 Good afternoon. Welcome to the New America Foundation. I'm Peter Bergen, the Director of the National Security Studies Program here. I'm very happy to introduce our speaker, Kim Gattus, who's, of course, as you know, is a BBC correspondent. Covering the State Department, she's got a new book, The Secretary, which has been reviewed in pretty much every American newspaper, and I've started reading last night and found absolutely riveting. And Kim will speak about some of the big themes of the book. I'll engage her in some Q&A and then throw it open to you. Great. That was a fast introduction. I'll do the talking now. Thank you all for coming. It's been a very interesting experience for me, talking to real audiences. I'm usually sitting in a TV studio talking straight into a camera. So it's been lovely to give talks around town and actually speak to my audience and my readers. So I thank you for coming. This is a book which started jelling in my mind sometime in 2010. I'm a State Department correspondent for the BBC. I travel with the Secretary of State around the world as many of my American colleagues have done over the last few decades. The Secretary of State travels with a small press corps. But I found that I was in a rather unique position because I wasn't an American covering an American Secretary of State. I wasn't even fully a Westerner. I was someone who was born in Beirut during the Civil War there. I grew up in essence on the receiving end of decisions made in Washington. And so I found myself in a very unique position having lived with the consequences of decisions made in Washington. I was now in the U.S. traveling around the world with the Secretary of State watching some of those decisions made sometimes in front of me, sometimes literally on the fly. So I want to just start my little talk by reading you the first couple of paragraphs from the book. I know this is not a reading, but they do set the tone and they lay out some of the themes that I try to address in this book. I grew up in Beirut on the front lines of a civil war. My father always said, if America wanted the fighting to end, the war would be over tomorrow. He waited 15 years for the guns to fall silent. From 1975 to 1990, everybody waited while 150,000 people died. Did America not care that people were being killed? Did it not have the power to stop the bloodshed? Were we just a pawn in the hands of the neo-colonial imperial power? And why were we all blaming this distant land for our war anyway? As a child, I never imagined I would one day live in that distant land and would be able to put some of those questions to the American Secretary of State herself, Hillary Clinton. As a reporter in the State Department Press Corps, I would even fly from Washington to Beirut with her on an aging American government plane which contrasted somewhat with my image of an omnipotent superpower. So those few paragraphs tell you broadly the three themes or the three narratives that keep this book going over the course of its pages and its chapter. This isn't a dry policy book. It isn't a book by a pure insider, someone like Valley Nasser, for example, who will be coming out with his own book, who's been at the table when some of those decisions have been made. But it is an inside account and it is the first draft of history, if you will, of Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State. And although in Washington we love the minutia of policymaking and every insider take that we can get, I found that the value added that I brought to the book was also my ability to remain an outsider, as someone who had grown up outside of Washington and outside of the U.S. So it's an unusual book for a Washington audience perhaps, but I did want to write it both for my peers here and also for a wide audience across the U.S. Over the last few weeks I've taken time out of my day job to talk about the book and I've been humbled and flattered and impressed by the feedback that I've gotten. Not just in Washington, but also across the United States. I've given radio interviews to small radio stations from Toledo to Albany to St. Louis to Tampa and LA. And what I found was that there was a real interest that we forget about sometimes in Washington, a real interest in understanding those bigger questions and how the world is connected. You know, people read the headlines but they can't always make sense of what it necessarily means for them and their lives wherever they are in the U.S. So these are big questions that weigh on the minds of Americans and we forget that sometimes when we're very busy with our day-to-day coverage of the big issues in the U.S. We sometimes forget that it doesn't really matter always how a decision was reached. People are living with the consequences. Whether it's in the U.S., you know, people who've had to fight in wars abroad or whether it's in the Middle East or other countries from Pakistan to China that are just seeing the end result of the decision that was made. Of course, for foreign policy analysts we want to understand how it was made, but I think it's important to remember that for real people, the general audience that I'm trying to reach, they are simply living with the decision that was made. And then, because I am from outside the U.S., I also wanted to address an international audience with my book. And they have several variations of the questions that are being asked in the U.S. about American power and what it really means today in the 21st century and how much power America still has. Americans wonder to what extent should the U.S. still be involved abroad, to what extent should it interfere, try to save every person that's calling for help, stop every conflict that erupts, whether it's Syria or Libya. There are enough problems in the U.S. that Washington is trying to deal with. There are enough budget issues that the average American doesn't understand why money has to be spent abroad on anything at all, even though, of course, the amount spent abroad is much less than people usually think it is. And so for my audience abroad I wanted to attempt to demystify a little bit this foreign policy machine, because there is an illusion or a perception. Let's start with the word perception first. There is a perception abroad that because America is the superpower, it pulls all the strings, pushes all the buttons and makes happen whatever it wants to see happen. And to some extent, of course, that is correct because America is the biggest superpower and it has more power than most other countries combined. But it is very often, as we see in Washington itself with domestic politics, it's very often difficult for the president to get things moving. It requires a lot of heavy lifting, whether he's having discussions in Washington about the sequestration or whether he's having discussions with Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas in the Middle East. Occasionally you see progress, but it requires a lot of heavy lifting. And it is something that is often difficult to grasp when you are living in Beirut or Pakistan or Afghanistan or even China, I have found. And so in my travels, I found that I was in this unique position where I could bridge the gap between the illusion and the perception and the reality, whether it was for a U.S. audience or whether it was for an international audience. And try to really demystify that foreign policy machine, explain to people how it really works to, you know, the best of my ability. I mean, I don't pretend to have all the answers. But I did feel that it was important to address both audiences in the U.S. and abroad. I want to read you another very quick passage from the book that sort of tells you a little bit how people abroad perceive the power that the U.S. has. And it isn't always about rejecting the U.S. per se because it is the U.S. It is often, it is sometimes, people have a different worldview or a different perception of what the U.S. should be doing abroad or not. But I have found also that it is often because people simply don't understand why the U.S. doesn't do what they want it to do. And so I've gotten a lot of interesting comments and reactions from this little passage, which I will read you now. And I write this around the time when the U.S. administration, during the first term of President Obama, is trying to get the peace process moving and nothing is moving. So I write, I still wondered whether one of the reasons countries and people were so often disappointed in the United States was their unrealistic expectation of what the U.S. should and could do. Governments everywhere that instinctively and narrowly pursued their national interests somehow expected the United States to suspend the pursuit of its own interests to please them. The Arabs wanted the United States to ditch the Israelis. The Israelis wanted the United States to bomb Iran. