Pod Save the World - Madeleine Albright’s warning about fascism

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

Tommy talks with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about the rise of fascism around the world and her concerns about how it is being enabled (and emulated) by Donald Trump. Then they talk about how Trump should respond in Syria, and Albright’s visit to North Korea in 2000 for meetings with Kim Jong-Il.

Guys, we have a big guest today on POTA of the World. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright is on the show. I think this is the biggest guest we've ever had, Michael. I don't know if you know the full history of the show, but big deal for me. She wrote a book about fascism. She's worried enough about the rise of authoritarian governments around the world and here in the United States that she wrote an entire book about fascism. We talked about that.

We talked about how she would advise President Trump. as he decides whether or not to strike North Korea to respond to their chemical weapons program. And then we talked about her visit to North Korea back in 2000, her meetings with Kim Jong-il, what she took away from those and how that can inform our approach to North Korea going forward. There are a few people on the planet who know more about foreign policy than she does. You will be well-served to listen and I think we'll enjoy this interview. So here we go. My guest today is former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

She is the author of a fantastic new book called Fascism, A Warning, that feels even more real every morning I wake up and see a tweet from Donald Trump. So thank you for being here. Thank you. Secretary Albright, you came face to face with fascism in the very first days of your life. Your family fled Czechoslovakia after it was occupied by the Nazis. How is your personal experience shaped the way you look at what's happening in the world right now and the ongoing threat from fascism? Well, I was born in 1937, two years before the Nazis marched into Prague, Czechoslovakia. My father was a Czechoslovak diplomat, and he escaped with my mother and me to go and live in England,

where the Czechoslovak government operated in exile. And so I spent the first years of my life, basically large parts of it in an air raid shelter, as London was being bombed by Germany. And I grew up in a very kind of small nuclear family, just my parents and me. My sister was born in England, and then the most incredible thing when the American military came in,

the Yanks arrived, and everything was different, and that was when I first fell in love with Americans in uniform. And then we went back to Czechoslovakia, And what I didn't realize was that all my family members had, 24 of them, had died in the Holocaust. My parents, I was little, and so we didn't talk about it, and I really didn't know my grandparents. And so then my father, again, was an ambassador, and then the communists took over. And so we came to the United States and were refugees a second time.

So from another authoritarian system. And so this is very much a part of my life. And the reason that I wanted to write the book was as a warning of how these things happen and what happens when not enough attention is paid to the steps that are taken towards this horror of people being subjected to authoritarian, fascist or communist governments. Yeah. I mean, I think it's such an important warning. I mean, you were Secretary of State in the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was a sense at the time that the world was moving on

from fascism, that there was this inexorable push towards more democratic, more open societies. Was that everyone predicting what they wanted to see happen? Or do you think there have been discrete events that have led to more authoritarianism in places like Hungary, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, etc? I think there have been. And writing this book has allowed me to kind of assess what happened and why it happened. And though I don't think we yet have complete answers, there were certain aspects that were similar, which is that there were needs of the people

in terms of the things that they hadn't liked about the previous regimes, that their interests had not been taken under concern, and there began to be real divisions in society between those that really gained by the change in government and those who did not. And so the kind of us versus them aspect happened. And I know obviously a lot more about what happened in Central and Eastern Europe,

but what happened there was that even though there were those who were desperate to join the West, when it was not clear that their economic situations would improve in any way and that there had been a group of people that had taken advantage of the freedom to enrich themselves. And so the newly minted democratic institutions were not able to deliver to those people. But I think it does take a lot of still thinking about what happened because we were also, and the only word to use, we were also euphoric at the end of the Cold War. Right. Right. I mean, you talked about the importance of these institutions and you write about it a lot in the book. We kept the peace after World War II because of the creation of institutions like the United Nations, more intertwined banking and trade systems. important alliances like NATO. But time and time again, you see politicians convince publics that the

answer to their problems is turning inward and ignoring those institutions. And those institutions are dismissed as globalism or anti-American. Why is it so much easier to demagogue these institutions that have served us well over time? Well, I think there are a number of factors that have to do with this. First of all, I think that they're not perfect institutions. They were created in answer to the horrors that had happened during World War II, which really had been brought on by hatred, hypernationalism, finding a scapegoat, leaders that were willing to say that they could solve everything. And they were a real experiment, I think,

