Presidential Transitions: National Security | Reimagining American Institutions | Hoover Institution - Talks from the Hoover Institution

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[MUSIC]

>> Eryn Tillman (00:08):
Good morning.
My name is Eryn Tillman, an AssociateDirector at the Hoover Institution, and
we'd like to welcome you totoday's webinar organized by
the Hoover Institution's Center forRevitalizing American Institutions,
also known as RAI.
Today's session will consist of a 30minute discussion followed by a Q and
A period.
To submit your question,please use the Q and

(00:28):
A feature located at the bottomof your zoom screen.
We will do our best to respond toas many questions as possible.
A recording of this webinar willbe available at hoover.org/rai
within a few days.
The Center for Revitalizing AmericanInstitutions (RAI) was established to
study the reasons behind the crisis andtrust facing American institutions,
analyze how they are operatingin practice, and

(00:49):
consider policy recommendations to rebuildtrust and increase their effectiveness.
RAI works with and supports Hoover fellowsas well as faculty, practitioners and
policymakers from across the countryto pursue evidence-based reforms.
When we say institutions,we mean governing and
judicial bodies at the state, federal andlocal levels, as well as non governmental

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civil society organizations such as media,nonprofits and foundations.
We also attempt to understandpublic opinion and behavior,
particularly as it relates to electoralaccountability, and are making investments
to improve civic education in both K12 andhigher education.
RAI operates as the Hoover Institution'sfirst ever center and

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is a testament to one of our foundingprinciples, Ideas Advancing Freedom.
Since 1919, the Hoover Institution hassought to improve the human condition by
advancing ideas that promoteeconomic opportunity and
prosperity while securing and safeguardingpeace for America and all mankind.
This webinar series was established tofeature speakers who are developing

(01:51):
innovative ideas andconducting groundbreaking research.
We hope to build awareness abouthow we can individually and
collectively revitalize Americaninstitutions to ensure our
country's democracydelivers on its promise.
And now it gives me great pleasureto introduce today's speakers,
the 66th Secretary of State andDirector of the Hoover Institution,

(02:12):
Secretary Condoleezza Rice, and the 20thWhite House National Security Advisor and
a principal of Rice,Hadley Gates Emanuel Stephen Hadley.
Director Rice.

>> Condoleezza Rice (02:22):
Thank you very much, Erin, and thank you and
welcome to all of you whoare attending this webinar.
We really do seek to shed some lighton what is a very important and
critical set of issues forthe United States of America and
that's how to make our veryvaluable institutions work better.

(02:43):
I wanna thank Brandice Cain's Roan andher team at the center for
Revitalizing American Institutions for
really putting the centeron great footing.
And we're delighted, my friend andcolleague Steve Hadley and I,
to be a part of this webinar.
Now, just a word about the two of us.
We found ourselves in 2000in a very unusual situation.

(03:10):
This webinar is aboutpresidential transitions.
You know, that we will havea change in power to the president.
We have, coming up, an election inwhich neither is the incumbent.
And sothere will be a presidential transition.
Well, Steve andI found ourselves in that position in 2000

(03:32):
when we were both advising Governor GeorgeW Bush on his national security and
foreign policy, and we thought he'd won.
And then on the night of the election,it turned out that he hadn't quite won.
In fact, there was going to bea contested period for a number of weeks.

(03:53):
As a matter of fact,
a couple of months before we actuallyhad an outcome to the election.
In a day when we have a lot of 50,50 elections, we forget that the first of
those 50, 50 elections that really hadconsequences was called Bush V Gore.
And so Steve and I are veteransof a peculiar kinda transition.
And so I want to start there, Steve, andtalk about what it was like to be planning

(04:18):
a presidential transition when youactually didn't know if you'd won.
After the election was finally called,I became national Security adviser.
Steve was deputy nationalSecurity advisor.
And we'll turn to some otherissues about how that worked.
But, Steve, why don't you talk about whatit was like to be in one of the more

(04:40):
unusual transitions thatthe country has faced.

>> Stephen Hadley (04:44):
Well, thank you, Conde, and it's great to be with you for
this webinar.
One of the things about it, and yourrecollection is probably better than mine,
but there was an issue about whetherthe Bush administration should be
presumptuous, if you will, andstart a very public transition process.
There was a big debatewithin the administration.

(05:04):
I think the vice Presidentwas very much in favor of,
let's get on with his start of transition.
But the soon to be declared presidentelect, George W Bush, had other ideas,
and he really thought it wasimportant to not be presumptuous,
to wait for the electoral process tocome to an end and for the decision

(05:26):
of the American people to be clear beforewe started the transition process.
Which is great for
him cuz he didn't have to runthe transition process like you did.
But it meant that once Bush v Gore,the Supreme Court case was settled and
it was clear that he wasindeed the President elect,
I think we had less thana month to do a transition,

(05:48):
a process that normally takes three plusmonths and is even then rather rushed.
So it was a remarkably compressed period.
And My recollection, Condi,is the priorities that you set for
us were one,we've got to get our people in place.
That's the first thing we had to do.
Secondly, we had to get someidea of what processes,

(06:12):
how was the national security structuregonna operate under George W Bush.
And then we decided we had to put togethera little memo, sort of what are the sort
of major initiatives that we will have inthe early days of the Bush administration.
And I think we had a 10 or11 page memo that we prepared.
But after, of course, 9/11 occurred,

(06:35):
a lot of that went into the deskdrawer never to reappear again.
But that's my recollection.
Maybe a little bit differentfrom your vantage point.

