October 7, 2020 • 30 mins
Restoring the credibility of the United States and repairing our reputation around the world will be an urgent task for the next administration and an ongoing effort in the years to come. It will be daunting but it is exceptionally important, not just for America's future, but the world's. One person who understands this well is Susan Rice, a longtime respected diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and was President Obama's National Security Advisor. She joins Pete to discuss this issue and what the next generation of diplomatic service might look like, reflect on leadership and how to overcome challenges, and talk about how to restore the trust our government once inspired around the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, I'm Pete Buddha judge, and this is the deciding decade.
Restoring the credibility of the United States will be an immediate,
urgent task for the next administration and an ongoing effort
through the decade ahead. Countries and people's around the world
trust the United States far less than at any other
(00:26):
time in modern memory, as a consequence of Donald Trump's
administration reversing American leadership on issues like climate change, insulting
and abandoning our allies, and attacking our democratic institutions here
at home, while cozying up to dictators and strong men
around the world. The work ahead will be daunting and
exceptionally important, not just for America's future, but the world's.
(00:48):
So I thought it was important at a time like
this to have one of America's pre eminent foreign policy
leaders and thinkers on the podcast, and I am so
thrilled that Ambassador Susan Rice agreed to join us and
have a conversation about the future of our foreign policy.
For those who aren't familiar with the Ambassador Rice, she
is a remarkable person who served as US Ambassador to
(01:11):
the United Nations during the first term of the Obama administration,
the first black woman ever to hold that position, and
was President Obama's National Security advisor in his second term.
She also has a remarkable story, one you can and
should read in her New York Times best selling book,
Tough Love, My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For. Welcome,
(01:32):
Ambassador Rice, Thanks so much for joining us today. It's
great to be with you. Mayor Pete, thanks for having me.
I remember hearing your name a lot, and when I
was a student at Oxford and you had served in
the Clinton administration, among other roles, as US Assistant Secretary
of State, responsible for our relationships and operations in Africa,
(01:53):
and I believe you were thirty two years old, the
youngest person ever to hold an assistant secretary position Department
of State. I just want to ask you about arriving
in that position, the youngest person ever to be appointed,
and in particular, knowing that you were doing so as
an exceptionally young person and in a predominantly male, predominantly
(02:14):
white field. Did you feel an additional pressure to prove
yourself or how did you arrive with the right mentality
knowing that you belonged in that role. Well, it's interesting, Pete,
I mean taking me back into time, I had spent
the first term of the Clinton administration in the White
House at the National Security Council, and I've done my
(02:38):
PhD dissertation on Africa, and I had a knowledge, a
substant policy knowledge. But moving over in the second term
of the Clinton administration to run the Africa Bureau in
all of its operations in forty eight countries in Sub
Saharan Africa, hundred people based in Washington and five thousand
based out in our embassies around the world in Africa,
(03:01):
and then having you know, pretty large budget. That was
a big leap. And as you pointed out, most of
the people who I worked with and who worked under
me were career Foreign Service officers who were twenty to
thirty years my senior, and most of them white and male. Um.
And to add you know, complexity to the whole thing,
(03:24):
I was a brand new mother. I just had our
first child. Uh, he was three months old and breastfeeding
when I started at the State Department. Suffice it to say,
I was not the person that many of these ambassadors
expected to be their bob. And Uh it was a
combination things. I mean, being an African American woman was
(03:47):
part of it. But my youth, as you point out,
was really I think the hardest thing for them to swallow,
and my relative inexperience, you know, on the kind of
career path that they had been on, where you literally art,
you know, as a foreign service officer in your twenties
and it's not until you're in your fifties that you're
able to become an ambassador. So it was a challenge,
(04:09):
and I was conscious of the skepticism. You know, I
made some early mistakes that you know, could have been deadly,
but were driven from a desire to get things done.
I knew President Clinton, I knew Secretary of State Madeline
all Right, Well, I knew what my marching orders were
in terms of getting policy progress accomplished, and my instinct
(04:32):
was just to drive, drive, drive to get that stuff done.
And what I learned was that, you know, in my
rush to get as much done as I could, that
I was not patient enough, that I was not respectful
enough of my colleagues knowledge and experience, that I was
sort of in such a hard charging mode that I
was leaving a lot of them behind. And I write
(04:54):
in the book about how I was incredibly fortunate to
have a senior colleague who cared enough to help me
take me out to lunch and basically take me to
the woodshed when I thought we were going for Chinese
food and um, and he told me very honestly, giving
me what I called tough love, the hard messages that
(05:15):
you may not want to hear, but that people who
care about you were willing to tell you about where
I was screwing up, and that if I didn't get
my act together, I was gonna and that intervention was crucial.
You know that it reminds me a lot of some
of the dynamics after I took office and when I
was at that age working with a lot of people
who had served in local government, and their attitude was,
(05:37):
you know, I've been doing this for twenty years or more,
i know what I'm doing, I know what matters. And
my attitude was, hey, the people of the city have
elected me to come in shake things up, drive these priorities.
And of course at the end of the day, it
proved to be the case that we were both right
and learning how to direct somebody because that's your job,
and to learn from them because they have so much
(05:58):
to teach you. At the same time was something that
came with experience, but also with some truth telling from
from people who are willing to pull you aside and
say here's something you don't see. And thank god, there
were people willing, at least in my case, to give
me that hard message. Did you have any major screw
ups early in your tenure that that were lessons learned
(06:18):
for you? Or did? Was it just no? Everything was perfect,
never made a mistake? Screw ups that really were sobering. Yeah,
was there one in particular that not not to dwell
on mistakes, but that's where we're that's what we learned from. Yeah,
well they were, There were several, but they were they
all converged around the extraordinary pressure we were under. This
(06:42):
is now n and we had going on in Africa
like an extraordinary series of crises. We had a war
among you know, six plus countries in the Congo. We
had war breakout between Ethiopian Arraitria, which was the deadliest
interstate conflict in the world at the time. We had
(07:03):
you famine and genocide in South Sudan, evacuations of our
embassies in Liberia and war and Sierra Leone and Angola.
