Washington and we the people. Im going to get right into the idea of revolution. You say in the book america has been through divisive. Before, some worse than the ones were iwe are in today with the hindsight of history can see them as Inflection Points, the transitional period between the old system that is broken down and a new one so largely. Are we in an Inflection Point . Guest absolutely. We are in the middle. The best example is in 2016 in the republican primaries there was a real civil war that the Establishment Republicans represented by jeb bush and others didnt get the nomination, didnt get the support of the American People. It was the revolutionary donald trump. The democrats are going through the same thing right now they are having a civil war in their party but is it going to be the traditional democrats, is it going to be some outsider, is it going to be a socialist but that is indicative of the fact washington doesnt work. It hasnt kept up with the country and i guess at the end of the book what i realized after a long period of thoughtfulness and i went into the wilderness to try to figure it out is that america goes through these divisive periods roughly every four years. Because we are very dynamic. Demographically, geographically, socially, economically we are constantly reinventing ourselves not just as individuals, but as the natioa nation and governmens very nature is a status quo institution. Its how weve always done things and we are going to do things the same way again. People then get stuck and america is set up to have these revolution, political revolutions. We had one in the very beginning in the American Revolution but ever since then we have the revolutions that played out and that is what they are in the middle of no. Host one of the things you said you did these talking past each other more likely to scream at each other and before facebook today we had a bit of a conversation about the idea we could have disruptive dialogue across the aisle which might actually make for some good tv. But certainly the more productive conversations we could have this day and age are based on Common Ground stability and entertaining each others differences. You explain to me what you mean by nationalism and populism and how it might be different in other states. There are four things to do fine, nationalism and populism and an easy to some and globalism. I was always for decades part of the republican foreignpolicy establishment. I went to all the schools. I had jobs in those administrations but over the last ten or so years i came to reject a lot of the thinking i had before about globalism. And globalism in my mind is the idea that because its a sophisticated economy and International Economy the world is flat that the National Boundaries are not as important, the National Boundaries are not important you think of the internet and going and people going, so the boundaries are less important because it is the free flow of information and ideas, individuals, finance, business and so that is the neww world so we dont really need to think so much about the National Laws and regulations. We need to have global institutions, global resolutions that apply to everybody. The second part is the elitism and i think that comes from again a complicated world and society so only the expert, only the people who have graduate degrees and Nuclear Weapons should be able to have any kind of opinion on National Security. So its those two together when borders dont matter and experts do and a lot of elitists are the people who think if we only have this International Group of enlightened people that they could better govern the world and we would be safer and happier place. That is sort of where i was ten, 15 or 20 years ago. Im not there anymore for a couple of reasons. The elitists are not taking care of all the people coming into the American People especially eye as a patriotic redblooded american, i believe the American People are sovereign not some softer selfselected group of experts would say bureaucrats, aristocrats if you will, it is the American People that have the right to choose their leaders and if they dont like their leaders, throw them out. They also make mistakes and then change their mind. But the other part of that which is globalism versus nationalism i think we have spent far too long dealing with the world as we wish it would be. The United States at the end of world war ii we were the dominant country in the world economically, militarily, and what we did was we were very generous to our former allies and even our former adversaries that had their societies devastated so we entered into security agreements, bilateral, multilateral as well as trade agreements to our disadvantage. We put up 75 of the resources for nato for example, the trade agreements we had were very blindsided. A lot of them were at the expense of the industry to encourage Economic Development and rebuilding in the devastated nation and the bureau of origin. So that is how things were for 50, 60, 70 years but i didnt think that made sense anymore because the world has changed. A lot of the countries had not only recovered economically but in fact they were surpassing us in many ways. We did the same thing with china and around 2000 where we said we are going to give china a helping hand, we are going to help them develop because in the end they will be like japan or korea or europe. They will be our trading partners and they will play by the same rules and they will be our friends but it didnt work out the same way so that is why i broke with nationalism. I broke with globalism and spoke with elitists and well before donald trump came along i was already there by 2014 and 15 and the reason is i went around the country and did a lot of public speaking. But i knew something was happening. I couldnt figure out what it was. I would get up to the podium and say how many of you think that the economy is and where it was that you dont have the opportunity for your childrens