this discussion.

>> good morning. i'm suzanne maloney, vice president director of foreman -- policy here at the brookings institute. on behalf of all of us, i am delayed to welcome us to a special event on meeting the russian challenge. we are here today to mark a release of an important new book published by the brookings institution press. the foreign policy bush passed to obama. it is by a national security adviser who joins us on stage today. he represents an incredible resource for all who care about national security. he includes transition memos, court challenges facing washington and the world as the

obama administration took office. with temporary reflection on how it stood the test of time. it has a glimpse at how the bush administration handled an array of international challenges it with no transnational threats, it included an foreign policy agenda today. the book illuminates for scholars and practitioners, the complexity of the crises that include a historic shift of international order. these lessons are relevant today as we are looking through a transition from the 9/11 era dominated by counterterrorist and threats from nonstate actors to a new strategic landscape of great power arrivals to the united states. in that respect, it is fitting that the brookings launch was handed off on the one-year anniversary of the anniversary

of ukraine. this comes on the heels of an historic visit of president biden to kyiv, an active war zone to meet with president zelenskyy on the unflagging commitment to the ukrainian democracy, sovereignty and territorial integrity. in his own countervailing speech, president putin suspended russia's involvement insult. the war appears to be entering a grim new phase. this will compound the immense and tragic human toll in ukraine and the wider ramifications on food and energy security around the world. the brave and inventive defense of its people and territory over the past year will be tested, as will the readiness of americans and others around the world to ensure that democracy can prevail over the thuggery of authoritarian states. >> we are doing an enormous array of work in this arena. you've no doubt seen the publication of our index on the

website and on the washington post. we will also post another event on wednesday on the implications of the russian suspension of new start with the assistant for arms control verification and compliance. please join us again. for today, let me say what an honor it is we are able to gain from a deep well of knowledge with experience of our distinguished speakers today print i will take a moment to introduce them. we are honored to have honor stage today dr. condoleezza rice, the 66th secretary of state. you all know dr. rice is a renowned scholar of russia and a pathbreaking public service who -- servant to serve as george w. bush's advisor from 2001 to 2005. she was the first woman to hold that position. she is currently the director of the hoover institute, a senior fellow on public policy, eight global business and economy professor at the stanford graduate school of business and a founding partner of gates

emanuel llc, a strategic consulting firm. stephen hadley is the editor of this book. he is a former assistant to president for national security affairs from january 2001 to 2005. he was the assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, serving under dr. rice. he is also a founding partner and the same firm. we are joined today by a colleague and good friend, dr. fiona hill, an acclaimed authority on geopolitics of brookings former policy. she served in russia and europe on the national security council and the national intelligence council under president bush, obama and trump. she is the author of the bestseller, there's nothing for you here. finding opportunity in the 21st century. lastly, it is a privilege to have the award-winning journalist and author david ignatius who will moderate our panel conversation today. as you all know, he writes a twice a week column for the washington post which is

essential reading in the foreign affairs committee. he is a recipient of many awards, and he is a post for an editor. he supervised the pulitzer prize winning coverage of the iraqi invasion of kuwait. i want to pay tribute to the three co-editor's. peter fever who directs the grand strategy program. william bowden, the director of the clement center for security at the university of texas at austin, and megan o'sullivan, the good friend from the brookings college who is named the director of the harvard center tonypandy school of government. i would be remiss they can purchase the book at our bookstore, or for those of you are joining us digitally. before we begin, we are livestreaming this event, we are on the record. send the book -- send your -- request or use our #on social media.

those of you joining us life, there will be a q and a. at the end of our discussion. thank you. the floor is yours. >> think you suzanne. i want to begin by congratulating the coeditors and steve of this book. if you are journalist or you want to understand the history that we have lived through, this book is going to be invaluable. thank you very much. let me ask you to begin our conversation by saying a few words about why you embark on this project and because we are focusing on russia, what in particular you think emerges from this material about russia that we ought to think about. >> thank you. thank you for coming. thank you for hosting this event. as mark is here who intruded in sa, early in 2008, we really told josh bowden eyes chief of staff that the new team coming

