YouSaid · the spoken record

Leslie Gelb

lines on the record: 92
first: 2015-08-14
most recent: 2015-08-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I that I should have had a better appreciation of what our power could accomplish in different places at different times and what it could not accomplish.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think through a strategy and you figure out how to deal with people well enough to move the pieces along so that in whatever it takes a week or three months your boss sees you've accomplished it. And if he sees that, you're going to get ahead.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think mainly history books. I try to immerse myself in history, mainly to see how Things went wrong, and on those few occasions how they went right. They give myself more of a finger feel and an intellectual appreciation of the difficulties of dealing with problems that you can't control, where you have to use your power and the power can't make things in and of itself come out the way you want”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because we have more responsibility than anyone else. There's any problem anywhere in the world. People immediately turn to the United States. And unfortunately, too often we try to go respond to it without knowing what to do and without thinking through a strategy.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's a realist, and I think that's basically the framework I've adopted in dealing with the world. I believe in power. I don't think you get things done through what we like to call soft power, that we persuade people we understand their interests better than they do. We think our values are going to get them to restrain themselves. It just doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. What happens is power where you get people to do things or not to do things because you change their calculus about their interest, what they're going to gain, what they're going to lose. And if you can't affect that calculus, you're not going to be able to achieve what you want. It's pretty much that, yes.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pure common sense, but it isn't done. And you can see it time and again in decisions made by presidents after presidents.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say Clark Clifford. Who replaced McNamara as Secretary of Defense was a major influence in my life because he really brought home to me the importance of thinking through strategy before you made your first moves on any area of importance and if it took two weeks to do it or whatever you take that time to do it before you start moving. Otherwise you trap yourself.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you see, it's not just Russia. We thought we would do it with Cuba. We thought we could do it with Iran. And economic sanctions, political pressure, even military pressure did not bring these countries to their knees. And what do people want? Do they want to go to war with Iran? What do they think the consequences of that would be? Did we want to invade Cuba? Only some nuts wanted to invade Cuba.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think they're just dead wrong, but they're people inside and people they consult on the outside who have this point of view. And not all generals agree with Breedlove. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs in testifying before the Senate a few weeks ago said Russia is the biggest threat, security threat to the United States. So you have people who say these things and then they don't say what they're going to do about it”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were central to it. And in the case of the states on their western borders, they can hurt us unless you have some diplomacy that takes their interest into account, doesn't give them control of these countries, but gives them a say so that they're treated like a major power, like we would expect to be treated on our borders.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the general. And I've had loads of conversations with senior NATO generals. They all say the same thing. You need diplomacy. You need to work out a kind of relationship with the Russians where they are treated like a major power. You don't give them the Baltic states or Ukraine, but you take their interest into account. Look. How do you judge whether Russia matters? Russia is no longer a global superpower, but they are a great power. And how do you measure that? You measure it in terms of whether Russia can help or hurt us in various parts of the world. And they can. Who can help us more than any other country in dealing with what's happening in Syria and Iraq? It's Russia. Fighting terrorism, Russia has one of the best anti terrorist operations in the world, including intelligence. Absolutely. Now, on that, I'm not on”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have. Let me tell you the end of that conversation She says wow and then she says, but then what would you do about it? He said, well, of course we've got to keep up our military strength, but we need diplomacy.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they can trump us militarily whatever we do. We want a bit of more aid to Ukraine. They can put even more to their supporters in eastern Ukraine You want to start shooting bullets, they can shoot more bullets right on their borders. Beyond their borders, we have the superiority. But on their borders, they've got it. And Christian. responded when he was finished Wow”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Ukraine, yes, aircraft, air defenses, whatnot. A couple months ago, the Supreme Allied Commander for NATO, General Breedlove, American General. Oh, sure.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, there's no question about it. But here, today, people think, you know, Russia is on its knees. On its borders, western borders.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you have to understand it from Putin's point of view. The second thing you have to understand is that on their western borders, Russia has military superiority over the United States and the West. See, people don't know that though. I've read about World War II.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is a pretty blatant assertion of U.S. authority and rights in the hemisphere. What if China would open up military bases in Mexico? What do you think we would do about that? We would not be. We would go insane. Right.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But as a great power he has a right to a say in those countries what happens there. Just as we would have a right to what happens in our hemisphere. People have forgotten about the Monroe Doctrine.