This is a goodlooking room. Welcome to trucon 2019. [applause] great to see so manys and members and sponsors and our board. Thanks so much for joining us here and welcome to trucon 2019. [applause] jenna i am so glad youre here with us today, and i am especially grateful to those of you who traveled a great distance to be here. 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 plans that summer to go up to the Russian Arctic and tag polar bears. So he took us out of the meeting we were in, down to his private office, and you saw all of these very surprised russian staff and president ial security officers, and he had this big, you know, it occupied the whole wall of his private office, this map of russia, which is across 11 time zones it needs the whole wall for the map, and he was animated pointing to places he wanted to go. The punch line is at the end of this if bill clinton, the former president might want to go with him, and he said maybe youd like to come hillary, and she was very polite, but in the car ride back she made clear that was the last place she and her husband would want to spend their summer vacation. Mary chasing tigers with putin. Mr. Burns it would have been worth the price of admission, i think. Mary let me take you to another part of the world, another moment, the arab spring. Mr. Burns right. Mary because it strikes me of the many days you watched history unfold realtime from either the state department or some foreign posting, or from the situation room in that case, i guess. Just those hours where obama was trying to persuade mubarak in egypt, game over. Youre done. You were there . Mr. Burns i was. Yeah, yeah. And mubarak was convinced that americans by and large were naive about what it took to ensure political control in egypt. You could almost feel it in his voice as he was talking to president obama. The president quite firmly, if diplomatically, making clear to mubarak that the time had come. And you know, mubaraks experience with the revolution began in early 2011 was a classic instance of too little too late. Steps he might have taken to open up the system a month earlier, by the time he did it, the street had moved way past and, and ultimately the Egyptian Armed forces did, too. Our friend in the gulf, saudis and others, still bear a grudge over this. Their sense is that the Obama Administration threw mubarak and the egyptian leadership under the bus. The reality of my experience was the political bus was halfway across his prone political body before the United States ever pronounced itself on this. Mary when did it start dawning on all of you, the president and Hillary Clinton was secretary of state then, that this wasnt restricted to one, two, or three countries, this was a whole region. Mr. Burns it was. I wish i could tell you that we had neatly predicted the change after the first revolution began in tunisia. You could see the seeds of this for years and years, even from my first posts in the early 1980s in jordan. The pace of it and the way in which it involved in which it evolved in each of the arab societies was very hard to grasp, and id be the first to acknowledge i think we some some things right and other things wrong, too. In egypt, i think the president made about the only calls an american president could on this, given the limits of our agency. In libya, while again i think the president was right to act in the way that we did, we got a lot of our mediumterm assumptions wrong, about how hard it would be to restore order post gadhafi. There was mary you knew gadhafi . Mr. Burns i did. And i first felt this was another back channel diplomacy in the george w. Bush administration when i led secret talks with gadhafi, first, to get libya out of the business of terrorism, after the lockerbie attack which killed 278 innocent people on an airliner, and then to get out of what was a rudimentary Nuclear Weapons program, and dealing with gadhafi in those years, 2003, 2003, 2004, was probably the single most peculiar experience i had as a diplomat. His favorite time for meeting was like 3 00 in the morning, which was not my prime time. Youd meet him in the middle of the desert in a tent, which was not ornate. It was this kind of canvas army tent filled with plastic white lawn furniture, and gadhafi sitting there at 3 00 in the morning, and he had this very disconcerting habit in the middle of conversation of pausing up at the ceiling for three or four minutes presumably gathering his thoughts. As a diplomat, you are trained to carry on the conversation. Was he wason for me a snappy dresser. He was wearing on that occasion what looked like a pajama top with photographs of dead african dictators on it. Mary wow. Custommade. Mr. Burns i am sure it was. I dont think it was a designer item, and i would spend three or four minutes trying to figure out how many of those i could identify. I got pretty good by the end of it, because he paused a lot. The other gadhafi story you may remember, the fall of 2009 he came to the u. N. General assembly to speak. Leaders are supposed to speak no more than seven or eight minutes. Gadhafi went on for 90 minutes. He didnt have a text in front of