in, whether it's -- rivers going to be, they will face enormous challenges. this going to be eight transition possible, and there were 40 transition memos with all of the day. what we found, what we thought we accomplished, what remained to be done, for the new administration, what is the challenge they're going to face, that was the purpose to help train, help prepare a new administration to take the responsibilities they were going to have beginning in january of 2009. i had recalled these memos is pretty good. about three years ago. i went down to texas, and i reread them. i thought they were as good as i

remembered, but i am biased. i also thought they were a good legacy. for the bush ministration. what was going on, and what we did, why. the book which concludes 30 of these 40 transition memos, and each case, up states the memos as to what is happening subsequently, and what he got right and wrong, and looking back now at 20 years and four administrations, trying to deal with these issues. what are the lessons for future presidents. to each memorandum, there is an attached set of laws. the speech, policy, statements, and phone conversations that they had, and embassy meetings. all of those attachments, with a transition memo, they are going to be an archive at smu, and the hope is a combination of the book from the access to the online archive with the

attachments will become a place where scholars, historians, and foreign policy can go and see what we are going to see about it. but there will be a record that they can consult. if they do that, there is a number of things they will see, and the fourth one is exactly where you want to go. the first is, there is a myth out there that all boys did was iraq, afghanistan and the war and tear. what you see from these memos and just the table of contents of the book, we are doing as you would expect, a whole range of things all at the same time. you have to if you are in the united states. secondly, a lot of these initiatives and conceptualizations of this step being taken by the mistaken work and supplies by the president, and handed over to a team of agents that he built. the secretary of state and defense. also others. you proposed confidence, he empowered them, and they shared

a vision and try to implement it on the ground. it was what great leaders do, and i think you will conclude from this that as a president, he was a great leader. the third thing you can see from this book is nothing much good has happened on global issues it is still true. the fourth thing that jumps out, and it will rain the conversation. that is how different the china and russia is that they faced with the china we see today. we'll have to talk about why that is. >> let me take off from there, and turned to condoleezza, who is a russian speaker, a russian specialist. the story that you read is of a bush effort to engage russia and try to bring it towards the

modern world, democracy. some kind of working relationship with the west. that arrives in 2008 at the russian invasion, and the memo describes the incoming obama, a strong response that you made with the invasion of georgia. he said no business as usual and a strong message. there are critiques included in the book that ask if that was enough, given the strong lean towards engagement. i want to ask you to think about that with us. next -- >> that is not a surprise. that is the point i want to make. a lot of the efforts going back into the summer were to try and forestall a soviet or russian invasion of georgia. i worked closely with the

foreign minister of germany. we could see there was a tinderbox there of russian peacekeepers inside of those sessions. i remember saying over and over, don't with them provoke. if they use will terry force, it will be hard for anyone to come to your aid. sadly, they were provoked. they fired on russian peacekeepers. my first thought was, why would anyone put those peacekeepers in absentia. i want to note that you don't get to choose the circumstances into issue enter. this is an existing circumstance. and then you have to decide what you can do and what you cannot do. we were not going to use american military forces against the russians. everyone was getting kind of spun up, and with all due respect, the testosterone was flying on the table. my colleague steve hatley said,

are we saying that we will go to war against russia. you have to recognize your limitations and set goals. our principal goal at the end of this was to have georgia be an independent country with a democratically elected president intact and russian forces not in the capital. that we achieved. indeed, we -- in conversation in which surrogate tried to make a secret deal in which removal would have been for russia. i said surrogate, the american secretary of state and the russian foreign minister do not have a secret talk about deposing a democratically elected leader. i think we thought this was going that direction. finally, the forces ended up pretty much where they started. in absentia. that was a success. would we have liked to have done more? you said no business as usual. i think there was a strong view

that we ought to do more in the way of sanctions in the war and in the economy. you are never dealing with one event at the time, and there was another crisis out there. i financial crisis. not many countries were in the mood to start thinking about state sanctions and the likes of a financial crisis, so this was a constraint. when i teach about foreign policy, i try to get my students to see that this decision-maker is not just stupid. they are not just making bad decisions. very often, they are choosing between not very good options. i think in the case of georgia, we were choosing between some not very good options. i wish we had been able to sustain the sanctions, but in this context, it wasn't going to happen. i am grateful that we were able to preserve independent georgia with russian forces not in the capital. >> you describe a fascinating scene.