No, it's absolutely my recollection.
And you're makinga really important point,
which is the transitions are first andforemost about people and
then secondarily trying to getthe machinery of government working.
And so let's talk about a little bit aboutthe people piece of that, because one of
the things that happens in a presidentialtransition is that the White House

(07:06):
can actually make appointments tothe National Security Council,
to the National Economic Council, but mostof the agencies, the State Department,
the Defense Department, the Treasury,cannot actually begin to function
because many of their top officialshave to be confirmed by the Senate.

(07:26):
And so this is one ofthe really interesting problems
in a presidential transition.
Very often the White Houseis kind of on first and
those agencies that report to thepresident because since they are basically
staffed to the president,this really important to understand,
they're staffed to the president, so theydon't go through a confirmation process.

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And since they don't go through aconfirmation process, they're a little bit
ahead of the game at the beginning untilthe agencies are able to get staffed up,
get their people confirmed.
So at the beginning,there's a little bit of imbalance.
I think between White House,what the White House can do and
what the agencies can do.
Very often with the agencies,you're left with whoever didn't turn out

(08:10):
the lights when the last administrationleft town after the inauguration.
So can you talk about that a little bit?
Because you actually were notjust in the White House, but
in the George H.W Bush administration.
You were in the Defense Department andhad to be confirmed.
So talk a little bitabout that imbalance and
also maybe talk abouta problem that we do have,

(08:31):
which is it's taking longer and longerto get presidential nominees confirmed.

It's just the way you describe, Connie.
And the tricky part, in the George H.WBush administration, I was slated to
be an assistant secretary of Defense,but I had not been Senate confirmed.
But I was also part of the transition teamfor the George H.W Bush administration.
So the tricky part was they neededthe White House already, since they were

(09:00):
staffed, wanted a direction on the futureof our strategic nuclear weapons.
And, by the way, how should westructure our conventional forces?
And that came over to the DefenseDepartment, to the transition team,
which was Paul Wolfowitz and me,basically, and not much anybody else.
And so you're then trying to respond toa White House who wants to get underway.

(09:23):
And within the agencies, you only have,really, the permanent government.
And that's one of the features,the good features of our system.
The president comes in with a wholeraft of political appointees whose
job really is to translatethe mandate that
the President has gotten fromthe American people in the election.
Translate that into policy.

(09:43):
But they then need to interface withthe permanent government, which is
the repository of expertise and history,if you will, of a particular issue.
And that tension is really veryconstructive in our process,
reconciling political imperativeswith continuity with the past.
But, of course, the problem isthe White House, as you say,

(10:06):
is way ahead of the agencies.
And I remember you asked me to have aDeputies Committee meeting in about March
or April of that first year, and I did.
And when people showed up, they wereall part of the permanent government.
No representative from the Bushadministration confirmed by the Congress,
by the Senate was.
They was able to show up.

(10:27):
So there's a means thatthere's a time lag.
Everyone thinks January 20th,the new administration start actually, new
administration doesn't really start untilprobably April or May of its first year.

Yeah, I want to get into the substance of transitions in
just a second, Steve, butjust a little bit more about the process.
I want everybody onthe webinar to understand that.
I think one of the biggest problemsthat we do have is that the time between
a nomination of an official, sothe President nominates, for instance,
usually the top people.
The secretaries getconfirmed pretty quickly.

(11:02):
But the nomination fora deputy or an undersecretary,
this takes a very, very,very long time and
that time has been increasing overthe last several administrations.
And so in some ways, an administrationstarts with their hands tied
behind their backs becausethey can't get their people,

(11:23):
the President can't gethis people into office.
Do you want to say just a word about that?
You've been part of a lot of groups thathave tried to think about what more you
could do about that.

It's tricky.
One of the problems is the Congress,over time, over recent decades,
has increased the number of thatneed to be Senate confirmed.
So in some sense,the problem has gotten worse.
And in the last few years, there's beenan effort with some success to cut back
the number of people thathave to be Senate confirmed.
Second problem is, of course,you got to have a White House clearance,

(11:56):
you got to have your agency clearance,a White House clearance.
A Senate committee clearance,and a Senate floor clearance.
And each group has their own setof paperwork you need to do.
So you find out you're basically preparingthe same information in different
forms three or four different timesbefore you're actually confirmed.
So there's a streamlining the process and

(12:19):
a standardization that wouldactually help advance the process.
The other thing people have tried todo is during that transition period,
designate who are going to bethe senior leadership team.
Get their paperwork in andget them confirmed by the Senate,
even in some sense, almost beforethe President has been sworn in or

(12:40):
at least immediately thereafter.
That's something else has been done to tryto telescope or compress this process.
But there's a lot more thatreally needs to be done.

