctions were automatic. I do think it is a very serious issue to—the whole A.Q. Khan network. We also tried to keep Musharraf’s feet to the fire on some democracy schedule. 9/11 changed a lot. Pakistan got a pass on many things. I think we need Pakistan very badly because Afghanistan isn’t finished, and because…and all of those things could have had a slightly different roll out if we had kept our eye on the ball in Afghanistan.
The question is, what is going to happen now to plus up Pakistan over what happened with India. I have a feeling that we are not going to put a lot of pressure on Pakistan. I’ve been invited to some interesting brainstorming on this issue in the last couple of days. One has to be worried whether the Indian deal is going to modify itself into an India-Pakistan problem. And this is, I don’t know the answer to this, whether we got anything on Kashmir in the course of this debate, and whether we got enough guarantees that this would not be involved in any way with Pakistan or whether there was any sense that it had to be constrained somehow. The India deal is a very interesting one, and very hard to be totally against because our relationship with India is very important and it is something that as the world’s largest democracy, and whether you see it in realpolitik terms as a buffer against China or whether you see it because we are so dependent on the Indian market, it is a very important thing from the perspective of the Indian relationship.
I can totally visualize what went on at the State Department where the regional people were totally for it, and the functional non-proliferators were against it. But in terms of nonproliferation, it is a really bad thing because what they have done is create a new category in the whole nonproliferation regime of a nuclear state that is not a signatur to the NPT. It is an ad hoc arrangement; the Administration has paid no attention to the NPT review. They sent a lower level person. They have no treaty emerging multilaterally, and whatever precedent they have set is very dangerous and very unclear as to what it does to Pakistan. I think we don’t know the answer. And we are dependent on Musharraf. We are dependent on someone who came in by coup, who is under a lot of strain—there’s no question about it. A.Q. Khan was pardoned and Usama Bin Laden is somewhere. So, I think there are no easy answers on Pakistan, and as Secretary [of State], it’s hard to think about. You have to think about, and this is the hardest part, how to manage what is your overall goal with the day to day pragmatic needs of getting through some very serious issues.
Question: This Administration has clearly taken a number of steps to alter our basic posture with respect to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, some of which have not gone through yet but there’s a clear desire to change the regime fundamentally with respect to proliferation and the weapons that the U.S. has or tests. Could you comment on that?
Albright: Well, first of all, I was involved in the NPT review in 1995 when I was at the UN. We worked on it very hard from various levels. There were many people that were involved in the negotiations and we saw it as a necessary update of the treaty. Even then, it was very hard to do. Nobody ever talks about Israel. Let’s just say that. It raises questions when Egyptians and various people in the Middle East come to us and say, “we want to create a nuclear free zone in the Middle East.” One couldn’t do that. So there were always various questions to it. But, it’s based on a bargain. And that bargain is that the nuclear powers will systematically disarm, and the non-nuclear powers will not try to acquire nuclear capability. Now, at various stages, I think that the five nuclear were working on disarming. That’s what some of the START treaties were about---a way of systematically getting rid of a certain set of weapons. This administration has taken a different view. In fact, they want to develop a new type of nuclear weapons—the bunker busters—which all of the sudden is totally contrary to that part of the bargain. Now, the non-nuclear powers have not exactly lived up to their part of the bargain either—India being the first and main example of that. And then we do know that there are other countries that have nuclear potential, but have given it up—Brazil, South Africa, and Ukraine. But, on the whole the thing was moving forward in a positive way, until the U.S. showed no interest in it and the new weapons. So that is one part of the problem.
The other part of the problem I think is that there is a huge loophole in the system, and that has to do with the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and how easy it is to weaponize. Now, I keep learning about this and I can’t say I fully understand it. But someday, I’m going to teach a course in the unintended consequences of foreign policy decisions. The biggest one that one can talk about is how we responded to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But another, I think, is Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech. But I am confused because I think we are moving toward the peaceful use of nuclear power here, and it’s going to be a big debate here. And if one advocates for getting away from being dependent on Middle East oil, and even some environmental groups are saying that nuclear energy is cleaner and we are about to have a big debate. But, the issue that I don’t understand is whether physicists did not know at the time how easy it was to move from peaceful to weaponize, and whether there isn’t some brilliant human being that can figure out what the barrier is. But that is a loophole. And this NPT review should have worked on it, and it didn’t really.
