School of War - Ep 67: Stephen J. Hadley on George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Stephen J. Hadley, National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush and lead editor of Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama, joins the show to talk about the lasting effects of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Bush administration’s dealings with Russia and China. ▪️ Times  • 01:38 Introduction  • 02:03 Transitions • 06:41 Russia and China then and now  • 08:45 Democratic values and our interests • 15:20 Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan • 19:39 Missing ingredients in Afghanistan • 24:07 Departing Iraq • 30:05 A better outcome for Afghanistan?  • 33:33 Commitments • 38:30 China and Russia from ’01 to ’09  • 44:57 Integrating China into the international system   • 47:37 NATO expansion

In the fall of 2008, the outgoing Bush National Security Council prepared a collection of substantive memos outlining where things stood on various elements of that administration's foreign policy. From the freedom agenda and counterterror operations to deteriorating relations with Russia, these memos, recently declassified and published in a project led by President Bush's National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, provide a fascinating overview of how the world looked at the moment Barack Obama took office. Stephen Hadley joins us today to discuss them. Our conversation ranges from the now 20-year-old invasion of Iraq and problems in Afghanistan to the nascent stirrings of great power competition in the Pacific. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a statement. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. people who not see buildings. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Erin McLean.

Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by Stephen Hadley. Mr. Hadley was the National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. Prior to that, he was the Deputy National Security Advisor. Prior to that, many other important distinguished roles in government, national security in the law. He is the lead editor, very recently, of a book called Handoff. The Foreign Policy George W. Bush passed to Barack Obama. Stephen, thank you so much for joining the show.

Delighted to be here. Thanks for having me. So this book is a collection of memos written at the time of the transition from President Bush's administration to President Obama's administration. And my first question, of all the things you might invest, obviously, a lot of time, in personally to memorialize from your time in the Bush administration. Why the transition? What about this particular project recommended itself to you? Well, one of the things about this project is that the 40 transition memos we wrote for the Obama administration were part of an effort by President Bush working with President Obama to make sure that this was the best

transition possible in 2008 to 2009, the Bush administration, the Obama administration. Why was that so important to President Bush? Because he was passing two wars, one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, a war on terror trying to keep the country safe from terrorists. And that was even before we got into the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. and he felt that the new team would have a lot on their plate the day they walked into office and he wanted to try to make sure that the day while he walked into office they were prepared to carry out the and assume the awesome responsibilities that would be before them. And I thought in some sense to take these memorandum and publish them and talk a little bit

about that transition would be to remind the American people that good transition, presidential transitions are possible, what they look like, and also remind the American people that Republicans and Democrats can work together for the common good. That was the first reason. The second reason was I thought that if we took these 40 transition memos, can get them declassified, and we got 39 of them declassified. We then took 30 of them, which we published, as they were, unedited as they were given to President Obama and his team, I thought it would be useful if we could then update them so that the person who wrote the original memo or worked on the issue for President Bush, whether it was Iran or Iraq or China or Russia or terrorism

for liberation or what it might be, write a postscript that would say, look, what has happened since the Bush administration, what happened under President Obama, President Trump, President Biden. And on the basis of that, how did the Bush administration do? What do we get right? What do we get wrong? And then now looking back on 20 years of four administrations of different parties dealing with the issue, what are the lessons going forward for dealing with that issue? Because all these issues covered by these certain memos are still with us today. And I thought that was both a useful tool for future administrations, but also was useful in creating a record that people could come to if they wanted to learn more about foreign policy under the Bush administration. I would say one other

thing. Each of these transition memos had a bunch of attachments to them, presidential speeches, policies, records of meetings that the president had with other foreign leaders, records of NSE meetings, those attachments, as well as the originals of the 30 transition memos we published and the nine declassified that we didn't publish, are all available on an online digital archive at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. So with the book and the postscripts, plus the attachments and the transition memos, it's. the digital archive at SMU, you got a pretty fulsome record of what was Bush foreign policy looked like to those who were participating in it. And I thought for historians, journalists,

and just people interested in foreign policy, that was a resource that ought to be made public. In addition to obviously being a very valuable contribution to the historical record as such, and I certainly profited through reading through them in preparation for this conversation. Very grateful that you and your team did this. I wonder if you hope that it has some effect on arguments about foreign policy and all these issues that are happening today. And I mean this in a specific way. You know, the left was generally an often critical of President Bush's foreign policy.