Yes, and of course, people on the national security side all
have to be cleared withsecurity clearances as well.
And I actually have kind of a funnystory about that, which is, of course,
as National Security Advisor,I went through a very,
very deep security clearance process.
I think you and I probably had mostof the clearances known to humankind.

(13:13):
But when I left the White Houseto become Secretary of State,
it was a different clearance agency.
And so they went back to the entireclearance process again.
And I wanted to say it's not as ifyou didn't know where I was for
the last four years to have to gothrough a clearance process again.
So I think there are some real problems inthe system so now let me ask you, Steve,

(13:35):
you did something quite remarkable, whichis at the end of the Bush administration.
You left a series of memos, memoranda forthe incoming Obama administration,
and you actually publisheda book about it called Handoff.
So that, to me, is one of the mostsystematic transitions that

(13:59):
I've ever experienced or ever known about.
What were you trying to achieve inactually leaving a paper record for
the Obama administration of whatthe Bush administration had tried to do,
what some of the concerns had been?
That seems to me to havebeen an unusual effort.

Well, one of the reasons that we did it was that
President Bush saw in the sortof spring of his last year.
That he was going to be handing whoeverwere the American people who were gonna
elect as president two hot wars in termsof Afghanistan, Iraq, the war on terror.
And it turned out one of the biggesteconomic crises we've had

(14:42):
since the Great Depression.
And his concern was that the newteam needed to be in a position to
get to hit the ground running fromthe day they step into office.
And he basically told Josh Bolton,as chief of staff.
I want a model transition process thatdoes everything we can do to help this

(15:03):
new team be able to handle theirresponsibilities from the day they step
into office.
What turned out to be veryfortunate was Barack Obama,
President Elect Barack Obama wasvery receptive to that idea.
So it really became a model transition.
And one of the elements ofthe transition we can talk about,

(15:23):
some of the others were these memos.
There were about 40 of them on the keynational security issues of the day,
and they all had a standard format.
What did we find?
What was our strategy?
What did we think we accomplished,and what remained to be done,
or what was really gonna hit the newadministration in the face as soon as they

(15:47):
walked in the door.
[COUGH] And we thought this would bea resource for the new administration,
but also, in some sense,
was us in the outgoing administrationgetting our thoughts together.
In an organized way, so that in meetingswith the new team, when they came in,
we would know what to tell themthat would be most useful to them.

(16:08):
So we've decided that we wouldpublish those memorandum.
And I thought the useful thing that theywould serve is let the public know what
the outgoing NSE staff, how we assessedthings at the time when we left office,
not through a subsequent period,looking back through backward in

(16:29):
terms of subsequent events,but how we saw it at the time.
And then we had the people who preparedthose memos prepare a postscript,
which brought them, in some sense,up to date what had happened since.
And on the basis of what hadhappened since, looking back,
what did the Bush administrationget right, what did it get wrong?

(16:51):
And what are the lessons forfuture administrations?
And I think that is a useful resource,a useful record of what we accomplished,
but also an effort todraw the lessons learned.
And I would hope future administrationswould try to do a similar kind of book.
I think it would be useful forhistorians and for
common folk who are justinterested in foreign policy.

I'm going to come in a minute to the question of whether or not
today's political environment would allowthat kind of handoff, as you called it.
But I want to start before I gothere by recalling a pretty dramatic
meeting that we actually hadin the Situation Room between
the outgoing national security teamof the Bush administration and

(17:35):
the incoming security teamof the Obama administration.
I had the opportunity just recentlyto be with Hillary Clinton, and
she was recalling this particular meeting.
And so this was a meeting in whichthe incoming secretary of state,
the incoming national security adviser, Ibelieve, the incoming treasury secretary.

(17:59):
As well as the counterpartson the Bush side,
Bob Gates was going to stayas Secretary of Defense.
So he was sort of there onbehalf of both administrations.
But we had this meeting because wehad received that there were possible
threats against the inauguration.
And in the post-9/11 environment,you had to take seriously

(18:24):
that there might be an attemptto disrupt the inauguration.
What I recall most about that meeting,again,
she's talked about it publicly,so I feel comfortable saying it,
was Hillary's instinct that we neededto be very careful about the pictures.
We didn't want the first pictures ofthe American president to be ducking under

(18:48):
a podium.
And I was really very much caught by thatand thought that we were planning for
more than most transitions hadplanned for, because, as you said,
this was the first transitionof power since 9 11.
How do you remember that session?

Very much the same way.
It was scheduled as a briefing session,[COUGH] where I think
the incoming team and the outgoingteam were gonna talk about Iran.
And what we're doing about Iran,maybe Afghanistan as well.
But we got this word from the FBIdirector that there was this new threat

(19:27):
information.
And we decided that that needed to bepresented at the beginning of the meeting.
And of course, it ended uphijacking the meeting altogether.
But I remember it as you, we hadan elaborate discussion led by the FBI and
Homeland Security andothers about what we were

(19:47):
planning to do to sort of getmore granularity on the threat.
And what we would do to respondto the potential threat for
reasons of preparedness.
But nobody thought aboutthe most obvious question.
And it was actuallythe practicing politician,
the secretary of state,who asked a critical question was, well,

(20:11):
what should Barack Obama do if hehears a gunshot before the FBI or
before the Secret Service hasrushed him off the stage?
And she then, and I must say it struckme and never occurred to me to ask this
question, she said, well, the Americanpeople are going to be watching.
And as you said, what do you wantthose visual images of the new

(20:33):
president to be if he is in the midstof his first crisis of his presidency?
And I thought it was an interestingtestament to the importance of
having people who are practicingpoliticians in the room and
in cabinet positions like thoseto raise these kinds of questions
that those of us notfrom that world may miss.

