you know, should we, you know, remember the russians had brought back the old communist into power, all kinds of scary stuff was happening. so if we need to pick a country that has followed our remedies sand doing really well to -- as a kind of beacon for the -- for everyone else to follow, what did they pick? argue argentina. they invited carlos in 1998 and the only other head of state invited was bill clinton. and of course, if you're inviting the president of a country to come speak at your annual meeting and say, follow this guy, he's done a marvelous job. and they praised him to the sky, well, of course, you know, you're not going to turn around and say, oh, by the way, we're really worried about their fundamentals. so this is another factor. it just shows you that -- well,

we're on tv, so i better say stuff happens. and this is -- you know, i cannot say how much i appreciate your recognition that these -- that these forces are so difficult to predict and deal with, and that's what makes the whole global financial system so worrisome. that's why i think steps need to be taken to at least minimize the risk of things going so badly wrong in these countries. [applause] >> ok. the book is "and the money kept rolling in and out". we thank you paul for being here. he'll be in the back to sign the books. thanks for coming this evening. if you can help us by pulling up the chairs on your way out and

>> and now, condoleezza rice who served as national security adviser from 2001 until 2005 and as the 66th secretary of state from 2005 to 2009. this is about 50 minutes. [applause] >> is one thing to learn about american history in the classroom. it's quite another to insert these lessons up close and

personal with one of the 21st century's chief architect of american foreign policy. the cop leadership lecture series was established by ambassador sue cobb to commemorate her husband chuck hobbs 50 birthday. please join me in recognizing sue and chuck for 25 years of providing the university of miami community which the opportunity to host insightful and provocative leaders from all walks of life. [applause] i also want the students to think them for very generously donating 300 of secretary rice's very big book, which were given to the first 300 students who attended this year's event. caught my the university takes

no credit for doing this. i want to thank her very good friend, mitch upland. university met with him recently to discuss launching a new partnership to bring speakers to campus and one likely to be called to say that we were going to have an opportunity to have secretary rice's first public book tour event. mitch is at the beginning of a beautiful relationship. thankthank you very much. [applause] that the cops have sponsored other distinguished speakers. caspar weinberger, bob galvan, ross perot and commissioner david stern, david gergen. sue and chuck has dedicated careers and energy to serving their country and community and a variety of ways. between them they are a formidable diplomatic that spans from i sent to jamaica, d.c. to

tallahassee and miami. he served as u.s. ambassador to jamaica in 2001 to 2005 during the same time when secretary rice served as national security adviser and u.s. secretary of state. governor jeb bush of an undersecretary of state of florida from 2,522,007. she taught them for the services as cochair of the u.s. department of state mandatory seminars for newly appointed ambassadors. an interesting twist she poses alumnus to harvard university were secretary rice is very distinguished member of the faculty have for her provosts and the university of miami school of law. chuck cobb was the u.s. ambassador to the republic of iceland during the administration of george h.w. bush and during the reagan administration served as undersecretary and assistant secretary at the u.s. department of commerce where he was responsible for trade, development export promotion and

international travel and tourism in this appointed by florida's governor's comments had bush and charlie christie seven statewide boards. so check serving the board of directors of the council of american ambassadors. check the fate double graduate of stanford and while we can't claim them as an alumnus and his longtime member of the past chairman of the board of the university of miami's board of trustees. please welcome miami's diplomatic dynamic duo, the ambassador cobb. climatic [applause] >> thank you, president shalala. dr. rice, ambassador cobb, gas, we are pleased to have all of you here. this whole thing is sort of unfolded around the interest of my husband and leadership. so when we have been able to

have outstanding leaders come through this area, we have arranged to have the university of miami's unit inert gas participate in that it's been an extraordinary pleasure. this year we hit the jack pot. with condoleezza rice. we do have a relationship that goes back, as you know, dr. rice was the provost at stanford and is back in stanford now at the woodrow wilson institute. chuck and i spent eight years on campus and stanford. it was not because we couldn't graduate. that's a different story. and we have many mutual friends from our service and government in hamburg and elsewhere. and of course we also had the privilege of service to our country at the consequential

times. one of the things that i enjoy thinking about leadership also and i think of dr. rice as the transformational leader. in fact, i think of president shalala and ambassador cobb as transformational leaders. and you might think about and ask what are the common traits? vision, contextual knowledge, understanding the environment, communication and motivational skills. they are challenging, but empowering. rocksolid integrity, unusual determination and perseverance, perseverance and perseverance. as you might guess, in a great admirer of dr. rice. not quite as much as moammar

