The Great Partnership: How George Shultz Helped Ronald Reagan Win The Cold War

>> Peter Robinson: The Book of Ecclesiasticus, also known as the Wisdom of Ben Sira. Let us now praise famous men, men whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten. Today on Uncommon Knowledge, the legacy of one of the most consequential figures in American history, George Shultz. Uncommon Knowledge now. The daughter of a minister and a music teacher who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, Condoleezza Rice has led a remarkably distinguished career, both as an academic.

She served as provost of Stanford and as a public servant in the administration of George W Bush. She served first as National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State. Condi Rice now serves as director of the Hoover Institution, a point not lost on my wife, she's my boss.

>> Peter Robinson: Raised in the Soviet Union, mathematician Natan Sharansky became a founding member of the dissonant organization the Helsinki Group and spent nine years in Soviet prisons, almost half of that time in solitary confinement. After his 1986 release, he moved to Israel, becoming a major figure in Israeli political life.

His books include the classic work Fear no Evil. A native of India who moved to the United-

>> Peter Robinson: A native of India who moved to the United States at the age of 14, Abraham Sofaer served as a US District Court judge until 1985, when George Shultz named him legal advisor to the State Department.

Abe is now the George P Schultz Distinguished Scholar here at the Hoover Institution.

>> Peter Robinson: A word now about the man we'll be discussing, George Shultz, who died three years ago at the age of 100. After graduating from Princeton, Mr. Schultz served with the Marines during the Second World War.

After the war, he earned a doctorate in Economics from MIT, then taught at MIT and the University of Chicago. During the Eisenhower administration, I'll pause while that sinks in.

>> Peter Robinson: During the Eisenhower administration, George Shultz served on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers. During the Nixon administration, he served as Secretary of Labor, Director of the Office of Management and the Budget, and Secretary of the Treasury.

After leaving Washington at the end of the Nixon administration, he served as President of the Bechtel Corporation until President Reagan called him back to Washington to serve as Secretary of State, a position he held from 1982 to 1989. After the Reagan administrations, Mr. Schultz served as a Distinguished Fellow here at the Hoover Institution until his death.

Today, George Shultz and Human Rights. Which brings me to the Helsinki Accords. I'll get to the guests, but I have to set up the first question, I'll do it this briefly. The 1975 Helsinki Accord signed by the United States, the USSR and every nation in Europe except Albania.

The accords cover topics from borders to military bases to scientific research. But they're best remembered for an agreement on human rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of immigration. Two quotations and now all three of you, listen closely. Two quotations, Ronald Reagan. At Helsinki the United States agreed to legitimize the boundaries of Eastern Europe legally acquiescing in the loss of freedom of millions.

Ronald Reagan would later change his mind about the Helsinki Accords, but that's what he said as a candidate for president in 1976. Here's the second, historian John Lewis Gaddis. The Helsinki Accords meant that the people who lived under Communist systems could claim official permission to say what they thought.

The Helsinki Accords a mistake or a breakthrough for human rights. Abe Sofaer, where did George Shultz come down?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: He supported the Helsinki Accords because he loved Max Kampelman who negotiated the Helsinki Accords. So I recall Max being very articulate about the accords and the value that they created.

The stability, increase of stability and understanding among the nations involved.

>> Peter Robinson: Condi, looking at the last decade of the Cold War during which George Shultz is the major, a major figure. We see the United States rebuilding its military, an American economy producing a technological revolution and also an American government deploying the issue of human rights.

How do you weight them? What proved really central?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Well, what proved really central is that the Soviet Union was a disaster waiting to happen, that's what really proved central. It was in its core weak. It had great military muscle and great military strength. But Ronald Reagan was the one who after all said it would end up on the ash heap of history.

He understood its essential weaknesses that authoritarians can delay but not ultimately deny freedom. There were people like Natal who were pushing and probing at it. And I just wanna say one thing about the Helsinki Accords. The Soviets thought they were signing onto something that did exactly what Ronald Reagan said.

They thought that this was going to codify the post war order. Instead, they signed on to something that gave license to people in their own country to speak about questions like human rights. To travel to conferences on human rights in places like Geneva and places like in Germany.

I remember particularly the East Germans that were able to travel to state sponsored conferences. And so sometimes you don't know quite what you're signing onto. And I think that's really what happened to Moscow in the case of the human rights basket, as it was called of the Helsinki Accords.

>> Peter Robinson: Natan, let me quote John Lewis Gaddis to you once more. The people who lived, because of the Helsinki accords, the people who lived under communist systems, at least the more courageous, could claim official permission to say what they thought. Was that true? Is that how it worked for you in Moscow?

>> Natan Sharansky: No, we couldn't claim official permission, we could take this, we didn't ask anybody for permission, we could take initiative. Because I have to say that when Helsinki was signed, the meaning was there are three muskets. One basket is that the west recognizes the borders of Soviet Union, meaning the Baltic states and everything what they grabbed from Germany and from Poland.