him, he had all of these little scraps of paper that kept falling off the podium as he was speaking. He was rambling all over the place. When i remember most vividly is 75 minutes into the 90minute monologue, the wonderful arabic Language Interpreter at the u. N. , i was listening on my ear phones, you could hear him in arabic say, i cant take this anymore. He threw his head phones off, and last 15 minutes anybody who didnt speak arabic, they didnt miss much. [laughter] mr. Burns but the problem with gadhafi, once the revolution began, this was existential for him. He wasnt going to negotiate himself out of existence, and so however much we may have gotten wrong, some of the mediumterm assumptions, you know, i still think the president s decision to act was almost unavoidable, because here you had the u. N. Security Council Resolution legitimizing the use of force in that instance. You have the arab league, of all institutions, calling on the United States to act, partly because, at one time or another, everyone around the arab summit table, gadhafi had tried to off. He was a unifying factor in the arab world. And then syria is the most, as you look at the arab spring tragedies, you know, syria is the most painful, not just because of its impact for syrians, but because of the, you know, really dangerous spillover in the region and outside the region as well. Mary well, and ive interviewed many people who you would have been working closely with, veterans of obamas Foreign Policy team. Mr. Burns yes. Mary who describes syria as their greatest regret, and specifically the failure to enforce the red line that obama drew in 2012. Mr. Burns yeah, it was a mistake that we all made. And i think there was probably an earlier mistake in the sense that in 2012, when you still had, you know, a pretty significant, if kind of unruly moderate opposition, there was a moment when even the russians, i remember at the time, were quite nervous about assad losing altitude. He was having a hard time recruiting people for the syrian military. He was losing ground in northwestern syria. You know, there was a moment if we could have telescoped the assistance that we provided to the moderate opposition, im not at all sure it would have turned the tide on the battlefield or caused the assad regime to collapse. It would have given us more leverage diplomatically, not just with assad but with the russians and iranians. I think the classic problem in our diplomacy in syria in those years was an imbalance between ends and means. We are setting maximalist ends outside of moscow, theres a red line with regard to the use of chemical weapons, but we tended to apply our means too incrementally and too grudgingly. By contrast to what putin did in december 2015 with a Russian Military invention that was relatively modest, but he did it in a decisive fashion, and that multiplied the political advantage. Mary do you see syria and where mary do you see syria and where we are now as an american policy failure . How much responsibility does the u. S. Bear there . Whats going on . Mr. Burns it is hard for me having lived through this, having been responsible, shared responsibility, to see this as anything other than an american policy failure. That does not mean it is exclusively an american policy failure. I mean, Bashar Alassad himself has saved his regime, but ruined a society and a country. Bashar alassad was kind of an accidental despot. He was setting up ophthalmology in london when his brother, who was an heir, was killed in a car accident. He was assuming the assad family play book, and brutishly is an an article of faith, and you had to be suspicious of everybody else, and did he that in a ruthless fashion. It didnt have to end that way. The initial were peaceful, it was school kids in a small city in southern syria near the jordanian border, but assad reacted in the only way that that mafia clan, which is really what the assad family is, knew how, which was brutally. And then that violence begot other violence as well. The russians and iranians share a lot of responsibility. I think they saw this as the place where they were going to make their stand against regime change, and almost anything the United States did, they were going to double down. Each for their own reasons, because russian and iranian interests in syria are not identical, but its just an awfully sad episode. And as i said, in terms of diplomacy or american Foreign Policy, the reminder of the importance of getting ends and means aligned. Mary yeah. Stay in the region and go to the situation that was leading the npr newscast as i walked in today, as we all walked in iran and whats happening in the gulf, two tankers attacked yesterday, tensions running high. How i mean, run us through the playbook of how you navigate that diplomacy when youre talking about two countries that dont have two diplomatic relations . Mr. Burns right. Well, id say several things. First, if the iranians are responsible for the attacks on the two tankers yesterday, that is a reckless and dangerous act. I do think its at least partly a predictable consequence of an american strategy in this administration which says