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted Obama to wait with him for the Shiite Messiah. Pakistan wanted to be given Afghanistan on a gold platter. India wanted the United States to say it could have Kashmir. Japan wanted Washington and make Beijing go away. Countries seem to forget that the United States had different layers of overlapping interests that it needed to align. And very often I found that the frustration that leaders showed with the U.S. was that they didn't understand why the U.S. couldn't make their rivals move. The Turks don't understand why the U.S. can't simply make Israel apologize. We've seen the apology come out today, but it's taken two years to get there. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a lot written about it and I don't delve into it in too many details. I didn't want to re-litigate all of the peace process. But just very simply on a human level, on a human interaction level, the Israelis don't understand why the Americans can't just make the Palestinians do something and the Palestinians don't understand why the Americans can't make the Israelis do whatever they want them to do. And it's the same thing over and over again around the world. So I try to tell the story from a human perspective, from my observation, with my own personal narrative woven in throughout the book to make this an accessible read to a wide audience. And I really try to take the reader along with me for what has been an exhausting four years around the world, around, across 300,000 miles, which is how far I traveled with Hillary Clinton. She traveled almost a million miles to more countries than any of her predecessors. And she is, of course, the central character and a very compelling one, whether you like her or not, a very compelling character in this book. And I try to paint a portrait of the woman. You know, much has been written about her already. I didn't want to write a pure biography of her. It's been done before and it will no doubt be done by great American writers. I wanted to write a first draft of history of her tenure as Secretary of State to tell that story, that bigger story of American power. Now several of my, you know, I have several big takeaways and I'm happy to answer questions about specific policy issues. But several of my big takeaways when it comes to her and her approach to foreign policy and her job as Secretary of State are as follows. She set out to improve perceptions of the U.S. around the world when she and President Obama came into power in 2009 and started their administration. Now I know that it doesn't always, you know, go down well with an audience at home to say that, you know, perceptions of American power of America had to be improved. You know, people bristle sometimes at the thought or the suggestion that America's image isn't perfect. I understand that people are obviously very proud of their own country. But I think that everybody can agree that during the Bush administration it wasn't exactly the golden age of diplomacy. It was a different approach to dealing with the outside world and it didn't go down well and it didn't necessarily do much for America's credibility. So there was very much a sense within the Obama administration that that had to be tackled and it was a first priority. You know, before they could get down to business, before they could actually get anything done that was tangible they had to make it desirable again for countries around the world to work with America including allies, you know, across the Atlantic. You know, the reconciliation with Europe started again towards the end of the Bush administration but it still needed a lot of work. Asia felt abandoned and disregarded by the Bush administration. You know, and let's not even go to the Arab world but we'll go into Arab perceptions of the US a little bit later on because it does ebb and flow. When it comes to improving perceptions of the US that was, as I said, the priority for Clinton and President Obama and she set out to, you know, she set out on a new campaign around the world, this time a campaign for America trying to reconnect with allies and rivals everywhere trying to establish new ways of working with rising powers be they Turkey or India or even Brazil and of course, you know, the big ones like China and, you know, there have been some successes and some failures. You know, the reset with Russia isn't exactly perfect but again, keep in mind other countries have their own agendas their own domestic constituency and it's not because America wants something that it necessarily happens and that is something that is often forgotten and which I found that Clinton had a particular appreciation for. She had a lot of empathy and she was able to understand where her counterparts were coming from what they had been through, what their political agenda might be and how she might be able to get through to them. So, her diplomacy was both behind closed doors and very public and I'll start with the public diplomacy which is her campaign for America which yielded two results. The first one very briefly is that she restored her own political fortunes by engaging with the world by her relentless public diplomacy by the way she showed loyalty to the president by being a team player by remaining above the fray of domestic US politics she has very clearly emerged as a winner. It was a gamble for both President Obama and Hillary Clinton to work together they decided to take that risk and I think that by all accounts it was a success. You know, we'll hear perhaps further down the line how much division there really was how often they really disagreed and I tell some of that in the book but overall there was a sense of loyalty and a desire to show unity for the outside world no matter how many divisions there were behind closed doors because there was also a sense that it was important to show that unity to help shore up America's credibility they didn't want any of the public sniping that happened between cabinet members during the Bush administration. So, her very public position, her global stature also helped to improve perceptions of the United States you know there was a reason why President Obama chose her it was a surprise to a lot of people it was a surprise to her but in hindsight it certainly made sense she was one of the people who could get on a plane travel to any capital and just get started and immediately hit the ground running with what she was trying to do and I also think just another point that we forget sometimes the position that the US was in it wasn't just coming after eight years of the Bush administration and very bullish type of diplomacy but it was also at the time of the financial crisis and there was a lot of talk about American decline so again reinforcing the need to take her campaign for America around the world and really reassert American presence, American leadership even if it's just a perception you know as we often say the old adage of you know showing up is half the battle won well she certainly believed in that her public diplomacy I think is one of the under reported and under rated aspect of her legacy I think it goes a long way to reach out to people directly around the world because decisions and countries futures aren't just made and decided by world leaders anymore by those countries leaders but also increasingly by people and there was a real recognition within Clinton steam but also within the Obama administration as a whole that this was something that they had to recognize and that people had to be empowered and we saw that with President Obama's speech in Israel I think very clearly today continuing that tradition now of reaching out directly to the public appealing to the Israeli and to the Palestinian public to say you know talking above the head of their leaders and reaching out to them and saying if you want change you have to help bring it about and it is about increasingly empowering people we've seen that of course in Egypt and across the Arab world but she really tried to take that to every country that she went to and one of my favorite examples is Pakistan you know it's easy to go to South Korea or to Europe or to even China where she was seen as a celebrity and you know get the adulation of the crowd it's quite something else to go to Pakistan and subject yourself to three days of interviews and town hall meetings and a barrage of hostile questions but she very clearly decided that she didn't want to give up on engaging with people that it was important to reach out directly to them make them feel that they were being listened