What was, of course, good for Soviet Union. Finally, it is recognized the results of the Second World War. The second was economical cooperation. The Soviet Union was very interested. And the third, non-binding obligation about human rights, which we believed it will be lip service, and the west will be deceived again, that's how we felt.

>> Peter Robinson: So you agreed with Reagan?

>> Natan Sharansky: No, and then we decided that in order not to let the west to be deceived, because we didn't really trust. We created health and key monitoring group which the idea was that we will be publicizing all those human rights policies Violations which in accordance with the healthcare code the west cannot ignore.

And hopefully, the other countries also will organize their Helsinki group. And we knew as Yuri Orlov told when our leader that probably will be all arrested for the high treason. I said no, I think we will be arrested for anti-Soviet activity in a year I was arrested for high treason and he was arrested for anti-Soviet activity.

>> Natan Sharansky: Everybody was arrested or exiled, but in this year we published more than 20 reports. And the American Embassy for the first time was ready to accept directly spokesman simply coming and they were taking these documents. Never happened before, you had to do it secretly. American Congress created special committee studying this, so Soviet Union could not run away from this.

And in the end really something which they believed it's kind of trap they're doing to the West, they fell in this trap.

>> Peter Robinson: They fell into it because you pushed them into it.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yes.

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: Well, Max was very aware that he was causing trouble for the Soviet Union, and that was a key part of what this was all about.

>> Natan Sharansky: But until Reagan didn't say that, that is the evil empire Soviets still had some room for the maneuvering that was the-

>> Peter Robinson: This brings us back, Reagan takes office in January 1981. George Shultz is sworn in as Secretary of State in July 1982. In his biography of Mr. Shultz in the Nation's Service, Philip Taubman describes a divided administration.

On one side, those who advocated an aggressive policy of containing the USSR while internationally while attempting to subvert it from within. On the other side, George Shultz. In George Shultz's own words, I set out to President Reagan what was to become our four part agenda. Human rights, arms control, regional issues, and bilateral relations.

Abe, why did George Shultz put human rights first?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: Wow, he probably realized that ultimately that was what it was all about, that that was the most basic value of all the values. He was facing an administration that thought that Reaganite ideology meant you don't engage in diplomacy.

Diplomacy was degenerate really just some of those guys. But George believed in it and he believed in and he fought for it.

>> Peter Robinson: Condi, you're to put it mildly, a diplomatic professional. So this notion of a divided administration with let's put personalities on it, you've got Cap Weinberger on one side insisting on rebuilding our defenses.

We get almost during the Reagan years, almost to a 600 ship Navy and George Schultz diplomacy, human rights. To what extent could George Shultz have succeeded without that buildup? Economic and military buildup, to what extent does one make the other possible?

>> Condoleezza Rice: I think, you've just made the important point here, Peter, which is that diplomacy without muscle is just talk.

I always said that when I walked into a room, I wanted the American economy on one shoulder and the American military on the other shoulder.

>> Condoleezza Rice: And Ronald Reagan understood that the Soviet Union was something of a paper tiger. I think that was the concept of the ash heap of history, but he also understood that nobody had pushed it.

And so, when you think about Reagan's defense buildup, it wasn't just the buildup, it was also challenging them in Central America. It was challenging them for the first time in Afghanistan. It was saying, if you're gonna play this game, we're gonna show you that you're too weak to win it.

And probably one of the things that was most misunderstood about that period, the Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI. SDI, where everybody kind of laughed and said, well, you'll never be able to shoot down Soviet missiles. And Reagan really was not naive, but he had a kind of view of nuclear weapons, that they were bad and maybe you could save the world from them.

But as you know, I did a lot of work on the Soviet military. And there's an article written in Vander Meetze, which is Military Thought of the Soviet Union, their principal military journal. And it's written by a man named Nikolai Gogol, who at the time was the chief of the General Staff.

And he had a very different view of missile defense, which was not that it would shoot down missiles. But, my goodness, what it would learn in terms of sensors, in terms of command and control. He wrote an article called the Third Revolution in Military Affairs. And do you know what he said?

He said, the Americans have now made our entire military investment over the last 40 years irrelevant. We now have to take on a new world, and they fired him. But Gorbachev would understand that they could no longer win the military competition. And a lot of his desire to change the terms of Soviet foreign policy and ultimately to change the terms of Soviet domestic policy came from a recognition that they were not going to win.

You have to chalk that up to Ronald Reagan and the defense buildup that changed the terms of the debate about what the Soviet Union was capable of doing.

>> Peter Robinson: Natan, there is an argument, it comes up again and again even today, that Ronald Reagan was naive. Clark Clifford, former Secretary of Defense, called him an amiable dunce.

Now, there is also an argument that he was remarkably shrewd, that he was using Cap Weinberger and George Schultz, all of that. But when you were released from prison, you met Reagan, Condi's just been talking about the underlying toughness. I saw you nodding when she mentioned SDI. We will of course come back to George Schultz, but we need to establish this figure for whom Schultz was working.

