[applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] good morning i have the honor be in the executive director of the foundation. I want to thank you for coming out this evening. In honor of our men and women in uniform protecting our freedoms around the world. Please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge of allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of america. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated before you get started once recognize a couple people in the audience. I know people have been such terrific supporters of libra for the to the congressman and his great wife. [applause] as well, we have another couple that is here with us. Much of the greatness you see here at the Reagan Library is also near offices and we hope youre watching to make possible through your generosity and i want to talk about them briefly. Harry and his wife roslyn. [applause] i dont know that a book has ever been written that included with the instructions for an operators manual on how to best introduce the author. I wish there was. If the introducer simply follow the instruction say when you buy a bike for your child on christmas eve, then all the pieces of the introduction would fit into place. And when youre finished there would not be a single extra nut or bolt on the floor or flattery for the author if on use. Now, what would such a manual to accompany democracy, the most recent bustling work actually say . None of the operators manual would likely be very simple and clear. Consider yourself extremely fortunate it would say. Doctor rice is one of the most respected and admired women in the world. With a Public Service record second to none. The fact that she is sitting with you prepared to discuss her newest book is like winning the powerball lottery. No, cant argue with that. Part two, the might also say someone with a statute of doctor rice degrees this in the form of speech in favor of an opportunity to be interviewed on stage, take it. Be brief and be seated. The audience sitting by you would probably like to hear from doctor is not all about doctor rice. I have been honored as have some of you to hear doctor racer before. Once when she was here with her memoir about her life and family and the extraordinary people. And once more about a memoir about her years but the first woman to the first africanamerican woman from secretary of state. Her work is a book i think any decent instruction manual to clearly state doctor rice had to write. The subject matter goes far beyond and how she thinks democracy can play, canada must play the fundamental lives of the people all over the world. When i say its a book she had to write what i mean is this, i think that she detected some years ago that someone needed to frame from the American People of freedom and evidence around the globe from the time the United States to the present day were soldiers and diplomats are fighting for the right of people around the world, fundamental question that seems to underlie her actions as this,. [inaudible] for the many other related questions doctor rices had to answer of the years, such as can democracy prevail where it has not been before . Is it right for every culture . How might we gauge her benchmark its progress . How long must it be before we take old . These questions and others like them have been the center of doctor rices world. Her book goes a long way in answering them. But before you read i know youll first enjoy hearing about it from the author herself. With that, if you please join me in conversation on stage at the Reagan Library with doctor condoleezza rice. [applause] [applause] madam secretary, on behalf of of the board of trustees of the reckon foundation and all of your fans here we want to welcome you to know that you are at the tail end of a long trip on the road to discuss your book. We cannot thank you enough for coming here. Thank you very much. They give free leadership here. Want to thank all of you for joining us for this conversation. Want to say that theres no place id rather be than the Reagan Library to speak about freedom. [applause] thank you. Id like to test my theory as to why you wrote the book. Has this been on your mind for a long time and he thought okay, somebody has to get out there and describe how democracy can flourish around the world no matter how difficult it might be . As a matter fact its been a my mind for a long time. You might even go back before that. When i think about democracy, its actually mysterious thing. People are willing to trust the constitutions, rule of law, there willing to go to the polls and elect people to represent them rather than going into the streets. Rather than bonding to family, clan, religion, they trust constitutions and rule of law. Thats a very mysterious process. I think as a kid, child growing up in birmingham, alabama was perhaps one who very early on saw something more mysterious. I sun segregated, birmingham alabama where you can go to a Movie Theater a restaurant if you are black person. You are most certainly a secondclass citizen, i saw black citizens i have an incident in the book encapsulated for me and i was six ish years old. My uncle also and it was election day there were long lines of black people waiting to vote. I said to my uncle, and that must mean that George Wallace cant win. I knew in my sixyearold ways that we dont want him to win. And so michael said, oh no, where minority in size and why do they bother because one day that beaufort will matter as i went around the world and south africans, latin america voting, sometimes for the first time they know that one day that boat will matter. And we are blessed with the extraordinary gift, democracy. Americans in particular were blessed with Founding Fathers who understood an institutional design that would protect our liberties, our right to say what we think, to worship as