YouSaid · the spoken record

William J. Burns

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73

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2019-05-09

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2019-05-09

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1. “Right, and that makes people suspicious. And so that was not invented by Donald Trump. That's a disconnect which existed in President Obama was quite eloquent about speaking to it. But we need State Department, I think, needs to do a better job of not just recognizing that disconnect, but acting on it. We all tell ourselves rightly that smart foreign policy”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Helped in that regard? No, it's a classic case of overreach that's come back to Hauntus like Iraq 2003. And that makes me”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “disciplined American leadership don't really need to be persuaded of the value of American engagement in the world, but they're skeptical about the discipline part, because they've seen overreach, they've seen instances where it seems like people are taking advantage of us too. So we all tell ourselves right now.”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “So there's lots of things that can be done to delayer the State Department. It's kind of a top heavy institution right now too. And then you've got to build modern skills on top of that. We talked about the revolution in technology. You need to attract people who are conversant in artificial intelligence, synthetic biology because it's the role of the State Department to support a president's effort to help build some workable international rules of the road on these issues. Same is true in climate change, same is true of the increasing significance of economic issues and traditional national security policy. And then third, this is an area that you know far better than I do, I think both the State Department and an elected political leadership need to recognize there's a pretty big domestic disconnect in our society right now between people in Washington and the establishment again in a sense and lots of American citizens who when we preach the virtues of discipline”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “I mean, I think here I will put my optimist hat on, although I understand how difficult this is going to be to do. And I'd say three things. First, you do need a political leadership that understands on this international landscape in this era the significance of diplomacy alongside all of our other tools. Second, I think, you know, State Department itself needs to be a little bit self-critical and reform. As you know from your own experience, individual American diplomats can be incredibly innovative and courageous and entrepreneurial as an institution. The State Department is rarely accused of being too agile or too full of initiatives.”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “It is, but it may work in New York real estate. I don't think it's going to work with Palestinians and Israelis. And third, I think, you know, there's the false assumption that time is on our side. And I think if you just look at demographic realities, sometime in the next decade, Arabs are going to be in a majority in the land that Israel controls from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. So the question is, how do you sustain a Jewish democratic state in those kind of circumstances? And I think there's also collateral damage out there, too, like Jordan, which is a small country, but an important partner of the United States for many years. If the two-state solution really does collapse, you know, that's going to raise a lot of questions about Jordan's identity and its stability too. And that's something we should pay more attention to.”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “And President Trump, you know, which apparently is going to come out sometime early this summer. It could end up putting the last nail in the coffin of a two state solution for Israelis and Palestinians because I think it's based from what little I know of it based on some false assumptions that the United States can help make progress on that issue, not really dealing with the Palestinians, which we haven't been doing directly for more than a year, that somehow you can substitute dealing with some of our Arab state partners for dealing with the Palestinians. And it's a good thing that there are a number of Arab states today who share with Israel a concern about Iran and it's bringing them closer together, but it's not a substitute for Palestinians and Israelis negotiating. It's another false assumption to think that you can substitute economic incentives for people's sense of political dignity. You know, if that were the case, this problem would have been solved a long time.”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “It's hard for me to be anything other than pessimistic right now, and I fear that when the so-called deal of the century is announced and described.”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I'm generally an optimist, although you might not know that from everything we've been discussing. But the Middle East is a place where pessimists always feel right at home. And so an Arab-Israeli issues.”

