guest: let me just say one of my favorite lines is the-- in my book is when you press the pod but not a computer it stops, but when you press the pod button on a human being it starts. that's when it reflects, rethinks and reimagines. i was on a trip to the middle east and on the two days before the end of the trip i left my phone on a helicopter so i didn't have my phone for the last two days. they were the best two days of the trip. i paid attention to everyone and listened to everyone. i wasn't trying to take a picture or scrambling for my e-mail. god bless you. trust me, you may want it for an emergency or to be in touch with your family, but other thenen that you will be fine. this book celebrates everything old and slow thing and all the things you can't download that you have to upload the old fashion way, good friends, good teaching,

good family. host: wow, i left my phone on the set and came back down before i went any further work here is the book "thank you for being late", thomas friedman of the "new york times" is the author. book tvs live coverage of the 2017th national book festival continues. next up is former secretary of state and author condoleezza rice. her burke-- book is called democracy, stories from the long road to freedom. book tv on c-span2, live coverage.

>> doctor rice is going to be interviewed for as by one of the best interviewers i know who has his own show on bloomberg, our national book festival cochairna and generous supporter mr. david rubenstein. please welcome both of. them. thanks and enjoy.nk you >> thank you very much for coming. >> thank you for havingnd me here and welcome to everyone. thank you for being here great event. [applause]. >> hard to believe that you been out of government for nine years, so before we get into your new book on democracy which i highly recommend, tell us what you have been doing since you left government other than writing three best-selling books, this is the third, but you are teaching at stanford and what else? guest: i'd gone back to my real profession. i had that digression in washington, but i have been at stanford to since i was 25 years old

starting as assistantst professor and i have returned to stanford. my appointment is in the business world, but ibi also teach undergraduates with a course in american foreign-policy and have been able to do a little bit of work in theor private sector and i am spending a lot more time practicing piano than i did when i was in the government because that's a great love and i'm trying to improve my golf handicap that's harder than playing the pn zero. >> you were one of the first two women to be elected to the national golf club. was that an owner you expected to get? >> i was stunned. when a good friend came out to tell me i was being invited to join augustine i just sat there dumbfounded and he said you will say yes;t?m bu right and i said yes, but i was completely taken by surprise. >> what is your handicap

>> not really a state secret.ng for those of you that our golfers, there's something called an index and you take the index and go to different courses and depending on the difficulty of the course you establish your handicap. my index is 11.6, which means on most courses on a battery 13 or 14 handicap. >> wow. did you ever play with president george w. bush? >> i have on a number ofpr locations. he plays really reallyys fast. you almost have to run to your golf ball to keep up with him. >> and music, you trained to be a classical music pianist and not have seen you perform with others. do you do those concerts anymore? >> i play at least one concert a year and was

fortunate to play at his music festival recently at the kennedy center. at least once a year iby play a concert with a quartet from boston university and we do a benefit for a charity we started called classic for kids putting musical instruments in schools because i'm a believer that we need stem, science and technology and mathematics, but i also believe we need the arts..arts our kids need exposure to the arts. [applause]. s. >> i want to focus on your book took us some people who may not know and there may be one or two, you were born and grew up in birmingham. >> yes. >> segregated south under jim crow laws. when you were growing upgr how long did it take before you realized you were treated the same as everyone? >> i grew up in birmingham, most

segregated city at the time in the country took the police commissionerer, bu was well known for his brutality towards blacks and it didn't take long to know that your parents were a little embarrassed because they could not take you to a restaurant or movie theater. they were never people who-- this little community i grew up in, mostly school teachers. my parents were educators and they never let us feel as though we were victims. they said when you consider yourself a victim you have lost control, so don't ever consider yourself a victim. they also said you will have to be twice as good. they didn't say that as a matter of debate trick they said it as a matter of a fact because education was supposed to be your armor against prejudice, but i remember the very first time it really came home to me. i went to see santa claus and you know how it works, you take the kid and santa claus puts

the kid on the need and says what will you have for christmas spirit this particular santa claus was taking the white kids and putting him on his knee and would hold the black kids out here and my father who was a former football player, my dad was 6'3", 240, he said to my mother angelina, if he does that to condoleezza i'm going to pull all of that stuff off of him and expose him as the cracker that he is, he said. >> what happened? >> here is this littlean girl and you are five and its santa claus daddy, santa claus, daddy, how will this end up? santa claus must have read my book-- father's body lay would because when it came to me he put me on his knee and said what would you like , but i remember that was the first time i thought this is terrible and santa claus of all things. >> another thing that might have been unusual as you have an unusual first name. where did it come from? >> condoleezza is my

mother's attempt to angle and eyes in a tying it means sweetness. maybe she missed the boat, but anyway that's what it meant. kerning with angelina and and i have an uncle and since we are southerners recall janel at, but i think she wanted an italian musical and she first thought about some and then others were not good, so she came with condoleezza. >> ultimately your parents moved out ofng birmingham to denver and you went to school at the university of denver or you graduated phi beta kappa and then you went to notre dame. >> that's right. >> you were a graduate student.