we please, to be free from the knock of the secret place at night. To have the dignity that comes with those who are going to govern you have test for their consent. If we were blessed with that and believe we are in town by our creator with those rights, cannot be true for us and not for them. One of the marvelous legacies of the United States of america and the building in which we sit, one of the most marvelous legacies of Ronald Reagan was that he never forgot our obligation to speak for the voiceless. He never forgot the application to do the right thing and supporting those who just one of the simple freedoms we had, and he delivered. He believed the United States of america, america is an idea. And its an idea that is universal. So, thats why i wanted to write the book. [applause] when you are secretary of state, you are in the position to mold the worlds opinion of the United States and its actions better than any other american, sure. I know youre not an office now, its only been just over 100 days since the Trump Administration has been empowered. I wonder if you are able to speak to, has there been any change in your mind as to how americans are viewed as we transition from president obama to President Trump . I was in europe not too long after the election and the first thing i said was just settled down. The United States of america is engaging in a little bit of a democratic experiment. We have just elected somebody who has never been a government before and has never even sniffed the government before. That president is going to take some time. Its a bit of a learning curve. America has new institutions that are absolutely firm and absolutely concrete and will hold america and check. So if you look at the president i think hes getting used to the fact that actually its not as easy as it looks in there. That the american presidency is not just one person, its a constrained institution. The conFounding Fathers were very terrified of executive power. Theyre leaving a king into not want to create another. The created a congress, two houses the separate and equal branch of government. Thats article one is a congress will constantly remind you when youre in the executive branch. Today, that congress 535 people mostly think they should be president of the United States. He has courts which he learned will challenge the president. He has governors, 50 of them have who think they should be president of the United States and their legislatures. By the way, he has a press as well, civil society, and americans who are uncomfortable. So the job of getting to be president is one thing, once youre there its quite another. The learning curve has been steep. Weve seen some things that really the world likes. That decision to strike the syrian airbases after the chemical weapons attack by sought on his own people was a very important corrected. A i cannot sit by and watch vps choking on chemical bath and so, i think that it is still a bottle of water to pass under the bridge and we are still learning in many ways but it is like to get up and not just react every time, but some very good things have happened and the one thing i will say as an american we have only one president at a time, and we have to do everything we can to try to make the president successf successful. [applause] you make a point in your book when we talk about democracy is purely important for the United States to go beyond talking the talk you have to talk the talk and walk the walk and the examplset theexample for the ree world that we are going to come up with the democracy andsi m wondering the next decade or two we sent some wrong examples and could have done better. We do it all the time. Democracies are not perfect. America is not perfect. One of the hardest moments for me was abu ghraib in iraq because it was a stain on one of the greatest institutions. The fact that we have men and women to defend us at the front lines of freedom is an extraordinary gift. A few people acting badly can suspend a cloud on the commitment of the men and women who do the right thing. I also say when Something Like that happens and we had a riot in the streets about a shooting war we dont respond quite as we would like i would say to people abroad that is why america is a good example. I didnt think the constitution would be the perfect work. So in perfection is a part of the human condition. The fact that the United States has been struggling with our imperfections ever since our birth defect of slavery we were born within in perfection and a constitution that is counted as three fifths of a man but somehow i would take the oath of office to that same constitution and i would be sworn in by a jewish Woman Supreme Court justice and you would say to people we just keep striving. That is what democracy is all about as a work in progress. [applause] russia and a few other countries for the moment they have some predicaments on our hands and theyve been accelerated in the last 100 days from the relations with russia and its expansionist tendencies with iran and the terrorist actions in north korea longrange missiles. Is that one of the examples above all the rest if we could fix this we have a huge problem on our hands. The secretary needed a different kind of secretary of state. They know that men like nobody else and they have to deal with Long Investment in difficult places Difficult People working in troubling circumstances. Jim is one of the best commanders of his generation, so it is an excellent team. But any National Security team would struggle with the problem and i think it is the single most dangerous problem that weve got. I was the secretary o secretaryd to negotiate with the North Koreans to get them to give up their Nuclear Weapons. That was kim jongil the father in a parallel universe. I think junior is unhinged and is living to say things i can destroy the United States but i hope