It's kind of the left's job to do that. But it has become fashionable on the right to be critical of the Bush foreign policy. And I don't think I need to rehearse for you. The various sort of common lines of attack there. Democracy promotion, the freedom agenda, so forth are often at the top of the list. Iraq has obviously come. up a lot. What do you think these memos have to say to right-wing critics of President Bush's foreign policy?

They say a number of things, I think. One, there's a lot of debate now about Russia and China and why we have such a strained relationship with both of them. And I think these transition memos are a bit of a reminder that the Russia and China that President Bush faced is very different than the Russia-China that we face today. Russia and China we faced were countries that wanted to be part of the international system, not disruptive to it, initially wanted to have a positive relationship with the United States. And we did a lot of cooperation with those two countries on issues that mattered here at home to Americans, which is documented in the transition memos.

And then in the postscripts, we try to describe what happened. so that the relationship went from what it was now, what it was in the Bush administration to what it is now. Another thing we try to do, you know, there's this big debate between realism and idealism and foreign policy. And we try to argue that in this concept, which we call a balance of power that favors freedom, that the Bush administration pursued a foreign policy

that reconciled this tension, that not only espoused our ideals of democracy, freedom, rule of law, and human rights, but also did so in a way that by promoting those ideals, we created a world which was very much in America's interest, help us defeat terrorism, help us to stand up to authoritarian's who were otherwise thinking about invading their countries. So I think by provoking maybe a reconsideration of the Bush administration, we are going to promote a more deeper understanding of the dilemmas that face the current administration, maybe make people a little bit wiser about some of the choices that the country has to make.

When you speak of this balance of idealism and realism and a foreign policy that reconciles the two, what would you identify as the signal successes of the Bush administration in that regard? And are there any lines of effort that you think came up short? One, I think in some sense we didn't. The best example probably is in terrorism. The terrorists were inspired by and used a twisted version of Islam and a fairly dark vision of the future in their recruiting efforts. And President Bush felt we needed to answer that vision with one of our own. And for the president, it was the promotion of democracy and freedom and saying,

rather than building the dark world of the terrorists, you ought to be building a democratic and free society that can provide better services, better security, better stability to your people. So in that case, the realistic objective of discrediting terrorists, The strategy for doing that was to promote our ideals of freedom and democracy. Now, I don't think we ever got it as effective as it should have been, and we would like to have been. But I think it's an example of where freedom and democracy was both a reflection of our, promotion of them was both a reflection of our deals, but also achieving our realistic objectives. I think that in terms of what we were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, we had a vision that basically had the following narrative. We, in some sense, the Middle East had been skipped over by the democratic reforms and market economic reforms that had transformed Europe and it transformed much of Latin America in the 20th century. For some reason, those reforms did not take root in the Middle East.

And the Middle East, in terms of American policy, we had a tendency to accept authoritarian rule on the grounds that it would provide stability. Well, guess what? It didn't provide stability. It made the Middle East a training ground for terrorism. So we thought, in order to counterterrorism, which is very much in American interest, in terms of realistic terms, we ought to be promoting democracy. and freedom because states based on democracy and freedom would better be able to meet the needs of their people, would not be invading their neighbors, would not become safe havens for terror, and would cooperate with us in providing a more stable world.

So again, this is a case where promoting our values and our principles, our democratic values and economic principles, met our interest in having, having a Middle East that was stable, more prosperous, and was no longer breeding ground for terror. That's what we tried to do. We were not wholly successful to say the least. Iraq did not was going to be a place where we were going to showcase how societies could be based on those principles and would be a place where Shia, Sunni, and Kurds would work together for a common national future. We were not as successful in doing that as we wanted to be. But I haven't given up on Iraq. And I think that despite all the challenges and the sacrifices that Iraqis have made and all the mistakes we made in our engagement in the Middle East, and there were a lot of them,

I think there is a good chance that Iraq will still be a place where Sunni, she and Kurds are working together for a common future rather than a place where either Sunni, Sunni, are beating up on Shia, Shia are beating up on Sunnis, and both are beating up in the Kurds, which tends to be more the model in the Middle East. So I would say this transformation of the Middle East that we sought, did not bring about in the way we had hoped as quickly as we had hoped. But I think that vision of a freer, more democratic, more rule of law-based, more market economic-based Middle East is still alive.

