TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Ms. Soderberg's bio
• International Crisis Group
• About The Superpower Myth

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Nancy Soderberg is a former deputy assistant for National Security Affairs under president Bill Clinton. Following that, she served as the alternate representative to the United Nations with the rank of ambassador. Her new book, with a forward by Bill Clinton, is called "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Might." Nancy Soderberg joins us tonight from Jacksonville, Florida. Ambassador Soderberg, nice to have you on the program.

Nancy Soderberg: Thank you so much.

Tavis: Given your work and time at the U.N., and that title ambassador, let me ask you what have you made all these many weeks, feels like months now, of the John Bolton drama?

Soderberg: Well, I mean clearly he should have been sent home. He has no business being sent to the United Nations. This is a man who does not believe in the fundamental importance of the United Nations and has said many derogatory things about it. That said, in a way there is a silver lining because the Bush administration has lowered the importance of that job since it took office. It's no longer in the cabinet, it's no longer on the policy-making committees. So the real decisions for the U.N. will be made in a new State Department where the ideologues are being moved out. So it may not be as bad as everyone thinks.

Tavis: What does it mean, do you think, in the eyes of the world that we have an administration that has, in fact, such low esteem for that body, to paraphrase your words?

Soderberg: Well, I think actually this nomination by President Bush was more a sop to keep the very far right happy than necessarily his view towards the United Nations. I think they're finally beginning to realize that, guess what, they need the United Nations. They're helping them out in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and all the various peacekeeping operations and the White House finally weighed in and told the Congress to stop trying to destroy the U.N. with its cutting of 50% of our country's contributions. So there's some good signs in there as well.

Tavis: Let me shift gears then specifically to Iraq. Are you surprised, number one, and number two, what do you make of these numbers that increasingly show that most Americans think overwhelming that the direction that we are headed in Iraq is the absolute wrong direction?

Soderberg: When you look at the TV coverage of what's going on in Iraq you wonder what on earth the other 40% could possibly be thinking with one bomb after another. I think beneath what's going on in Iraq, though, is a slow and very painful and very costly transition to a more stable situation. The administration made innumerable mistakes in the conduct of the war that has made America's job harder. But we're there pretty much alone. We've lost almost 2,000 soldiers. We're likely to lose again that many by the time this is over, meaning we'll have lost more than in September 11 by the time this is done, hundreds of billions of dollars. But we're going to stay there until it works, and the definition of it working is there is an Iraqi army to whom we can hand over the very difficult job of maintaining stability there. Now, the key challenge right now is the insurgency. We have not yet figured out how to deal with the security. We need more creative thinking and a lot more troops.

Tavis: Is the president right or wrong to insist that right now he will not now give a timetable for withdrawing? And as you well know, the argument, the logic behind that from the White House is that if we tell them when we're going to pull out, that sends the wrong signal to the insurgency. It makes the insurgency even worse. So is he right on wrong at this point?

Soderberg: He's absolutely right on that. As great as it would be to be able to bring those 140,000 American troops home and avoid the thousands of deaths that are likely to occur in the next three to five years, which is how long we're going to be there, if we leave now, we'll just be back there. We might as well stay and finish the job. Americans are very divide on this war, but I think now that we're there, it would be worse to pull out. And I think that the trick here is to get smart about the level of troops there. We need more troops there, get smart about how to deal with the insurgency, and as quickly as possible get those Iraqi forces up and running so they're the ones who are the face.

Tavis: Did I hear you suggest, though, that you think we'll be there for another three to five years?

Soderberg: I do. Any military advisor that you talk to, that's how long it's going to take to create a functioning national army.

Tavis: All right, so now that we are there, that being the operative phrase, I suspect, talking to you. Now that we are there, you suggest that the president do exactly what he's doing in terms of getting out of there. That said, tell me how badly, if at all, George W. Bush has abused our superpower status, number one, and number two, in his second term do you see him getting better about how he uses that power?