gadhafi. i don't have a scrapbook. climatic i do have an enormous regard for dr. rice and is very, very pleased to your answer do you do formal introduction and invite ambassador cobb to the stage. >> good morning, everybody. thank you, president shalala and my wife for those nice, nice comments. before you introduce condoleezza rice, i want to share with all of you a favoritism i have come a bias that i have. this bias is that i have a strong affinity for smart, strong, powerful, successful and

charismatic women leaders. and this evidence is that -- [applause] and as evidence of that, i have been married to one of those ladies for 52 years. [applause] but a second evidence of that, i had the pleasure to share the search committee for the university of miami and our first choice by far was donna shalala because she had all of those skills in all of those values. [applause] and thirdly, i am on the board of the woodrow wilson center and i had the honor to chair search committee recently. and our first choice was condoleezza rice, who clearly has all of those skills as i

will talk a little bit more about in a moment. [applause] unfortunately, we couldn't get her leave from stanford but couldn't get her away from writing this great book. and so, we were successful in encouraging congresswoman jane harman, who is a congresswoman in california and also a very charismatic driven, powerful, wonderful smart lady. so it is quite obvious i think from all of this but they really do have this biased. and for that reason, it is really an opportunity and pleasure to introduce the most successful women in the world and they really do believe that. so you have heard from my wife about leadership skills. and clearly, condoleezza rice has all of those. but in my opinion, the most important leadership skills she

has anything all successful leaders have this, is the ability to bring people together, to team build, to seek a common ground and no one is more skilled at this than condoleezza rice. as a national security advisor as you all know, it is her job to bring really diverse personalities together. so in her case, it was dick cheney the vice president, colin powell secretary of state and don rumsfeld, secretary of defense, really different personalities, really strong personalities, a lot attention in the room as you will read in this book. but she brought a consensus in under her leadership and the president leadership, they made some of the most important decisions of this century because of that great ability to team build.

now she also used that skill is secretary of state and doubtless some really tough problems in palestine and israel on one hand and then it was pakistan and india on another day after day, countries that were really diverse and different fundamental differences, again, no one was better in wringing their bread together again.or condoleezza rice. at age 30, secretary rice was named the provost of stanford and nancy heard of that is her alma mater. she was the first woman from the first minority in the youngest provost and stamper's history. she showed exceptional leadership skills at stanford. since that time come universities all over the country are trying to get her to be their president, but again there is an successful as i was earlier. she is a leader with incredibly diverse skills. she's a concert pianist, sports aficionado and because of her

leadership skills then offered to be the commissioner of the pack 12 and the commissioner of the nfl and a lot of others sports franchises. she serves on the board of hewlett-packard, chevron, charles schwab, carnegie, transamerica and many other boards in corporate and civic organizations. ladies and gentlemen, it's my distinct pleasure and i take no higher honor at this university has been to have a leader with so many talented and experienced this. so i present to you, the former secretary of state in the national security adviser, condoleezza rice. [applause] >> thank you. that was beautiful. [applause] >> madam secretary, welcome.

how long have i been inviting me here? >> a few years. >> most of our questions today were submitted by students. let me start with the first one. one of our students asked him how to make it to secretary of state? >> let me start by thanking you and i have no precedent shalala as secretary shalala but also as my friend donna. so thank you for having me here at du. [applause] [cheers and applause] ..

>> which a lot of prodigies were there, and there were 12-year-olds who could play from sight what i could play after only one year. they were 12, i was 17. i decided i was either going to end up teaching 13-year-olds to murder beethoven or playing in in order stroms someplace. finally, i wrap into madeleine albright's father, and he opened up the world of diplomacy and eastern europe to me. and all of a sudden i knew what i wanted to be. so the first lesson of how you get to where i've, where i am is

you find something that you absolutely love to do. and so i would say to each and every one of you as stupids, find your passion. not what job you want, not what career you want, but what you're passionate about. what's going to make you get up every day and make you want to go and do that. secondly, if you're passionate, your talents will come together, and i went on to become a professor at stanford, and i met when i was a young professor in a seminar at stanford a man named brent scowcroft who had been the national security adviser to president gerald ford and was, would become the national security adviser to george h.w. bush. he took an interest in my career, and when president george h.b. bush was elected, he took me with him to be the white house soviet specialist, and i was fortunate to be the white house soviet specialist at the end of the cold war. it, frankly, doesn't get much better than that. [laughter] the second lesson is find people

