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

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1. “Did yeah, you know, for the sake as much as anything of legitimacy, to get a resolution that would authorize the U.S. use of force. And, you know, in that administration, George W. Bush administration the first term, there were some starkly different views. And I remember one time going to a meeting in the Situation Room that neither Powell nor his deputy, Rich Armitage, could attend, I think it was at September of 2002. And I was dutifully making the argument for a Security Council resolution on grounds that it would strengthen our legitimacy if we had to use force. And I remember Vice President Cheney sitting across the table from me and listening very politely to what I had to say, but then saying in his usual laconic way, the only legitimacy we need comes on the back of an M1A1 tank. And that was the contrary view in that administration. It was not so much the NOCO-con.”

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

2. “Right, allies, partners, even if you don't need them militarily, because the truth is the US military was strong enough in the spring of 1991 to have accomplished that task without a lot of help. But politically and diplomatically, it made a huge difference to have that huge group of coalition partners. So that was another lesson because you need company on the takeoff if you're going to be successful on the landing, I think, in a lot of ways. So that was a part of it too. And then for my generation of foreign service officers with experience in the Middle East, there was also the shadow of Lebanon in the 1980s where we, the United States, had sort of stumbled into the middle of a very bloody sectarian war without any real sense of what the sort of vital interest for the United States was that what was at stake. And so that, I think, informed our concerns too.”

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

3. “I mean, it shaped it considerably in the sense that it gave all of us, I think, a healthy regard for the complexities of the day after in Iraq. I mean, the same reason that Bush and Baker decided not to move ahead in the spring of 1991. I think it also underscored the value of having a lot of company on the takeoff in any operation like this. I mean, the desert storm. In other words, Alice.”

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

4. “Exactly the right decision. It was later criticized, but I think for me it'll always be a lesson in how you need to be restrained and disciplined, even at points when your power could tempt you to do all sorts of stuff.”

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

5. “Could have, and it was a reminder to me, a lesson to me, and the value of restraint at certain times because they understood, I think, President Bush and Baker did, that if they had done that, it would have wrecked the coalition that they had put together so painstakingly in desert storm and the effort to push Saddam out of Kuwait, because that was the premise, to push him out of Kuwait. It wasn't to topple the regime. They also, I think, had a healthy respect for all the challenges of the day after. you know, if you did topple Saddam Hussein. And then I think for Baker also, he already had in mind the value of using that moment and really unparalleled American leverage to try to put together the Madrid peace conference to bring Arab Israelis and Palestinians together in the same room around the same negotiating agenda, which he was later successful in doing. But I think, so for all those reasons, I think it was exactly...”

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

6. “Balancing ends and means. And at some point, taking some really important calculated risks like they. But also then demonstrating restraint. In some ways it would have been the easiest thing in the world to continue to pursue Iraqi forces.”

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

7. “I'm not trying to exaggerate my role. I was a mid-level officer at that time, but I used to travel with him all the time on his trips. And, you know, he had a sense of strategic purpose. He understood that this moment of singular American dominance with the end of the Cold War wasn't a permanent condition. He had to use that leverage to try to shape an order that would outlast, you know, American dominance. He also had a sense of strategic empathy, as did President Bush forty one. They understood the predicament of Mikhail Gorbachev and what the Soviet Union was going through as it collapsed. You didn't see them, you know, spiking the football on top of the Berlin Wall. You didn't see them swaggering at a moment when by any rational measure, you know, American statesmen could have swaggered. I always learned a lot of lessons from that. There was a sense of humility that it wasn't shy about the exercise of power, but a sense of humility about the importance of back...”

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

8. “The Secret Sure. Well, it really was, you know, this is 1989 to begin again in 1993. It was one of those plastic moments in international history that comes along maybe a couple times a century. We saw it in 1945 and the years after that, the end of the Second World War, the beginning of the Cold War. And I think we saw it again in 1989, the end of the Cold War. But both of those periods intersected with a group of American statesmen in the case of 1989 led by President George H.W. Bush and James Baker as the Secretary of State, Brent Skokroff, the National Security Advisor, who were truly impressive in the way in which they understood how best to apply American power and diplomacy. And they understood the landscape and its transformations and the opportunities as well as the challenges that it created. Baker in particular was a really impressive person to work for.”

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

9. “He did. Yeah, he did. And I remember going over and trying to persuade him that he should find someone more senior to be the head of the Middle East office there. And he basically said, I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think you should do it. And I was smart enough, at least to understand that that was my cue to walk out of the office and do the best I could. But it was a good education in how Washington works.”