And you see it in the uprisings in 2018 and 2019, that changed leaders in Algeria and Sudan, changed prime ministers in Iraq and Lebanon and Jordan. There are people in the Middle East that still embrace that vision and wanted more democratic, more free, more prosperous, more stable future. So we didn't get as far as we had hoped, but I think the vision is still alive. and I'm still hopeful in places like Iraq will become examples of what that kind of society can look like. It is fascinating to read the Iraq and Afghanistan memos side by side as a snapshot in time, you know, of the winter of 08 into 9. It's personally relevant for me because I was a young Marine who had just had my Iraq deployment canceled so that we could go to Afghanistan later in 2009. And this, you know, that's a very micro sort of impact of what the memos are describing, right? Iraq memo is describing a restabilized situation that is nevertheless somewhat fragile.

I think it's easy to forget that that's actually what it looked like at that moment. And then I don't know if you'll agree with this characterization, but my read of the Afghanistan memo, it was in sort of sober, bureaucratic tones, you know, sort of official and with sort of normal natural official restraint, very much saying we have a big problem here. And a lot of energy is going to be required to solve it. I mean, I'm curious to know what you think about the contrast between the two situations at that point in time. But my specific question for you is, based on what you just said about, you know, there's still being, if you like, hope in the Middle East for something like democracy and free institutions and so forth. Was there much, if any, conversation within the administration about the preconditions that one needs for a democratic society in Afghanistan as opposed to, you know, a place like Iraq, which after all is a wealthier,

country with a sort of longer history of centralized government? Like, what was what was the level of distinction drawn there that you recall? So let me be clear that in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as you well know, because you lived through it, we went into those places for real national security objectives to protect the country from what we consider to be real threats, not only to our friends and allies in the region, but also to the United States. Having time, of those regimes, the question was, what do you do then? And what the people of both Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to want was an opportunity to build a democratic future, which made sense to us. We're a country based on democracy, freedom, rule of law, human rights. Those were consistent

with our principles. We felt, President Bush felt we had a moral obligation to help them. But also, there was a realistic reason to do it, because we wanted to make sure that those two countries did not become safe havens per terror, which we saw, you know, what that could mean for the United States on 9-11. So again, this fusion of both idealism and realism. We knew it was going to be a struggle that we couldn't do it for them. You know, people talk about nation building. You can't build another nation. A nation has to build it themselves. You could help them. President thought it was in our interests and consistent with our values to do so. and we did, but we could not make it happen.

Obviously, there was a lot more to work with in terms of resources and human capital in Iraq than there was in Afghanistan. Iraq, though, had been a brutal dictator, and people had forgotten just how brutal Saddam Hussein was, evading his neighbors, using chemical weapons on his own Kurdish population, brutally putting down Shia uprisings. This was a brutal guy, and it had traumatized. to society. But Iraq had better prospects in terms of its human capital and its resources. Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries of the world. Oddly enough, it had a democratic

tradition in terms of the loyajurgas. And we tried to build on that tradition. But it's very interesting that at the time we were doing an internal review in 2006 that came up with the surge, That is to say the change of strategy and additional forces that really defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Iraq, and removed it as a, and put down the sectarian strife as a strategic threat to Iraq, really stabilize the situation. At the same time in 2006, we were also looking at what more we could do to turn this situation around in Afghanistan. We had great success in Iraq. We had much less success in Afghanistan and left for the incoming Obama administration a further set of suggestions for alteration in our strategy for try to get control of the security situation in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration took some of those recommendations, added many of their own, and did their own surge in Afghanistan in the first and second year of their age. administration. I would say this. There were a lot of factors which combined to explain the success of the surge in Iraq, which, as I say, really eliminated al-Qaeda and sectarian violence as a strategic threat to Afghanistan and calmed the place so much so that in 2011, President Obama took all of American combat troops out of Iraq. We were much less successful, and the Obama administration was much less successful in their surge in Afghanistan. And I think it's because the factors that made for success in Iraq were not present in Afghanistan. That and some other

reasons that I think inherited the policy explain the lack of success of the Obama surge in Afghanistan. Well, can you, so I'm really interested then. And forgive me if that's what you just said, but what are those factors? What were the factors not present in Afghanistan? One is, in Iraq, we had as a result of the elections of December of 2005, by May of 2006, we had a duly elected, legitimate Iraqi government, elected under a new constitution that had been overwhelmingly ratified by the Iraqi people to partner with in the surge. and Prime Minister Maliki did become a partner for the president in the surge. We did not have the same kind of strong, legitimate government in Afghanistan. I would say under President Karzai, sadly, I know President Karzai, I know President