to that they were being respected and that they had a stake in the say or they had a stake in their country and a say in how it was run and it was interesting to see how perceptions changed over the course of her first trip there in 2009 and how coverage in the media also improved ever so slightly about one inch at a time and you could tell that you know she had helped diffuse a little bit the tension at the heart of the relationship now I'm not saying that the relationship is perfect it is still very tense and you know so much about it as well but I was struck by the fact that when I interviewed the Pakistani Foreign Minister who's you know quite a feisty speaker in a Rabbani car at the end of Clinton's tenure I asked her for her take on Clinton's diplomacy you know a very harsh position a very critical take on American policy American diplomacy and Clinton herself because these two women certainly clashed a lot in some of their meetings and I was surprised to hear in a Rabbani car saying that she was impressed by the empathy and the humanity that Clinton brought to every meeting and her desire to understand where Pakistan was forward and one of the crises that was diffused in that manner was in the aftermath of the Salah incident when I believe 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a NATO strike there was a real desire within Pakistan to get an apology from the United States but it was already election season in the US it was starting and it was simply unfathomable for the White House to come out with an apology and took a lot of work and to try to convince people within the administration that something had to be done that it had to be worded in some sort of way that would be acceptable to the Pakistanis or it would simply be impossible to move forward on issues like supply routes for NATO troops in Afghanistan or the whole discussion about the drawdown and peace talks with the Taliban eventually that apology very carefully worded did come and I think that that's why Hina Rabbani Kar was so impressed with Clinton's ability to figure out how do we work together towards a common goal now when it comes to public perceptions of the US around the world I'm fully aware that the United States as a superpower will probably remain loved and resented in equal measures it is the fate of a superpower whether you're the US or China or Brazil people in your immediate backyard on a more global level will push back against American influence and I'm also aware that even though initially the polls when President Obama was elected showed that there was better approval more approval of the US role around the world that those polls are slipping again they're still higher than during the Bush administration I'm not a huge fan of polls I think you know to determine things of a specific policy or a specific country it's not always the full picture but I do feel that there is less animosity towards the United States and that it is become desirable again to work with the US whether you're an entrepreneur in the Arab world whether you're the French President whether you are the Turkish Prime Minister or Foreign Minister there is that desire again with the US if only because of the realization that the US actually isn't exactly about to disappear from the global stage I mean decline is a relative term I don't fully subscribe to it I don't like to use that word but power is changing and the way the US exercises American leadership has to change to catch up with that changing reality on the ground it isn't anymore about you're with us or you're against us how can we help us help you how can we work towards a common goal together it isn't always going to work and there are people who are not going to want to work with the United States but it's certainly a more collaborative approach that is being tested the jury is still out on whether it will work and who knows what events will bring our way but it is certainly something that the Obama administration tried to implement to harness the changes around the world and the rising powers around the world and try to figure out perhaps a little bit idealistic but it is also very pragmatic and that takes me to the other aspect of Clinton's legacy which is to try to implement the approach to smart power it's not a new concept you know the Marshall plan was in its way informally a very smart power approach to the transatlantic the transatlantic relationship but I found that Clinton tried to implement it more methodically than had been done before because both she and President Obama realized that they had to catch up with the times that they were living in that they had to acknowledge that countries like Turkey or India or South Africa had to be brought on board so how do you develop the tools for 21st century diplomacy you do that by finding those common goals by setting up what sounds like a very boring concept but the strategic and economic dialogues like China or now also with some of the rising powers and you try to get people on board so that they have a stake in working towards that common goal and so my sort of evaluation is that to judge the work of the Secretary of State and the success of the Secretary of State is that the old scorecard of how many peace agreements have you signed how many treaties have you have you reached how many agreements have you been able to get to with some of your partners around the world isn't enough anymore to judge the scope of American power and to tell us exactly whether the U.S. is up or down and how well it's doing in its global leadership a lot has been written about the diffusion of power the end of power the G zero world as Ian Bremmer calls it the end of power it's more difficult to hold on to power to wield it to exercise it and so I found that both President Obama and Hillary Clinton were in a way quite avant-garde and I'm not quite sure that either people in the U.S. or even around the world are fully catching on to that reality I mean if you see the kinds of requests that still come America's way for help a little bit the traditional approach to what can you do to help us overall and I'll go into some of the specifics I found that Hillary Clinton was interested in the big picture of how do you reposition the U.S. for the 21st century how do you develop those 21st century statecraft tools whether it's economic statecraft of her job as Secretary of State making it very much part of the mainstream conversation with leaders everywhere she was interested of course in improving perceptions of the United States and she was of course interested as well in some of the details of the policy whether it was defusing crises or keeping up with events around the Arab world or rebalancing America's position on them at least I think that is one of the biggest criticism that she faces that she didn't go all in she didn't try to really bang heads together in the Arab world would it have made a difference it's hard to tell you often hear that the parties have to want it on the ground some people will tell you well America has to want it more and just impose it on them but there was a sense that she simply wasn't ready to stake her reputation as a politician on what is really a thankless task we see now that John Kerry is very much interested in trying to tackle that expectations have not been raised the way they were raised during President Obama's first term which led to so much disappointment because when the US doesn't deliver people throw their hands up in the air and they say you've abandoned us and you've got to be a part of her of her tenure I found it interesting to what extent she tried to break down the talking points in ways that were very accessible to people and be quite honest and candid about how much America could do and how much it couldn't do it's a double-edged sword it didn't always serve her right but certainly as someone interviewing her and as someone who grew up on the receiving end of decisions made in Washington I found that it was quite refreshing and it would be great if we could just stand here and say yes let's bring down Assad but if we don't have what it takes to do it we would be dishonest we wouldn't be open to the people on the ground making them believe that the cavalry is coming when it isn't coming but that's a message that's very difficult for people on the ground to hear when they are being shot out, when they are feeling abandoned by the West by the government obviously it's something that is very comforting to President Assad himself to know that the cavalry isn't coming so it's very difficult to to balance the public discourse and the diplomatic discourse and how much you say to the public and how much you don't say to the public and how open you are