I mean, it was crazy. And then just when when
we all thought it couldn't get worse, on August seven,
Alcada bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and we
(07:25):
lost twelve of our American colleagues in Kenya and two
hundred of our Kenyan employees and Kenyan nationals and thousands wounded,
and it was horrific, and like you know, when it's
your own people, your own embassies, you know, it was
a trauma for absolutely all of us, everybody on our team.
(07:46):
And so we were under an enormous amount of pressure
and the objective was to make sure that we did
all we could to prevent additional Alcade attacks, because we
had consistent intelligence that they were hargeting other embassies, and
our embassies in Africa at that point, we're particularly vulnerable.
They were old, they were close on the road, stuff
(08:08):
like that, and so we were constantly playing whackamole with
threat information. And one day in December, I think it
was December, late maybe late November, early December, um, we
got this really frightening intelligence that seemed very credible that
the next day there were going to be a tax
on an unspecified number of embassies, and so I made
(08:31):
the decision on the spot, in light of that intelligence,
to shut down our embassies. It was going to be
a Friday going into the weekend, shut them all down
across the continent. Nobody would go into the buildings, and
then we'd reassess over the weekend. And it was the
right decision. The problem was I forgot to tell my bosses.
(08:51):
I forgot to tell Under Secretary of State Tom Pickering,
who was responsible for all the regional operations. I forgot
to tell the Secretary of State. I was moving so
fast that I didn't do my homework. And so the
next morning I wake up to a phone call from
Under Secretary Pickering, who never ever lost his tempers, screaming
at me. Why am I reading in the press that
(09:12):
we shut down all of the embassies in Africa. Didn't
you think it would have been wiser to let somebody
up here know. And I just was like, oh my god,
I'm sorry, that's totally my bad, um, And I was
just moving too fast. And you know, when the pressure
is so intense, at least I made the right decision.
But you know, you move so fast, you get sloppy.
(09:51):
You know, our relationship with institutions I think is one
of the biggest things that that's on the minds of
those who are worried about the future role of the
US in the world. The press and has withdrawn the
U s from the World Health Organization. We are at
odds with the U N more I think than ever,
And I'm wondering to what extent you believe it will
be possible for the next administration. We hope Abiden administration
(10:16):
to not only reset our relationships with these institutions, but
do we have the credibility to help these institutions grow,
knowing that a lot of them haven't changed much since
right after World War Two. But I think a Biden
administration can re engage in many of these international organizations
and do a great deal to improve our standing and
(10:39):
credibility and efficacy within them. When we withdraw from the
World Health Organization, or when President Trump contemplates withdrawing from
Natives he reportedly has, or when we try to stick
it to the United Nations rather than make it work
for us, you know, that's not punishing the institutions, that's
(11:02):
harming our own national interests and our ability to protect
and defend ourselves and advance our values. And every time
we pull out, we're leaving a vacuum that gets filled
by somebody else. And that's somebody else nowadays is almost
always China. So it could not be more counterproductive. Now,
who's benefited most from our withdrawal from the World Health
(11:25):
Organization China. And we've harmed ourselves because the World Health
Organization is doing in the most difficult, least developed parts
of the world the hard work to stamp out diseases,
whether a bola or polio or HIV or COVID that
we can't do all by ourselves, or if we try
(11:47):
to do it extremely costly and inefficient. So yes, we can,
and we must get back in these entities and get back,
you know, with strengthen and efficacy. And there's this misperception
in some circles that you know, we're being jerked around,
for example, by the United Nations. The fact of the
(12:08):
matter is we designed the United Nations back after World
War Two, and is imperfect as it is, it works
for us. We have a veto nothing happens of consequence
in the United Nations that we don't agree to by definition,
you know, there's no point in using that veto in
(12:30):
an abusive or punitive way. But it does mean that
whether you know it, we're standing up for Israel's security
and legitimacy or you know, protecting our fundamental concerns, that
nothing happens of consequence that we don't agree to. That's
a pretty good deal. That's like you can bat a
thousand under that kind of set up. And so when
(12:51):
we talk about reforming and updating the institutions, you know, yes,
a number of them do need updating and reform. And
there are those who will argue legitimate you know, how
can you have a U n Security Council with five
permanent members two of them are European and in India
doesn't factor in as large as it is, or you know,
the Japanese will say they deserve a permanent seat, or
(13:13):
the Brazilians and then Africa will say, well, we're a
continent of bivillion people, we need a permanent seat. And
all of those are legitimate concerns in principle. But then
what do you do then the issue becomes truly complicated.
Do they all get a veto? Well, then that dilutes
our ability to steer it in a direction, and that's
beneficial to our interests. So you know, these things are
(13:34):
really complicated. They require, in the first instance, leadership from
the United States that the world believes is acting not
just in our own narrow self interest, but in our interests.