testosterone was flying around the room, and people sound like they want to go to war with russia. it sounds like good sense prevailed. but there is a question, looking back at georgia in 2008. certainly, looking at the don boss and thousand 14. whether we have been too cautious in showing the story. >> let me ask you. >> as you look back, maybe a little more testosterone should have been --? >> we had a little bit. we did bring georgian forces back from iraq and we brought them back with military transport. we had destroyers in the black sea. two if i remember. we delivered command terry assistance through military means, and there was a signal to the russians. one of the challenges is not to get into a situation that you

cannot control, so one of the ways i would make, and it is something that i would say is towards arms control and we are worried about that, we kept very good communications with the russian military through the chairman of the joint chiefs. mike mullins. he was an almost constant discussion with the chief of staff. one of the things that united states and russia, even before that, the soviet union, have learned, is how to keep open lines of communication so that escalation doesn't happen by accident. one of the questions we have to ask is can we still say that? >> let me elaborate on two things. one, a meeting that condoleezza is referring to is a testosterone flying. is anyone recommended to the president that we used u.s. military forces to go to war with russia and georgia.

the president looked at me like i was out of my mind. i said, we just think it is good for the historical record that the principles be clear as to whether that is something they are recommending because i was worried about post administration memoirs where people are saying i told the president we should have been tougher. to his president -- to his credit, the vice president was averse to say i am not recommending the use most reports against russia. we try to do everything short of that. we signaled the military option was on the table. why did we do that? because we said very clearly at the time, within our internal discussions, if we do not inflict a strategic defeat on putin for going to georgia, tomorrow will be ukraine -- will be the baltic states. that is article five provocation that could result in a war between nato and russia. all of this cooperation was a norm is that we try to do with russia. over georgia, we threw all of

that into the toilet. this outreach we had done actually, we thought it would might give us leverage to send a message. prudent to not have a relationship with the west. if this is going to be your behavior. unfortunately, that posture was revised for the next ministration. at their own reasons for doing it, but we got to the reset russia. i think in some measure, it tempered with the message we were trying to send. the wake of prudent going into georgia. >> let me turn to you. you are one of our country's best putin watchers. the book he wrote about prudent, i quoted in my columns and i recommended it to everyone in the audience. i think will be interested in hearing your evaluation of prudent. then, during the bush years, as you observed them, analyze them, and now, as you've seen him in ukraine.

where are you imagining it will be ending up at the end of the story. >> thank you. i was at the national intelligence office at that point, and we were observing a lot. having put forward analytical perspectives. in the audience, there was a senior director who is in charge of russia at the time, and a hotseat with distinguished speakers. with these issues and the analytical expression, there is something want to raise here. i was struck by how little we understood about prudent himself and the motivations. that is actually one of the reasons why he was managing to keep a pretty tight grip on information about it. when the president making this,

it was always manipulated, with as dr. wright says, it was a secret deal, and it is something we continue to see. up until this particular point. it was also asked for an early good in making something that was one set of objects, and maybe there were multiple objectives as well. so we focused on the issue of georgia, but as was said, he also had a much larger set of issues and objectives at that time, including ukraine. in fact, the telogen's community warned that we believed he would invade crimea as well put best. that was not as large as a year ago, but we did think crimea would be on the agenda. it wasn't on the agenda. that was because after seeing what happened in georgia, the president at the time pulled back on basically ukraine's idea

to join nato, and they extended into a subsequent level of lease for the russians on the black sea. and in the crimea. they were reading closely the same trends we were reading as well. when it came to georgia, putin was able to present all of this as indeed, to a trap. i remember, president bush said, we told him a thousand times not to do this. the aftermath. what was he thinking? when he was asked later what he was thinking, someone said to them, basically, your house was a tinderbox. you are running around like you were upset, but he said it was not his point. buying around there as well, and he was able to take advantage of that, which is something we learned about putin. he is very good at goading