about what the US can and cannot do you can travel around the world to reassert American leadership you can be candid with what you are able to do and start then feeding the perception that your power is very limited so it cuts both ways so where is the US today when you look at what Hillary Clinton has done and hasn't done what President Obama has achieved or not achieved there's a lot of unfinished business whether it's North Korea whether it's Iran whether it is the Middle East peace process I asked that question to Clinton herself how did she achieve some of your critics say that you've been inconsequential as a secretary of state and she said it's about the big picture it's about making it possible to move forward now it's about laying the foundation for a new way of exercising global leadership and perhaps now we'll be able to see in the second term of the administration in the second term of President Obama whether it'll be possible to pick some low hanging fruit but there is this constant back and forth in what the world wants from the United States and how much it wants the US to get involved or not how much it wants the US to interfere and how much it doesn't and when I talk to audiences abroad about my book I remind them that it's also about them to decide what it is that they want from America it's easy like we were doing during the war in Lebanon to say if the war is ongoing it's because America doesn't want it to end if there is chaos in Iraq in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion it's because it was part of the plan even though clearly there was no plan for the day after in Washington and so we have a tendency abroad to overestimate America's ability to move things I don't want to underestimate it either but I think it's important for people to understand also what it is that they want from the United States I was very struck during the Egypt revolution by something that an American official told me people in Egypt were waiting every day to see what President Obama was going to say about whether Hosni Mubarak should step down or not and my sense here was waiting to see what the Egyptian street was going to say because they didn't want to be leading the charge and then finding out that they had pushed people all the way forward and that there was going to be a violent crackdown and the US wasn't going to be willing or ready to actually do anything to intervene on the ground so they were waiting to listen to the people and seeing how far the people actually wanted to go and I really found that it was a nice cause for the US to do more and to be more open and more forcefully and more quickly called for President Hosni Mubarak's departure and so this American official tells me this is the irony here on the one hand we're being accused of dominating everything and on the other hand we're being accused of not dictating everything and dominating everything these are choices to be made by the Egyptian people and these are questions that people ask me so what's the plan what is America planning and they find it very hard to grasp my tale of watching American officials scrambled to keep up with change again not trying to underestimate the power that the US has but it's important not to overestimate it either and it is really I find at this stage about making clear to people and I found that that is something that Clinton was quite good at all her shortcomings I found that she was quite good at telling people it's up to you the US can help but we're not able to remake societies and I found that that was also another very candid statement to make from an American official to acknowledge that mistakes had been made in foreign policy in the US before and you try to learn from them I found it quite disarming when she talked to audiences around the world so clearly there's a change in the tone of American diplomacy there's a desire to work with the US again it isn't a universal love fest as I said but what I found most interesting today and that brings me to the question about how much involvement how much American involvement the US wants and how little it wants is to compare to very different situations but bear with me just one second you know when you look at the aftermath of the Iraq war you know by all accounts you know whatever word you want to use debacle disaster fiasco fiasco or if you want to be you know more generous you'll say it didn't go according to plan and there was real resentment in the Arab world about an American invasion which initially was meant to liberate the people from the dictatorship and there were thanks from the Shia community there was also a lot of bloodletting and a lot of chaos and resentment against the United States really boiled over during that period and as a reporter in the Arab world during that time I often heard people say that they were pleased that it happened they would never say that publicly they were glad Saddam was gone they were hoping that perhaps it might stare or desire for change in countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria but very quickly they looked at the chaos in Iraq and they thought no thank you we don't want this and of course in the ten years there will be a repeat of that especially not as far as I can tell in this country but what I found very interesting is that despite the debacle or the fiasco of Iraq and the very clear anger about a US military intervention in a Muslim country you see now that people are wondering why the US isn't helping the violence end in Syria bear with me just one more second because I know these are Iraq was a new unilateral decision with a coalition of the willing it was done on flawed intelligence or false pretenses whichever way you want to look at it but it was America intervening and it was as we've all been saying a fiasco so why is it that despite that fiasco you find that in the Arab world ten years later there's nothing about the violence in Syria and it's that difference that nuance between when America goes it alone and when it goes into a situation like Libya for example where it is called on to help where other countries come on board like the French and the British and where the Arabs are also on board and they put their mouth and they participate militarily in that intervention and so there is a nuance there that I find is often lost in the discourse in the US when they look at the Arab world because it isn't just you're damned if you do damned if you don't it's really about how you do it and I think it's important to keep that in mind when we listen to the calls for help from Syria I'm not advocating intervention or no intervention I'm happy to answer questions about it I reported on Syria extensively I am myself as a person very torn about what the best option is for Syria but I do find it genuinely intriguing that people in the Arab world are willing not all of them of course but a lot of them are willing to put aside the debacle of an American intervention in Iraq and think what can you do to help us with Syria and the role and the changing role of American power we saw the downside of too much power of hubris but now I wonder whether we're seeing the downside of too little power or perhaps more accurately the reluctance to use it and with that I will end my talk and take some of your questions Thank you Kim that was a very stimulating set of observations let me return to the incident where the 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed because in a way this is a very emblematic of a lot of things that happened between the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton's State Department and if you look at Valley NASA's peace and foreign policy and his forthcoming book he basically says three things and this incident particularly underlies this was a White House that really only cared about domestic politics this is a White House that didn't really care about diplomacy this was a White House that made all the decisions and the reason that the deaths of these 24 Pakistani soldiers and the fact that it took nine months for apology eventually to come out of Hillary Clinton's mouth was because of these three reasons domestic politics it was an election season they didn't care about diplomacy they didn't really care about trying to make nights with the Pakistanis they really only cared about counterterrorism so do you think Valley NASA's overall kind of take is correct that the State Department was sort of marginalized on most issues and a sub part of that Holbrook never got to meet with the President one on one and Holbrook of course was Clinton's person and despite the fact this was supposedly the President's most important foreign policy kind of mission at the time which was sorting out the