generation and then i said do you think we are getting kicked around by countries we shouldnt be getting kicked around in. Then i asked how many think the values of america that we think of independence for ingenuity then people have their hand up. How many people think its washingtons fault and everybodys hands went up including the guy running the sound equipment so the people i was talking to, womens groups, college students, security groups, foreignpolicy experts, business groups, they were all doing really well for the most part. They were not suffering that they knew something was wrong in the country so that is when i really had an awakening and decided the way they kept peace and had governed itself for decades wasnt working anymore and i became a nationalist and committed populist before donald trump even came on the scene but i want to point out to me although some is and the xenophobic kind of where you hate the other guy and populism isnt we dont have to do anything. Lets give everybody everything. Its not that. Thats just somebody else to talk about that for me is it is getting back to americas roots. Host what i appreciate is that you are selfaware sake you talk about your own educational experience. For example when you talk about your time in the white house and the National Security adviser, some of the people that you called on including people like fiona hill is there a need for expertise in a place like the white house where you are dealing with a complex problem is their choice between those that are educated and have the experience has been on the ground again or again, is there a change with that of the peoples government . Guest absolutely. Thats why we have a president because you get the best advice you can get and decide if they want to take it or not. I was responsible for hiring fiona hill, the head of russia and europe have a working institution and i had read her books and known her for years. I thought she would be a really important addition. I knew she wasnt going to agree with me on a lot of things, but i thought before Trump Took Office if he had said on the campaign trail wasnt the least bit naive. Theyve been doing bad stuff for a long time. I thought that doctor fiona hill would be a good advisor because i hoped trump could get into negotiations with putin and i wanted her to be able to say to him lets have the back story, lets drive a harder eagle delete harder deal and i thought that he would respect her fear fears but it isnt they that it worked out. What i thought was good about him in the Business World as well as in the journalist world and marine and he wanted to take a much tougher stand on china. Guest you have been very clear in your book for the past administrations havent recognized the right is a challenge for this coming trade. Interested in your book and thoughts of computing with an economy that is very much a statmuchstaterun a state run and im interested in your thoughts being tough with china in a way that other president s may not have been tough enough on. Lets start with the imbalance or asymmetry between cap capitalists guest where is china and what has happened, so as you point out, he has essentially said to them give up all the power coming you dont have any individual rights that give us all the power and we promised that they will have prosperity and peace. Especially in the last 20 or so years. There is no religion that holds them together, there is no real ideology. It is authoritarianism and maybe ethnic pride. That is where they start out with and that is the deal the chinese leadership and the party have worked out for the last probably since 1980, 1990 prosperity has increased. But the other thing is to look at the generation. Its not like america or the west where you have an old person and a young person in the United States senate together or you have an old candidate and young candidate and medium age. In china you advance with your generation so you start out and publicly identify me as 10yearsold as a smart the chinese advance with her age group by the time i get to be president of china they see all the leaders where were they in the formative years of their lives, they were in the middle of the cultural revolution. So the cultural revolution in china was in the 60s up to maybe 1972 and a 73. A lot of the leadership of china they were the sons of the leaders of china and when the cultural revolution happened which was chaotic and disruptive and students storming the universities it was the wrong kind of populist revolution but they went wild and took a lot of the Senior Leaders and put them in jail and sent them out into the country basically slave labor. For his childhood experience as all of his colleagues, a lot of them had been in the top positions when they were young and they lived a good life in beijing and then all of a sudden they were sent to the countryside along with their families to be punished. I think that when this group is the first thing that happened as a disruptive society is people going crazy, order breaking down, the revolution of the wrong kind so what they want to do at all costs to us to make sure china doesnt go there and. It drives their whole authoritarian system and that drives their position in the world. They want order at all costs. They dont believe like we do but its a good thing. You are not going to have individual freedoms. You will be as the government tells you so that is sort of where they start out. They dont want disorder and they want prosperity. Everything was going along quite nicely. The united aids as i said really tried to help china to modernize. We thought they were within their economy and society and it will be just like korea and all the other countries. The chinese needed to, they were coming from so far behind probably 20 or 30 years and they were very conscious of that that we have people who were in starvation situations 20 years ago so they will do anything to keep that up. As of the United States, a lot of the manufacturing