Presidential Transitions: National Security | Reimagining American Institutions

>> Eryn Tillman: Good morning. My name is Eryn Tillman, an Associate Director at the Hoover Institution, and we'd like to welcome you to today's webinar organized by the Hoover Institution's Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, also known as RAI. Today's session will consist of a 30 minute discussion followed by a Q and A period.

To submit your question, please use the Q and A feature located at the bottom of your zoom screen. We will do our best to respond to as many questions as possible. A recording of this webinar will be available at hoover.org/rai within a few days. The Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI) was established to study the reasons behind the crisis and trust facing American institutions, analyze how they are operating in practice, and consider policy recommendations to rebuild trust and increase their effectiveness.

RAI works with and supports Hoover fellows as well as faculty, practitioners and policymakers from across the country to pursue evidence-based reforms. When we say institutions, we mean governing and judicial bodies at the state, federal and local levels, as well as non governmental civil society organizations such as media, nonprofits and foundations.

We also attempt to understand public opinion and behavior, particularly as it relates to electoral accountability, and are making investments to improve civic education in both K12 and higher education. RAI operates as the Hoover Institution's first ever center and is a testament to one of our founding principles, Ideas Advancing Freedom.

Since 1919, the Hoover Institution has sought to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity while securing and safeguarding peace for America and all mankind. This webinar series was established to feature speakers who are developing innovative ideas and conducting groundbreaking research. We hope to build awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country's democracy delivers on its promise.

And now it gives me great pleasure to introduce today's speakers, the 66th Secretary of State and Director of the Hoover Institution, Secretary Condoleezza Rice, and the 20th White House National Security Advisor and a principal of Rice, Hadley Gates Emanuel Stephen Hadley. Director Rice.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Thank you very much, Erin, and thank you and welcome to all of you who are attending this webinar.

We really do seek to shed some light on what is a very important and critical set of issues for the United States of America and that's how to make our very valuable institutions work better. I wanna thank Brandice Cain's Roan and her team at the center for Revitalizing American Institutions for really putting the center on great footing.

And we're delighted, my friend and colleague Steve Hadley and I, to be a part of this webinar. Now, just a word about the two of us. We found ourselves in 2000 in a very unusual situation. This webinar is about presidential transitions. You know, that we will have a change in power to the president.

We have, coming up, an election in which neither is the incumbent. And so there will be a presidential transition. Well, Steve and I found ourselves in that position in 2000 when we were both advising Governor George W Bush on his national security and foreign policy, and we thought he'd won.

And then on the night of the election, it turned out that he hadn't quite won. In fact, there was going to be a contested period for a number of weeks. As a matter of fact, a couple of months before we actually had an outcome to the election. In a day when we have a lot of 50, 50 elections, we forget that the first of those 50, 50 elections that really had consequences was called Bush V Gore.

And so Steve and I are veterans of a peculiar kinda transition. And so I want to start there, Steve, and talk about what it was like to be planning a presidential transition when you actually didn't know if you'd won. After the election was finally called, I became National Security Adviser.

Steve was deputy national Security advisor. And we'll turn to some other issues about how that worked. But, Steve, why don't you talk about what it was like to be in one of the more unusual transitions that the country has faced.

>> Stephen Hadley: Well, thank you, Conde, and it's great to be with you for this webinar.

One of the things about it, and your recollection is probably better than mine, but there was an issue about whether the Bush administration should be presumptuous, if you will, and start a very public transition process. There was a big debate within the administration. I think the Vice President was very much in favor of, let's get on with his start of transition.

But the soon to be declared president elect, George W Bush, had other ideas, and he really thought it was important to not be presumptuous, to wait for the electoral process to come to an end and for the decision of the American people to be clear before we started the transition process.

Which is great for him cuz he didn't have to run the transition process like you did. But it meant that once Bush v Gore, the Supreme Court case was settled and it was clear that he was indeed the President elect, I think we had less than a month to do a transition, a process that normally takes three plus months and is even then rather rushed.

So it was a remarkably compressed period. And My recollection, Condi, is the priorities that you set for us were one, we've got to get our people in place. That's the first thing we had to do. Secondly, we had to get some idea of what processes, how was the national security structure gonna operate under George W Bush.

And then we decided we had to put together a little memo, sort of what are the sort of major initiatives that we will have in the early days of the Bush administration. And I think we had a 10 or 11 page memo that we prepared. But after, of course, 9/11 occurred, a lot of that went into the desk drawer never to reappear again.

