Lovely phrase the weapons of the spirit. The power you get from your belief in god. And at the end of the day, nothing can beat that. I tell a story bat about a william who on the strength of her faith forgives the murderer of heir daughter. The last story in the book is about a village in the mountains of france, a protestant village, that openly takes in jews during the Second World War in complete defiance of the nazis. And theres no mystery why. Two sets of people who have no external material advantage. They have no formal power. They had no money. They had nothing. But what they have is something in their hearts that says, i am empowered by god to do the right thing. And thats enough. And its very both uplifting and also kind of i was very writing this book moved me in a way that writing my previous books did not for that very fact. Just by the end i was to sit in the backyard of a womans a little bungalow in winnipeg and talk to a woman whose daughter was murdered brutally by a sexual predator, and who stood up on the day that her tortured daughters body was found, stood up in front of a press conference of 100 people, you know, waving microphones in her face and said, without even knowing who the murderer was, whoever he is, i am on the path to forgiving him. That was to hear her say that, just the more it floored me then and floors me still, and you cannot but have awe for the power of that kind of thing. If you hear it first hand. Thank you all. [applause] next on the booktv, charles gati, editor of zbig and a panel dignitaries talk about the life and career of former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. This is about two hours. [applause] so while my fellow panelists are getting seated, its my great pleasure and honor to be able to lead this discussion. One of my College Professors used to speak about the great chain of being, medieval idea about interconnectedness. I always like to think about a great chain of being in Foreign Policy and Strategic Thinking about Foreign Policy. In that chain sort of begins with the person that were honoring today in our modern history with trinity and Henry Kissinger, the man with whom his career has always been linked. But the other links in that chain are seated in front of you. Its fasting to read American History and think about how the ideas, strategies, challenges are passed from person to person in this amazing american story of Foreign Policy, decision and discovery. So in that spirit were going to try to talk in the brief time that we have come in the spirit of Zbigniew Brzezinski and a great chain about the big ideas that wouldnt do justice if we talk about little ones. But i want to start by asking, remember, the panelists will briefly share with the audience the first time you remember meeting Zbigniew Brzezinski. Madeleine. Happy and very glad to be with my colleagues and everybody. There is a connection to science, because what happened was i did my first year of graduate school insides and then we moved to new york and i transferred to columbia. And i took a course from Zbigniew Brzezinski on compared of comity. Now, at wellesley and also at sites, ive been trained on the soviet bloc, and then to be with zbig it was able to discuss something that nobody talked about in 1953 which was impaired of communism. He has had this capability of really analyzing the world as it evolved better than anybody that i know. Secretary gates . The first time i met zbig was when interviewed for a job in the spring of 1977. And since i dont go way back ill just tell you one of my most memorable Early Experiences with zbig that i was recounting to him earlier. In the carter white house, the president as an energysaving they shed all the thermostats [laughter] and so it was very warm in the summer time. But zbigs office was always cool. I realized this a couple of weeks after the start to work for him, it was the coolest place in the entire white house. And i finally realized what he had done. Were going to talk about strategic brilliance but this was tactical brilliance. He had moved a lamp under the thermostats. [laughter] and the temperature police never caught on. [laughter] well, i met him because i was at the staff when he arrived. I had been hired by Brent Scowcroft as a navy ensign, and esso farsighted to build location i have for the job was i had an active security clearance. On the basis of that they brought me over and i was assigned a wonderful project, and arms control project which had a name an anachronism which was an acronym, lost in history called the mutual and balanced force reduction talks in europe. And, boy, i knew everything about it and i was asked at one point to repair a memorandum to National Security advisor. Describing the marble that was transport negotiation. It went on separate pages and i think it is true that the new National Security advisor showed great discretion and did not read the memo at all. When he was he said to me, you are going to work with Sam Huntington and she will try to develop a cowtown strategy for National Security for the country. And having been in the details of mbfr it was like the world had opened up and i was going to be i think was sufficiently traumatizing to me that within three months i decided that i really ought to go practice law where i went back down in other issues. But it was a great opportunity, and it has been wonderful to follow your career and followed it ever since. I first met zbig, and congratulations, in 1953. I know precisely when it was because i was a new instructor at west point and he was a new instructor at