Why 2022 Ukraine Is Different from 2014 Ukraine

>> Audience 1: Thank you for coming and thank you for speaking to us. My name is Viktor Babinski, I'm a history PhD student at Yale and I'm from Poland. And my question will concern that region. It seems like both surprise Russian aggressions in 2014 on Crimea and in 2022 on Kyiv were predicated on the same assumption that the west is in long term decline and it is too weak, disunited and complacent.

To react in force to a sudden, brutal, swift attack. And in 2014, this worked pretty well but in 2022 it backfired spectacularly, leading, as you said, to the isolation of Russian economy imposed by the West. Now my question is what has changed over those eight years in America and in Europe to that effect?

Thank you.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Well, thank you very much and I do think that 2014, there wasn't a strong response after 2014 but some things began to happen after 2014 that put us in a position in. 2022 to respond in the way that we did, I myself happens somewhat surprised by the competence of the Ukrainian armed forces.

I do know now that the Ukrainian armed forces being trained by forces from the west for some period of time now since essentially 2014 when it became clear what Russian intentions might be. And of course, it wasn't just Crimea but it was what happened in eastern Ukraine and the Donbas as the Russians carried out the hybrid warfare, the Ukrainian armed forces and some of it was actually hot warfare between Ukrainian and Russian forces and the Ukrainians have gotten better.

So one thing is the Ukrainian armed forces got better during this time secondly, and this is true of your own country, Poland a number of countries decided that maybe the reliance on Russian energy wasn't a very smart policy. And so Poland and a number of other countries actually began to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas significantly to the point that Poland now is less than 10% dependent now everybody wishes that the Germans had done the same thing because Germany is really the problem here but again, some of the weaning away from Russian energy resources I think helped as well and then finally.

I think it was the nature of the attack it was about as World War One or World War Two like as you might imagine I'm going to use an image here that most of you are too young to fully understand but I will explain there used to be something with photographs called negatives and you could just see the outline you couldn't really see the faces, but you could see the outline and I think that this war is like a negative for Europe of 1939,1941 and it has called people's attention to the kind of brutality.

And it feels like and looks like if you were doing this in black and white, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941. And that has mobilized Europe in ways that are maybe somewhat unexpected. And finally, I do think that the well, let me just say the decision, of course, of Sweden and Finland to join NATO is an extraordinary example of that, a friend of mine said that Vladimir Putin had managed to end German pacifism and Swedish neutrality all within a matter of several months.

And it's true it's extraordinary. And then the final point is, and I give the Biden administration very good marks here, they used the intelligence about what the Russians were about to do very, very well. I think Bill Burns, who's the CIA director, fine diplomat, had been, speaks perfect Russian, was maybe part of the reason that they started using that intelligence to inform Europe early on so that the sanctions were in place when Putin did what he did.

>> Audience 2: Hi there, so my name is Richard, I'm from Dalian, China, and I'm a student at UChicago. So thank you for taking the time to talk to us. And I just wanted to focus on a specific area that was kind of alluded to during your speech, and that is the issue of technology and how technology diffusion, specifically between China and the US, will play out.

So from a Chinese perspective, at least, I know that the government's really focused on areas that you mentioned, like quantum computing, AI, semiconductors, and have been placing a very strong policy emphasis on those areas for many years. And we now see evidence from the Biden administration as well, with the semiconductor act most recently.

So I was just most curious about your personal perspective on how this technological competition and innovation will play out in the near future and how that will exactly involve itself in this great power rivalry.

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yes, thank you. Well, let me start by saying technology is, of course, a very broad swath, and there are certain elements of technology that I think will be decoupled between China and the United States.

The Internet and social media, for instance, the American western view of the Internet, kind of, you go on, you talk to whom you please, you kind of say what you want, for good or for bad, is irreconcilably different than the Chinese. What has emerged in China, which is the use of social, of social engineering, of giving social credits for certain kind of Internet activity.

And so I don't see any coming together of that part of it, although I will say something like TikTok is kind of interesting because, of course, it was initially Chinese, but it does have an America it has a US base that looks somewhat different. So in the kind of social media realm, I don't think you're gonna see much cooperation between China and the United States.

Then when you get out to frontier technologies, that's really where I think the battle has been joined. Again, I wish that Xi Jinping had not given that speech about surpassing the United States, because it called into question all kinds of things, like including whether Chinese students should be allowed to study in American high tech labs, something that I believe is absolutely necessary.

The United States should not have in its university's nationality test about its students. But that's the kind of thing that it led to. And then in the middle, you've got. And by the way, I think the United States will do just fine in that competition, because the United States depends on distributed innovation, not leadership from the top.