>> Natan Sharansky: Okay, because I really wanted to continue the line of-

>> Peter Robinson: Go go.

>> Natan Sharansky: Cuz it was straight to what I know. And by the way, everybody now can read it in the archives of White House they publish it. For me, It's very interesting reading because they know it from the other side.

You can see how Schulz and Reagan, they always had exactly these four parts of the negotiations. And the first one, 90%, it was about Strategic Defense Initiative. What is Star Wars? And they don't really know whether Americans believed this crazy idea. But it was clear that Soviets are scared to death and they wanted very much to negotiate that, it will not start even defense in space.

And Americans are explaining why you're concerned, it's only defense. And we need defense because our people don't trust you, that's in the first place when it comes to the fourth human rights. And here, Schultz knew every name and every topic. And he says, but you know our public cannot trust you because of Sakhara, because of Sharansky, because of Hebrew teachers.

And he knows the cases, and so he is not making direct linkage. But it's clear we need Star wars because we don't trust you. If you will release Sakharov, if you will release Sharansky, if you'll increase the level of immigration to thousands, not hundreds, we don't promise you, but it will improve the trust.

It was so clear the linkage is so clear, and it worked. Now, about Reagan, When I first met Reagan and I gave him compliments for evil, I said that it was a great day for us in Gulag when through Soviet press attacking Reagan. We found out that finally there is the leader who understands the nature of Soviet Union.

And he told me the joke, very primitive joke. And the joke was that Kosygin and Brezhnev, Kosygin was number two on the Brazil number, are sitting and discussing what to do with this pressure of Soviet Jews. And then Kosingin says to Brezev, maybe we'll let them go, and that's it.

And then Brezhev says, but then who will stay in the Soviet Union? Only you and I.

>> Natan Sharansky: And the other one says, speak for yourself. And he's telling and everybody's laughing. And I think, my God, it's primitive joke of 20 years ago, something like this. And I came to speak with the leader of the free world after all these years to hear these old jokes.

No, but then you understand the fact that these primitive jokes, that's how he was explaining to the world the real nature of Soviet Union. So, yeah, it looks that he was naive, that his jokes were primitive. He went to the very essence of Soviet system and he really understood that communism is absolutely primitive, against the nature of the people.

And it will be finished, and we only have to help it to be finished. He was very good in his naivety. I only hope that today's leaders of the world will be as naive as he was.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Amen.

>> Peter Robinson: The refuseniks, George Shultz in 1985. This is in a speech marking the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords.

In the accords, we all committed ourselves to treat in a positive and humanitarian way the applications of persons who wish to be reunited with members of their families. Yet over the past five years, the number of Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality permitted to emigrate, mainly for family reunification, fell from over 51,000 to 896.

The regrettable trend is the same for Soviet citizens of German and Armenian nationality. The Jewish refuseniks in the USSR. Condi, again, I ask you as a professional, why did he attach so much importance to what was, after all, as best I can tell, Jews accounted for less than 2% of the Soviet population.

And that's on the most generous estimate I could find. Why did he feel that that was a lever somehow, that was the point of attack?

>> Condoleezza Rice: I don't think it was for him a lever. I think it was a moral case. And we had gone through Jackson Vanik, we'd gone through the refused experience.

And really, he kind of set a standard, by the way, for other secretaries of state that, as Natan said, you know every name when you go to talk about a human rights case. So when I would go to China, I would carry a list. And I always found and I'm sure George found the same with them.

They were a little surprised that the American Secretary of State was somehow concerned about this person, because we value human life. And it was a way of saying to the Soviet Union, we value every single human being, we value every single Jew that you are preventing from leaving the country.

And they were always a bit confused by this. Weren't there more important strategic things that we would talk about? And so I think in some ways, it was a moral case for George, but it was a little bit, we're different than you are. We really care about these individuals.

And as I said, it set a standard for how secretaries of State from Winona. I know that whether it was me or Jim Baker or Hillary Clinton, you would go and you carry names. And I think that was really an important statement about America.

>> Peter Robinson: By the way, Abe, when George Shultz returned to the State Department from a visit to the White House, he met President Reagan once a week.

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: Good mood, bad mood.

>> Peter Robinson: Did he say, those? I had to listen to those old jokes again.

>> Peter Robinson: At the personal level, how did George Shultz? I think we know the answer to this, but I'd like to hear you comment on it because you knew him so well.

How did he respond to Ronald Reagan? The two of them worked well together. How did George Shultz make that work?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: It really was a marriage, they liked each other a lot. Reagan knew that Shultz added a lot to what he could do because of his class. I mean, Shultz had intellectual.

He could speak in an articulate way about the most complicated issues. He's the one who started the list. He made us read that list. The list was revised, of course, as they let someone go, we'd put someone else on the list. So it was a great partnership because Reagan had fire in his belly.