>> i love the football.o notre of course i went to notre dame football as a graduate student. everyone does. >> you went back to the university of denver and got a phd and then you were recruited to stanford? >> correct. >> your specialty was soviet and russian affairs. why did you pick that? wasn't the normal thing you might pick. >> i was a failed music major. i started in college as a a piano major i study pn zero from the age of three. about the end of my sophomore year in college i went to the aspen music festival that summer and i met 12 -year-olds who could play what took me all year to learn and i thought i would be playing in a piano bar somewhere, so i wandered back, no major and took a class in internationalss politics taught by madeleine albright's

father. i wanted soviet, eastern european, international and that took me then into international politics as a major and ultimately has a degree. >> madeleine albright tells the story that her father once said his favorite student was you and she was surprised that you had been his student. so, when it-- her academic career at stanford and ultimately you got involved the juror-- george walker administration. >> i got involved and it's really important story because there is this notion we sometimes have that i got there on my own. no one gets there on their own. there is always someonerk advocating for you and for me brent who had been national security advisor to gerald ford came to stanford and gave a talk and i was a second your professor atr

stanford and he got to know me and said i want to get to know you better. sort of getting known for my work on the soviet military, so he started taking the two conferences like the aspen strategy group and he really meant toward me into the field and i often say there's another lesson in that. we also say you have to have role models and mentors who look like you hurt its great if you do, but if i waited for a black female specialist role model, i would still be waiting and instead my role model and indeed my mentors were white men. they were old might-- white men, the people who dominated my field, so i we say to my students that your mentors just have to be people who believe in you and see things and you don't necessarily see in yourself. >> so, you got a job on bush 41. >> when george hw bush

was elected he has to brent to be a security advisor and brand calledsa me and said, this is 1988 remember, he said the president will needd someone to help him sort this out. do you want to be the white house soviet specialist and as a result i was the specialist at the end of the cold war. >> do you speak russian? >> i do speak russian. >> so, after that administration was over he went back to stanford connect i did. >> and when george w. bush was running for president, how did you get involved? >> i went back to stanford for the chief operating officer, a very happy academic. george hw bush called me one day and said my son who is the governor of texas is thinking about running for president and i would like you to talk to him about foreign-policy. i spent a couple days with him and after he asked me to organize his foreign-policy and the

campaign and that's how i got involved with the george w. bush. >> were you surprised he asked you to be the national security advisor at the beginningng>> g >> by the time we got to his election, i figured i was probably going to the administration and national security adviser, i had been on the national security council staff, so it was the natural thing to do. >> how many women had served as national security advisor before you? >> none.pp [applause]. >> let's talk about this book. "democracy", why did you feel compelled to write a a book about democracy? >> i think in many ways i wanted to write this book for a long time because it is in some way of expression of my own life. i am a firm believerer that th that there is no other system, that accords the kind of dignity human beings crave and to be

able to be free from the secret police at night, to be what to say what you think and worship how you please and most importantly to have those who govern you ask for your consent and i think growing up in segregated birminghamm where my parents werere half citizens, fundamentally believed in this democracy. i relate one story in the book when i was at my uncle and he picked me up from school and it was election day in alabama, and i was six years old or so and i knew in my own six-year-old way at this man, george wallace is not good for black people. there were long lines of people going into vote and it was segregated, of course. i said to my uncle if all these people vote, then that george wallace man can't possibly wint geor and my uncle said no, we are minority.

he said so george wallace is going to win anyway and i said to him , so why do they bother and he said because they know that one day that will will matter. i never forgot that.ha i thought as i wrote this book of the extraordinary story of the us of america, this constitution that wasa, thi given to america by its founders, that words about equality and yet a country born with the birth defect of slavery, but how the same constitution that had once counted in the compromise my ancestors would be the same constitution to which i would take the oath of office as the 66th secretary of state under a portrait of benjaminam franklin sworn in by a jewish woman, ruth bader ginsburg and that for me is the story of democracy. [applause].