harvard. West point was having a student conference, and we were assisting a famous soviet at Cologne University in this one panel. He had to leave the day before the caucus was over, so zbig and i cochaired the last day and as i recall we disagreed on everything. But then i have to say, zbig replaced me as National Security advisor. I know what kind of problems i left but he was a busy guy. So with that introduction, i want to turn to asking each of the panelists to think with all of us about some of the big ideas that Zbigniew Brzezinski has written about, thought about. And want to start with secretary albright and ask you to reflect on something that is in the last several of zbigs books, and thats the idea that a fundamental thing thats happening in the world that isnt immediately detectable in the daily news is something he calls the Global Political awakening. Something that you see in the arab world most vividly, but its everywhere, its in china, and russia. Its something that certainly you were seeing at the beginning when you were secretary. Id be fascinated in your thoughts about how this is playing out, what it means for america, how we should respond. And to come and let me say as i said earlier, i think zbigs brilliance is that he had the capability of analyzing the world as it is at a time and be able to think forward and have larger thoughts about it. I do think for those of us that were raised in a different situation of where you had two blocks looking at each other, and the u. S. Soviet relationship and understand all of a sudden all the changes that have come about not only with the fall of the wall, but just generally, i think zbig has had a capability of analyzing. I have to say ive had the privilege of sitting and taking notes from zbig most of my life. In class and then following him around when he was National Security advisor and then helping to do research for his books. He speaks in perfect paragraphs and so it is easy to follow his thoughts. I think that what has happened is obviously a complete disintegration of a variety of systems that we operated with. There are many, many more forces out there. The one that i think has captured peoples imagination is whats been happening in the arab world. I was involved in a very interesting discussion with an arab and it was the winter, and so i said, we cant call it the arab spring anymore so we called it the arab awakening. He was furious. He said this is outrageous. The arabs havent been asleep all the time. I said what would you call a . He said arab troubles. I said what about arab opportunities . So you see the different approaches to what is actually happening. I think that what weve seen come in many of us have drawn lessons from what happened in central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the wall, thinking that it was a similar story in the arab world, is completely different i believe, and that basically there is a political awakening but it is not in central and Eastern Europe there was a desire to be european and be part of the european system. That is not what is going on. We see in the arab world and we can unpack that at some point. We also see there are many more countries that are playing roles. Went zbig was at the nsc we talked about the regional influence. I think there are more than just one regional influential. That are countries that are playing the roles and they want to be listened to. What is happening also is awakening in an inter your way. And here i must say that i think the thing that is entirely different is the role of Information Technology. And what it has done is awakened within country im chairman of the board of the National Democratic institute. What weve seen is that this aggregation of political voices. And so everybody, people talking to the government on 21st Century Technology. The governments are listening and 20th Century Technology. And responding to it in 19th century ideas. So there is a disconnect and Political Parties are difficult to form when the voices are disaggregated. So its kind of id get from Tahrir Square to governance . Then theres the other side of Information Technology which is that one could say i dont think zbig or i would be among those, that we didnt know was going on during world war ii. Now we know everything thats going on everywhere. And, therefore, it is change peoples approaches as to what needs to be done, and that awakening has awakened a set of ideas in terms of how to respond to it throughout the world but i think its a huge new issue. We dont infrastructure works, whether the organizations that we all grew up with our functional. And did one last thing that has happened is were all used to a nation state system. There continues to be nationstates but the nonstate actors now are playing a large role in this awakening. We dont know at what stage we bring them into the decisionmaking process, and nonstate actors are not just terrorists. Nonstate actors are also huge corporations and ngos that are not under the control of any government and, therefore, tools that governments need to use to influence them dont work because those tools work against people that have territory and people that theyre trying to protect. Secretary gates, something that Zbigniew Brzezinski has thought about every moment of his career and, indeed, through his boyhood in poland is the reality of russia and russian power. Thats also the subject that you wrote your doctoral dissertation on if i remember. And so i want to ask you, we are not in a fascinating moment in which the United States is seeking to work with russia, i