John Cole: Well good afternoon, and welcome to the Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole, I'm the Director for the Center for the Book
in the Library of Congress, which is the reading promotion arm.
We're very pleased to have you here for a demonstration of how we try
to promote books and reading,
in this case through a noontime lecture series
by well-known authors who have new books.
And the authors we have here are special friends of the Library
of Congress who in the past have used the Library,
or are currently using the Library and its resources to produce books.
And I always like to hold up the book that we are featuring today.
Our program is being filmed for cybercast on the Library's Web site,
which you'll be able to enjoy it later.
That means, however, that we would like you
to turn off all things electronic, if you could.
Secondly, we are planning a question
and answer section during the second part of the hour,
and if you have a question -- and we hope you do --
your asking that question actually gives the Library
of Congress authority to use your words and your image,
and your answer on our Web site.
There will finally be a book signing when this is over.
The secretary has agreed to sign,
and she'll be signing books in the back.
There are still books on sale, and we hope you take advantage of this,
and hope that you have a --
I know you'll have an enjoyable and an informative hour.
To introduce our speaker, it's my pleasure
to present Dr. James Billington, who is the 13th Librarian of Congress.
The librarian of Congress is named by the president,
it is in effect a lifetime appointment,
even though there is no single term of office described
in the appointment charter.
We're very pleased that Dr. Billington has been
with us since 1987.
He was appointed by President Reagan.
He is not only an innovative librarian,
who has brought much new technology to the Library of Congress --
which I hope you saw as you came in, the new Library
of Congress experience -- but he is a great friend of books,
and reading, and American thought and culture, and we're pleased
to have him to introduce Madeline Albright.


James Billington: We are very privileged today to have
as our speaker a truly remarkable and path-breaking individual.
I'm happy to know her as a friend,
and to address her as Madam Secretary.
Madeline K. Albright, she served as the 64th secretary of state
of the United States from 1997 until 2001.
She was not only the first female secretary of state, but also,
at the time, the highest-ranking woman in the entire history
of the United States government.
As secretary of state, Dr. Albright worked with allies, alliances,
advocated democracy and human rights in a rather deep and highly personal
and effective way, was involved in trade, environmental standards,
and much else around the world, and a very busy secretary.

She worked, actually, for the legislative branch as well
as the executive branch, serving as chief legislative assistant
for Senator Edmund Muskie from 1976 until '78.
From 1978 until 1981 she was a member
of President Carter's National Security Council.
She co-founded, in 1981, the Center for National Policy,
and in 1982 was appointed the director of Women
in Foreign Service Programs, and a research professor
of international affairs
at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
From 1993 until 1997, she was United States' permanent representative
to the United Nations, and a member of the president's cabinet.
In 1995, she led the United States delegation
to the United Nations' Fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing, China.
She's an alumni of Wellesley College, received a doctorate
from Columbia University's Department of Public Law
and Government, and a certificate from its Russian institute.
Today, she's a principal of the Albright Group,
a global strategy firm, and is the first Michael
and Virginia Mortara endowed distinguished professor
in the practice of diplomacy
at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
That's 17 words, I think that's the longest title in the history
of academia, and well-deserved in every respect.
Now in her new book, Memo to the President-Elect:
How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership,
she draws on her scholarly background
to make forward-looking suggestions that address today's national
and international issues.   It is a personal pleasure

to introduce someone whom I had the privilege
of knowing even before her illustrious professional journey was
beginning, when she was a research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center,
and already a dynamo in that context.
It is also an institutional pleasure to welcome her here to the Library
of Congress where, if I recall correctly, she did a good deal
of her work before becoming our stateswoman-in-chief.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Madam Secretary,
our statestoman-in-chief.
[applause] Madeline Albright: Thank you very much.
Thank you.   Thank you very much.

Thank you.
Dr. Billington -- my good friend, Jim --
we have in fact done many things together, and I'm delighted
to be here in Thomas Jefferson's library,
because I often was reminded that I actually had Thomas Jefferson's job,
and was delighted to have that, although I never was able
to quite acquire all the wisdom that he had, or the books, so --
and I did come here a lot.
As I was writing my dissertation, and various other times,
and then when I worked for Senator Muskie,
because this is the congressional library,
and you can actually take the books out of here
when you are a member of Congress.   Or you used to be able to.

