3 Takeaways - Former Under Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns: On American Foreign Policy Under President Biden and What It Can Accomplish (#18)
Episode Date: December 1, 2020Find out what President Biden can accomplish internationally and what an activist US policy looks like from Ambassador Nicholas Burns, former Under Secretary of State, Ambassador to NATO and Special A...ssistant to the President.
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Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with
the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other
newsmakers.
Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and
their careers.
And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn
Thoman.
Hi, everyone. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. Today, I'm delighted to be
here with Ambassador Nicholas Burns. He's one of the most knowledgeable Americans on international
affairs, having served as Undersecretary of State, Ambassador to NATO, Member of the National
Security Council, and Special Assistant to the president. He has also served in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
I'm looking forward to hearing what he thinks the Biden administration can accomplish internationally.
Nick, thanks so much for being here today.
Lynn, it's a great pleasure to be with you.
I'm looking forward to a really good conversation.
It's an important time for Americans and our role in the world.
It certainly is. In what ways do you think a Biden administration will be different in
international affairs from the Trump administration? I think the Biden administration, led by one of
the most experienced people in foreign policy ever to arrive at the presidency, Joe Biden,
is going to be fundamentally different than Donald Trump. I was an opponent of Trump over the last four years. I can't hide that. I don't want to hide that from your listeners.
While he may have done two or three things that were advantageous to the United States,
I felt that he weakened us overseas, mainly because he isolated us from, frankly, what made
us great and has made us an important world power. I think Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tony Blinken,
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Jake Sullivan, John
Kerry back in public life as the new special envoy in climate.
They're all people who believe that the United States to be successful in the world, to protect
the American people, and to add to our well-being and prosperity, we have to be out in the world.
We can't live behind walls.
We can't dig moats around the country and pull up drawbridges.
We've done a lot of that the last four years. So I think you're going to see a very activist administration
reclaiming America's seat at the global table. So what does that mean? That means we have to go back
into the World Health Organization during the pandemic. It's a flawed organization. It ought
to be held accountable for its fairly significant missteps at the beginning of the pandemic when it
wasn't tough enough in asking questions of the pandemic when it wasn't
tough enough in asking questions of the Chinese government way back in January 2020. We've got
to be back at that table because now with the vaccines coming, and what a hopeful thing that
is, you and I were just talking about that, we've got to be at that table to work with China and
India and the European Union and Japan so that we have an equitable distribution of the vaccine,
particularly to poor countries. We've got to be back at the climate change table. We've been absent for four years. We left the
Paris climate change agreement. You know, we're actually the only country in the world that's
not part of it. And yet we're the second largest carbon emitter. If the U.S. is not involved,
how's the world going to cope with climate change going forward? So Joe Biden has said very,
very, I think, appropriately, we've got to be back at that table. And then, Lynn, I'd say we
have to be back at our alliance table. Now, what do I mean by that? NATO is our major alliance
in the transatlantic area. I was ambassador there on 9-11. When we were hit really hard,
3,000 people dead in your city, in New York, and at the Pentagon, in Washington, a field in
Pennsylvania. I'll never forget this. The allies started calling me. I was the new American ambassador. We're with you. We want to fight with you. We want to defend you.
And by the next morning, we'd invoked this part of the NATO treaty of 1949 called Article 5.
If one of us is attacked, then all of us are attacked. And we'd never had to invoke it before,
but we invoked it then. And all those allies came into Afghanistan with us. So the point here is
that NATO is vital to us. So the point here is that NATO is vital
to us. So we've got to preserve NATO. Donald Trump tried to distance ourselves from NATO.
He tried to become the chief critic of NATO instead of owning it and leading it. And we
have a similar alliance system, a little bit different, structured differently, but with
Japan, Australia, South Korea, and East Asia. And that's the power differential between the
United States and China. So America is strong in the world when we're in it, when we're honoring
our friends and allies, when we're participating in the lifeblood of diplomacy, which is trying to
do things to help the human condition, to help people survive, and to help people prosper. And
I think that's going to be the greatest difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Donald Trump felt that America could be alone in the world. Joe Biden
understands we can't be alone. Despite our incredible strength and power, no country can
conquer climate change on its own. No country can conquer COVID-19 on its own. We got to be with
others. What practical achievements can we hope for from a U.S. return to or leadership of these
organizations?