Afghan war so what do you think of Valley's insider perspective and you quote him in the book fairly extensively I'll quote him saying that for his first time in government he looked at how hard it was to get anything done and he said I can find the exact quote he says I'll never again say you should have done this or you should have done that and you should have disagreed on very much and I don't think we disagree about Clinton's role within the administration I'm always interested in the nuances of every discussion that's also what I try to do with my book is to bring nuance to discussion about American power to bring nuance to the discussion about how the rest of the world perceives the US I think every White House always has on policy on foreign policy I mean I'm not a Washington insider I've only been here for five years but that's very much my perception that's very much my understanding you have some secretaries of states who are more powerful than others but even someone like Condoleezza Rice who was national security adviser to the president who then became secretary of state was often on the losing end of arguments about what was the best course of action and sometimes I think it was more ideologically driven the arguments were more ideologically driven I do think yes that this White House is quite political but I tell the story of President Truman back in the day when he has to make a decision about whether to recognize the state of Israel or not and the State Department is furious about the possibility that this might happen they first want to make sure that the president's political adviser within the White House turns to the State Department officials and says look you don't understand here the president has to get re-elected that's all that matters and it is very often a recurring theme and it is something that we don't often that we sometimes forget abroad as well and I think it's important to remember that I can't speak for Hillary Clinton I interviewed her a lot I interviewed her 19 times she never gave me the impression that she felt marginalized she wasn't being marginalized she isn't someone who you can just put to the side I think she chose her battles very carefully I think she weighed very heavily on a lot of issues she won some battles and not others both Gates and her were if I'm not mistaken on the losing end of the argument for an even bigger number of troops for the surge so she lost that she tried to engage with by she was able to do that with a lot of leaders but she failed with hamming cars I didn't really go anywhere Holbrook didn't get one on one meetings with the president but she got one every week and that was one of the conditions if I understand correctly that was one of her conditions for taking the job she wanted to be able to go above the bureaucracy the machinery around the president to have direct access to him I think that yes politics are always involved in every decision that you make but that goes back to my point about loyalty Clinton never in public not to journalists not to her foreign counterparts none of her aides ever showed that there was dissension within the administration history will tell we'll find out in a few years like I said there was no agreement or how much division there was and how bitter the fighting actually was but what I found her approach was often and I detail that in the Libya chapter is to get a good sense of the situation on the ground figure out what it was she thought was the best course of action and then give the president the elements that he needed to come to the same conclusion as her and sometimes that works but she needed to tip the balance in favor of military intervention and a UN resolution that called for all necessary measures to protect civilians you know on Pakistan it took a lot of time and it was partly because of the politics it's also partly because of the Pakistanis and how high they put the bar and exactly what kind of apology they want and it's not always easy to get that going but it was an effort that she pursued relentlessly because she realized that it had to be done one of the things that comes across really clearly in your book is the incredible grind that Secretary had to do her job and her staff and also you covering her and the other thing that comes through very clearly is what you mentioned the empathy but one thing that surprised me was how late everything ran all the time she became better over the course of what ran late because she would basically listen to everybody what they had to say wouldn't wrap it up and say we have to move to the next meeting so she was and then you contrast it in a sense with President Obama there's a great scene in the book where President Obama goes into a meeting with King Abdullah and doesn't really do any pleasantries and basically he says why don't you give Al Al overflight rights do you think consistently they were President Obama's had a different approach in these kinds of meetings versus Hillary Clinton based on your own reporting you know obviously my focus in the reporting and in the book is on Hillary Clinton and I haven't been in many of the meetings with the president I'm not sure many people have been in meetings with the president but it's not the focus of my reporting but they clearly have very different styles but I think it also comes with an age I think she has matured and evolved in her style I think that removed from you know the fray of domestic politics she was able to be more herself to tap into that ability of hers to empathize with people and put it to work in her conversations and it is something that world leaders also commented on you know I interviewed several foreign officials for the book and they often volunteered that observation about her ability to talk to them as a mother as a friend before getting down to business or simply to understand what it was that they could both do to bridge the gap I mean think about what we're seeing today that Benjamin Atinyahu has finally given to the Turks about the Mavi Marmar incident it's taken almost two and a half years right and it's not for the lack of trying I mean Clinton tried President Obama tried President Obama has good relations with several world leaders but it's not a chummy kind of relationship it's just not the kind of guy he is I mean you can criticize him for him or criticizing for it or not but that apology reminded me of you know the incident itself back in was it 2010 May or June 2010 the end of May 2010 Davutoglu was the day after was meant to be in Washington for talks about the Iran sanctions and he had a morning meeting to prepare for his meeting with Hillary Clinton and the officials who came to see him were focused on the Iran sanctions Davutoglu was what is wrong with you people we've had Turkish citizens detained, killed there's this incident happening it's an affront to Turkish sovereignty and you're here to talk to me about Iran sanctions then he goes into his meeting with Hillary Clinton and the first thing she says is I'm my condolences and I'm sorry for what happened and she personally picks up the phone the Israeli Prime Minister to sort out releasing I think one of the journalists who was detained who was missing I can't remember the exact details and suddenly Davutoglu the tension just leaves the room and he's sitting with someone who understands what he's going through and who tells him that as a mother she can't imagine that someone is going through this you know is it something that women bring to the job possibly not all women either so it really depends but I think that what we saw in President Obama's speech just to come back to your question what we saw with President Obama's speech in Jerusalem wasn't just in his own attempt at public diplomacy but his own ability as well as the people who are on both sides of that conflict whether it's the Palestinians or the Israelis comparing Palestinian children to his own daughters and saying everybody would want the best for their kids I mean it does go a long way I think you can roll your eyes and say all that soft power is nice but it does seem to get you somewhere sometimes in your book you have a lot of people who are not part of the kind of conventional State Department apparatus in a sense, Humo, Aberdeen, Jake Sullivan, Phillip Reins who are these people and what role do they play for Hillary Clinton and do these people all expect to be part of the 2016 campaign that surely is coming so you say what's your answer they're very different characters and Humo Aberdeen are part of if you want to call it Hillary Land Humo Aberdeen has been with Clinton since the 90's in the White House Phillip joined her in the Senate they were both part of the campaign trail so they're