But that's my recollection. Maybe a little bit different from your vantage point.

>> Condoleezza Rice: No, it's absolutely my recollection. And you're making a really important point, which is the transitions are first and foremost about people and then secondarily trying to get the machinery of government working. And so let's talk about a little bit about the people piece of that, because one of the things that happens in a presidential transition is that the White House can actually make appointments to the National Security Council, to the National Economic Council, but most of the agencies, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Treasury, cannot actually begin to function because many of their top officials have to be confirmed by the Senate.

And so this is one of the really interesting problems in a presidential transition. Very often the White House is kind of on first and those agencies that report to the president because since they are basically staffed to the president, this really important to understand, they're staffed to the president, so they don't go through a confirmation process.

And since they don't go through a confirmation process, they're a little bit ahead of the game at the beginning until the agencies are able to get staffed up, get their people confirmed. So at the beginning, there's a little bit of imbalance. I think between White House, what the White House can do and what the agencies can do.

Very often with the agencies, you're left with whoever didn't turn out the lights when the last administration left town after the inauguration. So can you talk about that a little bit? Because you actually were not just in the White House, but in the George H.W Bush administration. You were in the Defense Department and had to be confirmed.

So talk a little bit about that imbalance and also maybe talk about a problem that we do have, which is it's taking longer and longer to get presidential nominees confirmed.

>> Stephen Hadley: It's just the way you describe, Connie. And the tricky part, in the George H.W Bush administration, I was slated to be an assistant secretary of Defense, but I had not been Senate confirmed.

But I was also part of the transition team for the George H.W Bush administration. So the tricky part was they needed the White House already, since they were staffed, wanted a direction on the future of our strategic nuclear weapons. And, by the way, how should we structure our conventional forces?

And that came over to the Defense Department, to the transition team, which was Paul Wolfowitz and me, basically, and not much anybody else. And so you're then trying to respond to a White House who wants to get underway. And within the agencies, you only have, really, the permanent government.

And that's one of the features, the good features of our system. The president comes in with a whole raft of political appointees whose job really is to translate the mandate that the President has gotten from the American people in the election. Translate that into policy. But they then need to interface with the permanent government, which is the repository of expertise and history, if you will, of a particular issue.

And that tension is really very constructive in our process, reconciling political imperatives with continuity with the past. But, of course, the problem is the White House, as you say, is way ahead of the agencies. And I remember you asked me to have a Deputies Committee meeting in about March or April of that first year, and I did.

And when people showed up, they were all part of the permanent government. No representative from the Bush administration confirmed by the Congress, by the Senate was. They was able to show up. So there's a means that there's a time lag. Everyone thinks January 20th, the new administration start actually, new administration doesn't really start until probably April or May of its first year.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, I want to get into the substance of transitions in just a second, Steve, but just a little bit more about the process. I want everybody on the webinar to understand that. I think one of the biggest problems that we do have is that the time between a nomination of an official, so the President nominates, for instance, usually the top people.

The secretaries get confirmed pretty quickly. But the nomination for a deputy or an undersecretary, this takes a very, very, very long time and that time has been increasing over the last several administrations. And so in some ways, an administration starts with their hands tied behind their backs because they can't get their people, the President can't get his people into office.

Do you want to say just a word about that? You've been part of a lot of groups that have tried to think about what more you could do about that.

>> Stephen Hadley: It's tricky. One of the problems is the Congress, over time, over recent decades, has increased the number of that need to be Senate confirmed.

So in some sense, the problem has gotten worse. And in the last few years, there's been an effort with some success to cut back the number of people that have to be Senate confirmed. Second problem is, of course, you got to have a White House clearance, you got to have your agency clearance, a White House clearance.

A Senate committee clearance, and a Senate floor clearance. And each group has their own set of paperwork you need to do. So you find out you're basically preparing the same information in different forms three or four different times before you're actually confirmed. So there's a streamlining the process and a standardization that would actually help advance the process.

The other thing people have tried to do is during that transition period, designate who are going to be the senior leadership team. Get their paperwork in and get them confirmed by the Senate, even in some sense, almost before the President has been sworn in or at least immediately thereafter.

That's something else has been done to try to telescope or compress this process. But there's a lot more that really needs to be done.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yes, and of course, people on the national security side all have to be cleared with security clearances as well. And I actually have kind of a funny story about that, which is, of course, as National Security Advisor, I went through a very, very deep security clearance process.

