- The case for American leadership in the world in dangerous times.

This week on "Firing Line."

- America has to lead.

There's no one else that can do that.

- [Margaret] She was President George W. Bush's first national security adviser during September 11th attacks.

As Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was an architect of the effort to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

- We want Iraqis to run Iraq.

The United States doesn't have any desire to run Iraq.

- [Margaret] Rice remains a strong advocate for America's responsibility to defend freedom around the world at a time when isolationist sentiments are on the rise.

- Too many in this chamber have decided that we should police the entire world, the American taxpayer be damned.

- [Margaret] One year after the Hamas attack on Israel, (bombs booming) a wider war looms in the Middle East, and the battle for the future of Ukraine continues to rage with no end in sight.

What does former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice say now?

- [Narrator] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Secretary Condoleezza Rice, welcome back to "Firing Line."

- Thank you, it's great to be back with you, Margaret.

- You are at the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where I serve on the Board of Overseers and where the archive for "Firing Line" resides.

So I'm internally grateful to welcome you back to this program.

- Well, it's a real pleasure to be back with you and it's such an honor to be able, at the Hoover Archive, to do things like keep these marvelous documents and marvelous tapes so that future generations can know about it.

So we're just honored to be a part of that.

- You wrote a recent essay for foreign affairs warning about the perils of isolationism.

You say that we are in a moment that in some ways is more dangerous than the Cold War.

And I wonder why this moment prompted you to warn the American public about the perils of isolationism.

- I wanted to say to the American public that I understand the sense that we're all tired.

We've been through a lot.

We ended the Cold War on favorable terms, defeating the Soviet Union, essentially.

We then took on and defeated Al-Qaeda, at least in the form that attacked on 9/11.

But there isn't really an option but for the United States to take on its role and responsibility as a dominant power that wishes to shape the international system.

You see, there's this notion that if we leave the playing field, it'll be okay.

But in fact, great powers don't mind their own business.

And the great powers that would supplant American power are not ones that share our values, will not uphold our interests: China, Russia.

And so I just wanted to say to the American people, we have to get up and go back to bat because too much is at stake for the United States to turn its back on the international system.

- I wonder where you find the threat of isolationism most in the American political landscape.

- There's a tendency to think that it's on the extremes of the political parties.

You have the kind of America firsters in the Republican party.

You have the 'America's not good enough, given our history' on the far left.

But I actually think it's a little bit of a seed in the American public in general, a little bit of that sense that, as I said, we've done our part and, and if we've done our part, then why can't someone else do it?

And so this was meant not to address any political party, not to address any particular political movement, but really to just remind the American people that every time we've tried to withdraw it hasn't worked out so well.

There was a war in 1914 that started in Europe.

By 1917 we were drawn in.

There was a war that started in '38 and '39.

By 1941, we were drawn in.

And, of course, Margaret, as you know, in 2001 we thought the threat was out there and it turned out it was at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and a field in Pennsylvania.

So this is addressed to all Americans to just remember who we are and why we are important to a peaceful and prosperous international system.

- You write that "those who argue for engagement will need to reframe what it means.

The 80 years of U.S. internationalism is another analogy that doesn't perfectly fit the circumstances of today."

Why do we need to reframe and how do we reframe engagement?

- I think we reframe engagement, for those of us who believe in engagement, reframe it as perhaps a little less ambitious than it was in the past.

And by that I don't mean that we shouldn't care about democracy, we shouldn't care about human rights, we shouldn't care about disorder in the world.

But if I go back to John Kennedy's speech "to bear any burden and pay any price," that's not the America of today.

Too many Americans weren't served well by globalization.

And so those of us who believe in it have to have something to say to them about education and skills development that will not leave them on the sidelines this time.

It's not enough to just say, "Oh, globalization is a good thing because you can buy cheap goods made in China."

That isn't going to sell.

I also think that we need our allies in a way that we perhaps have not demanded in the past.

America has to lead.

There's no one else that can do that.

But we have strong, vibrant allies in Europe.

We have seen NATO come together, the European Union come together around the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We've seen in the Indo-Pacific, Japan and Australia and a friend, not an ally, but a friend like India, step up and say Chinese aggression is not going to stand.

So the other element of this is to recognize that we need our allies perhaps more than we have ever needed them.

- It strikes me that when you were Secretary of State and when you were the National Security advisor for President Bush, we leaned on our allies quite a bit in the context of our engagement with Afghanistan and our engagement in Iraq.