very much part of the Hillary machine they were there to make sure that she looked good that she had everything she wanted very careful about her image and you would think that they were sort of quite successful I don't know whether restoring her image was always part of the plan or whether it was just an unintended positive result of her doing her job well but certainly between Humo and Phillip there was a lot of attention being paid to how she came across to how events were staged more so even than the usual attention that is brought to events staged for Secretary of State there was a lot of sales in magazines access to reporters writing long form articles about her documentaries you know there was some criticism of that approach in the State Department people saying are we here to serve Hillary Clinton or are we here to serve the Secretary of State but I found that over the course of the four years some of those same people then told me well you know what in the end it serves America's image as a former First Lady the former senator but she represents America so they will if she decides to run and I'm happy to discuss that I mean I think I can give you a sense of what might be going through her mind or as an observer what I think will what is that well I think she's a very flexible and pragmatic person I think that she's going to make sure that she doesn't do anything about the chances of running if she decides to do so I think the pull will be very strong but I really don't think that she has made up her mind fully I think that between her health her age her family you know Bill and Chelsea whatever may be going on in their lives who might be her opponent in the Republican Party who might be her opponent in the Democratic Party I mean in 2007 everybody said it was hers for the taking it didn't turn out like that I'm not an expert at American domestic politics but you know perhaps it is still possible that someone might you know rush her to the finish line I think it's unlikely but you know you can never quite tell she'll have to make a decision sometime in the next year whether she wants to do that or not I think that her video coming out in support of gay marriage was seen as her first opening, her first public statement that you know sort of unofficially launched that campaign you know I looked at the video I certainly thought okay this is you know this very much looks like a campaign video without her saying it but I was very interested in this you know I compared it to her video announcing her start in 2007 very different lighting very different hairstyle much softer you know this is something that she wasn't comfortable putting forward as a candidate in 2008 her sort of softer side and you know she told me herself that you know since 2008 what she's learned as Secretary of State is to be better at connecting with people but whatever she decides you know it's not the last that we've heard of her she's not just going to retire whether it's something else you know she will still be quite prominent but Jake Sullivan is in a different category because he's very much a foreign policy operative he's now the National Security Advisor to the Vice President he became very prominent at the State Department as an aide to Clinton on all things foreign policy you know I tell the story of how you know all hours of the day to say you know what's going on in the world because he helps her to keep track of all the details I mean she's very good at keeping track of the details but she tries to keep focused on the big picture and you need someone to constantly tell you you know behind you know beyond the headlines you know these are the trend lines or this is how these things are are connected if she decides to run in one way or another but the reason why I wanted to include them in the book and many others because there are a lot of you know characters in the book is to really show you know the human beings at the heart of the foreign policy machine fallible human beings who don't have all the answers who are sleep deprived who don't have all the facts who are doing the best they can whether you agree with their decisions whether they are religious officers and you know Pakistani guards just sort of humanize all of that a little bit you've got a busy day job so how did you write the book? oh my goodness I put my social life on hold I told my friends I'd see them in two years and they were very forgiving and you must have kept good notes because I mean you really have very detailed accounts of some you know I don't know whether I should say this in public but it's all sort of strong innate resistance to keeping a diary I cannot do it it is something about maybe growing up in Lebanon where you know we're all about forgetting the past and moving forward we have collective amnesia about the war I don't want anything in writing about what I went through you know retelling some of those experiences in the book it was really the first time that I wrote about it visual memory I have a very good emotional memory I remember how things felt how tired I was how nauseous I was from the curry or the jet lag but I also did a lot of research in the local media obviously I had all my notes or all my reporting you know from television and from radio that are preserved in the BBC archive and I went back to some of those because sometimes you notice things and back to footage that you had noticed in the moment but you kept your day job I kept my day job absolutely yeah I kept my day job because it was very much I had to be in the moment to continue witnessing history in the making and so then I went back it was I felt sometimes like I was it was an out of body experience because I was reporting on the day to day news but I was also then going home and taking a trip down memory lane to the first trip and I had interviews to piece together some of those moments that I didn't have access to I wasn't in the room when Clinton talks to Davutoglu about the agreement that they're trying to reach with the Iranians but I spoke to people who were in the room and I tried to piece all those moments together the conversation that President Obama had with Hosni Mubarak telling him these reforms that you're offering is just not enough it's not going to work was Obama the head of Clinton in terms of pushing Mubarak out the door? I think it's hard to tell I think it's hard to tell I think there was an instinct to want to be with the people to want to recognize that desire for change and to support it because there was a sense that perhaps they had let down the Iranians in 2009 very different situations at that moment be a missed opportunity for the US they recognized that something big was happening they've just seen Zinedine Ben Ali being deposed in Tunisia Clinton and Gates were definitely more tempered in their enthusiasm if only because age experience years in American government and policy this was an ally of 30 years she made that comment about Egypt being stable on January 25 and she got a lot of criticism for it but it was just an expression of 30 years of American policy towards Egypt that you can't just switch off within seconds as the revolution is just getting underway in Egypt and there was also a realization that if you immediately said well, you know, millions of people are taking to the streets in Egypt fine, you know, we'll put Mubarak to the side you know, these were still very early days and I'm not quite sure that we'd reached the million mark yet it was just starting in those first week in that first week there was a realization with Mubarak and sorry, with Gates and Clinton they had to be careful about how America looked to its other allies and friends and the Saudis and the Pakistanis would say well, you know, the minute there are demonstrations in our country you're gonna throw us under the bus you know, America is already being accused and criticized for being a fickle friend you know, how fickle are you really and so that goes back to the point that I was making about trying to really stay in tune with the Egyptian street because there was one speech that President Mubarak made which seemed to temper the mood on the streets and which made many Egyptians think okay, you know, maybe this is enough for now and then the next day you had the episode with the horses and the camels on the streets and the protesters being beaten and killed and violence erupting again and then all bats were off again and that's when the administration became much more forceful in public watching what was going on on the street in Egypt became much more forceful here in Washington saying so it was very much trying to stay in tune with the Egyptian public Pivot to Asia is one of the big sort of signature