You've mentioned a couple of them, the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Agreement,
there's the G20 on economics, there are trade agreements.
I think practically speaking with the World Health Organization, we have a highly developed
public health system here in the United States.
That public health system in our 50 states will know how to distribute the vaccine. But that's
not true of most countries. They don't have strong public health systems. So I think we have to
appropriately look at America first and take care of our own people first. Can we also spend a little
bit of time helping the poorer parts of the world cope? And can we make sure that there's an
equitable distribution of that vaccine so that the rich countries don't get all of the services and the poor countries are left without anything?
I think that's an ethical obligation that the United States has to itself and to our role in
the world. Certainly with the climate change agreement is to inject a real sense of urgency
into our own country. Joe Biden has proposed something quite dramatic, and that is a multi-trillion
dollar investment here in the United States in our economy to transform it, and it's going to
take a while, into a clean energy economy so that we can actually reduce dramatically our carbon
emissions and really meet climate change head on. That has to happen around the world. So that's
another primary example. In NATO, we have to make a really big decision.
We've been in Afghanistan now for nearly 20 years, since 9-11. It'll be 20 years,
September 11, 2021, that we began this vocation, this war. We've got to get out of the war in Afghanistan. How do we do that? By protecting the Afghan government, our ally, and not giving the
Taliban a free road into Kabul to take over the government.
That's going to be a difficult negotiation. We've got to do that. We've got to wind down the war
in Iraq. We're still there. Most American families, every American family knows someone in that
family, has someone in that family who served in the military, whether it's your nuclear family
or your extended family. We've asked too much of our men and women in the armed forces. And I think strategically, while the Middle East is very important, NATO and Europe are more
important to us, frankly. And what's happening with China, our competition with China, the need
to limit China's military ambitions in East Asia, we don't want to fight them. You have to be strong
enough out there to limit. They are higher level priorities for the United States for the next
decade. And so we can't
be the world's policemen. We can't be everywhere. We can't send our troops into 35 different
countries. We've got to make decisions. And I think there's a, frankly, Lynn, a Republican
democratic consensus. They do agree on some things. Wind down these two wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, actually accelerate and magnify our efforts to try to limit China from
becoming a mega power militarily in the Indo-Pacific, continuing to contain Putin in
Europe and make NATO stronger to do that. I think there's a transformation underway towards those
objectives. There is concern among both Americans as well as among people in other countries about American dependability
as the U.S. has withdrawn or disengaged from international organizations and agreements.
How do you think the Biden administration can deal with those concerns?
I think they're going to have to deal with it through actions. Actions are going to speak a
lot more convincingly than just words. And here, Lynn, I'd say I think there's two different
constituencies that we have to worry about overseas. The reaction to Joe Biden's
victory to his new cabinet has been very positive around the world, particularly among our democratic
allies. So I actually think Germany and Japan and Australia, Canada, our closest allies, the United
Kingdom, are going to welcome the Biden administration back with open arms and will want
to work on a thousand different issues. But I worry about publics overseas.
If you look at recent public opinion polls, and this gets to your very good question,
in Germany, for instance, the United States is rated by the German public to have lower
credibility than China or Russia. More Germans say they have confidence in Vladimir Putin
than Donald Trump. And so I think there's a skeptical world out there.
And it's exactly how you framed the question. We're worried, and I've gotten this in private
conversations from a lot of Europeans and Asians. We're worried that in 2022 or 2024,
there'll be other American elections and you'll just go back to the isolationist agenda of Donald
Trump because they look at this big vote. Joe Biden will end up with slightly more than 80 million votes. Donald Trump will have somewhere around 73 million votes. There'll be a
6 million, 6.5 million dollar vote difference, excuse me. But Europeans will say that many people
voted for someone who tried to destroy the relationship with us, the Europeans. And so
they're worried that we're going to revert back to what we've just seen in the last four years. And that's going to be on us,
on American citizens, people like you and me, to convince them it's not true. And that depends on
being consistent to our principles of how we should act in the world.
President Trump, as you just mentioned, mined a belief that for our alliances,
we paid a massive amount of the cost and didn't get much in return.
Do you think Americans will support a re-engagement globally?
I think Americans do not want to see the United States take on every fight in the world and
make it our own.