who are interested in you and your career who can help you and open up opportunities. nobody gets there absolutely on their own. there are always mentors, and there's another important lesson. sometimes we say you have to have role models and mentors who look like you. well, if i'd been waiting for a black woman soviet specialist mentor, i would still be waiting. [laughter] so your mentors, your role models can come in any color, shape or size. just find somebody who really cares about you and cares about your career. and the final part of that story is that when in 1990 mikhail gorbachev came to the white house, and we were sitting together on the lawn of the white house in the marine one, the presidential helicopter, getting ready to take off for california, i thought, i'm really glad i changed my major. [laughter] and so if you find your passion, if you find people who will

support you, if you work hard and if you don't worry too much about what comes next, incredible opportunities do open themselves to you. finally, i'd say get involved in politics at some point, you know? find a candidate you like, work for them. ultimately, that's really how i got to be secretary of state. i worked for george w. bush, and i became his secretary of state. so those are some of the thoughts that i have, but the most important start right now, find your passion. [applause] >> wonderful. let's take a little about the organization of decision making and be your role in the nsc, the national security council. that role was almost painful for me to read it, it was herding cats. if you were advised now after your experience in that job a president of the united states, would you suggest to them that

one characteristic of the members of that team whether it's the secretary of defense, treasury, even the vice president would be gets along well with others? >> yeah. [laughter] well, that might eliminate a fair number of people in washington. [laughter] so i'd be careful about that criteria. no, there's no doubt that we had very strong personalities. but i hope that i gave the impression in the book that they were debates about substance, these were not personal issues. nonetheless, we got along just fine until the most stressful times. and the most stressful times were around the war on terror and around iraq. and so perhaps the lesson is that in so-called normal times to the degree that anything's ever normal in decision making in washington you can, it is important to have different voices. you can even do with some tension. but, you know, when things get really tough, it is easier if people get along.

and that, perhaps, is the lesson that i would say to the president, it's a new president, and you can do fine with personalities that may clash if things are going well. when they get rough, it's a lot harder. >> uh-huh. let me follow up on that question. it's the personalities, but it's also different points, very strong points of view, some black and white, some more nuanced as you described it in your book. >> right. >> does the fact that each political party has kind of this big tent strategy, does that need to be reflected in the foreign policy leadership, or can you just bring people in to consult with them? i'm pushing you pretty hard on how you put the team together. >> right. well, it's, it is a really find line because if you put a team together where people have views that are too similar, you get group think. >> yep. >> and that's not a good thing. when i was secretary of state, i actually had a couple of curmudgeons on my staff who would challenge me about just

everything i wanted to do because i have always thought if you're constantly -- and this is true in school too -- if you're constantly in the company of people who say amen to everything you say, find other company because you don't actually test your assumptions in that way. so i would tend to err in the direction of people who do have strong views, who do express them, but who can also put them aside, ultimately, and find a way to work together. >> and within the political party, both the republican and democratic party, they do have people with widely different views. if you were actually advising a president, you can't anticipate that you're going to go through tough times. >> right. >> so what characteristics of that foreign policy team? if in past years we've had people on foreign policy teams that were lawyers but not necessarily had the kind of substantive expertise that you have. >> no, that's very true.

we actually had on our foreign policy team when you think about it, we had quite experienced foreign policy. bob vice president cheney had been secretary of defense and chief of staff in the white house, colin powell had been chairman of the joint chief of staff, i'd been in the white house before, so we had a lot of expertise. i'm really to this day not quite sure why sometimes the personalities didn't gel, and i'm not actually sure -- i don't actually think it was observable in, before we got to washington. that's why i think it was the times that perhaps tested us. but i would say to a president who's choosing a foreign policy team do think about talking about to people about internal dynamics because it can get -- >> think about the team part. >> do think about the team part. have strong views. you don't want a president who's just hearing one side of the story. but think about the team dynamics as well.