I think you and I probably had most of the clearances known to humankind. But when I left the White House to become Secretary of State, it was a different clearance agency. And so they went back to the entire clearance process again. And I wanted to say it's not as if you didn't know where I was for the last four years to have to go through a clearance process again.

So I think there are some real problems in the system so now let me ask you, Steve, you did something quite remarkable, which is at the end of the Bush administration. You left a series of memos, memoranda for the incoming Obama administration, and you actually published a book about it called Handoff.

So that, to me, is one of the most systematic transitions that I've ever experienced or ever known about. What were you trying to achieve in actually leaving a paper record for the Obama administration of what the Bush administration had tried to do, what some of the concerns had been?

That seems to me to have been an unusual effort.

>> Stephen Hadley: Well, one of the reasons that we did it was that President Bush saw in the sort of spring of his last year. That he was going to be handing whoever were the American people who were gonna elect as president two hot wars in terms of Afghanistan, Iraq, the war on terror.

And it turned out one of the biggest economic crises we've had since the Great Depression. And his concern was that the new team needed to be in a position to get to hit the ground running from the day they step into office. And he basically told Josh Bolton, as chief of staff.

I want a model transition process that does everything we can do to help this new team be able to handle their responsibilities from the day they step into office. What turned out to be very fortunate was Barack Obama, President Elect Barack Obama was very receptive to that idea.

So it really became a model transition. And one of the elements of the transition we can talk about, some of the others were these memos. There were about 40 of them on the key national security issues of the day, and they all had a standard format. What did we find?

What was our strategy? What did we think we accomplished, and what remained to be done, or what was really gonna hit the new administration in the face as soon as they walked in the door. And we thought this would be a resource for the new administration, but also, in some sense, was us in the outgoing administration getting our thoughts together.

In an organized way, so that in meetings with the new team, when they came in, we would know what to tell them that would be most useful to them. So we've decided that we would publish those memorandum. And I thought the useful thing that they would serve is let the public know what the outgoing NSE staff, how we assessed things at the time when we left office, not through a subsequent period, looking back through backward in terms of subsequent events, but how we saw it at the time.

And then we had the people who prepared those memos prepare a postscript, which brought them, in some sense, up to date what had happened since. And on the basis of what had happened since, looking back, what did the Bush administration get right, what did it get wrong? And what are the lessons for future administrations?

And I think that is a useful resource, a useful record of what we accomplished, but also an effort to draw the lessons learned. And I would hope future administrations would try to do a similar kind of book. I think it would be useful for historians and for common folk who are just interested in foreign policy.

>> Condoleezza Rice: I'm going to come in a minute to the question of whether or not today's political environment would allow that kind of handoff, as you called it. But I want to start before I go there by recalling a pretty dramatic meeting that we actually had in the Situation Room between the outgoing national security team of the Bush administration and the incoming security team of the Obama administration.

I had the opportunity just recently to be with Hillary Clinton, and she was recalling this particular meeting. And so this was a meeting in which the incoming secretary of state, the incoming national security adviser, I believe, the incoming treasury secretary. As well as the counterparts on the Bush side, Bob Gates was going to stay as Secretary of Defense.

So he was sort of there on behalf of both administrations. But we had this meeting because we had received that there were possible threats against the inauguration. And in the post-9/11 environment, you had to take seriously that there might be an attempt to disrupt the inauguration. What I recall most about that meeting, again, she's talked about it publicly, so I feel comfortable saying it, was Hillary's instinct that we needed to be very careful about the pictures.

We didn't want the first pictures of the American president to be ducking under a podium. And I was really very much caught by that and thought that we were planning for more than most transitions had planned for, because, as you said, this was the first transition of power since 9 11.

How do you remember that session?

>> Stephen Hadley: Very much the same way. It was scheduled as a briefing session, where I think the incoming team and the outgoing team were gonna talk about Iran. And what we're doing about Iran, maybe Afghanistan as well. But we got this word from the FBI director that there was this new threat information.

And we decided that that needed to be presented at the beginning of the meeting. And of course, it ended up hijacking the meeting altogether. But I remember it as you, we had an elaborate discussion led by the FBI and Homeland Security and others about what we were planning to do to sort of get more granularity on the threat.

And what we would do to respond to the potential threat for reasons of preparedness. But nobody thought about the most obvious question. And it was actually the practicing politician, the secretary of state, who asked a critical question was, well, what should Barack Obama do if he hears a gunshot before the FBI or before the Secret Service has rushed him off the stage?