he doesnt really believe that. Hes also reckless. By all reports, his halfbrother was under chinese protection. They made a lot of progress in the last several years. A Nuclear Weapon you have to have three and theyve been harvesting for plutonium and uranium for quite some time. They have to hold the material in Critical Mass until the moment. They are not getting very good yield that doesnt mean its explode prematurely that they are working at it and exploded when they wants to. The vehicles are getting longer in range and i dont know if President Trump is being told that its one year to three years or five years. No president of the United States is going to let a north Korean Leader be able to reach the United States because the Nuclear Weapon. The only country that actually has influence with the North Koreans is probably china but the chinese have always been more fearful than the nuclear regime. They have refused to tighten the screen so they can do a lot wi with. They have to be convinced to do whatever they can for the regi regime. If you hear them say if he wont do with the North Koreans, we will. But if the message that they are sending. It is kind of ugly because if you want to look at military options, you are looking at seoul which is very vulnerable and close to the border. They could do a lot of damage and civilian casualties very quickly. We ought to be negotiating, trust me, i tried that and they walked away. We are going to have to try to find a way to protect south korea and japan because again, no president can let the North Koreans reach. [applause] we have seen a lot of analysis if he thinks there is one tragedy to occur they would point to the disaggregation absolution. I got an insight into this because i know Vladimir Putin very willing to spend a lot of time with him. [applause] he thought they would get more attention. So, one day we were sitting there and he says you know us. Russia has always been great when its ruled by great men like peter the great and alexander the second. Every bone in your body wants you to say do you mean vladimir the great, but your secretary of state. That would be improved. You cant say that. But thats what he thinks he is. He is avenging humiliation, so what if it means you take somebodys territory. The russians are backing the separatists killing the ukrainian soldiers every day so be it if they run along the coast at least the last 300 years they havent done anything and it threatens, he does something thats really dangerous. They fly awfully close to american ships and planes to. I wouldnt have made this permanent but thats fine. Rotating will do. We also need to say stop playi g within 10 feet of our planes because one of your guys is going to get shot down really soon and stop doing it and we need to send strong signals about that. You have to be careful what you give them, something they cant hurt themselves with a. Of the final thing and this is something the president has done, rebuilding the American Military budget is an important signal. All of those years of sequestration. [applause] from the perspective is there one nation that you think is most particularly at risk of the strategy . Thats basically what we try to do is another attempt. But putin is happy with the conflicts so he doesnt have to have all the territory. He can just make georgia ungovernable as a whole and as long as a solid is in part if it is one third ungovernable that is the game he plays crimea is a little bit different and one of the things we need to understand i have a love liberal russian friends who say that it was the right thing to do. Crimea was from catherine the great and then 1954 dave crimea ukraine as a symbol of friendship but it didnt matter with the soviet union for my liberal russian friends say they should have given it back. Thats not the way it works. Its a violation of International Law and we can never recognize the annexation of crimea that we need to be aware that its not an unpopular thing to have done and it added to the popularity. You just have to be pretty firm. You are fairly pessimistic for the institutions to thrive in charge of. What you want is an executive that isnt so strong because it is checked by other power centers. He was the first one to messed this up for russia. When Ronald Reagan said to tear down that wall i dont know if he thought it was going to happen. They are brittle. They are at a position to rule because theres no organized opposition and hes making sure of that. But a few weeks ago, people flooded into the streets. Still, online bloggers are still protesting government actions, so there is something slightly alive underneath. And another thing is the russian people are different than they were in the soviet union. The 25 years since the collapse when i first went to moscow in 1979, russians looked at their feet. They never looked at you. Now they travel and send their kids to study abroad. They spoil their children and by their furniture at ikea. Somewhere along here someone might emerge to be a focal point of that constituency. But before we get too carried away with the liberal russia, the other potential opposition could come from even the harder right because there is an even more ultranationalist, old shroud ultra orthodox. So i worry about the place that i think has a Great Potential but unfortunately it is in there now. They attempt to substantially slow for a much better batting from other such points and i wonder if the policies he attempted to put in place actually survived the review and they were in place do you think that would substantially impro improve. It was evident of a white house that didnt have its act together and did things to ban green card holders which is not legal. But the second one is the right targets there are few countries in the world that are ungoverned spaces, sudan. We dont have the ability to vet people from there