Thank you. Before we get underway, i want to take a moment to thank those who helped make this event and so much of our work possible. We are fortunate to be supported by a range of sponsors, who are partners, really, in the work that we do and the world that we seek to create. Thank you to our conference sponsors, bob abernathy, the Carnegie Corporation of new york, compton foundation, Craig Newmark philanthropies, the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, open society foundation, the sandler foundation, and here i just want to take a moment and recognize Herb Sandlers support to the Truman Community for over a decade. Mr. Sandler passed away just last week, and i am so glad to have met him just a few weeks ago. We are grateful not just for their continued investment in our Organization Since 2008, but for their willingness to lead by example in funding and guiding the good fight for a wide range of likeminded organizations. I would like to thank Board Members, john driscoll, alvin loshak, stephen bailey, jake sullivan, jon finer, frank kendall, and matt spence. Execonline, Franklin Templeton investment, guide house and blue star strategies, and all of you, our members, who continue to support us through your dues and your contributions to our community in so many ways. Without your support and commitment to trumans mission, none of this would be possible, so thank you. We are also joined today by a number of our Board Members and friends from around the community. And finally, i would like to ask our hardworking staff, who have been pushing for months to make this a success, to please wave their hands. Theyre mostly at registration. Weve got a few in the back. I think theyre manning throughout the space here. Theyve been working really hard and i really appreciate everything theyve done. Im so thank you. [applause] jenna and especially for our new members. Please take a minute to introduce yourself to our staff. Theyre really special folks, and theyre here working for you. And, you know, im really just so excited to be here with all of you for what is my very first trucon as trumans new president and ceo, just three months into my tenure. [laughs] [applause] jenna it has been a busy three months, and were really excited to have you here today. Our theme today is American Global leadership, the path forward. And as ambassador burns details so eloquently in his newlyreleased book, the back channel a memoir of american diplomacy and the case for its renewal, the last two years of u. S. Foreign policy represent nothing short of what he calls unilateral diplomatic disarmament, born of equal parts ideological contempt and stubborn incompetence. And we know that this move comes right when americas interests are being contested in realtime. We have adversaries aplenty without tying one hand behind our back. We have got some stiff competition for who gets to write the rules of the global playbook at a time when new technologies are creating new realities and even posing fake ones faster than we can contemplate, legislate, or regulate. And still, still we know that we must chart a path forward. We must build the america and the world in which we want to live, a just, secure, prosperous, and inclusive world for all peoples. A world in which america defends its interests, but doesnt act alone. An america in which we all start living up to the best version of ourselves. You know, our namesake, harry men and women make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, Society Stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. And thats why im honored and humbled to stand shoulder to shoulder with our incredible members, nearly 2000 men and women from all across the country, statesmen and airmen, business leaders, academics, legislators, members of congress, and now two president ial candidates, Pete Buttigieg and seth moulton. Folks, we are the leaders we have been waiting for. We are not the next generation anymore. We are the now generation. And it is our time. Truman is training and supporting and giving voice to our incredible membership to craft the policies and messaging, to advance the solutions we need to drive u. S. Global leadership. Our value is clear, and truman was built for this moment. This conference is one such reflection of our values. In addition to the conversations on the threat of white nationalism, hearing from Foreign Policy advisors from a number of our campaigns, and a great panel on disinformation, military readiness, inclusion, and so much more, i hope youll notice something else, because throughout the course of the next three days, 54 of our speakers are women. 43 are people of color. [applause] jenna we have provided pronoun stickers at registration, so that you can, if you choose, let everyone know how you prefer to be addressed. And we are proud to provide complementary child care and a private room for women who are nursing, because you cannot be what you dont see, and and we are going to spend our time together building the america we deserve in ways great and small. [applause] jenna now, as we enter these three, what i hope will be challenging, invigorating, urgent, and also really fun and exciting days, i can think of no better person to set the mood and help us understand not just what is at stake, but what weve lost, but also, to really build the case for renewal, because this conference is about understanding the current moment, sure, but really, its about whats to come. The future we imagined and how we build it. And thats why it is an honor and a real pleasure to welcome ambassador bill burns, my former boss, to trucon. [applause] jenna ambassador burns is the chief of mission, or the