Transcripts For CSPAN Former Ambassador William Taylor Remar

Morning, all. Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is chris, i direct the leadership and practice initiatives here at the Elliott School of International Affairs. And on behalf of the brigadier, and on behalf of vice dean Alanna Feldman who joined us this morning, its my pleasure to introduce and welcome before us today ambassador william taylor, junior. Ambassador, within the world of foreignpolicy and National Security, is very well known and his reputation long preceded him. Ive had the pleasure of working and knowing ambassador taylor, my friend bill for a good 30 years. And one of the benefits of a very difficult situation that our country faces a few months ago and this bill taylor faced, given his subpoena and testimony, led to the fact that the nation at large got to see a magnificent servant. And thats why we are bringing him here today. Because he has served the country superbly across his career. He graduated from west point, he was the Cadet Company commander. He served in vietnam, he stayed an extra six months. Served in vietnam for 18 months when he could have left after 12. He served in a Rifle Company and then commanded, served in a rifle platoon and then commanded a company. He received a bronze star and an air medal for valor. When he returned to the United States he worked for a while in the department of energy and served senator bill bradley on his staff for 5 years. After that he went to the department of defense, worked in the think tank and served once again as an advisor to the Us Ambassador to nato, william taft. And then build again along service, period of service at the department of state area was a coordinator for assistance to the former soviet union, after the collapse of the soviet union and the beginning of the Us Assistance Program he worked a lot in congressional relations. Thats where he and i met and we had many vigorous discussions, not always in agreement at all about the nature of those programs. And but then and now of course ive developed the highest admiration for him. He has been the go to guy for hard problems across the us government. He served in afghanistan as a coordinator of assistance programs. Once again, he did the same in iraq. He worked for the middle east quartet and former World Bank President James Wolfenson on programs on behalf of what all parties at that time hoped would be middle east peace. He worked for the middle east quartet and former World Bank President James Wolfenson on programs on behalf of what all parties at that time hoped would be middle east peace. He was called to service as ambassador to ukraine in the Bush Administration in 2006, served there for 3 years and he most recently in his career served as the executive Vice President at the u. S. Institute of peace where bill and i again had occasion to work together. And of course, as all of you know he was asked to serve yet again as interim meeting acting ambassador in ukraine. So the point of asking bill to come here today is to reflect on this marvelous career of public service, exemplary leadership throughout ad to provide for all of us gathered here, at example of what constitutes good leadership, what constitutes able model for public service. Without further ado, jointly in welcoming ambassador bill taylor. [applause] mr. Taylor they told me i should turn this on. Now you can probably hear me. Thank you very much. That is a kind introduction. You said people in the Foreign Policy world know me, they did not until about a couple months ago. It is a great opportunity for me to be here, thank you for inviting me and all of you for coming to have this conversation. I look forward to having the conversation with you about the topics chris talked about. In terms of being known, we all get our 15 minutes of fame and i am on minute 14 and i will be glad when the 15 are done. But it is an opportunity, this 15 minutes is an opportunity for me to get a couple messages out that if i did not have this 15 minutes, people would not listen to me. I will take advantage of you, take advantage of this opportunity to say a couple things about our u. S. Policy towards ukraine and that leads into the topics that we can further discuss. I have a couple messages about ukraine. We should support ukraine because it is on the frontline of our freedom. The frontline of the attack the russians are mounting. [inaudible] ukraine is on each of the battlefield on this war. The military invasion i mention is the obvious one. There is the occupation of crimea and the occupation continues. Six years after election interference. The russians have interfered in elections, figuring out what worked and what does not work. That interfering in european elections. We know they interfered in 2016. Many Government Agencies have given us all the help we could ask for on that. And we know, the russians have begun to interfere. This is the kind of thing some of you have read professor tim snyders book, the road to unfreedom. This is an important book. It started russia, where they are not free at the elections are not free at a then move through ukraine, europe, the United States. Election interference, another example, a battlefield where ukraine is on the front line is on energy as a weapon. The russians have designed, built, almost completed but not quite, a pipeline from russia into germany that would bypass ukraine as well as europeans on russian gas. Russians have hijacked you and hacked into ukrainian infrastructure but not just ukrainian infrastructure. They did it and europe and they have done it in the United States to a lesser degree. Talk into this . The other one seems to work. I am not starting over . If i did not get any of that there we ago. Want to take this . All set . Sorry. It is the russians. [laughter] mr. Taylor so i was making this case for a robust defense against the russian aggression in this