He wanted to make a difference. And Shultz really cared about things, but people differ in the drive they have in their spirit, really? And in the role that maybe some great power causes us to have the benefit of serving. They had different roles, and they were very complementary.

They enjoyed each other very much. And Nancy was part of what made that happen.

>> Peter Robinson: All right.

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: Because she saw the relationship and made it well from the first time she invited them over to the White House for dinner, just the four of them. That relationship blossomed.

>> Peter Robinson: Again, I'm Struck that Jews are 2% of the Soviet population on the most generous estimate. And yet, as Condi and Abol said, George Shultz cared about the refuseniks. You spent nine years in Soviet prisons, in 1985, your wife Avital disrupted a meeting. This is a famous incident between George Shultz and Andrea Gromyko to draw attention to your imprisonment.

Later that day, some on the State Department staff were critical of Avital for offending Gromyko. And George Shultz said this, quote, I'd like to think that if my wife were out and I were in the Gulag, she'd demonstrate for me. You're finally released in 1986. To what extent can you describe the role that George Schultz himself played in your release?

>> Natan Sharansky: Well, I am released, by the way, today is 11th of February. Yes, it was the day of my release, yeah. So I'm released straight in the morning I am in KGB prison. Then I go through Berlin, they take me in the airplane, they bring me to the Berlin, the American ambassador.

I cross the bridge, I meet my wife, whom I didn't see for 12 years. We come to the airport where thousands of people are waiting me, but Shimon Peres, who understood public relations, he said no. Now you have a call from President Reagan. And I okay, I heard his evil, impious speech and the yeah, Reagan was very important, so we talked to President Reagan.

People say how you could be so calm talking to President. I came straight to the paradise, so they'll tell me now you'll talk now to God, it's natural.

>> Natan Sharansky: It's not God, it's only President of America. So we talk and then I want to go, they say she was Paris says no, now we have to talk to Secretary of State Schultz.

Now they'll start bringing me all the ministers. Then Avital says now without Schulz, Reagan could do nothing, it's very important. So that's how I first heard that Schulz is very important, I can say that Schulz was the one, he at the same time a statesman at the same time, he's like the father.

Like when Avital was coming to the office he had Charlie Hill was his assistant.

>> Peter Robinson: Charlie Hill.

>> Natan Sharansky: Charlie Hill immediately was giving his room to Avital because she now has to run the State Department. And Schultz was really taking full care of her. This story was even funnier that some Richard Pell brought her to the press conference of Soviets five minutes before.

So she gave press conference instead of before Soviets. And then the State Department people come to shoot and say she has to be immediately exiled because Soviets are bewildered. If we will not punish her publicly, it will be the end of negotiations because somebody really made such a provocation how she got there.

And Richard Pell who did it, he tells me or my God, so now they'll start investigating who brought her and how it happened in such a scandal. And then should said don't dare to touch her, and then he said what he said. So again, if you read some of these archives, he speaks with the Soviets.

Soviets only repeat what they were told and he knows every name. Later he met many of them, he had a Seder in Moscow with refusing. And they say, well, they are refused because of state secrets. And what if the boss says to the scientists only over my dead body, and then they try to prove that there are state secrets, they don't understand what he's talking about.

But he's talking about the case of Professor Lerner and he met with his daughter and he knows the case very well. So he's like officer who prepared his homework, but he also knows these people personally. And they know nothing, they can't understand from where it comes what he's talking about.

>> Condoleezza Rice: They don't know exactly.

>> Peter Robinson: By the way, you talked about going across the bridge, didn't you walk across that bridge in a particular way?

>> Natan Sharansky: Well, I worked in a particular way, when they went down from the airplane and they said to me to go straight to the car, and I went like zigzag.

When I was already on the bridge, I was on the freedom, why should I be zigzagging? But it doesn't matter.

>> Natan Sharansky: Doesn't matter, though, by the way, President Reagan quoted it right correctly said next day. But somehow somebody wrote that I was doing it on the bridge, and now the world knows that I'm doing it on the bridge.

I tried to convince many times, no, it was not on the bridge, it doesn't matter, people remember.

>> Peter Robinson: We set the record straight, I said a moment ago, this argument that Reagan was an amiable dunce won't go away. Let me frame it in a somewhat more sophisticated way.

I hope we're now at enough of a distance from the Reagan years and from Mr. Schultz's accomplishments. It's hard for us to realize because he was with us here until just three years ago and deep into his 90s, he was coming into the office three or four times a week.

So to us, we wouldn't be all that surprised if we went into the old building and turned a corner and saw him. Still, it's been four decades and there's a revisionist reassessment taking place. Probably the most prominent is the new biography of Reagan by Max Boot. So let me quote this to you, this is Max Boot's article in Foreign affairs last year.