>> you point out in the book that you are african-american, but actually 40% of your bloodline is white. >> 40% of my bloodline's european. >> and 10% is asian? >> something other. [laughter] >> i'm other. >> in birmingham, the young girls that were killed in the bombing, where they people you knew? >> absolutely. at the birmingham black community particular school professionals was small and niece mcnair, one of the four girls killed in the baptist church bombing inn september, 63, had been in my father's kindergarten. i had done kindergarten. there's a picture of my father giving her her kindergarten diploma. her father was the photographer at everyone's wedding and w birthday party and so yes, the college had been in my uncle's home room.

i remember him saying that monday when they went back to school that he looked at her empty chair and cried. >> when that happened did your family say we should move out of here? >> no, but i rememberrs for the first time seeing real fear in my parents eyes about what they could do to protect me. but, no, we stayed there. birmingham began to change. again, the story of democracy. that same constitution would be used by the naacp and thurgood marshall and others starting on the way back and i described in the book from 1937. they would sit there on friday morning and they would decide what cases they would take to try and break down segregation and inequality. that would eventually end up in the civil

rights act of 1954, wrote voting rights act of 1965 and the first-time appearance and i could go to a restaurant to days after the civil rights act passed my father said let's go out to dinner so we got dressed up and went to this hotel and i remember that people just looking up from their food and maybe realizing it was okay. we had dinner. >> in your book you point out that we had a birth defect, slavery. when slavery ended in 1865, we went to jim crow laws, so how do you as an african-american women rationalize what our country did after the civil rights amendment occurred in the constitution we still went through a hundred years or so of discrimination, how do you say democracy is such a wonderful system when we had to live through that? how do you rationalize that claimant there is no perfect system human beings have ever created , ever. yet, because of the

institutions that we-- the constitution, the courts, independent judiciary, slowly but surely the life of the descendents of slaves would be won through those very institutions. when martin luther kingen mar and others took on the struggle, doctor dorothy height who was a very dear mentor of mine, the only real woman among those great civil rights leaders, they were asking america be what you say you are. now, you are in a stronger position when you have those institutions in place and you appeal to those institutions and so in any system the bringing of rights to people is a difficult and sticky and hard process and ours has been extreme a hard, but i look at how far we have come to still a way to go and i think we've actually done better than i can think of in

any place in the world. >> so, today you are accomplished person, famous, do you feel discrimination anywhere in the world? >> you know, i say by the time you are a senior professor at stanford or secretary of state someone treat you badly because of your race or gender it's your fault, not theirs. no, i feel very strongly that i am able to achieve what i want to achieve and i try to tell my students to feel the same way. if-- it goes back to what my parents said, if you consider yourself a victim, then someone else has control of your life. now, we all know that there are great inequalities in our society and we know that our great nationalist, doesn't matter where you came from, it matters where you're going. you can come from humble circumstances and do c great things that it's

not true for all of our people, so our goal, our job as a citizens off democracy has to be to use these institutionsti to demand that they deliver on that promise, not to shun them becauseth they are still the best option for getting there >> did your parents live to see your greatyo success as a professional? >> i lost my mother very young. my mother was only 61 years old i was 30 when she died, but she got to see me as a professor at stanford.best before she died i gave her my first book, which was not a "new york times" bestseller. it had been my dissertation. in case you don't notice neither of those countries actually sitne anymore, so i gave her the book. she saw me become a professor. my father knew i had become national security advisor. >> you were an only f child and i guess.

>> so you know the pressure of being on only child. >> that's why i'm a sports fanatic because that was my father's passion and a music finale because that was my mother's profession.ha when you are only child you have to satisfy both. .. the united states has a democracy, not perfect. you talk about the soviet union and russia. obviously a subject you know about. you point out that democracy broke out in roche i russia after the bolshevik resolution and after gorbachev lost pair. why did democracy disappear from russia? >> guest: well, one thing i seek to do in the book is dismiss one of the explanations you sometimes get about russia. that the russians don't have the right dna for democracy. i just don't believe that there are any people on the face of the earth who aren't capable of democracy. david, you know that we have