hybrid war. Focusing on ukraine, but others. I was making these arguments at the United States institute of peace from the crawford of u. S. Come comfort of u. S. Ib, i was able to observe and make these points from the sidelines. Then about not quite a year ago, last may, i got a phone call. The first was from the state department. A friend of mine said, bill, would you be willing to go back out to ukraine . You know i did this. It is not clear at the time. Hypothetically, sure. The next day, same guy calls up, its not hypothetical anymore. He says, would you be willing to go out, and i said, then i need to do some consulting, some checking to see if people that i know would have some advice. One person i know is my wife, and i checked with her and her advice was, dont go. I heard recently that there is, that there is a hashtag and its for wives whose husbands dont listen to them. And that hashtag is wereallmrstaylor. I didnt realize this is a thing , but apparently it is, as i was told. So i got her advice. I also went to a mentor and we will talk maybe about mentorship later on. Well respected. I certainly respect him a lot and he said, look, if your country asks you to do something, you do it. If you can be effective. Thats an important caveat. Its important these days, because if you cant be effective, then you shouldnt do this. However, he said, you should find out if you can be effective and he said, the only way, bill, youre going to know if youre going to have the support of the u. S. Government for you out in ukraine is to talk to the secretary of state. And i did and i talked to secretary pompeo before i went out there and we had a very frank conversation and he assured me that the strong support for ukraine would continue. I was concerned about that and people in this room understand why someone might be concerned about the support for ukraine coming from the administration but he was very clear and convincing, so with that assurance, i agreed to go out there. So i go out to the ukraine, i went there in june. Got there last june. The embassy was, turmoil is too strong, but it was unsettled. It was concerned, was upset. Their ambassador, ambassador yovanovitch, had been suddenly and abruptly, without explanation pulled out of ukraine. Heres the boss leading the country and the full Embassy Mission all of a sudden was not there. And without much convincing indication of why, what the problem was, what the issues were. So when i got there, i had a little bit of information, but not much. But what i could do was sit, stand, talk in a meeting kind of like this, a little bit bigger, the embassy out there is big as there are 900 people at the embassy. 300 americans and 600 ukrainians, and i had a meeting with them soon as i got there to try to both get a sense from them in a conversation, but also give them a sense that what they are doing is important, so i had three messages for them. The first was, what we are doing, what we the u. S. Embassy in ukraine are doing is a very important time in the history of the ukraine. You will remember, there was an election in ukraine, where a comedian was elected. Volodymyr zelensky was very well known as the star of a tv series in which he played the president of the ukraine. And he was very well known by the ukrainians. It turns out, ill come back to this, but it turns out he was very well known by russians because this tv show is called servant of the people. It was widely viewed and in the show, president jolobaradko played a president going after corruption and going after oligarchs and defending ukrainian autonomy from even corruption, but also from places like the imf or the world bank and these are oligarchs, corruption, even imf are the institutions that the ukrainians love to hate. So president jolobaradko was going after them in the show and he appealed to ukrainians sense of justice. A respect for the rule of law. It was a very smart tv show and it turned out that it got him elected and he was just taking office when i arrived and when masha was pulled out and i arrived and it was an important time to be working with this new administration. A month after i got there was the parliamentary election and again, president zelensky and his party, by the way, is named the same thing as his tv show so his party is servant of the people. And servant of the people won 60 percent of the seats in the parliament so he could do things with the parliament and with the Prime Minister and with government and with the cabinet. So he was able to move some things along, in particular in the fight against corruption but also in the attempt to end the war that i talked about a minute ago. Those were his two top priorities, end the war on honorable ukrainian terms but also fight the corrupt oligarchs that were threatening both the ukraines future and his presidency. So i made the point to the embassy that that mission is really important. Second point i made to them was that there was strong support for what we are doing. What we, the u. S. Embassy, is doing in kiev right now and in forwarding, pushing forward on a strong u. S. Ukrainian relationship. It turns out we had a great opportunity with this new government and so its important time for the u. S. Government to be working with the ukrainian government, the new ukrainian government, and i was able to say to them based on my conversation with secretary pompeo that weve got strong support. I could point out to them that the congress, republicans and democrats, house and senate, strong support, bilateral support. Chris mentioned when we were working together in the 1990s on support for all 15 of the former soviet states, strong support, but chris will remember, on the other side, the senate side, senator mcconnell would put money aside for ukraine. And people would push back on senator mcconnell for this earmark. But it turns out in retrospect, that that was a good investment. We invested a long time in that, but my point is bipartisan, that bipartisan support continues to this day. You see sanctions built, passing the senate. 