We have to make choices.
I think our government needs to make the home front the real priority.
We're in this terrible pandemic.
Every single American is feeling the threat of this pandemic to our loved ones,
to our friends. And so that's job number one. And job number two is getting the economy going again.
We're in a deep recession. It's going to get worse. If there's no stimulus package,
further packages by Congress, millions of Americans are going to be out of luck
in terms of their jobs or health insurance. As we all know, we've gone through a terrible racial crisis in 2020 and in 2021 and 2022. Racial justice, the pursuit of
racial justice, in my view, has to be a top priority for the country and for every American.
So I think that President Biden is really telling us he's going to be focused first on Americans at
home. And frankly, that's the right place to focus. But I think Americans at the same time, and I know polls are not always right. We know that from the November
3rd election. But polls consistently have shown over four or five years that the great majority
of Americans favor the United States being active in the world and being active in NATO. 75% of
Americans, Republicans, Democrats, Independents said in the Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations poll that NATO is a priority and the United States should honor that commitment.
Americans want to do something about climate change, the majority of Americans. So I actually
think we should take our cue from citizens and understand that while we have to focus at home,
we also, as the most powerful country in the world and a leading democracy,
we've got to be active overseas.
And the trick here will be to be smart about it, not to make some of the fundamental mistakes
we've made in the past.
The Iraq War 2003 turned out to be a major mistake.
And now I have to say that I was ambassador to NATO at the time I supported the war in
2003.
I deeply regret that decision to go to war.
I deeply regret my support for it.
We have to learn from our mistakes over the last 20 years, the reaction to 9-11.
We came out swinging, two big land wars, two decades each in those land wars, thousands of
Americans dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, many more people dead in Iraq and
Afghanistan. We don't want to do that again. And I do think that means that we need
to lead with diplomacy. It doesn't mean we become pacifists in the world. It means that on climate
change, on the pandemic, on reengaging with allies, on issue after issue in the next decade,
it's more likely that we're going to have to start with diplomacy rather than starting with
the military. I used to work for Colin Powell, 35 years in the army, but also a secretary of state. He said, our diplomats should be on point
for America overseas in the lead. Only when the diplomats cannot possibly resolve something
really critical and vital that we call in the military. And we got away from that. We lost that
wisdom. And we started just swinging at people and punching people after 9-11. And it's
understandable. People were frustrated and horrified by the deaths in our own country,
but we have to be smart in the next decade. And I think diplomacy first is the right way to think
about this. China is a big issue. How do you see China and its leader, Xi Jinping, and how do you
think we should deal with China? That's the $64 trillion question. You know, after climate change, it's the biggest challenge we face.
I think the challenge is we know we have to compete with China, but we're also going to
have to cooperate with China on some issues. Where's the balance between those two, competing
and cooperating? And another way in which Republicans and Democrats, I think, are largely
united in the Congress, for instance, and in both political parties is to which Republicans and Democrats, I think, are largely united in the Congress,
for instance, and in both political parties is to say, and here President Trump, I think,
was insightful and he was right to say China is a major competitor.
How is that?
Well, certainly on trade.
There's been tremendous job loss in the United States over the last few decades because China
has not been honoring the rules of the road of trade. China has been
dishonoring, violating patent regulations, intellectual property regulations. They've
used the power of the Chinese state to injure American companies, Japanese companies, Indian
companies. So we have to compete on trade. And frankly, we ought to be working with the Europeans
and Japanese to pressure the Chinese to adhere to
these trade regulations because they're really meaningful for Americans. You may lose your job
because China has cut corners and violated a trade rule that gives the priority to a Chinese
company over the company you work for in Michigan or in Georgia or in Texas or in California.
So the government's got to protect our workers and protect Americans from unfair Chinese trade practice. That's number one. Number two, Xi Jinping's the most assertive Chinese
leader since Mao Zedong. And he's pushing out militarily, illegally taking territory in the
South and East China Sea and the Spratly and Paracel Islands, contesting Japanese control of
the Senkaku Islands and the East China Sea. You probably noticed he started a big, very worrisome conflict with India on their several thousand kilometer border in the Himalayas.