people. he is good at finding them amenable to a weakness and egging them on and drying them to a conflict. i think what we failed to get across at the time with the fact that he a much bigger agenda. there was a mode of intelligence showing, and that was a great breakthrough on the part of the burns who was one of the -- also a president bush ambassador. he understood the nature of the russian system. we have allowed putin to get ahead of us, and have an agenda set, and one of the items that we haven't really mentioned is what we've talked about with the importance of u.s. leadership. it was about having the allies along as well. we had a financial crisis in 2009. and our non-european allies didn't want anything to do with what was going on in georgia. in fact, it was a quick move on the part of presidents are cozy

of france to basically come down the caucus boutin like the calvary sweeping and to bet in the war before anyone had much chance to reflect on that. there was the beijing olympics, we try to settle to soft. he actually literally drove a police -- peace plan on the back of a napkin. it was in french and russian, and it later translated into georgian. it is never been translated into english. that was the problem for the next ministration, which highlighted at least in private the extended english version of this. prudent took advantage, along with others of the definition of peacekeeping forces to get several steps ahead, and we were kind of forced into it with the continued if -- continued policy of the french. >> will i went to france and it was always in solve -- in the

south of france, and i saw the plan, and i said to presidents are cozy, did you look at a map? russian forces were going to be 15 kilometers from there. the french insisted that they had looked at a map until they looked at a map and realized that they actually made a huge mistake. actually, thanks to alexander shupe who was the finish foreign minister of the osce, we were able to undo some things, and the georgians were exhausted. we were told just fine about that and we managed to undo some of that, and we undid the failures there of the french diplomacy, but i think, they were trying very quickly to get this solved and didn't really pay attention to what they were doing. >> before i let fiona go on the question of putin, i would be

interested in separate from the bush administration experience, i would be interested in your assessment of where he stands now. your end of the war, going badly, an extraordinary situation in which his former oligarch crony is lobbying and spit falling at the general staff. it is amazing. you've been watching this long time. where will this end up? >> i think if we look back to this. of transition and there is orchestration, you look at the wrong way of being president. he only had 24-year terms of the time. he was said to be giving his own hand over who had been prime minister, and he made himself prime minister and was looking over his shoulder the entire time. dimitri was acting as president.

we can't discount that. it was during the obama administration that it became prudent going to the scene. he just moved himself into the background when he was still having a major impact on things, and he feels the calculate that people desperate and was still there. then we saw putin is saying that he could be with us as eternity, as much as he has his lifespan. he technically can stay in power until 2036. he has the possibility of another to four-year -- six-year terms. every single week at is a catastrophic war. it suggests that putin intends to stay. we can speculate on all of the talk with a look.

that was one of the members of all time, but we always seem to be someone else who is out there in the arena. putin helped to create that kind of image because he had every intent of being there in the driving seat. when you ask where this ends, putin wants to make sure there is an end of his term. that is really what we've got to push back against. >> steve. i want to turn to a question that was asked by one of the brookings friends. this is a u.s. army officer named thomas swim, but he raises a question we are all thinking about. whether china will end up being the great beneficiary of the ukraine war. your policy is an emergency this book. it is to try and draw china like russia into the global rules-based immunity.

our questioner asked, what are the odds that russian china form a strong alliance in the future. maybe, you could speak to the kissinger question, and russia and china and how you thought about that triangulation. back in the time of president bush. we had a common strategy which was to try and bring russia into the international system. russia and china. it seemed to be what they wanted to be. part of the system redefined it or overturned. they wanted a constructive relationship for different reasons. we did not see an done of us saw the evidence of the alignment between russia and china we saw. there was an alignment. i think the main element of that alignment is both of them see

united states as threatening the legitimacy of their individual regimes did they saw them as the enemy to be opposed not only by a western influence in american influence at home and russia, but also to confront american influence and try and undermine american standing internationally and undermine democracy here at home. it accentuates our divisions. >> it is a very different relationship between the united states and those countries. i don't think so. there is a very strategic alignment where there is commonality and they will work together. it is not insisting on lockstep compliance. with each other's appliances. china has respect to russia, and