used cultural arguments so the germans were once supp the asians were too confucius. you have south korea, japan. africans, they were too tribal.e you have ghana. you have botswana. you have kenya, going through very interesting period in democracy. latin americans prefer men on horseback. now there is bra civil and chile, colombia.n 0 horn african-americans, they were toh child like to care about the thing called the vote. we had a black president. a black attorney general. we have had attorneys general. we had black secretaries of state.t it i reject the cultural argument. you with the russians you get it all the time. they like strong men. the story is failure of institutions to take hold under enormous pressure. if you think about the collapse

of the soviet union and you think about the rapid effort to build capitalism, 50% of the russian population fell into poverty practically overnight. the country broke aparttr overnight. and unfortunately their first president, boris yeltsin, who i admired for a lot of reasons, but instead of strengthening the institutions and working through them, he starts to rule by decree. weakens the legislature.e weakens the independent judiciary. now that presidency, really strong presidency in russia unboris yeltsin is one thing. but when vladmir putin becomes president, that same very strong presidency now in the hands of somebody with authoritarian instincts. so the russian failure is a story of the importance of institutions. you can't depend on single s person, you have to depend on the institution. >> you don't see putin as

jeffersonian democrat? >> no, i don't think you would confuse him -- i know him pretty well. i spent a lot of time with him. >> does he speak english? >> he was learning at the time he came in office. his english i understand now is passible. i would chitchat in russian. he liked me at the beginning because i was speaking russian. i remember sitting with him towards end of my time as secretary, conde, you know us, russia has only been great when ruled by great men like peter the great and alexander ii. you want to say, and do you mean vladmir the great but you're secretary of state, you can't do that, that would be rude? but in fact that is who he thinks he is. he thinks he is reuniting the russian people in greatness and i think that instinct led him to destroy all of the kind of institutional constraints on the presidency.

the independent judiciary, frees press, civil society. >> you think a chance of his voluntary stepping down is slim? >> i think so. the thing about regimes like that they're vulnerable. you don't know they're brittleow until something happens. we have to remember that the only district that vladmir putin did not win in the fraudulent election of 2012 was moscow. that tells you something about how he is viewed in the cities. >> let's talk about another country that joins russia that you write about, poland. >> yes. >> poland democracy did break l out in poland and what do you think the state of democracy in poland today? >> poland is a story we should try to emulate at the beginning. poland is a story having institutions in place when i call the democratic opening comes. solidarity in nationwide labor union lend lech walesa had been

under ground by martial law in the 1980s. it was sustained by the vatican and village priests. the afl-cio, sustaining as labor union and ronald reagan's cia. kind of an interesting troika. now, when gorbachev comes to power, eastern europe breaks free, poland already had institutional infrastructure in place.e. so the democratic transition was easier in poland than almost any place else but now what we're seeing in poland, it is still a young democracy.g it has for the first time a very strong centralized executive and you're starting to see kind ofto erosion of the independence of the judiciary, the independence of the press but people are fighting back. civil society is mobilized on social media against these moves of the, what is called the law and justice party, which is the

president's party and the president, president duda, actually ended up having to veto a law he had sponsored that would have gone a long way told undoing the independence of the judiciary. so don't count out polish democracy just yet. >> go further south. you next write about ukraine. ukraine started with democracy. what would you say the state of democracy in ukraine? >> ukraine is many way as sad situation because fur trying to build a demock sy with assertive, aggressive neighbor,r taking your territory and making the eastern half of your country unstable it is kind of hard to build democracy. they made progress. poroshenko who is president launched anti-corruption campaign. one of the great checks on democracy, one of the greatt challenges for democracy whenn you have corruption. they have made good moves on

corruption. there are young people in the legislature determined to deliver democracy. it is vibrant society in its western parts. the problem for ukraine is that with the troubles in eastern ukraine, you don't read much about them in the newspapers these days but people are dying every day in eastern ukraine as these russian separatist its who are supported by the russian armed forces are causing all kind of props. so ukrainians democracy is always on a knife's edge but it is not an authoritarian regimeif either and that is something to celebrate. >> but as long as putin is in charge of russia you don't see eastern ukraine all of sudden going back to ukraine and crimea going back to ukraine?e? >> crimea i think it will be very hard but here is one.i like to make. one reason i want to write the book also to talk about the role america can play in supporting democracies.ra we have a tendency, and i take