>> let's talk a little about latin america and the caribbean. do you think it makes sense to focus on latin america and the caribbean as a ring in developing -- as a region in developing u.s. policy given the fact that the countries differ in their stage of development, and so many of them their issues are really global issues? >> yes, yes. well, there's one sense in which i do think we want to think about latin america and the caribbean as a region. as a matter of fact, i would call, i would say even the western hemisphere which is that there is a kind of natural affinity for trade policy. we do share some problems of just the kind of transnational borders of trying to deal with trafficking in persons, trafficking in arms, trafficking in drugs until there are reasons to work as a region. i also think that since the organization of american states actually has a democratic

charter, we should have a view of our hemisphere, first and foremost, your neighborhood as being democratic. but you make a very good point. once you get beyond those sort of big categories, you really are talking about countries that are very different in how they interact with the globe. brazil thinks of itself, of course, as a regional leader, but brazil is also one of the most important emerging economies for the whole global economy. it is one of the, as we call them, the bricks, one of the emerging economies that has a chance to really structure how the international economy's going to look going forward. when you think about countries like, of course, obviously, the united states has a global role, but when you think even about countries along the pacific rim of latin america, they may connect more to the economies of asia. i was always struck when i would go to something called the summit of the americas which was really about latin america and

the caribbean and, you know, we would have these discussions, and hugo chavez would take off, and everybody would sort of close their ears and whatever. [laughter] but then almost a week or two weeks later we would go to the asia pacific economic council, apec. and there it's the pacific rim countries of chile and up the pacific rim all the way to canada and all the way out through japan and china and korea. and the conversation was completely different. it was about global trade, it was about freeing trade, and so, um, i actually always thought that in essence the countries had more in common with their asian counterparts than they had with their latin american counterparts. >> is how they perceive themselves in a stage of development significant there? >> i think it is because if you look at places, um, like chile, now quite developed in many ways, colombia getting there in

terms of development, you know, a country like brazil is interesting because on the one hand it is leading the global -- one of the leaders in the global economy, but with huge income distribution difficulties that keep it really more on the developing country side. if you look at some of the poor countries in, say, central america like a guatemala, for instance, you're talking about places where you can't even reach the farmers in the highlands by highway. and so their problems are to try to build infrastructure so that they can join the 20th century economy, forget the 21st century economy. so, yes, you have radically different levels of development, but when you think about it, you have radically different levels of develop within countries. look at the north of mexico and the interior of the country, and you have very different levels of development even within countries. >> does a secretary of state think of cuba differently than as part of the region because of the domestic politics and the relationship? >> well, i think we think of

cuba differently because it is the one country in in the oas that can't even take a seat at the table because it's not, it doesn't have a democratically-elected president and, unfortunately, we have a history with cuba of castro's decision to install soviet nuclear capability that threatened the territory of the united states, highly anti-american regime there. and so there are foreign policy reasons principally that we have a different relationship with cuba. but my hope is that in the larger democratization that is going on across the world, that the cuban people simply can't be left behind. it absolutely has to be the case that when fidel castro goes, the cuban people get a chance to elect their next government, it's not just handed somehow to raul castro. [applause] >> that was a set-up question. [laughter]

um, both the national security adviser and certainly the secretary of state are almost firefighters part of the time. you get woken up in the middle of the night. someone does something stupid either within your own organization or around the world. >> yeah. >> how do you anticipate the future though? there's some evidence that while there was the basis for the arab spring or even others predicted of a soviet collapse, how do you anticipate the future when you're in those particular leadership roles for both the president, but more importantly, for the country? and how do you organize yourself to do that? >> yes. well, obviously, you try to have experts who are keeping an eye on events, and in this regard having embassies with people who really know the place and can get out into the community. one of the things i tried to get foreign service officers to do was not stay in the embassy, not talk to other foreign officials,

but get out in the country. get a sense for what the conversation is on the street in the country. and that sometimes will give you a bit of early warning. secondly, on the arab spring i think we knew something was coming. the freedom agenda that we launched about the middle east i gave a -- president bush had given his second inaugural address in which he talked about the need for there to be no man, woman or child who lived in tyranny including in the middle east. i gave a speech at the american university in cairo saying that egypt feeded to lead this revolution -- needed to lead this revolution, and i can remember going to see mubarak and saying to him, you know, mr. president, get out ahead of this, get reforms started before your people are in the streets because what you could feel by being in the middle east was the kind of seething anger that was growing against authoritarians

