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Richard Haass

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2016-07-15

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2016-07-15

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1. “The answer is I can't explain it. I wasn't involved. I can't be involved in campaigns. I'm just an observer like you are. So whether it was Rust or Just people thought they could handle a question, and then it turns out they couldn't. I can't explain why it was. Why it played out the way it did, but it wasn't the only area, quite honestly, where he had stumbles as a candidate. And it's quite possible also this 2015-16 wasn't his year. He represented a degree of establishment continuity. Sure. And as you saw with both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, this was not a year of great public outpouring for establishment continuity.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Jeb Bush is very intelligent. I think he would have made a good president. On the other hand, he hadn't campaigned for a while and just”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Process oriented? Is that a fair way to describe it? More process oriented, a little bit more careful. I think the W.'s administration a little bit less formal, a little bit less careful. Some of the decisions as well as some of the follow-up. So I thought the administration of the father, all things being equal, I think history will judge as a more successful presidency.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Here I'll probably alienate some of your listeners, but I don't think inequality is the real issue. I think the real issue is a loss or absence of upward mobility. And we've had inequality in this country since day one. What we've also traditionally had though is tremendous opportunity and mobility. And to me, the goal is to resurrect that. And as long as people see real improvements in their standard of living and the prospects further, then I think we do just fine as an economy and as a society. And people don't wake up every day angry about inequality so long as their specific circumstances are improving and are likely to continue to improve.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “If you want this country and this society and this economy to derive the benefits of globalization, then you would better go out and make the case for it.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “It's blamed for a lot of things, including job loss and who knows what else. So it's going to be hard to win that debate. I think this president, Mr. Obama, has a few more months left in his term to try to begin to shape the debate about globalization and this country's relationship with the rest of the world, his successor, indeed his successor, over the years, will have the same opportunity or necessity. But I worry that it's part of a larger turning away from the world. I worry about certain elements of isolationism. We see in both parties, it's not a Republican or a Democratic problem. In some ways now, the biggest debates in this country are within political parties. And we're seeing it whether the opposition to immigration, opposition to trade, more broadly this pushback, rejection of globalization, and not just in this country. We see it throughout Europe and elsewhere. So the lesson I take.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Look, trade is important economically. It might even be more important strategically as a way of bolstering allies, promoting development, tying Others who are potential adversaries into relationships, which they'll think twice before they overturn. The problem is that most of the energy in the domestic debate is anti, anti-trade.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Asia, very uncertain future given who knows how China is going to play out, issues potentially with the South China Sea, the East China Sea, North Korea. You've got India growing at 7-8%, but you still have the problems with Pakistan. And then you've got all the global issues from cyber to health to trade to proliferation to terrorism. The international plate is as full and then domestically there's probably less consensus in this country about America's relationship with the world than at any time during my career. So the combination of a world that to some extent is unraveling in the United States where there's no longer consensus about what role we ought to play, the combination of the two, I think as much as anything else explains what's going on.”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “The sad answer is I think you're on to something. But if you look at the Middle East, it's as close to chaos as any part of the world. We talked about Europe for a while. That is suddenly much more unsettled than we ever imagined”

   2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “On that election. So a minority, if you will, held us back. I think the feeling was with the end of the Cold War, there was no longer a strategic reason not to open up that clearly embargo and isolation would not bring about the kind of political changes we wanted to see in Cuba. So the feeling was let's try engaging with them. Let's try trading with them, having tourism ending their isolation, you then take away the excuse of the regime that it needs to keep control. So I think this is a worthy experiment. The other wasn't working. After 50 years, you still had communists in power. So let's try a different approach. And maybe this can This can bring down or at least bring about the mellowing, the moderation of this system. And I think there's a decent chance.