its about coercive diplomacy, but it is really coercive diplomacy without the diplomacy part. Which is a pretty big challenge. You know, i have seen, you know, in working on the Iranian Nuclear negotiations, especially secret talks of 2013, how you can make coercive diplomacy work. I mean, it was not an accident that the minds of the iranian leaders were focused, because of very broad anda very Strong International sanctions effort that by 2013, value of iranian currency had dropped by 50 , its oil exports had dropped by 50 . But we coupled about with the willingness to engage diplomatically. And the danger which youre seeing unfold today, which all of you are, if you embark on a course of diplomacy, which is all coercion and no diplomacy, you run the risk of both inadvertent collisions and then hardliners, and theres no shortage of them, either, in this administration in washington or in tehran today, become kind of mutual enablers going up an escalatory ladder. And you have to remember in the middle east, i mean, you know, this is the land of unintended consequences and inadvertent collisions that escalate fast, and that is a real danger. And in my view, a totally unnecessary one. I dont nobody needs to convince me that iranian actions and lots of different fronts threaten our interests and the threaten the interests of our friends, but it was a huge mistake to bail out of the Iranian Nuclear agreement, not because it was a perfect agreement. I have rarely seen perfect on the menu in diplomacy. But it did limit what, in my view, was the imminent risk that was posed by iran, which is an unconstrained nuclear program. We still had the challenge of pushing back against other, you know, iranian actions that were threatening and that remain threatening, but we were in a much better place to do it, because we had put together a very Strong International coalition that isolated iran, and now, i think what were doing is actually isolating ourselves in some ways, too. Mary do you believe this Current Administration is interested in walking back from the cliff and ratcheting things down . Mr. Burns you know, it is hard, because you see a lot of incoherence. The president s instincts are hard for me to figure. I think he probably genuinely means what he says, that he is willing to talk to iranian leadership. This is unburdened by any knowledge of the comprehensive Nuclear Agreement or anything else. But i do think the people around him, john bolton, with whom i worked in different administrations before, is one of them, that when they say what they are interested in is a Better Nuclear Deal with iran, but, you know, in fact, i think the real motive is a capitulation of the Iranian Regime or an implosion of the Iranian Regime, and i do not think any of those as possible in the near future. The Iranian Regime is very good at taking advantage of outside pressures, and most unlikely to i think to capitulate with the 12 demands that secretary pompeo laid out. So if those goals are unrealistic, then they are left with the dimension before, the dangerous collisions which can , escalate, and a lot of Collateral Damage too. We are dealing with vladimir work for him, in a sense, which is widening the fissure between us and our closest european allies. We are loading the sanctions over time. Even the foreign minister of germany a year ago stood up and said in the face of repositioning unilateral american sanctions on iran, all of this will reduce vulnerability to the American Financial system. This will not happen overnight, it will not happen next year, but in six years, we will wake up and find out that a tool that we often overused or misused, but that sometimes was quite effective, is no longer as effective as it once was. Mary i think of the many points you just made, what strikes me is that someone with your level of expertise, directly negotiating with iranian counterparts, that it is not clear to you what the u. S. Goal is with iran. Mr. Burns yes. That is always a dangerous thing in diplomacy, because the people tend to assume the worst about what you are doing. Whether it is the iranians or allies or others. In many respects, the biggest mistake we are making today, not just in iran but around the world, at a moment when we are no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block. The rise in china, the resurrection of russia. The huge existential challenges of climate change, the revolution in technology. That is the moment where actually diplomacy and our capacity to draw on alliances and mobilize coalitions matters of countries matters more than ever. It actually matters a lot more momentve in the unipolar 20 years after the cold war. It is that capacity to draw alliances and mobilize coalitions that sets us apart today from lonelier powers like china and russia. But my worry is we are squandering that asset at precisely the moment it matters most, not just on iran but on a whole range of issues. Mary let me turn you briefly to a very different challenge. A very different situation, north korea. If you are making the pitchfork reenergized robust diplomacy is as the way forward, can diplomacy solve the north korea problem . God knows, many generations have tried. Mr. Burns the diplomatic landscape in american Foreign Policy is littered with examples of where we were not able to make diplomacy work, for one reason or another. I never took issue with President Trumps instinct. Diplomacyox, to turn on his head with kim jongun. It is not like i could point to a pristine record of success in diplomacy before that. But i think that the problem remains, you have to connect that symmetry and personal relationships, which do matter, to the day in and day out hardnosed work of diplomacy. You have to be realistic about it. After two summits with kim, it is pretty obvious to me, at least, that there is no chance in the foreseeable future that this north korean regime will fully denuclearize. It is important to retain that as an aspirational goal. There are lots of other countries in the world. The practical question as you look at over the next couple years is are they going to reduce the dangers in the meantime . If you set aside the irony of what im about to say, i think era, i think you could learn a little bit from the experience of dealing with iran. After the secret talks in 2013, which i led along with another truman project, along Jake Sullivan we helped put together , an interim agreement. It took Iranian Nuclear program, it rolled it back in some important respects, introduced very intrusive verification and monitoring procedures. Very limited sanctions were relieved. We preserve the bulk of the sanctions for the comprehensive talks. That is the kind of step i think would be practical to go forward in dealing with north korea. It would be infinitely more difficult to do. It would almost make you nostalgic for dealing with the iranians, because especially on verification, i think the north korean regime will resist that intensely. But i think that is a realizable goal. Again, preserving the aspirational aim of a denuclearize north korea. But i think the president is so enamored with love letters and dealing with kim at the top. If i were kim jongun, that is exactly the way i would want. Mary in the north koreau. S. Relationship, you are dealing with readers on both sides who have not embraced delegating and allowing their staff mr. Burns it has not been careerenhancing for people who get delegated in north korea. Mary no. Exactly. So how do you break through that and get some of these details that could mean incrementally moving over . Forward . That is not the way these guys do it. Mr. Burns it is a little bit fanciful to think you could do that. If you ask about diplomacy, i just dont see it. That is the way to maximize the interest and leverage that all of our allies or partners that and that the chinese gave us. Mary what is the state of u. S. Diplomacy today . If i asked you for one word. Mr. Burns hollow. Hollowed out would be the twoword answer. I think it could be measured in tangible and intangible ways. I would add that it is not as if donald trump or the people around him invented drift in american diplomacy. Ever since the end of the cold war, we have oftentimes had a hard time both recognizing and investing in the significance of diplomacy. And the unipolar american moment did not seem like it was given world wet in the needed to expend so much on diplomacy. After 9 11, the huge shock to our system, a huge gap in our intelligence tool, but the drift has been going on for a while. But what President Trump has done was accelerated it and made it a lot worse. Mary you are saying this decline was inevitable . Mr. Burns i dont think it was inevitable, but no matter who had won, if Hillary Clinton won in 2016, she what have had to recognize that we are the new era on the international landscape. It is more crowded in that area. And contested here in that area diplomacy matters more than , ever. Therefore it is worth looking at ways in which you could reform it, the tools of American Foreign politics, along with all the other National Security tools. Because you never get far in diplomacy unless it is backed up by military and economic leverage as well. We have to be honest about that. That is also going to be the reckoning, i think, in the post trump era, whether it is in the year and a half or 5. 5 years. There will be a huge challenge. The worry i have is we are digging a hole for ourselves today in terms of american diplomacy but also in terms of our role and influence in the world, we will eventually stop digging, whenever that is. It is not like the rest of the landscape is static. We will climb to the top of the hole and look at the landscape. That is hardened against our interests and against our values, in a lot of ways. Allies are starting to lose faith and hedge. Adversaries take advantage, whether it is china, russia, or regional adversaries. Institutions, enlightened that we worked so hard over decades to help shape, it is starting to teeter. For all of those reasons, i worry. You look at the practical measures in the state Department Today you have a , Record Number still, almost three years into the administration, of senior vacancies in washington and overseas ambassador posts. We have the slow progress we have made over