An Hour with Madeleine Albright

from the leed center at the university of kansas he pierre presents an hour with madeline albright i'm kay macintyre madeline albright served as secretary of state under president clinton the nation's first female secretary of state at the time the highest ranking women in the history of the us government she also served as permanent representative to the united nations she is currently a professor at the georgetown university school of foreign service and is the author of several books for latest the mighty and the almighty reflections on america god and world affairs explores the role of religion in politics secretary albright's appearance is sponsored by the dole institute of politics speaking with secretary albright is stephen takes senior fellow emeritus of the dole institute and now pearlman thank you for coming this

evening is true a great honor to have you here that you're going on there's a lot to cover this obviously you know the world was with a new meaning to that of expression a world hurt but i wanted to start off with which your book and the concepts that brought you to write this this one book be the money in the almighty obviously extremely well timed the pope's comments caused riots in the muslim world and jogged and four there's a new book on faith and politics and domestic politics all obviously john kerry just the pbs interview talking about his faith i wanted to know how this book evolved how your own concepts of religion and it says meaning in terms of diplomacy for the fears of all welcome there so i'm really so grateful to every day for coming this evening and i have to say i had kind of an interesting trip i just came from the clinton library to show of

bipartisanship here i am steve it's very nice to be with you again there really is an evolutionary process to this if i can just take a minute i am of a generation of students of international fares and practitioners who used to generally say this issue is so complicated let's not bring god into it complicated now ah but clearly even as we were in office it was evident that religion in a variety of ways with playing a huge role in various set of the issues we were dealing with prince's jerusalem jerusalem was just real estate problem we were dealt with them a long time ago but when the parties involve believe that god gave them that piece of land and they're obviously as another presence in the romance also as we were in office there is increasing evidence the burbling in various things in the

islamic world and so we began to think about ways to study as long to get involved in and that they'll waste mentioned kosovo bosnia a lot of that had to do not only ethnic the religious conference are really came into fruition in my mind anyway more that as i was asked to give a speech at yale divinity school in the spring of two thousand and four and i began to really think more systematically about the role of religion in god in our own foreign policy amanda how effective a variety of different of the conflicts that we're going on i have to admit that one of the hypotheses of the book was that president bush in his relationship to god was an anomaly in american foreign policy but i went back and i re looked at american history through the religious prison and every american president has invoked god in some form or another president mckinley going so far as to

say that it was our duty to christianize the philippines although they were catholics are made because they work mcdonough said that's how it evolved and and in contrast to my first book i my first readable book nine pm my memoirs which you know is easier to writing and i knew more about me than anybody else i had to learn a lot to write this book and and i tell my friends i am not a theologian and i have been turned into really just mistake i am a problem solver and so the book we both worked for jimmy carter did your involvement with thinking about this issue and thinking about the ramifications which and one appears in the policy specifically asked our job alter and carmen assertion a member he was somewhat area yes and it wasn't it wasn't greed it

universally wasn't there is very interesting i think when we give both worked for president carter and and clearly i think people are very interested in all of a sudden there was a southern baptists that had become president and his very religious in his own fate and the truth is that from his perspective and then war i think i have to admit in reid learning and re reading a lot of the stuff about camp david his camp david it was very evident that religion was playing a role and i interviewed president carter this book and geek he really spoke about a very deliberate aspect of using his religious knowledge and his relationship with mr bacon of israel who was a very strong believer in two years to see the value and the importance of understanding religion but i have to say and i speak personally anywhere fascinated by president carter in terms of his own religious beliefs and sell but i don't think it had the same kind of in depth involvement