- Yes.

- Does engaging our allies in this new reframing change even from that set of relationships, or how does it compare?

- We needed something very specific from our allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly in Afghanistan, huge country, decentralized.

We had these reconstruction teams.

The Germans took one, the Italians took one.

That's really not what we need today.

We're in, Margaret, for a long struggle this time.

We have great powers that are not going to go away easily.

One thing that I remind people is that China is not the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was a military giant, but it was an economic and technological midget.

And so this time, the allies have to be prepared for a somewhat longer haul.

I know we always focus on, you know, who's paying two percent or whatever, and that's important.

But I would really ask us as an alliance to think about capabilities.

How can we integrate our capabilities better, and integrate our capabilities better for even new challenges like the cyber warfare that we know might take place, these new transformative technologies that are changing not just the way that we live, but are going to change the face of the international system.

Can we do more to cooperate there?

And so I think we need from our allies a greater integration of our capabilities.

And we need to integrate new allies like Sweden and Finland, what an amazing addition to NATO.

And we just need to make sure that everybody steps up and does their part.

- This week marks one year since the Hamas attack on Israel, where Hamas killed more than 1200 people in Israel.

A war is still raging in Gaza.

Conflicts have intensified between Hezbollah and Israel and Lebanon.

And more than 100 hostages, as you well know, are still missing.

And ceasefire talks seem to have stalled.

What does victory look like for Israel at this point?

- Well, let's start by saying that October 7th was one of the most brutal attacks that I think I've seen.

Raping women and then chopping up babies and taking hostages.

I had five different Gaza crises as Secretary.

None of them looked like this.

And so it was not surprising that Israel was going to try to the degree that it could to eliminate that kind of threat from Hamas.

And that war in Gaza goes on.

My hope is that as Israel thinks about what it has already achieved, that it thinks also about the future of Israel, a country that has a marvelous and vibrant economy and needs its soldiers back, and its reservists back in that economy, a country that was on the road to normalization with Saudi Arabia, which would change the face of the Middle East, thanks to the Abraham Accords, which were extraordinary.

So that war, I am hoping will wind down, that you can begin to do something about the humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians.

I think the war against Hezbollah is a little different.

Hezbollah holds Lebanon hostage.

And so this is first and foremost about eliminating the threat or diminishing the threat of Hezbollah to Israel.

And they're doing an amazing job of doing so.

- How do you assess the damage that has been incurred upon Hezbollah?

- I think it's remarkable.

They have decapitated large parts of the Hezbollah leadership, including Nasrallah.

There are reports that they have, maybe, killed the second in command.

With terrorists you have to, you have to take the head off.

We learned something really important about fighting terrorists: Number one, the leader, is pretty good.

Number two's okay.

Number three is not so good.

So to the degree that you can really decapitate the leadership, it matters.

They've destroyed large amounts of Hezbollah's capability.

If you are a terrorist, do you really want to be caught in a guesthouse in Iran these days, like Haniyeh was, inside an Iranian guesthouse.

So the Israelis are achieving something quite extraordinary with Hezbollah.

I don't think a cease fire is always the answer until you have achieved certain goals.

And then my hope is that Hezbollah's spell over Lebanon will be broken and Lebanon can find decent leadership for the Lebanese people who have been held hostage by Hezbollah as much as Israel has.

- Does it strike you that the intelligence that Israel had around southern Lebanon and into Hezbollah starkly contrasts with the intelligence Israel had about Hamas' capabilities?

- The contrast between what Israel clearly knew about Hezbollah and what they didn't know about Hamas is striking.

Now, I suspect that they will say, "Well, we were putting all the intelligence assets into Hezbollah," something like that.

It is amazing what they've achieved.

And by the way, if you're Hezbollah, you must be wondering, and Iran at this point, who's the mole inside?

And these groups tend to turn on each other.

But I do think there will be a reckoning for what happened with Hamas, because not to see that coming was a strategic failure.

- When you were Secretary of State in 2006, when Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, you wrote in your memoir about what a shock it was that you experienced, that the region experienced, that Hamas won that election democratically.

What have we learned about trusting the democratic process, especially in cases where groups refused to disarm?

- Well, the democratic process will not always turn out as you wish it would.

And in 2006 when Hamas won, the one thing that we did do, with the Russians and the Europeans and the U.N. and what was at the time called the quartet, was to demand that Hamas, if they wanted to be recognized, recognize the right of Israel to exist, which even Yasser Arafat had done with the PLO.