the last three or four decades to help create a service to look more like our own society. When i entered the Foreign Service in 1982, most american diplomats looked like me. Nine out of 10 were white and only a quarter were women in that era. By the time i left, the gender balance was close to 5050 but , although still woefully inadequate at senior ranks. Those trendlines, however painful, however slow have been , reversed. There is a really pernicious practice i think in the last couple years of going after individual career Civil Servants or Foreign Service officers just because they worked on controversial issues in the last administration. That is the way you corrode an institution, in my experience. The last thing i would say have been the intangible factors. Present trump was asked whether he was worried about the senior vacancies amongst diplomats. He said, not really, because im the only one who matters. That is an exercise in narcissism. That is not the diplomacy i learned working for jim baker. Mary let me challenge you. It sounds like you are describing there are two traps here. The decline perhaps in american diplomacy. And the decline perhaps in american influence overall. They are related but not the same thing. I have such a distinct memory of setting up the state department well before President Trump. This was back to the run up to the war in iraq, 2002, early 2003. Colin powell was secretary of state. Im taking notes on the state Department Briefing and had this moment where i realized im not sure this is where the most impactful american policy is being formulated. That is being done through military channels, and that is being done at langley. Is it worth considering perhaps america is conducting Foreign Policy with more clout and leverage through policies that are not diplomatic . Mr. Burns i disagree little bit. I think you are right that relatively speaking, american influence in the world is not the same as it was at the height of the unipolar moment, again, when i was working for baker in the state department. Through natural forces, the way the system works, powers rise over time, like china. That has begun to shift. Of course, their own unforced errors. The Global Financial crisis in 2008 are both at the top of the list. But the reality i think is that precisely because we still have a better hand to play than everybody else. But it is not the singular dominant it was 30 years ago. Precisely because of that, diplomacy ought to be a more important instrument. Along with all the other was. Because to multiply our influence in the world, you need allies. You need partners. The military helps produce that, intelligence sharing also contributes enormously to that. The problem is, as president obama used to say, the military those of you who are veterans in the audience know, that creates an imbalance over time. We end up expending blood and treasure in conflicts in some instances that could be avoided or mitigated by using diplomacy as our first tool or resort. That is the only thing i think we have missed. Not just hanging this on the trump era, we missed this in previous eras. To some extent, not as egregiously as now. That is the realization i think american states will have to come to. In this era, diplomacy backed up by all these other tools, matters more than ever. Mary there is a lovely closing thought in your book, tourquevilles quotation, the greatness of america lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation but in her ability to prepare her faults. You do add the trump era has the capacity for self repair beyond imagination. The book offers a broad prescription for self repair. Ther at the clumsy diplomacy for dummies level what , advice would you give to your successors trying to navigate this climate here in america and the world they are wrestling with . Mr. Burns there is at least three things that are obvious to all of you as they are to me. You have followed these issues for many years. You do need Political Leadership that understands we have entered a new era, you cant turn the clock back to the unipolar american moment. Its an era in which, as we were discussing before, diplomacy does matter more than ever. We have to be honest with second, ourselves as professional diplomats in the state department. While individual american diplomats can be incredibly courageous, creative, and innovative, as an institution, the state department is really rarely accused of being too agile or too full of initiative. We tell ourselves we are gardeners. This was the george cannon, George Schulz metaphor. Sort of pruning problems around the world. We havent done such a good job our own messy patch of garden in the state department. The things we can do to delay or because we are too heavy. Then on top of that renewed foundation in the state department, you have to add 21st century skills. You have to be creative about doing that. If you want to bring people into the state department, even if it is just for a couple of years with experience in the world of technology, we will have to look at ways in which you can bring people in temporarily at the middle level. The same is true with