some responsibility for this, to associate democracy promotion with what happens in iraq and afghanistan. those were extremely stressful situations where we had a security problem and later on tried to help build democracies. but most of the time democracy promotion is much simpler and much less complex. if you think about the way that we dealt with the baltic states, so the 45 years that they were under soviet occupation, david, when i was special assistant for soviet affairs i had a stamp. it said the united states does not recognize the forceful incorporation of the baltic states into the soviet union. whenever you mention lithuania,u latvia, estonia, you stamped it with that. we couldn't do anything about the fact that the soviets enforcably incorporated baltic states but we stood for the principles. in crimea we have to stand ford the principles even if we can't do anything about it, we have to

stand for the principle i annexation of crimea was horrible. [applause] >> you mentioned iraq and afghanistan. i want to talk about the middle east and democracy but before we do, where were you on 9/11? >> i was national security advisor on 9/11, and it is like september 12th. i was at my desk. a young assistant hit plane hit world trade center. i said that was a strange accident. president bush was in florida at education event. i got him on the phone. he said, that is a strange accident.ci keep me informed. a few minutes later i was having my staff meeting.ng somebody handed me a note, a second plane hit the world trade center. now we knew it was a terrorist attack. so i went into the situation room to try to reach the national security principals.th colin powell was in peru at a meeting of the organization of american states. george tenet the cia director

had gone to a bunker.et we can't reach secretary rumsfeld.in his phone is ringing. ringing. we looked behind us on television. the plane hit the pentagon. about that time you have to get to a bunker. planes are filing into buildings all over washington d.c. when the secret service wants to escort you under those circumstances. they don't is court you. they pick you up, carry you. i remember being levitated toward the bunker. i have to make a phone call. i called my aunt and uncle in birmingham.nd i called president bush. you can't come back here the united states is under at stack. the rest of the day dealing with reality american security would never be the same. >> on afghanistan never been inl the news lately. it is our longest war, 16 years. do you see any solution near term? >> i'm worried about afghanistan. i have always said that what,

the point that we have to get to somehow in afghanistan was the afghans were able to prevent the taliban from existential threat against the afghan government. i always thought that you are going to remnants of the taliban, hit an run terrorists here and there in the country but as they have been able to carry out bolder attacks closer to the capital, even in the international zone, you have to wonder how well we're doing getting to that place of stability. so i think the decision by the president and by secretaryrypres mattis to try to really stablize the military situation is one that i support. but eventually there will have to be a political solution in afghanistan. i suspect that is going to have to involve pakistan which is really big part of this problem because the pakistanis aren't really convinced that a stabley afghanistan is in their interests.ts they have got to be made to help

stablize that territory, and you know, we, we're talking about democracy. look, it is very tough. afghanistan was fifth poorest country in the world during 9/11. but it is at least a place now where girls go to school in large numbers. it's a place now where women are not beaten in a soccer stadium that was given to the taliban by the u.n. it's a place where men are not lashed because they don't wear beards. it is not a place that harbors terrorists. so i think we have had some achievements in afghanistan, but yes, i'm concerned. >> democracy in iraq, do you think we've made progress there? what do you think really went wrong after the invasion of iraq? it didn't go write the way you thought it would. what went wrong? >> i talk about the iraqi case i lay out several different scenarios what the circumstances

are when the democratic opening comes, right? now, the best is place like poland where you have institutions in place or colombia where you have institutions that were weak but were there. the worse situation when you had a cult of personality, tyrannical leader, wherety everything had been at the service of that leader. that was saddam hussein. and so there were effectively no institutions to think of, or we thought underneath him. and so the distance between people's desire, now that they have overthrown the dictator,w that we've overthrown dictators, and the institutions there to channel all of those passions there, there is a great distance, you don't have much time. i relate in the book that we made a lot of mistakes. we undervalued potential for the tribes, the sunni tribes, to play an important role.

we didn't understand the tribes when we got back with the surge in 2007, the tribes were a big part of the reason we were able to defeat al qaeda in iraq. i think we didn't fully understand the implications of the disbanding of the army which wasn't supposed to take place by the way. i described that in the book. in the fog of war a lot happens. one thing i would like people to understand about iraq, we did not go to iraq to bring democracy to iraq. that is and urban legend. i was in those meetings. it doesn't have the benefit of being true. we went to iraq because we thought we had a security problem with a saddam hussein who rebuilt his weapons of mass destruction. i would have never said to the president of the united states, use military force to bring democracy to iraq or afghanistan for that matter. once you have overthrown the dictator you have to have a view what comes after. the president and his visors