   2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “I don't know. I mean, you're right. It's not my lane. I mean, I think in diplomacy a lot of times, you know, Secretary Clinton always asked the right questions. I think she and President Obama were a pretty formidable team, as John Kerry was later on. So I don't know, 2016 was such a complicated election. As you know far better than I do.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Look at the second and third order consequences. So I think it's hard to look at Syria in those years as anything other than a policy failure for the United States. But again, it was enormously difficult issue.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Earlier on, I think if you look at everything we did from 2011 through 2015, it's actually pretty impressive. But we stretched it out over a long period of time. Whereas you look at Putin's intervention at September of 2015, which I'm the last person to try to justify, but it wasn't a huge military intervention three dozen years ago. Having said all that, I'm not one of those people who think that if we had done X, Y, or Z in 2011 or 2012, I could sit here with a straight face and say the outcome would have been a lot different. The reality was that not only was Assad was not going to negotiate himself out of existence, the Russians and Iranians were always going to double down, no matter what we did. And the president was right when many of us would make arguments about we should do this or that to ask, okay, so play this out for me.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Or I think an alternative would have been not to set such maximalist goals. And then ironically, I think actually. Use a little bit more assertive means early on in the Civil War when I think that might have given us more leverage not to achieve a military solution. That wasn't, I think, going to happen, but more leverage for American diplomacy on that period. At a moment early in the army.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Yeah, and the truth is the shadow of Iraq 2003 and that strategic disaster hung over, I think, all of our reactions to the Arab Spring and the pace with which those changes came down the pike. I think in Syria what all of us got wrong, me included, was an imbalance of ends and means, you know, the classic challenge you face in statecraft where we set maximalist ends, you know, Assad must go, there's a red line that if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons against its own people, we'll react. And yet our means, I think, turned out to be too minimalist in the sense they were pretty grudging and incremental.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Yeah, I mean, at first I had enormous empathy and sympathy for the president's concern about not getting dragged into another major military intervention in the Middle East. The shadow of...”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Legitimate external threats, whether it's Iran or anybody else, but we should be equally direct and equally blunt in our concerns about overreach, whether it's overreach domestically, you know, the kind of repressive tendencies that caused this regime to murder Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi diplomatic establishment in Turkey, and to push back against external overreach, like in Yemen today, which is... Humanitarian catastrophe, but also I think a strategic catastrophe for the Saudis. As friends, we ought to be honest about our concerns there and not be indulgent.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Self interest, you know, when you have a big stake in counterterrorism cooperation, how does that balance against genuine concern about human rights violations? Having said that, I think in a relationship like the US-Saudi relationship, which matters to both of us, I think it's really important not to check your values at the door. I think people will argue that you have to be careful about pushing values too hard because you're going to disrupt a relationship or make it more brittle. Actually, I think, you know, not raising those kind of concerns is actually what's going to make those societies and leaderships more brittle over time. So in the case of Saudi Arabia, it seems to me the United States ought to be quite strong in our support for legitimate efforts at social and economic modernization, what the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Saman has laid out, hard as it is to achieve. We ought to be strong in our support of Saudi Arabia.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “I'd start in a note of humility because over my three and a half decades as a diplomat, I certainly didn't always get it right in striking the balance between values that matter, not just to Americans, but to lots of people around the world.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Purpose of the administration strategy right now is not really to produce a better nuclear deal, but rather to produce either the capitulation of this Iranian regime or its implosion. And I think those aims are not tethered to history, at least as I've understood it with the audience. We can do a lot of economic damage to Iran. I don't underestimate that for a moment. But I think it tends in some ways to play to the strengths of the hardest of the hardliners in that regime. And I just wouldn't underestimate the dangers of an escalation and of collisions in a part of the world where they really end well.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Your admission, yeah. I didn't mean that in a complimentary way. So there's that erosion of credibility against a pattern of retreat from all the agreements you mentioned. Second, I think we're widening the fissures between us and our closest European allies who are trying to stick with the nuclear agreement, in a sense doing Vladimir Putin's work for him. Third, we're eroding the utility of sanctions over time. Yeah, the Foreign Minister of Germany stand up a year ago and say, all of us need to reduce our vulnerability to the U.S. financial system. So this won't happen overnight, but we'll wake up five or six years from now and find that sanctions, which we've been always used well, but when we've used them strategically have been a pretty potent instrument, aren't as potent anymore. And then there's another set of dangers of collisions, I think, you know, whether it's between us and the Iranians in the Middle East or between some of our closest partners in the Iranians. And then the real danger of escalation too. And, you know, I worry that the main...”