Karzai, I know President Kani. We didn't have it under either of them. So one of the things you need to have is a local partner. And we really did not have that kind of strong, local, legitimate local partner that could rally their people in Afghanistan. We had a better local partner in Iraq. Secondly, you had the safe haven problem. Next door to Afghanistan and Pakistan was a safe haven for Iraqi terrorists, for the Taliban, the ISI, the Pakistani security services were actively working with the Taliban and in some measure al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, which made stabilize.

the situation difficult. There was kind of a similar safe haven in Iran. There was a vehicle next door to Iraq. There were terrorists that are flowing into Iraq from Syria, but they were not the kinds of challenging safe havens, I think, that we faced in terms of Pakistan, in terms of Afghanistan. Three, we had taken a long period of time to train up Iraqi security forces that were really able to take a laboring war in the surge. We had at that point not trained up a similar kind of cadre of forces in Afghanistan. Fourth, Stan McChrystal had in Iraq developed this remarkable fusion of operations and intelligence, which you probably know a lot about, to really eliminate a lot of the senior leadership at al-Qaeda. We didn't have the same kind of

purchase on al-Qaeda or their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. And finally, we had in Iraq, which had been particularly in the Sunni areas, had been under the sum of al-Qaeda for a number of years. And in Anbar province in Iraq, the tribals had had it. And they were ready to rise up against al-Qaeda if we would only give them some military support and assistance. And we did. We didn't see the same kind of uprising against the Taliban elements and al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan, which admittedly were not, didn't have the kind of control of territory that al-Qaeda did in Iraq. But again, we did not have the kind of popular uprising that the Obama administration could double down on in its surge in Afghanistan. That would be my sense.

Yeah. It's the case that the Obama campaign in 2008 portrayed Iraq as the bad, capital B, bad war of choice. And Afghanistan is the good war, right? The good war that needed to be prosecuted and pursued. And so departing Iraq, as we did in 2011, you know, the Obama messaging on this was kind of muddled as the commentary in the book discusses. At first, it's the pursuit of a campaign promise. But at some point, there was a pivot in the messaging. And the claim, got made that while the Bush administration had negotiated this agreement with the Iraqis to depart in 2011, and so our hands are tied, you know, or we're tied. You know, we left because of that agreement. And one of, I think, the very unambiguous contributions to the historical record that this collection of memos makes is right, it's right there in black and white in the Iraq memos. There's this expectation that, yes, we've signed this agreement, but we understand from our Iraqi partners, I'm paraphrasing here, that, you know, they're going to want some training assistance, probably some special operations assistants, you know, they're going to want some sort of follow-on

force after 2011. What is the, you know, talk a bit about that. Talk about what your understanding actually was on the future of Iraq as you left. And what was the impact of our departure, our actual departure in 2011? So we negotiated at the end of the Bush administration in October, November of 2008, two agreements. One was a strategic framework agreement that provided for diplomatic economic and security cooperation between Iraq and the United States. And the other was an agreement that allowed our forces to stay in country because the UN mandate under which U.S. forces were operating in Iraq was expiring. And the Iraqis did not want to renew it. So we needed a legal basis for our troops. And in order to get that and to get it approved by the parliament

in Baghdad, Maliki said, I need to have in the agreement an end date as to when all U.S. forces are going to be withdrawn. And it was a political requirement for him, and so we gave it to him, which was December 31, 2011. But Maliki made clear, and it was an understanding we had between the Bush administration, the Maliki administration, that as time passes and as the human. Keith went out of the Iraq debate, both in Iraq and in the United States, at some point, we would negotiate an arrangement not for the return of U.S. forces in Iraq in a combat role, but keeping forces in Iraq in a support role to train and provide enablers to make the Iraqi

