Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Rice University on Tuesday, Nov. 8, under the joint sponsorship of the Baker Institute and Houston PBS. She spoke to a packed audience at Rice University’s Tudor Fieldhouse and promoted her new book, “No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington.” I am a member of the Associate Roundtable at the Baker Institute and I had the opportunity to attend her presentation. The following are a few personal observations about the event. (View a video of Dr. Rice’s remarks and question-and-answer session below or on the Baker Institute website.)
The presentation was arranged as a conversation between Secretary Rice and Houston PBS anchor Ernie Manouse. It was not a monologue in which Secretary Rice gave a set of prepared remarks to the audience. Personally, I was expecting the latter, so this format was a pleasant surprise and provided a more casual setting for Secretary Rice’s commentary.
Secretary Rice, in response to questions from Manouse and later from the audience, covered a variety of topics over the course of the evening. While she was there to promote her new book, her comments did not come off as a recitation of anecdotes from the book or a set of selections intended to highlight certain portions of the book. Instead, she discussed a diverse set of subjects, including the post-Soviet restructuring of Russia and the former Warsaw Pact, education in the United States and the period of American history that she would have most have enjoyed being involved with public policy, other than during the past decade.
On that last point, she said she would have enjoyed working in the immediate post-World War II period, in which statesmen like Dean Acheson and George Marshall helped create the postwar order and the beginnings of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War. Secretary Rice’s interest in being present at the creation of important U.S. foreign policy initiatives came up more than once in her comments, with her emphasizing how one does not know what will happen at the beginning of a particular historical epoch and about the importance of focusing on longer-term planning rather than the headlines of the day. This issue of the judgment of history was an undercurrent to many of her comments.
Although Secretary Rice discussed a variety of issues, I noticed that, unless I’m mistaken, one issue never came up. That issue was the Iraq War. While foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin and Muammar Gaddafi were mentioned, Saddam Hussein was not. I can’t help but think that this was the elephant in the room.
However, to be fair to Secretary Rice, one can argue that the Iraq War has become the unmentioned issue of American foreign policy in recent years. It’s not hard to find contemporary and after-the-fact critics of the war on both the left and on the right and, while it was probably the most-discussed issue in U.S. foreign policy during the period from 2002 through 2008, one doesn’t hear much about it now. For example, President Obama’s recent announcement that U.S. combat troops will be leaving Iraq by the end of 2011 didn’t capture headlines to the degree that stories about political scandals or economic turmoil have in recent months.
It is fair to ask that for all the sturm und drang of the Iraq War debates of the last decade, whether the Iraq War may find itself discussed in the same way as the Korean War — as a war that captured the headlines during its era, but whose architects and opponents did not talk about much in later years. If that’s the case, perhaps it’s not a surprise that the Iraq War didn’t come up for discussion in Secretary Rice’s commentary or in the questions from the audience, but this absence is worth noting, given the recentness of that war and her role in it.
I picked up a copy of Secretary Rice’s book at the event and I look forward to reading it. Regardless of one’s opinion of her work as a policymaker, she is a scholar as well as a political figure and I hope her book is one that reflects her intellectual depth. Her visit to Rice University was an engaging and thought-provoking evening, and I am glad I was able to attend.
Mark R. Yzaguirre is an attorney in Houston, Texas. He is a member of the Baker Institute Associate Roundtable, the institute’s membership group for young professionals and rising leaders in the Houston area, and also blogs for FrumForum.com.