president of the Carnegie Endowment for international peace, a role that was preceded by his 33 years of service to our nation as a diplomat. Ambassador burns or p undersecretary for political affairs, as many of us know him, has played a central role in most of the major u. S. Diplomatic efforts over the last three decades. Among them, the end of the cold war, the post 9 11 tumult in the middle east, and is a central figure in crafting the iran nuclear deal. Among his numerous accomplishments, he was ambassador to jordan, assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, ambassador to russia. Ambassador burns has received three distinguished president ial Service Awards and multiple awards from the state department to include three secretaries distinguished Service Awards. He is without a doubt one of the great statesmen of the last half century and rather astonishingly just an incredibly kind and decent man. I will never forget ambassador burns asking after my children as we sprinted through bilateral meetings on the margins of the u. N. General assembly. Folks, he coached his daughters sports teams in the midst of all of this. I dont know what excuse the rest of us have. Today, ambassador burns joins us to reflect on his career and diplomacy and really talk about the path forward for u. S. Foreign policy. He will be joined on stage by a voice we know well, but a face many of us dont, Mary Louise Kelly from National Public radio. Welcome. [applause] jenna Mary Louise Kelly is cohost of all Things Considered, nprs awardwinning afternoon magazine. Previously, she spent a decade as National Security correspondent for npr news, and she has kept that focus in her role as anchor. That has meant taking all Things Considered to russia, north korea, and beyond, including live coverage from helsinki for the infamous trumpputin summit, and her past reporting has tracked the cia, other intelligence agencies, terrorism, wars, and Rising Nuclear powers. Kellys assignments have found her deep in interviews at the khyber pass, at mosques, and in grimy belfast bars. And this fellow georgia native holds degrees from harvard and cambridge. We are so fortunate to have ambassador burns and Mary Louise Kelly here today. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to them. [applause] good morning everybody. Welcome, ambassador burns. Mr. Burns thanks. Its great to be with you. Great to be with all of you. Mary yes, it is great to be here. So we are tasked with looking at the future of american diplomacy and Foreign Policy, but i thought i might start by looking backwards for a moment. How did you get started in this gig . This was early 1980s, you write in your book you were offered a princely salary of 21,000. Mr. Burns it seemed like a lot of money at the time. Mary yeah, it was in 1980s in washington. And what was the attraction . Mr. Burns my dad was a career army officer, so i learned to respect Public Service through his experience, as i was growing up. Then when i was 18, just by serendipity, one of my best friends in high schools father egypt,the ambassador to so i spent four months in cairo at a very impressionable age, and that was my introduction to Diplomatic Service. And then i went to the old u. S. Embassy on groves square and took the written exam for Foreign Service ironically the same week as our Embassy Colleagues were taken hostage in tehran, which should have been a signal to me, i suppose. [laughter] mr. Burns but you know, i entered never expecting id do it for three and a half decades. I was very fortunate. Mary im hoping i can get you to tell a few stories of the some of the characters and crazy scenes that you encountered along the way before we get to where we are at this current moment. And let me ask you to start with russia. You did a couple of postings there. Mr. Burns i did, yeah. Mary ended up as ambassador, 2005 you went in . Mr. Burns i did. Mary how does that work . You go in and you present your credentials. Mr. Burns right. Mary you went to the kremlin in this case . Mr. Burns i did. Mary talk about that. Mr. Burns this is august of 2005, im the newly arrived u. S. Ambassador. I meet putin at the kremlin, which, as many of you know, is a place that is built on a scale that is meant to intimidate visitors, especially newly arrived American Ambassadors. You go through a huge, ornate hall, down long corridors, you go down a hall and twostory bronze doors, and youre kept minutesthere for a few to let this sink in, and then the doors crack open a bit and here comes Vladimir Putin, and despite their chested persona, he is not very intimidating in person. He is about 56 with lifts in his shoes. Before i got a word out of my mouth he says, you americans need to listen more, you cant everything your own way anymore. We can have a set of relations, but not just on your terms. Mary and by the way, welcome to moscow. Mr. Burns yes. There was not a lot of pleasantry. So it was in my experience, vintage Vladimir Putin, it was not so. Not subtle. It was a most defiantly charmless, but a direct message and thats the putin with whom we have been wrestling for all these years. Mary one of the perks of being ambassador to moscow is you get to live in the house, and you in your book describe some entertaining dinner parties and guests who made their way through those holes. Describe the house. Mr. Burns it has been the residence of the American Ambassador since 1934, so george kennon, as a young diplomat who helped move the first ambassador in there. I think theres so many layers of bugs in the walls that it probably confuses the Russian Security services as well. My wife and i said to have anything like a personal conversation, youd