security forces more effective in maintaining security in their own country. was the understanding that we would do. And President Obama offered and tried to negotiate that kind of understanding. People can decide why that negotiation failed, but it did fail, in part because the Obama administration felt that they wanted the agreement allowing our forces to stay after 2011 to be affirmed by the parliament, as the first one had been. They thought there was a legal requirement. And Maliki thought for the number of forces he was going to get remaining in the country, it wasn't worth the political price of trying to drive it through the Iraqi parliament. That's my understanding as well. So, you know, everybody talks about the endless war in Iraq.

Well, for American troops, the endless war in Iraq ended in 2011. Our troops come out. A lot of things happen as a result of that. One, Maliki, sadly, becomes less inclusive and more sectarian in his agenda. He politicizes the military, thereby making it less effective. He does not bring those Sunni military elements that had risen up against al-Qaeda as part of the surge. He does not bring them as it had been agreed. They would be brought into the Iraqi security forces or into the Iraqi police.

or otherwise give them jobs in a growing Iraqi economy. And that basically completely alienates the Sunni community. So that when al-Qaeda reconstitutes itself in northeast Syria as ISIS, and we fail really to stop the Syrian civil war that allows ISIS to exploit that situation and reconstitute itself. In 2014, ISIS comes into Iraq and takes 40% of the country. And the Iraqi security forces who have been weakened and politicized do not make much of a defense. And the local Sunni population feels so alienated from Baghdad, the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

They don't offer much resistance either. So in 2014, to his credit, not President George Bush, President Barack Obama, inserts U.S. forces back into Iraq. But again, not as a leading-edge combat role, but to train and support Iraqi forces. Exactly what we were going to try to negotiate in 2011 had we still been in power. And those forces help the Iraqi security forces get rid and push out of ISIS so that by 2018 Iraq is sovereign once again and has full control over its territory. And those forces now remain in Iraq to provide that train and assist role, some 2,500 of them. And interestingly enough, this new Iraqi government, which is basically a Shia-led government,

with a Shia prime minister, comes to the United States and says we want American troops to stay as a way of balancing the influence of Iranian forces within Iraq. So we ended up in a way in the place where we had thought we would end up in 2011, but had this devastating interlude when ISIS comes in, takes 40% of the country in the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi people have to eject them. It is striking how all things considered the outcome in Iraq is objectively better than the outcome in Afghanistan. Even if the outcome in Iraq is not ideal, right? It seems objectively the case despite the fact that so much criticism was leveled against our efforts in Iraq versus our efforts in Afghanistan in the first, you know, 10 years or so of them. What could I ask? This is a bit of a counterfactual, but I'm curious to know your views.

I mean, you outlined, I think, very persuasively what the challenges were in Afghanistan as compared to Iraq. Imagine a world where, instead of handing over to the Obama team, your team stayed in charge. What could have been done differently? What should have been done differently in Afghanistan to try to steer towards a better result? Or was it such a hard problem that, you know, you think even your team would have steered to an outcome that was going to always going to be bumpier than that in Iraq? Look, there's no silver bullet in Afghanistan. And I sympathize with the Obama administration as they struggled with it as the Trump administration struggled with it. I think the thing about the kinds of efforts we made in Iraq, the kind of effort we made in Afghanistan, that I think probably we didn't appreciate enough and probably didn't explain enough to the American people.

And is how long these things were going to take. it would be unrealistic to expect that within the space of just a one eight-year administration, you could take these societies and they would be democratic, free, rule of law, prosperous, stable, and secure. this was going to have to be the work of subsequent administrations as well in the same way as what we did for Japan after the end of World War II or Europe at the end of World War II or South Korea at the end of the Korean War have been decades long in the generational efforts. And I would point out that we still have military troops in much greater numbers than we have in Iraq in both Europe and South Korea and in Japan. So we were willing to stay the course

and make a long-term multi-administration, multi-generational effort. I am hopeful that we'll continue to make that effort in Iraq because we still have troops there, still have a commitment to Iraq. President Biden decided that we were not going to make that kind of long-term commitment in Afghanistan and pulled the troops out.