want to say again, after a period of that reminded many of us of the cold war in terms of the emptiness and difficulties of dealing with Vladimir Putin. Do you think that russia can be a genuine and an effective partner for the United States in this period . First industry and chemical weapons dismantling program . Second and somehow working to change the political fabric of syria . And just more broadly as a partner in this very messy world . In a sentence i would say as long as Vladimir Putin is president of russia, the answer to your question is no. I believe that i had a beautiful for russia when medvedev was present. I felt he understood the problems, understood the need for foreign investment, understood the need to strengthen the ties of the west. Understood the need for greater openness and freedom in russia itself. Putins lust for power and taking a second term away from medvedev and getting himself elected and putin could remain president and russia until 2024 if he is allowed to. I think putin is all about the past, past glory, past empire, lost in our, lost glory, lost power. And i think that its not an entirely onesided picture. The reality is that he promised president bush and follow through with president obama that he would not send as 300 service terror missiles to iran. They did abstain on some of the international so its not a black and white picture, but id say that on the whole putin is constantly on the search to either tweak the United States or to create problems for us. And two diminish us, believing that in any way he can diminish as he elevates russia. My own as many different opinions in the room as there are people, my own opinion is that this maneuver with respect to syria was very clever because one of the side effects of what he has done is to ensure that i thought that stays in power. Assad is now the figure we are dealing with on chemical weapons. So its now in everybodys interest. Europe, hours, everybody else is to keep assad in power so that this move on chemical weapons can take place. So it completely throws into a path whatever the west was saying about getting rid of assad, or the need for a change of government and so on, putin has played this in a way that he is insured the survival in power for at least some period of time of russias friend. In terms of whether this works or not, i dont know. Some of you may remember how hard a time we had finding a Nuclear Power plant in Eastern Syria in 20062007. We didnt really know it was a Nuclear Power plant until the israelis told us u. S. Intelligence is supposed to be really good at big stuff like that and find it in the middle of a desert. So if you dozens of chemical weapons storage places, my confidence that theyre going to get all the weapons, that they can stop the syrians from producing new weapons even as they give up weapons, or that theyre not passing them to hezbollah or to iran, i just dont know. I have a great deal of skepticism on that but ive got to give him the credit for a very clever maneuver that put the president 98 ball, put the United States behind the eight ball, insured assads staying in power and brought greater prestige to putin himself. To all that said, again, i think there are some areas were we can probably work with russia. But by and large i believe as long as putin as president as i said at the outset, i think finding a longerterm cooperative mutually beneficial relationship with the russians is going to prove a challenge. Steve hadley, if we identify Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as the people who opened engagement with china, with china now, i think its fair to say thank you was the person who consolidated that opening with Deng Xiaoping in a period of less celebrated, probably no less important. And i want to ask you to think about come with us but with the chinese have been saying through the new president , xi jinping, that they are seeking a new form of great power relationship with the United States. I know you just have been in china, thinking about china and please share some thoughts with us. One of the things, china is really the growth of asia generally in terms of its economic power. And within chinas growth is going to be a real opportunity but also a challenge or the United States over the next couple of decades. One of the things i worry about quite frankly is that doctor brzezinski and print and Henry Kissinger in many ways have carried the u. S. China relationship. And madeleine and others have done, have been treated in office, but they have really been for 40 years the face, u. S. Based to u. S. China relations. And i worry about where our country will be over the next 20 years. I think the statement by xi jinping about the new model of great power relations is a real opportunity for us. I would hope that they would help the United States and china to craft a new model. It just is the following, that a lot of the elements of Great Power Competition that characterize great power relations in the past, territorial frictions, colonial, conflicting colonial aspirations, are not present between the United States and china. And secondly another thing that is not present is the United States is not trying to keep china down. There are a number of chinese who dont believe that but if you look at the level of investment, the level of trade, our sponsorship of china in the international organizations, what every president for the last 40 said that its in our interest for a strong, prosperous and secure china, it doesnt hold water. The opportunity is to focus the relationship not on bilateral tensions wh