He's been intimidating the Vietnamese and the Philippines. They've smothered Hong Kong's
democracy. Hong Kong will cease being a democracy, has ceased being a democracy because of what Xi
Jinping is doing. So we can't fight him and shouldn't want to start a war against him,
but we got to push back. And that means holding our space. Since the end of the Second World War, we've been the strongest military and air force in the Indo-Pacific. We have American bases in South Korea, Japan, and Australia. We have the Seventh Fleet there, I should say, is that Japan, Australia, and India are right with us. And we're coalescing militarily. None of us want to fight China. China doesn't want
to fight us. I'm not talking about that. But just being strong enough so that we can limit and deter
the worst aspects of this push. So that's a second area after trade. China is going for it. They want
to become the dominant military force in the wide Pacific,
in Indian Ocean. And we're a Pacific Rim country, Alaska and Hawaii, Oregon, Washington,
and our largest economy, California, the state. So we've got to be active there.
And third, this is going to sound Cold War-ish, but it's not meant to be. Xi Jinping has been
saying, particularly during the pandemic, we're the superior system. The authoritarian system is the wave of the future.
And unfortunately, you know, President Trump just didn't engage in that.
He didn't speak up for the people of Hong Kong.
He didn't speak up for the more than one million Uyghurs, the ethnic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang
province in Western China who've been put in concentration camps.
He didn't speak up, President Trump, when the Russian government tried to murder Alexei
Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, with Novichok, the nerve agent.
And he didn't speak up for the people of Belarus.
It's amazing what they're doing.
Every Sunday, there are hundreds of thousands of people on the streets trying to tear down the authoritarian government in Minsk.
And we've been absent.
And so we've got to find our voice.
We're competing with China there and Russia and find our voice. And the last point I'd make, and forgive the long answer, but this is a really complex and important issue.
I certainly believe we should be competing with China on trade, on military positioning, and on values.
We believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.
But if we just compete and if we begin to see China as the enemy, and we shouldn't.
They're not our enemy.
Words are important in diplomacy.
They're a competitor.
They're an adversary.
We're also going to have to work with China.
Here's where the balance comes, Lynn, between competition and cooperation.
Certainly in the pandemic, we should be working with China and certainly on climate change
where the world's two largest carbon emitters.
So we're going to have to have balance.
And on some weeks, Americans might see President Biden doing more positive cooperation with the Chinese. In other
weeks, we're pushing back rhetorically. That juggling act is why we elect a president.
Can the president be sophisticated enough and able enough with his team to maintain this uneasy
balance between competition and cooperation. And I'm positive
that Joe Biden can do this with a lot of very smart people. Kamala Harris, our vice president,
Tony Blinken, our secretary of state, Jake Sullivan, our national security advisor.
This is a really good team. And we need that kind of a team in the White House and State Department.
How do you see the future of the EU in a post-COVID world, minus the UK and with the institution
incredibly unpopular among its countries? Yeah, the European Union is such a unique,
it's a supranational authority. It's 30 nations have come together and in many ways devolved
sovereignty to Brussels, a single labor market. So if you're appalled, you can just get in your
car or get in the train or a plane and you can work in Portugal or the United Kingdom. It's largely
working. And they're our largest trade partner, our largest investor in our economy. The European
allies are the largest number of American military allies in the world. They're really important to
us. I think the European Union is at a very critical point, Lynn, because, and your question
is the right one to ask, the UK is going to be out as of December 30th, 2020. That's going to weaken the European Union.
The UK, the United Kingdom, was the second largest economy in the EU, was after Germany,
strongest military in the EU, and most globally minded country. Certainly the British are much
more globally oriented than, say, the Germans or French in their foreign policy. So the EU is going
to be weakened. The United Kingdom is going to be weakened. I think the Scots will seriously
consider having a referendum in the next two or three years where the Scottish people would vote
either to stay in the United Kingdom, they joined in 1707 in the Act of Union, or to secede and
become an independent state. And then it may well be that Ireland becomes a unified,
independent nation in the next 10 to 15 years. You can't imagine this would ever happen after centuries of colonial rule and subjugation by Britain. But it would mean that this great
country, this friend of ours, this partner, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland could possibly become the United Kingdom of England and Wales without Scotland and Northern
Ireland part of it in the next decade. I'm not rooting for that because the United Kingdom is
so important to the United States and you don't want to see it reduced and not capable of being
with us in all the issues that we're going to need the United Kingdom. So big changes coming
out of Brexit and maybe changes that the British people could not have imagined when they voted for Brexit so narrowly in June 2016.