And she then, and I must say it struck me and never occurred to me to ask this question, she said, well, the American people are going to be watching. And as you said, what do you want those visual images of the new president to be if he is in the midst of his first crisis of his presidency?

And I thought it was an interesting testament to the importance of having people who are practicing politicians in the room and in cabinet positions like those to raise these kinds of questions that those of us not from that world may miss.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, so let me ask a few substantive questions in terms of the issues for a moment.

And then there are a number of questions that we will get to in the Q&A about how we think about the current environment and transitions. So if you were writing those memos to the incoming team this time in 2025, as opposed to writing them in 2009, what would the key memos look like this time around?

So start with the situation with China. What would you be saying to the new team about China?

>> Stephen Hadley: It's a great question. And one of the things you may remember we did when we came in in 2000-2001, there were a series of briefings prepared for us. And one of them was on al Qaeda that Dick Clark had prepared.

And you and I both sat through it and thought it was very useful to bring us up to date on the terrorist threat. So I would think the transition memo would be very much similar to the format we used in 2008, which is, what did we find, what was the strategy, what was accomplished, and what left to be done.

But I would have supplemented with a briefing and a sit down session, I would think, with the principals and their principal deputies. To have the intelligence community come in and say, what does intelligence tell us about what the Chinese are doing militarily, economically and diplomatically in the world?

And then have the secretary of defense, the outgoing secretary of defense come in and explain what were we doing militarily in the theater to deal with this emerging threat, both in terms operationally and in terms our planning. And then I'd have the outgoing secretary of state brief on what was our diplomatic effort to rally friends and allies to deal with the problem of China.

And finally, what is the state of our communications with China? Cuz one of the things we tried to do is to reestablish those patterns of communication, particularly between our militaries. So we can deconflict and bring down a crisis if there's some incident in the South China Sea or in the Taiwan Strait.

I think this is one where really having the two teams, the incoming team and the outgoing team, sitting together for a couple hours in the room and walking through where are we with China? From an intelligence, defense, diplomatic and economic perspective, I think would be really useful to them.

And it's the kind of thing that you can't really capture in a memo. It's better, I think, to brief and then have a conversation. Conversation back and forth between the incoming and outgoing team. And I would do that on the key issues. I do that on the Middle East.

I do it on Russia, Ukraine and Russia, and particularly in China.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, and Steve, I would just add one thing, which is a few months after we were in office in April of 2001, we faced a big crisis with China when one of their pilots hot dogging in international airspace hit our reconnaissance plane.

Forced it to the ground, kept our crew for a week and we couldn't establish communications with them for three days. And I think letting an administration know a little bit about some of the surprises that you might get in a situation in which we still to this day don't have really the kind of communication and deconfliction with China that we had with the Soviet Union or with Russia.

You know, you might even talk a little bit through the mechanics of trying to, to get to the Chinese government. I think the Clinton administration experienced something similar when we accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Kosovo. So there are just some of those I'm going to pass on to you some of the bad surprises that might be out there that might be a part of the transition memo or discussion this time.

>> Stephen Hadley: One of the things we tried to do last time, and I don't think we codified it as well as we should have, was sort of give to the new team what is going to hit them in the first 90 days or 120 days. What are the meetings that are previously scheduled that they're gonna have to handle and that might draw on some time of the president?

And then as you say, what are the kinds of contingencies that might occur that they're going to have to handle early on. Second thing I think is getting them to know what are the communication channels, both diplomatically but also operationally. Who can you call how I think is very important and where are their gaps that they're going to be subject to and suffer from?

And the third thing I would say is the transition doesn't end with the inauguration of the new president. One of the things we emphasized and I think actually happened was as the new team comes in and is faced and starts to deal with these issues, they're going to have questions about the history.

And one of the things those transition memos did is they had attached to them all the relevant documents about policy decisions and deliberations within the Bush administration so people could see what we historically, what we had dealt with. And sometimes I know the Obama administration actually called up documents from the Bush administration.

So they had a better understanding of what went on in the past. But also just being willing to pick up the phone and say, we have this problem. Would you come in and talk to me? How you saw it from the prior administration, I think, is in some sense the relationships you establish during the transition give the new team resources.

That they can call on after they're in power, when issues arrive where the perspective of the prior team would be useful to them.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yes, and Steve, I think there's a difference between, if you're in the prior team, believing that your advice is maybe as important as what they already know.

Because I always thought, you have no idea about my puts and takes. But there is a role for formers, I think, of being able to say, here are some of the things that we faced. And sometimes I will get calls even today from people in the State Department saying, the Pakistani.