That is defined as that which is potentially and hopefully
beneficial to others as well. So you can't have a
(13:55):
zero some mindset. If it's good for us, it's got
to be bad for everybody else, or it's bad for
everybody else's good for us. That that is the Trump
zero sum mindset that makes it impossible to cooperate and
bring others along with us. That touches something I've been
thinking about a lot, which is the question of trust
and the level of trust that the US can command
(14:17):
among nations in the world. In fact, while I was
researching a book I have on the subject, I hit
on this story of a moment during the Cuban missile
crisis where President Kennedy knows he needs or wants to
get French support for whatever he might have to do
during the Cuban missile crisis, calls Dean atches In, the
former Secretary of State out of retirement, sends him to
Paris to go see Charle Degal and tell him what's
(14:39):
going on, armed with highly classified photos as proof that
the Soviets are putting missiles in Cuba. Gets there and
the president, the French president greets him, he's grumpy, but
when he offers to show him the photos, the French
president reportedly just kind of brushed him off and said,
your president's word is enough. And and you think about
(15:02):
right exactly? I mean for the president this presidence were
to be enough for anybody around here, let alone overseas,
it's just impossible to picture, but that must have been
something of just unquantifiable value for American objectives in American
diplomacy and ultimately for American security. And the more I
investigated the sources of trust, I found that one of
them is predictability. Sometimes when people are trying to invent
(15:25):
some kind of rationale for how this president behaves, they
talk about his unpredictability as if it was strategic. That
you know. Sometimes it's been called the madman theory. If
other countries think he's crazy, will be more likely to
get our way. And yet even if that is strategic,
which I don't think most of us believe, but but
it would be a strategy that's incredibly destructive of the
(15:47):
ability to have any trust. So what are ways to
accelerate that process of building trust on the world stage
or maybe even here at home before it's too late.
Knowing that trust building takes time, but time is of
the essence. I mean, so much of our problem is
not just that the president is unpredictable. I mean, he's unpredictable,
But the predictable thing about him once people crack the code,
(16:10):
is he's serving his own interests rather than the national interests.
And a lot of countries have figured it out, which
is why they flatter him and you know, stay at
his hotels and do all these things that have nothing
to do with what values or interests we might share.
It's all about making him feel bigger and better and
(16:31):
and advancing his own personal, political and financial interests. So
you know, with Joe Biden, not only does he come
with this very substantial and known and trusted track record,
but people understand that he is serving us interests in values,
and that when he says something, he's telling the truth.
(16:51):
That he's not out in it for himself, having long been,
for example, the poorest member of the Senate, and he's
not in it for anything other than what one would
expect the United States president to be in it for,
which is to serve the national interests. So I think fortunately,
in this moment, with all that we have to repair
(17:13):
and rebuild, we benefit from the prospect of starting with
somebody who comes with an extensive record that people can
already trust. You know you you mentioned COVID. I know
(17:42):
in addition to your foreign policy leadership, I know the
mayor of d C has turned to you to help
it advise on how the district is managing the pandemic.
And as somebody who comes from the local level of government,
I was struck by something that uh, you wrote about
out This is back in when I think all of
(18:03):
us were trying to figure out how to face the
rest of the world in the Trump era. You wrote,
Congressional delegations, governors and mayors can reassure our key allies
that the American people still value them and we do
not intend to see our global leadership. So even then
you were thinking about the kind of global role of
local leaders and uh, and now I know you're you're
helping at least one local leader deal with a global
(18:25):
issue in its local implications. With the pandemic. I wonder
in your experience what you've come to conclude about how
the different levels of government in our system interact and
what that might mean to help us meet the moment
in the years ahead, especially knowing that, uh, in the
absence of federal leadership these last few years, it's really
fallen to mayors and governors to step up. Now, hopefully
(18:46):
with the president who supports them, there might be a
whole new era in terms of what local and state
leaders can achieve. How do you see all that fitting together?
And and and has that changed any since you've become
maybe more immersed in in local problem solving through we're
helping the district navigate the pandemic. Well, it's interesting. I mean,
up until recently, all of my policy making experience was
(19:07):
at the federal level, and you know, senior levels of
the federal government. Um. And even though I've been a
most of my life a resident of the District of
Columbia and you know, cared deeply about this city, I've
never had an inside perspective on, you know, on municipal governance.
And I really do think that in this vacuum that
(19:30):
Trump has created that I pointed to back as in seventeen,
as you noted, and he's it's only gotten greater. He's
essentially left us naked internationally and naked in terms of
domestic leadership on critical challenges. And nothing points that out
more starkly than his failure to uh to lead on
(19:52):
COVID and all of the many lives that have been
lost as a consequence. And what it does point out
is that for the citizen on a daily basis, you know,
would be great if the President of the United States
were doing its job and for example, procuring vast quantities
of PPE and ventilators and distributing them rationally so that
(20:15):
states weren't having to compete against each other and bidding
up the price. And it would be great if we
had a national testing strategy that made sure that we
had the quantity and quality of tests and distributed them rationally.
We don't have any of that. But at the end
of the day, what Americans have come to understand is
it really matters who your mayor is, who your governor
is um And you know, we've seen great successes and
(20:39):
great failures at the state and local level for me personally,
but I think for many Americans. You come to appreciate
even more how critical leadership, high quality leadership is at
the state and local level. You know this, I mean,
I'm obviously I'm preaching to the choir, but uh, you know,
and think of what head in mind. For example, when
(21:01):
I wrote that piece back in two seventeen, was something
like climate leadership. You know, the administration, the President pulled
out of Paris. He's flipping the bird too, you know,
to climate change into the rest of the world, who
everybody else on the planet cares deeply about this issue.