How do you see the future of the EU minus the UK, given that it's so unpopular among the different
populations across the EU? Well, there's a lot of complaining about sometimes the overbearing nature
of the European Commission
in Brussels, the majority of Europeans are very proud to have the EU.
They understand it's made them wealthier, more stable.
They haven't had a war on the continent, a major war between the protagonists since 1945,
a disastrous war, Nazis, a disastrous war produced by Hitler.
And so I think that there is wide public support
for the continuation of the European Union. There's an uneasy balance between what powers
do the nation states have in the EU and what powers do Brussels have. But I think the EU
is in many ways the wealthiest place on earth. It is the most just in terms of how they treat
their workers, workers' rights, environmental standards, human rights standards. I'm very proud to be American, but I think we can learn a lot from
how the Europeans have constructed a modern state and how people are treated within that state,
including healthcare. Let's talk about the Middle East. One of the great changes in America's
economic profile has been the emergence of the U.S. as a self-sustaining energy producer. Do you think that this means that our traditional Middle Eastern alliances, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, look at the Middle East. For those of us of a certain age, we remember gas lines in 1973 when I was in high school.
We were totally dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
That's not the case.
It's a great thing that the United States, Canada, and Mexico together are the largest
energy power in the world, that America now can reduce our reliance on coal because we
had this boon in natural gas. I think it's relieved
us of dependence on authoritarian kingdoms in the Arab kingdoms in the Middle East. And that's a
very positive thing for America. It does mean, I think, that the Middle East is not going to be
the epicenter of American attention in the world. It's a very important part of the world. There are
a lot of problems where we need to be involved, but we shouldn't be fighting landlords there. We've had too much bitter experience of getting
caught in the quicksand of some of these conflicts and dealing with China. And honoring our alliances
in East Asia is a more important priority. And this is a big change. George W. Bush and Barack
Obama would have said the Middle East countering terrorism is the most important priority we face.
The Trump administration said quite correctly in their National Security Strategy Report of 2017,
the rise of China and Russia as authoritarian states opposing democracy is the greater threat.
And I do think that's right.
And that's something we have to proceed upon in the next couple of years.
Most of the issues that we're dealing with are global, like COVID and health,
greenhouse gas emissions in
the environment, trade and the global economy. How can we make multilateralism work better going
forward? Not all multilateral institutions work well. Some that are completely ineffective either
need to be retired or, frankly, discarded. The United Nations Human Rights Council,
if you just read
the title, you say, well, that's a council that promotes human rights. Actually, it's been
commandeered by some of the world's worst human rights offenders, Iran, Russia, China. It's a
farce. And so I don't think we should waste too much time on multilateral institutions like that.
But there's some other institutions that are critical. The World Health Organization is the only one we've got. It's the only global organization
that actually brings everybody to the table on something like COVID-19, or the eradication of
polio, which is just a couple of years ahead of us, or the eradication of malaria, which might
be a decade or two ahead of us. And we can combine forces and really do great things together for
global public health. We need that. You need NATO and you need our East Asian alliances that I've talked about because that's
defending America overseas so the problems don't come home to our 50 states.
So I think you have to pick and choose.
As the strongest country in the world, we run most of these institutions.
Donald Trump thought they sapped our power.
I think most Americans understand they actually build our power and influence in the world.
So we've got to reconstruct them, modernize them, inject them with new ideas.
We've got to be change agents and continue to make these institutions useful, effective,
and modern, 21st century, not 20th century.
So it's a process of transformation.
It's very important that we play this role of working overseas.
Returning to the U.S. before I ask you for your three takeaways,
what other strategies do you think would make America stronger and less divided?
Well, I think all of us are worried about this. If you think about the way we're divided, red, blue, north, south, urban, rural, coastal, interior, we just appear to be
this fractured country right now. Lincoln said it best, as he said so many things best. During the
Civil War, when we were truly divided, fighting each other, 700,000 Americans died, the greatest
crisis we ever faced. And yet here was this leader who said,
we're not enemies. We're brothers, sisters, families, and we have to think of each other
that way. And it's on all of us. It's on left-wing liberal Americans, and it's on right-wing
conservative Americans, and it's on people in the middle. That's probably somewhere I am
as a centrist to say, despite our political disagreements,
being Americans together is the most important thing that we need to talk about and think
about.