believed we had to give the iraqi people a chance to build democracy. now a lot of blood shed, a lot of lives lost. that will never be able to bring those people back. i will say that as the iraqis now are on the virge of defeating isis, iraqis still have some democratic institutions. they have a prime minister accountable to them. there are people protests.s they're not shot in the streets. you don't have mass graves the kind saddam hussein put people in. iraq's big challenge, can the country hold together with the kurds who for a long time wanted to be an independent people? that is the big challenge for iraqis. but they do have institutions i think can help them. >> arab spring was supposed to produce democracy throughout parts of middle east. syria doesn't look like having

democracy anytime soon. >> i would rather be iraqi than syrian. bashar al-assad, unfortunately it will be hard to get him out of power, because the russianse who have people on the ground want him in power. eventually if he is to go, it is russians that will make the decision if he goes. o i'm not giving up on middle east finding its way towards democratic institutions. we get very impatient with people when they're trying toe find their way to democracy. we say, either they just don't get it.on or look at all those, you know,, the muslim brotherhood. we forget, as we talked about, david, our own history of democracy is pretty long one and pretty tough one. so i would say use the polish example.e.. try to plant some seeds for democracy. there are entrepreneurs who are people on whom you might build further democracies.

there are civil society groups, women's groups. tunisia is an example where a national labor union and civil society groups actually managedy to bring about something that looks a nascent democracy. i'm not ready to give up on the middle east yet. >> since mubarak has there been move towards more democracy in egypt? >> no, in egypt, egyptianawful military rulers look-a-like egyptian rulers for a while, saddat, mubarak. there are civil society groups we need to support to help. what happens in the middle east, the moment you have a chance for democratic opening the strongest institutions are often theis radical islamists. why is that?t? it is not an accident.

because leaders like mubarak destroyed the foundation of more liberal institutions and parties, people like noor and others who might have been a foundation for democracy but they didn't destroy the radical islamists who organized in in radical mosques and radical madrassas. we have to be more organized when the democracy comes. >> on the middle east, israel, there is either a one-state solution or a two-state solution. >> yeah. >> if you have a one-state solution do you think you can have democracy? >> i think for israel to remain democratic jewish state, it has to have a democratic palestinian state. i'm a believer in the two-state solution. [applause] eventually they will have to get there. >> talk about the gulf states, the gcc states, the gulfth cooperation council countries. you don't think i assume democracy will break out there or should?

>> no. these are monarchies and they have varying degrees of liberalism towards issues like women's rights and varying degrees of liberalism towards the marriage of religion and politics but some interesting things are happening there. even in a place like saudi arabia, right, so saudi arabia really now has a generational shift and most -- and a majority of the people studying in university in saudi arabia in their great university build by king abdullah are women. now they will have an interesting kind of test here. can you educate women at this level and still tell them they can't drive? [laughter] >> we'll find out. so let's go to the far east for >>moment. in your book you point out thatu authoritarian governments while

not perfectly jeffersonian democracies can have good democratic features and good pluses for the peel. you cite, for example, singapore. what do you admire about singapore? >> singapore, first of all, very small, right?e? what i really say when people say authoritarian is sometimes better they have two examples. china, the largest country in the world and singapore, one of the smallest and singapore was fortunate. it had a wise man leader in lee kwan yu. it was at a time democratic values were not very obvious in most of asia and he turned out to be a truly, wise, benign leader but the problem with that theory is, you better hope the next one is benign and then that his son is benign and that his son after him is benign because you don't always get lucky. the singaporeans got very lucky. we have tendency to hold

democracies to higher standards than we do authoritarians. there are all kind of really bad authoritarian leaders. just read caracas, in venezuela. somehow authoritarians are better for people because they deliver for their people. but the chinese have delivered but that particular model is running out of steam. singapore delivered. but so many authoritarians have not delivered that we sometimes hold democracies to a higher standard.ll >> china, you don't expect jeffersonian democracy will break out there, right? >> no, i don't, expect. jeffersonian democracy will break out there but tell you something about china. china is about to have an interesting test. china's economy grew, lifted 500 million people out of poverty. a miracle what they were able to do. heavy export led economy. l being low cost labor provider in the international system. they did it with a command

economy, a lot of state-owned enterprises. that model runs out of steam. they can't get growth out of that model any longer. now they have to free up market forces. when you free up market forces there is a kind of mismatch between the market forces and top-down authoritarian midcallri system. the question, how long will it be before you have a crash of both? just an example, china had 186,000 riots, in the last year, 186,000 reported riots.ut not because somebody was protesting for democracy, a peasant, a party leader andle developer would seize their land.. they had no courts to go to, so they go riot. even chinese leaders say we need independent courts so that doesn't happen. how long before independent courts become independent judiciary? you're starting to get a difference in the institutional landscape in china.