Quote, one of the biggest myths is that Reagan had a plan to bring down the evil empire and that it was this pressure that led to US Victory in the Cold War. In reality, the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union were primarily the work of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Reagan did not bring about Gorbachev's reforms, much less force the collapse of the Soviet Union, close quote. So Boot belittles Reagan by name, but of course, what he's attacking is the whole Reagan diplomatic effort, including, of course, George Shultz. Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War, and Ronald Reagan and George Shultz had very little to do with it, Condi.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Well, one has to ask the question then, why didn't this happen at some other time? And it is absolutely the case that Gorbachev is essential to the end of the Cold War because of the decisions that he took. He could have tried to resist, he didn't have to move 500,000 troops out of East Germany.

He didn't have to give the speech saying that the Brezhnev doctrine was no more, he didn't have to ultimately acquiesce to the unification of Germany. All of that is true. But you have to ask what set the conditions to make Gorbachev make those decisions? And the conditions that demonstrated for Gorbachev and by the way, Shevrat Nadza, another great friend of George Shultz's, demonstrated to them that there was no other alternative now.

But to get out of the arms race, to stop trying to be the adversary of the United States and to, as Gorbachev said, make a common European home. It's not that Gorbachev woke up one day and said, I think I would like the Soviet Union to look different.

I wanna have a different relationship with the United States. The conditions were set so that he really had very few choices. And he, fortunately for history, he took good decisions, not bad ones. At the time when he became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, nobody would have assumed that he was going to undertake a series of steps.

That some six years later would actually end the-

>> Peter Robinson: Amazing, how fast it happened.

>> Condoleezza Rice: How fast it happened. So Reagan and Schultz set the conditions, I will have to say I think that George H.W. Bush, maybe it's because I worked for him. But George H.W. Bush is underestimated in kind of bringing it to that final conclusion.

When you had to do things to make sure that Gorbachev wasn't pushed into a corner, he tried to resist, right? But there is no doubt that the conditions that led Gorbachev and Shevardnadze to make the decisions that they made were set by Ronald Reagan and George Shultz. And that would be my answer to Max Boot.

Mikhail Gorbachev didn't just kind of rise full blown with a set of policies that would lead to the end of the Soviet Union.

>> Peter Robinson: Abe, would you like a whack at that one?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: Well, Max Boot's book is an excellent book, and people who write books, as opposed to people who are secretaries of State, have a need to say something different.

And to somehow shine the light on themselves, and that's what unfortunately,

>> Peter Robinson: This is flattery Abe?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: No, in a very good book, a very good writer said something silly, you don't fault people or give them a great deal of credit for the circumstances that Condi described. You take life as it actually happens, and you say well, they were there, Condi Rice was there when such and such happened.

And you got to give credit in a natural, normal way, and unfortunately, people who write books sometimes like to see things in a more complicated fashion. I think that George Shultz and Ronald Reagan were a great team, but everyone's right when they say, well, if Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had not been there, they wouldn't have been such a great success.

Probably true, but so what, I mean, you've got to look at history, and history had the forum there, and things changed?

>> Peter Robinson: Nathan the revisionist impulse.

>> Natan Sharansky: Well, maybe he's a great author, but what he says is absolute nonsense.

>> Natan Sharansky: Because Gorbachev was a true communist, but he was a young generation of communists.

Well, he understood the system doesn't work, we urgently have to improve the system, and one of the first things to get cooperation with the West. And as he says himself many times that I found out that it is impossible to improve the relations if you will continue keeping these people and who needs these people?

He writes about it, before you know that he became the leader, I come to Canada to speak about agriculture because he was minister of agriculture. And they speak with me about Sharansky, then I come to Ted Show to speak about to me Sharansky and Sakharov, who are they?

I come back, I'm reading, what an answer because of these people we have now to suffer, so that was first. Then he understood that without giving a little bit more freedom to people, the work will not be efficient. And as a communist he was not understanding that you cannot give them a little bit of freedom, or they are free or not, so he gave a little bit of freedom.

And thanks God he didn't realize that as a result Soviet Union cannot exist, and I curtain look, giving permission to Jews, to more and more Jews, he tried at the same time to put laws will prevent from the others to go only first rate relatives and so on.

And then he came to Washington first time and took 250,000 Jews are demonstrating. And because Schulzel tell that Jewish activists wanted this demonstration, I for months traveled all over America and everybody wanted this demonstration. Jewish establishment was afraid to irritate Reagan and Gorbachev, and then Boris Abrams, the head of Jewish establishment, because of our pressure, went to George Shultz and said, do you really want this demonstration?

And George Schultz, here a few years ago he was telling me again this story, he said, you understand, I not only want this demonstration. I want that when Gorbachev comes on every screen, he'll see only this demonstration, how you think we can work if you are not doing this?

So Schulz was at the same time establishment and was activist, and you can see it from archives that when Gorbachev came, Reagan told, you see my people were speaking, what do you want? So he decided to make the last step to bring down the Iron Curtain. Without Iron Curtain, Soviet Union cannot exist, again as a communist, he didn't understand it.