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “I think it was an historic mistake, and I think you can measure the impact in a couple of ways. One is sort of the collateral damage of it. I think it does further erode American credibility. That's an overused term in Washington, as you know. It's often used by people like me, card carrying members of the Washington Establishment, to push presidents in directions, which may check”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “That's right. And you see lots of populist imitators and nationalist leaders in Europe who do exactly the same thing. But they don't offer plan B. They don't offer an alternative vision of, okay, these challenges are real, but here are the ways in which we need to understand them, and here are the ways in which we need to try to get ahead of them.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Right. And so that you can understand entirely why people feel that deep sense of not just anxiety, but resentment of the people who benefit from those changes. And that's, you know, ultimately that's the challenge of leadership, especially in democratic systems, is to be honest with people about the changes that are inevitable, that you can't turn the clock back in different parts of the manufacturing sector in the United States, but you can adapt to it. You can think ahead, you can focus on education in other areas where you can help cushion the effects of some of those changes and then look ahead to a place where, you know, the United States can be a successful and competitive as anyone else can, if not more so.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “You do. Well, you've written and spoken about this as eloquently as anyone, but I mean, you know, I was in the UK two weeks ago and we're clearly having a nervous breakdown on both sides of the Atlantic right now in some ways. But you can see some of the same sources of anxiety creating all of those tensions in societies. It's uncertainty about what the revolution in technology is going to mean, whether robotics and automation are going to displace workers on a huge scale. It's concern about inequalities, which are real in our society just as they are in parts of Europe.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “self interest to something for suckers it's much more focused on the self part than the enlightened and I think that actually erodes our real strengths in the world today rather than takes advantage of them as well”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “No, I think that's true. And I think, first, I think President Trump tapped a pretty rich vein in American society, the sense that we're being taken for suckers, that allies aren't doing their fair share and adversaries are taking advantage. So that's part of his own political genius, I think, in a way. But the question is, what do you do about that? And I think presidents, you know, I worked for five presidents and ten secretaries of state, administrations of both parties. What animated American foreign policy at its best was a sense of enlightened self-interest, a sense that our narrow self-interest, which obviously always needs to come first in a sense, but that we can strengthen our hand in the world if we're trying to mobilize as many other countries as share a common sense of purpose as we can. And I think President Trump tends to see that ideal of enlightenment.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “to push NATO partners to spend more on defense. It's not the first president who's tried to do that, but he's right. He's right to push the Chinese on predatory trade and investment practices. But where I think he's wrong is by casting doubt on what should matter most to Americans right now, which are alliances, our capacity to mobilize coalitions of countries as well. And that's our real source of strength on the landscape as far out into the 21st century as I can see.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “I mean, I think that the problem now is that, you know, as we become so erratic, adversaries are not going to sit on their hands and rivals, they're going to take advantage of that moment as Putin is trying to do, as Xi Jinping and China is trying to do in a different way. Allies start to lose faith and they hedge when our behavior becomes less predictable for them when we cast, the president casts so many doubts about the utility of alliances, the kind of things that really set us apart from lonelier power like China and Russia. And then I think institutions start to teeter, international institutions that we work so hard to build and defend over more than 70 years since the end of the Second World War. We didn't always get it right. And of course those institutions and those alliances need to be adapted. President Trump's rights.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “But I suspect, you know, I suspect that's what's animating a lot of what the Southern District of New York is doing, the New York Attorney General and others. And, you know, I suspect that's another of the sources of anxiety.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “You know, it's a really good question, and I don't know, is the honest answer? I think several things. First, the president clearly has a bad case of autocrat envy, and in that sense he's Putin as the kind of leader that in a weird way he admires. I think second, the president seems deeply insecure about the legitimacy of his selection and that the more people speculate about a Russian role, the more questions that chaos on the legitimacy of that election. So there's that sense of insecurity. Third, you know, I've always thought, you know, having dealt with Russia for many years, that you do need to follow the money. And there's the whole issue of investments that may have come from Russia or oligarchs in the former Soviet Union and Trump properties. I have no idea what the truth of that is.