who were corrupt, authoritarian who were planning die fastic successions from themselves to their sons. you could sense that mubarak or ben ali in tunisia were increasingly isolated with people who were telling them their people loved them, but on the streets their people didn't love them. so you had, really, i had a sense this was coming. what you can never know is what is the spark. that the spark would have been a man, a shopkeeper self-emulating in tunisia is what you can't see. so you see the kindling gathering, but you don't know when it's going to ignite. and the best you can do is expect that it might ignite at any time and try to get ahead of it. and so trying to get particularly our friends in the middle east to reform before their people were in the streets was our way of trying to get ahead of what happened, ultimately n egypt and -- in

egypt and tunisia and other places. >> talk a little about the collapse of the soviet union in terms of what scholars knew, and you were right there. >> i was. and we used to laugh that people would say gorbachev is bound to fall from power. thank you, but when? it was the, it was the issue. because you -- a general sense that things are going bad is not enough. people knew that the infrastructure -- political, economic, social -- of the soviet union was weak. i went for the first time in 1979 to study language. i was there for an expended period of time, and i was a student of the soviet military. and i remember thinking, you know, i had this image of the soviet military as ten feet tall, and i remember going into a store to buy some little gifts for my family, and they were doing the competition of the prices on an abacus. and i hadn't seen an abacus since second grade in birmingham, alabama. and i thought, well, this isn't

a very developed place. and you start to get a sense that something's really wrong there. so i think soviet specialists knew that the infrastructure was weak. it took, however, a true believer in kind of marxist ideology that it could try um over -- triumph over the fact that people were estonian or ukrainian, and it took somebody who believed you could reform the soviet union. gorbachev tried to reform it, and then it collapsed. but i can tell you still in 1990, the soviet union collapses in 1991. in the fall of 1990 i don't think anybody thought that the collapse of the soviet union was a year away. >> one of our students wanted to make sure i asked about social media and how the foreign policy establishment now follows social media around the world. >> yes. >> and whether that's part of

the intelligence gathering. >> it is now. in fact, when i went to state, i took with me someone named sean mccormack from the white house who was very interested in what was then an emerging social media. there was not then any facebook or twitter, but people were on web sites all the time and chat rooms, so we started to understand better what was going on this. i also asked a former student of mine, a gentleman named jared cohen who would later on go to work for secretary clinton to go and start thinking about did we want to even try to help people to use social media to democratize? so he created groups of friends who would, for instance, people who'd helped to overthrow terrorism in colombia who could chat with people in the middle east who were trying to deal with terrorism. so we were starting to use social media.

what i've begun to understand now, of course, social media's an an accelerant. it's not the cause, but it's an accelerant. what's very interesting is what's happening with social media in china because the regime is doing everything it can to control the internet. it'ser terrified of the interne. in fact, hacking into servers to try to find that last human rights advocate who might be on line and, apparently, social media is going wild in china. and the regime is not so certain that maybe it's, maybe it's not a bad thing that people have a way to vent through social media. so you remember the story of this young girl that was run over in the streets, and people didn't -- that exploded into the social media in china. but i would say to the regime, you know, it's one thing to think people will just svelte, but eventually they will vent and want to organize to do

something about it. and so social media, i think, is going to continue to have a huge impact on how revolutions, how reform, how democratization takes place. >> and so foreign policy experts in the years ahead are going to have to follow -- >> absolutely. >> -- social media. plus our intelligence. >> right. i think it will be one of the most important sources of understanding the pulse of what is going on beneath governments because governments are noter relevant by any means to this, but populations are more empowered than they've ever been by social media. >> i have to ask you about iraq because one of the things you do is put a broader context and a broader justification on the reasons to go into iraq, and you describe it, i think, as a kind of imminent security risk. >> yes. >> and my question is, um, first, how did you change the collection of, um, intelligence

information after your experience in iraq? because clearly there were real questions about how accurate the information was. >> yes. well, the most important thing that we did was to reorganize the intelligence agencies. by the way, both as a result of the as well as failure prior to 9/11 and the as well as failure with iraq. because in the prior case we had a wall between domestic intelligence which the fbi did and external intelligence which the cia did, and when they crossed as they did in 9/11, we couldn't talk to -- they couldn't talk to one another. in iraq i think we -- >> excuse me, condi, would you explain because many of the students may not understand -- >> sure. >> -- why we have that, because you're a teacher, why we have that gap between the fbi and the cia. >> absolutely. it was, the gap, the wall as i like to call it was there for very good and legitimate reasons which was that we did not want our foreign intelligence agency,