So you find yourself with Iran, and trying to figure out what the verification aspects are. And the U.S. is not in a good position given where we are on what other countries are doing. The fact that the regime is not viewed as important is detrimental. Now, the PSI, is it a good step or not? I think it’s viewed as a good step, but we just had an interesting thing with Bill Perry. There’s a group called the National Security Advisory Group, that originally [former Senator Tom] Daschle put together and now Senator Reid has put together, and we just did a paper and we should get you that paper. Bill Perry, who is absolutely brilliant in describing things, said that there is a 50-50 chance, actually it’s based on Graham Allison’s book, but a 50-50 chance that some terrorist will use a nuclear weapon in the United State in some way. And while PSI is good, it cannot limit…whatever you would need to do that is about the size of a grapefruit, and PSI is not going to prevent somebody from bringing in a grapefruit. So, what has to happen is to get some control over fissile material and all of those aspects of trying to have an international regime on this. And this administration is not into international regimes—that’s the whole problem. That’s the gestalt that does not work. And it goes back to some of the things I said. We are the most powerful country in the world, but no matter how powerful we are, there are certain things that we cannot do alone. And getting control of fissile material or missile parts or whatever we cannot do alone.
Question: I was wondering if I might ask you a specific question on North Korea. We are coming up on the fifth anniversary of your trip to Pyongyang, and right now, we are really only having the first serious negotiation since then to address this issue. And one of the issues that’s a real sticking point is the question of their highly enriched uranium program as opposed to the plutonium program that the Agreed Framework addressed. In the current context, that has become the sticker. In other words, that issue has to be put on the table before this Administration is willing to move in the negotiations in any serious way on plutonium and the other issues. I’m curious as to how you see the HEU program: both its history, its emergence, and how that should be addressed in the current context?
Albright: Well, first of all it’s existence is a question. It did not exist…I have not had a lot of contact with this Administration. And the only real contact with the first Administration was to call up and say that the North Koreans were cheating, and it was all over this HEU thing. And, in looking over it, we were trying to figure out whether we should have known. We didn’t know and we could not have known. So, the question is still, does it exist? There are questions in the talks and questions of translations as to whether it really exists. Let’s assume it does exist. The question is, how do you get some control over it, which leads to the major problem that we have and this was a problem that we had, is how do you verify whatever agreement you have with the North Koreans. While we were accused of giving away the store, no one would have ever signed any kind of an agreement on anything, had we not been able to get some verification. So, the question will be that they have to put on the table, is how do they verify first of all where is it and how do they verify it?
Now, the North Korean thing is as much of a chicken and egg negotiation as anything that has ever been done. What the North Koreans want more than anything else is to have face to face negotiations with the United States—bilaterally, alone, and I have never understood why that should be such a problem. I never thought that negotiations were appeasement. It’s how you deliver a tough message. We talked to the Russians all through the Cold War, we talked to the Chinese or whomever, and we should talk to the North Koreans. I think what has happened in the last 24 hours is that [U.S. Ambassador] Chris Hill, who is a professional diplomat who I worked with a lot on the Balkans, is trying to deliver some messages while having some meetings on the side. I think that’s important. What we did was to have bilateral talks and to remain in close contact with the Japanese and South Koreans, so that they knew what we were doing. But we went into the room by ourselves. That is viewed as a sign of recognition of some kind. Now, Chris Hill has said that we have no intention of invading which is a step forward, and that we recognize them as a sovereign nation, and that I think is a step forward. But the HEU is a problem. There is no question about it. In terms of determining its existence, and how you verify, and how you stop it. But the thing that’s happened by this Administration not talking to these people is that by inaction they have made them a nuclear weapons state. They have nuclear weapons. They have the capability of producing them, and worst of all they have the need to sell them. So, that combination…but the verification aspect is key.
Question: Madame Secretary, if we could go back to Iraq for a second. What are the implications of us getting out next year, declaring victory, saying our job is done, and having the place either go to chaos or the emergence of a strongman?