Of course, it's great that he made all these steps, Brezhnev would commit suicide but will not do it, so he did, but it meant the end of the Soviet Union. So when ten years after Soviet Union fell, and I'm on the conference with Gorbachev in Poland and I'm asked, what are the factors which brought down the Soviet Union?

And I say four people, I said first of all Reagan, second Sakharov, third Gorbachev, then they went to Gorbachev to say thank you, good, and he was bewildered. He said I release you, I signed this against all the Politburo, and you're putting me on number three.

>> Natan Sharansky: And I tell him no, number three is a very honorable place.

>> Natan Sharansky: Okay, so boot was him number one, okay.

>> Peter Robinson: We lost Mr. Schultz three years ago, he was 100 years old. And three years ago isn't all that long, so for many of us, he's still very vivid to us, but he was 100 years old. I'm not quite sure how to formulate the question, so I may fumble as I ask it, but there's something as we talk about him and Ronald Reagan and even you mentioned Brezhnev.

And these were people who had experienced The Depression and then the Second World War and then the Cold War, so these were people who were members of a generation who understood the stakes. They understood the importance of politics and diplomacy, and were also on our side, Reagan and Schultz, old enough to feel in contact with an earlier world, a pre-Soviet world.

They couldn't quite remember, Reagan is born in 1911, Mr. Schultz was born in 1921, I think it was, they couldn't quite remember, but it was close enough. So within their own intellectual compass was the possibility that the world could be without a communist regime again, and I remember feeling when he died three years ago that somehow or other it was all suddenly gone.

That that kind of generational knowledge, the sheer stature that those people had is unreproducible. Now tell me that I'm wrong because that's a very sad thought, it's a very distressing thought for us in the United States, for you and Israel, Abe, tell me I'm wrong.

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: I know, I can't tell you you're wrong, its fortune, we were lucky that Ronald Reagan had an attraction, he wanted people of talent especially after Haig.

He wanted someone solid, someone who could reason, someone who was polite, at the same time strong. And there was George Shultz, I mean, head of Bechtel, a man who had all the governmental experience you could imagine. You can't expect these things to be replicated, you just have to pray that they will be at the right time.

>> Peter Robinson: Condi, you must reflect on this generational question.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yes, no, look, we've called them the greatest generation-

>> Peter Robinson: Yes.

>> Condoleezza Rice: For a reason, and they were. But there will be other great generations. I think George would have been the last person to say that it was the end of great generations.

He loved young people, he was always impressed by this valley and the people who were coming up with new ideas. George's last years were trying to understand the implications, like Henry Kissinger, the implications of AI and the implications of energy policy and what were we gonna do about climate change.

So this is someone who kept growing and kept changing. And I think he would find your comment not just sad, but if you don't mind my saying so, a bit untrue, that just because a generation passes, we're kind of done for it. I've often thought that the next greatest generation, in some ways, in military terms, those who took up arms after 911.

And went off to far flung parts of the world to try to defend America. And so the great thing about the United States is that when that challenge has come, others have, for the next generation, have stood up and done it. I think what was different about that generation is that the burden, if you wish to call it that, of military service was more widely spread across the society than it is now.

So many of the children of the elite don't serve in the military.

>> Peter Robinson: Did he ever express any regrets about the volunteer military?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Well-

>> Peter Robinson: Cuz as an economist, he was for that.

>> Condoleezza Rice: He was for it. And actually, I believe the volunteer military has been a great institution in the United States.

But it has meant that there is a chasm between those who serve and those who don't. And we feel it from time to time that we don't have these common experiences any longer. One thing that I think George did find odd was after 911, he kept saying, why didn't you mobilize the country in the way that we did in response to the challenges of World War II?

And it always struck me because we actually had just the opposite view, which was that we should not mobilize the country. I remember President Bush saying, I want people to go back to work. I want them, when can we open airports again? When can the banks open again?

Because he wanted Americans to feel normal. And in a sense, during World War II, everybody was part of the war effort. And I think that is different about now and about then, but George Shultz was kind of evergreen. And I don't think he ever stopped learning from the next generation.

And fortunately here at Hoover, a lot of our students got to learn from him. And I always valued that he could go to a dorm and have dinner and they could know George Shultz. It's a great thing about universities, by the way, there are a lot of things not to like about universities.

But one of the things that you really do have to like is that they are intergenerational. And they value that intergenerational nature.

>> Peter Robinson: Natan, you may reject this question, but I invite you, the Israeli with us today. The Israeli, the man from a country where the danger is always present.

I don't need to elaborate what's been going on in recent months where service in the IDF is very widespread. And you look at the United States and the rising generation and do you think perhaps I'm trying to give you permission to give it to us if you want to, that we have lost touch with the brutal realities of international relations, that we've gone soft?