Yeah, so
let me ask a few substantive questionsin terms of the issues for a moment.
And then there are a number of questionsthat we will get to in the Q&A
about how we think about the currentenvironment and transitions.
So if you were writing those memos to

(21:17):
the incoming team this time in 2025,
as opposed to writing them in 2009,
what would the key memoslook like this time around?
So start with the situation with China.

(21:38):
What would you be saying tothe new team about China?

It's a great question.
And one of the things you may rememberwe did when we came in in 2000-2001,
there were a series ofbriefings prepared for us.
And one of them was on al Qaedathat Dick Clark had prepared.
And you and I both sat through it and

(22:04):
thought it was very useful to bring usup to date on the terrorist threat.
So I would think the transitionmemo would be very much similar to
the format we used in 2008,which is, what did we find,
what was the strategy, what wasaccomplished, and what left to be done.
But I would have supplemented witha briefing and a sit down session,

(22:28):
I would think, with the principals andtheir principal deputies.
To have the intelligencecommunity come in and say,
what does intelligence tell us aboutwhat the Chinese are doing militarily,
economically anddiplomatically in the world?
And then have the secretary of defense,the outgoing secretary of defense

(22:52):
come in and explain what were we doingmilitarily in the theater to deal with
this emerging threat, both in termsoperationally and in terms our planning.
And then I'd have the outgoing secretaryof state brief on what was our
diplomatic effort to rally friends andallies to deal with the problem of China.

(23:14):
And finally, what is the state ofour communications with China?
Cuz one of the things we tried to dois to reestablish those patterns of
communication, particularlybetween our militaries.
So we can deconflict andbring down a crisis if
there's some incident in the SouthChina Sea or in the Taiwan Strait.
I think this is one where really havingthe two teams, the incoming team and

(23:38):
the outgoing team, sitting together fora couple hours in the room and
walking through where are we with China?
From an intelligence, defense,diplomatic and economic perspective,
I think would be really useful to them.
And it's the kind of thing that youcan't really capture in a memo.
It's better, I think, to brief andthen have a conversation.

(24:00):
Conversation back and forth betweenthe incoming and outgoing team.
And I would do that on the key issues.
I do that on the Middle East.
I do it on Russia, Ukraine andRussia, and particularly in China.

Yeah, and Steve, I would just add one thing,
which is a few months after wewere in office in April of 2001,
we faced a big crisis with China whenone of their pilots hot dogging in
international airspace hitour reconnaissance plane.
Forced it to the ground,kept our crew for a week and
we couldn't establish communicationswith them for three days.

(24:35):
And I think letting an administrationknow a little bit about some of
the surprises that you might get ina situation in which we still to this
day don't have reallythe kind of communication and
deconfliction with China that we hadwith the Soviet Union or with Russia.
You know, you might even talk a littlebit through the mechanics of trying to,

(24:59):
to get to the Chinese government.
I think the Clinton administrationexperienced something similar when we
accidentally bombedthe Chinese embassy in Kosovo.
So there are just some of those I'mgoing to pass on to you some of the bad
surprises that might be out there thatmight be a part of the transition memo or
discussion this time.

One of the things we tried to do last time, and
I don't think we codified it as wellas we should have, was sort of give
to the new team what is going to hitthem in the first 90 days or 120 days.
What are the meetings that are previouslyscheduled that they're gonna have to
handle and that might draw onsome time of the president?

(25:41):
And then as you say,what are the kinds of contingencies that
might occur that they're goingto have to handle early on.
Second thing I think is getting them toknow what are the communication channels,
both diplomatically butalso operationally.
Who can you call how Ithink is very important and

(26:02):
where are their gaps that they're goingto be subject to and suffer from?
And the third thing I wouldsay is the transition doesn't
end with the inaugurationof the new president.
One of the things we emphasized and
I think actually happened was asthe new team comes in and is faced and

(26:23):
starts to deal with these issues, they'regoing to have questions about the history.
And one of the things those transitionmemos did is they had attached to them all
the relevant documentsabout policy decisions and
deliberations withinthe Bush administration so
people could see what we historically,what we had dealt with.

(26:45):
And sometimes I know the Obamaadministration actually called up
documents from the Bush administration.
So they had a better understandingof what went on in the past.
But also just being willing to pick upthe phone and say, we have this problem.
Would you come in and talk to me?
How you saw it from the prioradministration, I think, is in some sense

(27:06):
the relationships you establish during thetransition give the new team resources.
That they can call onafter they're in power,
when issues arrive where the perspectiveof the prior team would be useful to them.