98 to 2. You see increased support on Security Assistance in the National Defense authorization act from 250 million to 300 million this year, passing 86 to 8. So the bipartisan support is there. We know about the ranker. We know about the partisan fighting on the other thing, on impeachment and whistleblowers, thats a different story. What i was able to say had yet to be told of course when i got there, but i was able to tell the embassy that we have bipartisan support, strong support, house and senate, also the Defense Department, state department, Treasury Department, u. S. Id, so we could do our jobs out there and be confident that we had the support of washington. The third thing i told them was, lets just focus on what we are trying to do. I talked about the mission, we got support, focus on that and not let politics or any other of the swirl of other issues, political issues, domestic get in the way. Keep our focus, and that helped, so we all moved forward. Thats certainly what i was interested in doing and were able to do that, so we began. And as i went through the summer, last summer it is now, it became clear to me that there were two channels of policymaking and policy execution. Ill call the First Channel the regular channel, and this is the institutional channel, and i will talk a little bit about institutions and the importance of institutions, but the regular channel of policy making and policy implementation for ukraine was the embassy. The ukraine desk at the state department, Deputy Assistant secretary of state, and the secretary of state. People like alex vindman and fiona hill, famous names now, more famous thankfully than mine. They may not think so. But more famous. But thats the regular channel. And most, this is important. Most of the policy and the implementation of that policy goes through the regular channel even now. So the Security Assistance that i mentioned. Regular channel. Political assistance where we try to support the ukrainians as they are negotiating with the russians with some support from the germans and the french and we have been there. Weve been supporting that, and we should do more. But thats part of the regular channel. Usaid has a great program, state department has a good program on rule of law. Those kinds of assistance programs, support for technical assistance, thats the regular channel, and its supported by the congress, and as i mentioned earlier, overwhelmingly the congress has been passing those funds, so that kind of the regular channel, but i figured out slowly, i should have figured this out more quickly, but it became clear to me that there was a small part of the u. S. Policy towards ukraine that was Going Forward in an irregular channel. And this irregular channel was the product of and led by a private lawyer. Probably everybody in this room knows who im talking about. And he was able to get the assistance, excuse me, of a couple of wellmeaning diplomats in this. You guys are good . Thank you very much. So this irregular channel tried to have an effect on one small part of the u. S. Policy towards ukraine and you all know the story, i dont have to tell the story, and if anybody doesnt know it, i can refer you to some congressional testimony where i lay it out in great detail. But the punch line here is, in the end, the regular channel prevailed. In the end, the regular channel kind of reasserted itself. It was uncomfortable and unusual, thats why i call it irregular, but the pressure reasserted itself. The assistance went forward. Our two president s got together, president zelensky, President Trump got together in new york. The bipartisan support for ukraine continues. The bipartisan support for ukraine continues. That is still on track. So what i wanted to do, and chris is right, this is my punch line, so this is the bottom line on this institutional bit. The regular channel is the institutional conscience of the u. S. Government. This regular channel is the institution that forms policy in this case for the ukraine, but more broadly. It includes professionals. It includes people who have been in the government for a long time and people who have not been in the government for a long time. Probably some people here have worked in this professional institution, an institution that forms u. S. Foreign policy and there are probably people in this room who will go into that institution, that regular channel. The regular channel. Thats an important, thats a very Important Institution and its a very important component of our government and it provides the norms and it kind of keeps us on track. Sometimes, its burdensome and sometimes its cumbersome, but nonetheless its designed with all of its intricacies, with all the support from the congress, and input from the congress, theres not always support as chris indicated, sometimes there are disagreements, but that disagreement and that support from the congress is important input into that foreignpolicy institutional arrangement, plus what the Treasury Department thinks and what the Defense Department thinks and what state thinks and how it gets integrated into the National Security council. That institution is important and there are a lot of institutions. That are important. Jim steiners earlier book the road to unfreedom, he also has a book on. He. One thing he points out is important of institutions and strengthening institutions. What may they be, they may be George Washington university as an institution. Higher education more broadly. The u. S. Foreignpolicy structure is an institution. The private sector, these are all pieces that provide guidelines and provide direction and provided conscience for what were all trying to do. Let me stop there and hope that something i said was prompted some disagreement or other arguments, i