as we're seeing in recent years when some religious leaders even john and forth as much and basically excoriate some domestic religious leaders for their involvement and so many religious leaders around the world to find that their positions are bolstered by conflict by basically horning up with iran and how when fear and anger it's kind of tough to bring people went to the table when politically speaking they're more in tune with the conflict that's going on now it seems a lot of religions around the world these days most major ones feel are under threat in some fashion certainly here in united states fundamentalist that oversees and certainly iraq for good reason but the sunnis and the shiites and the christians there on how you bring people to the table in a situation where there's so many people were looking to to take advantage of the conflict well i think the interesting part is to try to figure out to what extent religion is used for ill and complex and

people are citing various aspects of their religious belief to fulfill whatever desires they have in a calm in the situation that makes it even more conflicted and they clearly are calm frankly all three of the great abrahamic religions have extremists and one of the hardest parts stephen stephen you describe the vocabulary because fundamentalist doesn't quite work for me back so extremists i'm not sure that's right either and and i think we have to be really careful in how we say things on all of this not a kind of a really a stereotype people are and what we think they believe that what which are asking in terms of the income which part i just came from a truly remarkable meeting of president clinton's global initiative and one of them there are lots of great speakers in one of the really incredible people there was archbishop desmond tutu i played such a huge role in south african reconciliation and he said about

religion or something and i'm going to quote from now on is that religion is like the night you can either use it to sliced bread or stick and sometimes that and i think it shows what can happen and has where people have taken various parts of their holy books and somebody else's holy book to say look at all the blood curdling parts and that the truth is that the old testament certainly has a lot of blood curdling parts of the new testament has some kind of fierce parts of the koran does and so the question is how to pick them art that are common language in which they're also is a lot peace love charity justice and an aside i think they can be picked up and different ways to exacerbate conflict or what i'm advocating in this book is to help to get religious leaders despite what the pope has said to help in resolving you working

with senator brownback on an issue of uncommonly years with common values could you explain i mean it i have to say i write it and not just kidding it is so nice to be here because i have a sense just to be here and also a little rock that it's nice to be with real people and end i loved living in washington i've lived there since nineteen sixty eight and i actually first met their goal when i worked on capitol hill sent a mosque again they knew each other and so i have despite a few partisan and so my side i am basically like bipartisanship than our washington at the moment as horrible as a horrible place it is toxic to republicans and democrats barely speak to each other and it's very different from various other times when i've

been involved in politics there and so were paralyzed the american system of the airlines because of aig and when i went out to see senator brownback when i was doing interviews from a book and we started talking and we'd all of a sudden found that we had a lot of issues there we could do in common and so we have this rather peculiar partnership here i am an apartment with a very conservative christiansen in kansas looking to find issues that we can do together we had a conference on this last fall enjoyed at georgetown under the sponsorship of aspen institute to look at issues that we actually could do together and we have found four for starters that we agree on stopping genocide and what's interesting is you know the huge rallies for stopping genocide and are poor are really composed of right and left black white muslims christians and jews it's an example of what we can do together and

stopping trafficking people helping refugees and religious tolerance and so we're continuing to work together to look for issues that ride like to work with what i have found very admirable there are some conservative christian groups that have a very ambitious international program in terms of humanitarian activities bleeding heart liberals have very ambitious ideas in humanitarian relief and i think we can work together on an international agenda and senator brownback in place so we are we're partners in a small within within the concept of soft power i guess i don't like it so despite the fact that the term was invented by the promoter lionel like the term saw her as is so soft and it doesn't sound like you're doing anything but it is a way not just using military i am the themes in my life are

you were all influenced by our backgrounds and delays he mentioned i was born in texas but he and we left there twice and ii elaborated on this bit at my memoirs that you know a new mayor is the deciding event in czechoslovakia life and it was an agreement that was made by the british french italians and germans over the heavy objects of our immunizes wasn't there so for me that's a very significant and then when the nicest that into a war to the tide was change twenty nine states i made a deal that allowed the soviet union to liberate central eastern europe and also had obviously very deleterious effects of the themes that i love is that the role of the united states and i have been an airline have believed in the goodness of american power ah and i think that there are many ways to protect american parish rather than just a