on the ground because the embassies are very small and under constant siege. They need much more thorough vetting from those kind of countries and we are taking iraq off the list for fighting with us that they are actually going to take the time to step i six months to a year and i think that would have made sense. I think because of the way the First Executive order came out, it kind of poisoned the well for what would have been a completely sensible policy so we will see what happens in the court. Make them go to another country. There are other ways to do this and maybe that is what they will do because i do think it is a problem for. This might be related to President Trump capturing what he feels on the America First policy. Under that under allah, im betting a large of some in the lefthand. That is really important for the American People to grasp. For me it is the same argument i would make about democracy and promoting democracy. You can say we will Pay Attention to our own affairs. Weve got to build our bridges in pennsylvania so why are we building bridges in afghanistan . Our schools are not in great shape so why are we trying to send girls to school in nigeria . You can say all these things. But there are powerful arguments against the thinking. One is a moral argument and one is a practical argument. America he is an idea. When we leave from both power and principle, the principle that no man, woman or child should have to live in poverty and the worst of circumstances because youre from a compassionate nation. As many problems as we have, we have been given extraordinary bounty. If you go to some of the places in the world i dont know how bad it looks in the United States of america is much worse. How can you turn a blind eye to the children playing in the dirt in haiti and turn a blind eye to the ebola pandemic . [applause] we are too good to be that way. The moral argument is i am a christian, and i have been told that when you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me. Whatever that impulse comes from in compassion, america has had it and we have to keep it. Now the practical case. Democratic states that can be liver for their own people dont invade their neighbors. They dont traffic child soldiers that are ten or 11yearsold and traffic in the human sex trade so that women end up in brothels and Eastern Europe and southeast asia. They dont harbor terrorists as a matter of state policy. As democracies dont fight each other, we know that. Its called the democratic peace. There is a reason that we have believed that we are better off when other people beyond our borders can live with decent governments to try to take care of them. As foreign assistance, yes that was a time that is given for strategic reasons so we gave money to somebody else or maybe a little bit of guilt about colonialism but those states have been long gone for a long time. If you look at the programs we now run, the millennium challenge assisted countries you will receive packages from the United States only if you are governing wisely and fighting corruption if you are investing in your people. If you are doing those things then we will give you foreign aid and i will give you one example. Its actually quite efficient and one of the problems combining them is nobody knows what the title is of the land so they changed the law. When you go abroad and look at the relief for the humanitarian crises or that kin the kind of s we have run all over the world you recognize it out to be the most compassionate and its good for us, too because when you create responsible for firms that act in the International System in a way that enhances prosperity and security, we are all better off. So, it is a very inexpensive way to keep us from ultimately having to intervene in other more expensive ways including by military force and most americans there has been a poll out there, a survey. They think foreign assistance is about 25 of the federal budget. It is less than 1. 5 and about half of that goes to the promotion of democracy and improving the lives of people. [applause] there is adoration that follows you everywhere and in the last at least two decades everywhere you go people ask what you please run for the presidency. [cheering] i just wonder if it is the kind of thing now youve reached a point in your career when you say no, you mean it. [applause] you have to know your dna. I admire people that run for office and i dont think the process is too tough. I remember being in the campaign with george w. Bush at the end of the day, he wanted to get back to his hotel so i love doing Public Service and i will keep doing it. Its important to the country and without that we are not going to be very strong. We work a lot with boys and girls clubs. They are the most wonderful public minded kids in our 30 plus years of teaching but also those that got the participation trophy, so they are slightly fragile but there is a combination of slightly and hyper confident because theyve been told that they were so my favorite lines are i want to be a leader and i say that isnt a destination or job description, so what actually are you going to know so that somebody might want you to leave and my other favorite one is i want my first job to be meaningful if. What would be meaningful is that somebody pays you to do something for the first time in your life, that would be meaningful. [applause] ive got work to do and stand for. What can we do to influence Foreign Affairs with so much opinion and interest as a topic that involves the relationship in the rest of the world and i often sense that people are frustrated with decisions that we face. Is there any advice that you would give someone or is there something people can get involved in where they feel like they would make a difference . Scenic youre not going to have an effect on what we do most likely. We have elected people to