jobs that they have iwe have i think you y say they were in america and went to china and america never really retrain a lot of the people. We had unemployment or underemployment and a large section of the population while the chinese were booming. So, we enable their success. We do not resent their success or at least i dont. We enabled it. But now that times have changed and its time to recalibrate the relationship. We dont need to treat china like a third world country and give them the advantages of the trade and finance and market economies they would have enjoyed would have enjoyed as a third world developing country. Im not saying we should have an adversary relationship or try to keep them down. Theyve done great things. Guest do you have concerns about the silk road and throughout africa this concern about the new sort of colonialism and if you have concerns about the rise and the displacement of the United States as the sort of power. For year for years they said two americans you know that you are in charge. We want a peaceful rise. But i think the rhetoric and ambitions have changed in the last decade or so. The things id love to point to is the refusal to renegotiate a lot of these deals. They are beg, borrow, steal however you can. But theyve also done three things geographically and militarily that we have gotten nervous about. One is the South China Sea. From the middle east all through the South China Sea into the philippines, japan, korea and the chinese have aggressively move to say thamoved to say than internal chinese place. We are going to build them up. But no, these militarized and they are now moving towards claiming that as the worlds greatest ceiling of commerce should be an internal place to decide who does what and when so that is a big problem. The silk road which is the chinese attempt to take the countries in the 14th, 15th and 16th country where trade went from china to europe to the middle east and theyve pretended to recreate the silk road with china in charge. Its called one built one road. Not unlike the romans and the final thing is the maritime ambitions so the chinese have looked at pakistan to the east coast of africa and they said well we are going to build por ports. We want to trade for chinese goods through the ports but some of them are now being militarized, so the chinese are building the maritime route, they are building a land route and trying to control the worlds global commerce. In addition to that the chinese leaders have said they want to dominate the technologies of the future. Theyve gone from making low value finishes all the way up to computers and High Technology but theyve identified ten technologies stuffed with robotics, artificial intelligence, bioengineering and said we want to be the leaders and we are going to do it however we have to, we are going to buy american companies, they are going to demand western companies that want to do business in china and i have to turn over their intellectual property so that is another way that all these things added together plus a much more aggressive attitude and talking about it. We are going to dominate the world and dominate the technology of the world and then we will rewrite the rules according to your specificatio specifications. Not to be an overtly stock but to be the partnership where america. The ability to trade with both companies and frankly that would be a great thing to revisit. Trump understood if you rebuild the American Economy you have a lot of leverage and you get off of middle east oil and make America Energy independent and have a lot of leverage in the energy world and also because we are the recipient of purchasers of most countries goods. Other countries when they sell to us they need to sell to us. Trump understood those things and realized h realize they coue American Economy if he could get up off of the middle east energy. He could use trade wars to renegotiate the agreement with china and japan and south korea i think there will be one with pretenses and in mexico and canada so that the United States iand a far better position with much more leverage. My advice to him is now that you have china with a phase one agreement and you have the trade agreement with mexico and canada and japan you probably get one by the end of the year we now have a consortium and trading block where we can go to china. A lot of us have the same complaints and we can go to a walk led by the United States and say we demand a new deal now. We dont want to take you down but we want you to stop exploiting us with the generosity weve given you over the decades. That is interesting. Its the aftermath i think we visited when we speak about china. It has given us peace in iraq and afghanistan that we have seen as a sort of complete waste of american lives and of course the american trade. We know theres going to be a vacuum with basis and al qaeda and other nonstate actors. How do we get out of those and focus energy and resources . Guest Foreign Affairs you pick your site. To me the big priority now is china. While all these other things are problems that you dont want to lose track and i think that he was really great at understanding what is the game here with the soviet union and the United States and its Nuclear Weapons. So lets not get sidetracked with all this other stuff that might prevent you from dealing with the major issue of the time. What trump has allowed the Energy Industry in the United States would we have gone through three and four years as the net Energy Importers to exporters within a short period of time we could replace them at least. So, once we could get off of their energy we dont have to get into their psychodrama that they have been fighting each other for thousands of years. We dont belong in the middle of that. In fact we could probably replace their oil. So, i think that timmy is one of the important things with all the other stuff you mentioned and if it distracts you from doing the important thing which is dealing with