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “You're right, it was a long time in coming, largely because the opponents of change, even though they weren't numerous, had a great political intensity to South South.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “For the benefit of hindsight, but still. You didn't even need hindsight. I thought it was wrong beforehand. It was naive. I also thought it was arrogant. And just simply, and it wasn't funny, I got criticized once for suggesting it wasn't going to work and being called, if you will, the foreign policy equivalent of a racist. And I said, no, I'm simply saying that the prerequisites for democracy aren't to be found in the contemporary Middle East. So we ought not to embark on a foreign policy which posits that as our objective.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And so forth. But I would simply say, and I'll let him speak for himself, but the preponderance of the voices in this administration, this is George W. Bush, wanted to go to war, some for reasons they thought the Iraqis might have weapons of mass destruction. Others thought that Iraq was going to be an easy target, topple Saddam, and they actually thought very quickly and very easily you could create a democracy that would set a precedent and an example that the rest of the region wouldn't be able to resist. I was profoundly skeptical that that would happen, but you couldn't prove it wrong. People believed it. They thought this would be a transformational act. And the rest again is history.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Absolutely. And I would simply say that like a lot of military men, he is often very wary of large uses of military force. He comes out of Vietnam and he understands just how dangerous and risky it can be to American military personnel. He doesn't see wars and abstraction. He sees a war as all too real. So he was the one who years ago, if you remember, developed a quote-unquote Powell doctrine, the idea if you're going to go to war, do it with a lot of force for very clear objectives. And the problem with the 2003 Iraq war, we did it with a minimum of force, and we had objectives that military force could not accomplish. Military force can destroy things. It's very, very hard for military force to create things. So Powell was properly skeptical, but then when it was clear, the president had made up his mind, this is President George W. Bush, Powell then tried to influence how we would go to war diplomatically through the UN.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “I forget about it. I would state the lesson differently. In the Middle East, the enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy. And we're paying a price for that”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Well, actually, both of them had elements of nuclear programs during their eight year long war in the 80s, but I take your larger point. I oppose the 2003 Iraq war, even though I was in the government at the time I was at the State Department. One of the reasons was I did think that the balance of power between Iraq and Iran suited our interests, and I was also wildly skeptical of our ability to build a post-Saddam Iraqi society to our liking. And I think it's fair to say that strategically, Iran was the greatest strategic beneficiary of the Iraq War.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “You're not going to have a nuclear free Middle East. You've got Israel that has nuclear weapons, Pakistan. Pakistan is not that far away, and they've got the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal. Iran has virtually all the prerequisites of a nuclear weapon. Other countries are beginning to put into place certain types of nuclear power programs. So at the moment, the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East looks to me like a pipe dream.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “But it didn't in any way solve the problem. And there's a lot of people who said, well, maybe in 10 or 15 years or Ronald will be a much more reasonable, moderate place. That's possible. I wouldn't bet a lot on it. And so my concern is that in 10 or 15 years, we're going to face an Iran without constraints potentially. And in the meantime, a lot of its neighbors seeing this possibility may decide to develop nuclear options of their own, if you will, to hedge. So as bad as the Middle East now is, and it's plenty bad by any and every measure, it's conceivable to see how you could have multiple moves towards what you might call a pre-nuclear weapons status on the part of several of Iran's neighbors and Iran could return to that. So this is not a problem that's been solved, to say the least.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “The joint agreement to me was in principle better than either living within Iran with nuclear weapons or going to war with Iran. But there are aspects of the treaty that give me real pause, not just to transfer of wealth, but the fact that after 10 years they can do whatever they want when it comes to centrifuges. In 15 years, they can accumulate as much enriched uranium as it is they want. So as you rightly said, it bought us time.