i will tell you one other story. i gave a lecture at at chi n.w.a. university, their cross affectionately call it between harvard and stanford. i decided i wouldn't gave the same talk with stanford students, find your passion. do something hard. et cetera, et cetera. the questions blew me away. i'm an engineer. why do i need to take literature? what do you do if your parents doesn't like the major that you have chosen? i thought, these are chinese kids? they're questioning in this ways how long is it before questioning your parents' choice of major becomes questioning your government? so i think there are a lot of trend in china may ultimately lead at least to liberalizationn if not democratization. >> i lead to ask you where you't

don't think jeffersonian democracy will break out, and that is north korea. >> that is away as way. >> if you were advising the current president today, or any president of united states or any president today, what would you tell him to do about north korea?yo >> this is the most dangerous situation that we face. we tried when i was secretary to negotiate with kim jong-il.he kim jong-un's father tori denuclearize the country. they wouldn't live up to the agreements.. we walked out of the talks. ever since they have been on rapid course of improving theiro bomb design and harvesting fuel and increasing their, the range of their delivery systems. no american president can tolerate a somewhat unhinged north korean leader. because if he is not crazy he is reckless. this is somebody who reached into malaysia, killed his half-brother under chinese protection. so he is reckless.

i don't think any american president can tolerate that leader with the capacity to reach the united states. and what the administration isth trying to do, and i support what they're trying to do is, they're painting a very bleak picture for the chinese. that is the only country with any real leverage on the north koreans. the chinese have never really been willing to use their leverage fully because they worried that the regime could collapse. then they would have unstable long border and they would have refugee flows. but what the administration is saying to them is, your choice now is either we do something about the north korean problem or you do something about the north korean problem. hopefully that will get through to the chinese because the military solutions here are not very pretty. >> so if a missile went and came near guam, would you think we would still have to wait for the chinese to do something or -- >> i think at some point theth american president, and i'm not inside so i don't know what he

is being told about how long he has but at some point you know, if you're threatening guam, and already, firing missiles over japan, we're getting prettyapane close to a denumont, pretty close to the president having to make a decision. i do note kim jong-un came out to attack guam, the chinese must have talked to him, came back a few days, he wouldn't attack guam. i think we have the chinese attention. just a question what they're willing to do. >> our book covers two parts of world i will talk about briefly. you talk about africa and kenya and there is an election going on now. let me ask you about south africa. you met with mandela. you knew mandela. why do you think democracy hasn't worked as well with mandela after it was as you expected? >> mandela is remarkable man. i never met anybody i found more impressive. he said to george w. bush, when

president bush asked him, why didn't you run for another term? he said i wanted my african brothers it was okay to step down from office. on a continent that had too many presidents for life, this was an important statement. again it's a story of institutions. it was essentially single party system under the african national congress. somehow mandela's great authority was never transferred into institutions which could then survive him and they have had considerable trouble since. but institutions are still there. it is just that it has been hard to really deliver through them. first presidents matter. united states of america was pretty lucky that george washington actuallyty didn't want to be king. i don't know how many of you have seen "hamilton." it is a really a great show but it becomes a very clear that we, we got lucky with the particular combination of founding fathers

that we had. many places haven't been that fortunate. >> you're right about latine. america. you talk about colombia, how they have made progress there. generally the military juntas of the '60s and '70s are gone but what happened to venezuela? >> hugo chavez happened to venezuela. you can get a really bad leader who doesn't get checked by those around him with considerable wealth. the oil curse is real. and when i was secretary of state the price of oil went to 14dollars a barrel. it -- $147 a barrel. it empowered people like chavez who tried to buy elections across latin america. he single-handedly destroyed all the important institutions, the opposition. he was succeeded by somebody who is chavez without charm. and chavez without i think

without chavez's street smarts. maduro has taken the country down. i hope that this is one where the organization of american states, the latin american states, need to be all over maduro to do something because it's sad to see a middle income country where people can't findl food and they can't find medicine. >> we had an african-american president but never had a female president. never had african-american female president. >> right. >> have you ever thought -- [applause] >> well, thank you very much but, no. [laughter]. you have to know your dna. you have to know your dna. i was on the campaign trail with george w. bush. i will never forget, we would go to five campaign events. at the end of the day he was raring to go. i had to get back to the hotel. people who draw energy from the process. i don't so much.