Yes, and Steve, I think there's a difference between,
if you're in the prior team,
believing that your advice is maybe asimportant as what they already know.
Because I always thought,you have no idea about my puts and takes.
But there is a role for formers,I think, of being able to say,
here are some of the things that we faced.
And sometimes I will get callseven today from people in

(27:43):
the State Department saying,the Pakistani.
Did you really say that?
And even more than that.
So I do think this relationship,if it can be maintained
between the outgoing administration andthe incoming administration or
the former administration and the currentadministration is very important.

(28:04):
And I believe maybe I'm wrong about this,but that in the national security area,
there's a little bit of understandingthat that's one of the obligations.
And I've generally had very goodrelations with my successors,
no matter what the party.
And I think you have too.
I think that's right.

The other thing you realize in particular,
in the national security space,there are ongoing things that get passed.
There are ongoing wars that get passed.
There are crises that get passed.
There are diplomatic initiatives that getpassed, one administration to another.
And it's important that thoseballs do not get dropped.

(28:46):
A new administration comes in,you've just won an election.
Your adrenaline is pumping.
You think this is your moment.
The guys before us didn't have a clue.
We're writing on a clean sheet of paperand we're gonna change the world.
Well, you know, you aren't.
You are going to be hostage tothings that happened before.

(29:07):
And what you create during yourtime in office is gonna depend,
whether it succeeds or not is gonna dependon what subsequent administrations do.
And I think after your new team comes in,after a few months,
they suddenly realize that they're notwriting on a blank sheet of paper.
And that's why, Condi,

(29:27):
you still get phone calls from citynational security officials saying,
what were you thinking and doing backthen when you were talking to X and Y?

Right, I'm going to ask you about one more substantive
memo that you might leave.
And then we'll turn to what's a growinglist of questions from our audience.
So Steve, you have spent a lot oftime thinking about Ukraine and
thinking about the challenges there forthe Ukrainians and for
the United States in supporting Ukraine.

(29:56):
What would that memolook like at this point?

One of the things that's interesting is what is already
being done, I think, by the by the Bidenadministration to try to ensure that issue
transitions, regardless of who is electedpresident here in the upcoming election.
And I think it would be very importantto describe to the new team what is this

(30:22):
financing arrangement theyhave now come up with.
Whereby they're borrowing againstthe interest being earned on those frozen
Russian assets in order to makea loan to the Ukrainian government to
help fund their economic andmilitary requirements.
That's very important that thattransitions successfully from one

(30:42):
administration to the other.
There's also an effort to shiftmore to NATO responsibility for
ensuring that the weaponry andmunitions continue to flow to Ukraine.
That's an important pieceof this initiative.
Also, they're starting to do somethingyou and I have talked about and
recommended, which is not making Ukraineso hostage to the weapons that it can

(31:07):
get from friends andallies like the United States and
Europe, but actually have their ownindigenous production capability so
they can make their own weapons they needand maybe even earn a little money by
selling some of those weaponson the international market.
So we're in the process, I think,of a transition in terms of Ukraine.

(31:29):
Some new pieces are being put in place,and it's very important that the new
team understand what those are andto the extent they agree with them,
can continue with them sowe don't leave Ukraine in the lurch and
it does not suffer from the fact thatwe're having a presidential transition.

Steve, I'm gonna make the transition to the questions,
because we've got a question here fromsomebody who worked for us in the NSC,
Dave Travers, and he asked about Exactlythis question, what would it look like?
What would a good transition look like?
You've described one on China,you've described one on Ukraine.
One of the hardest ones always to describeis the transition in the Middle east,

(32:12):
because you almost always seem tobe inheriting some hot crisis.
You will remember that weinherited the second Intifada.
When we came into office,
people were dying every day in violencein the west bank and in Jerusalem.
This incoming administration willlikely inherit a crisis in Gaza,

(32:34):
in Lebanon, and who knows what to do?
And will probably inherit the questionof what to do about Iran.
So how do you think about that transition?
What does that memo look like?
What does that briefing look like?

Well, that's a hard one and in some sense,
it's a little bit like whenwe came in office, the issue,
one of the first issues was, well,what are you gonna do about Al Qaeda?
And we had that issue and we had tocome up with a strategy on that one.
And our approach was, as you remember,to keep Dick Clark and
his organization,which we're dealing with counterterrorism.

(33:11):
Keep them and tell them,you keep doing what you're doing and
we're gonna while we take sometime to develop a new strategy.
I think that's really the model forthe Middle east right now.
Keep doing what we're doing.
But there is a need torethink our strategy.
We have been pushing forceasefires in the Middle East.

(33:33):
The Israeli people and their governmenthas a little different view about that and
feels this is an opportunity to deala real blow to Hamas and Hezbollah and
Iran and should not be passed up.
So we have to really think abouta new approach to those conflicts.
But I also think we need a newapproach with respect to Iran.