So I'm delighted to be here, thank you.
And pleased to see all the fabulous things you've done here,
because this has to be the people's library,
and you've certainly made it that.
I'm very pleased to have a chance to talk about my new book.
The book is a little bit of a contrivance, because it's written
in the form of a memo to the president-elect,
to be read election night.
But it's out now, so it's actually for all of you.
But it was fun to write a memo that said, "You have to do this,
and you have to do that,"
and "Do you realize what you've gotten yourself into?"
[laughter] And things like that.
The idea came to me when I was sitting
in the Washington National Cathedral for Gerald Ford's funeral.
Because he was a president that I had met, and admired,
and all the former presidents of the United States were there,
as well as the current president,
and it really made me think much more deeply
about the power of the presidency.
And I have been fascinated by the American presidency my entire life,
and have seen it up close and personal a couple of times,
but it really is an office that can be used for a lot of good deeds,
but it is possible also to overstep the powers that are there.
So I thought it would be interesting to look at what the powers were
of the president, what the problems were going to be
that the next president had to deal with, and to really, in the process,
help to set the framework for the discussion of this election
on national security issues.
The first part of the book was actually quite a lot of fun
to write, because I went back and I looked
at how different presidents had done things,
and how they had set their offices up.
I found a citation where Warren Harding, not one of our best, said,
"I wish there were a book that would tell me what to do."
So it's here, a little late for him, but --
[laughter] But it was also fun
to see how the whole system had evolved, how the office
of the president had grown, how the duties had enlarged.
I spent a lot of my own time when I served President Carter
and then later President Clinton, obviously,
in the national security mechanism.   And so I spend some time talking

about how the national security system works.
A lot of people get a lot of things mixed up in terms
of what the National Security Council is, who is the staff,
who the people are, who are the mandated members
of the National Security Council.
I talk about the fact that it is perfectly natural for the secretary
of state and the secretary of defense to dislike each other,
until they unite in disliking the national security advisor,
and I do talk about some of the aspects
of the personalities involved.
I give advice to the president, in the following way, on the formation
of the cabinet: I would like to see a president
that actually likes the idea of having a lot of diverse views
in the cabinet, or in the circles around him or her,
that would present a variety of ideas.
But I also believe that it needs to be a team, because one of the things
that happens in Washington -- I think some of you probably are
from out of town, but in Washington there is a way, in fact,
that smart people show how smart they are,
by making the person sitting next to them look stupid.
That is not a very good way to give advice.
But I did work for a president who liked very much to have us argue
in our cabinet meetings, and really perpetuated that by setting
up questions that would make it possible, and in fact necessary,
for us to present our views very clearly.
And so I think it's very important to have a cabinet that's a team,
but also feels comfortable enough in presenting diverse views,
because the world is complicated in such a way
that it is truly necessary to have a lot of different opinions.
So I say that I would like to have a confident president,
somebody who has the confidence to listen to a lot of different ideas,
rather than a certain president
who doesn't even know what he doesn't know.
Because it is very important to be able to have a curious
and probing mind as president of the United States,
to really push these issues.
And I go, as I say, I go back and I look at some historical aspects
of the American presidency and the system.
I do advise that the next president get exercise;
not all the time, but to get exercise.
[laughter] And I went back and I looked
at what various presidents had done.
And I must say, I was kind of shocked.
John Quincy Adams -- we all know a lot more about the Adamses
after the HBO series -- but John Quincy Adams went swimming nude
in the Potomac.
And he had really put off having an interview
with a particular female reporter, so she went down there and sat
on his clothes one morning,
and he finally did give her an interview, neck deep in water.
[laughter] So the first part
of the book does involve these various stories, and goes back
and looks a little bit more into various aspects
of how the presidency works, what the relationship is with Congress,
how the constitution operates.
The second part of the book was actually much harder to write,
because it deals with the issues that the next president is going
to have to deal with, and I have to tell you that I think this is going
to be one of the most difficult presidencies we have seen
in a very long time, perhaps ever, for most of us.
Because the issues are so complex, and require so much input
from the United States and cooperation
with the rest of the world.
Let me just go through some of them with you, and then I hope
in the questions you will ask more detailed questions about areas
that you're particularly interested in.
The world is a mess.   That's a diplomatic term of art.

[laughter] And there are, I think, five very large,
what I call "umbrella issues."
The first is how to fight terrorism without creating more terrorists
and more anti-Americanism.
There are murderers out there who attacked the United States on 9/11
and various other places.
They are not some kind of mythical warriors.
And I believe it's a mistake to talk about "The War on Terror."
First of all, it's not a normal war, and second,
it does in fact increase the stature of these plain murderers
into much larger figures within theie own society if they are
"warriors" on behalf of their beliefs, versus Western ideas,
or democracy, or America, per se.
I don't think we fully understand the roots of terrorism.
We also make the mistake of lumping all terrorist organizations
together, believing that they are controlled by Osama bin-Laden
through the al-Qaida network, when in fact there are diverse groups
with different agendas, and we need to isolate those
who are the genuine murderers that have anti-American feelings
without creating more of them.
So that is the first issue out there.
The second issue is how to deal with the fact
that nuclear non-proliferation regime is broken, that the bargain
that has functioned throughout the world
for the last several decades does not work.
The bargain was based on the fact
that the nuclear powers would systematically disarm,
and that there would not be an attempt by non-nuclear countries
to become nuclear countries.   While there had been various times