regard to climate issues and a number of others for which the state department is still kind of stuck in the 20th century by and large. Third and last but not least, we also have to be honest about the reality that there is a pretty big disconnect in our own society right now between people like me cardcarrying , members of the washington establishment like me when we preach the virtues of disciplined american leadership, there are lots of americans who dont need to be persuaded on the importance of american engagement. But they are skeptical about the discipline part. They see too many experiences in the post9 11 era. The administrations of both parties where we havent been especially disciplined, as well. Over time, you have to reduce the disconnect and build more of a domestic compact. Not just with congress, which still will determine appropriations and other things, but also with the wider american public. There are lots of people who have a stake in the world with whom you can work, governors, mayors. That needs to be a higher priority, i think. Mary you would still advise todays teenagers, College Students to go into the path you chose . Who want to serve the country and have an impact . Mr. Burns absolutely. I draw on my own experience. That is why i wrote this book, to bring diplomacy to life at a moment when i think not just Diplomatic Service but Public Service in general is so belittled and denigrated. In my experience, i wouldnt have traded it. For anything. I would have traded a few moments here and there. It was a wonderful experience. I think especially in this era for the United States, you can do a lot of good. Not just for our interest, but for people around the world. I am a passionate believer in the value of Public Service. I know a lot of people are turned off today. Applications are off about 20 , 30 . After 20 years in which every year applications rose. That is really discouraging. It is actually a very good time to get in, in a way. People who come in, those junior diplomats or career Civil Servants, can be part of the renewal phase of an effort not just to renovate not only the state department but americas role in the world. That is exciting, i think. Mary you may have anticipated my last question. Here it is. We interviewed you on npr a few weeks ago. One of the questions we asked was whether you felt that your time at the state department, broadly speaking, america had been a force for good in the world. You said yes. But it occurs to me we framed that as during your time at the state department, you left in 2014. Five years later, do you and do you still in your heart feel america is a force for good in the world . Mr. Burns there is a lot more room for doubt in the course of last three years. We are doing a lot more things around the world that are damaging to our own interest. Squandering the assets that alliances and coalitions provide. We are walking away from some enormously crucial issues. Climate probably being the best example of that, at a time when the challenge is only getting bigger and we are missing opportunities there. We are missing an opportunity to help begin to shape workable rules of the road on a lot of the challenges posed by the revolution of technology. That will not come through some brandnew convention, it will come from likeminded countries working together to develop some basic rules that can then shape the incentives and disincentives of society. I worry about all of those missed opportunities right now. I think we are checking our values at the door into many relationships with authoritarian leaderships. Leaderships. Saudi arabia being a classic example today. That is not a service to the longterm future of those societies. If they dont come grips with some of those problems, they will become more brittle over time. They will be less reliable partners over time, too. The last thing i will say is ive always been a big believer in all of the years i spent serving United States overseas in the power for our example over the power of our preaching. I think we are setting a pretty lousy example today. That spills over into how people look not just at the american government, but at what we think we embody at our best. We are not always at our best. But at our best, i think we embody a sense of openness and respect to the dignity of human beings. Without that, i think there is a consequence not just for american interests, but the Way International order evolves, too. Mary will burns, ambassador thank you. , mr. Burns thanks, mary. [applause] a panelthat same event, discussion on Foreign Policy with senator elizabeth warren, mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President joe biden and senator bernie sanders. This is an hour and 20 minutes. [applause] amna good morning, everybody. Can everyone hear me ok . Excellent. Thank you for being here. I will let you come on up and take a seat. I think we got the order right. No one will ding us if we dont. Everyone comfortable . Good morning. We are here to talk about what a progressive vision for Foreign Policy and National Security looks like. Just so you guys know, this is going to be a conversation. You gu c