They did not, and so they remained isolated.

But in retrospect, yes, I think you don't want armed groups to be able to run in an election.

When you think about it, it is, of course, an unfair advantage if you're armed with a militia and you run in an election.

And so if we had that to do over, and by the way, the Palestinian Authority objected to insisting that Hamas disarm first.

They said they wouldn't participate and then the elections wouldn't be legitimate.

But in retrospect, yes, you don't let armed groups be in an election.

I think the Irish Republican Army, the way that that was handled, was probably preferable.

- So is there a lesson for future generations and what could be done differently?

- In the future, perhaps what you do is you say, "all right, either you disarm now and you participate in the elections, or we have elections, and when you disarm you can participate in following elections."

And in retrospect, I think that's probably what should have been done.

- If you were in a situation room today advising a president, would you advise the pursuit of a ceasefire in Israel to return the hostages or support Israel's continued military campaign?

- We have to remember when we ask what we should do, the United States, from the Situation Room, that Israel is a democracy.

And I know that there are tensions within Israel about Netanyahu and his leadership.

These are the questions about, when is there a ceasefire, what can you do to get the hostages back, that I really feel Israel should take the lead.

Ceasefires are not always the answer.

Sometimes they are.

I think probably in Gaza it makes more sense than in Lebanon at this point.

And I would just make one other point.

It would be really good if we stopped talking in the newspapers about every conversation that we have with the Israelis.

I think that you do better with the Israelis if you're not publicly debating what Israel might do, publicly debating what we will support and what we won't support.

We don't need another New York Times headline about tensions between the United States and Israel.

- Last week, Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles into Israel, but caused very little damage.

How do you assess the risk of a wider war opening up in the Middle East?

- I would note that I think we're already in a wider war in the Middle East.

It's not an all out war, but we have, of course, there's trouble in the West Bank, unfortunately.

We have the northern front has really opened up between Hezbollah and Israel.

And with the Iranian attack, direct Iranian attack, as opposed to using their proxies, which is what they usually do, that's a new chapter.

I do expect that the Israelis are trying to make an assessment of how big, now, does the response have to be.

Iran is on its back foot at this point.

I would caution that it's always important to take a look and say, where are we, what have we achieved, and let's not overreach.

And that seems to me to be a conversation that's worth having with the Israelis quietly.

- That two strong a response to directly engage with Iran might lead to a perilous conflict with Iran.

- The Iranian regime is very, very weak for a lot of reasons, including its own domestic circumstances.

And one might suggest, I'm not inside, but one might suggest that bleeding the Iranian regime, given that Iran is on its back foot, might be a strategy that might work at this point.

- Financially?

- Financially, in terms of support.

I don't think, as opposed to times when the Europeans have wanted us to talk to Iran, I don't think you're going to have that- - Now is not the time to talk to Iran.

- Now is not the time to talk to Iran.

And so it might be that really bleeding and toughening up against this regime, warning them that any attempt to actually weaponize their nuclear capability, meaning marrying the fuel, the bomb design, and the delivery vehicle, might bring a kind of destruction that they probably don't want to risk.

- So previously you've argued that we should be putting as much pressure on the Iranian regime as we possibly can.

So you're arguing now, in this moment when they're on their back foot, to double down on that, - I would double down on the pressure on the Iranian regime.

And one might think about at this point whether the Houthis, who are international outlaws for what they've been doing to shipping, ought to join the party with Hezbollah and Hamas in terms of some of the destruction of their capability.

Because Iran has largely wanted to work through its proxies.

And so working from the outside in, one might be able to truly disable the Iranian regime.

I wouldn't take anything off the table, but I would really think strategically how do you best use this moment to weaken the Iranian regime now, but also for the future.

- When you say the Houthis should join the party, do you think the U.S. should participate in some kind of an offensive against the Houthis or the Israelis?

- I have long thought that by the Houthis threats to international shipping, we have every reason, as the United States of America, as the guardians of sea lanes and freedom of navigation, to show the Houthis that their strategy isn't going to work and it's going to bring destruction.

- Do you think by attacking all of the proxies, Iranian proxies, ultimately, combined perhaps with the, as you say, bleeding the Iranians while they're on their back foot, that will ultimately end in a weakening of the regime and a change in leadership in Iran?