represent us to take those positions. When you look at the United States of america and the wide range of things we do across the world, much of what we deliver is through volunteers into civil society. If you care about Girls Education worldwide, i guarantee there is a Nongovernmental Organization that is dealing with that problem. If you care about the march of islamic extremism i guarantee there are organizations that are trying to find reconciliations between the great religions and that are trying to help people find a better way. If you care about what is happening where the religious freedom is i guarantee they are faithbased institutions that are finding a way to get bibles to people so they can practice their faith. Not all of the democracies actually practiced in washingt washington. Much of it is practiced in civil society. In the 1835 when they wrote the book democracy for america, she noticed the voluntary association of american and they just get together voluntarily to do great things. We are the most individualistic and we will take you all the way to the supreme court. Brown v. Board of education, yesterday anniversary. But we are both also communitarian and we do get together to do good things and we will know those associations today. That has had an International Component and my own view is that that work makes america stronger abroad than even the things we do with our extraordinary military power and extraordinary economic wealth and so, there are many ways to be involved internationally. And by the way, being informed is also very important because in the day when the social media does matter and congress is always listening for opinions in the formed opinions would be nice if youre getting an awful lot. [applause] i ask when you raise your hand if you could wait until someone puts a microphone out for the question so well start right here in the middle. Im curious as to what your feelings are in the proxy army where does that fit in . Is a very bad situation but it is a situation that has two things going for it. The Israeli Military strength and deployment and missile defenses are known recently to help protect israel. From the terrorist perspective youve also got the northern border between syria and lebanon. So these are tinderboxes. They are getting the forces out into the army in. But the way that we deal with the problem is we help to protect the israelis. They are very militarily capable. They also are excellent in terms of their intelligence. That is the reason i think that you see fewer instances. I know that you are a california resident and i note you dont want to be president but how can you help out this beautiful state . [applause] here we really do need help. [laughter] first of all, we cant keep living beyond our means into trying to raise taxes by covering up the fact we have tensions that are unsustainable and so on and so on. At some point californians are going to have to blow the whistle on the budget games that were going on in sacramento. We have other issues i think of california. The k12 education is a disaster for poor kids. I am a major proponent of School Choice for the following reasons. [applause] we have an opt out system of public education. Intel also you name the place, you know where the schools are. So who is stuck in failing neighborhood schools, a lot of them are minority kids and some are dysfunctional but a lot just dont have the choices so the next time i read an editorial in the Los Angeles Times or in the Washington Post about how charters in the School Choice and vouchers are so bad for the Public School system i want to say okay, send your kids to school outside of washington or east oakland. And when youve done that, you can talk about keeping ferrets from School Choice, but dont send your kids and then say we shouldnt have choice. This is one california could lead. [applause] let me just say that you are my hero and the age that there is so much talk about the challenges for women and minorities. I am looking for you to share what you think are the attributes that will help us as women and those of us are interested in raising maloney knows that can be productive and contribute and not be so entitled. I will take your top five in a heartbeat. I grew up in a particular way. I was lucky to grow up in segregated birmingham alabama. That might sound odd but my parents had a believing i could be anything i wanted including president of the United States or whatever i wanted to be. Now, the way they did that was interesting because they had two important mantras. One was you have to be twice as good. They meant this as armor against prejudice but i told my students if you work hard enough to the twice as good you were going to be confident and no one will be able to throw you off. They said the minute you describe yourself as a victim, youve given control of your life to somebody else. You can control the response to your circumstances and then they would say your armor will be a highquality education and then they had several others which were funny so my father would say somebody doesnt want to sit next to you because you are black that doesnt matter as long as they move. [laughter] [applause] and what he was saying is dont let somebody elses prejudice bring you down. So i say to young women and minorities but also to with my white male students, dont internalize somebody elses prejudice against you or views about you. Be confident enough in your self. I watch kids and think by the way, social media has contributed to this. I heard somebody say once to a group of younger people dont compare your actual life to somebody elses virtual life because they read on social media, everybody is perfect on social media. So, i think that they are internalizing now this sense of a kind of agrees meant and i cant achieve and i cant succeed and we need to say to them luck, life is not so easy but