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

10. “Was I mean, and it was a good education for me because I worked at the National Security Council staff. I ended up at a pretty young age running the Middle East office there. But right after I arrived, the Iran-Contra scandal broke, which almost brought down a presidency in Ronald Reagan. So I saw in those first few months how an NSC staff system should not work. But then, you know, Colin Powell ended up becoming the national security advisor. I worked for him. I saw a much more disciplined National Security Council staff.”

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

11. “Yeah, I mean, I think increasingly, especially for my generation of American diplomats, it became incredibly important to have an understanding of how the policy process works in Washington, which you can only get from working in Washington, as well as how to navigate foreign landscapes overseas. Traditionally, that had been the focus of American diplomats, lots of people I admired in the generations before mine spent almost their entire career serving overseas. And so I think in this day and age, and certainly in my generation, you've got to be able to do both if you're going to be an effective diplomat. In other words, if you're sitting in the White House situation room, as you well know, you know, it helps if you can bring a granular sense of foreign leaders and how you navigate those complicated places. But by the same token, when you're working overseas, it's hard to be effective if you don't understand how to help shape the...”

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

12. “Oh, when I turned up in Baghdad, I think they were relieved in a sense, but you know, it didn't exactly create much expectation about my future as a diplomat, I don't think.”

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

13. “Lots of others. So, you know, I then spent the next three and a half decades as a foreign service officer worried that my pay was going to get docked for the cost of the next.”

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

14. “Yeah, I used to tell this story to new foreign service officers to remind them that you don't have to have a rocket-propelled start in any profession. I was persuaded, actually, I thought this was a great idea, a great adventure to drive a truck filled with communications equipment from Amman, capital of Jordan, to Baghdad in Iraq, middle of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and thought this would be a great adventure until I got to the Iraqi border and an Iraqi security officer who bore a striking resemblance to Saddam Hussein ended up confiscating the truck and all of its contents. I had to drive under police escort the rest of the way to Baghdad through Anbar province and a lot of places that later became well known to Americans Fallujah.”

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

15. “Does no leadership matters enormously whether it's in a really complicated part of the world like the Middle East or any place else? And people like Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin who are prepared to take risks and have a larger vision of the interests of their countries and the value of peace. When they get removed from the scene and that kind of a brutal way, it leaves a void. And then you see the way in which people stumble in foreign policy.”

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

16. “Yeah, I did that summer as well, which was fascinating. Ambassador Ielts, the U.S. Ambassador then went out to deliver a message to Sadat and I went along with Alts' family. And it was fascinating. It was a very informal lunch with Sadat at his vacation home on the Mediterranean. Know you get exposed, I think, to the world of diplomacy and international affairs at a very early age. So in that sense, I was really fortunate.”

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

17. “The war in 73, and I was there in June of 1974 when President Nixon on his last legs as president made his trip to the Middle East too. So I remember him coming through Cairo in that period, again, as a very impressionable 18-year-old. So, you know, I started to get hot.”

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

18. “What's in your future? Yeah, I mean, I wish I could say that I had a sort of neat plan from an early age. When I was 18, one of my best friends in high school's father became the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, so the summer of 1974. So I spent four months that summer living in Cairo, started to learn Arabic. That was my first exposure really to the world overseas, but also to the world of diplomacy too. So I got a preview of it then.”

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

19. “Not a lot. You know, my dad didn't bring the office home, but you sort of grow up with it too. So in a way, that was my exposure to public service. I mean, I saw it through the eyes of military service, but, you know, it gave me a sense of, you know, the satisfaction, the fulfillment that you can derive from that too.”

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

20. “Kind of poignant him, and I saw my dad, you know, who's now 87 and doing great, thank God. But, you know, it was 30 years ago that he helped to negotiate that treaty, which was a big step forward at the time. And of course, now it's about to die on the vine. And so a lot of that old arms control architecture that was built up in the worst of the Cold War, you know, I think is beginning to fall away. And that's a real shame. But no, I'm enormously proud of my dad.”

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

21. “It makes you adaptable. I think it certainly gives you a good sense of your own country too. And a lot of times professional diplomats, the challenge you run into is you absorb yourself in other societies. And you can lose touch with your own. And, you know, I was lucky because I was equipped from that experience growing up in the way that I knew my own society pretty well and its strengths and its diversity and physical beauty and everything else. And so I always try to draw on that as a diplomat overseas.”

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

22. “Perpetually. It's true. No, it's a hard adjustment sometimes, but when you're in that world in an army family, sort of like foreign service families, that's just the way it is. And so you think that that's normal. In a way, it had its benefits. You know, I love playing basketball and baseball and high school, and I was mediocre at both. But, you know, if you had a bad season in one place, you could reinvent yourself the next time. No internet.”

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

23. “Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and spent, you know, I grew up bouncing from one army post to another around the U.S. I went to three different high schools, started in California, then Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.”

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