But then there's the area that you mentioned, semiconductors, and there the real issue is TSMC and the dependence of everybody on Taiwan, which is a bit frightening. This is the kind of supply chain issue that really people began to understand more in a broader sense, during COVID but the semiconductors really kind of the tip of the spear here.

And there's something of a race as to who can build greater indigenous capability. The United States is obviously going to spend a lot of money now, government money and R and D, but it really requires companies like Intel to be able to succeed at reclaiming. Claiming that share of the semiconductor pie that they once dominated.

And of course, TSMC is gonna hopefully put fabs in Arizona. So there's some effort to take the pressure off of Taiwan in this regard, because given the problems around Taiwan, you don't want that to be the supply chain alone. Finally, I would just say the latest reports just in the last few days that the party is very unhappy with the massive investment that they've put into trying to get to next generation.

High quality semiconductors does say that China still has some problems of getting to that made in China indigenous capability that Xi Jinping has championed. So I would say if the United States can simply pay attention to its own capabilities, that it will be just fine. But I do think you're gonna continue to see efforts by China for indigenous capability.

And I think you're gonna continue to see the United States try to cut off investment from the United States in Chinese high technology. Something that I think will be hard to do, but that is the source of many of the nature of many of the bills that are making their way around Congress.

>> Audience 3: Thank you so much for speaking with us today. My question is, how do you think the US should pursue relationships and security partnerships with countries that are extremely indebted to China? For example, the only US permanent military base in Africa is in Djibouti, but China holds a majority of the debt and happened to put its own military base just miles away.

And so do you think that this poses operational risks and how can the US kind of deal with these?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, it's a very good question. We spent a lot of money and effort, really, starting with the Bush administration and for several years trying to build up East Africa in particular as a kind of counterterrorism center.

And if you go through the entire area of that area around Africa, you'll see that there are American military assets there that we've engaged in significant training. At one point, there was actually gonna be an AFRICOM, an actual command for Africa because of the importance of those countries in the counterterrorism fight.

And somehow I think we took our eye off the ball a little bit, that you can't just do military cooperation, that in many of these countries, the need for infrastructure cooperation. For financial assistance was probably not recognized and acted on. It allowed China to have a kind of vacuum to fill on some of these areas.

But I don't think it necessarily poses operational risks because I think those are fairly specific kinds of military assets. They don't rise to the level of the assets that one would probably use in a great power rivalry, it's not ideal. But we really ought to go back and look at those relationships and where we have them, and we have some significant ones in Africa.

We should be trying to buttress those relationships with more than just military assistance. We should be trying to buttress them with financial assistance, with foreign aid, with all of the things that can make those relationships more secure. I do think with Belt and road and what the Chinese are trying to do, what was supposed to be long talk own at one point, you would lend a country money.

If they couldn't pay it back, you own the port or whatever facility, that's turned out not to be so doable in the 21st century. Kind of worked in the 19th century, but doesn't work so well in the 21st century. And one thing that I think the United States should do, and we're doing it, helping to do it at Hoover, as a matter of fact, is to better inform populations in some of these countries of the strings attached.

That come with Chinese assistance, not to mention the lack of emphasis on health and safety issues, environmental standards, etc, that come with some of those Chinese gifts.

>> Audience 4: Hello, my name is Christine Thompson, I'm a recent grad of the University of Alabama. You touched on it briefly, but I would still love to hear more of your thoughts.

Even if necessary, does partnering with antidemocratic countries delegitimize American efforts to promote democracy abroad?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Thank you, this is one of the hardest issues that I dealt with when I was secretary in many ways on a daily basis. Because the Bush administration and I personally great believers in democracy, in America's role in promoting democracy, in America's role, not in imposing democracy.

But in helping those who wish to resist tyranny resist tyranny. And that's a very different notion heard, you can't impose democracy, you really have to impose democracy, you have to impose tyranny. And working with civil society, working with women's groups, working on girls education. I mean, there are a whole number of elements to American policy, speaking out on religious freedom, human rights issues.

No secretary of state, I think, can carry out an American foreign policy that is devoid of those values and devoid of an effort to signal those values wherever you are in the world. I think, though, we have to recognize that the United States is not an NGO. So you do have to deal with countries that don't share your values, that don't share your social system.

You have to deal with countries that have human rights. You talk about them, but that have human rights practices that we would not condone, because the United States also has strategic interests that have to be carried out. I remember very well when I went to Egypt and I gave a speech in 2005 about trying to get Egypt to lead democracy in the Middle east.

And at the end of the speech, I had seen Mubarak that morning, and I had to go see him later on in the afternoon because we were trying to deal with the tunnels in the Gaza Strip. That was where Hamas was smuggling arms in, and the Israelis were trying to blow them up.

And so we were trying very hard to deal with the security situation in the Gaza and its impact on Israel. And I remember talking to the young activists, the civil society folks, after my speech, and they said, well, how can you go talk to Mubarak? I mean, he's the block to democracy in Egypt.