that there were very specific disarmament talks,
that process has not moved forward,
and in fact the United States has talked in the last seven years
about a new generation of nuclear weapons, and is more concerned
about how to develop those than really moving forward
on a disarmament process.
And then, of course, what has happened is
that there have been more nuclear powers added: India, Pakistan,
North Korea, and we don't know what is happening in Iran.
Some countries have decided to give up their nuclear weapons,
some of the former Soviet republics; some countries have decided not
to go that direction, Brazil and South Africa,
but there are some new nuclear powers.
So that bargain has been broken.
I also have -- someday I'm going to teach a course
on the unintended consequences of foreign policy decisions,
and there are various ones.
I often wonder -- President Eisenhower's "Atoms
for Peace" speech in 1953 really talked about the importance
of peaceful uses of nuclear energy,
and we in fact did transfer some technology
in following up on that policy.
I have talked to physicists, and I asked them, "Did people not know,
in the '50s, how easy it was to move from peaceful to weaponized."
And they say they did know, so that's not an excuse, but I do think
that if we look at what's happening in Iran, for instance,
it does seem as if we have not figured out at exactly what stage
that scientific knowledge moves from peaceful uses to the potential
of weapons, and how to prevent or how to close that loophole.
So the next president is going to have to work
on a new non-proliferation strategy so that the worst weapons don't get
into the hands of the worst people.
The third big issue that the next president has to deal with is how
to restore the good name of democracy.
I believe in democracy, I do think it's the best system in the world,
and I also do not like it when people say,
"X part of the world is not ready for democracy."
That they have no comprehension of it, pick the part,
but I don't believe that, because I believe
that we are basically all the same, that people everywhere want
to make decisions about their own lives, and that they in fact want
to have the capability of having a say in what they do.
Democracy has to deliver.
It may sound a little Marxist, but people want to vote and eat,
and so the bottom line is there have to be economic reforms
in the countries that are moving toward democracy
and constituency services, but democracy, I think,
is the best form of government.
The problem is that the war in Iraq has given democracy a bad name.
You cannot impose democracy, that is an oxymoron.
And so democracy has a bad name.
And while I fully supported President Bush in saying
that the Middle East could be democratic, I don't know any leader
that looks at Iraq now and says
"I want my country to look just like that."
So we need to restore the goo dname of democracy.
The fourth big umbrella issue is globalization.
Dr. Billington said that I now have a global strategy firm, and I do,
and people actually come into my office and say,
"How do we stop globalization?"
Well you can't stop globalization, it has to be managed,
and the negative aspects of it have to be mitigated.
And I think, at the moment, the most salient negative aspect is the
growing gap between the rich and the poor.
By number, there are fewer poor people in the world now,
but the gap between the rich and the poor is growing,
and it's not just happening overseas, it's happening
in the United States also.
And so there has to be a way to mitigate
that negative aspect of globalization.
And then the fifth issue, which probably dominates all of them,
is the one that has to do with the bundle of problems to do
with global warming and energy security.
So those are five big umbrella issues
that the next president will have to cope with.
And then under that umbrella, or within it, or co-habiting with it,
are two hot wars and their unintended consequences.
Afghanistan is not going well, and that is the war that actually --
or the place from which those who came on 9/11 were trained,
where Osama bin Laden was last seen,
and in fact where the Taliban are resurging.
And President Karzai is a wonderful man; I've met him, I know him,
I admire him, but he is basically mayor of Kabul.
He does not control the whole country.
And part of the problem is that the warlords and the Taliban have access
to ready money through their poppy crop, which they turn into opium,
and then sell and have money to buy more arms.
Afghanistan is a big test for NATO, the best and most powerful alliance
in the history of the world, but the fighting there is very difficult.
The United States has just announced that we're going to have
to send more troops into Afghanistan, and as we know,
our troops are already stretched.
So there's Afghanistan, and then the unintended consequence is Pakistan.
Pakistan is a country that contains every element
of what gives you an international migraine.
It has nuclear weapons, terrorism, extremism, corruption, poverty,
and a very iffy government that is trying to sort itself
out in a coalition, and trying to figure
out what role President Musharraf now has, and yet we need Pakistan
in order to deal with the war in Afghanistan, and the border area
between Pakistan and Afghanistan that is really a no-man's land,
and people suspect that Osama bin Laden is somewhere in that area,
and that al-Qaida bases itself out of there.
So that is the first hot war.   The second one is Iraq.