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “A good question. The polls would suggest we've gained somewhat, but not that much because other areas have hurt us. We heard over issues. Our reputation gets hurt over things like guns and violence in this country or political dysfunction. Subtracted from our reputation what we did in Iraq and what we didn't do in Syria has hurt us. So I think while we've recovered somewhat economically,”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “It hurt us in lots of ways. It hurt us in terms of lost resources. We simply didn't have as much wealth to devote to what it is we do in the world. It hurt us reputationally in many ways. Suddenly the desire to emulate the American model, to put it gently, was not what it was. And I would just think more broadly it made people uncomfortable with the world in which American leaders and officials were making decisions that had tremendous consequence for them over which they had no influence. And no one likes to be in a situation where they feel vulnerable but unable to influence. And that's what the rest of the world felt.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Absolutely. So again, there's a difference between, it seems to me, what is espionage, and we carry that out. And this is just the newest domain of espionage, and intellectual property theft, which needs to be stopped. And the Chinese have agreed to stop it. The question is whether one, they meant the agreement, and two, whether they will then implement it. So there's big questions there. And this is one of the 600 things on the U.S. Chinese agenda. And I think also in future trade agreements, this question of intellectual property protection is going to play a larger role. It needs to.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “In general, in the whole area of cyber, the technology has outpaced the rules A little bit like the old Wild West, and there's no sheriff, a lot of people out there with guns, and we're seeing it all over. So the US-China relationship is simply one part of a larger situation. Look, some forms of espionage and the rest we carry out, and it's carried out against us. And if we're not protecting our data, shame on us. To the idea that the Office of Personnel Management got hacked, that was irresponsibility on our side. Now, the Chinese are doing more than espionage. They're also doing property theft. And that is something that we have got to sanction them on if they won't stop.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Do the technology. It's uneven, certain types of jobs, certain sectors of the economy are more vulnerable. I just don't think we've really begun the public conversation about how is it we better prepare workers to deal with some of the challenges, and that's everything from transition assistance financially to education and retraining. And we just can't put a moat out there. We can't pull up the bridge. We've got to think about how is it we compete in this world. The political conversation isn't close to the conversation we need to have.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Which, by the way, is scary for the future, could things like robotics, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, if anything, the potential for job displacement might accelerate. And I don't think we've begun to think that through as a society, what we're going to do, but in the meantime, trade is the scapegoat. There's a venting. And just like we're talking about Brexit before, that became a vote where people expressed a lot of their frustrations with the status quo. You don't get a chance to vote on globalization, but you do get a chance to vote on grade, on trade. And I think what's happening is that trade is carrying a lot of weight that it really doesn't deserve, but people are turning towards it to vent their frustrations.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “One way to answer it is that trade on occasion does cost jobs and whether it's cheaper labor elsewhere or people produce better products, say, in the area of cars was a reality for a long time. So trade displaces. What I think also happens, though, is that trade is blamed for things. It gets scapegoated. So the biggest source of displacement in jobs, of job elimination is not trade, it's technology, it's productivity increases”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Well, the answer is it's central. Think about it this way. We have, what, 320 million people in the United States? That's out of a world of roughly 7 billion. That's four or five percent. We're what, 20-odd percent of the world's GDP? Another way of saying 75 to 80 percent of world GDP lies outside the United States. So if we are going to sell a lot of what it is we do has to be outside the borders of our own country. We're just not a large enough market to be self-sufficient.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “That much? Absolutely. We don't have a direct equivalent to Brexit, but again, what it shows me is that, for example, historical support for free trade agreements is just not there. What you have right now sitting in the Congress, a major trade agreement, the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, involves the United States and countries, I think it's 11 other countries, make up around 40% of the world economy. Right now, that trade agreement is parked. I'm not sure under what circumstances it could muster the necessary support. And what this tells me is that here's one of the basics. Free trade used to be bipartisan support, Democrats, Republicans, and so forth. At the moment, you'd have to say, not just as the jury's out. That's one of the American parallels to Brexit.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “The short answer is absolutely I see parallels. What you see in both sides of the Atlantic is widespread pushback, even rejection of important aspects of globalization. Whether it's immigration or free trade or other issues, and I take the Brexit vote as something of a wake-up call. Morning shot.