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Right, because from his point of view, I don't know that he ever had any expectations that he was going to be able to work with a Trump administration to roll back sanctions and everything else. He tried, but I don't know that he was convinced that would happen. But next best thing for him was a dysfunctional United States and erratic leadership that's consumed by its own internal political challenges and is not nearly as formidable a leadership force on the international landscape from Putin's point of view, that creates more space for Russia. So I think he's seen it as an opportunity.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “I think efforts with Putin, in my experience, efforts like that, especially from an American president, to ingratiate yourself, are seen as a sign of weakness and manipulability. So I think if you had been able to see the cartoon balloon coming out of Putin's head on that stage in Helsinki, it would have said what an easy mark.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “on a defiantly charmless, but he was delivering a message then. And so, you know, based on his conviction that we were determined to keep Russia down, when he saw an opportunity to take advantage of polarization and dysfunction in the U.S. political system 2016, he seized it and in some ways succeeded beyond his wildest imagination”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Know is built on a scale meant to intimidate visitors, especially new American ambassadors. So you walk through these huge halls down long corridors, you come to the end of one huge hall. There are these two-story bronze doors, and you're kept waiting there for a minute just to let all this sink in, and then the doors crack open, out comes Vladimir Putin, who's, you know, not, as you know, not particularly impressive, he's five, six, but he carries himself with great self assurance. He comes walking toward me and before I got a word out of my mouth, said, you know, you Americans need to listen more. You can't have everything your own way anymore. We can have effective relations, but not just on your terms. That was vintage Vladimir Putin's not subtle.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “You know, it was both, I think, a matter of conviction and convenience for Putin to point at connect dots that really weren't meant to be connected in the sense of U.S. activities that he would see as efforts to undermine him. He drew a straight line from the weakness of the 1990s to the color revolutions in Georgia and then Ukraine, and so all this as an effort to undermine him and keep Russia down, not trying to justify that, that's just his conviction. It was also convenient for him because he could use an enemy at the gate to justify very repressive practices at home, and Putin, in my experience, was always a very combustible combination of grievance and insecurity and ambition, all wrapped up together. I remember first meeting I had with him as the newly arrived U.S. Ambassador Summer 2005. So I'm meeting with him at the Kremlin, which as you know,”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “No, it wasn't. And, you know, in a way, Putin and Medvedev, even though they're not all that far apart in age, came from different generations. You know, Putin was raised professionally in the KGB. You know, the most searing experience for him was the collapse of the Soviet Union and what was in effect defeat in the Cold War. Medvedev's whole professional life largely came after the end of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “The New START Treaty, which was a really important step forward, I think. But we didn't have a lot of economic ballast in the relationship. And you also had a Vladimir Putin behind the scenes, still the central decision maker, who became increasingly concerned, I think, especially after the revolution in Libya and Gaddafi's overthrow, you know, in which Russia had actually allowed a security council resolution to be passed that legitimized the use of force to help topple that eventually helped topple Gaddafi. I think Putin became increasingly convinced that the United States was taking advantage of Russia and he needed to push back.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “You know, our relationship with Russia had cratered. We thought it had hit an all time low. We've discovered since then how much lower it can go after the war between Russia and Georgia in August of 2008. It made sense from our cold-blooded self interest as well as Russia's to explore areas where we could cooperate. So we eventually did on Afghanistan, on the Iranian nuclear issue.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “It did. I mean, I think, you know, what was termed the reset in policy in 2009, 2010 to this day, I think was a smart thing for the United States to do.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “A shrewd thing for the president to do. It gave Putin a chance to get some things off his chest. The president listened. But, you know, I mean, that at least opened up the possibility of a more serious dialogue. The challenge, of course, became, you know, Putin was prime minister, he was no longer president of Russia in that period. So one of the structural problems we faced and the president faced was how do you sustain connection with Vladimir Putin, even though he wasn't president sitting in an office in the Kremlin was clearly the central decision maker in Russia.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “It's true. Well, I had had the bright idea riding out on the limousine with the president to suggest that maybe the way to break the ice would be to ask Putin, you know, what he thought had gone right and gone wrong. 55 minutes later after a pure monologue by Putin and a listing of grievances, I was wondering whether I had a future in the State Department or in the Obama administration at that point. But it was actually, I think.