either have to turn the radio on really loud or go for a walk in the garden. But, no, its a lovely place and the history is full of stories of the house when kennon was serving there in the mid 1930s. There was one famous holiday or Christmas Party in which they brought not only the zoo keeper from the moscow zoo, but a bunch of the trained animals there and they one Red Army General managed to put basically, you know, a babys bottle filled with champagne for one of the trained bears, who then managed to get drunk and you know, fall all over the guests and everything else. So that was kind of a high bar for subsequent entertainment. Mary i hope you didnt replicate that in your tenure, but you did host a very young senator obama when he came to moscow . Mr. Burns yeah, this is the week after i got there. So shortly after this meeting with putin i described. So thensenator obama came with dick lugar, you know the revered senator from indiana who recently passed away, and lugar was clearly grooming barack obama to be his new sam nunn, you know, his new partner on a lot of arms control issues. And you know, i remember being struck first by senator obamas attentiveness to my daughters, you know, who were very young then, they were in middle school, and his daughters were a little younger than that, but he knew very much the experience of taking young kids himself moving to new places around the world, and he was totally unpretentious at that time. I dont know what his expectations were about running for president. Mary were you struck by his knowledge or questions about russia . Quiterns no, but he was curious and interested. We talked of other things, we moscow traffic was quite bad. Talking about iraq 2003, he was george h. W. Sted and bush Foreign Policy with baker and scowcroft and others, and where we went wrong where we went wrong at the time, which was two years after the invasion. Mary and if i had told you then, 2005, that we would be sitting here in 2019 and Vladimir Putin would still be the president of russia with several more years ahead of him in that role, what would you have thought . Mr. Burns you know, it probably wouldnt have shocked me. Mary really . Mr. Burns putin had created a system, even this is a decade ago, which centered so much on him, that even if he changed roles, as he did in 2008, you know, when he became prime minister, but he was still the ultimate decisionmaker. Dmitry medvedev was sort of the front for that. It was a system that is hard for ifin to move away from, even he wanted to. Mary you have watched the alaska my guess, three years play out with u. S. Russia relations and all of the many twists and turns weve witnessed. Is the Vladimir Putin that we can glimpse today, those of us who havent met him, does it seem to track with the Vladimir Putin you met . You knew him before he was president. Mr. Burns yeah, no, i met him when he was the deputy mayor of st. Petersburg, i think 1994, and he was a very great figure, i was a great figure as the political change at the u. S. Embassy. I certainly never thought he was going to be president of the russia, and he probably never thought that i was going to be the u. S. Ambassador. Atin, in my experience, is combustible combination of grievance and ambition and insecurity wrapped together. He prides himself on being able to play a weak hand skillfully, and hes a realist, if not a cynic. He understands that russia has a much weaker hand than the United States. I remember him saying publicly a year ago its not my fault if i play aweekend while weak hand while those with stronger hands play them poorly. He has a deep mistrust of his political elite and foreign leaders, and i think hes convinced himself the best way to carve out power for himself is to chip away at an americanled order, and hes been effective at parts of that especially over the last decade especially. Mary have you watched his appetite on taking risks grow . Mr. Burns i have. I think hes become more reckless over time. In my earlier experience, he was a much more calculated risk taker. I think you saw in ukraine, the appetite not just in swallowing crimea, but the push to the south of ukraine in the donbass as well. And i think his appetite for taking risk has grown, and we saw that most vividly in our election in 2016. It is not as if putin invented the dysfunction or polarization in our system. He saw it as an opportunity to take advantage. And i have always thought in addition to his training in the kgb as a Russian Security officer, the other thing to understand is hes a judo expert. He is trained to use the strengths of stronger opponents against them. When he saw dysfunction in our system, it was an opportunity to take advantage. I think he is as surprised as donald trump was that trump won, but i think he sought to accelerate the chaos in our system and put the thumb on the scale against Hillary Clinton. Mary before we leave putin, tell us the story, because you were actually there, for the famous meeting between putin and Hillary Clinton back when he still kind of liked Hillary Clinton, and she asked him about siberian tigers. Mr. Burns yeah, the conversation had been desultry until then. It was president putin complaining about american policy, and secretary clinton and i on the car ride talked about other things to discuss. Bearing in mind his barechested persona, he sees himself as a great outdoorsman, and he had taken a particular interest in tagging siberian tigers as well as polar bears in the Russian Far East and way up in the arctic north. As the conversation was kind of deteriorating, she asked him about this, and i have rarely seen putin more animated. He literally lit up talking about his