military way so and no one was who is more in favor of a muscular foreign policy the new for the administration and i've seen that containment they have and working in certain circumstances were no use our armpits led to the question of whether we are losing our have have lost moral authority in the world i believe that the united states have a moral foreign policy which for me means that we have to base our foreign policy on things that that this country has been counted upon such as human rights religious liberty at a sense of civil liberties a rule of law that that's a very different from a moralistic foreign policy where we're lecturing to everybody all the time i have been very concerned about what i consider is our lost moral authority due primarily to what has happened in abu ghraib and guantanamo

and it is made it very difficult for us to take other countries to task because of their human rights because one of the things that we had done all these years has decided for instance that china it has a very bad human rights record and so we have in the past taken it too the human rights commission that the united nations or cuba and tried to become a nation by other countries we can't do that anymore because we're left out of court on it so i have believed in the importance of the moral authority of the united states because i really do think where an exceptional country that we have lost that moral authority and to go back on something you said i was in favor of muscular for kasey i am i am why i do believe that there are times when you have to use force in order to try to stop genocide appealing various things that were happening in the balkans which is something that

senator dole and i worked those devices talking about with the sense of why should we go in then why should we use american forced to intervene either in bosnia later and possible so i believe in military force that i don't believe in just using military force to solve conflict national intelligence estimate just came out that said sixteen different agencies that the black for use of military force there as his generates new terrorists only generation terrorists they created as a result of this says something that you were rethinking is that something you agree with her or did you kind of know that intuitively or felt that that we were creating more prompt ourselves in a rack the room helping to solve and do you write the session as mobile question that you see any pause about come out we thought we'd solved the situation never let me add it was a good opportunity to stay where they

were i came to the united nations in february nineteen ninety three my job was facing many different things that one of the major day to day activities was that the nineteen the gulf war cease fire was translated into a series of resolutions dairy council resolutions that had to be enforced they had to get rid of their weapons mass destruction they had to the iraqis they had to return of prisoners of war from kuwait returned to london and returned treasure took away stop torturing of people of various aspects and wheat so we talked about iraq all the time and so i have to say that i understood the why of the war because i had said as many terrible things about sciences president bush named thaksin them longer as they said than thirty years so i understood i also did frankly believe that there were weapons of mass destruction by

deduction because we have inspectors in their starting right after the gulf war and they have in fact destroyed more weapons then the gulf war itself but when they left in nineteen ninety near eight not all the weapons have been accounted for so by deduction i thought that they were there but i did not think that they pose an imminent threat to the united states we had saddam hussein in the strategic box we were bombing regularly in the no fly zones there was a very tough sanctions regime and so that danger of this size the people who attacked us on nine eleven didn't come from rocca came from afghanistan and i never believed that there was a connection between some of the latino applied and sevens and so i felt that we needed to give our eye on the ball in afghanistan and given what we sing in afghanistan now it bears that i mean won him letters

on the monument to the talent to my research it as so it on a rock i said and i testified to this why now scientists at the y but not the why now and then i didn't understand what next i had been asked to some briefing at the pentagon and when i talk to them about what the timeline was and what were they thinking about they had no answers about how there was going to be over a transfer from the coalition forces to any functioning government of iraq and i think the war has been terribly terribly mishandled i say something and in this book you know when you write a book in you predict something you want very much to have it be true i actually hope i'm wrong on this because i have written in this book that i'm afraid that iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in american foreign policy which is quite a statement and i think it's worse than vietnam not in terms of the number obviously of americans that have been killed or the number of vietnamese in comparison them

are rocking skill but in terms of the unintended consequences and among those unintended consequence is that is the fact that it really looks at this stage as if iran has won the war in iraq and is it growing regional influence i am i am often democracy as i was introduced as chairman of the board of the national democratic institute and actually were working in iraq now and there is political activity and i hope very much that iraq ends up democracy and stable a lot of people they look like just like that so the bottom line is that it has the reverberations haven't there are incredibly serious and i don't think were well planned and you know he actually is saying something that those of those who are not living in a parallel reality have seen for a long time which is making things worse there are more and more