At that point, it was clear that, you know, governors
(21:23):
and mayors and consortium like the ones that that Bloomberg
put together, and the private sector and civil society and
individuals like Greta can make an enormous difference on an
issue of global significance, even when the President United States
is a wall. So we want to be in a situation,
particularly in a crisis like COVID and increasingly like climate,
(21:46):
where we're all firing on all cylinders. But in the
absence of that, there's more that can be accomplished at
the state and local level than I think many of
us uh realized previously. One other thing I really wanted
to ask you about because you have experienced foreign policy
at so many levels professionally and foreign policy leadership, and
(22:08):
it strikes me that the ranks of those who serve
our country, especially as career diplomats, but really across all
the federal service. You think about the Department of Justice.
So many parts of of the US government have taken
a real beating, and a lot of people have left,
and those who were there, many of them are demoralized.
So I wonder what your hopes are for what the
(22:29):
next generation of diplomatic service might look like, and things
that you think the next administration should think about in
building that that team of public servants all the way
from the most junior career person through to presidential appointees,
in order to make sure it really is the kind
of team that could guide our country through this decade. Well,
I think it's a great question, and it's one I've
(22:51):
thought a very bit about. I will say, Pete, we
didn't need to have the Trump era destructive of the
administrative state to accomplish kind of progress that that I
hope we can can make going forward. We have had.
I can't overstate the losses, uh in terms of experience
and talent, for example, in the State Department and the
(23:12):
Foreign Service and the civil service. But it's not just
the state departments the intelligence community. It's the civilians and
the Defense Department, and in the Justice Department and in
so many other critical areas. One of our greatest strengths
is the United States of America is we are the
most diverse country on the face of the earth. So
many studies have shown when you bring diverse voices around
(23:32):
a decision making table, you make better decisions. That has
proven whether you're in the private sector, in the corporate boardroom,
or in government or the nonprofit world. We have the
opportunity to bring this incredible complexity of the mosaic that
is our country to the decision making table. But we
also have this extraordinary advantage when we speak to people's
and countries around the world, to show them that there's
(23:56):
people in this country that come from where they come
from and understand their issues and concerns and language and
all of the above. It's a great asset that if
we use it, but we don't use it right now.
In the State Department. This is I mean, this is
as bad as I can imagine in my lifetime. But
of some one and eighty odd ambassadors that we have
(24:17):
around the world, three three pet are African American right now,
and you know, like one is Latino or I believe.
I mean, it's just crazy and we can do so
much better. So, you know, really emphasizing in our intake
and our retention and our promotion opportunities for all the
(24:41):
people who represent this country who have the interest, in
the talent to serve. But then the other thing, and
you alluded to this, is that the career path in
the State Department is really antiquated. When I described, you know,
early in our conversation my time early in the State
partner and all these people who are the ambassadors and
senior official when I was at the Assistant Secretary for
(25:01):
African Affairs, who were twenty to thirty years my senior.
They had literally been working in the same job on
the same track, just moving up for thirty years. Who
do you know, your age and younger, Who does any
job for twenty five or thirty years anymore much like
five years, right, We're not likely to be in the
(25:23):
same career. So that's really unusual. But I even I
don't think I've done one job more than five or
six years, right, So nobody does that. And if you
want to have the best talent and refresh it and
encourage people who may not want to commit a career
(25:43):
to serving but could add a whole bunch of value
for five years, and who come with skills and experiences
like technical skills and digital skills and language skills and
you know, business skills that can be valuable in government.
And yet the constraints of the career path make it
really hard to tap that talent. You can't just you know,
(26:06):
easily come in and come out and be treated decently.
We're gonna have to bring back people who have retired
or were driven out and let them start at the
level they left at without penalty. We've got to have
more fluidity and interchangeability between the Foreign service and the
civil service. We've got great talent in the civil service
that isn't elevated to the extent that it should be.
(26:28):
And all of these things are difficult because Congress will
have a say, and the unions will have a say,
and you know, all of these entities that have a
stake that are legitimate share you know, stakeholders. But it
is really the case in my opinion that we've got
to look at this afresh and be willing to uh
to change the business model in order to attract and
(26:51):
retain the quality talent and the diverse talent that we need.
I think you're right, that's a huge opportunity, and I
agree it shouldn't have taken things being smashed a bits
the way they have been by this administration. But since
they have been, it makes it all the more urgent
and maybe all the more possible to make these kinds
of changes. I wonder if you picture a historian in
(27:12):
the forties looking back aties and what they wound up
meaning to America, America's place in the world, what would
you most hope that observer would be able to say
about As we sit here now at the outside of
that decade. I hope that historian could look back and say,
(27:35):
this was the decade where America looked in the mirror
and decided that it can and should be much better.
That we can be more unified, that we can be
a leader in the world that serves our interests and values.
If not more perfectly, then you know, more consistently, um
(27:56):
and with the right intentions. That it's a much fairer
and more just society for the least among us. That
we've narrowed the gaps of inequality and racial and regional disparity.
And you know that if you're a poor white kid
born in Appalachia, or a Latino boy born in the
(28:18):
barrio in Los Angeles, or an African American girl born
in Detroit, or a Native American girl born on a
reservation in South Dakota, that this is still a country
where you can and and and have the real potential
to achieve a brighter, more secure, more hopeful, and prosperous
(28:41):
future and pass that on again to your kids. We've
got to ReVibe and and reinvigorate the American dream and
make it really available to everybody. Well, there's a great
conversation with the Ambassador Arts. I've really enjoyed hearing her
(29:02):
remarkable stories about what it was like to play a
central role in so many of America's toughest and most
important decisions, her work helping to secure this country with
countless lives at stake every day. She's got such an
admirable life story and a fitting outlook on what we
can do over the next decade to repair the credibility
of the United States and restore the trust our government
(29:25):
once inspired before Donald Trump around the world. There was
so much that needs to be done to improve our
country and reinvigorate the American dream, as she said, and
we're all better off when we pay attention to the
insights and the aspirations of thoughtful leaders like Susan Rice.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(29:47):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Pete Buddha judge, and this is the deciding decade.