Albright: Well, you know I think this is where my little ditty is. We can’t leave. We made this mess. I think that nobody thought through the post-invasion planning. We all know the mess that they’ve created. What is very difficult is that we are both the solution and the problem because there is no question that our presence there is attracting a variety of problems. And yet if this recent memo is to be believed that said that half of the Iraqis are not trained, and of the other half, I can’t remember the number now, but only one or two divisions are only anywhere near prime time. So, they are definitely not ready to do their own security. I think that if we pull out now, I think it creates a vacuum. And the question is how to maintain enough troops there in some disbursal that makes some sense. There are lots of discussions about this in terms of should they all come back, not be out front. Others say that we should actually add troops. I suppose it might make sense, it’s just not possible. You can’t recruit enough Americans that want to go anymore—that can go or will go. And I don’t see re-instituting the draft. So there are real problems about where you get extra troops.
I was against certain Democrats that said that we should set a date by which to leave. I think we need to rephrase whatever the benchmarks are about us leaving. Try to keep training. Stop making a rule that our friends can’t train outside the country. People are willing to train the Iraqis but we are insisting that the training go on inside Iraq. That doesn’t work. I think we can’t precipitously pull out. I think we need to set some more benchmarks about how to leave. Because otherwise, depending on which story you read, there is a danger of a civil war happening, and the Iranians are somehow involved. And for us to pull out on the basis of saying, “it’s done” is a lie. So, I think that we have to look for steps in between and also make clear that we are not staying forever.
It’s a very bad situation, and there is no easy answer. And there are discussions all over town about how we should proceed. Jon Deutsch writing that we should pull out. I frankly…one has to be very careful to offer solutions that don’t work. To pull out does not work.
Question: What in the world can we do to diminish the hatred that the average Arab has for the United States of America?
Albright: Part of the thing that is harder and harder is to figure out where it comes from. I’ve been very involved with this Pew survey. Fortunately, it is slowly coming down. In Morocco for instance, things are getting somewhat better. In Indonesia, the numbers have changed totally. And the reasons they’ve changed are because of the assistance with the Tsunami. It’s very interesting. They’ve just totally changed.
The easy answer, without being able to solve it, is to solve the Middle East peace process. Whether one thinks it’s the central thing—whether we think it is or not—the surveys show it is the central thing. Therefore, I think this window of opportunity that exists now needs to be taken. And then I think there needs to be more understanding of the complexities of the Arab societies. We have a tendency to lump everyone together. And we need to look at it in terms of country by country of what can be done to change our relationship. But, we are about to enter a new phase of hysteria where we pick people out…we are in this position where we are going to be even more anti-Muslim and Arab because of the bombings in London. I’m sure. And the question again comes up as it did with Russia, what are we going to do about Egypt? Are we going to push Mubarrak? I’m sure we won’t. So, it’s that weighing aspect of it. So, we are going to have to see what Karen Hughes does—she has a big, huge job. It was shocking that no Democrats showed up at her hearing—just appalling. It didn’t happen overnight, and it’s not going to go away over night. But I do think it’s interesting to look at if you give assistance in various places…the hard part in selling this is how do you make sure that assistance to somebody in some Arab country doesn’t go to a terrorist group. Pretty tough. But I do think that looking at the Middle East Peace Process, trying to do everything we can to strengthen Abbas so that he can show that democracy delivers jobs, and trying to make sure that that process continues.
Question: Gang Lin from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Thank you very much for your remarks. I enjoyed them very much. In September, Chinese President Hu Jintao will visit the U.S. In November, President Bush is supposed to visit Mainland China. It seems rather unusual to have back to back summits like this. What do you expect in those summits? Could you compare the summits in 1997 and 1998 when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the United States and President Clinton visited China? Thank you.