supposed changes in the Obama administration and Burma seems to be a sort of unalloyed success basically they're having their own issues but to the extent that you can because I mean one of the problems is you laid out it's hard to sort of score this you know, where you're making you know, if you don't have some sort of treaty or some kind of but Burma looks like it's certainly better to be Burmese today than it was five years ago right so but it's also a decision made within Burma right, but it seems that the Clinton the Obama administration we're not there yet or we were there it seems that it seems that they managed this one pretty well in the same way they say that George H.W. Bush managed the kind of fall of the Berlin Wall pretty well you can you can manage these things in a way that it doesn't become a regional crisis or whatever and it seems that in Burma this is one of of all the kind of things that you might talk about this seems to be the absolutely most unmitigated success I mean Libya may also turn out to be somewhat successful obviously Syria is not a success so how would you score Burma, Libya, Syria these kinds of I'm making what may be a sort of strange comparison actually between Burma and Libya because I think that even though the situations were very different and one you know involved a military intervention the approach was the same the thinking behind the approach was the same the local stakeholders want our help the region is on board the people within the country want the change how do we help choreograph this and how do we help make it happen so in Libya you had the Arab League deciding that they wanted a no-fly zone you had the Arabs saying we will get involved militarily you had the Libyans very clearly calling for help and you had the Europeans desperate for the US to get involved somehow because they couldn't do all the heavy lifting on their own and the US doesn't want to do all the heavy lifting on its own anyway so it's sort of regional and local cooperation empowering the local stakeholders and with Burma you had decision within Burma by the ruling by the I guess you can't call them the junta anymore but by the ruling that they wanted to open up to the outside world that they wanted to reform that their economy wasn't going to improve unless they latched on to progress in Asia I don't know perhaps they looked at what was happening in the Arab world and also thought if you don't reform in time chaos engulfs you we might just as well get on with that but it started in 2009 the first sort of signs that Burma was willing to open up were seen in 2009 at the beginning of the President Obama's administration and Clinton heard several Asian ministers when she was in an ASEAN meeting in Asia tell her that this was happening and that there had to be a different way to engage with Burma and that they were willing to engage the Burmese up to date with what was going on and how the U.S. could help and get involved and in the end seal the deal so you have again the Burmese wanting to do it the regional players like Indonesia eager to figure out a way to help and work with the Americans to make it happen and then the U.S. steps in and helps to bring it together so those two interventions civilian and military you know you can't control we saw the tragedy in Benghazi and we see now that the path towards democracy in Burma is very rocky it's not because something you open up or something you remove a dictator that all your problems are solved in Syria I mean it's hard to how can you call it a success when 70,000 people have died perhaps it's a success if there are any more wars anywhere ever again and then you know you say okay we've managed to stay out of this one Are historians going to regard this as the Rwanda of the Obama administration I tend to shy away from making big historical comparisons like these because I think only time will tell I don't like to make predictions which are then contradicted by the next day's events or headlines bristled at you know the foreign media making comparisons between my country and you know other countries you know Lebanon is Lebanon Syria is Syria I also don't think that we're necessarily able to talk yet about a failed state I mean Syria has strong institutions it has a history of civil society that people aren't necessarily aware of that is under reported I don't know how long this conflict will go on but I certainly did never expected that it would be over quickly and I fully expected Bashar al-Assad to do everything he could and use all the violence at his disposal to hold on to power because it's just a different approach it's a different rationale to the idea of leadership and the idea of power that is sometimes very difficult for people in this country to understand you know I recount a conversation with an American official in the summer of 2011 already in the book and I say President Assad is going to burn the country down before he gives it up and the American official says that doesn't make any sense what good does that do anyone well it does him a lot of good because he's still in power and it is often difficult to understand before moving to Washington I lived under Syrian occupation and that's why I think I still value my ability to remain an outsider no matter how long I've been in Washington is because I still try to tap into what it's like to live in the Middle East and what shapes your world view and what shapes your understanding of what is good for you or bad for you how America is perceived looks serious a very difficult situation we can appreciate the difficulty and the agonizing decision making that is going on in the US when it comes to you know what do we do but going back to your one of your earlier questions about politics you know politics and the election was also very much determining factor in President Obama deciding that he didn't want to get anywhere near that conundrum of Syria because he didn't want to that would mean that he owned the problem and that he had to get involved when nobody really knew what the best way forward was and is it one of Clinton's failing that she didn't tip the balance in favor of you know arming the rebels you know possibly but she certainly wasn't able to give the president the same kind of certitude in the elements that she was bringing him for Libya on Syria so she wasn't able to say that she was involved the French and the British are on board I'm talking 2012 the situation has changed now you know we have a you know a Syrian coalition that is you know coalescing that is representative there wasn't none of that and so it's fine for the US to say okay fine you know we'll I don't know we'll do it but you need to have the elements that at least make it on the ground in Syria you have the French and the British who are much more eager to do something you have the Arabs much more eager to arm I think we're moving towards some kind of intervention but not a full scale military could you have a no fly zone that you could invoke a NATO article 5 because Syria is attacked Turkey you could have an enforceable NATO led no fly zone in the north of the country where Syria attacks Turkey I mean that didn't happen last year when they decided to deploy the patriots which is when they decided to deploy the patriots but there is a lot of talk now about how you can you know either enforce a no fly zone perhaps have strategic strikes but you'd need a coalition of the willing that involves Arab countries you know very often and I say candidly as somebody who grew up in the Arab world people in the Arab world often want the US to help but then when it does like I said damned if you do damned if you don't and I think that that is perhaps slowly changing because of the Iraq-Syria situation where suddenly they realize it's not always the case that we don't want the US to do anything there's some introspection but there isn't a foolproof plan and you're dealing with with a dictator who's you know very cunning who understands how to play the region and play people against each other but it is certainly the case that every day that goes by that there isn't a solution it only gets worse can you wait for the money can identify yourself to this gentleman here Dana Marshall transnational strategy group thanks very much for those comments you mentioned a little bit but I want to draw you out a bit on one of the more interesting to me areas that she moved policy forward and that's an economic state craft there were to my county no fewer than four speeches that she gave on that subject in the United States I think the last was in Singapore I wonder maybe the genesis of that outside advisors whether people inside the building that were kind of urging her to take a more forward