if you are wellprepared, you can get there. The final thing i would say in terms of womens leadership and the like is we have this conceit of mentors and role models but they have to look like you. Now had i been waiting for a black female role model i would still be waiting. Role models and mentors have to be people that you admire. Mine were old white males. They actually dominated by field. But they were people to solve things in me that i didnt even see him myself. When youve found those kind of role models, you have to be able to navigate a lot of ups and downs into difficulties of getting to the top of whatever color you are, whatever gender you are and i was fortunate i had parents that even under very difficult circumstances never had to let me off the hook for personal responsibility. [applause] thank you for coming here today. During secretary clintons term, about the second year the state department was doing some influencing and president putin term and all of a sudden i was on the news on msnbc and fox news once or twice and then it disappeared because of the hacking into the dnc and the release of a very damning emails. What do you think about the interference in other countries elections and nationbuilding . They dont actually interfere. What we do is we try to help people to have free and fair elections. One thing the United States supports is when the National Endowment for democracy, which president Ronald Reagan began since electoral monitors to make sure that the elections are proceeding free and fair. We do speak out when we see fraudulent activities. We tend to come up through the National Endowment for democracy or through Freedom House or others actually train people who then can go and be candidates and so forth. If that is not interference, what we are doing is trying to strengthen Opposition Forces in places where authoritarians press them. In putins case, he got really mad in 2012 because Hillary Clinton said that his election was fraudulent. If you got your people picked up for tax evasion, this was really bad in 2012 and even any really bad election by the way, he didnt when moscow so that tells you something is still a live among the russian people. And he is an ivory and eye ford of guy, so he says by the way they have been trying to interfere for a long time its just the internet and the Cyber Attacks give you other ways to do it, so he says now im going to show you what i can do. My view is that is what the interference was all about. The way i think we should have dealt with this was to say we know you did it. We will punish it at a time and place of our choosing. And by the way, we have absolute confidence in the american electoral system in absolute confidence in the outcomes of the american electoral system because he likes Nothing Better than seeing us spin around like chickens with our heads cut off talking about this was influenced and that was influenced. We should have expressed confidence in our own system. He wins when we dont express confidence in our own system. I am all for investigating what happened there. It is a hostile act by a foreign power. We need to know what happened and be smarter with our cybersecurity. By the way after all they hacked into our records, so clearly we are doing something that is making us vulnerable. And so, i do think that he was going after Hillary Clinton because he was angry because of what she did in 2012, but that is where i would stop in terms of his motivations. I wouldnt have gone so far as to say that he was trying to elect a particular person. I think that he was an eye for an eye. We have time for one more. [applause] one last question and i would like to take it from right here in the balcony if you could. You have given us your thoughts on u. S. Relations in places like china and russia. I was wondering if i could get some of your thoughts on the socialist governments in south america. In south america, yes, good question. So, theres a tremendous success story. When i first started teaching at stanford i taught a course called the google of the military in politics. And i always had several i could talk about. Now you look in latin america and most of the big states are functioning democracies. Brazil, chile, peru, colombia. Either way, one of the things i wanted to do in th give in to to say to people democracy promotion isnt iraq and afghanistan. That is a security problem and thats very hard, but colombia is a place that we helped bring back from the verge of it being a failed state, so the big things latin america are doing very well. There are a few like the sandinistas that are still hanging on and the cubans are still making trouble in latin america but they wont last. Those regimes i think will not last. The place that i am the most worried about is venezuela. This is a perfect situation. This used to be a middle income country that now people can find food and they cant find medicine. I dont think there is a contagion factor to the rest of the region because they are pretty strong. But i do think that the organization of the american states ought to finally say enough. They need to arrange for that regime to be voted out of office. Its going to take a long time maybe the transition of a couple of years because the liberal forces have been so suppressed by the regime, but its sort of chavez without charm. [laughter] i dont think that regime can last and we are beginning to see cracks in the regime. Venezuela is the single saddest situation right now in latin america and we need to deal with it. The efforts to bring the socialist regimes in Central America will come and go in places like el salvador and nicaragua but i think ultimately those regimes cannot last. We are honored as we always are when you pay us a visit and on behalf of all of us here i want to say thank you for coming and you are invited back at any time. Thank you so much. [applause]