E-mail a friendDr. Kiron Skinner
original airdate January 21, 2005
Foreign policy expert Dr. Kiron Skinner is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a Hoover Institution research fellow. The Harvard Ph.D. is also a protégé of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and sits on the U.S. Defense Policy Board and the board of the National Security Education Program. While doing research for George Shultz's memoir, Dr. Skinner became interested in the story of the end of the Cold War, and subsequently became a scholar on former President Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Kiron Skinner
Tavis: Dr. Kiron Skinner is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She's also the author and editor of several books, including her most recent, 'Reagan's Path to Victory: the Shaping of Ronald Reagan's Vision.' Dr. Skinner joins us tonight from the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, California. Dr. Skinner, nice to have you back on the program.
Dr. Kiron Skinner: Thank you.
Tavis: Uh, pardon the pun here, I don't mean to color the question, but how big a deal is this that Condoleezza Rice is now the secretary of state?
Skinner: I think it's an important historic moment for the United States on several fronts. Of course the fact that she's the first African-American woman to be chosen secretary of state by the Senate, elected--nominated by the president. But also, I think it's an important moment for the country because of her background, what she brings to this new post, the chief diplomat for the United States. She brings a wealth of experience and sensitivities that many people don't know about, and I hope we can talk about some of that this evening.
Tavis: Well, you used the phrase "chief diplomat." There are a number of folks, certainly her critics, who are concerned, worried that she might not be the diplomat that Colin Powell was.
Skinner: Well, I think those fears are unwarranted when you look at her professional record. Her first major diplomatic activity, in fact, as a professional happened in the 1980s when she served under President Bush Sr. She was an American participant in the unification of Germany, which no one expected could happen, which in some ways marked, um, the end of the Cold War. Not only was it Germany being unified with American participation, Dr. Rice at the center of that diplomatic activity, but Germany unified as a democratic country within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. No one thought that could happen. For many, it would have been the crowning moment of a career. For Dr. Rice, it was just the beginning. She made a lot of friends in European capitals as a result of that. She honed her diplomatic skills, and it put her in good stead for the rest of her career.
Tavis: There were a number of senators, certainly in the committee hearings, who asked some rather aggressive questions, uh, of Dr. Rice, and I guess if you're gonna be secretary of state, you ought to be able to take the heat. I think now--I think now mainly of California Senator Barbara Boxer, uh, Senator Joseph Biden out of Delaware, and the concerns certainly those two members of that panel raised were concerns about Dr. Rice's ability to admit when she had made mistakes. Uh, talk to me about your sense of that line of questioning.
Skinner: Well, I think that line of questioning was important. It's part of the democratic process. We should take the nomination process seriously, even when it is felt that the nominee will be confirmed. So I believe that it was useful because it pressed Dr. Rice to give the American public a much more comprehensive view of her understanding of the international system. Many points came out in the exchange with Senator Boxer and others that, um, that did not come out in her official statement. So I think it was useful. She talked about Iraq, the difficulty of pre-war intelligence. She did not, in my view, make any mistakes in saying that there was some faulty intelligence, there were conflicting stories taking place. But she added that when you look at Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it was a unique country and he was a unique dictator in the sense that he had already used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He had violated scores of U.N. resolutions. And she just built the case around W.M.D. in a much more, I think, complete framework in the exchange that she had with Senator Boxer. She didn't back down from those very facts that we do know to be true, his own horrendous and bloody record.
Tavis: What about the notion of multilateralism? There are some who are concerned that Dr. Rice is much more a hawk, if I can use that term, than the dove, if you will, that Colin Powell was. What about this notion? Does she believe in multilateralism?
Skinner: That came out, that very point, that in fact she's committed to a multilateral framework, um, for American foreign policy, although she is firmly committed to America putting its interests first. And if American interests diverge from what other countries want, the U.S. has to protect itself. But on the multilateral point, think about German unification. That was done in a multilateral context, and again, I mentioned it as one of the first opportunities Dr. Rice had to actually learn and develop diplomatic skills. But in the past 4 years, she's gone beyond that early experience. Her interests in the--and commitment to the Millennium Challenge Account, which links foreign aid from the U.S. economic assistance to political liberalization in countries, that's done in a broader context with the rest of our allies. We saw it in the G8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, last summer where the industrialized nations engaged countries from the African continent on security and economic issues. Try to really follow what Rice and others authored in the Millennium Challenge Account. She's very committed to a multilateral approach to U.S. foreign policy from what I can see in the past 4 years.
Tavis: There are also concerns. And you've known her longer than many, certainly most. 20 years you all have been friends and worked together for a couple decades now. What about this notion that being national security advisor and secretary of state are two very different things, and because of a relationship and indeed friendship with President Bush, she might not be the best person to tell the president what he needs to hear, um, when he needs to hear it, and for that matter, that she might not be willing to disagree with the president because of their friendship?
Skinner: Well, I actually think, and I've said this in numerous interviews in the past 2 days, that when I look at Dr. Rice's career as a professional in international relations, that in fact, um, much of her preparation has been more for the secretary of state position than actually the national security advisor. She is extremely diplomatic. She's fiercely independent, and much of that did not come out, I guess, in the past 4 years because she was a private advisor to the president. But she's always been an independent thinker. She's never cowered in discussions with anyone, no matter how powerful they are, including whoever her "boss" is. So I expect her to really come forward in a way that we didn't see when she was national security advisor.
Tavis: Let me ask you right quick. I got a few seconds left. Whether your politics are left or right, conservative or liberal, it seems to me that for those African-Americans and people of color who do foreign policy work as you do, one has to be excited and certainly encouraged by the notion of the United States having a black male secretary of state followed right behind him by a black female secretary of state. What does that do in terms of being a shot in the arm for people like you who do foreign policy?
Skinner: I think it's important because what it does is really enforce the notion that national heritage and heritage ties really matter in the making and execution of foreign policy, um, and I think we see this with Rice and Powell at the helm. President Bush made a historic mission to the African continent, and it was Dr. Rice who said that slavery was America's birth defect. That was a powerful statement to come from someone out of the White House, and I think we will see a greater emphasis on the African continent because Dr. Rice is secretary of state.
Tavis: Dr. Skinner, I thank you for coming on, and the real work now begins. We'll see what comes of Dr. Rice at the state department. But nice to have you on. We'll do it again sometime.
Skinner: OK, that's great.
Tavis: All the best to you.
Skinner: You, too.
Tavis: Up next on this program, actress and singer Minnie Driver. She'll perform for us in a few moments. Stay with us.
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