leaning position on those issues I think it's very much part of the approach of smart power what was interesting about Clinton which again is perhaps slightly different from President Obama is that she's very open to a lot of outside input she wants all the briefing books all the background information so that she can form her own impression her own opinion about what may possibly be the best way forward she's very open to outside input interesting enough I've asked several of her advisors who was her main inspiration or who did she read most or what articles inspired her most they didn't seem to be able to point out to one thing in particular and I'd like to go back to them and ask again but it does very much seem to be a combination of a lot of different input talking to a lot of her predecessors former secretaries of state listening to people within the building which is something that doesn't happen very often with secretaries of state depending on their style of diplomacy but realizing also the changing nature of power diplomacy in the old traditional way of doing it over the last centuries just doesn't work anymore it isn't just about treaties it isn't just about war and peace it is about empowering people it is about money very simply it is about money it is about empowering women and she made that also part of the mainstream of the conversation if you want to advance your own country she would tell leaders around the world it's not going to happen if you leave half of your economic force behind if you leave half of the population behind she put it in very pragmatic terms it wasn't a nice to have soft power issue it was pragmatic she put it in very pragmatic terms if you want to improve your economy it is not going to happen if you leave half of the population behind so it is an interesting question who were her main influencers or what main books were she reading to develop some of those ideas I think it is like I said a combination of diverse outputs a combination that you have to exercise global leadership in a new innovative way my name is Dave Bryce and I am a retired area resident who gets to attend events like this so that is very nice it is like a big campus university campus in Washington isn't it huge campus and free we should change that that is fine I like the free part thank you very much although it is changing politics diplomacy somewhat still a male dominated world so you have this Hillary Clinton doing it so first of all in the 300,000 miles that you traveled with her from others did you see any reaction to her being a woman either positively or negatively and then kind of related she is not just any woman she is part of the Bill Hillary team maybe the most interesting political couple since McBeth and Lady McBeth in terms of the way people relate to them what did that have any impact and then kind of tangentially did Bill have any impact on her so there is kind of three related questions thanks it is a question that I have been getting a lot about her as a woman and how I interacted with her as a woman and to be honest it has taken me by surprise because it is not something that I think of often myself I don't know if that term exists but I find that mostly I am gender blind I was very fortunate to grow up as an Arab woman with a father who never ever said anything to me about not being able to do something because I was a woman so it is not something that is a natural starting point for any discussion or thinking that I do that is not to say that Arab women have an upheld struggle but we also have a lot of very strong Arab women who are very assertive and run a lot of businesses and own a lot of capital in the Arab world so in my writing about Hillary Clinton obviously I am where she is a woman and I am where I am a woman but it wasn't something that I focused on to explain her approach to work because I covered also a woman who is very different in her style very different Clinton is warmer not just in her interactions with average citizens but also in her interactions with leaders and that is something some of her foreign counterparts commented on not in saying a woman but in saying Clinton and Dr. Rice saying Dr. Rice we loved her she was respected and admired by many of her foreign counterparts as well regardless of the policies and they said she had a much tougher approach in meetings it was very business like there was no chit chat there was no how's your daughter 20 minutes talking with the Saudi king about camels I was down to business this is what we need this is what we want how are you going to deliver it was more of an academic approach more lecturing and Clinton was more as we have been saying more of the empathetic it is also a political skill how am I going to get you to do what I want you to do so is it part of her being a woman it is all of her that she brings to the table and I have no doubt that many men have the ability to empathize as well can you name any can you name any President Obama or yesterday in Jerusalem with his speech when it comes to her relationship with Bill Clinton this is not a pure biography of her I don't go into any of those details I can tell you from talking to some of her friends that she stayed in very regular touch with him that they spoke often on the phone that they are very much connected but there was also a sense that she had to distance herself from the couple and that she had to exert herself fully as her own person she has always been her own person in her own right a lawyer she was active as a First Lady she was a very political First Lady but there was a sense that it was always Bill and Hill and during her time as Secretary of State she steered very much clear of the couple it was just her there weren't many moments or pictures of her with Bill it was just the fact that she was on the road all the time and I'm sure that she sought his advice because she sought the advice of many people who had been in positions of power dealing with foreign leaders before her whether it was her husband or whether it was Condoleezza Rice she called on Condoleezza Rice often to get the lay of the ground that came into power but what I found interesting over the course of the four years is that she stopped being Clinton number two and became Hillary number one and I thought that the moment that exemplified that best was during the Golden Globe Awards when the host on stage after Bill Clinton's speak says oh my god that was Hillary Clinton's husband you know it used to be oh my god it's Bill Clinton's wife and now it's oh my god it's you know Hillary Clinton's husband so she is the politician turned stateswoman in her own right I mean she did it obviously as a continuation of her career as lawyer first lady senator but it was very much outside of the shadow of her husband by the time that she finished her tenure take one more question over here and then you'll sign books afterwards sure thanks Hi Pascal Siegel at inside through analysis do you think Hillary Clinton approach to smart diplomacy is going to survive John Kerry or is it gone with her I think the question is is it going to survive events because the best laid plans so sometimes don't work out because of events because you're overwhelmed by the news by by change that's always a question it's a struggle to maintain a certain course I find her approach to smart power was very much you know she really tried to make the changes to her sorry let me rephrase that she very much tried to make the changes she brought to the State Department and the style of diplomacy permanent so ambassador for women's issues is a permanent position at the State Department economic state craft part of the diplomacy global entrepreneurship program part of the system women's issues gender issues part of the budget it's now been sort of in essence if you will sort of codified in the way the State Department works I won't bore you with the details of the QDDR the quadrennial diplomacy and development review but that's all part of trying to make the smart power approach something permanent but then it depends again on style and leadership how is John Kerry going to take this forward how much is he going to focus on it or not and also it's important to keep in the jury is still out about whether it will work or not this smart diplomacy smart power approach it's being tested it's a generational effort and we'll have to see whether it takes root whether those foundations to do diplomacy in that style in the 21st century where America is still the biggest superpower but not the only power that sort of gels and continues but it was very much a feeling within the Obama administration that it was worth trying and that it was the best way forward Thank you very much Thank you