the cia, being active inside the country and perhaps spying, to use that word, on domestic events, on american citizens and so forth. so the cia was kept to a foreign intelligence agency. the fbi which operated under rules and laws -- think "law and order" -- the fbi was the internal intelligence agency. well, just to give you one example, a few nights before 9/11 a telephone call was made in san diego by one of the men who would ultimately be one of the suicide hijackers to afghanistan. but we couldn't track across that bound ri because -- boundary because we didn't want the tracking of phone calls inside the united states by foreign intelligence. so would i have liked to have known what he said a couple of days before 9/11? when we realized that, of

course, we had an internal security problem, the attack on our internal security, we had to sew up that gap so that the cia and what they knew about what was going on outside the country and the fbi and what they knew about what was going on inside the country could talk to one another. and that's what the so-called patriot act that you've probably read about actually, it closed that seam. so that was one intelligence problem. the iraq intelligence problem was a little bit different, but also structural. we had, um, as many -- depending on how you count them -- as between 15 and 17 different intelligence agencies in the united states. defense department has one, energy department has one, state department has one, the cia has one, etc. the cia was one. the person who was in charge of all of those as the director of central intelligence was also the head of the cia. so we had this strange situation in which we had all this different intelligence reporting, but obviously the

director of cia was human. he trusted his own intelligence agency more than all of these others that he was supposed to be over. and we found that some of the counterevidence about what was going on in iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs probably didn't get the airing and the hearing that it might have. so we created the director of national intelligence who is not the director of the cia, he's a separate person, to cull the intelligence, help the president understand when there are disagreements in the intelligence agency and give more of a total picture of what's going on with intelligence. so that was the big reform that was made. >> you also have talked in at least one speech that i know of about the anticipatory self-defense as part of the context for making the decision to go into iraq. and i really want to ask you when you examine the iraq

situation and there was a discussion, did you look at other countries as well? because if you look at the list of justifications, you could put those on iran as well. and so why iraq rather than iran? and did you look at more than one country? >> yes. we looked -- iraq was unique, in our view, and it was unique because we had been to war against saddam hussein in 1991, he'd signed an armistice, he was systematically violating that armistice. he was found in 1991 to have had been one year from a crude nuclear device. he had used weapons of mass destruction against the iranians and against his own people. the constraints that were put on him were starting to break down including, by the way, the fact that we were flying so-called no-fly zones to keep his air

force on the ground. he was shooting at our aircraft practically every day. i can remember the president asking don rumsfeld, what do we do if he gets a lucky shot and brings down an american pilot? is so we were really in a state of suspended hostility with iraq, not in a state of peace with iraq. in 1998 president clinton had actually launched cruise missiles against iraq, and he -- the inspectors who were supposed to be keeping his weapons of mass destruction programs under control were, left the country. so he was different for his having dragged the region into war several times including us, the fact that he was continuing, we believed, to build weapons of mass destruction and according to the intelligence agencies had reconstituted his chemical weapons, reconstituted his biological weapons and was on his way to reconstituting his nuclear programs. he had tried to assassinate president george h.w. bush, he

was shooting at our aircraft, he put 400,000 people in mass greys. he was considered the biggest threat in the middle east. as bad as north korea and iran were, they were not in a category like iraq where there were 16 security council resolutions that said he was a threat to international peace and security. >> does that also account for the need to focus on the israeli/palestinian issue, that they're also suey generous in the sense that it's unique compared to other parts of the world? >> yes. the israeli/palestinian issue while it isn't the key to peace in the middle east and to a different kind of middle east, it is a key to a different kind of middle east. now, any student of international politics from the time that i was your age and in college which, admittedly s a long time ago, but from that time when you took a course in international politics, people started it with the most volatile renal in the world -- region in the world is the

middle east. and that's still true today. so people have been trying to do something about that for all of this time. the israeli/palestinian issue is one of the core issues that need to be resolved to get rid of that volatility in the middle east. >> and every administration has struggled with it. >> every administration has struggled with it. >> do you see hope out there? >> i do. i describe in the book that ehud olmert who was the prime minister of israel when i was secretary of state and mahmoud abbas, the current president of the palestinian authority, were pretty close to a deal in 2008. a very good deal put on the table by olmert. olmert was in political and legal trouble, so abbas did not take it up for a variety of reasons. but the reasons i actually wrote about it is i wanted to suggest it was not a hopeless cause. there is an answer here, but time is not on the side of either of them. >> i'd like to go back to the soviet union because given your