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Right, what you have in Europe then is increasing inequality. You have high levels of unemployment and underemployment. You have demographic distributions that aren't even in terms of wealth and employment. And you sense there's a lot of fault lines in Europe Far right and far left parties, both could come to the fore. You asked before about surprises. That's another part of it. So Europe at one and the same time there's elements of boom and there's real elements of fragility.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And suddenly Europe is, you sense it's in play. And one of the lessons I draw from that is it's more difficult to have assumptions now. It's more difficult to have a sense of the givens. There's a sense of greater, not just speed of change, but breadth of change. And I just went three years ago, I didn't have the imagination, I'll be honest with you, to see this coming.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “In Southern Europe, you know that from what it is. You do. Unfortunately, you can imagine without a hell of a lot of imagination another terrorist problem. In any number of countries, there's uncertainty about Russian intentions, not only in eastern Ukraine, but with some of the other small states that border it. So I add all this up. And again, struck by if we had had this conversation three years ago, we never would have talked about Europe.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Not the first surprise we've had in Europe in the last two or three years. We had Russia and Ukraine What shall we say was an unfortunate surprise. We had the massive flow of immigrants from Syria and the Middle East to Europe. We then had terrorism. So this in some ways, if you add it up, is at least the fourth surprise in the last two to three years. And what's so surprising about this? That Europe for decades was the part of the world with the fewest surprises. It seemed to be the most stayed and predictable. But I would think going forward, we still don't know what's going to happen with Brexit We don't know whether the countries may decide to do their own versions of an exit. We could have problems once again in Greece on the financial side or with some other country in”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Two things. I think there's two things to say. One is that, or maybe even more than that, one is that there were polls that came out beforehand which suggested that the factual basis, shall we say, was incomplete. People just in many cases didn't quite understand what the relationship was between Britain and the EU. And so far. Second of all, there was industrial misrepresentation of the facts about the flow of money, about consequences, about immigration issues. So now it's a little bit like the hangover. What you have as a country that went out a bit on a political binge and now has to deal with the consequences. And again, it reinforces my instincts that you don't want to decide major issues in a democracy this way.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Well, it could be a deal that would require less of them, but would also give less to them. And the real question is whether net net, they would come off better. And I think if you're sitting in Northern Ireland or you're sitting in Scotland, you then have to make the calculation. Are you better off in a post-EU UK? Are you better off? Going out on your own. And I think that will literally be the debate, certainly in Scotland and potentially in Belfast and beyond.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “I'm not ducking the question. The honest answer is nobody knows because there's a debate within Brussels whether to give them a bread or deal or not to because a lot of people in Brussels fear that to give the British a better deal would create a precedent and suddenly 27 other governments may want their own better deal. It has to be.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “And beyond that, it has the potential to tremendously increase centrifugal forces within Europe. And I just say for those who aren't familiar with it, Europe is one of the great historic accomplishments of the last three quarters of a century, twice in the 20th century. Europe was the venue for great wars, the two world wars. The whole idea after World War II was to so knit together Europe and France and Germany in particular that war would become unthinkable. We ought not to take that for granted. And I'm worried if Brexit goes ahead, depending again on the details, it could have knock-on effects throughout Europe.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “It's quite possible, what it will depend on more than anything is if the British government goes ahead with Brexit, the new government under the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, and if, depending on the terms, there's Brexit and Brexit. And this is totally uncharted waters. So we don't know what will be the details of potentially a new relationship between a post-EU UK and Europe. But depending upon the details, it's quite possible that you'll have a second Scottish referendum. And in this time, if there is one, it would pass because people would vote to stay in Europe. And I believe there's a decent chance you'll have a so-called border poll in Northern Ireland in which people would vote to join Ireland. So I think that Brexit, one of the many reasons I opposed it, has the potential to lead to the dissolution of the United Kingdom.