terrorists in fact there was a certain time that secretary rumsfeld said he thought that they were you know as we were going some terrorist more were being created so i think liane it is them is providing what i had gotten millions of hard for some time i'm very glad that part of it is indeed last night i understand that said roberts is calling for the declassified i think they do have to be class by the whole thing that and then why aren't that i know you know dozens of the government bailout say sources methods and you have to be careful not to reveal it's easy to to figure out how the black out that has been a reason to tony snow the spokesperson the state of the sources and methods of view and say we made the excuse of various times that i think that that doesn't work it doesn't work you know in an austere secede you have to be careful about sources methods because there are people that it

compromised as we've seen an there are also you needed to keep this the sources and methods but otherwise you really don't have any eyes and ears and we're trying to find out that i do think there are ways to declassify in a way that does not undermine you mentioned national democratic institute is doing work in iraq and it's been it's been pointed out that without some more about progressive more what role i societies methods of dealing with their own culture's such as the role of women and government and the private sector are that democracy can't take hold and you experience this ad that you're well i'm remembering out the moment when i was with president vice president gore and saudi arabia and you point out a new book that the crown prince now king abdullah was running the country and king fahd was really kind of incapacitated and whether you still have to go and pay respects at one point dump when vice president was meeting with them became one of the early on

tirade and it was the interpreter said we look forward to working with your secretary of state madeline albright he told me later that what he was really doing was this is a rant about what you having a woman as secretary of state i don't think al gore ever heard that story but there was king fahd and he was he was not probably the part that occurred to me was the old latin expression and you know there it does is in the major garrett us as the something that people who have greater control over their over the reactions don't speak of but still backs the highest levels of government o'brien said i have to give you my version of what it was like to deal with the five pound team found really was practically a madame tussaud's wax figure he had an hour and yet you did have to go see and so on my last visit there he

he i met him and everything and the person that was the interpreter was an incentive you hear my nose is the saudis had a basket the united states who has a very colorful figure of prince bandar and prince bandar was conveniently diplomatic corps in washington but when he was in saudi arabia he was the interpreter and so here you were sitting on a low stool between us and he was very and we were actually good friend so what would happen was king fire will go and stand there with say his majesty would like to say how happy he is and i would say his legacy would like ray long time relationship and then your ear is so anyway so that

that is where whatever ban there said is what happened that what i'd you think is very interesting is there were obviously concerns about a woman secretary of state in the word least the paper said in the arab world particularly an hour but when i went for my first meeting with some arab leaders they were the gulf cooperation council day we will all their foreign ministers and we had a very good meeting and they were very respectful and kind of at the end of it i said something like that we may notice that i'm not dressed the same way as much predecessors and next time would talk about women's rights and we didn't actually and the saudi foreign minister took me to his house in met with his very urbane daughters and i know what the truth is that i have more problems with the men in our own government ha ha

ha say not that they were all male chauvinist pig but that i got because and this has a lot to do with my age where it took me as a senator murkowski said she and i were twenty five year overnight success that and i think a lot of the people that i worked with in the government have known me for a very long time they know me as a carpool mother or friend of their wives or a staffer on the hill or made coffee and xerox and various other roles and all of a sudden onset just a sparse they were concerned and they said how events themselves have that madeline and got into the sectors they and i didn't so it is very interesting and but i do think that people have gotten used to it and obviously my daughters might say something like this but when condie rice who's made national security advisor when my daughter said you know mom know he's questioning whether she could do it because you did it