And I had to explain that, yes, we have our aspirations for democracy, we will work with those who wish to have aspirations for democracy. But sometimes we have to deal with countries and powers that we don't like their human rights policies. It's just the nature of being a great power.

It's sometimes hard to explain, but I don't think that it undermines the really good work that the United States does in support of democracy all around the world.

>> Audience 5: Good afternoon, Secretary Rice, thanks so much for taking the time, it's an honor to speak with you. My question regards China, specifically moving forward, do you see the resolution or integration of China into the international system as one that comes more from, the 1.4 billion people.

You know, sort of something that, you know, they sort of think, and they sort of a bottom up approach, or do you think it'll more be from changing the party leadership, sort of a more bending towards the western way? And if, and with that in mind, what should or can the US do to sort of bolster that approach, thank you.

>> Condoleezza Rice: It is very hard for me to see the rebirth of the integrationist strategy under Xi Jinping. I would like to think differently, but the way that things are going in China internally, the continued competition to try to go to China made in China, I think it's very hard to get back to, let's remember what we really meant by that integrationist narrative.

We really meant the full integration of the Chinese economy into the international order and some liberalization of the Chinese economy, some thought also Chinese politics, I was never so sure about that. But that kind of systemic change is hard to see under Xi Jinping. Now, I would never say never, and I think what you try to do is you try to keep open the possibilities for cooperation.

You try to keep open the possibility for cooperation on climate change, you try to keep open the possibility of cooperation on North Korea. Although I'm told by people in the administration now that China is not cooperative on North Korea, which they were during the time that I was secretary, you try to keep open people to people.

It's one reason that I am so opposed to the idea that you wanted to cut the number of Chinese students studying in the United States. I said to the FBI director, if somebody is an agent for the PLA, then don't give them a visa and we won't admit them, but don't turn us into intelligence agencies.

When we have Chinese students, they have to be treated as students, and that's the nature of our system. And so I think you try to keep all of those areas open. One of the areas I'm most concerned about is, as we're watching the tremendous tensions around Taiwan and military forces bumping into each other all over the place, I worry a lot about an accident.

And the most serious thing that the Chinese did, from my point of view, was in response to the Pelosi visit, when they decided to cut off military to military contacts. That's a very bad thing, because I'm a veteran of the 2001 Hanan island incident, where a Chinese pilot hot dogging in international airspace, hit our reconnaissance plane, forced it to the ground, held our crew for seven days, and for four of those days, we couldn't reach the Chinese.

I mean, they literally wouldn't return our phone calls, and I finally found my counterpart, it's gonna sound fanciful, but it's not. I literally found my Chinese counterpart at a barbecue in Argentina, they were in Latin America I called up the Chileans and said, can you get the Chinese to the phone they said, they've already left for Argentina.

I called the Argentines, they got the Chinese on the phone, that's how we established contact after the Henan island incident, and so very dangerous not to have some level of contact during this period of heightened tensions.

>> Audience 6: Hello, Secretary Rice, thank you for this conversation today. There's some rhetoric that the Quad alliance is seen as a potential Asian NATO sort of treaty.

Do you think that it would be wise to create an Asian NATO sort of treaty, and does that include the United States in it?

>> Condoleezza Rice: Yeah, there are three reasons that I would let the Quad evolve rather than trying to get to something structural prematurely, and the first reason is that, the first reason is India.

India bristles whenever you talk about them as an ally, they are a friend. They obviously have very important strategic interest in common with the United States in the Indo Pacific, and I was the secretary who negotiated the civil nuclear deal, and the reason we negotiated that is it allowed us to take a lot of restrictions off of India for defense and technology cooperation, and that's proceeding now.

There have been a lot of people unhappy with India for their stance on the Ukraine war, I think the Biden administration has actually been wise, did not push it too hard, because where we really need India is in the Indo-Pacific. But I think India would be, would the kind of non aligned gene, if you will, in India would react badly to anything that looks like a formal alliance, so just let it keep evolving.

The second reason is that I don't know who the members would be, I think if you just let it evolve, you have countries like Vietnam that have serious problems with China. Singapore is a country that, if you don't make it, take a loyalty test and attest to its loyalties, that operates really within the frame of American friends and allies.

So for all of those reasons, I would note, not do it, and then the third reason is, I'm not sure that you could get through the US Congress at this point, something that looks like an article five guarantee, which is what countries would want in a NATO like alliance.

And without the United States, it's not a particularly compelling grouping. I'm grateful that we got through the accession of Finland and Sweden I was kinda holding my breath. I thought there might be more Josh Hawleys who would argue that the United States shouldn't take on new allies in this way, but I think that to force that kind of decision in the US Congress would be a mistake.