Did you really say that? And even more than that. So I do think this relationship, if it can be maintained between the outgoing administration and the incoming administration or the former administration and the current administration is very important. And I believe maybe I'm wrong about this, but that in the national security area, there's a little bit of understanding that that's one of the obligations.s

And I've generally had very good relations with my successors, no matter what the party. And I think you have too. I think that's right.

>> Stephen Hadley: The other thing you realize in particular, in the national security space, there are ongoing things that get passed. There are ongoing wars that get passed.

There are crises that get passed. There are diplomatic initiatives that get passed, one administration to another. And it's important that those balls do not get dropped. A new administration comes in, you've just won an election. Your adrenaline is pumping. You think this is your moment. The guys before us didn't have a clue.

We're writing on a clean sheet of paper and we're gonna change the world. Well, you know, you aren't. You are going to be hostage to things that happened before. And what you create during your time in office is gonna depend, whether it succeeds or not is gonna depend on what subsequent administrations do.

And I think after your new team comes in, after a few months, they suddenly realize that they're not writing on a blank sheet of paper. And that's why, Condi, you still get phone calls from city national security officials saying, what were you thinking and doing back then when you were talking to X and Y?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Right, I'm going to ask you about one more substantive memo that you might leave. And then we'll turn to what's a growing list of questions from our audience. So Steve, you have spent a lot of time thinking about Ukraine and thinking about the challenges there for the Ukrainians and for the United States in supporting Ukraine.

What would that memo look like at this point?

>> Stephen Hadley: One of the things that's interesting is what is already being done, I think, by the by the Biden administration to try to ensure that issue transitions, regardless of who is elected president here in the upcoming election. And I think it would be very important to describe to the new team what is this financing arrangement they have now come up with.

Whereby they're borrowing against the interest being earned on those frozen Russian assets in order to make a loan to the Ukrainian government to help fund their economic and military requirements. That's very important that that transitions successfully from one administration to the other. There's also an effort to shift more to NATO responsibility for ensuring that the weaponry and munitions continue to flow to Ukraine.

That's an important piece of this initiative. Also, they're starting to do something you and I have talked about and recommended, which is not making Ukraine so hostage to the weapons that it can get from friends and allies like the United States and Europe, but actually have their own indigenous production capability so they can make their own weapons they need and maybe even earn a little money by selling some of those weapons on the international market.

So we're in the process, I think, of a transition in terms of Ukraine. Some new pieces are being put in place, and it's very important that the new team understand what those are and to the extent they agree with them, can continue with them so we don't leave Ukraine in the lurch and it does not suffer from the fact that we're having a presidential transition.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Steve, I'm gonna make the transition to the questions, because we've got a question here from somebody who worked for us in the NSC, Dave Travers, and he asked about Exactly this question, what would it look like? What would a good transition look like? You've described one on China, you've described one on Ukraine.

One of the hardest ones always to describe is the transition in the Middle east, because you almost always seem to be inheriting some hot crisis. You will remember that we inherited the second Intifada. When we came into office, people were dying every day in violence in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

This incoming administration will likely inherit a crisis in Gaza, in Lebanon, and who knows what to do? And will probably inherit the question of what to do about Iran. So how do you think about that transition? What does that memo look like? What does that briefing look like?

>> Stephen Hadley: Well, that's a hard one and in some sense, it's a little bit like when we came in office, the issue, one of the first issues was, well, what are you gonna do about Al Qaeda? And we had that issue and we had to come up with a strategy on that one.

And our approach was, as you remember, to keep Dick Clark and his organization, which we're dealing with counterterrorism. Keep them and tell them, you keep doing what you're doing and we're gonna while we take some time to develop a new strategy. I think that's really the model for the Middle east right now.

Keep doing what we're doing. But there is a need to rethink our strategy. We have been pushing for ceasefires in the Middle East. The Israeli people and their government has a little different view about that and feels this is an opportunity to deal a real blow to Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and should not be passed up.

So we have to really think about a new approach to those conflicts. But I also think we need a new approach with respect to Iran. And I think we've for a long time focused too much on the nuclear issue and not enough about what Iran is doing to disrupt the region and what we're doing about that.

So I think this is a case where I would say to the new team, you ought to sort of continue what's going on. But then get your people together and come up with a new strategy for how to deal with the emerging challenges in the Middle east, which are enormous, have been with us for a whole time.

And in some sense, we've been working on these things ever since the State of Israel was founded at the end of World War II, and we still haven't solved them.