i think they are trying to walk a delicate role. on one hand, they are trying to say, we are sympathetic to russia and we think the west has taken into account russia's real national legitimate security interests, and on the other hand, they are trying to say, we stand for the principles of sovereignty, respect for borders, territorial integrity and no use of force. on the one hand, they are providing a lot of cheap russian oil and gas. they are filling a lot of products, but for the moment, it is still complying with our sanction stand with the export controls. so far, it has not provided lethal weapons that are showing up on the battlefield in ukraine. i hope that china will continue to try and walk that line and there will be stresses over the

long-term, and certainly, they need china now. russia is a junior partner in this relationship area i think that is not something russia will be comfortable with on the long-term. for china, i think they pledged that the chinese and russian relationship was an open-ended nation ship, and then they going to ukraine, and russia doesn't look like a great partner. to go out to the world and bring in a different kind of agenda to the world. they have an alignment of and i hope they will not throw their hat into the ring into providing weapons to russia, and i think we cannot separate them, but we should not assume they are allies. we should do those things to

have independent relations with each, and separate to encourage the inherent tensions in the relationship. >> i would come up on this point of inherent tensions. we made this mistake before. we did not see this coming, and it was well underway before we recognized henry kissinger and it was split. i do think we have alignments, and i believe it is probably temporary for a number of reasons that steve mentioned. it is really embarrassing for vladimir putin when he was made to stay by the chinese that we understand the chinese have concerns about what is happening the crane. it was a diplomatic speak for the chinese because we are out of our minds and we were told that if we didn't stay it, they would. there are inherent tensions because vladimir putin doesn't play second fiddle very well.

xi jinping is clearly the first violinist. that is a tension. there are ethnic tensions there. the russians are not known for their tolerance of or respect for asian populations going back to their willingness and experiences to talk about the mongol horde. several centuries later, i think there was a tension there, we often try to exploit them. i would just make one more point about vladimir putin. by 2008, after munich, it was very clear that he had a broader agenda. i remember sitting at the -- we invited him to the nato and russia council in bucharest, and this was problematic because yeti discussion with ukraine and georgia for ever ship action plans and data, and he came. it was late in the day, and he started his speech, and i remember, because we were trying to listen to him into russian

because he spoke much more harshly than anyone interpreted it. >> he said, ukraine is a country. i remember thinking, did i hear that right. did he just say submit country? he was already the last one that visited, and he said you know us. russia has only been great when it's been ruled by great men. like peter the great and alexander the second. he didn't say catherine the great. she was a woman, so i guess you can count. he also didn't say lennon or stalin. it was very obvious to him, the greatness of russia was in the empire. how dare the communists come up gave a speech before the invasion. how dare lenin and stalin make a mistake that broke up the russian empire, so it is imperial and it was starting to become evident.

but maybe not soon enough. >> let me ask one more audience question. this is from robin, an oral historian. it is a thought exercise. i can imagine print allison. >> what is the combination of events that could help convince prudent that he needs to back down. >> it is tough. >> he is not going to give up this dream, which is the restoration of a russian empire. not a soviet empire. a russian empire. within the territory of the soviet space, that starts with the. russia plus ukraine plus belarus with aspirations for empire. without ukraine, it is a regional power. he is not going to give up a vision. you may take a pause. if he cannot achieve his

objectives, he looks at risks. so, it's the kind of thing that has a longer discussion. i think time is not on the ukrainian side. what we ought to be seeking is to give ukraine a weapon in training and intelligence and other support they need. sometimes, this year, they can do a counteroffensive, and that offensive they might think about is to go through it to the black sea and try to break a land bridge between russia and crimea which goes over ukrainian territory that the russians are occupied. to break a land bridge or threaten it, and to put crimea and russia forces in crimea under risk from ukrainian attack. at that point, putin could face

a possibility of losing crimea, and if he loses it, he loses his job. that is the kind of thing that might give prudent some cause to say i'm going to take a pause here, i will negotiate something or it will be a cease fire. like the war in 2014, a frozen conflict with russia sitting on more ukrainian territory, and at a later time, putin will have an option to resume the effort to make ukraine a failed state. in the interim, the pressure of ukrainians to try and make sure that they do not succeed in building a sovereign and secure prosperous state. it is not going to give up a vision, but they may be able to deny him and force him to stand down on a current iteration of this. >> what would be the thought

exercise answer? what it makes a lot of sense. there are three points i want to go to. first of all, it was proficient in judo, we all knew that. we all know a few things about that we did before. if you lose one, you might then lose it overturn your opponent later on. it is a much longer game than we give credit for. i think that is consistent with what was said. that is the next time until 2030 61 it might be the end of things. this is an issue of history. we shouldn't be picking up on that and telegraphing it. in fact, in the 1990's, st.