Now I have said about Iraq -- I made this prediction in my last book,
and often you hope that -- well, you always hope that what you predict
in a book will come true, I'm sorry this has,
which is that I think Iraq will go down in history
as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy.
Now that is quite a statement,
and it means that I think it's worse than Vietnam.
And I do, not obviously in terms of the number of Americans
who have been killed, or Vietnamese versus Iraqis,
but in terms of those unintended consequences.
The war in Iraq is certainly not going well, and I have to tell you
that as an ordinary American I have no idea what's going on there.
I read the papers, I listen to everything: I think it's very hard
to really know what's happening.
But it is not, as far as I can tell, getting much better
in a military way, because it's going
to require a political solution, not a military solution.
And the biggest unintended consequence
of the war in Iraq is Iran.
One could argue that Iran has come out the best from the war in Iraq.
It has resurged in a way of being a regional power,
we don't know quite what it's doing, and there's evidence
that they are mucking around in Iraq in any number of various aspects
of providing some of the explosive devices,
or in fact having an undue influence politically.
So those are the two hot wars.
One we have to end, the other one we have to win.
And then we have to pick up -- I hope very much that President Bush
and his team is able to work out some kind of a Middle East peace.
Secretary Rice has said that in fact she believes
that that will be possible by the end of the term,
and I can assure you that any president would be very happy
to be able to implement some kind of a Middle East peace.
But I say in this new book that it is very important
for the United States to be fully involved in the peace process
in the Middle East, to have a Middle East envoy on the ground,
with a large team that really works on the issue and presents ideas,
because while I don't believe
that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is responsible for every problem
in the world, it does in fact play a very important role.
And then there have to be strong negotiations on North Korea,
and trying to figure out how to limit its nuclear potential.
So those are the big, big issues that have to be dealt with,
and I haven't even mentioned Africa.
Africa is usually the forgotten place.
Kenya was, we thought, a stable democracy, until a couple
of months ago when there were ethnic riots
as a result of a tainted election.
We don't know what's happening in Zimbabwe, a country that was seen
as kind of in the forefront of the national liberation movements.
President Mugabe -- many of you may remember this --
actually was a hero.
He's now turned into somebody that is in fact counter
to every democratic trend in his own country.
Darfur, where the American declaration
of genocide has not actually proven anything in terms of delivery
of help -- of helicopters, for instance --
to try and figure out what to do in that situation.
And Congo is not in the news, but a lot of people are dying in Congo,
and now we have the food price, and food shortage situation,
and I've just mentioned a few countries in Africa.
And then there's Latin America, a part of the Western hemisphere
that we don't deal with often enough.
I think the most revolutionary thing I did while I was secretary
of state was to move Canada into the Western hemisphere.
For those of you that don't know how the state department worked,
it was in Europe.
And so I thought it should be where it is.
[laughter] And basically, in order to kind
of strengthen the democratic voices in the Western hemisphere,
and to talk about the solidarity of the Americas.
I used to carry around some maps that showed the progress
from authoritarian governments to democratic governments,
and when we first looked at the situation in the '80s,
there were a lot of -- the authoritarian ones were in red,
and there was a lot of red, and it systematically moved to green,
as the democratic governments.   And when we were in office,

