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LEADERSHIP VOICES WITH CHRISTIAN CARYL, AUTHOR OF STRANGE REBELS

Amb. Kurt Volker: [0:01] ...Senator McCain's desire to see a policy institute developed that focuses on promoting character driven leadership. How do we advance next generation of leaders in the world, both in the United States but in the world as well? [0:16] We've developed programs and activities around that goal. Everything form a future years' program where we find emerging leaders and give them a real professional development around the country here in United States, to doing some research projects looking at some complicated international problems, and trying to improve the way we go about making decisions on them and see if we can make a difference on the way those issues play out. [0:44] One of the things that we've done is to launch a series of discussions with people about leadership trying to learn some of the lessons that should be learnt, that we should all. [0:56] An example, about 10 years ago we had the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, a fascinating conversation with him about some of his experiences in the Middle East, his perceptions of some other Israeli leaders or his region, and even the observations that someone like that has after a career in a variety of positions. [1:18] I thought the most interesting thing he said was when we asked him what advice would you give to people who are emerging as leaders themselves and what should they go for? He said "Well, make sure you get enough sleep." [1:31] [laughter] [1:32] I thought that was quite refreshing. [1:37] Olmert explained that you get enough sleep, try not to do too much. Be strategic. Don't get bogged down in weeds. Make decisions, move things along, but only about 10 a day, don't make any more than that. Do whatever you do with great passion and with love. I thought that was a really great answer and one of the more compelling things I had heard. [2:04] We also did an interview. I did one in New York. We were working on a video now with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. I asked him a similar question. What advice would you give to people who are emerging as foreign policy leaders today? He said know yourself. Know who you are and what you are capable of and what you want, because then you can deal with others. If you don't know, others are going to be running circles around you. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the point of it. Very, very, [inaudible 02:36] . [2:37] This is another one in our Leadership Voices series.

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[2:40] We're delighted to have with us today Christian Caryl, who is the author of the book he's holding in front of you here, "Strange Rebels," which examines leaders who were dealing with challenging times in the year 1979, and dealing with them in ways that were really quite remarkable with a lot of lasting impact. [3:03] I talked to a colleague of ours who suggested that we do a bunch of "Voices" event reviews to talk about the lessons from that study. I thought it was a terrific idea, and when it came to speaking over the phone we realized there was a lot in them. That's what we're here about today. I hope that you enjoy this conversation. [3:22] That's the introduction. The first thing I want to ask to Christian, and of course could you give me a little gravity, and, as I was saying, run with whatever you want to say. [3:33] [laughter] Amb. Kurt: [3:37] The first question that I would want to put is, why 1979? Christian Caryl: [3:42] Well that is, in fact, an excellent question. It has everything to do with my work as a foreign correspondent. [3:48] At the time I got the idea for this book, I was working for Newsweek magazine. I knew people out there that it kind of doesn't really exist anymore. Shortly after 9/11, Newsweek sent me to Afghanistan. [4:01] It was a very interesting moment to visit Afghanistan, because they were just emerging from that sort of 20-year period of warfare and internal turmoil. One thing that struck me very forcefully when I finally made it to Kabul, was all around me I saw these indications of a society that was actually going somewhere in the 1970s. [4:23] All the cars were made in the 1970s that were around, all the ministry buildings were built in the 1970's, even the house we lived in, which we were told used to be rented out by some Al Qaeda people, it was made in the 1970s. You know, it was kind of a throwback to my childhood. [4:41] While we were in this place, you begin to think about what happened in this society that seemed to be doing things in the 1970s that are almost unimaginable when you go to that country today. [4:52] My next assignment was Iraq, and oddly enough, you see a similar dynamic in Iraq. What happened in Iraq? Well, in Afghanistan, soviets invaded it in 1979, what happened in Iraq was the man Saddam Hussein became president. And shortly after that they started their eight-year war, eight years I believe it was, with Iran, then the first Gulf War, then other events that we all know about only too well. [5:17] Again, you get into the cars. 1970s big American car with an eight-track tape player -- I don't know if any of you remember eight-track tape players. [5:26] The house we were living in was built in the 70's. Again you have this impression that the society, it was kind of going places in the 1970's and then it sort of hits a brick wall and all that stops.