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “demographic problems you know is a solid basis for competition in the 21st century i don't i think that's an illusion too um but again you know you when when putin came to power and especially as he was surfing on a $130 a barrel oil in the Russian economy bounced back he was determined to push back He thought we had taken advantage of Russia's moment of historical weakness so when he saw dysfunction and polarization in our system he was going to try to take advantage”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “I do think we made a mistake you fast forward a decade later in the spring of 2008 when we pushed towards the end of the George W. Bush administration to open the door to formal membership for Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. almost inevitably engendered a reaction, not just from Putin, but for a whole range of people across the Russian political elite. I think each of us, Americans and Russians, had our illusions over the last quarter century since the end of the Cold War. Ours was that, you know, we could eventually maneuver over or around any Russian leadership because in the early 90s we could. But there came a point where Russia was able to push back and Putin took a particular relish in doing that. Russians had their own illusions. I think Putin's had the illusion that an authoritarian system which is essentially a one-dimensional economy, which”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “I think in the first phases of it, you know, in the mid-1990s, late 1990s, when we first admitted Poland and some of the Central and East European states, you know, when I was sitting in Moscow as the political chief, you know, I tried to highlight the reality that we shouldn't underestimate the Russian reaction to that, that at some point they would be back economically and politically at least, and there'd be this sense that they were taken advantage of. But to be honest, I never thought that either that wave or the later wave which brought the Baltic states into NATO were lethal to the US-Russian relationship. Poles had their own sense of historical insecurity caught between the ambitions of Germany and Russia. So you can understand the need to help anchor Poland in a sense of security and possibility.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “In Russia at the time? I mean, I think there was a fair amount of empathy, I think, in the Clinton administration, an enormous amount of effort was put in to helping manage Russian sensibilities. You know, there was a debate that broke out late in the 1990s about who lost Russia at a time when it was clear that Russia was beginning to turn in a more authoritarian direction. I always thought that was the wrong question. I mean, Russia was never ours to lose. Russians had to reshape their own society, and they had kind of lost trust in themselves. I'm not a fatalist. I don't think we were fated to have the kind of ugly adversarial relationship we have today. But there was a certain amount of competition that was always going to be built into it. So, sure, could we have managed different moments better”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Vaguely, I mean, I was the senior political officer at the US Embassy in Moscow in the early 90s when Vladimir Putin was then a kind of gray, unknown deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. And I remember being in one meeting with him when I was visiting St. Petersburg. But I'm sure, you know, I made as much impression on him as he did on me. I didn't ever expect I'd come back as the U.S. ambassador. I'm sure he didn't expect he was going to be the president of Russia. But I have always thought that if you want to understand the smoldering aggressiveness of Vladimir Putin's Russia, it helps to understand the disorder, the chaos, the mix of hope and humiliation that was Boris Yeltsin's Russia that was the Russia I knew first in the early nineteen nineties.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yeah, I mean, I remember, you know, even before the war in the summer of 2002, two colleagues of mine in the Middle East bureau and the State Department had had the most depressing brainstorming session of our careers where we tried to lay out all the things we thought could go wrong after Saddam was toppled. Because in a sense, we always saw, and here I don't mean to minimize the military challenge, but the easy part was toppling Saddam. The hard part was always going to be on the day after. And so we called this memorandum, which we sent to Secretary Powell, who really didn't need to be convinced of this, the perfect storm. And, you know, you read it in hindsight, it's declassified now. We got it about half right. We got some things right, some things wrong. But it was an honest effort to lay out our concerns. And I think in any disciplined civilian service, just like the U.S. military, you have an obligation to be honest about your concerns. I wish I had been more effective.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “To military leverage and economic leverage, but you need to strike a balance so that it becomes your tool of first resort because, you know, history shows us that at least attempting to use diplomacy in a serious way spares you enormous expense in American blood and treasure, which comes with the use of force, especially if you use it prematurely or you overuse it.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “I mean, I think the drift began even before that. You know, after the end of the Cold War, it was easy for all of us as Americans to get a little bit complacent because our weight in the world was such that, you know, it seems sometimes that diplomacy did matter so much. But 9-11 was such a deep shock to our system that it kind of further emphasized military intelligence tools. And diplomacy tended sometimes to be treated as a kind of under-resourced afterthought. And so I think at this moment, another plastic moment on the international landscape is I think President Obama recognized very well you've got to look at the whole range of tools in promoting American interests overseas. And at a time when we're no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block, the rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, diplomacy is actually more important than ever. You're never going to succeed in diplomacy unless it's harnessed, you know.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “View that was the paleo conservative view that after 9 11, you know, toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan was necessary but not sufficient. You needed to send a stronger signal to people in a part of the world that in their view only understood one language which was force and Saddam became the tempting next target for a lot of people.”

    2019-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 325 — Bill Burns · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source