>> Condoleezza Rice: It's also the case, as you're alluding to, that you come in and you're Both trying to, usually in the Middle east, at least, deal with what is a hot crisis.

As well as trying to think about the broader ideas of how you'd like to plan for the future. And I think that's one of the hardest things when you come into office is to deal with the urgent. And sometimes you start putting the important off while you deal with the urgent.

So do you have any advice in the incoming administration on how to think about that?

>> Stephen Hadley: I think and kind of you may have a different view than I do about that. I think everybody, when they come in, they think, well, I'm gonna solve the Middle East problem.

I'm gonna be the one that achieves a reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and the Arab states. And we tend to go right into the diplomacy. But actually diplomacy only works, as you have said, if you set the table with positive and negative incentives and if you have the right institutions to build on.

And that's one of the things I think that was innovative about President Bush's policy to the Middle east because he said. Yes, we want a Palestinian state and what are the borders and features of the peace between Israel and that state is important. But what's also important is what are gonna be the institutions of that Palestinian state is gonna ensure that the Palestinian people get what they deserve.

Which is a state that actually can provide security and prosperity and a better life for the Palestinian people. So one of the things I would say to those folks is don't jump right into the negotiation. Think about setting the table, getting the incentives right, both positive and negative, and think about the institutions that are required if any peace is gonna be enduring.

And you've got to have a policy that addresses all three of those things. And some of them are gonna take some time, particularly the institution building speed piece. We've been waiting for a reformed Palestinian authority for about 25 years. We need to have one.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, I want to stay for one second on this prioritizations and substance, because one of the questions is about prioritization.

>> Eryn Tillman: And one of the other hard things about prioritization is you tend to pay attention to the places that are trouble and sometimes not enough attention to other allies, other parts of the world. And there are a couple that we try to pay attention to, but it always is hard.

So what do you do about Africa? A continent that has extremely important, growing demographics, some conflict, but some places that are fewer presidents for life, growing middle class. Latin America, a place that, as President Bush has called it, our neighborhood but it can be very easy not to get around to Latin America and Africa because these other places are hotter conflicts.

How do you think about this? Because we now call it. Some people call it the Global South, I don't particularly like that term myself, but we have an important relationship with India. It could be easy to just sort of leave all of that on the side while you deal with the hot coast.

So any advice to the incoming administration about that kind of prioritization?

>> Stephen Hadley: It's really hard. It's really hard and George W Bush wanted to have a new, different kind of relationship with Mexico and with Latin America generally. And 911 happened, as you remember. His first state dinner was with Vicente Fox, president of Mexico, just days before 911.

911 happens and suddenly the priorities have changed, and he's now a wartime president and he's got to protect the country against further attacks from Al Qaeda. So it's very hard. The other problem is, I remember we had an exercise that George Tenet led to try to come up with intelligence priorities.

Where are we gonna put our intelligence resources? And the whole thing about prioritization of resources works until something unexpected happens that captures the attention of the American people and the media. And suddenly something that was way down your priority list becomes a number one priority. Because the American people are demanding action, the media is demanding action, and the Congress is demanding action.

So priority sort of last until your first crisis and I think what you said is right. The tension between dealing with the immediate and dealing with the long term. And one of the things you did as Secretary of State that impressed me was you, at the beginning of every week.

Would write down a list of the three or four things that you needed to accomplish that week, notwithstanding all the things that were gonna distract your attention. And I think that discipline This is what you have to do is to insist that there's a part of your time that's focused on your agenda and is not gonna become sucked into the crisis of the moment.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Steve, one of the questions that's come up here. You've already talked about China, but I wanna go back to it because the question's been asked in a kind of specific way about one of those handoffs that might be actually quite crucial, which is the handoff on Taiwan.

And the spirit of it is, this will be a very important issue. You don't want anybody, particularly China, to take advantage of what might be a transition period in a place like Taiwan. Of course, you've also got a little bit of a period where the current president is gonna be a lame duck until the inauguration.

And so when you think about some something like Taiwan that could be of the criticality that it is but you're trying to signal about it, how do you think about the advice to the new team about Taiwan?

>> Stephen Hadley: Well, Connie, you ought to jump in on that one because you're probably more of an expert than I.

Before you do, let me just point out one thing. One of the messages I know, and I've talked to Nick Burns about this, I know the message that the-

>> Condoleezza Rice: Nick Burn's the ambassador to China, our ambassador to China.