petersburg is debiting mayor, we were going on about the history than two. that is the part we are not so good at because we tend to always move on to the feature and leave the history behind. but we are living in this history all the time. among those are catherine the great and prudent. nicholas the first is also there. he wasn't called great but he was actually the father of russian nationalism and the people. but he was also the person who almost lost crimea when we get back to this point of losing crimea. nicholas the first presided over the crimean war after overextending and finding the british and the ottomans and the french fell back. it was after nicholas the first passed on towards the end of that conversation that alexander the great, who prudent invoked, had to come in and and emancipate. but it on the national stage.

there could be some lesson that he learned from that history that might make them decide to pause for now, but the third thing is what happened in georgia. because really, putin had deftly had in the crosshairs, and he was in the crosshairs, imprisoned in georgia. he left power 2013. his health hasn't held at this particular moment. georgia turned off in a different direction. prudence reading was that he can't prevail on the battlefield , but he might prevail over time for it we no longer talk about georgia in the way we did. it was an enormous tragedy. basically, decades on, georgia looks like it's in a different place. very comfortable place. it doesn't look as vulnerable and weak, and no longer able to exert itself, but a beacon of freedom and democracy that we touted to be back in 2008 in 2009. we are looking for another play in which perhaps he doesn't win everything he wants to on the battlefield in ukraine, but he can weaken the ukraine and prevail on the ukraine overtime.

>> we are about to go to questions from the audience. be thinking of what you would like to ask. i will close with just a final question for condoleezza. he said something fascinating earlier. in conversation with prudent, he said to you, you understand us. that is often seen as modern russia's complaints. you don't understand us. you do understand russia. years of deep study. if you were going to pass a message to prudent, that someone will understand russia and him, what would it be? this will not end well. and, i think nicholas the first, rather than alexander the second might be the right analogy. the fact is, i agree with steve and fiona that he may bite his time and wait. but before he puts a lot on the

line, it includes the 800,000 russians who collect -- who have left the country. the best and the brightest. he has put on the line the economy of russia has become a backwater. he has put on the line any sense that the russian military was anything to reckon with. he has become dependent on the wagner group and prisoners to fight this war. the international standing, he likes inviting people to moscow. the international standing is subordinate to xi jinping. by consent, message. you have lost what you have hoped. if you come down this road, the country will be a large north korea. is that what you are looking to do?

he took great pride in the international system. i will never forget everyone being dragged off to the founding of thanks peter -- st. petersburg pretty dragged every leader to it. president bush went, angela merkel and. it was one of those things that reminds you of the russians not changing things print i went behind a restored golden palace, and the backs were not painted. this is a reminder of the potemkin village. they had tried to get out of this, and i would try to appeal to that art of prudent. may be, it is unlikely, but that is the message i we give. this will not end well, and your country is going to be a large north korea. is that going to be your legacy? wax audience. this is your turn. i will start in the first row. there'll be microphone runners.

identify yourselves and keep your questions short if they are innate specific panels. please say so. >> i am george nicholson with the global special operations forces foundation. i find it interesting that you talked about history. a few years ago, i was with crystal, and also distribute us. they said the problem with west point is that we teach engineering, or -- but in the world we live in, we should teach religion in history and everything else. this goes back to putin's perspective, a historical perspective. if we made a mistake after the collapse of the soviet income week basically turn to the russians and said you are a second-class power. we will go ahead and assume the warsaw pact countries have been creating animosity. it is the same thing after world war i with the treaty of versailles. it is going ahead and creating a climate in germany where there'll be internationalism or hitler's able.