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In all these respects, and then here we do this with Ukraine, we bring the Baltic states into NATO. These are states that used to be part of. Sure. The Soviet Union, and now they're under NATO. It looked like we were going to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO as well. And I think Putin has been fighting against all of this. Now I wouldn't give him the right. These countries don't belong to him.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Economically, including in Ukraine, where the Europeans made a proposal in effect to incorporate Ukraine into the European economy. And push Russia aside as intolerable. The central thing about Russians in foreign policy for hundreds of years is they like to flex their muscles. They like to be the great power. They like to be treated like the boss. And they lost the Cold War. The country was diminished in size and in power.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that there's a lot to show from a Russian point of view. That we diminish them. And we diminish them in all sorts of ways.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's the central point to keep making to people, but it's hard to get through when the hysteria has reached the proportions it has.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even the critics say the main point is, well, in ten to fifteen years they can decide they don't want to abide by this anymore. That's a long time.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not for a long time to come. Look, I've spent a good deal of my life working on arms control. Even though I didn't believe arms control was arms control. I think arms control was a way of managing. Relations with an adversary And if you look at the history of all the arms control treaties we reached, they didn't solve the problems. They minimized the problems to varying degrees. They lessened the problem, or they put the most serious problems off into the future where there was a better chance of managing them. We've kind of forgotten that arms control agreements are not agreements of surrender by one party to another. You're trying to bargain with another state that has its own interests and is not going to give certain things up. And you make agreements to lessen the threat, which this agreement absolutely does.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it will, at least the people who do the That a presidential veto will be sustained in the Senate. I don't know about the house, but in the Senate.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there is overwhelming opposition within Israel. Through this agreement with Iran. And none of that is going to change. Obama... Tried to compensate by offering Israel some arms, some high-tech arms that he had previously denied them. But that's not going to change their mind about any of this. And we're going to go through a few years of just very nasty talk from Israeli leadership about Democrats because of their support for this. Hillary is trying to avoid it by, as usual, not taking a position, strong position on it, but you'll get a lot of anti-democratic feeling from Israelis. As far as American Jews are concerned, The polls show 60 to 70 percent are in favor of supporting these, yes.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true. Interestingly, they're divided on foreign policy national security, where you have the Tea Party guys like the Pauls who tend to be touch isolationist. Very much so involved in wars.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They want it hands down except for presidential nominees. Reagan being the exception people bring up. But in fact, Reagan was not a crazy right-wing president at all. He was a conservative president. The argument is that the”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They all left the place because they got totally frustrated with American politics. And it began at the time of the Vietnam War. The people who unfortunately didn't get frustrated were the extremists, particularly on the right. They decided that this was their great opportunity to go in and control politics.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To that sort of it disappeared. You see, they all left. So it's party first country settlement. Bill Bradley, Sam Nunn, etc. Eucentrist, moderate,”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marginal here's the difference not that they were marginalized, it's that they were what I would call 25 or so national interest senators of both parties. Who, if an issue were really important, would put politics aside and try to get something done. So, if it was critical and you needed a law pass in order to solve a problem, they would get together and do it.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he became the author of the law that sort of gave Congress a chance to say no to military involvement after 30 days.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because he actually was pretty much of a hawk on foreign policy. He was a big supporter of the Vietnam War until late in the game.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's right. 60s really was a revolution inside the United States. And frankly, I think it caused a lot of people, good people, to stay away from politics. I don't think the quality of people who run for office today hold office today are as good as they were when I was a young man in Washington.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The same mistakes over and again, which is why over time I developed the philosophy that guides me in thinking about foreign affairs, that you're going to make the mistakes. They're inevitable. I don't care how smart you want because we're involved in various parts of the world where our knowledge is slight and where our power doesn't add up to our desires. And we're going to make mistakes. And the most important thing you can do is keep your mind open to the possibility that you did make a mistake so that you can see it and fix it and not cause the blunders and the suffering that we do when we persist in our mistakes.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fastest reversal of everybody you supported. It was fast, but I was for it initially. And when it was clear they didn't have the weapons of mass destruction, I opposed it. And on top of it, I saw we had no idea what we were doing. Clearly. There had been no plan for fighting the war.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few years we don't even know that we know that some of Saddam's officers are involved with them. but that these are Sunnis who escaped from Iraq and are now Syrians fighting for ISIS. I think that's exaggerated.