Restoring the credibility of the United States will be an immediate,
urgent task for the next administration and an ongoing effort
through the decade ahead. Countries and people's around the world
trust the United States far less than at any other
(00:26):
time in modern memory, as a consequence of Donald Trump's
administration reversing American leadership on issues like climate change, insulting
and abandoning our allies, and attacking our democratic institutions here
at home, while cozying up to dictators and strong men
around the world. The work ahead will be daunting and
exceptionally important, not just for America's future, but the world's.
(00:48):
So I thought it was important at a time like
this to have one of America's pre eminent foreign policy
leaders and thinkers on the podcast, and I am so
thrilled that Ambassador Susan Rice agreed to join us and
have a conversation about the future of our foreign policy.
For those who aren't familiar with the Ambassador Rice, she
is a remarkable person who served as US Ambassador to
(01:11):
the United Nations during the first term of the Obama administration,
the first black woman ever to hold that position, and
was President Obama's National Security advisor in his second term.
She also has a remarkable story, one you can and
should read in her New York Times best selling book,
Tough Love, My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For. Welcome,
(01:32):
Ambassador Rice, Thanks so much for joining us today. It's
great to be with you. Mayor Pete, thanks for having me.
I remember hearing your name a lot, and when I
was a student at Oxford and you had served in
the Clinton administration, among other roles, as US Assistant Secretary
of State, responsible for our relationships and operations in Africa,
(01:53):
and I believe you were thirty two years old, the
youngest person ever to hold an assistant secretary position Department
of State. I just want to ask you about arriving
in that position, the youngest person ever to be appointed,
and in particular, knowing that you were doing so as
an exceptionally young person and in a predominantly male, predominantly
(02:14):
white field. Did you feel an additional pressure to prove
yourself or how did you arrive with the right mentality
knowing that you belonged in that role. Well, it's interesting, Pete,
I mean taking me back into time, I had spent
the first term of the Clinton administration in the White
House at the National Security Council, and I've done my
(02:38):
PhD dissertation on Africa, and I had a knowledge, a
substant policy knowledge. But moving over in the second term
of the Clinton administration to run the Africa Bureau in
all of its operations in forty eight countries in Sub
Saharan Africa, hundred people based in Washington and five thousand
based out in our embassies around the world in Africa,
(03:01):
and then having you know, pretty large budget. That was
a big leap. And as you pointed out, most of
the people who I worked with and who worked under
me were career Foreign Service officers who were twenty to
thirty years my senior, and most of them white and male. Um.
And to add you know, complexity to the whole thing,
(03:24):
I was a brand new mother. I just had our
first child. Uh, he was three months old and breastfeeding
when I started at the State Department. Suffice it to say,
I was not the person that many of these ambassadors
expected to be their bob. And Uh it was a
combination things. I mean, being an African American woman was
(03:47):
part of it. But my youth, as you point out,
was really I think the hardest thing for them to swallow,
and my relative inexperience, you know, on the kind of
career path that they had been on, where you literally art,
you know, as a foreign service officer in your twenties
and it's not until you're in your fifties that you're
able to become an ambassador. So it was a challenge,
(04:09):
and I was conscious of the skepticism. You know, I
made some early mistakes that you know, could have been deadly,
but were driven from a desire to get things done.
I knew President Clinton, I knew Secretary of State Madeline
all Right, Well, I knew what my marching orders were
in terms of getting policy progress accomplished, and my instinct
(04:32):
was just to drive, drive, drive to get that stuff done.
And what I learned was that, you know, in my
rush to get as much done as I could, that
I was not patient enough, that I was not respectful
enough of my colleagues knowledge and experience, that I was
sort of in such a hard charging mode that I
was leaving a lot of them behind. And I write
(04:54):
in the book about how I was incredibly fortunate to
have a senior colleague who cared enough to help me
take me out to lunch and basically take me to
the woodshed when I thought we were going for Chinese
food and um, and he told me very honestly, giving
me what I called tough love, the hard messages that
(05:15):
you may not want to hear, but that people who
care about you were willing to tell you about where
I was screwing up, and that if I didn't get
my act together, I was gonna and that intervention was crucial.
You know that it reminds me a lot of some
of the dynamics after I took office and when I
was at that age working with a lot of people
who had served in local government, and their attitude was,
(05:37):
you know, I've been doing this for twenty years or more,
i know what I'm doing, I know what matters. And
my attitude was, hey, the people of the city have
elected me to come in shake things up, drive these priorities.
And of course at the end of the day, it
proved to be the case that we were both right
and learning how to direct somebody because that's your job,
and to learn from them because they have so much
(05:58):
to teach you. At the same time was something that
came with experience, but also with some truth telling from
from people who are willing to pull you aside and
say here's something you don't see. And thank god, there
were people willing, at least in my case, to give
me that hard message. Did you have any major screw
ups early in your tenure that that were lessons learned
(06:18):
for you? Or did? Was it just no? Everything was perfect,
never made a mistake? Screw ups that really were sobering. Yeah,
was there one in particular that not not to dwell
on mistakes, but that's where we're that's what we learned from. Yeah,
well they were, There were several, but they were they
all converged around the extraordinary pressure we were under. This
(06:42):
is now n and we had going on in Africa
like an extraordinary series of crises. We had a war
among you know, six plus countries in the Congo. We
had war breakout between Ethiopian Arraitria, which was the deadliest
interstate conflict in the world at the time. We had
(07:03):
you famine and genocide in South Sudan, evacuations of our
embassies in Liberia and war and Sierra Leone and Angola.