and today secretary of state and you're out in your book madam secretary you've mentioned that your mother told you that your father josef korbel who is professor of university under that does she was his favorite student it really is quite remarkable the czechoslovak emigrate diplomat train to secretaries of state so but what happened was this un my father had them became a nice states in in nineteen forty eight and he i got a job became he asked for political asylum and he got a job at the university of denver they had no idea where denver was and my parents bought a green port who and we drove across country and he kept saying they say the dam is the mile high city there were not going up are we going to write to you so you can ultimately be named dean of the graduate school of international studies there at and he was a very popular professor income he writes about was they had gone to the university of denver's music

and what happened was that my father died in nineteen seventy seven and by then he was you know pretty well known figure in cameron wants flowers memorial things and among them was saying ceramic container in the shape of the piano and leaves and flowers and things i said very different from the others and i said to my mother where did this come from and she said it's from your father's favorite student lives and what had happened was she had been a music major and then either had to or wanted to take international relations and searched to look for my father and he persuaded her to become an international relations major she then went and did her masters at notre dame and came back and was working on her phd with my father when he died so here was this young african american woman from alabama working on a phd about the czechoslovak military so she and so in nineteen eighty seven that when i was working for

my long string of losing democratic presidential candidates that our little more than working for michael dukakis and my job was to find among the various things i was doing that outside foreign policy advisers and so i thought right here's this woman soviet expert teaches on the west coast woman african american protective visor so i call her up and i ask you to do the same she says madeleine you know i don't know how to tell you this but i'm a republican and i said honey how could you be we have the same father at times so she was named national security adviser time magazine actually asked me to write an essay my main rebel about war or bella since about seventy pounds of them and talk with her about it and we kind of came out with different ideas bowl we've learned from my father and so i said i think that channel with that better than you do kind of it's

very easy to speak on behalf of the dead but i i think that she did in some way take different lessons away from what my father taught but she is very generous and kind of that the infant's my father had other and we recently there were asked to do a program on npr about my father and so we did both of this they went to interview and she just was so nice about him and so that's where i am and it makes me very proud that there's this particular man made such a difference but i think there is a difference about being the daughter and having spent a lot of time i am the perfect iran pianist activist david beautiful daughter and i tried very hard to model myself and my father so what's big economies of rice has been if there's been a lot of controversy lately apparently aren't you did not leave a plan to do with terrorism and maybe even been fighting osama bin ladin in your

basement the state department the same time obviously there was controversy with the oakland and then she's responded with your take on this one i mean give a little bit of context of this patent obviously i think we're all trying to figure out how to deal with terrorist and how did that begin as you start your questions or what is it we're dealing ah an hour when did it start and why wasn't stop center is one of the major issues and the nine eleven commission that was its war was to try to figure out how things happened and it's a very complicated story and we went back and very much i was the lead witness on the nine eleven commission and when the back very much and looked at the record very carefully and you know as president clinton to set i think everybody wishes here we say did you do enough obviously nobody

know or we would've caught it by now but im having gone over the record i think we were very hard at a time when before nine eleven when people actually thought we were crazy to be answered i think that's the hard part but themselves back into the pre nine eleven mold to understand that whenever now we talked about using force it was very difficult to get support and anything i mean the tarp about bosnia just done so yet and said that there were present then did was he put out i'm an order that the cia would create move to deal with fighting terrorism he created the terrorism czar that's dick clark in this whole set of executive orders and really local through it all not a very long list and very substance substantial in terms of what we were doing i think it's pretty evident to anybody who knows me and you know all these people who've just met me than not being secretary of state but

i had my worst day of secretary state was august seventh nineteen ninety when our embassies in kenya and tanzania were bombed them we reacted to that right away by launching missiles into afghanistan and men won into sudan on a pharmaceutical factory that we felt very strongly was associate with i think people need to go back and the press during that time when basically we were criticized for that and president clinton was accused of wag the dog and that we overreacted and all kinds of aspects so i i personally feel that we did everything we could we were set up to strike at any given time but there never was is what they call actionable intelligence to find a location where he was to hit and it was not a period in american history where you just carpet bombed in order to we're