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We knew And there was genuine concern that he had these weapons of mass destruction. Was there proof? No, but there was enough evidence floating around in combination with his behavior over the previous 10 years plus to make people feel you had to go after him. Now, they didn't take the next step which they must take in order to have a rational policy and saying, then what are we going to do?”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that what we're saying? We didn't believe it because here Saddam had attacked Iran. We didn't like Iran, but they attacked him. And it was a seven year war. And they used chemical weapons against Iran.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I asked them outright at the time. Do we have a smoking gun on the weapons of mass destruction? And he said, no, we don't have a smoking gun, but all of us very much believe that they do have these weapons of mass destruction programs.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Ho Chi Men was regarded by many Vietnamese as the father of Vietnamese nationalism. You know, I don't like his communist system or anything like that, but he had the monopoly of nationalism, not only in the North, but in the South with the Vietnam forces. Who are also backing him? And when that's what you have going for you, it's hard to deal with it. Look at Syria today. Have these fanatics fighting, and the people we trained for years in Iraq and armed with best of armaments, as soon as the ISIS attacked them, they dropped their arms, took their uniforms off, and ran away.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he was the commander of a battalion. He was a lieutenant colonel at the time. And he wrote me a note. I was working for Javitz at the time. Romeo notes saying we just had the first major battle with North Vietnamese forces in the central highlands of South Vietnam. And I can't tell you how proud I was of my troops, how well they fought with such skill and such courage. There was only one problem, the North Vietnamese fought better. And there are only two explanations for this. One is they were on dope, and the other is they were on nationalism. And if they were on nationalism, boy, are we going to have trouble?”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it depends on the country. In the case of Vietnam, it was nationalism that we were fighting. That was the root cause of it. You know, I was very close to an army officer who went out and commanded an air cavalry battalion. And one of the main battles that was fought in the central highlands of Vietnam.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Vietnam, I had read one book. I wrote a good many of the memos of the Secretary of Defense to the President of the United States when I was Director of Policy Planning in the Pentagon. And I had read one book on Vietnam, Bernard Falls, The Two Vietnams. That was more than most people there had read. We had no knowledge of the place. The same applied to Afghanistan. The same applied to Iraq. All of a sudden we throw in the troops as if force is going to solve Centuries Of culture, politics, and internal problems, and it never does.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed, it was, and how important it was to win. Now, David's views changed over time. David Halberstams. As did mine. I was a supporter of the war. I didn't know anything about Vietnam, but to me it was the crunch point in the battle against communism. And it took a long time for me to evolve. It took a very long time for my foreign policy profession to evolve because we believed in it. The same thing happened with how we fight Afghanistan or how we fight Iraq. We believe our way into these wars Because we make these decisions without knowing about the countries we're getting involved in.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we thought the biggest threat to the United States was from the Chinese Soviet alliance. And from world communism. And just as we saw Berlin as the major focal point for this in Europe, we saw Indochina as the major focal point in Asia. And people believe we had to stop. I hardly knew anybody in the foreign policy profession who differed with it, including Dan Ellsberg, including my buddy David Halperstam. His 1964 book, The Making of a Quagmire, ends with a chapter that is the best argument for the domino theory I've ever read.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the key question because it applies today too. Look, Ellsberg created the impression that we got in because our government lied to the American people about the stakes and what was involved and why it was important. But that's just false. It's plain wrong, including elsewhere himself, Ellsberg himself was a big supporter of the war. Through a good chunk of the sixties, he joined the Marines, he went over there and he fought. The reason we got involved in Vietnam, and it's critical that we understand it for what we get into trouble with today. The reason we got involved is we believed our way into the war. We saw Indochina as the cockpit of the war between Soviet Union, Chinese communism against the United States of America.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With having an opinion on this and that to their superiors. So I took responsibility for writing all those analytical statements, which really weren't very analytical or very presumptuous. They're more or less straightforward.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we started to do these monographs. And basically, the monographs which very few people have read are sort of straight recounting of the issue. There's one on pacification that sort of tells you document by document, summarizing them what the history of how we handle pacification was or why we made the decision to send in the Marines in March 65 and so forth. And the only sort of analytical parts of the Pentagon papers were the brief summary statements at the beginning of each monograph, which I took. The creditor blamed for in my transmission document, and I did so because most of our authors were military and they didn't want to get stuck.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we were to answer them. Then I put together a small group and basically everyone agreed that we'd give the same kind of baloney superficial answers to these questions if we just sat down to write them and to get some perspective on it, we ought to look at the history of our involvement. Send a memo into McNamara, said go do it. Let the chips fall where they met.”
2015-08-14 · Masters in Business · Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source