there was this only one small, red island left.
Now there is a movement back to a certain amount
of authoritarian governments, because democracy has not delivered.
And I had gone to Venezuela any number of times, and it was run
by a bunch of tired old men, who were elitist and had nothing to do
with the people, so I can fully understand how Hugo Chavez
got elected.
But he turned what was a populist movement into some kind of new form
of populist autocracy, and we don't know exactly how
to handle a growing anti-American funded trend that he is pushing.
So just mentioning those major issues would make you all know
that we have to operate differently in terms of help.
We may, and we will, continue to have the strongest military
in the world, and I think there's no question
that we owe them a great debt of gratitude for the missions
that they have performed in Iraq and other places.
They have done everything that they've been asked and more.
But the issues that I've raised,
most of them cannot be dealt with militarily.
They are, by their very nature, transnational issues.
They require a multilateral approach.
Now there are a lot of people who don't
like the term "multilateralism."
When I was being confirmed as U.N. Ambassador, I talked about the need
for assertive multilateralism, and they hated that term --
I mean, benign multilateralism didn't strike me
as very interesting.
And multilateralism has too many syllables in it,
and it ends in an "-ism," and so people don't like it --
[laughter] -- but basically it means that you do things with others.
And so I do think we need to figure out what is a better relationship
with the Europeans, who are truly the closest to us.
It would help if they stopped examining themselves
so much all the time.
We need to develop a relationship with Russia that is coming back
into a large national role, but there are things we disagree
with them on, we have to state that clearly,
but we have to look for areas of agreement.
We have to deal with a rising India and China, and we have to figure
out how to restructure the international system.
So that is a huge job for the next president of the United States.
And the problem is priorities.
Now I would do away with the 100 day gimmick.
That is something that worked for FDR in a very particular time
on kind of one set of issues.
I think the next president has to lay out a longer agenda than that,
and then do a little marketing, which is that if you decide
that you have three priorities, and you accomplish two,
you have done quite a lot of your work, two-thirds.
If you set down ten priorities, and accomplish four,
you've actually doubled what you've done, but you haven't even done half
of what you set out to do.
So I think there has to be a way of dividing things up much more
into short, medium, and long-term priorities.
The president has to talk all the time to the American people.
There has to be, I believe, a bipartisan foreign policy,
an understanding that Congress is an equal partner in all of this,
and that our domestic economy is tied to our foreign policy in a way
that requires us to understand what's happening
in the rest of the world.
And America has to think about what it is that people think about us.
I loved representing the United States.
One thing that Dr. Billington didn't say: I wasn't born here.
I was born in Czechoslovakia, and I'm a naturalized citizen,
and nothing made me prouder than to sit behind a sign
that said, "The United States."
I thought it was the culmination of a great American story
and the generosity of the American people.
And I come from a generation of people who, when somebody said
"America," thought, "Omaha Beach," or "The Marshall Plan."
Now when you say "America" to most of the world, which is much,
much younger, they think "Guantanamo," and "Abu Ghraib."
The next president has to close Guantanamo, and we have to realize
that while we are an exceptional country, which I fully believe,
we cannot ask that exceptions be made for us.
The United States has to abide by the rule of law, we operate --
or have been, or did operate on the basis
that the law is what makes the United States work.
We have to make sure about our own civil liberties,
and we have to make sure that the next president understands the
limitations of the office, as well as the opportunities,
and I hope that she/he reads my book.


[applause] John Cole: Thank you.   Thank you.

We could listen all day, I think, but part of our program is
to share Secretary Albright with all of you and with us,
through questions and answers.
And I will -- we have about 25 minutes for questions and answers,
then we stop for the book signing, so we're disciplined today.
And I would like to ask for a show of hands of people
who have questions, and if you would wait
until the microphone reaches you, we will have a chance to --
everyone will hear the question.
Yes, sir? Male Speaker: That was easy.
Hello Madeline, it's great to see you.
About Iran: Iran seems to have everything going their way.
They got lots of money.
Madeline, is there anything Iran wants from the world
that would cause them to change their behavior
of subverting governments throughout the Middle East,
and being so involved in Iraq?
Madeline Albright: I think that -- I spent quite a lot of time in Iran
in my book, and I describe the difficulty
of our long-term relationship with them.
They quite rightly say that we and the British were involved
in ousting democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953.
Then we had the hostage crisis, which cut both ways,
but I won't go -- it's been a complicated history.
I think the thing that most people don't focus
on is that Iran is Persia.   It was a major empire.

And I think that what they do want is some recognition of the fact
that they have a long, deep cultural and religious history,
and that they have a right to play a major role.
I think that's different than playing a dominant role,
but I believe that -- and it's hard to get there
with this leadership, I have to admit that.
And I have to also say that we tried.
When President Khatami had been elected,
we thought he was a reformer and that we could kind of open
up some possibilities of dealing with him, and they not react.
And they didn't react because -- a number of reasons,
but one is they didn't like the fact that in one of my speeches,
I said that the Ayatollahs were unelected leaders.
That is a statement of fact, but for whatever reason,
you know, they weren't ready.
And I think that there has to be a kind of dual-track approach to,
or triple-track approach to the Iranians.
I don't think they can be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
I think that according to the NPT, they have a right
to a peaceful program monitored by the IAEA, but it's hard to tell
if they are not in fact coming clean.
So the international community and the U.N. has to operate in that way.
I think that the U.S. has to be willing to involve them
in a regional diplomatic approach, not only to Iraq,
but how they can be players within a system in the Middle East
that shows some recognition for their presence and their power,
and we have to deal with them.
But at the same time, I advise in the book
that the next president keep every tool on the table.
I teach a course called the National Security Toolbox.
Foreign Policy is just trying to get some other country
to do what you want, that's all it is,
and so the National Security Toolbox has force, diplomacy,
economic tools, and they all have to be on the table for Iran
But it is our big problem,
because they are pushing us around at the moment.
And we need to have this triple-track approach to them.