I mean, it was crazy. And then just when when
we all thought it couldn't get worse, on August seven,
Alcada bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and we
(07:25):
lost twelve of our American colleagues in Kenya and two
hundred of our Kenyan employees and Kenyan nationals and thousands wounded,
and it was horrific, and like you know, when it's
your own people, your own embassies, you know, it was
a trauma for absolutely all of us, everybody on our team.
(07:46):
And so we were under an enormous amount of pressure
and the objective was to make sure that we did
all we could to prevent additional Alcade attacks, because we
had consistent intelligence that they were hargeting other embassies, and
our embassies in Africa at that point, we're particularly vulnerable.
They were old, they were close on the road, stuff
(08:08):
like that, and so we were constantly playing whackamole with
threat information. And one day in December, I think it
was December, late maybe late November, early December, um, we
got this really frightening intelligence that seemed very credible that
the next day there were going to be a tax
on an unspecified number of embassies, and so I made
(08:31):
the decision on the spot, in light of that intelligence,
to shut down our embassies. It was going to be
a Friday going into the weekend, shut them all down
across the continent. Nobody would go into the buildings, and
then we'd reassess over the weekend. And it was the
right decision. The problem was I forgot to tell my bosses.
(08:51):
I forgot to tell Under Secretary of State Tom Pickering,
who was responsible for all the regional operations. I forgot
to tell the Secretary of State. I was moving so
fast that I didn't do my homework. And so the
next morning I wake up to a phone call from
Under Secretary Pickering, who never ever lost his tempers, screaming
at me. Why am I reading in the press that
(09:12):
we shut down all of the embassies in Africa. Didn't
you think it would have been wiser to let somebody
up here know. And I just was like, oh my god,
I'm sorry, that's totally my bad, um, And I was
just moving too fast. And you know, when the pressure
is so intense, at least I made the right decision.
But you know, you move so fast, you get sloppy.
(09:51):
You know, our relationship with institutions I think is one
of the biggest things that that's on the minds of
those who are worried about the future role of the
US in the world. The press and has withdrawn the
U s from the World Health Organization. We are at
odds with the U N more I think than ever,
And I'm wondering to what extent you believe it will
be possible for the next administration. We hope Abiden administration
(10:16):
to not only reset our relationships with these institutions, but
do we have the credibility to help these institutions grow,
knowing that a lot of them haven't changed much since
right after World War Two. But I think a Biden
administration can re engage in many of these international organizations
and do a great deal to improve our standing and
(10:39):
credibility and efficacy within them. When we withdraw from the
World Health Organization, or when President Trump contemplates withdrawing from
Natives he reportedly has, or when we try to stick
it to the United Nations rather than make it work
for us, you know, that's not punishing the institutions, that's
(11:02):
harming our own national interests and our ability to protect
and defend ourselves and advance our values. And every time
we pull out, we're leaving a vacuum that gets filled
by somebody else. And that's somebody else nowadays is almost
always China. So it could not be more counterproductive. Now,
who's benefited most from our withdrawal from the World Health
(11:25):
Organization China. And we've harmed ourselves because the World Health
Organization is doing in the most difficult, least developed parts
of the world the hard work to stamp out diseases,
whether a bola or polio or HIV or COVID that
we can't do all by ourselves, or if we try
(11:47):
to do it extremely costly and inefficient. So yes, we can,
and we must get back in these entities and get back,
you know, with strengthen and efficacy. And there's this misperception
in some circles that you know, we're being jerked around,
for example, by the United Nations. The fact of the
(12:08):
matter is we designed the United Nations back after World
War Two, and is imperfect as it is, it works
for us. We have a veto nothing happens of consequence
in the United Nations that we don't agree to by definition,
you know, there's no point in using that veto in
(12:30):
an abusive or punitive way. But it does mean that
whether you know it, we're standing up for Israel's security
and legitimacy or you know, protecting our fundamental concerns, that
nothing happens of consequence that we don't agree to. That's
a pretty good deal. That's like you can bat a
thousand under that kind of set up. And so when
(12:51):
we talk about reforming and updating the institutions, you know, yes,
a number of them do need updating and reform. And
there are those who will argue legitimate you know, how
can you have a U n Security Council with five
permanent members two of them are European and in India
doesn't factor in as large as it is, or you know,
the Japanese will say they deserve a permanent seat, or
(13:13):
the Brazilians and then Africa will say, well, we're a
continent of bivillion people, we need a permanent seat. And
all of those are legitimate concerns in principle. But then
what do you do then the issue becomes truly complicated.
Do they all get a veto? Well, then that dilutes
our ability to steer it in a direction, and that's
beneficial to our interests. So you know, these things are
(13:34):
really complicated. They require, in the first instance, leadership from
the United States that the world believes is acting not
just in our own narrow self interest, but in our interests.