and i have negative liked politics particularly. i do love policy. the other thing is, i am, my call something what i do. i love being a professor. i love teaching millenials. they are a challenge. they're wonderful. you know, they come it me an they say, i want to be a leader and i say you know, that is not a job description. it is not a destination. let's talk about what you're going to learn and know so somebody will follow you. and then my other favorite line, i want my first job to be meaningful. l i say, your first job is not going to be meaningful. it will be your first job. what will be meaningful somebody will pay you to do it for the first time. so i got my work cut out for me. [applause] >> so if you don't want to run for office, suppose some president came along said, you did a great job as secretary of state. why don't you do it again? >> you should never go home

again. i amazing alignment of the stars. i had a president would tell leaders, we grew up together we would say. we started out when he was just leaving the governorship of texas. he trusted me. i admired him.he of its with a time of consequence for the -- it was a time of consequence for the country. i have great admiration for people in public service. we don't admire people who do public service. it is hard, it is hard work. [applause] i tried so hard to my students not let them be cynical about public service.en i served as secretary of state. the foreign service and the soul service, the people who work in the state department. not to mention more than 30,000 foreigners who staff our embassies around the world are some of the most dedicated people you will ever find.st i was honored to lead them.

i loved being the nation's chief diplomat.io nothing like getting off of a plane that said the united states of america, thinking what can i do to represent this grea country but i'm done. [laughter] >> so when you stepped down as secretary of state you handed the reins over to another woman, hillary clinton. >> yeah. >> what was it like, one female secretary of state handing the reins over to another female? you are saying we don't need these guys anymore? >> so, madelyn, colin, myself, hillary, it had been 16 years since there had been a white male secretary of state. so we were saying, i don't know, maybe we have to do a little affirmative action here to see what happens but, no, it was great. it is a nice little club. the secretaries of state. the dean of the secretary is of state is george shultz who is 97 years old. [applause] he is still one of my great mentors.

i will tell you a little story i think you will appreciate it. he had a birthday party not too long for henry kissinger, turns 94. the two of them did 20 minutes walk around the world, no notes, completely coherent. i'm sure it was something in the water at the state department. it is amazing people.wa >> i remember, i heard from that party, george shultz said something, ah to be 94 again. half laugh. >> said from his point of view henry was still a promising young man. >> as you look back on your career which was extraordinary, what would you say you're most proud of having done?in your >> well, with the caveat history takes a long time to judge, i think i'm most grateful for that we stood up for the right of people to live in freedom. i know that there were a lot of cynics about and a lot of criticism, some of it totally

justified about the freedom agenda and declaring that america's one of america's most important purposes was to, to work hard so no one would live in tyranny. but i think america is at its, is at its best, it's highest calling when it leads from power and principle. when we stand for the proposition that the rights we enjoy are indeed universal, and that they are universal, that there are no people for whom they shouldn't be be secured. so i'm very grateful we were able to do that. when i think back on some of my travels, it was always when it was about people, and a couple of things stick out in particular.wa i went to china after the great earthquake there and a little boy, couldn't be more than 12 years old. he walked up to me, you're that lady from the united states,st

aren't you? i thought, yeah, i am. people ask me what was it like to be a woman representing the united states in the middle east where women were second class citizens and one story sticks in my mind there.y i had a very difficult meeting with a shia cleric, very conservative cleric, who couldn't touch me because i was woman outside of his family. after this meeting, very difficult meeting in iraq, he said, will you do me a favor. he didn't speak english. through the translator he said, will you do me a favor. a favor, really? i said sure. my 13-year-old granddaughter watches you on television and she loves you. she and her mother are coming to the states, would you meet them? on that day, this little 13-year-old girl comes in a little pink t-shirt, says princess. walks up to me in perfect english, she says, i want to bei foreign minister too. there was something in that moment, because her very

conservative grandfather beamed when he thought about this little girl. this problem, this progress that we try to bring through democracy, through justice and equality, it's a long, long, long road. and people have traveled that road for a long time.ha america's traveled it for a very long time. we're still working at it. so the thing i'm most greatful for, is that even with our own troubles here in the united states, we stood for the proposition that every man, woman and child should live in freedom. >> i want to highly recommend to everybody here this book i enjoyed very much reading, "democracy."ocracy [applause] and i want to thank you for your service to our country over many, many years. >> it was an honor.vi thank you. [applause]