And we see what has happened. The Taliban is back and the Taliban is back as they were in the 1990s. But this regime, Taliban regime, I think, is even more brutal, particularly on women than they were when they were last in power in the 1990s. And this is a real tragedy for the Afghan people and a real black mark, really, for the United States. Yeah. I think we would have tried to stick with it longer. So when we talk about these generational commitments, you know, one of the lines of criticism, I was about to say leveled by the left, but I think you find it on the right now, too,

leveled at the Bush administration's Iraq policy and the invasion of Iraq was that there was a misrepresentation of what was going to be required in the long run, you know, how many troops, the actual level of commitment and so forth. You were there at the start as well as at the finish. You know, I was just actually at a political event for a conservative candidate. It's running for office, who absolutely would agree in principle with much of what you're saying. But he had a comment in the course of his remarks to the group along the lines of, well, obviously, I don't support, you know, I wouldn't have supported the Iraq War. It obviously really struck me because I was a young guy, but I was around at the time. I remember just about everyone supporting the Iraq War.

It slightly overstates it, but it was an extremely popular movement with wide support in the Democratic Party as well. What was the nature of the discussion within the National Security Council and within the Bush administration about the likelihood for a lengthy commitment. What was the internal conversation and what was actually messaged out as a consequence of that? We didn't. So there are two things really need to be said. And one, I want to correct something.

Remember, again, this notion of endless wars, which I think is one of the great barriers to understanding. Remember, the so-called, we talked about how the endless war in Iraq ended for us in 2011, until we went back in 2014 in a different configuration. We, similar, the Ababa administration, got American forces out of a combat role in Afghanistan in the 2011 to 2012-13 timeframe. And again, we had pioneered,

the military had pioneered this alternative model of by-with-and-through allies where U.S. troops are not at the front end leading combat operations, but are enabling and supporting and training local forces, local Afghan security forces that are taking responsibility for security. That was the situation in Afghanistan. In some sense, for our combat troops, the war was largely over. The question is, could we have sustained that model for a longer period of time?

And could we have done something to make the Afghan government more effective, more legitimate, and to reverse what had been an erosion of the military position in some sense of Afghan security forces? That was the challenge. And I think we would have tried to do that. On Iraq, you know, Richard Haas, a good friend of mine, has this framework of wars of necessity. wars of choice. And I say to people, anytime someone tells you it's one thing or another, it's usually some of both. I think in this case, Iraq was neither. I would call Iraq a war of last resort. We had for 12 years been working under 16 and later 17 UN Security Council resolutions. It's called on Saddam Hussein to stop developing and disclose that he had given

up all weapons of last destruction, stop supporting terror, stop invading his neighbors, and stop terrorizing his people. He was a brutal dictator doing all of those things. We tried to enforce those 16 later 17 resolutions with diplomacy, with inspection regimes of various kinds, three different generations of inspections regimes, dumb sanctions, smart sanctions, smarter sanctions, no-fly zone, preventing Saddam from flying his airplanes in the northern, southern part of the country. We used Bill Clinton, President Clinton, used military strikes on Iraqi territory. And Congress adopted a resolution in 1998, making regime change, American policy. We did everything we could to get Saddam to comply with the writ of the international community.

And finally, Bush tried coercive diplomacy, building up forces. in order to threaten an invasion to try to force Saddam either to comply or leave the country. And when Sharaq, President Shrek of France, President Putin of Russia and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany, broke with that effort at coercive diplomacy and said they would not support the use of force against Iraq under any circumstances, that effort end. And Bush was subject to, had the following decision. Do we basically let Saddam off the hook, give him a get out of jail free card, say that 17 UN Security Council resolutions, 12 years of effort was not serious, recognizing that he would have resumed his activities, including his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and potentially resumed his invasions of his neighbors? or do you enforce the writ of the international community and American credibility and use the force to topple the regime?

And Bush decided on the latter. So I'll shift gears to China and Russia in the few minutes that we have left. You said earlier in our conversation, and with respect to China, at least I've heard President Bush actually say this, that the China and Russia you were dealing with was not the China and Russia of today. I think what President Bush said at the event I attended was along the lines of who Jintao is in Xi Jinping. I think on Russia, it's pretty clear that there's a lot of evolution and Russian behavior between 2001 and 2009. China may be maybe a little bit less clear. But talk about that dynamic.