here we thought he was and a lot of women children so i think that's a point now again to respond to this when we left sandy berger a brief that dr rice and nine brief secretary powell on all the things that we had done and the serious threat of terrorism would pose to them and that they would have to spend a lot of time on and i can tell you that they both were very surprised and did not really i think see it as that big a thing and new know how much time where they didn't have to spend on it and and so i think they've than the record shows i actually didn't do a lot between the time that they came in and sitting room of itself now i thought my listeners questioned her and it because it's a question that's come up as a very pleasant it's sad that we left

an icon he writes said that that wasn't true so we went back to the record an image of the nine eleven commission report on page a hundred and ninety seven it says as the clinton administration drew who were close clark in a staff developed a policy paper of their own which incorporated the cia's new ideas from the blue sky memo impose several near term policy options clark and staff proposed to go to roll back out pride over a period three to five years including colbert made to the northern alliance covert aid to uzbekistan and renewed predator flights in march two thousand and one a sentence called for military action to destroy our private command and control targets and infrastructure and taliban military commander assets the paper also expressed concern about the presence of al qaeda operatives announced a cell there was a clamor for them and then as president and calmly pointed out there were

clark was demoted so but the truth is that i think we need to concentrate now on the war in iraq that is worth a korea than it as creating more terrorists and that's the story that's what the problem is the war in iraq is making america less a lot worse than an even hand in a couple more questions and at the moment so people like that like to start moving towards the microphone on but the war in iraq obviously as in some of the places around the world that were going up to get to north korea springs to mind there's not a lot of bum good options on this very question about whether iraq should break up into its

provinces know the balkanization of iraq is that something that sounds like a reason was there any reasonable exit strategy for iraq in your mind well first of all there has to be a reasonable exit strategy really we cannot stay there do you think that it is very important to make clear that we had no interest in having permanent bases and also then to it i happened to not be somebody that believes in setting a date certain to leave we were asked to do that on bosnia said that we would be at near we couldn't do it and so we lost our credibility and i think ultimately when you put a date on something you really holding a gun to your own head as much as anyone but i do think we actually live as our presence is both at the solution of the problem we are like a magnet for everybody ate says on the other hand the security issues in iraq are very serious and an argument that i make i mean i just finished making the same argument in europe

is that the united states did not start world war one a war were to buy one you saw that our national interest was involved in that hour we went into it and the war and the europeans and others may not have agreed with the fact that this war started but the truth is it affects their national interests as much as or even more than it does ours certainly the countries in the region so they need to get in there and help in the training of iraqi security and in the reconstruction it does mean that we share the contracts all of that but they have to be in that and they have to understand and i think that we have to get the regional countries more involved i personally am very worried about the splitting up of iraq i agreed that it's necessary to get more autonomy to the different regions but the unintended consequences of the split up means that the kurds who are the most independent in the north

there desire ultimately to have a kurdistan affects what happens to the kurds in turkey in an avalanche aspect of that the shia in the south certainly increased the power of iran and the central park is not as kind of a homogeneous says it might look in terms of sunni so do i dont think that that that is a solution but i do think that we have to systematically work out a way to leave because it is we are improving the situation of questions the book but the microphone what the possibilities are pushed recognizing hall the men that the nation is why not let it dissolve into three parts that they entered to lead a divide in the report well i think that that they're the problem is that it would in

fact create this in fact are de stabilizing other parts of the region and he just say this president clinton was a great reader himself and actually told us what books to read the assigned books and one of the books he told me i should read was a great book about the creation of the modern middle east and it's called the east end all peace by an american historian david prompted and it's a great story it's how it got put together after the end of war war one and the short version is that it happened because the british and french bureaucracies like to each other that one of the things that comes out of this book is a rock is a completely artificial country created out of these various parts so there is some reason to think that it shouldn't be a country but i think given what is going on in the middle east now to have it totally