asia and china and the Global Technologies of the future, then you should have a very different approach, so yes, i was critical of not going into afghanistan, because we should have told the people that went after us, but they kind of did that after three months. We shouldnt have stayed around to rebuild afghanistan and we sure shouldnt have stayed around to try to rebuild the countries that dont want to be rebuilt. You talk about the book we are trying to nation build the what looks like 20 years and what is missing is the civil society. You cant just make a democracy and create a government or educational institutions. It comes from the countries you want. You talked about the invasion being the right thing. Im interested in your views on the United States. I appreciated that you have your tender with respect to some of the president s messages for example, and im interested in your thoughts on the importance of the institution in the country. Its the backbone of democracy. The state which i know you are not a big fan of. Those that are associated with him can you talk about the importance of the institution abroad . Guest the First Amendment it is freedom of speech and freedom of press and i think trump like reagan understood the press is going to be against h him. Some president s and George Washington talked about the press because he just couldnt be bothered with the newspaper then. I think trump has understood the same way that reagan did and all oin allof our revolutionary pres did you have to find a way to get directly to the heads of those press establishments. Reagan did it by going around the country and speaking to the cities and towns all across the country, going to the local Radio Station stations and telen stations. If thestations. Fdr, franco roosevelt, by talking on the radio directly to the American People. So how does trump do it, he understands they are going to hate him and lied about him that he found a way to reach directly over those people to the American People tweeting. I dont like the tweets, some of them make mike skin crawl. Crawl. But his ability to get directly to the American People, for that, to me thats an institution that he and reagan and fdr catholics say lincoln would say to the free speech of the american leaders to talk directly to the American People. Host held we find that balance, if for example if we hadnt had the wall street journal or washington post. For the state that is asking questions to get answers to the American People or is there always going to be a test. Host be talked about this at the beginning of the conversation where you said a lot of people discriminate. Its like trying to reason with a tired to yearold. Eventually those people just become irrelevant. And then that is the ultimate bike i am a believer in the common sense of the common american and those voices that are trying to strangle or refuse to listen will eventually go to the wayside because nobody will listen to them anymore. So, am i worried about the balance, yes it will get a little out of whack here and there but at the end of the day to find a center. Guest i cant believe you just said that. [laughter] how cool is that . There were certain parts of information that the average american doesnt get access to and the nonproliferation of nuclear strategies. It is basically a nonproliferation agreement they were fined with military preconditions. I worked in the Nixon Administration. Its to take a review of the American Foreign policy. One of the things that is clear is russians have been cheating for years on the class of weaponry. My advice is to get to where we need to get to. I think it was the right thing to do. What i learned is you have to have some chips to play in the game. Where is your leverage if you dont have that class of weapons. Reagan was able to go to the soviet union and said lets cancel the send back. They had the threat of the Defense Missile system they knew they couldnt build and we thought we might be able to. And i thought that he had gone to the right place which doesnt mean you never have these but you have demanded negotiate them host we have had a cycle and you describe this beautifully held accountable and noncommittal promises at least since the 90s were building Nuclear Weapons programs. What are your views on if this is a solvable problem and we have to live with the idea that they will have Nuclear Weapons . Host the priorities, so do you, what did you do differently . Republicans, democrats. Then they come to the negotiating table. I think trump has done the right thing. We had a review of the Foreign Policy at the beginning of the situation in and i called it the deputies of all of the agencies of government, the treasury, state, defense, intelligence, military and they basically have the same policies which to m pos basically doing nothing. Come back to me in about a weeks time i want to hear all of your ideas. Think outside, way outside the f the box. On the one hand, and i said on this hand i want you to think of maybe accepting them as they stayed in the International Community and on the other hand think about a regime change and what they might do militarily. On the economic pressure would think that the covert things that we can do but come back and lets check this again because they probably havent done that reassessment in the last couple of years. So we all come back about a week later and i spend the time in between learning. I had early in my career done a favor but it was probably about a decade before they were born. So anyway, they come back and have these ideas and there was no clear easy thing. You could do a little bit of military stuff and if you put them all together you could instead of thinking of a file that is either a switch you could have a bio and starts turning up the bio of pressure in all these ways. The other part of that was understanding the role they play. 75 of the food, fuel, transportation comes as a sort of gift from china. Theres other things going on so they may