(33:56):
And I think we've for a long time focusedtoo much on the nuclear issue and
not enough about what Iran isdoing to disrupt the region and
what we're doing about that.
So I think this is a case whereI would say to the new team,
you ought to sort ofcontinue what's going on.
But then get your people together andcome up with a new strategy for

(34:19):
how to deal with the emergingchallenges in the Middle east,
which are enormous,have been with us for a whole time.
And in some sense, we've been workingon these things ever since the State of
Israel was founded at the end of WorldWar II, and we still haven't solved them.

It's also the case, as you're alluding to,
that you come in andyou're Both trying to,
usually in the Middle east, at least,deal with what is a hot crisis.
As well as trying to think aboutthe broader ideas of how you'd like to
plan for the future.
And I think that's one of the hardestthings when you come into office is to

(34:59):
deal with the urgent.
And sometimes you start puttingthe important off while you deal with
the urgent.
So do you have any advice in the incomingadministration on how to think about that?

I think and
kind of you may have a differentview than I do about that.
I think everybody,when they come in, they think, well,
I'm gonna solve the Middle east problem.
I'm gonna be the one that achievesa reconciliation between Israel and
the Palestinians andIsrael and the Arab states.

(35:31):
And we tend to go rightinto the diplomacy.
But actually diplomacy only works,as you have said,
if you set the table with positive andnegative incentives and
if you have the rightinstitutions to build on.
And that's one of the things I think thatwas innovative about President Bush's
policy to the Middle east because he said.

(35:54):
Yes, we want a Palestinian state andwhat are the borders and
features of the peace between Israel andthat state is important.
But what's also important is whatare gonna be the institutions of that
Palestinian state is gonna ensure that thePalestinian people get what they deserve.

(36:16):
Which is a state that actually canprovide security and prosperity and
a better life for the Palestinian people.
So one of the things I would say tothose folks is don't jump right into
the negotiation.
Think about setting the table,getting the incentives right,
both positive andnegative, and think about
the institutions that are requiredif any peace is gonna be enduring.

(36:41):
And you've got to have a policy thataddresses all three of those things.
And some of them are gonna take some time,
particularly the institutionbuilding speed piece.
We've been waiting for a reformedPalestinian authority for about 25 years.
We need to have one.

Yeah, I want to stay for one second on this prioritizations and
substance, because one ofthe questions is about prioritization.

And one of the other hard things about prioritization is you
tend to pay attention tothe places that are trouble and
sometimes not enoughattention to other allies,
other parts of the world.

(37:23):
And there are a couple that we try topay attention to, but it always is hard.
So what do you do about Africa?
A continent that has extremely important,growing demographics, some conflict,
but some places that are fewer presidentsfor life, growing middle class.

(37:44):
Latin America, a place that,as President Bush has called it,
our neighborhood but it can be very easynot to get around to Latin America and
Africa because these otherplaces are hotter conflicts.
How do you think about this?
Because we now call it.
Some people call it the Global South, Idon't particularly like that term myself,

(38:06):
but we have an importantrelationship with India.
It could be easy to just sort of leave allof that on the side while you deal with
the hot coast.
So any advice to the incomingadministration about that kind
of prioritization?

It's really hard.
It's really hard andGeorge W Bush wanted to have a new,
different kind of relationship withMexico and with Latin America generally.
And 911 happened, as you remember.
His first state dinnerwas with Vicente Fox,
president of Mexico, just days before 911.

(38:42):
911 happens andsuddenly the priorities have changed,
and he's now a wartime president and
he's got to protect the countryagainst further attacks from Al Qaeda.
So it's very hard.
The other problem is, I remember we hadan exercise that George Tenet led to try
to come up with intelligence priorities.
Where are we gonna put ourintelligence resources?

(39:05):
And the whole thing about prioritizationof resources works until something
unexpected happens that capturesthe attention of the American people and
the media.
And suddenly something that was waydown your priority list becomes a number
one priority.
Because the American people are demandingaction, the media is demanding action, and

(39:26):
the Congress is demanding action.
So priority sort of lastuntil your first crisis and
I think what you said is right.
The tension between dealing with theimmediate and dealing with the long term.
And one of the things you did as Secretaryof State that impressed me was you,
at the beginning of every week.

(39:48):
Would write down a list of the three orfour things that you needed to accomplish
that week, notwithstanding all the thingsthat were gonna distract your attention.
And I think that discipline This iswhat you have to do is to insist
that there's a part of your timethat's focused on your agenda and

(40:11):
is not gonna become suckedinto the crisis of the moment.

Steve, one of the questions that's come up here.
You've already talked about China,but I wanna go back to it because
the question's been asked in a kind ofspecific way about one of those handoffs
that might be actually quite crucial,which is the handoff on Taiwan.
And the spirit of it is,this will be a very important issue.

(40:40):
You don't want anybody,particularly China,
to take advantage of what might be atransition period in a place like Taiwan.
Of course, you've also gota little bit of a period where
the current president is gonna bea lame duck until the inauguration.
And so when you think about somesomething like Taiwan that could

(41:02):
be of the criticality that it is butyou're trying to signal about it,
how do you think about the adviceto the new team about Taiwan?