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[5:37] That got me started thinking about the end of the 1970's, what's going on there? And originally I had the idea of writing a book about Afghanistan. I decided that would be a little bit narrow so I decided to think about the issue in broader terms. [5:51] And then later I was assigned by Newsweek to go to Japan which confronted me with the entire East Asian modernization experience of which Japan was the pioneer. You can't live in Japan nowadays without thinking about Korea, and China, and Taiwan. [6:09] In 2010 I had the great good luck to go to Hong Kong to teach for a semester, and again there you are confronted with 1979, the story of China's modernization. Because 1979 was the year, as I told in the book, that China began with the special economic zones. [6:25] The most important of which is Shenzhen. Right on the border of Hong Kong and you can actually reach it on the subway system, the Hong Kong subway system. You just go to the end of the line and there it is. [6:34] In 1979 it was often described as a fishing village, a bit more than that but there really wasn't much there. Now it's a city the size of New York City and that's where they make the innards of your iPhone. That's another story that I'm trying to tell in the book. It's kind of an unlikely combination of stories, but that's how it came together. Amb. Kurt: [6:52] It reminds me of a couple points in history where you had constellations of things that made for really big changes that were lasting, as opposed to the normal forty years that you go through. You can think of 1939 and the launch into World War II, you can think of way back to 1648 and the creation of the state system. [7:18] Henry Kissinger on the mind I guess. What is it that produces a leader? Is it the times that are so striking that produces these leaders that emerge like [inaudible 07:32] or Margaret Thatcher, Elton Gold, Ronald Reagan? Or is it that these leaders emerge, who have some sort of insight or vision that sort of shape what's happening? Christian: [7:43] That's an excellent question. One of the things I realized I wanted to do with this book was writing on the history of ideas. The history of ideas doesn't exist on its own. Ideas don't have any effect unless they are in someone's head. [7:56] Then I realized it was going to be a book about the intersection of powerful, important political ideas with individual biographers, with leader's biographies. One of the things that strike me about the group of people that I'm writing about in this book is that all the leaders that I'm writing about are leaders that had a very strong interest in ideas. [8:17] None of the leaders that I'm writing about in this book are technocrats in that sense of the word. I should explain I'm telling five stories in the book. I'll make it very quick. [8:26] As you can see there's Margaret Thatcher who was elected British Prime Minister in 1979, I already mentioned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which isn't here on the cover.

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[8:35] Up here you see John Paul II who became Pope in 1978 and made his first trip back to his Polish homeland in June 1979 setting off a whole interesting series of events that culminated, I would argue, culminated in the revolution of 1989. [8:53] Then we have Iotola Komani who of course is the leading figure of the Islamic revolution in Iran, 1979. Then we have Dung Xiaoping who became the paramount leader, as we call it, of China in late 1978 and then proceeded to launch a completely unprecedented economic modernization program in 1979, in which the special economic zones I mentioned were just a part. [9:17] But what strikes me most especially about these four people on the cover, is that these were all people who were deeply invested in a set of ideas, who understood the importance of political and economic ideas and who were very interested in transforming the consensus about those ideas that each of them encountered in their own situations. [9:39] That's the thing that I found really interesting when I was writing the book, explaining this interface between leaders and the ideas that drive them. Amb. Kurt: [9:50] Is there any relationship between them or their ideas that caused this to happen at the same time. Christian: [9:58] Well that's an interesting question. Amb. Kurt: [9:59] Alright, two excellents and one interesting. [10:01] [laughter] Christian: [10:02] That's an excellent question. Amb. Kurt: [10:04] Three. [10:05] [laughter] Christian: [10:06] Which is also interesting. [10:07] [laughter] [10:07] That's an interesting question, and it's an interesting question because I'm not sure we can ever give a definitive answer. It seems to have something to do with generations, a very slippery, difficult concept. The period I'm writing about is really, pretty neatly, one generation after the end of the Second World War. You can see two dynamics involved. [10:27] One is at the end of the Second World War in the developed west. The end of the Second World War marked this unprecedented period of prosperity. The French called it, correct me if I'm wrong, "Le trente glorieuses", the 30 glorious years. What they meant by that was, wealth was distributed through the population like never before. Economic inequality was brought back, the welfare state was spread out, it encompassed everyone, embraced everyone. Yet, capitalism was also very vibrant and everybody got rich. [11:05] What you see in the 1970s was that whole model in Europe and United States hits a wall. The energy crisis, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system a whole series of things happen, and people begin to lose faith in that model. It just doesn't work anymore. And nowhere so dramatically as in Great Britain, where the beginning of the cradle to grave welfare state was welcome with open arms in 1945. By 1979 people were realizing it's just not working anymore.