Female Speaker: I was wondering -- this is a more personal question --
what do you see as your greatest success
and greatest challenge, in your lifetime?
Madeline Albright: In my lifetime?
I'm 70 years old, so -- I think in terms of policy,
first of all it was pretty good that I got there in the first place.
That was not easy.
So I was happy to be there, but the bottom line is, to what end?
Was it worth it, being secretary of state?
And I think, in order to make a difference on issues
that I really considered essential, and having watched what had happened
in a variety of ethnic conflicts throughout my lifetime,
and knowing something about the Balkans --
because my father had been Ambassador to Yugoslavia,
and I knew that area very well --
I felt that we had to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
And so in terms of, first of all, getting our own administration
to really come together on it, and then doing all the diplomatic work
in order to get alliance agreement to it, and then winning a war;
I think, in terms of just an issue that I had taken up,
that I was identified with -- actually sometimes not positively,
it was called Madeline's War when we did everything wrong,
and we bombed the Chinese embassy by mistake, and various things --
but I really did feel that that was my biggest accomplishment
in terms of policy.
I think the biggest challenges, again in the policy area,
was the opposite, of not being able
to mobilize everybody to do something.
Now, Rwanda, I was U.N. ambassador, I wasn't secretary of state,
but I really felt that the system had failed,
and that while we probably could not have gotten there on time
because it was volcanic genocide and erupted so quickly,
I with that we had been able to make the system work.
But on the whole, I think that I'm very proud
of the various things that we were able to do.
And to try to use -- I believe in the goodness of American power.
The theme of my memoirs is: the times that the U.S. was not involved
in something, terrible things happened,
and when the U.S. really got engaged and worked hard on behalf
of good, we made a difference.
And that's why I'm so troubled by America's reputation at this point,
and the mess that we've made in Iraq.
John Cole: Yes, over here?   The microphone is coming.

Female Speaker: That was very interesting.
I just wanted to clarify a few things
about what you said about Pakistan.
Firstly, you spoke about democracy, and I found it interesting that --
I mean, Americans obviously do support a democracy,
but it's been strange that in Pakistan,
because Musharraf is not democratic, has not been democratic,
and it has suited the interests of certain parties in the U.S.
to actually prolong
that relationship, they have ignored that.
In fact, even recently with the elections, for the first time
when Musharraf was actually very clearly --
there was a lack of support for him, even then Bush was actually,
you know, engaging in behind-the-curtain moves to keep him
in the equation, which is kind of -- I mean, anyway, apart from that,
what do you think about Senator Obama's comments about Pakistan.
He's made some very controversial statements.
And thirdly, with regards to the nuclear program,
certain countries -- while you do think
that American power can be a good thing, certain countries do think
that it is high-handed that the only country
which has actually used nuclear power --
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all of that --
does enforce these regulations.
So how do you kind of deal with that, how do you manage it?
Madeline Albright: Thank you.
Let me deal with the last one first, and that is that I think that --
I won't go through the history of World War II,
but I looked at those -- we've all studied those decisions very
carefully, and there was the sense that it would end the killing
of millions of people if the war went on.
I have made the following assessment: that as horrible
as it was, and terrible things happened,
that we have not used nuclear weapons
because people know what a devastation that created.
And I have been in enough meetings now
where somebody has actually said, "It's been such a long time Nagasaki
and Hiroshima that people have forgotten
about what devastation a nuclear war would create."
And we have to make sure that people remember how unacceptable
and horrendous a nuclear exchange would be.
I think that the reason that United States and others are
in the position of making some of the decisions is
that they are the nuclear powers, but as I said, there needed to be --
the bargain where the nuclear powers would systematically disarm has been
broken, and that needs to be put back into place.
I'm going to say something on the issue of democracy
that I think always shocks people, but the bottom line is I believe
in democracy, and it is the best form, but one of the real problems
about being a practitioner of foreign policy rather than somebody
who just reads about it or teaches it is that you cannot be consistent.
The argument's always out there
between whether we have a realistic foreign policy
or an idealistic foreign policy.
I can't ever buy, because I can't figure out what I am.
And so I say that it's a false dichotomy,
because I call myself an idealistic realist, or a realistic idealist,
and when I teach about it I often say
that a foreign policy might be a little bit like a helium balloon.
You have to have the idealistic aspect of it to get it
up into the air, the air of it, but you need ballast in order
to make it go in some direction, and that's the realistic aspect.
I think it should -- American foreign policy should be moral,
it should be based on our ideals of democracy and human rights,
but at times we have to be pragmatic and deal with the countries
as they are while pushing them, or pressing them in some way
to move towards democracy and human rights.
But as I said earlier, unfortunately, we need Pakistan,
and so I believe that we closed our eyes for too long to some
of the things that Musharraf was doing,
and that when he had what I call a coup against the rule of law
in removing the judges, not enough was done.
But I'm realistic enough to know that we can't afford
to have a totally dissolved situation in Pakistan.
The Pakistani people have now voted for a different kind of government,
and I think that the U.S. should be doing everything it can to support
that coalition government.   I am -- I think that I'm not -

I don't quite remember what Senator Obama said, and I do believe
that people are concerned about what is happening in the northern part
of Waziristan, and whether the Pakistanis are doing enough to deal
with that issue, and how the United States deals with it.
I'm sorry, I can't answer that very well for you.
John Cole: Yes sir.   Wait for the microphone.