have said nice things like we are going to help you but they never did and trump has said that they tried maybe they never did. They didnt understand as a negotiator understands. Maybe he cares a little bit about a greater leader than his father. And i think that he has played to the ego. He was gone by the Administration Since then. That is a demonstration and the next meeting they had was in hanoi they fought the vietnam war so the other example was luck this is vietnam. We were at war with each other just like relations with yugoslavia how close we are now so i think those are carefully calibrated to show these are the possibilities. Then the other thing he did which i thought was actually most people thought that it was corny but he did a trailer that is like a movie trailer. Host how did you solve a problem like north korea, and anyway i think that was the right thing to do. That is a broad plan to be of politics and trade and assertions of poverty and domestic politics and all these things. You said about the president prt watch what he does and not what he says its where he does not what he says. Its about what made john f. Kennedy. I think having worked closely with him he is from the new York Real Estate world where you either made money that year were lost. He created the whole genre of Reality Television you have good ratings are bad. Washington is vague. Its how you get there and make some money when you sell a building. Its getting to where you can win so he looks at the negotiating positions and trash talking. Every time he sort of proposes a negotiation of somebody. Its not the political establishment that goes nuts, that is just absurd. Trump probably thinks it is as well but that is an isnt wheree expects to settle. So to a certain extent he says a lot of strange things. The next week they are sending each other love letters. It doesnt matter who he humiliates, sometimes even himself he doesnt worry about having the contradictory thoughts in the same place he just wants to win and it gets effective. 2006 we have the act. Now in this crazy place we have the supporters and detractors fighting over the same. He talked about paying for that and the way that hes talked about immigrants and immigrati immigration. Do you think sometimes his rhetoric gets in the way of a policy that may be beneficial in the end . When bush talked about the secure act he said in the announcement it still requires that we honor the tradition of the melting pot. Do you think sometimes the rhetoric gets in the way of the policy . Host guest im going back to reagan even they have a legitimate proposal democrats dont like because they dont want to give him the win. I think right now we have done such a delicate place nancy pelosi doesnt want to give donald trump to win right now. Host and working with the labor divisions and also to invite her to the announcement i think that there is a little bit on both sides. Guest guest co. I was in the white house. He wants you to think its all about him and nancy pelosi and the democrats. But its really not. Thats the status quo to get the job done. The supporters said no we want a different direction so i think that is what is different. Its a war that nobody wins that there is no middle ground of somebody is going to be successful on the other side and fade into the background as i said. As far as the wall itself, its a symbol to get control of the borders. They are sealing the border with china now they are refusing to fly flights into china. If you didnt have a border thats what the hardest to do. The borders are important. Host im interested in the rhetorical argument around it. I would like to know a little bit about russia an and go backo putin. As we have seen with 2016, interference, there is warfare going on. Russia is versus the nuclear and the economy losing its grip. What is the biggest approach to make sure we retain our predominance and dont allow russia to get to china or other enemies create access. Guest coul guest could we have found a way to have working with russia and i would prefer we have an agreement of noninterference. But i dont think politically that is going to happen. No matter who the next president is and i do think that it will be donald trump, any kind of relationship is possible right now, and it is a shame because we are in a very good position, stronger position to deal with russia. A lot of it is economics. They have sort of done the same thing twice. In the 1970s when the price of oil was going up, russia is a big exporter, they really went hog wild when they got. They spread around the world, they had a big military buildup and then when Ronald Reagan came in, he was able to because of the price of oil going down and because of american technological superiority and he was able to drive the russians in soviet union had collapsed over the economy. When he was coming onto the world stage, it was a great nation, superpower, toe to toe with america and he could look forward to a great future. But then everything collapsed by the late 80s, early 90s. Putin himself was to graduate school at that point and wrote a dissertation in russia. He talks about how to make russia great again and they would use the resources and ands holiday for state control and then the price of oil would eventually go up and they would be rich again and that is what they followed. Then it all collapsed. Then in 2010 reinvesting into the economy. Whats the socia to social servt consolidate control and then the price of oil is down and i dont think that it will ever go out to those levels again it is kind of broke. So this would be a very good time to force the deal to let them have their dignity and as reagan did that the collapse of the soviet union but we are in a stronger position now because of american domestic politics and i would put a lot of that right into the lap of the democrats and the Obama Administration and the intelligence community. They have an effect pushed russia into the arms of china which to me is one