That is defined as that which is potentially and hopefully
beneficial to others as well. So you can't have a
(13:55):
zero some mindset. If it's good for us, it's got
to be bad for everybody else, or it's bad for
everybody else's good for us. That that is the Trump
zero sum mindset that makes it impossible to cooperate and
bring others along with us. That touches something I've been
thinking about a lot, which is the question of trust
and the level of trust that the US can command
(14:17):
among nations in the world. In fact, while I was
researching a book I have on the subject, I hit
on this story of a moment during the Cuban missile
crisis where President Kennedy knows he needs or wants to
get French support for whatever he might have to do
during the Cuban missile crisis, calls Dean atches In, the
former Secretary of State out of retirement, sends him to
Paris to go see Charle Degal and tell him what's
(14:39):
going on, armed with highly classified photos as proof that
the Soviets are putting missiles in Cuba. Gets there and
the president, the French president greets him, he's grumpy, but
when he offers to show him the photos, the French
president reportedly just kind of brushed him off and said,
your president's word is enough. And and you think about
(15:02):
right exactly? I mean for the president this presidence were
to be enough for anybody around here, let alone overseas,
it's just impossible to picture, but that must have been
something of just unquantifiable value for American objectives in American
diplomacy and ultimately for American security. And the more I
investigated the sources of trust, I found that one of
them is predictability. Sometimes when people are trying to invent
(15:25):
some kind of rationale for how this president behaves, they
talk about his unpredictability as if it was strategic. That
you know. Sometimes it's been called the madman theory. If
other countries think he's crazy, will be more likely to
get our way. And yet even if that is strategic,
which I don't think most of us believe, but but
it would be a strategy that's incredibly destructive of the
(15:47):
ability to have any trust. So what are ways to
accelerate that process of building trust on the world stage
or maybe even here at home before it's too late.
Knowing that trust building takes time, but time is of
the essence. I mean, so much of our problem is
not just that the president is unpredictable. I mean, he's unpredictable,
But the predictable thing about him once people crack the code,
(16:10):
is he's serving his own interests rather than the national interests.
And a lot of countries have figured it out, which
is why they flatter him and you know, stay at
his hotels and do all these things that have nothing
to do with what values or interests we might share.
It's all about making him feel bigger and better and
(16:31):
and advancing his own personal, political and financial interests. So
you know, with Joe Biden, not only does he come
with this very substantial and known and trusted track record,
but people understand that he is serving us interests in values,
and that when he says something, he's telling the truth.
(16:51):
That he's not out in it for himself, having long been,
for example, the poorest member of the Senate, and he's
not in it for anything other than what one would
expect the United States president to be in it for,
which is to serve the national interests. So I think fortunately,
in this moment, with all that we have to repair
(17:13):
and rebuild, we benefit from the prospect of starting with
somebody who comes with an extensive record that people can
already trust. You know you you mentioned COVID. I know
(17:42):
in addition to your foreign policy leadership, I know the
mayor of d C has turned to you to help
it advise on how the district is managing the pandemic.
And as somebody who comes from the local level of government,
I was struck by something that uh, you wrote about
out This is back in when I think all of
(18:03):
us were trying to figure out how to face the
rest of the world in the Trump era. You wrote,
Congressional delegations, governors and mayors can reassure our key allies
that the American people still value them and we do
not intend to see our global leadership. So even then
you were thinking about the kind of global role of
local leaders and uh, and now I know you're you're
helping at least one local leader deal with a global
(18:25):
issue in its local implications. With the pandemic. I wonder
in your experience what you've come to conclude about how
the different levels of government in our system interact and
what that might mean to help us meet the moment
in the years ahead, especially knowing that, uh, in the
absence of federal leadership these last few years, it's really
fallen to mayors and governors to step up. Now, hopefully
(18:46):
with the president who supports them, there might be a
whole new era in terms of what local and state
leaders can achieve. How do you see all that fitting together?
And and and has that changed any since you've become
maybe more immersed in in local problem solving through we're
helping the district navigate the pandemic. Well, it's interesting. I mean,
up until recently, all of my policy making experience was
(19:07):
at the federal level, and you know, senior levels of
the federal government. Um. And even though I've been a
most of my life a resident of the District of
Columbia and you know, cared deeply about this city, I've
never had an inside perspective on, you know, on municipal governance.
And I really do think that in this vacuum that
(19:30):
Trump has created that I pointed to back as in seventeen,
as you noted, and he's it's only gotten greater. He's
essentially left us naked internationally and naked in terms of
domestic leadership on critical challenges. And nothing points that out
more starkly than his failure to uh to lead on
(19:52):
COVID and all of the many lives that have been
lost as a consequence. And what it does point out
is that for the citizen on a daily basis, you know,
would be great if the President of the United States
were doing its job and for example, procuring vast quantities
of PPE and ventilators and distributing them rationally so that
(20:15):
states weren't having to compete against each other and bidding
up the price. And it would be great if we
had a national testing strategy that made sure that we
had the quantity and quality of tests and distributed them rationally.
We don't have any of that. But at the end
of the day, what Americans have come to understand is
it really matters who your mayor is, who your governor
is um And you know, we've seen great successes and
(20:39):
great failures at the state and local level for me personally,
but I think for many Americans. You come to appreciate
even more how critical leadership, high quality leadership is at
the state and local level. You know this, I mean,
I'm obviously I'm preaching to the choir, but uh, you know,
and think of what head in mind. For example, when
(21:01):
I wrote that piece back in two seventeen, was something
like climate leadership. You know, the administration, the President pulled
out of Paris. He's flipping the bird too, you know,
to climate change into the rest of the world, who
everybody else on the planet cares deeply about this issue.
At that point, it was clear that, you know, governors
(21:23):
and mayors and consortium like the ones that that Bloomberg
put together, and the private sector and civil society and
individuals like Greta can make an enormous difference on an
issue of global significance, even when the President United States
is a wall. So we want to be in a situation,
particularly in a crisis like COVID and increasingly like climate,
(21:46):
where we're all firing on all cylinders. But in the
absence of that, there's more that can be accomplished at
the state and local level than I think many of
us uh realized previously. One other thing I really wanted
to ask you about because you have experienced foreign policy
at so many levels professionally and foreign policy leadership, and
(22:08):
it strikes me that the ranks of those who serve
our country, especially as career diplomats, but really across all
the federal service. You think about the Department of Justice.