in terms of trying to do what we call multilateralism, and trying to figure out how to solve problems that required more than one country's input to make them go away. So that's one thing. The second thing is that these institutions in many ways are faceless, and people do want an identity, and we all want to know who we really are, and whether it's ethnic or linguistic or religious, and that's fine. I think that's perfectly normal to want to know more about your background. But if my identity hates your identity, then it leads to nationalism and hypernationalism. Patriotism is one thing, but nationalism is very dangerous because what it again creates an us versus them. And for me, as I went through this book and I looked at what were the

historic aspects to it, some of it has to do with this major division, us versus them, and then a leader who identifies with us versus the them and doesn't care about the rights of the them, only about the power of the us. Secretary Albert, you have a chapter in the book that's about the President of the United States, and I feel like there's sort of two parts to it. One is the level of concern you may or may not have about his authoritarian instincts. But the other is about the damage he's doing in the cover he's giving to authoritarian regimes around the world when he attacks institutions like.

the press, the judiciary, etc. Can you talk about both of those elements and how concerned you are about the current president of the United States? Well, let me begin with the more of the international part, which is something that kind of tags onto what we were talking about in the post-Cold War world. I think one of the things that I have, has been kind of a guide for me in my life, and it goes back to what you asked me initially, I am somebody who believes that when the U.S. is absent, terrible things happened. And for somebody that was born in Czechoslovakia, Munich, was really a watershed event. And it was an agreement that was made among the British and French and the Germans and Italians over the heads of Czechoslovakia and the country I was born and was

sold down the river. America was not present. And then what happened when we lived in England and I was a little girl and the Yankees came, everything changed. And you thought, okay, it's going to be all right. I felt that even as a little girl. And then what happens after the war when as a result of agreements reached during World War II, Europe was divided in half, and the country I was born in was behind the Iron Curtain. So I could go on, but mostly my way of looking at things comes from whether the U.S. is present or not. And so I was very proud to first work for President Carter and then for President Clinton, when America stood for human rights, for calling countries out, for not treating their populations properly, for doing things that

undermined the democratic systems. And America was in a leading role, not telling everybody what to do, but being an example and being engaged. And so what is bothering me now is that not only are we not involved internationally in a way that I would support, but also that we give sustenance and cover to authoritarian leaders who, in fact, are really working on this us versus them aspect and developing concepts that are anti-democratic. And then the other part goes, not only are we not leading, but we also are providing an internal, very bad example, which again is what I was writing about. I went back and I looked at the history of the rise of fascism in a number of countries and discovered that there are a certain fascism is hard to define, but there are certain

common things that happen. One is a denigration of the role of the press and not believing it and not understanding the importance of the press. The other is a leader who has no respect for the rule of law and also undercuts the whole role of the judiciary. Then there is this aspect of calling on nationalism to motivate people and to, in fact, really make even more serious the divisions that exist in society. There also are the kind of tools that are used of having, rallies with banners and uniforms and using propaganda and basically not having any respect for the

views of others. And so those are kind of the way I saw it. And it was very interesting because Mussolini, and there's a great quote, which I think summarizes an awful lot of things, as he was consolidating his power, he said, if you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices. And so I have been concerned about the feather plucking that is going on in the United States so that we are, our leader is now exhibiting some of the tendencies that I spoke about. I think he is the least democratic president that I've observed. And then put that together with our lack of leadership internationally. That's what I'm concerned about. Yeah, a lot of plucking going on seemingly daily.

Madam Secretary, I'm hoping to ask you a question or two about Syria, because, Because Trump's team is right now, as we speak, figuring out what to do after Assad again used chemical weapons against his own people. There's actually a good chance that between the time we record and release this interview, that he will have launched a strike. If you were sitting in the situation room today advising President Trump and the team, what would you recommend that he do to respond to Assad in this instance? Well, I think it's not just a matter of the immediate response. I do think that what happened in terms of a leader of a country poisoning his own people with chemical weapons, he's a war criminal. And the fact that he had done it before and the fact that he had made agreements not to do it anymore

and to get rid of his chemical weapons poses a very serious threat. And I do think there needs to be some well-thought-out response that makes a lot of sense proportionally. But the main thing that bothers me is that it is unclear to me as an interested citizen. I have no idea what the plan is. You can't just kind of do one-off things. You need to have some kind of a strategic plan and figure out what your objectives are, what strategy you're going to use. And that's what I don't know the answer, because from everything that I can tell, there is no overall strategy. and what happens is you can't do serious policy with tweets.