Again, you saw conduct of policy at the highest level through the whole administration. How did China and Russia look to you in 2001 versus January of 2009? I'll take them separately. They're a little different, though our strategy was very much the same. Putin initially looked like he wanted to be part of the international system, wanted a cooperative and productive relationship with the United States. Initially, it looked like he wanted a democratic future for Russia and to bring Russia into the Western family of nations. Bush would talk to Putin and say, Vladimir, you have a historic, opportunity to bring Russia into the West. And Putin would say, well, Ms. George, that's what I want to do,

but there are dark forces in Russia that must not be unleashed. So it has to be done in my own way, in my own time. But we were talking about how you establish a two-party democracy, the importance of checks and balances, of free press and independent judiciary. We were also having very constructive relations with Russia in the area of counterterrorism, counterproliferation, arms control, all the rest. But two things were happening in parallel with that. If you look at the chronology, Putin was becoming less and less inclined to be democratic and more and more authoritarian, dismantling checks and balances, increasing central government control. And secondly, he became more and more concerned about the color.

revolutions on his borders in 2003 to 2005 in Georgia, in Ukraine, in Kyrgyzstan. We thought these were good news because they were going to create prosperous, stable, democratic neighbors who would be good neighbors for Russia. Putin didn't see it that way. He saw these as basically CIA-led operations to establish regimes that would be anti-Russian and that he saw the whole effort as a dress rehearsal for destabilizing Russia itself. And in 2008, he goes into Georgia. And that is the end, really, of our efforts to be able to bring Russia into the West. Our strategy was we were going to try to bring Russia into the West, to bring it into

international institutions. But we were going to hedge by expanding and strengthening NATO. So that if Russia became revanchist and went back to its old pre-Soviet ways, we would have a platform from which to resist. And it's very interesting that the only two countries Putin has invaded so far, Georgia and Ukraine, are the only two countries that are not in NATO. So that's the Russia story. China's story, same strategy.

Try to bring them into the international order so they'll be supportive. of it, try to bring them, have a constructive relationship with China, but hedge by strengthening our relations with our allies, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia, develop a strategic relationship with India, increase our own present in the region as a edge in case China goes rogue and becomes more aggressive. That's indeed what China has done. And the Obama, the Biden has administration of course, is using those relationships to try to manage China. The China we face was a China that wanted a benign international environment so it could focus on its own economic development. It was following Dong Xiaoping's aphorism or policy of hide your power and bide your time, not really

reassuring it itself, but meant that in the short run, we weren't going to have crisis. They wanted to be part of international institutions and the international order not redefine it or overturn it, and they wanted a constructive relationship with us. Yes, the Communist Party was still there. Yes, its ideology was still pretty hostile to the United States, but the trends were moving against them. The problem really with terms of China is, I think, Xi Jinping comes into power after the Bush administration's left office in 2012, and he's not Huzentai. and he's not Zhang Ziman prior to presidents. And he's got a different agenda for China.

He believes the West is in decline, that America is in terminal decline, that this is China's moment to assert itself on the international stage, and he starts to use his great economic heft and increasing military power to intimidate his neighbors and friends, to have very aggressive diplomacy overseas, to try to basically retaliate overseas against people who are critical of China, indeed to disrupt in some sense our own democracy here at home by encouraging division. And pointing out as frequently and often and intensely all the shortcomings of our democracy

to discredit not only in the eyes of the Chinese people, but also in the global stage and also within the United States itself. He's an authoritarian. He's a party man. He believes and has been reasserting the Chinese Communist Party into all aspects of Chinese society. And as you saw in the most recent Party Congress and National People's Congress meeting, the party has now been placed over the normal. government institutions. So this is a new vision for China, a new set of policies, much more threatening to the West, much more threatened to our friends and allies in the region and to America's own prosperity and security going forward. And I think it shows once again that who leaves these countries really matters. Well, so I certainly grant that she is not who and that there's a personal dimension to she's leadership that is highly relevant. That, that's