>> people often think about this. we push too hard. in that moment of victory after the cold war. in a way that it was counterproductive. i was with george w. bush, and i can tell you that the latter half of the administration, the administration stated everything they could to have russia as a partner. not a junior partner. president bush is particularly attuned to this. he had to show respect or russians. you can do the counterfactual trip let's say we did extend nato. that assumes that vladimir putin didn't have interests and ambitions, and at that point, we didn't extend nato. we would have been just fine

with the circumstances, and he wouldn't have had all of the things done now. he would have done them without article five guaranteed for the polls and the checks and some greens and others, they now look like what was just described. would that have been the right moral case for the people of poland and those countries that suffered under soviet occupation for 45 years? when i hear don't expand nato, i think, the alternative is states in eastern europe have no control of their future. i don't really like that for the united states. we did that once paid it was cold yalta. it didn't work out so. by the way, i would make the argument that there are two periods for putin.

he became a partner in afghanistan, and intelligence cooperation, and across the board. he thought he had found a strategic concept which worked with the united states. we can be warriors against terror. president bush took him up on that. i remember when the bombing of the kindergarten happened. it was president bush who said it was a terrorist act and not some chechen naturalist -- nationalist which is what they had the tendency to say. that worked until putin realized that the other part of the doctrine was people ought to be able to choose their freedom and democracy begins to spread in places like georgia and ukraine and so forth. so, i think we sometimes see a tendency to do something different we. maybe this will have turned out differently. that says to me that vladimir putin was a different person

with different ambitions than he had. i don't like the world without article five for those countries. >> i want to reinforce a couple of things that were just said. first of all, leadership matters. the antithesis on prudent is that boris doesn't like that. nelson is now holding a set of other documents that have been declassified. what he is telling bill clinton, president clinton is that he is not a imperial person. there's is a chance to take ukraine back, and that prime mr. said there is no way that we would have a war with ukraine. there is a way. now we have one. that is because of prudent and the mindset of people being very different. going back to the 1990's before there is an expansion of nato, some of the people were now around putin.

at the end of the 1980's, we didn't factor in was that leadership didn't matter, and prudent himself, the people around him become so important. i want to say, from the point of view of all the other countries. russia remains an empire. chechnya still a part of all that, and russia is still an empire. when we stop that, all of the titles in my work, i am from russia and asia. i was the national security director. for russia and europe and russia. we are split russia first. we tend to note ukraine and

georgia and belarus. that is to your detriment. we don't go around calling poland at as the emperor of war separately to call india or the united states the former colonies of england. the thing that we are dealing with is a empire. the last great empire. spain and u.k.. but, russia is still behaving like an empire, and the united states slap back against an kingdom and they made an imperial rush towards the suez canal and said no more to this. this is consistent with u.s. practice which is trying to push back the umpire. >> i am the one person who is not a russian expert. i will give you my perspective.

my wife and i are reading the icon in the act, and what you take from that and russia is trying to get its relationship right, and it has never succeeded. we thought that russia would come out of the soviet experience, and there is a chance that you can convince putin that this is his opportunity to bring russia permanently into the west, and condoleezza rice will remember that we say that explicitly to prudent, and that is what i want to do. it is something that is not awakened. it is something we do our way in our times. we tried to do that, and we try to build a relationship, and if you look at the book or the chronology in the russian memorandum, we are dealing with russia all the time. they are dealing with them all of the time. they're doing with their counterparts. but we also hedged.

we hedged. there is a possibility that history could not be overcome, and russia will go south. we hedged by expanding nato, strengthening our nato partners, strengthening our presence in europe, and in many report respects, it prevented context which might encourage prudent to move in a positive direction, but tom graham in the postscript to the transition memorandum on russia said, did we get the balance right between outreach to russia and hedging. i struggled with that for a long time. i was a big advocate for the nato enlargement. i struggled until i read prudence speech on the eve of this to ukraine. it came out even more explicitly that this was empire and it is liquidating ukraine as a way, bringing it into the revitalization of the russian

empire. that is when i laid the burden down. i concluded that all of this nato missile defense was a pretext for what is a real vision. if you think about ukraine, you think about the sudeten land. that is what we are faced with now. >> we have five minutes. we have two questions. you served -- let me see if i get someone although in the back. those three, and will at the panel respond. >> thank you. i am a retired civil servant. there is a handover memo that the bush administration has to deal with and there are three parts. >> keep it to one part. we have so little time. >> what was the nature of the threat or use of force and how

to did that impact the region? >> yes, sir. >> hello. i am from the republic of georgia, and i would like to thank you for the support of democracy during this crisis. i was a child during that. i would like to ask you about the clinical goals with regards to russia and georgia. all of those goals were achieved, especially with george's prospect of becoming a nato member. thank you. >> the gentleman there. in the back. >> thank you for a fascinating discussion. i am a second year masters student at johns hopkins. my question is, with the russians be willing to accept the consequences of a potential military defeat.