split apart i will have a kind of a knock on effect in terms of turkey and iran that that maybe ultimately what happens then it's an honor to come listen to speak today as a question actually about a north korea north korea announced in two thousand five every two thousand five that they had a nuclear weapons do you consider that a failure of the agreed framework in nineteen ninety four a failure of the current administration's policies and how can we get north korea back to the table i do think that the north korean situation's one of the most dangerous in the world and we actually thought so when we were in office and an hour wind in nineteen ninety three ninety four the north koreans pulled out of the non proliferation treaty and i was one of the first things that we had to deal with an hour we were in the process of getting sanctions on

to north korea when we were able to work out this agreed framework which was a bargain that was made the north koreans actually do need energy in contrast to iran that has oil at the north koreans have nothing they have the hydro little bit of a hybrid power but they really do need energy and so the idea was that they would freeze their nuclear programs in exchange for us providing them with heavy fuel and building light water reactors right now and telling you this through armed and in everything i'm about to say i want you all to bear in mind that i hold no brief for kim jong il here's a terrible dictator whom starving its people but we had a bargain that we made with him and what happened i think in some ways people forgot that i'd japan and south korea were democracies and that they were going to help finance these light water reactors and all of a sudden their parliaments wanted to know how much money and why et cetera so it took longer

for these light water reactors to begin to be built and some of our deliveries of heavy fuel and they they basically were saying that we were remaking on our part of the agreement what then happened was in nineteen ninety eight they launched missiles that went over japan and we thought that was at sea essential to have a full review of our north korea policy in and former secretary defense bill perry added that up and and it was one of the most serious reviews that i was involved in basically we gave north korea one of those fourteen the road moments which is out we couldn't go into negotiations with you to change your behavior or we will have a confrontation with you and we were prepared to have military force that really knew is horrible concept because million we would win millions of people would die and the north koreans

say well let's have a negotiation so we began a process and they had a moratorium on their missile launches and then if i can tell a story here which is that they didn't came to the united states because they want a person planned to go to north korea and they came with an invitation and we can present that was ray go but we basically warn him that he shouldn't go without preparation so it they suggested to him that i go and they were real thrilled about that that they decided that it would be fine if i went to north korea and now our intelligence on north korea was really very very sparse and we did not really know a lot about him trying out and our intelligence said he was crazy and a pervert and i know we were also basing our policy a lot on the south korean policy

called sunshine policy which is the idea of trying to get reckon peaceful reconciliation and can die schoene have this president south korea had met him charley army said now you can have a really rational conversation with him and so i went and we had no diplomatic representation there so you know about a chance so there was no way to set the script but then we didn't really know what would happen when i got there and where they're back in china would even see me as a lowly secretary state instead of a head of state and they said well in or do anything i had to go to see his into father and so i did that and an actor i'd gone to this mausoleum yeah i get a call that kim jong il was singing so my sense that being with him is he's not crazy that what happened where we were standing there together at our press conference and

look over were about the same height and i know that i had on high heels in my life and he did to atlanta as there was a lot to fear than mine but we had about twelve hours of talks and we were on our way not only to making sure that the missile moratorium stayed in place but in terms of a whole group of negotiations about their missiles and their exports nuclear technology now they cheated and their argument that i make is that our arms control agreements with the soviet center throughout the years the cold war they cheated or we thought they'd cheated there was a process to call them on it they thought we cheated and they took us into this crisis and the reason you have arms control regimes isn't going to have a system and so i think it was we were going to do

anything more that we could not there right now there were a lot of people that were confused in the united states about the election in november two thousand i can assure you that kim jong il was confused because we were in the middle of these talks and the bush administration did not pick those up at all and so we are now in this process where instead of having bilateral talks which is where i think the action takes place we have the six party talks and i must say that i think it looks as the one part of our government doesn't know what the other part is doing because the treasury department insisted on financial sanctions on them while the state farm was trying to negotiate and everything's at a standstill so i think the only way now is i actually it goes back to the points that i made about iran which is you don't get anywhere if you decide not talk to these people and so i would be for bilateral talks because it is