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Even though technically Parliament disposes this was advisory, it's extremely difficult for British politicians to simply say, never mind. So one way or another, Brexit in some form is likely to happen. I would say, and I'm prepared now to be called an elitist. To me, it's a real sign that you ought not to be deciding major, major matters of public policy through referendum. It's why the founders of the American political system created something called the Congress, created something called an executive. The whole idea was to have representative government rather than direct democracy. And I think what we've seen in Britain is a very expensive lesson of what happens if you have direct rather than representative democracy.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Not a good way to Well, except there's an awful lot of voters' remorse and a lot of people afterwards, I think indeed if the referendum were to be repeated, it would go down in flames.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “The entire argument doesn't tend to get people out of their seats, much less to vote. So you had anemic showing on the remain side and you had an impassioned if uninformed turnout on the leave side and the rest, as they say, is history.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “In part because it was a referendum on the status quo and people who were, for one reason or another unhappy or disaffected or angry or worried about the future. Vented and supported the leave vote. A lot of them were not particularly well informed exactly what would be the precise consequences. So I think it was something of a protest vote. And it was very hard for the remain camp to make a persuasive case. What were they supposed to say? Well, things aren't perfect, but it's better to stay than it is to leave.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “There's a reason for that. There's a principle that you see in the literature of political science called intensity. And the whole idea of intensity is what matters in American politics, and merely in democratic politics more broadly, is not absolute numbers, but it's the intensity with which political participants bring to the process, whether it's voting or money or time. So what this means is small numbers of people with great intensity can overwhelm large numbers of people who have virtually no intensity. It's the reason, for example, that 90% of Americans may favor background checks, but the NRA wins the gun control debate.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Right, and it wasn't that I was a political chameleon. I was essentially a political at the time. I think I was probably a registered independent at the time. At some point I became a registered Republican. And even now I run a skip ahead of several decades. I run a nonpartisan institution. I don't feel particularly partisan in my bones, and I'd like to think. Maybe it's naive that there's a place in American politics, say within the 40-yard lines. Where your micro. We're a conservative or moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans can find common cause And if we can't have that center, then I think we as a society are in serious trouble.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “And then after that, after the Carter administration ended, I was put on the transition team for the State Department for the Reagan administration and went over to the Reagan State”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “After World War One, which is what you're alluding to, there was the British and French ministers and their subordinates essentially did draw the map, a lot of which is the contemporary Middle East, I was really focusing on the Persian Gulf. Where the Brits stayed longer and they left essentially in the late 60s, early 70s. But soon afterwards, again, you had these major tests with the twin crises of Afghanistan and Iran. And I was lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to be one of those who was asked essentially to plan for it. So I had an amazing early experience in the Pentagon. Indeed, what's now Central Command, the force which has fought several of the wars, including the Gulf War, the Iraq War and all that, I was involved in the creation of that force. So it's a little bit of being in the right or wrong place at the right time.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Filling the vacuum, and it was essentially the American reactions, what was called the British East of Suez withdrawal, meaning the”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “So I said, great. And so I went and worked at the Pentagon. It was a fantastic opportunity because about less than six months after I got there in 79, you had two big historical events. You had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And you had the revolution in Iran. And I was assigned with a very small group of people to plan for what would the United States do in that part of the world because we had very few capabilities, very few plans. And suddenly... I was thrown at this in part because I had written my doctoral dissertation on this part of the world.”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “After Oxford, actually during Oxford, I spent a year splitting between my master's and my doctorate working in the Senate. As an aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Senator Claiborne Pell, who was a Democrat from Rhode Island. I really just wanted some experience. I'd been an academic and wanted to see how the sausage was made, and I got the chance. After that, I then spent a couple of years working at a think tank in London, a place called the Institute for Strategic Studies, essentially doing a postdoc. And then after some conference, I spoke at, a few people who were working at the Pentagon said, hey, would you come and work with us at the Department of Defense?”

    2016-07-15 · Masters in Business · Interview With Richard Haass: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source