Well, Connie,
you ought to jump in on that one becauseyou're probably more of an expert than I.
Before you do,let me just point out one thing.
One of the messages I know,and I've talked to Nick Burns
about this, I know the message that the->> Condoleezza Rice: Nick Burn's
the ambassador to China,our ambassador to China.
Our ambassador to China.
One of the messages being sent to China,but is also being sent to both friends and

(41:38):
allies generally is, don't thinkAmerica is gonna be distracted in this
period run up to the election, andbetween the election and the inauguration.
And don't try to take advantage ofit thinking America is distracted
because we have a sitting presidentwho is not a candidate for office.

(41:59):
And who, I think, will view hischarge during this transition period
is to make sure,to reassure our friends and
make sure our adversaries do not tryto take advantage of us because he and
his team will be watching,which is very important.
And secondly, I think there's a message,in some sense,

(42:19):
to the domestic audience as well.
This is gonna be a challenging timebetween the election and inauguration.
There'll be electoral challenges howeverthis comes out, fairly disruptive time.
And I think President Bidenviews part of his legacy,
I hope he does,is to make sure America gets through this
transition period withits institutions intact.

(42:43):
And I think that will be a terrificcontribution that he will make
to his legacy about getting us throughwhat will be a tumultuous period.

Steve, I keep promising to move away from substance, but
I keep getting questions about substance.
So I'm gonna ask you another one, and
it's actually something I know you'vebeen giving a lot of thought to.
When Henry Kissinger became secretary,he and
President Nixon recognizedthat there was an opportunity

(43:14):
to exploit what became knownas the Sino-Soviet split.
And in fact,they exploited it quite brilliantly.
And having opened up to China,and then having given
some form to the US Sovietrelationship with the great

(43:35):
agreements of 1972,they really had a strategy
about how to keep the Soviet Union andChina apart.
We face now, in international politics,
what some have called a kindof Russia-China axis.
They call it their friendship andrelationship without limits.

(43:57):
We know that it is deepeningin terms of cooperation.
We also know that on occasion,the Iranians are kind of a part of that.
And I was a little shocked myself tosee North Korean soldiers showing up in
Russia either to fight in the Ukrainianwar, to be trained there.
What would you say tothe incoming administration?

(44:21):
What would your transitionmemo look like on the issue
of the four of them andtheir coordination?

One of the issues with the transition memo should be
clear about what is happening, what isnot happening, and what the trends are.
So the information and fact base is right.
But then there's an issue about,really, you kind of got two strategies.
And one of them is something, Connie,
that you said in an interview you didwith the Atlantic Council and Fred Kemp,

(44:53):
which was, rather than try to pull apart,we ought to scrunch them together.
Because you make the point that China andRussia, and
is certainly in the case ifyou add North Korea and Iran,
have really both historic and contemporaryreasons to be wary of each other.
They have a long border that hasa lot of empty space in Russia and

(45:17):
a lot of excess people in China,[LAUGH] which is a source of tension.
I'm sure the Chinese are not sosure they like the close relationship
that has reemerged between North Korea andRussia.
And I'm sure the Russians are a littleconcerned about what China is doing in
Central Asia.
So one thing is to try to underscore andencourage those and make the point

(45:42):
that these countries have differinginterests in some sense, I like that.
But the second thing I would say is,
you're not gonna weanRussia from this new axis.
They are too dependent on the othercompanies, economically, militarily,
and diplomatically as theypursue their war on Ukraine.

(46:04):
But China is a different matter.
And I think one of the things wecan do is, if we pursue the right
policies in Ukraine to set back Russia,in the Middle East to set back Iran,
and in Asia in order todeter China over Taiwan.
If we show steadfastness andsuccess there, China may decide that it's

(46:27):
thrown in in this axis with a bunch oflosers rather than a bunch of winners.
And China may actually consider and
reconsider its investment in this accessand maybe step back a little bit,
or at least limit the extent towhich it is committed to them.
So I think there's a case herewhere the right strategy and

(46:50):
the right policy in each of thosecontingencies has an added effect that
it may get China's attention tothink maybe it ought to diversify
itself a little bit away fromthis new access of convenience.

Steve, one of the things that the new president is gonna
face, we've been talking aboutall these conflict areas, and
there are a couple of questionsabout process and prioritization.
But I wanna turn to one that is gonna bevery important, which is that the defense,
the industrial base,the state of American armed forces.

(47:26):
I really do think that we sometimes thinkthat diplomacy operates in a vacuum.
But of course, diplomacy operatesagainst the backdrop of American
economic power andAmerican military power.
And to the degree that your adversariesare concerned about that and
deterred by that military power,or that your allies are, in fact,

(47:50):
reassured by that military power,it's a lot easier to be secondary state.
So talk a little bitabout how you think this,
Administration will have todeal with the rebuilding or
the shoring up, if you wanna call it that,of the US defense forces,

(48:11):
particularly when deficits are roaring.
And it doesn't look as if we have anyway to get that back under control.

I think this is the biggest challenge the new administration
will have and it's one that's really notshown up in the campaign at this point.
We talked earlier Condi,about how to have successful diplomacy,
you have to set the tablewith respect to positive and
negative incentives on the partiesthat you're negotiating with.