Soderberg: Right. Well, the title of my book is the "The Superpower Myth," which I define as having fallen victim to the myth that because we're a superpower, we're all-powerful and we don't need the rest of the world to meet the challenges of the superpower, and I think that got us into the war in Iraq, and it caused a lot of the mistakes, and it's the reason we're in Iraq alone. The Balkans we went in as a leadership role and got the world to follow us. Today, 9 out of 10 soldiers in the Balkans are not Americans. It's the opposite in Iraq. And I think there's a very subtle shift going on in the Bush administration away from that myth to a much more realistic policy. You see it on the international criminal court, which was essentially the fourth leg of the axis of evil in the first term. They all of a sudden let the situation in Darfur move that way. Much more realistic policy on negotiating with Iran. They're now listening to Europe for partnerships, working together. They're coming down to earth and I think the second term is going to help stabilize the international situation. Iraq is what it is right now, but I think you will see progress in the Middle East peace process. They're going to have to negotiate a deal on North Korea and engage the rest of the world and the U.N., despite John Bolton and realize that we need partners to help share the superpower burden. Now, they've made a lot of mistakes that are making all of this much harder, but it is doable if they keep on this more realistic trend that they've started in the first 100 days of the second term.

Tavis: Historically when we have misused our American might, as you put it, what typically, if in fact there's an answer to this, what typically is behind that? What causes us to do that?

Soderberg: Well, it's basically a politicization of decisions and ideology that confronts reality and goes seriously awry. I think this is an administration that came to office four years ago thinking that we still had to fight the cold war. There had to be state enemies. They chose China and Iraq. Remember the axis of evil? They were going to militarily solve Iran and North Korea. And reality has a very annoying way of seeping in, and to their credit, I think they're beginning to look at that and figure out, OK, maybe we need to shift course here. I think Donald Rumsfeld will be a short-termer. He's the center of a lot of the problems and mistakes. Condi Rice has cleaned the State Department out of the ideologues that were imposed there on the first term. So there's a lot of possibility here. Now, as the Bolton nomination shows, the ideologues still have a hold on some of the politics here, and they're going to have to fight it out in the next couple years to see which direction they go. But I'm hopeful that it's going to get a lot more realistic.

Tavis: Let me ask you, shifting gears somewhat slightly here, but since he's at the middle of all this mess, I guess it's never a real shift of gears. Over the weekend, as you've heard, the CIA Director Porter Goss suggested that he had...his words--an excellent idea, an excellent idea where Bin Laden is hiding. What do you make of that? Anything?

Soderberg: I sure hope we're going to get him, if that's the case. I mean, I think everybody thinks he's on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, being protected in those hidden caves. He still sends out creepy messages and tapes, so someone knows where he is. I think we need to make a much harder effort to get him, and that would be a significant step. Al Quaeda's now dispersed around the rest of the world, glomming onto other terrorist networks, giving them technology networks. It's a dangerous fact that he's still out there, and we need to get him. So, if they know where they are, I hope they're on the way. It's also crazy to announce it, by the way.

Tavis: Yeah, I would agree with that. Let me ask you what you see--this may be an impossible question, but let me ask you anyway--what you see as perhaps the most, the most unique burden that we do bear as the world's last superpower? What's the most unique burden we bear as a result of that?

Soderberg: The world will not coalesce and meet the challenge of ending terrorism and weapons of mass destruction or at least much more progress in controlling it unless the United States engages and builds a world coalition against non-proliferation terrorism. That's the challenge. Unless we get that right, we're going to continue to be the number one target. We are the number one target right now and we need to figure out how to get the world to follow us. We need to once again become the great persuader, not just the great enforcer that we've become. We are the number one superpower, we're the only superpower. It's going to be that way, and we need to figure out how to use that power to get others to follow us. That's the challenge of the Bush administration in the next four years.

Tavis: I guess it's hard to know the answer to this question, the final question, given that administrations change in the White House, potentially at least, every four years. Are you hopeful about what you've just suggested?

Soderberg: I think that there are signs that they are moving in that direction. I think that there's a possibility that they'll begin to work within the international community on non-proliferation, although I think the most recent efforts at the United Nations with the review of the Non-proliferation Treaty, one of the things that has kept nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorism, was a great failure. So I'm more hopeful in other areas than the non-proliferation issues. You've got North Korea just sitting there churning two types of nuclear weapons out, and we're trying to get China to solve the problem for us. We need to get in there and negotiate that as well. So I think there's a long way to go, but I think they're beginning to move in the right direction, so I think there--other administrations could have met this challenge well before they have, but I think they're beginning to move in that right direction, so I'll say I'm wishfully optimistic.

Tavis: With a foreword by Bill Clinton, the book is "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might" authored by one Nancy Soderberg. Ambassador, nice to have you on and all the best to you.

Soderberg: Tavis, thanks so much.

Tavis: Thank you. Up next on this program, actor Jon Cryer from "Two and a Half Men." Stay with us.