What I find interesting, I was just reading that Moscow has responded all of a sudden to President Trump's most recent tweet about the fact that very smart and new missiles are coming, saying that they don't do diplomacy by tweets. But I do think that there need to be diplomatic contacts, there needs to be a plan. we need to figure out what friends and allies we have in this and understand that you can't go back and forth and one day say I'm pulling out the forces and then all of a sudden tweeting that the missiles are coming. So that unpredictability in it is very dangerous. Yeah, not useful unpredictability like Kissinger used to float about Nixon. I mean, you spent so many years measuring your words, choosing him carefully, trying to find common ground. You likened diplomacy to child psychology, which I thought was great. How do you feel when you see Trump popping off at Kim Jong-un or Putin or other world leaders like this?

Does that just horrify you? It does horrify me. You know, and you were mentioning, well, it was President Nixon that kind of with Henry Kissinger's guidance had talked about the crazy man theory. The bottom line is you might be able to do it once, but you can't do it all the time. and acting as though everything is just separated, that it's transactional, that, I mean, one can't stay away from thinking that what President Trump is doing is basically still in some reality TV or playing some video game, where what he's trying to do is make sure that people listen for the next show. That is not the way this is done. and those that are listening to this really measure every word and not just try to, it's hard to figure out how these tweets happen. Is he sitting somewhere and trying to figure out, oh, so what am I going to do to get everybody galvanized or scared to death today?

I have no idea. It's not the way that diplomacy or exchange of even threats is ever done in a way that makes sense. It's appalling, frankly, and embarrassing as a proud of. American. Yeah, I agree. Secretary, I worked on the in the Obama White House on foreign policy, including on the Arab Spring and Syria. And I fully concede that we handed President Trump a horrible situation in Syria. Curious, you know, I know you've been critical of the Obama administration's approach to Syria back in 2013 when President Obama did not take a strike to enforce the so-called red line regarding chemical weapons. To what degree do you think the U.S.

misjudge the entire trajectory of the Arab Spring. I mean, seven years ago, we were talking about these same sort of democratic movements springing up that you've been talking about after the Cold War, but this time in the Arab world. And now we've got a civil war with no end in sight in Syria, a strong man in control of Egypt, a bit of a mess in Libya. I mean, is there something that could have or should have been done differently in your view? Well, I think one of the things that happens is that we don't think enough about what are the unintended consequences of decisions. And so I think an awful lot of this comes from the war in Iraq

that I have a lot of criticism for and think that it was one of the worst mistakes that were made. And so there was not enough of an assessment of that. Then also what happened is there's no question that President Obama was elected to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And then the Syria issue spilled over on it. And frankly, I've never seen anything as complicated as Syria. The bottom line is, even I, who follow this every day, has to get up in the morning and try to figure out who is on whose side, which subgroup and what is going on in terms of proxy wars. I do think I'd try very hard, and I did when I was in office, and now as I teach and comment, to try to figure out what the lessons are from previous things. And let me just tell you, I was disturbed by President

Obama's initially doing a red line because one thing that we learned as a result of Bosnia was never to do a deadline or a red line because it then becomes a gun to your own head. For one reason or another, you can't live up to it. And so that has been my rule. I also do think that there was an issue that I thought was legitimate for President Obama to try to do things according to the law. And he was concerned about authorization for what he might do. And then Congress didn't live up to what its responsibilities are, if they, according to Article 1. And so there are all kinds of issues to it. So that part. I do think that there's a question as to what happened during the Arab Spring. And some of that does have to do with the issue that we're

dealing with now everywhere, which is what is the effect of technology and what motivates people to do things? So I have been, obviously we know that the Arab Spring began with an emulation of a young man in Tunisia, and then that spread throughout the Arab world. And I always think that Egypt is a very good example of things. Where social media got people, young people, into Tahrir Square to object to what Mubarak's government was doing. Very inspiring when they're there. But the question is, how did they get, or how does one get from Tahrir Square to governance? And that's the hard part, because they were summoned by social media.

Their voices were completely disaggregated. There was no organization. I happen to think that elections are vital, but they were held too early. and the Muslim Brotherhood was organized, and the people in Tahrir Square were not. So then what happens is that it's a mess, and Cairo is a mess, and Mubarak has left and what's going on, and how are things dealt there, and all of a sudden what happens is, and I made up this mythical man who lives outside of Cairo, who wants to get his souk in the, his stall in the market open,

and there's a mess, and he wants order, and there is no order. And so he wants order, and then Cici comes in and gives them order. And so it's that question about how does democracy work, how much time does it take? I happen to believe in political parties. And so all of a sudden, the whole thing gets out of control, and people want order. And I do think that they need some help from the outside, and we didn't pay enough attention. Yeah. Order and services are some basic needs that people have. I'll go back to the book for a minute.