(48:40):
Well, as you just pointed out, oureconomic strength, our military strength,
and our diplomatic strength in termsof rallying allies to our cause,
that is how you set the table.
So these are the instruments insome sense of our diplomacy,
as well as of our economic andmilitary policy.

(49:02):
We now have sort of,there's a consensus that we face the most
challenging period in our historyin terms of international
situation since the Cold War orperhaps even World War II.
And while we say that and peopleare writing that we have not postured
ourselves in such a way to, to suggestthat we really believe it in our core.

(49:26):
We remember in the Cold War we wereputting 6 to 7% of our GDP into
the defense budget.
We're now at roughly 3% isactually declining in real terms.
We were the arsenal ofdemocracy in World War II and
we post Cold War led it all a trip.

(49:46):
The truth is we do not havethe industrial capacity to meet
the defense needs of our friends andallies like Ukraine and
Israel, andour own defense needs at the current time.
We're treating as a problemof business as usual,
we need to treat it asa problem of crisis.

(50:08):
And we need to start talkingabout what we're gonna do so
that the resources we put in defensedo not have an adverse effect
on our fiscal situation,which is deteriorating fairly rapidly.
So, this is how do yourebuild the industrial base,

(50:29):
put the resources into that, but in a waythat does not compound the fiscal crisis,
I think is the principal challengethis new administration is gonna face.

Steve, I want to close with a question that's been here in
the chat andI think is on everybody's mind.
We started by describing a transitionwhere there was actually a contested
election.
It was a little bit of a high wire act forpeople trying to do the transition.
But the truth of the matter is thateverybody's a little worried about

(51:03):
the transition this time around.
Likely another 50, 50 election and,and a lot of concern about how
peaceful that transfer is going to lookand what are going to be the messages?
And you mentioned the sense thatabroad people are asking, you know,
is America really able forits institutions to function in the way

(51:27):
that would allow the kind of reallynot just peaceful but systematic and
efficient transition that youstarted out by describing and
that you've chronicled in Handoff,the book about the transitions,
any thinking about where we are andwhether today's political

(51:49):
environment will allow the kind oftransition that we experienced in 2000 or
that we were a part of in 2008, 2009.
Are we going to make it this time?

[LAUGH] I think we're gonna make it this time.
I mean, look, the best case is ifwhoever is the incoming president and
the outgoing president sit down inthe Oval Office in front of the American
people and say the American peopledeserve a good transition between
these administrations, andwe here pledge to each other and

(52:25):
to the American people we are going tomake this a first class transition.
That's the best case, andlet's hope that's what the whoever
wins the presidential election andPresident Biden decide to do.
The second best is, I think, transitionseven in disruptive circumstances,

(52:47):
and 2000 was certainlya disruptive circumstance.
The outgoing president at thattime had really no interest,
particularly in facilitatingthe transition to a new
president whose electionthey denied had occurred.
But notwithstanding that, at the top,there were transitions that were fairly

(53:09):
effective, I think, between agencies,between the professional staffs in
the Defense Department,the State Department and elsewhere.
And even at the NSC staff, which ispart of the White House operation,
very close to the president.
You officiated at a Passingthe baton ceremony, the US Institute
of Peace did an interview withRobert O'Brien and Jake Sullivan.

(53:34):
And Jake Sullivan publiclythanked Robert O'Brien for
a transition support that helped him andhis staff hit the ground running in 2020.
So, it can happen.>> Condoleezza Rice: Robert O'Brien,
the National Security advisorto President Trump, just to.
Yes, as the outgoing national security advisor to
Jake Sullivan's,the incoming national security advisor.

(53:57):
Notwithstanding the disruption of thatperiod of time in 2020, they managed
to have a transition arrangement which Ithink Jake Sullivan found very useful,
and that Robert O'Brien took a greatdeal of pride in having achieved.
So, it can still happen even infairly disruptive circumstances.

Yes. I think American institutions are pretty
remarkable and we count on them.
I think we also counton the American people
expecting a lot of those that they elect.
I would never myself want to beone of those people who runs for
office because the American peopleexpect a lot of those people.

(54:42):
But maybe that's the strengthof the democracy,
we get the right to expect a lot.
And I think when it comes tothe peaceful transfer of power,
we should expect a lot,it's the foundation of democracy.
And thank you, Steve, for the rolethat you've played in it in the past.
Thank you for continuing to talk about it,continuing to educate people about it.

(55:03):
And to those who've been listening,
I hope that this has been enlightening foryou on a little bit of the behind
the scenes look at how presidentialtransitions take place.
And thanks a lot for joining us.

Thank you.

Nice to be with you.

Thank you, Steve Hadley.
Thank you, Director Rice, forsuch an important conversation and
discussion at this time.
Thank you to our audience for your greatquestions and also our events team for
all your work behind the scenesto help run smoothly.
This recording will be availablein a few days at hoover.org/rai.
And we encourage everyone to sign up forour next webinar: Tuesday,

(55:43):
November 12th, the same time,10 AM Pacific on "Polling:
What is on the Minds ofAmericans" with David Brady,
Doug Rivers, Daron Shaw, and Lynn Vavreck.
Have a wonderful rest of your day andthank you for joining.
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