So many parts of of the US government have taken
a real beating, and a lot of people have left,
and those who were there, many of them are demoralized.
So I wonder what your hopes are for what the
(22:29):
next generation of diplomatic service might look like, and things
that you think the next administration should think about in
building that that team of public servants all the way
from the most junior career person through to presidential appointees,
in order to make sure it really is the kind
of team that could guide our country through this decade. Well,
I think it's a great question, and it's one I've
(22:51):
thought a very bit about. I will say, Pete, we
didn't need to have the Trump era destructive of the
administrative state to accomplish kind of progress that that I
hope we can can make going forward. We have had.
I can't overstate the losses, uh in terms of experience
and talent, for example, in the State Department and the
(23:12):
Foreign Service and the civil service. But it's not just
the state departments the intelligence community. It's the civilians and
the Defense Department, and in the Justice Department and in
so many other critical areas. One of our greatest strengths
is the United States of America is we are the
most diverse country on the face of the earth. So
many studies have shown when you bring diverse voices around
(23:32):
a decision making table, you make better decisions. That has
proven whether you're in the private sector, in the corporate boardroom,
or in government or the nonprofit world. We have the
opportunity to bring this incredible complexity of the mosaic that
is our country to the decision making table. But we
also have this extraordinary advantage when we speak to people's
and countries around the world, to show them that there's
(23:56):
people in this country that come from where they come
from and understand their issues and concerns and language and
all of the above. It's a great asset that if
we use it, but we don't use it right now.
In the State Department. This is I mean, this is
as bad as I can imagine in my lifetime. But
of some one and eighty odd ambassadors that we have
(24:17):
around the world, three three pet are African American right now,
and you know, like one is Latino or I believe.
I mean, it's just crazy and we can do so
much better. So, you know, really emphasizing in our intake
and our retention and our promotion opportunities for all the
(24:41):
people who represent this country who have the interest, in
the talent to serve. But then the other thing, and
you alluded to this, is that the career path in
the State Department is really antiquated. When I described, you know,
early in our conversation my time early in the State
partner and all these people who are the ambassadors and
senior official when I was at the Assistant Secretary for
(25:01):
African Affairs, who were twenty to thirty years my senior.
They had literally been working in the same job on
the same track, just moving up for thirty years. Who
do you know, your age and younger, Who does any
job for twenty five or thirty years anymore much like
five years, right, We're not likely to be in the
(25:23):
same career. So that's really unusual. But I even I
don't think I've done one job more than five or
six years, right, So nobody does that. And if you
want to have the best talent and refresh it and
encourage people who may not want to commit a career
(25:43):
to serving but could add a whole bunch of value
for five years, and who come with skills and experiences
like technical skills and digital skills and language skills and
you know, business skills that can be valuable in government.
And yet the constraints of the career path make it
really hard to tap that talent. You can't just you know,
(26:06):
easily come in and come out and be treated decently.
We're gonna have to bring back people who have retired
or were driven out and let them start at the
level they left at without penalty. We've got to have
more fluidity and interchangeability between the Foreign service and the
civil service. We've got great talent in the civil service
that isn't elevated to the extent that it should be.
(26:28):
And all of these things are difficult because Congress will
have a say, and the unions will have a say,
and you know, all of these entities that have a
stake that are legitimate share you know, stakeholders. But it
is really the case in my opinion that we've got
to look at this afresh and be willing to uh
to change the business model in order to attract and
(26:51):
retain the quality talent and the diverse talent that we need.
I think you're right, that's a huge opportunity, and I
agree it shouldn't have taken things being smashed a bits
the way they have been by this administration. But since
they have been, it makes it all the more urgent
and maybe all the more possible to make these kinds
of changes. I wonder if you picture a historian in
(27:12):
the forties looking back aties and what they wound up
meaning to America, America's place in the world, what would
you most hope that observer would be able to say
about As we sit here now at the outside of
that decade. I hope that historian could look back and say,
(27:35):
this was the decade where America looked in the mirror
and decided that it can and should be much better.
That we can be more unified, that we can be
a leader in the world that serves our interests and values.
If not more perfectly, then you know, more consistently, um
(27:56):
and with the right intentions. That it's a much fairer
and more just society for the least among us. That
we've narrowed the gaps of inequality and racial and regional disparity.
And you know that if you're a poor white kid
born in Appalachia, or a Latino boy born in the
(28:18):
barrio in Los Angeles, or an African American girl born
in Detroit, or a Native American girl born on a
reservation in South Dakota, that this is still a country
where you can and and and have the real potential
to achieve a brighter, more secure, more hopeful, and prosperous
(28:41):
future and pass that on again to your kids. We've
got to ReVibe and and reinvigorate the American dream and
make it really available to everybody. Well, there's a great
conversation with the Ambassador Arts. I've really enjoyed hearing her
(29:02):
remarkable stories about what it was like to play a
central role in so many of America's toughest and most
important decisions, her work helping to secure this country with
countless lives at stake every day. She's got such an
admirable life story and a fitting outlook on what we
can do over the next decade to repair the credibility
of the United States and restore the trust our government
(29:25):
once inspired before Donald Trump around the world. There was
so much that needs to be done to improve our
country and reinvigorate the American dream, as she said, and
we're all better off when we pay attention to the
insights and the aspirations of thoughtful leaders like Susan Rice.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(29:47):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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