Albright: Well, I’ll go back to what we did first. We were in a different place. We were coming out of a period where we wanted to change the relationship with China, while making very clear that we had a one China policy, that the Taiwan Relations Act was in place, that the situation had to be resolved peacefully. There was not one meeting…I went to China many times or met with Chinese in other places, but we were concerned about a build up of missiles on the Taiwan Straits. So that was always part of our discussion. And at the same time, we were trying to work toward developing some kind of a better relationship with the Chinese, so that’s where I first started talking about engagement and not endorsement because we were concerned about the human rights record in China, and all that. But what we were doing in our summits were delivering the tough messages, but also bringing them into the WTO. That was a large part of what we were doing with China—mainly because we had so many trade issues that had to do with intellectual property and a variety of trading issues, and we thought that bringing them into the WTO would be helpful. But having been in all of the meetings, I knew what we were doing in terms of delivering a hard message but moving our relationship forward. What we talked about was the necessity of moving, this became an issue of some dispute, of moving toward a strategic partnership. At the time, we were criticized for that, saying that we were already strategic partners. We never said that, but we wanted to move in a different relationship.
I think now there are somewhat different issues—still many of the same issues that I mentioned—but also some different ones. Some of them have to do with resource competition. I think we are very worried about what the Chinese are doing on oil. I don’t know whether they will be having these discussions, but I certainly would be in terms of trying to figure out what their long-range plans are. Whether we can get their help on Iran, or Sudan, or things that we need them for in the United Nations. I would be very concerned about the buildup, and would certainly make a point to say that solving Taiwan militarily is unacceptable. There are huge trade issues. There’s no question. That’s just the facts of life in terms of textiles and various aspects. So, there are many issues to deal with the Chinese. I think the proximity of the meetings…this is one of the things that often don’t make sense, but sometimes these things are set up because it’s the only time that the calendar works. Some people think it may be this huge thing, but it may be the only time between things or whatever. It may not be, but I think we have to take that into consideration. If it is the only time the calendar works, then they’ll try to make something more of it. But it could be that the staffers figured out that this was the only time that they could get together.
I was very worried when the Bush Administration came in that they were going to turn the Chinese into enemies. I was very glad to see the shift. I don’t think that we should make China an enemy. I think that would be a big mistake. Also, I think some of it will try to explain the Indian thing is actually not against China. The other part is that North Korea will play a huge role. We have basically sub-contracted our North Korea policy over to the Chinese. We need the Chinese on a lot of things now. I now have discussions with people on every topic I can think of, and we had some China people in recently. And somebody said, “you have to think of the China relationship as the relationship between an addict and a pusher but nobody knows who’s the addict and who’s the pusher.” It’s a very strange relationship.
Question: Thank you Madame Secretary. My question is on Taiwan. Some people believe that we can wait 30 years for the Chinese system to change, and the Taiwan question will resolve itself. Will we be better off or worse off in 30 years? Has the One-China policy given and will it continue to give the Chinese the time they need to build their military until they feel that the time is right for them to move against Taiwan? Should we move away from the One-China policy to take account of Chinese military actions in the region?
Albright: I think that it’s very difficult to move away from the one-China policy. I can’t visualize under what circumstances that would happen. I do think that what has to happen is to use the leverage of saying, “well stay with the One-China but they can’t have this military build up.” I don’t know whether that has been done. I happen to be more on the side of those who think that China will change. How a country that has this kind of economic spurt and development can maintain total control, and it isn’t maintaining total control. They are very nervous that they are going down the Gorbechev route, but the truth is that there are these riots in the countryside. You can’t logically have people making daily decisions about what companies they are going to buy, or if they are going to pump oil from their backyard, or buy a condominium, and not have them want to make other decisions about their political life. I think the Chinese Communist Party is going to have to adjust. It’s going to happen. Unless the Chinese are totally different than everyone else. I happen to believe that we are all the same—I really do. That ultimately, with the presence of information, they just can’t stop this, it just depends on the length of time that you give this. There are so many interesting relations between Taiwan and mainland anyway, I think there are ways to peacefully resolve the issue.
The much larger question is, whether independent nation-states is the answer anyway. It doesn’t make much sense for Taiwan, which is a democracy and economically viable, not be independent if one still thinks that nation states are still the way to go. Who knows. I also do hope that someone is saying to China, “if you keep building up, we can’t keep our one-China policy.” And I don’t know if that is happening.
Question: Thank you for your remarks. I wanted to ask you if you think that energy security has to become more of a concern in our foreign policy? Demand is increasing in the world, there is a beginning of a supply crunch.