Male Speaker: Thank you very much for your time.
You said you considered Kosovo a success?
Can you speak to some
of the unintended consequences of that situation?
Madeline Albright: Well let me say, the success is in that
after several years of mass killings, that has stopped.
But I think that in many ways the international community let Kosovo
down after the end of the fighting by not paying enough attention
through the U.N. and the E.U.
to developing some international structures there,
working well enough with the neighbors in order
to move the process forward from the end of fighting.
And the Kosovars got very frustrated by what was going on.
I think there were a variety of plans that were out there proposed
by the former Finnish president Ahtisaari
that the Russians did not want to accept, and so ultimately I --
not that anybody asked me, but I agree with the idea
that there should be an independent Kosovo.
The unintended consequences of that are that there are other parts
of other countries that believe that they should also be independent
from wherever they are a part of, and the argument
that the U.S. government's making that I agree with is
that Kosovo is not supposed to be a model for other cases;
that it's a sui generis case where there was ethnic cleansing,
where the solution for how to deal with it was not worked
out fully, frustration developed.
But what needs to happen, I think, with Kosovo in order
to make it a success is to get the Balkans generally into the E.U.
And what we used to say is that we hoped
that in the Balkans they would be more interested
in what was happening in Brussels than what's happening in Belgrade.
I hope for the Serb people that in fact they realize
that they are much better off by being a part of Europe,
that the Kosovo issue they have lost on,
and that they could have much better lives if they were part of a Europe.
And the Russians have been very unhelpful on it.
But in terms of just stopping ethnic cleansing,


Male Speaker: Thank you Madam Secretary for mentioning Guantanamo,
but I wondered what specific advice you might have
for a future president to deal with a prison that's full of prisoners
that likely wouldn't be taken back by countries from which they came,
and who likely may not get fair trials based
on civil rights violations perpetrated
against them in the past few years.
I wonder what specifically could be done.
Madeline Albright: I think it's definitely a very difficult problem,
but we do have a functioning legal system.
And I think they can be transferred into some other system
that we have had, and allow them to have lawyers, habeas corpus,
and to get back into a functioning legal system.
Part of the problem - there is no question that it is --
I'm not saying it's easy to deal with the terrorist threat.
It is not.
The question is whether a society, in protecting itself
from terrible things, does in fact undermine the very system
that we're trying to protect.
And also, what it does to our reputation.
Now, I have been asked about this --
does it matter about America's reputation?
And I said in something this morning
on a program: this is not high school.
I don't care if people like us.   That's not what this is about.

What it is about is how you protect American national interest,
and you cannot get cooperation from other countries on a whole series
of issues that we need help on -- just the ones I mentioned --
if all of a sudden we are viewed as the country that's out of step,
that's the legal pariah,
that doesn't understand how the system works.
So I think it behooves us, although it's not a simple issue,
to move into a legal system
that I think has functioned pretty well in the United States.
And this is damaging us so badly; in a lot of attitude surveys,
people just say that the thing they think
where the U.S. has gone haywire is on something like Guantanamo.
Male Speaker: Good afternoon, Madam Secretary.
I was stationed overseas in 2005-2006 in Abu Ghraib
and Camp Bucca prisons, and I've dealt with these detainees,
looked at them eye-to-eye, and to some extent had conversations
that were -- to the extent where they told us, "You know,
we're really glad you guys came," or "Really, we want to see you dead."
And when I came back from there, I was very angry,
and I was very overwhelmed, because I too felt
that our image was completely gone, disaster, tarnished,
however you want to say it.
And that was one of my main concerns was: how are we going
to change that, affect that, to get the help of other --
you know, influence the change of people to see us better.
And now my question for you becomes -- is now, rather --
do you think we should pull out,
or do you think we should continue the presence that we have there,
kind of like the way we did after --
the way we developed in Europe after World War II,
to develop a presence there that we have to maintain.
Personally, I feel we made a disaster over there;
we made the bed, now we're sleeping in it.
And I really do think it would be an injustice to the people,
the Iraqi people, at the same time for ourselves, our image,
and our future generations, and our reputation if we were to pull
out right now, just abruptly, without some kind of plan.
Madeline Albright: I think we do have to end the war.
And this -- let me just say,
I don't think there are any good options on Iraq.
I think that's the simplest way to put it.
Nothing -- we have to choose the least worst.
And the tragedy is that our troops are both the solution
and the problem.
They are required because of the security issue, and it's very hard
to see about a normal life for the Iraqis when there's mayhem,
and people being blown up, and all kinds of things going on.
And our troops have helped a lot in that.
On the other hand, they are part of the problem because they're
like flypaper for everybody who hates us.
So the question is how to deal
with the security issue through some other way.
And so I think that we do have to get out in a systematic way,
while leaving some small force there in order to deal,
so that it does not become a terrorist haven.
But we need help.
Now, this may be farfetched, but it will require the next president
to be highly involved in some diplomacy, and that is --
and I say it this way: the United States did not start World War I
or World War II, but when we saw
that it affected our national interest,
we went in there and turned it around.
There are countries around the world who disagreed with this war,
how it started, the reasons, how it's been carried out,
but there's no doubt in my mind
that it affects their national interest now,
in some cases more, even, than us.
They're closer to it, they have an overflow of people that go there,
any number of unintended consequences for them.
And I think the next president has to work on a diplomatic surge
in order to get them, these other countries, to help in training some
of the security forces, helping in the reconstruction effort,
so that all of Iraq is now an international issue,
not just the American war or invasion.
And there needs to be generally a diplomatic approach
with the neighbors.   You know, a lot of things --