>> Stephen Hadley: Our ambassador to China. One of the messages being sent to China, but is also being sent to both friends and allies generally is, don't think America is gonna be distracted in this period run up to the election, and between the election and the inauguration.

And don't try to take advantage of it thinking America is distracted because we have a sitting president who is not a candidate for office. And who, I think, will view his charge during this transition period is to make sure, to reassure our friends and make sure our adversaries do not try to take advantage of us because he and his team will be watching, which is very important.

And secondly, I think there's a message, in some sense, to the domestic audience as well. This is gonna be a challenging time between the election and inauguration. There'll be electoral challenges however this comes out, fairly disruptive time. And I think President Biden views part of his legacy, I hope he does, is to make sure America gets through this transition period with its institutions intact.

And I think that will be a terrific contribution that he will make to his legacy about getting us through what will be a tumultuous period.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Steve, I keep promising to move away from substance, but I keep getting questions about substance. So I'm gonna ask you another one, and it's actually something I know you've been giving a lot of thought to.

When Henry Kissinger became secretary, he and President Nixon recognized that there was an opportunity to exploit what became known as the Sino-Soviet split. And in fact, they exploited it quite brilliantly. And having opened up to China, and then having given some form to the US Soviet relationship with the great agreements of 1972, they really had a strategy about how to keep the Soviet Union and China apart.

We face now, in international politics, what some have called a kind of Russia-China axis. They call it their friendship and relationship without limits. We know that it is deepening in terms of cooperation. We also know that on occasion, the Iranians are kind of a part of that. And I was a little shocked myself to see North Korean soldiers showing up in Russia either to fight in the Ukrainian war, to be trained there.

What would you say to the incoming administration? What would your transition memo look like on the issue of the four of them and their coordination?

>> Stephen Hadley: One of the issues with the transition memo should be clear about what is happening, what is not happening, and what the trends are.

So the information and fact base is right. But then there's an issue about, really, you kind of got two strategies. And one of them is something, Connie, that you said in an interview you did with the Atlantic Council and Fred Kemp, which was, rather than try to pull apart, we ought to scrunch them together.

Because you make the point that China and Russia, and is certainly in the case if you add North Korea and Iran, have really both historic and contemporary reasons to be wary of each other. They have a long border that has a lot of empty space in Russia and a lot of excess people in China, which is a source of tension.

I'm sure the Chinese are not so sure they like the close relationship that has reemerged between North Korea and Russia. And I'm sure the Russians are a little concerned about what China is doing in Central Asia. So one thing is to try to underscore and encourage those and make the point that these countries have differing interests in some sense, I like that.

But the second thing I would say is, you're not gonna wean Russia from this new axis. They are too dependent on the other companies, economically, militarily, and diplomatically as they pursue their war on Ukraine. But China is a different matter. And I think one of the things we can do is, if we pursue the right policies in Ukraine to set back Russia, in the Middle East to set back Iran, and in Asia in order to deter China over Taiwan.

If we show steadfastness and success there, China may decide that it's thrown in in this axis with a bunch of losers rather than a bunch of winners. And China may actually consider and reconsider its investment in this access and maybe step back a little bit, or at least limit the extent to which it is committed to them.

So I think there's a case here where the right strategy and the right policy in each of those contingencies has an added effect that it may get China's attention to think maybe it ought to diversify itself a little bit away from this new access of convenience.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Steve, one of the things that the new president is gonna face, we've been talking about all these conflict areas, and there are a couple of questions about process and prioritization.

But I wanna turn to one that is gonna be very important, which is that the defense, the industrial base, the state of American armed forces. I really do think that we sometimes think that diplomacy operates in a vacuum. But of course, diplomacy operates against the backdrop of American economic power and American military power.

And to the degree that your adversaries are concerned about that and deterred by that military power, or that your allies are, in fact, reassured by that military power, it's a lot easier to be secondary state. So talk a little bit about how you think this, Administration will have to deal with the rebuilding or the shoring up, if you wanna call it that, of the US defense forces, particularly when deficits are roaring.

And it doesn't look as if we have any way to get that back under control.

>> Stephen Hadley: I think this is the biggest challenge the new administration will have and it's one that's really not shown up in the campaign at this point. We talked earlier Condi, about how to have successful diplomacy, you have to set the table with respect to positive and negative incentives on the parties that you're negotiating with.

Well, as you just pointed out, our economic strength, our military strength, and our diplomatic strength in terms of rallying allies to our cause, that is how you set the table. So these are the instruments in some sense of our diplomacy, as well as of our economic and military policy.