>> Natan Sharansky: Well, I like your question. Why should I bring it down? It gives me great opportunities. First of all, about the historical memory. I'm speaking all the time to those my partners in struggle for Soviet jury, then to their children, then to their grandchildren. And with every year I see that it's more difficult to people to explain what I'm talking about.

First they don't know who's Reagan, later they don't know who is Sakharov. Then they don't know what is Soviet Union. Really, they all were born like ten years after Soviet Union 100 of years ago. So it's more and more difficult. And as a result, now I go to Israel, very doubtful about our young generation.

They all want to go to Thailand, they all on the concrete, no, not talking, yeah, we talk, so they don't read. And then comes this tragic war, and we find out that our new young generation is more patriotic, more noble, more broad thinking and more sees everything in historical perspective than we are.

And there are a lot of tragedies around me, practically in every home around me or friends who lost somebody in the war. But a lot of heroism, a lot of great patriotic feelings. So now we know that our young generation, who doesn't know what Soviet Union, nevertheless, they may be even more devoted than we are on one hand.

On the other hand, what is really unfortunate, that history is not only the battle of people, it's also a battle of ideas. And that this battle of ideas is forgotten and here I'm coming to America. The fact that Marxism is Leninism, which looks like absolutely defeated ideology, which is dead so on.

And then in American universities, which Condi likes, we all-

>> Natan Sharansky: Yeah, it comes back in terms of so called woke movement that the world is again oppressors and oppressed. And oppressor is always wrong and oppressed is always right. And we should not permit to oppressor even to speak because it makes it more difficult and uncomfortable for oppressed people.

And then you'll take simply the word class and replace with the word race. You get exactly Marxist Leninism that I grew with and which killed tens of millions of people. And the fact that this battle of ideas is forgotten and that's why you cannot apply it to this world, that's really unfortunate, it's fortunate for America, for Israel, for the world.

And I don't know how to connect it with Reagan Schulz, but they did leave not only feeling emotionally involved. But in the world of ideas, that's why Reagan could say that that is evil empire. That's why Schulz knew that not only he's fighting for Professor Lerner Sleepak, for Sharansky, he's in this great battle of ideas.

And that's really, I hope that American universities will know how to bring young generation back to-

>> Condoleezza Rice: Right again, it's not their fault the young generation. It is our fault that we've taught history in a way in which they think history is so simple as to have oppressors and oppressed, colonizers and colonized, you have to fit in one category or another.

By the way, those people, I said in my class that I teach with Stephen Kotkin. I said, it can be simultaneously true that many of America's founding fathers were slave owners. And they wrote the document that has done more for human liberty than any document in human history.

So if we teach them that history is not complex, then that's the way they respond. So I think that's our fault, not theirs.

>> Natan Sharansky: Yeah, I agree probably with the professors in American University.

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: I think there's real value in service, I think you learn a lot. And-

>> Peter Robinson: Military service specifically, or public service?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: Kind of public service. And I think that we are a better stronger country if we encourage service.

>> Peter Robinson: All right, last question. Let me set this one up, if I may, a couple of quotations here. George Schultz, this is a 1984 speech at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York.

Quote, for centuries we have sought to free ourselves from that primitive existence described by Hobbes where life is nasty, brutish, and short. We have sought to create instead a world where universal respect for human rights and democratic values makes a better life possible, close quote. Now here's Natan Sharansky in 2021, on the occasion of the death at the age of 100 of George Shultz.

There is no doubt that it is people like President Reagan and George Shultz who really changed the attitude of the world to our struggle. As a result of their efforts, millions of Soviet Jews became free. In fact, all the world became a much better place after this that owes a lot to such giants as George Shultz, close quote.

What does the example of George Shultz mean to us today in that classroom where you and Stephen Kotkin are teaching current Stanford undergraduates? Let's do a quick calculation. So a Stanford senior graduating this June at the age of 22 will have been born long after the Cold War ended.

And so when you talk about the Cold War, you might as well be talking about the Spanish-American War. In their minds, it's all black and white or sepia toned. How do we appropriate from history, even from this recent history, meaningful lessons for the present?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Well, the first thing is you have to teach history, which we don't in so many places, and you have to teach it in all its complexity.

And you have to say, as I say to my students, just because you go Googled it doesn't mean you've researched it.

>> Condoleezza Rice: There is a tendency not to want to understand in depth. And I think if you can get the students to read about the Sharanskys of the world.

And just to know their stories, it's one thing to have them learn a bunch of dates, they can Google those. I was a little shocked when some of my students didn't know who Rommel was. So it's important to have a sense of what World War II is about.

But sometimes I think they are more attracted to history's people, the people that emerge from this. And so reading about the great refuseniks, reading about the people who challenged these systems, I think that's a different way to teach history. And it vivifies for them how history shaped who we are today, but how it was shaped by people who were willing to take on that Hobson world.

And so I actually think these stories are really important, we don't tell the stories. Could I ask you a question?

>> Peter Robinson: I'm gonna label this a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it because it feels both dumb and mandatory in that class. So you're talking about the personalities and George Shultz, those of us, what a commanding figure he was.