Albright: The thing that I find so interesting that is different than everything I ever learned is that how many issues are part of national security concerns. There are things that I never thought about or learned about or studied. One of the things that I keep thinking about as a professor is that people that are in to national security policy need to have a better scientific basis, whether you’re dealing with health issues or climate issues or energy issues that most people just take for granted. And how many players are involved in making national security policy in the U.S. government. So energy policy, I think, has been seen as an aside, and I believe it does need to be central. What’s happening is that country’s energy policies affect their other policies. You can’t function as an industrial society without the energy. Therefore, when you see what China is doing, and how it is effecting our diplomacy in Iran, Sudan, and Venezuela—you know everyone’s out there trolling for oil—it does affect your other diplomatic efforts. I do think that it needs to be a priority.
I think the question that I have is every time one talks about energy, the numbers about who has it, and how much they have changes. I remember an era of sitting in gas lines. But they keep discovering oil in different places. It has affected the economies of a number of countries. I think that fact that Russia can turn on the spigot whenever it wants to has changed with the way they deal with their own domestic problems. I was just in Azerbaijan—a country that is going to be very rich and how it plays internationally. It was a very important aspect of international policy these days, and I do think it needs to be more central. Why we can’t pump oil, and develop oil more strategically, we should be pumping out of West Africa. Now, granted, it’s deep wells, and it’s a lot harder to do, but the truth is that there is a lot oil there and if it were done in a reasonable way, it could help the economies of some of the countries in West Africa, that are a part of the real axis of evil—whether those kinds of things can be done. And Nigeria, which didn’t know how to manage its oil resources, whether more should be done to see energy policy as part of a much larger policy issue. And then the nuclear thing, which I truly am confused about. I was in the Carter White House when Three Mile Island happened. So, there was this aversion to nuclear power. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but clearly depending on whether we change our minds, it will have an affect in our lifetime. It does need to be seen more as part of the whole picture.
Question: My question is about the central tension between the desire for stability and change. It seems like it’s trying to reconstruct an airplane in mid-flight.
Albright: Just to let you know how un-monogamist I am, I was part of an interesting bipartisan study on what U.S. policy toward democratization in the Middle East should be. And, we went there and had very interesting meetings in Cairo with the Egyptian opposition people, and others from the whole region. I do think we are all the same. People do want to be able to make decisions about their own lives. To assume that some people can’t do that is truly racists or imperialists or whatever. The question is how to have an overall policy on it. I do agree with President Bush that democracy, and freedom, and liberty are things that America stands for and it’s a good thing. I also think it’s good realpolitik policy for the United States. And I think that it’s an overall-arching theme, and I do wish that we had done more on democracy promotion during our term in office in the Middle East. We did everywhere else. The truth is that George Bush didn’t invent democracy promotion; I did. [Laughter].
The question here is how to do it. And the stability/democracy question is a very important one. And as I said earlier, ultimate stability comes from democracy. It is the only truly stable system. But when we came up with this report, it was very interesting because there were some countries in the Middle East that said it was very important for the United States to get the democracy message out there. We should not shy away from it. But for the U.S. to have a democracy plan for countries without taking into consideration the differences within the countries is very bad. So, what we advocated was a country by country approach with much more emphasis on education in those countries. Democracy not as an imposition but promotion in terms of NGOs and various things. But, I think it’s wrong to decide that they can’t be democracies. Now Egypt, we advocated that the various Islamic groups become part of the system—that once they eschew military means, they should be able to be part and run for office, etceteras. So, I think it’s wrong to assume that they can’t be democratic. And I do think that the stability of tyranny doesn’t work.
Question: Iraq is now the number one issue for the average American, more important than education or healthcare. What type of impact does this have on foreign policy makers? Does it mean that they get more attention from the President?
Albright: That’s a good question. I can only visualize. I think it makes a difference if it’s in the first or second term. If this were the first term, it would certainly be a political issue—are we going to lose states because of this? Now, I think it’s a legacy issue. I have a feeling that there are meetings when the President says, “how the hell did we get into this mess?” Now, it may not be for this President who is sure about everything. But it clearly is something that if it’s on the front burner for them everyday.