We now have sort of, there's a consensus that we face the most challenging period in our history in terms of international situation since the Cold War or perhaps even World War II. And while we say that and people are writing that we have not postured ourselves in such a way to, to suggest that we really believe it in our core.

We remember in the Cold War we were putting 6 to 7% of our GDP into the defense budget. We're now at roughly 3% is actually declining in real terms. We were the arsenal of democracy in World War II and we post Cold War led it all a trip.

The truth is we do not have the industrial capacity to meet the defense needs of our friends and allies like Ukraine and Israel, and our own defense needs at the current time. We're treating as a problem of business as usual, we need to treat it as a problem of crisis.

And we need to start talking about what we're gonna do so that the resources we put in defense do not have an adverse effect on our fiscal situation, which is deteriorating fairly rapidly. So, this is how do you rebuild the industrial base, put the resources into that, but in a way that does not compound the fiscal crisis, I think is the principal challenge this new administration is gonna face.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Steve, I want to close with a question that's been here in the chat and I think is on everybody's mind. We started by describing a transition where there was actually a contested election. It was a little bit of a high wire act for people trying to do the transition.

But the truth of the matter is that everybody's a little worried about the transition this time around. Likely another 50, 50 election and, and a lot of concern about how peaceful that transfer is going to look and what are going to be the messages? And you mentioned the sense that abroad people are asking, you know, is America really able for its institutions to function in the way that would allow the kind of really not just peaceful but systematic and efficient transition that you started out by describing and that you've chronicled in Handoff, the book about the transitions, any thinking about where we are and whether today's political environment will allow the kind of transition that we experienced in 2000 or that we were a part of in 2008, 2009.

Are we going to make it this time?

>> Stephen Hadley: I think we're gonna make it this time. I mean, look, the best case is if whoever is the incoming president and the outgoing president sit down in the Oval Office in front of the American people and say the American people deserve a good transition between these administrations, and we here pledge to each other and to the American people we are going to make this a first class transition.

That's the best case, and let's hope that's what the whoever wins the presidential election and President Biden decide to do. The second best is, I think, transitions even in disruptive circumstances, and 2000 was certainly a disruptive circumstance. The outgoing president at that time had really no interest, particularly in facilitating the transition to a new president whose election they denied had occurred.

But notwithstanding that, at the top, there were transitions that were fairly effective, I think, between agencies, between the professional staffs in the Defense Department, the State Department and elsewhere. And even at the NSC staff, which is part of the White House operation, very close to the president. You officiated at a Passing the baton ceremony, the US Institute of Peace did an interview with Robert O'Brien and Jake Sullivan.

And Jake Sullivan publicly thanked Robert O'Brien for a transition support that helped him and his staff hit the ground running in 2020. So, it can happen.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Robert O'Brien, the National Security advisor to President Trump, just to.

>> Stephen Hadley: Yes, as the outgoing national security advisor to Jake Sullivan's, the incoming national security advisor.

Notwithstanding the disruption of that period of time in 2020, they managed to have a transition arrangement which I think Jake Sullivan found very useful, and that Robert O'Brien took a great deal of pride in having achieved. So, it can still happen even in fairly disruptive circumstances.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yes.

I think American institutions are pretty remarkable and we count on them. I think we also count on the American people expecting a lot of those that they elect. I would never myself want to be one of those people who runs for office because the American people expect a lot of those people.

But maybe that's the strength of the democracy, we get the right to expect a lot. And I think when it comes to the peaceful transfer of power, we should expect a lot, it's the foundation of democracy. And thank you, Steve, for the role that you've played in it in the past.

Thank you for continuing to talk about it, continuing to educate people about it. And to those who've been listening, I hope that this has been enlightening for you on a little bit of the behind the scenes look at how presidential transitions take place. And thanks a lot for joining us.

>> Eryn Tillman: Thank you.

>> Stephen Hadley: Nice to be with you.

>> Eryn Tillman: Thank you, Steve Hadley. Thank you, Director Rice, for such an important conversation and discussion at this time. Thank you to our audience for your great questions and also our events team for all your work behind the scenes to help run smoothly.

This recording will be available in a few days at hoover.org/rai. And we encourage everyone to sign up for our next webinar: Tuesday, November 12th, the same time, 10 AM Pacific on "Polling: What is on the Minds of Americans" with David Brady, Doug Rivers, Daron Shaw, and Lynn Vavreck.

Have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you for joining.