expertise about the soviet union how do you see russia developing over the next few years? and do you think that their importance in the world will continue to increase, perhaps even surpassing china? >> yes. i think the russians are in trouble in terms of global standing, and i think they know it. um, you know, russia is a -- the russian economy is 80% dependent on exports of oil, gas and minerals. that's not a modern economy. um, and i'll tell you a little story about, that shows how much that oil, gas and minerals is ink -- linked up with power. of i was having a meeting about energy policy, and he was going around asking people about the energy policy. so the russian says, well, he says, we understand that our oil and gas fields are technologically behind, but no

foreigner will ever own russian oil and gas, he said. he said, so we're going to buy the technology from western oil companies. and so i was, had been a director of the chevron corporation, and i said, so don't you understand that their advantage is, actually, in their technology? they're not going to sell you their damage to make you a better -- their technology to make you a better competitor. and he said, oh, that's a really good point. [laughter] and then he said r you still a director of chevron? i was the secretary of state. [laughter] but in russia dmitry medvedev who was the deputy prime minister was also the chairman of gas -- [inaudible] so state and economy and politics and personal fortunes all linked up together. by the way, there was a fair amount of political violence too. now that mr. putin has decided that he is the once and future president of russia -- [laughter] um, i think the chances that russia is going to break out of that and build on other

strengths that it might have including a very smart population, those have receded, and i think, unfortunately, russia will not find greater strength in the international economy. it's pretty much an economy that's dependent on the price of oil to do well. >> let's go back to the arab spring. what do you think the lessons are? >> the lesson of the arab spring is that authoritarianism is not stable. it's simply not stable. if men, women and children don't have a way to change their circumstances and change their government peacefully, they will do it violently. when we were in romania, we learned of something that i've now called the -- [inaudible] moment. he was the dictator of romania, and in 1989 with revolutions going on in poland and hungary and check slow zack ya, he was

exhorting the romanian people for what he'd done for them, and all of a sudden one old lady yelled liar. then ten people, then a hundred people, then a thousand people. and all of a sudden he realizes that he'd better get out of there because something's gone wrong. and instead of delivering him to freedom, the young military officer delivers him to the revolution, and he and his wife are executed. that moment is when fear breaks down either an old lady yells liar, or a soldier turns his gun away from the crowd, refuses to fire, or a tank turret is turned away from the crowd. and then all that's left between the dictator and his people is anger. and that's what you've got in the arab spring now, and that's why authoritarianism is not stable. >> um, what about what do you think about leading from behind as the multilateral coalitions, and -- >> i don't mind multilateral coalition. i'm sorry, leading from behind

is an oxymoron. it is. [applause] you don't lead from behind. and i actually think some in the white house may be sorry that they used that phrase. >> um, let me ask you about a domestic issue because i actually share your view and have had conversations with president bush about the failure of immigration reform. and how, how serious do you think that issue is for the next presidential debate that we have? >> it is essential. and let me tell you why. when you're secretary of state, you get to go out in the world, you get to see what people admire about the united states. and there are a lot of things that are not admired, but the one thing that's overwhelmingly admired is what i call our great national myth. you can come from humble circumstances, you can do great things. doesn't matter where you came from, it matters where you're going. and that's actually led people to come here for generations from around the world to be a part of that.

and it's why we have asian-americans and mexican-americans, and we have german-americans and indian-americans. it's because people, the most ambitious people have wanted to be a part of that. now, i don't know when immigrants became the enemy, but if we don't fix this, we are going to undo one of the greatest strengths of the united states because the only thing that keeps us from the demographics of europe and japan is immigration. and so i am a major proponent of comprehensive immigration reform that, first and foremost -- [applause] first and foremost recognizes that we have people living in the shadows, and we've got to deal with that. we're not a country that actually wants people to be afraid to go and take their sick child to a hospital. that's not the kind of country

we are. and i worry that the states because the federal government has not acted are starting a patchwork now of immigration policies when really what we need is a federal policy that is true to ourselves, true to our laws but also true to the absolute fact that the united states of america is well served by the great ma lang of people that we are. >> i have three quick questions to -- [applause] wind us up. next fall, let's pretend, you've been invited to be, um, the moderator of a presidential debate. the debate's theme is foreign policy. what's the first question you will ask both candidates? >> do you believe that america has an exceptional and unique role to play in the world? or is america just some, any