You have this fascinating chapter about your visit to North Korea in 2000, when you spent about 12 hours over two days with Kim Jong-il. You describe him as polite, well-informed. He said the right things. And I was reading it. It sounded a bit like recent reports about the South Koreans' first ever meeting with Kim Jong-un, where he said pleasant things, got everybody drunk. It was sort of similar a playbook.

What did you learn from that experience? What do you think is the right balance of skepticism about North Korea's intentions and the need to take some risk and put some skin in the game in the hope of a breakthrough? Well, first of all, I do think that it takes sustained, diligent work and trying to find out as much as possible about what's going on. And for that, you need to have constant contact with the people that know something. I mean, and what happened that was interesting in our case was that the leader of South Korea at that time wanted to have the Sunshine policy. And he was somebody that had been a dissident and somebody that we really trusted a great deal.

And he was somebody that had actually met with Kim Chong-il, the father of this guy. So it is important just the way it is now for this administration to be in contact with the South Korean leadership who also has had some contact and wants to have different relations. Then also we spent a lot of time with the Japanese and tried to kind of have talks that were not just us, to have trilateral talks and also talk to the Chinese. So it takes incredible amount of preparation. That is the main thing. And I also think that it is important to think about what the various tools are in the toolbox. And we have used some of them. Some are economic, the sanctions.

And I think we need to do more diplomatic work. And we need to figure out where we want to go and realize that it takes a lot of patience, hard work, and preparation. And that's not something that I'm seeing in terms of this administration and the possibility of some kind of a meeting to help resolve what is the major issue, which is the nuclear capabilities of North Korea. That's very worrisome, coupled with whatever they might be able to do in the ballistic missile range in order to have a delivery system for nuclear warheads. You also heard about how at the end of the Clinton administration there was essentially a choice to be made between. focusing on Middle East peace or an agreement in North Korea. President Clinton ultimately chose to focus on a Middle East peace process but was unsuccessful.

In the book, you wrote that he recently at a party pulled you aside and said he wished you all had focused on North Korea instead in those final years in 2000. Do you feel the same way? Do you think there was a missed opportunity there for a breakthrough? Well, I do, but I just have to give you a little bit more of a context on that. First of all, that we have been, as a country, long concerned about the Middle East peace process. There's no question about that. And administration after administration worked on that. And we all did.

I mean, President Clinton spent an incredible amount of time at Camp David with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafa. We had meetings afterwards. I had some in Paris and we had some in Washington and President Clinton put out something called the Clinton parameters about what the kind of potential items for solution of this long-running really unhorable situation in the Middle East. And he really felt that he had developed a relationship with the people in the Middle East and that in fact Arifat might be able to be persuaded. So then what happened was the North Korean issue had also gone on a long time. And one of the things that, Actually, we had no peace treaty with North Korea.

I mean, this is something that had gone on in some form or another for a long time, and during the Clinton administration from 93 on. But we also were concerned about where it was going. President Clinton asked former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry to do a complete review of our North Korea policy. And then, as I said, talked to Kim Daigang in South Korea about everything. And so, and timing was really. unbelievable because this was late summer, early fall in 2000. And what happened was the number two guy

had come to the United States in order to invite President Clinton to go to North Korea. And President Clinton, I think, did the right thing by saying, you know, I'd like to come some for it, but we're not prepared and I want the secretary to go. So that was absolutely the right thing to do. but timing got obviously was an issue we were in the middle of negotiations when the election of 2000 happened and then there was the transition and so it was a very hard decision and because i do believe that one of the great strengths of president clinton is that he really does look at decision making and what was the right thing to do and what wasn't the right thing to do and so in retrospect it looks as though it might have made a difference, but it's very hard, and it was a very hard choice.

And by the way, one of the things we did do was suggest that Kim Jong-il come to the United States, and because he didn't fly or whatever, he didn't want to come do that. So we tried to work on it until the last minute, and if I can continue a minute more, which is that we were in the middle of discussions on these missile limits. They had actually begun in Kuala Lumpur, Wendy Sherman, name is now somebody that people know because of her work on Iran at the State Department. But she was with me. We'd gone to South Africa. She was prepared to fly to Kuala Lumpur at any minute to go forward. And then the elections happened and she didn't go. We briefed Colin Powell

on everything that we were doing. He was fascinated by it and wanted to continue. And then there was an article in the paper, a headline that said, Powell to continue, Clinton policies on North Korea, he was hauled into the Oval Office and told no way. So that's the issue. But when we finished, there had been no addition to fissile material. They had no ballistic missiles. And we were in a very different place in terms of where we were with North Korea. And it's one of those things where you never know how it might have turned out.