I mean, I don't believe that Senator McCain really thinks we're going
to be there 100 years, but what I was troubled by was
that the Iraqi defense minister, about two months ago,
said that our troops had to be there until 2018, because the borders were
so porous to foreign fighters and foreign weapons.
And so that means we have to get the neighbors involved in closing
down the borders, so a surge in diplomacy is important.
But the U.S. has to get out because of the negative aspects of it,
and worry about the refugees and various other ways
of dealing with the Iraqi people.
John Cole: We have time for just one more question.
The lady in the back, please?
Female Speaker: My question, it would be to the president:
how can they use common sense to run our government, to help us?
Like, I come from a rural state, the far western part of North Dakota.
We look up at the global issue, and we see bureaucracy all the way down,
and people talking about fine ideas,
but they're doing nothing to make it possible.
It just seems like we get bigger and bigger.
Madeline Albright: Well, I think that is the very basic question
that we're dealing with in this presidential campaign,
trying to figure out how -- and this is not an easy answer.
I happen to believe that you need to understand how Washington works
to run Washington, and that it is very difficult to say
that Washington doesn't matter.
It does. I think that the next president is going
to have a hard time getting rid of layers of bureaucracy,
trying to figure out how to have a better relationship with Congress --
Congress is basically closer to the American people,
they get elected more often --   and to have that partnership

between the executive and legislative branch.
That is something that has broken down.
The question is how to have the checks
and balances, and not have gridlock.   That is the major problem.

And so the most important thing --
and this may be the longest nominating process
that any of us have watched.
On the other hand, it is such an incredible exercise in democracy
that I think we should applaud it,
and hope that as this process keeps going, because this is
but the beginning of it, that the American people will be listened to.
So what I would try to do in the rest of this campaign is
to have more and more times when the candidates meet with people
in these town hall settings.
Less of the media interpretation of what is going on in sound bites,
and more direct contact between the people.
I have to tell you, I have found it very educational --
even as a national security person, I have been out doing a lot
of campaigning -- to realize -- this sounds stupid,
but you come from the plains -- that how vast this country is.
And how, while a lot of it seems exactly the same,
because there's a McDonald's and a, you know, Wal-Mart everywhere,
there are real differences in our country.
There are huge differences between western Pennsylvania and Ohio
and California, and that our candidates have to listen
to those differences, absorb them.
But I think -- and this may be a good way to end on this --
I think our presidents have to listen more.
That that is a part that is really important;
you can't have the solutions without listening.
But I also think that our people need to listen more
to what the candidates are saying.
Not easy, because it's filtered through this, you know,
one stupid question after another on some TV show,
when they actually have something important to say.
And democracy is not an event; democracy is a process.
And we are telling everybody else how to do the process,
and so they are watching what we are doing.
And I travel a lot overseas, and people are watching us, believe me.
I was in India in December, they wanted to know about Iowa.
I was just now in Poland, they wanted to know
about the superdelegates.
So everybody is watching us, but it is that magic of American democracy
that Thomas Jefferson really was instrumental in giving us
that we need to make sure really works,
and this Library is the best place to make that happen.
Thank you all, very, very much.
[applause] [music] [end of transcript]