other country? because if america's just any other country, then you have no right to ask the american people to sustain the sacrifices that we have and to play the role that we have on behalf of the international community for now better than 60 years. and so why is america exceptional? [applause] >> second question is even though you're not responsible and they can't officially wake you up anymore -- [laughter] what keeps you up at fight in foreign policy? what are the things that you worry about that we ought to worry about? >> well, i worry about, you know, the list of terribles; iran, pakistan. i worry about mexico. i think that we don't pay enough attention to what's happening on our southern border. and if you live in california or new mexico, you know that the

drug cartels own a lot of that space between northern mexico and the southern border of the united states that's very dangerous. last year there were -- two years ago there were 5,000 kidnappings and murders of officials, mexican officials, probably twice that in the last couple of years. so very dangerous. but you know what mostly keeps me up at night? it's the question of whether the united states is going to reaffirm and somehow do the internal repair that we need to do to lead. i worry that we can't seem to get our entitlements under control. i worry that we can't get our budget deficits under control. i worry about immigration policy. i worry about the fact that in k-12 education i can look at your zip code and tell whether or not you're going to get a good education. and that's not just wrong, it is actually probably going to undo us more quickly than anything the chinese could ever do to us. because if we have people who

are unemployable -- and they will be unemployable -- they'll have to live on the dole because they'll have no other choice. we will continue to have a situation in which only 30% of the people who take the basic skills test to get into the military can pass it. it will, indeed, pull us apart as a country faster than anything else. and if we're not confident and optimistic in one country, we won't lead. and so that's probably the one that really keeps me up at night. >> um, here's my final question. if you have a choice between running for the senate in california -- [laughter] being a university president or being head of the national football league -- [laughter] what's your first choice? >> oh, that's no contest. [laughter] well, i used to want to be the commissioner of the nfl, but i told roger goodell, i said, you know, when i was struggling with the iranians and russians every

day, your job looked pretty good. but actually from northern california it doesn't look so good anymore. and these days i have to say it, these days being a university professor at stanford university where the stanford cardinal are having quite a special season -- you know, come on. you know what those special seasons were like. you have had plenty of them, let us have one. [laughter] that's really the greatest job in the world. >> ah, thank you, madam secretary. [applause] >> that was fun. [applause] >> for more information about condoleezza rice, visit hoover.org and search her name. >> my connection to this foundation goes back quite some years. i have, with great honor and boasting, used a lot of the work

of robert rector in my own research in writing. his work has been particularly helpful for we in terms of my own -- for me in terms of my own attempts to think differently about both political and economic liberation for african-americans. the united states is an incredible place. it stands out among other nations in the world, and i recently had an opportunity to be reminded of how great this place is at my family reunion in escambia county, alabama, actually in the city of atmore, alabama. escambia county is the county that my family's plantation was. and so i stand here before you as a descendant of slaves from the bradley plantation in

escambia county, alabama. slavery, reconstruction, jim crow, the civil rights movement, this is my family's story of struggling and fighting for humanity and freedom in a context and a culture that was saturated with injustice and dehumanization. now, what's so amazing about this narrative, this story is that not only does my family know where the plantation is in escambia county, we now own it. and there are members of my family currently living on it as free people who have property rights to it, codified and protected by the rule of law.

now, how many countries in the world is it possible to have a group of people who were once slaves on a piece of property, a few generations later actually own the property? that they were living on? they were being end -- enslaved on? so this makes this place absolutely amazing. yes, of course, we notice the progress in our country by having a black family in in the oval office. there are not too many countries around the world where you would see subdominant cultures rise to that, that level, that status. and just a few generations after movements like the civil rights movement. but it's amazing to me, and i personally am delighted to think

about what is it about this country, what is it about our founding principles that allows someone like myself to be a descendant of slaves, to be standing in front of a group of people having earned a ph.d. standing in front of this heritage foundation backdrop speaking to you about my second book? to me, it's just an amazing narrative about the potential of freedom and liberty and economic empowerment that this country actually offers to those who have the opportunity to take advantage of it. so i named my book "black and tired" on purpose. one, because i am black, if you can tell. [laughter] and so i want to remain connected to the history of my own family, the story of rising