We're not enemies.
And it's on people like me to make sure that those political differences don't mean that
we can't be friends, that we can't have a beer together, that we can't be involved in
the same civic organization together and work for our town together. I think every American has to take that responsibility.
We're so divided. We're so judgmental about each other. These false stereotypes that somehow we
use to define ourselves against somebody else who's red or blue. To encourage all that, we need
a leader in the White House who will say, I think, a lot of what President Biden's beginning to say. And that is, he's going to be the president of every American, even all the
Americans, the 73 million Americans who voted against him, he wants to be their president.
That's necessary. But we can't just rely on Joe Biden. We've all got to lead and participate in
this healing of America. As someone who spent my whole professional life thinking about our role
in the world, I've come to a not unsurprising
conclusion. And that is that the United States cannot be effective in our foreign policy,
our global leadership, if we're not healed at home, if we're not unified at home.
If we're fractured at home, then we're not going to be the kind of democracy and example to others
that we want to be. Nick, what are the three key takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with
today? I did my homework, Lynn, because you told me you're going to ask this question.
Here are my three takeaways. Takeaway number one, I hope this doesn't sound divisive and political.
Trump's in the rear view mirror. He's receding from our view. That'll become real clear over
the course of 2021. My vote was against him because I think he divided us and he played on
our worst instincts and he tried to divide us by race, which is unforgivable given the history of
race in America. That's number one. He's in the rear view mirror. We're going to be better off
because of that. Number two is there's hope. I felt when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were
declared the winners, we felt just a weight was lifted, that this constant
barrage of tension and the daily tweets and the divisiveness was over. And there's hope. And I
don't want to be too political here. There's hope that Republicans and Democrats can begin to come
together, that we begin to coalesce as a country. And I think whatever happens in the Biden
administration, he's a good person with really sound values. And he is going to reach
out to Republicans and to independents who didn't support him. And I think that's a hopeful thing
for me. And third, Lynn, is to remind ourselves every day how fortunate we are to be Americans.
We're highly imperfect. We know that. But we're an immigrant society. We're made up of hundreds of nationalities,
religions, races, and out of that amalgamation of the whole world become a people who are united
by one big idea that all women and all men are created equal. It's a radical idea. And it's
truly what distinguishes us in history as a people. And it ought to fuel us with some positive energy
that we have a unique role to play in creating a more perfect union at home and to create a
better world overseas. And Churchill is somebody that I've read a lot about. He wasn't perfect.
He was an imperialist, but he got a lot of big things right. And he came to Harvard,
where I teach, on September 6, 1943, to receive an honorary degree. And it was a very
important point in the war because the tide was turning for the US and UK, the allies against
Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, who were going to win the war. And he gave a speech, and there were
thousands of young people lined up in Harvard Yard to listen on a speaker. He was speaking inside
Memorial Church. And in this big speech, he turned to the Americans
and said, essentially, you're the great paladin. You have to lead the world. And Britain was
receiving after 150 years of British domination. And he said to the Americans, the price of
greatness is responsibility. If you want to be great, you are so powerful, you have to be
responsible with that power. And you have to be involved in the are so powerful, you have to be responsible with that power,
and you have to be involved in the world. And as the leading country in the international civilization, he said, you have to be repulsed by the agonies of the world and do something to fix
them. And you have to be, as he said, inspired by the causes of the world, and you have to advance
them. What a great message from 77 years ago to the Americans today. But if we can
perfect our democracy, we can be an example to others. And we can get behind climate change. We
can get behind the role of the cause of advancing gender equality and racial equality, and we can
make this a better world. I truly believe that, that the price of greatness is responsibility.
We have to be in the public arena and try our best to make it a better world. That's a takeaway that I hear from my students every day, their idealism, their passion, their commitment.
This millennial generation is going to change the world for the better. I'm convinced of it.
So I hope that gives us something to hope about, Lynn, as we conclude this podcast. Thank you so much, Nick, for your service
and government and also for our conversation today. This has been fascinating. Thank you.
Been a great pleasure. Thank you, Lynn, for the opportunity.
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