thank you. >> may i take this? we will start with condoleezza. you can respond to those questions with any closing remarks. >> was take the georgia question. i am worried, to be honest about georgia. i think we lost focus on georgia. if we could refocus again on georgia, i think there would be a lot of younger people in georgia who expect something different than georgia now has, and we have done very little in terms of human rights abuses in georgia and the press in georgia, so i would like to put georgia at the center of the agenda because currently, it is not going in a direction that i think we achieved a lot into thousand 8, 2010, and it is reversed, and we need to worry about that. i will mention that on the question, i will leave iraq to steve. on the question of the russian

population, i think you have to talk about multiple russian populations. it is for older and last thing -- less educated incomes, and this is an attack on russians. the russian state, the homeland. i don't think they would accept that they are being told they are winning. the only thing that is beginning to change as there are a lot of body bags coming home, and that is you read a quote at least he didn't die in a drunken brawl, that gives you an idea of this level of respect. -- was emerging as having a relationship with the west that was going to help russia and the

rest of the international community. i think that russia is dying day by day. to me, we have to have a policy that isolates putin's him and what's going on in ukraine from the russian people. because i think there are enough russian people who want to be part of the international system and we need to keep them in our universities, and working in our law firms and other places. they did not sign up for this. >> steve. >> we could have an old -- a whole hour on the iraq discretion. -- discussion. wars are -- war is either a choice or a necessity. he said that iraq is a war of choice. i think that's wrong. i think iraq was a war of last resort. for 12 years through a variety of measures we have tried to get iraq to comply with 17 u.n.

security resolution. we said top supporting terrorism, either destroy, or demonstrate that you destroyed your weapons of mass destruction and stop intimidating your neighbors. in order to obtain compliance, not only were the 17 u.n. resolutions passed, we had no fight -- no-fly zones in the north and south, we had smarter sanctions. we had inspections regimes, we had a congressional resolution with regime change. the policy of the united states in 1998 and clinton administration used force on the territory of iraq to get them to accept inspectors. none of it worked. george bush tried coercive diplomacy, building our forces and trying to get putin to comply, -- and there are parallels here. [laughter]

i think he was getting saddam to comply. and i think that he thought it would succeed until the time that putin said publicly that he would not support any use of force against iraq for any circumstances. at that point, bush was faced with the choice. you basically, say to putin, sorry, we were already -- only kidding, 17 resolutions didn't mean anything, bring our troops home and give saddam a get out of jail free card or do you enforce instability in the international community. bush made that choice. given what we knew at the time, that was the right choice. >> we are going to have to leave it there, i think. >> i have a question to pick up on this somewhat here, the consequences of iraq, are

because the interpreted upside -- putin likes to refer back to iraq as a time of justification, and for what he's done in ukraine as well. in fact, he read in what's happening there of the united states being in the business of regime change. putin's comments are always that we are out to get them or someone is out to get them, which is his own fear, he plays on that with his relationship with iran as well. iran is helping putin today and the world -- he is reaching out we know to north korea and there are these other steps coming into play here. one of the -- made an analogy with the korean war, and the split in the korean peninsula.

it could be one of the many scenarios that we see in ukraine. putin is observing all of this, and it gives putin as sense of either risks or things he needs to do himself. one of the problems that we had our self and interpreting the questions is that they are all perceived pretty differently from the outside. putin is trying to justify what he is doing right now -- and trying to avoid outcomes that might be seen as somewhat that are mental. history is real, and these precedents are very real for vladimir putin. the legacies and the extent of what were of in with -- i know we need to wrap up but -- more books. >> condoleezza has a hard exit.

we will wrap up here. please stay in your seats and let -- and join me in thanking our panel for a really terrific discussion. [applause]