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Condoleezza Rice provides perspective on global topics
Speaking with the air of experience being in the thick of volatile global foreign policy, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to a large crowd inside Kresge Auditorium Tuesday evening.
Invited to DePauw University to speak as part of the Ubben Lecture Series, Rice initially provided comments about conflicts in places such as the Middle East, as well as their potential causes. She then sat down with 1974 graduate, trustee and public policy expert Kathy Hubbard to discuss current affairs.
In her short introduction of Rice, Hubbard said she “finally said ‘Yes’” after repeatedly being asked during golf rounds to come and speak at DePauw. She also shared details about her that some may not know: Rice is trained as a classical pianist, was once a competitive skater and has a knowledge of football that Hubbard described as “exceptional.”
From January 2005 through 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State, only the second woman -- and the first African American woman -- to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s National Security Advisor from January 2001 through 2005, the first woman to do so.
Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff from 1989 through March 1991, and was also senior director of Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as special assistant to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After she took the podium and recognized Timothy and Sharon Ubben, the series’ benefactors, Rice leapt into her lecture focused on the theme of what she labeled the “international system,” which she understood seems now to be “a little bit chaotic.”
“What we’re seeing I think is a breakdown of an international order which we’ve taken for granted,” Rice provided.
She elaborated that this order was greatly dependent on a “democratic peace,” explaining that efforts to establish democratic systems in Germany and Japan after World War II were meant to rebuild them rather than break them down further. Free trading systems, she said, were based on the idea that all can benefit from each other’s prosperity.
“Democracies don’t fight each other,” Rice said.
Rice transitioned her focus to three elements and events which she believed has led up to the perceived shakeup of a stable system of peace and agency. She described the moments after then-President George W. Bush and his administration realized the planes crashing into the World Trade Center were part of a concerted attack which challenged a collective sense of security.
“When the Secret Service wants to escort you, they don’t,” Rice said to laughter from the audience. “They pick you up and take you.”
She added that the modern vulnerabilities of cybersecurity further challenge the idea that “an attack on one is an attack on everyone,” as well as the issue of what she referred to as great power rivalries, most especially with China and Russia. This vying for power, she said, has led to that breakdown in diplomatic relations.
This said, she still took a dig at Russian President Vladimir Putin, who she said knows her well as an expert on Soviet policy.
“He once told me that Russia has been a great nation because of people like Peter the Great,” she smirked. “I wanted to ask if that included ‘Vladimir the Great,’ but you can’t do that as a diplomat.”
For Rice, these three hampers of foreign policy give further encouragement to isolationism, nativism, nationalism and protectionism - what she called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As result, “Do you hear me now?” movements lead those who feel abandoned by politicians and fellow citizens with more favorable circumstances to weaponize identity and divisively create an “other.”
For Rice, this phenomenon materializes out of both economic and cultural misunderstandings.
“You can’t have third-graders who can’t read anymore,” she said. “You can’t have college graduates with huge debt and no practical skills.”
Rice specified that those who are in poverty and unable to get a solid education in poor areas, especially minority children, have little to hope for. To combat this and other related issues, she believed it necessary to make efforts in bridging cultural divides.
However, Rice said she was optimistic that this current generation was more public-minded, and that places like DePauw would foster the future leaders who will find solutions to these issues.
Rice is currently the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. She is also a professor of political science at Stanford.
In a discussion with Hubbard, Rice commented on a variety of issues developing in the Middle East. This included President Donald Trump’s recent move to pull troops out of Syria, which she described as an “impulsive decision” which complicated efforts to keep the Islamic State (or ISIS) from regrouping.
Rice also touched on the issues which have faced Iraq since it was invaded by the United States in 2003. She defended the Bush administration’s aim of uncovering weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein was accused of harboring, stating that an abundance of intelligence believed they existed.
Rice added that the invasion was to address a “security problem,” and not meant as an avenue to establish a democracy. However, she believed that Iraq’s reemergence since has taken too long to rise above the conflict which surrounds it.
She also commented on how U.S. foreign policy has been aimed at dealing with China as a global economic power or a potential adversary. She said that while authoritarian regimes such as China’s may be efficient in building roads, democracies make far fewer “big” mistakes.
Rice said U.S. policies such as severe tariffs threaten to “overdo” relations with China, but admitted that there is no clear strategy.
Finally, Hubbard asked Rice to comment on whether she believed that racism was a greater problem now than in the past. She had a blunt reply.
“Are you kidding me?” she said in an unflinching manner.
Rice described her childhood as a “war zone” in segregated Birmingham, Ala., saying that race relations then were far worse. Though describing slavery and Jim Crow as “birth defects” in the nation’s growth, Rice believed that race complicated by poverty had indeed gotten worse.
But she provided three ideas which she said her parents drilled into her to succeed against prejudice: She had to be twice as good, not be a victim of circumstances and let others who are intolerant break themselves down.