And they, by the way, they also had no nuclear weapons. So very different situation. Yeah, I mean, and you go on to write about how the opportunity to cut a deal with North Korea narrowed even further during the Bush administration after the invasion of Iraq. You wrote that, quote, the auster of Saddam Hussein conveyed a powerful message. It's not enough to pretend to have weapons of mass destruction to be secure. A nation must build them, own them, and hide them. I've heard similar analysis about the impact of the Libya intervention. Some believe that Kim Jong-un looked at what happened to Gaddafi and said, I need a real deterrent.

let's get to work on this nuclear weapons program. It's funny because you always hear people in Washington say, we need to be tough on ex-country like Iraq or Iran to send a message to North Korea. But does the actual record of how these invasions are viewed in North Korea and in other countries flip that argument on its head and maybe argue against interventions? Well, I think that each one is different. But by the way, I'd love to introduce this image that I use. I do teach at Georgetown, but I use this with my students.

People talk about diplomacy and international nations as a game of chess. It is not a game of chess where two people sit quietly in a room and think about the moves they're going to make and take time between their moves. It's more like pool, billiards, where there are a bunch of balls in the middle of the table, and somebody comes up with a cue stick with the hope of getting a ball into one of the pockets on the sides, and on the way it hits a lot of other balls. It's dynamic and horizontal. And that is what goes on here, which is that one thing affects another, and you don't really know what the effect is in terms of news from another country. You just do know that these balls are hitting each other and are going in unexpected directions.

And so the question is what lessons people learn. But I do think there's another part to this, which is what is the responsibility of the United States as the major country in the world in terms of trying to figure out what is going on inside other countries or in border conflicts, not just because we're altruistic, but because these are the kinds of issues that are likely in the long term to create problems for America. And whether it's the threat of ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads hitting us, or whether it is the tragedy of people having to leave their countries as refugees and where they go and how are they treated in other countries, that these are not issues that stay in their own countries. The billiard balls work

and have effects in unexpected ways and the United States. I do happen to think that we're an indispensable nation. I said it, you know, President Clinton said it first, but I said it so often that it became identified with me. But it doesn't mean that we act alone. It means that we need to be engaged with partners in various parts of the world because ultimately it does affect the American people, our territory, and our way of life. Right. My final question for you, because you and the Clinton administration worked so hard to broker a meaningful peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, so much of that early work was

undone by Rabin's assassination and then ultimately efforts by President Obama were unsuccessful. But recently, the situation in Gaza has gotten particularly dangerous. I'm wondering what concerns you may or may not have of the trajectory of events in Gaza, in Israel, and what credibility you think Trump's team has to intervene and do something to stop the violence. Well, I am worried about it, and especially in the last months, because some of the actions that have happened in Gaza, some violence on the ground, but then also what the Israelis have been saying in terms of that the, that the Iranians are taking advantage of that and that they are a threat to the security

via drones and rockets going into Israel and that Israel has to defend itself. So there are a variety of billiard balls that exist there and the way that they are being played out. One of the things that has gotten even more complicated recently are the divisions and different coalitions in the Middle East. What has happened is we now have a much larger relationship with Saudi Arabia, some of it based on their purchases of our arms, and some of it because we have a common interest in that we're worried about what Iran is doing. And what is interesting that I found recently is that the Saudis have finally said that Israel has a right to exist. That is a very big deal. So there are some positive signs, but ultimately it is a very dangerous situation, and

the U.S. can have all kinds of ideas and bridging ideas and process ideas, but unless the parties, i.e. the government of Israel and the authorities among the Palestinians are willing to make some decisions, we can be as creative as possible, but it won't happen. And so far, I don't don't see a lot of movement on this as far as the Trump administration is concerned, because again, it takes people that are fully cognizant and appreciative of the various issues that take place and the complexity, and how many of the things are proxy wars, how many of them concern specifically the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, and how much of it falls into that much larger morass in the Middle East of attempts for new regional hegemony between the Saudis and the Iranians.

Unnerving, all of it. The book is fascism a warning. I highly recommend folks read it not only because I think it's an important summation of the history and risks of fascism, but it's also a great primer on all kinds of topics like how the Korean Peninsula came to be divided in the history there that I think is just a great background reading for anybody interested in these topics. So thank you so much for being on Pod Save the World. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for your great questions, and I appreciate your help on explaining all this. Thank you. Well, have a great day. Thanks again. You too. Thank you again for listening to Pod Save the World. If you enjoyed this interview, please share it with your friends. Rate and review us in the iTunes store and, you know, keep listening.

Thanks, guys.