Ronald Reagan, in some ways almost glamorous, but they were white males.

>> Condoleezza Rice: So-

>> Peter Robinson: Is that how you handle the problem?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Your point would be? Look, I'd be the first to say that history ought to be taught in a way that also highlights the stories of people who were not white males that got written out of history.

Do people also know who Frederick Douglass was? Do people know not just Martin Luther King, but Booker T Washington? And so we don't have to be selective and say we'll only teach white males or we'll only teach people of color, we can teach the great stories of so many people.

And I always encourage my students also to to know their own family history. Who in your family decided to make it possible for you to be who you are? It might have been a grandparent or in case of some immigrant kids, it was some parent who picked up and said, my child will have a better life there.

Now, the whole story of humanity is a complex one, it's a beautiful weaving tapestry. And it doesn't have to be just white males, but some of them actually were.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, and that's not a bad thing, it's okay.

>> Peter Robinson: Abe, you have eight grandchildren.

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: I do.

>> Peter Robinson: What should they learn from George Shultz?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: I hope they learn about him the story, I think Condi's absolutely right. Stories really impact people, you learn lessons without knowing the words. And George-

>> Peter Robinson: What's your fondest memory of him?

>> Abraham D. Sofaer: My fondest memory was in Iran Contra when he faced incredible pressures and managed to give the country someone to respect.

>> Peter Robinson: Natan, the lessons for the present?

>> Natan Sharansky: Well, look, every year that I have anniversary of my release, which on Hebrew calendar is Beit Adar, in a couple of weeks, all our children and now all our grandchildren sit together. And like on Saturday, we are telling the story.

Vitaly and I are telling the story, where comes George Schulz and Reagan and Thatcher, but all the Jewish activists about all the struggle. And it's interesting how with every year it was our daughters who understand more and more. And they started from very simple things, what are conditions in prison, but then finish what it means solidarity of people all over the world.

What means communism? What means what this battle of ideas? And now we start the second round with our grandchildren and our daughters are helping. Because you cannot really communicate on the level of our grandchildren who all understand everything only through Facebook and Twitter. And our daughters can help us.

So that creates this continuity that the world of ideas should not disappear for a moment. I think here some of the heroes of struggle for example Sojourner, it's Suaren fetched that continuing the line of Kony that American Jews, who had such a great battle, 25 years of their life, they devoted to this greatest victory.

And they forgot to tell to their children about themselves, about their own victory and not speaking about grandchildren. And it's very unfortunate because it has to be something which continues all the time and goes from one generation to the other exactly as Jews did about exodus from Egypt.

And as a result, Exodus, Egypt is something part of our identity. But defeating of communism and the struggle of George Shultz is not part of American identity, because somehow, as Kwanja said, we are googling, not studying. So, yeah, I think it's very important that there'll be heritage of George Shultz and all the other great fighters and great leaders that will continue here.

>> Condoleezza Rice: The Jewish community in America also has something to be very proud of. So my first job using my Russian language was helping Soviet Jews relocate in Denver.

>> Peter Robinson: Really?

>> Condoleezza Rice: My mother was a teacher in the Denver public schools, and a little girl showed up in her class one day, and she had a sign that says, I don't speak English.

And so my mother asked, well, what does she speak? They said Russian. Her family had emigrated, this is in 1979. And so, I helped her family, and they had, at the Jewish community center, relocation help for Soviet Jews.

>> Peter Robinson: Really.

>> Condoleezza Rice: And so, we have a wonderful story to tell about how America, together with these very brave people who were willing to stand up to the Soviet Union, willing to leave, willing to leave everything.

Ala's parents, they had been engineers in the Soviet Union, and now her father was working as a janitor so that her mother could learn the English language. And I've since lost touch with them, but I'll bet they did all right, and probably Allah did very, very well. So there are wonderful stories about how this all unfolded, and I just hope we continue to tell them.

>> Natan Sharansky: Yeah, by the way, the leader of the successful absorption of Soviet Russian Jews in San Francisco is sitting just in front of me, yeah. I need the freedom,

>> Peter Robinson: indeed.

>> Peter Robinson: The battle of ideas and the continuity of our history, including the history of George Shultz. Director Rice, will the Hoover Institution get on that?

>> Condoleezza Rice: I think we can do that.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Let me just say, we're sitting in the Schulz building.

>> Peter Robinson: Yes.

>> Condoleezza Rice: And the reason we're sitting in the Schulz building is to be able to commemorate not just George, but his ideas. And if you have a chance at any time, if you've not been to this building and you can walk around, there are quotes from George, and there are pictures.

And this building does commemorate not just the man, but the ideas. And I think that's very important, and we'll continue to do it.

>> Peter Robinson: Condoleezza Rice, Abraham Sofer, Natan Sharonsky, thank you. For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution, and Fox News, I'm Peter Robinson.