a dangerous situation and the thing that is the most dangerous that's going on in the world now is a kind of peculiar set of ad hoc alliances between countries that i have arms and need oil and countries that have oil and need arms and so you've got venezuelans talking to north korean said iranians talking to north koreans and and sudanese and creating these various groupings that are becoming increasingly anti american or more you spoke specifically about the sudan conflict and the actions of the united states was taken but what can we the general populace do possibly too and sure that future instances of genocide are acted on that leaders in the twenty first century will never again allow this to occur and never forget the past well i i'm a great believer in having more and more citizen action on issues and

your generation i think is very much more tuned in to some of the issues that had been going on on this i know that the student movements and our four are the most remarkable ones and and i do think that what has done there's happen is that our general populations have to be better educated and in democracies the more you speak out the more it has influence on the government the other parts of our war across international cooperation on this but unless whether it's this issue or another issue what has happened in this country and many countries is that our citizens are not educated very well i hate to blame everything on the media that it's very hard to get the news and in a way that is not right it's very hard to fully get an understanding of the various issues and it takes

a certain sense of responsibility by citizens to be involved the other part that i feel very strongly about is i think it's patriotic to ask questions and i think it's important ms bell our generation screwed everything up so it's now up to you know and i am very interested in my students is clearly also prepare for this university is that all of you are very involved in these issues are speaking out and are making sure that our government response to you so i think that's the best thing you can do and that's why i say it's so ironic when everybody was talking about how horrible rwanda was to all of a sudden not really be there are yelling and screaming and speaking out about it so citizen action on this is very important

like to wrap it up now on would like to thank you for being here we talked a little bit earlier about you were reading a piece of your book that you would please i do think that and one of the themes of my life and clearly us secretary state a very important part is you'd think a lot about what is the role of the united states how dc's acting in the world and do what responsibilities do we have been and should we be telling people what to do and so i thought about this my whole life in it and i certainly thought about a lot of this book and and having thought and written about it carefully i thought it would be verified just concluded by reading this ours is a country of abundant resources momentous accomplishments and unique capabilities we have a responsibility to lead that as we fulfill that obligation we should bear in mind the distinction pointed out by john adams liberty at least in the sense of free will is god's gift not ours it is

also morally neutral it may be used for any purpose whether good or ill democracy by contrast is a human creation its purpose is to see the liberty is directed into channels that respect the rights of all as the world's most powerful democracy america should help others who desire help to establish and strength and three institutions but in so doing we should remember that promoting democracy is a policy not a mission and policies must be tested on the heartland of diplomacy practical politics and respect for international norms our cause will not be helped if were so sure of our rightness that we forget our propensity as humans to make mistakes though america may be exceptional we cannot demand that exceptions to be made for us we are not above the law nor do we have a divine calling to spread democracy anymore then we have a national mission to spread

christianity we have ensured the right to ask but never to incest or blindly assume that god bless america former secretary of state madeleine albright and stephen tate recorded september twenty seven two thousand sits at the leed center at the university of kansas it was a presentation of cane used dole institute of politics the recording engineer was tubby smith and kate mcintyre k pierre presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas america is not the women's freedom takes guts that's because freedom is amnesty problematic sometimes

downright dangerous next time on apr prisons leonard pitts syndicated columnist and winner of the two thousand four pulitzer prize for commentary join the eight o'clock sunday night and kansas public radio for rebroadcast it's taught at the university of kansas center on what's happened to america and our civil liberties since september eleventh we live in an era where you have the ability to choose the news that reinforces your political bias so why bother with challenges posters or demands if you know when you're a kid and actually think at a syndicated columnist sunday night at eight o'clock on kansas public radio these pieces

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