- In the Foreign Affairs piece that you've referenced a couple of times, Margaret, I have said that we should learn from George Kennan's admonition that the idea is to deny the easy course of external expansion until they have to deal with their own internal contradictions.

And the Iranian regime is full of contradictions.

It's an incredibly unpopular regime.

Its leader, the Ayatollah, is old and, by some accounts, sick.

There has been a lot of turmoil inside the Iranian regime.

They must be looking at each other and saying who opened that guesthouse so that for four months a bomb could sit there waiting for Haniyeh.

And so I think maximum pressure on the Iranian regime, and a warning.

I admire, I really support what the Biden administration did in sending American assets to the region, which is a warning to the Iranians that they might not just be fighting the Israelis if they decide to go too far.

That seems to me also very important.

I will just make one point.

Our defense capability really needs to be rebuilt because the fact that we needed carrier strike groups in the Middle East and can't keep them simultaneously in the Indo-Pacific lets us know that we're in danger of some kind of overstretch.

And if you really believe in peace through strength, which I do, we need to rebuild our defense capability.

It's one of the issues that I would have hoped that people who want to be president would have addressed.

- With respect to the next generation of leadership in Iran, what should the U.S. be doing, or what should our allies be doing to cultivate and think about the next generation of leadership in Iran?

- Well, certainly, there's an Iranian diaspora that keeps those contacts.

And I hope that as we were with the diaspora of the Baltic states, so that when the Baltic states were freed, there were people who were able to help shepherd the Baltic states toward democracy, freedom and a Western-looking policy.

I suspect that if you really understood the internal politics, the internal situation in Iran, there are an awful lot of Iranians who are actually pro-American, who we see the signs whenever there's a protest.

Women are a group that I think will be a bulwark.

I've been asked very often, what would succeed Vladimir Putin?

That's not a pretty picture because he's killed off all of the liberal opposition.

In Iran, I don't know, but I sense that that might be a place where you could trust the Iranian people with just a little help to build a decent regime should the Ayatollahs fall.

- In 1972 the future prime minister, Shimon Peres, appeared on the original "Firing Line" with William F. Buckley Jr. And he appeared at a time when there was a tide of isolationism in the United States and he made the case for democracies.

Take a look at what he said.

- Short of the size and geography, there are many similarities in the way the United States was created and Israel was born, the same spirit, the same convictions, the same outlook, and the same desire to do a positive service to other people.

The Russians are here, trying to take over the Middle East, trying to make the Middle East a new page in the Russian glories, in the Russian history.

And Israel, a tiny little nation, is standing in the face of Soviet Russia, without losing her nerves, without demanding that anybody else to fight instead of her, but simply to maintain the necessary strength so she won't be overcome by either threats nor by arms.

- How does defending democratic nations abroad strengthen our country here at home?

- The United States is not just a territory or a nationality, it's an idea.

And that idea is that human beings prosper best and flourish best in democracy.

And if it's truly universal, then we have to believe it true for all of the world.

And we can't always bring it about for other people, but we can support it.

We can support the concept.

We can support democratic nations, and we can support those within totalitarian nations who wish to live within a democracy.

But there's also a very practical thing.

There's something that political scientists have actually demonstrated called the democratic peace.

Democracies don't fight one another.

And that's because there are constraints on the ambitions and the desires of that one leader who might launch the war against Ukraine for totally reasons that are 19th century and that you wouldn't get that in a democracy.

And so democracies are hard.

They are messy.

But in general, they are better for the world.

And I think we are better when we support democracy.

We are better when democracy flourishes.

And we're certainly safer.

- Does the same argument apply to Ukraine?

- The argument about democracy applies to Ukraine as well.

It applies to Ukraine because any people who wish to remain free, especially free from an effort by their larger neighbor to extinguish them as in an imperial way.

Yes, Ukraine is important for democracy.

But Ukraine is also important for the principle that sovereignty should matter.

We promised Ukraine sovereignty.

We and the British, and the Russians, for that matter.

And the Ukrainians are not asking us to fight their fight.

They're asking us to give them the means to fight their fight.

We will all be better off because if Vladimir Putin and his sidekick Xi Jinping are going around the world on that victory tour, having defeated NATO, having defeated the greatest Democratic collective security organization in human history, I don't wanna be the president of the United States who has to say the American people, "I could have stopped that with just arms and money for the Ukrainians and I didn't."

- Secretary Rice, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

- Great to be with you.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (soft music) - [Speaker] You are watching PBS.