said, do you think that Hujintau and the men around him and women around him contemplated a period at some point in the future, say a generation out, where their integration into the American-led economic order would so empower them that they would make a bid to alter the terms of that order to better favor them? You know, was that was that on their minds or is it really all she? I think, again, this is a complicated system. Were there people in the party who had that vision absolutely, no doubt about it. Was that the vision of John Ziemann and Hu Jentau? If so, we didn't see it. That was not their vision. And I think the issue is, if we had succeeded and had integrated them into the international system, addressed some legitimate grievances they had that they did not have as big a role in that international system that China was entitled to, given its economic strength, and its emergence is a great power. If that had been allowed, if you had had a Huxentau-type successor,

so that the first second decade of the 2000s was a case of continued integration of China international system, constructive relationship with the United States, it might have kept those contrary voices within the party at bay, because the Chinese people would have been satisfied with the situation in which they found themselves. We just don't know. That's the counterfactual. It's taken Xi Jinping, you know,

10 years to get to this point in time. And we just don't know whether those, what it would have been looked like if those 10 years had been under a Jean Zemin or Hu Jentau type reader. I want to be respectful. of your time, but if you'll permit me, I've got one more question for you back on Russia. You mentioned NATO enlargement. You spoke about realists in our conversation today. You're aware

that there's a realist argument to the effect of it is NATO expansion that has provoked Vladimir Putin into these horrible things he's done in Georgia and now especially Ukraine. The book gets into this. I think it's the Europe memo actually addresses there's a, I guess it's an April 2008 summit in Bucharest where there's no membership. action plan agreed to for Georgia and Ukraine, but there is this assertion that both will become members of NATO, even if we're not prepared to kind of take a formal step in that direction today. You know, what do you say to the critics? What effect did this state of play in April have on what happened later in the year in 2008? And today, for that matter. Yeah, I mean, it's a very

good question. There are two ways you can interpret those events. So in May, we have the Bucharest in Bucharest, Romania. The issue championed by the United States is do you give a membership action plan to Georgia and Ukraine, which puts them on the road to membership in NATO. And the French and the German leaders block that. They make it clear that in their view, Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for NATO membership. And we paper over the disagreement with some flowery language about how their final destination is to be. part of the NATO family. But, and Putin and people who have the view that you described point to that language and say,

that was a provocation to Putin. I think you can read the events of Bucharest differently, which is that it was clear that the Germans and the French were not going to let Georgia and Ukraine join NATO. And indeed, shortly thereafter, with respect to Ukraine, Ukrainians stopped pushing for NATO membership. And there's virtually no discussion about Ukraine joining NATO from there on. Putin also talks a lot about moving NATO infrastructure closer to the Russian border. That did not happen during all of this period until 2014 when Russia, when Putin, invade Ukraine, thereby threatening other countries that are in NATO. And at that point,

Ukrainian start talking again about NATO membership. And NATO does start temporarily deploying forces closer to the Russian border to deter Putin from doing what he's did in Ukraine in 2014 elsewhere. So I would say to you, Putin's actions in Ukraine in 2014 brought about exactly the things he complained about. It did begin for the first time to bring NATO infrastructure close to. to Russia. It did revise the notion of should Ukraine be in NATO precisely again because the only two countries he's invaded, Georgia and Ukraine, are the two countries who aren't in NATO.

But for me, what did it was the speech that Putin gives the night before, a couple of days before he authorizes and initiates the reinvasion of Ukraine on February 28th of 2022. And the last half of the speech talks about missile defense and NATO enlargement and all these grievances that Putin had been pointing to as provocations from the rest. But the front part of the speech and Putin's various manifestos that he's done before that are all about Ukraine is not a real country. Ukraine will not be sovereign until it is part of Russia. that Russia, a vision of a new revitalized Russian empire, not a Soviet empire, a Russian empire, were reclaiming historic Russian lands. And that raises questions about Moldova, raises question about the Baltic states,

raises questions about some territory in Poland. It's clear that it's not about NATO enlargement. It's about an aspiration Putin has to restore. or a Russian empire, and that that is a threat not just to Ukraine, but other forces, other countries in Europe as well. That's his agenda. And that's what needs to be defeated in Ukraine. Steve Hadley, lead editor of Handoff, the forum policy George W. Bush passed to Barack Obama.

It was a great conversation. Thank you so much for making the time today. Delighted to be here. Thanks very much for giving me the chance. This is a nebulous media production. find us wherever you get your podcasts.