of the greatest geopolitical threats getting together again like they did in the 1950s and 60s. Host is there not another argument for multilateralism holding them close as we can collectively on a sort of valuesbased alliance that dont, is there another case for making sure the alliances are strong and friendships are maintained . Guest think its great that once everybody has their fair share. In the alliance for the United States is just handing out goodies at our expense to countries that dont want to antiup for their own defense. Just to do away with these. I would like to talk about you. Its been so interesting to talk about these ideas and i would like to turn back to what beca became. During the Nixon Administration and the last job that you had at the white house was of course the National Security adviser what you have learned along the way. In those two things that came to the middle and how did you effect here . Guest for the first opportunity to have equal access to education and eventually equal access professionally. As a freshman year in college i got a job that was in 1970 and at that time the most you could aspire to in the white house would deviate or the assistant or the administrative assistan assistance. They just were not coping, and its not, its just the way that it was. I didnt have a grand plan of how to be a pioneer, but it turned out that way because i took advantages of the opportunities when they came along. But to end my career sitting just a few feet away from my first job as a secretary, to end it as one of the most senior people in the American Government studying the Foreign Policy in a job that they wouldnt even aspire to or see as responsible to the point where my daughters think that its routine, it is expected. Host they see what you have done and have cropped in a place host they opened for women and now in fact night with her daughtemy thirddaughter is abour first child probably about the time that this ayers. The fact that there are so many opportunities. And i love working with women and talking to women of all ages but the problem is now i have it all. I have a great education and career and the we have won the d war. Im retired and did this for well over a decade and they were some of the most rewarding times of my life. But then got back into the swing of things after september 11 and had a pretty good background, so actually it was my older daughter that said i think that the country is under attack you should go out and do what youre good at. What you write about is thats what people want and deserve to get opportunities where we have equality under law. I couldnt imagine anything so afraid to take time away. Its sort of miraculous that you can do that and then go back and get the network. To end up with a very interesting and fluid nonlinear path. Guest you have a lot of opportunities but dont let those get hithisget in the oppof fulfilling life. Ive also got personal fulfillment. If i havent been part of their growing up, i havent had an opportunity to scold them and do all of the normal mama thing. Host i have a quote from you, look around the future is in all of our hands. It isnt for the permanent government class where the talent running audio blogs. We are the people whose task it is to bring about the revoluti revolution. What can we do to secure and make sure that we can live lives of fulfillment with a right that we are guaranteed, how do we make a difference . Host guest one of the problems is ten years ago, 40 of the American People have checked out is that im not political. Trump has done is hes taken a group of people who felt disenfranchised who were neither rich or powerful more politically active or influential and said its your country, too. Whatever you say about the policies and politics the fact is more are in the political process. You dont like the way they are doing it, get rid of them. Host there were eligible voters so your point is well taken. With its rights come responsibilities and i think that for too long is your responsibility to choose the leaders, the father is a sacrifice to save you have that right and now you have the responsibility. Host it is a statement about what you have observed in the country and also a statement about you. It makes a personal reinvention of possible but we also have the power to reinvent the nation. You reinvented herself many times over and served this country. Youve written this wonderful book as somebody that is politically engaging i and whati loved about it there is so much i found what was Common Ground. Trump, washington and we the people. Guest thank you so much. Can be viewed on the website at booktv. Org its what people are clicking on and we know why in some cases. Once that was the case and everybody could measure its obvious the things they want to click on a crazy stuff that make your hair catch on fire and i dont want to hear about the budget. So we are all elevated in our opinions because the news model is and forcinis enforcing us toe provocative stuff. There is my news. Now its replaced entertainment at a large extent. A lot of you would relate to this. How many of you watched the news like entertainment. So many lawyers in here. [laughter] so that is the big problem. The big problem is once you can measure stuff there is no way that Public Companies could do anything but the stuff that gets the most attention theres no way that you cant ignore that and so we have to get to this point once that small technological change happened. That caused us to bifurcate and complete almost civilizations at this point. We are in bubbles and dont really see what is happening in the other because it looks crazy or insane or stupid or maybe they are lying and we cant quite tell. We know theres nothing wrong in the bubble but it doesnt make and we cant make any sense of it and its largely because people have become totally bifurcated their news. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nixon Library and to this beautiful replica of the east