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[11:33] That's the west, kind of loss of confidence in the old model, a sense that the old way isn't working anymore. In the developed world, the end of World War II marked the start of decolonialization, independence movements, many of which were socialist or perhaps radically nationalist in character, but certainly not religious. What happens then, in many parts of the developing world, people get disillusioned with that. [11:59] Many of those independence leaders turn out to be corrupt. Socialism doesn't work. If you're an Arab Muslim, the war of 1967, also 1973, show you that whole nationalist socialist Nasser thing isn't really working either. Some people begin to turn to religion. There is an interesting overlap here, because it doesn't happen only in the Muslim world. The 1970s, there's this incredible rise in Islamic political activism, what we now call Islamism. [12:29] You get something similar in the United States with the rise of the evangelicals. 1979 is also the year the moral majority is formed in the United States, which is quite striking. In Israel you have the rise of a religiously motivated settlers' movement. Even in some extent, in India you get the Hindu nationalists which are about religion. There are some very odd parallels here that happen. I think that they really come together and kind of explode in 1979 that has a lot to do with it. Amb. Kurt: [13:05] One of the things that you just mentioned, and I want to play this out a little bit, the rise of Islamism. You can mention the 67 war, and the 73 war. One of the things in 73 was also the hostage taking in Munich, the Olympics, and the Israeli athletes. We've had other things during this period that were indicators of militant Islamism, which we didn't recognize as such until much later. [13:38] If you go back to 1979, was this a turning point in that as well? Christian: [13:42] It was. Remember, those hostage takers I would agree with you were a sign of militancy, but they were still the old style Palestinians. The revolutionary Marxists in 1972, it's hard for us to forget. When we talk about terrorism and how it's been around forever, but which terrorists? The 1970s terrorists were Marxists or radical nationalists, sometimes a combination of both. They weren't really religious. Well, maybe Sri Lanka. [14:11] They really weren't religious. What happens in the 1970s is that you get this amazing phenomenon throughout large parts of the Muslim world. In Saudi Arabia and large parts of the Muslim world they call it the Sahwah, the awakening. People begin to return to religion. It really is a response, in part, to Bathism and Socialism and all of these secular movements that somehow didn't prove very satisfying. [14:41] People realized that religion offers ultimate answers to ultimate questions, which the secularists somehow don't really do. There's that. In Iran, you have this sort of amazing modernization program going on, the Shah's modernization program, the white revolution. That oil money is flowing, they're building stuff, and western culture is coming in gang busters. Religion just doesn't play much of a part in this. [15:10] As people are flooding into the cities, they are disoriented. They are looking for their roots, trying to find new values systems. What do you have? You have the mosque. These things, I think, are very, very important. You also have an ideological thing going

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on which is the rise of these new, young revolutionary Islamic thinkers. We had Sayyid Qutb in the 50s and 60s, writing. A lot of you know about him, he was a Muslim brother who developed what we now call, perhaps, jihadi ideology. [15:45] There were a lot of other people writing as well. I talk about Mount Duni in my book, Pakistani theorized about an Islamic state which at this point is kind of an odd concept. Muslims were used to states governed by presidents or kings, but what's an Islamic state? What is that? What happens in 1979 is that you get an Islamic state for the first time. Ayatollah Khomeini has really cooked up this novel and unprecedented idea of rule by clerics, which by the way, never really happened in Iran before, it's actually kind of a new idea. [16:23] He's kind of a traditionalist with a twist. In Afghanistan, what's kind of striking to me about 1979, when the communist government comes to power in 1978 you have a rebellion. Of course, most of the people doing the rebelling are Muslims. A lot of them are very traditionalists Muslims. They're tribal leaders, they're clerics. It's kind of a small revolt here, one over there. [16:46] Then you get this new phenomenon which is the young men who lead these new Islamic revolutionary political parties. That's a new thing. You had a political party in Iran too, that becomes the official kind of carrier of the revolution. You have to have your party card. It has an ideology like the communists have. In Afghanistan these parties were built up just like communist parties, with substructures and all this stuff. [17:13] These are young revolutionary Islamists who are learning from the enemy. This is why 1979 it marks a really radical turning point. For the first time in Iran they're coming into power. In Afghanistan they're picking up the gun and showing what they're ideas can do against a super power. At the time, it was so confusing, especially for American policy makers, we didn't know what do with it. There are many stories about that. I won't go on. I've gone on long enough. [17:44] You have to put yourself back into the moment and remember just how unprecedented that was at the time. Amb. Kurt: [17:50] That's a really good point, as well. That's probably [inaudible 17:55] . [laughter] What you're getting at though, is often times we really don't understand what's happening when it's happening and now you got to look back and in hindsight and say "OK, so what Deng Xiaoping was doing was really [inaudible 18:09] ." Or, Margaret Thatcher really did change the UK. When, at the time, it was highly controversial and it was not clear it was going to be lasting, how far reaching it was going to be. [18:22] Taking some of these lessons now and say, "OK, what's going on today? Are we witnessing anything like that, that's far reaching? " Christian: [18:30] I wonder. I mean, one thing about today is that we've probably lost our faith in our revolutions and grand ideas. One of the differences with today's Islamists is that they already have 30 years of the Islamic Republic in Iran to look back on. Nobody really wants to do that, again, for some reason. [18:51] For example, Tunisia, I recently interviewed Rached Ghannouchi, the head of the Islamist Party in Tunisia. And I said,

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"This really fascinates, and how did you experience 1979? The Islamic Revolution, as a young Islamist, that must have been really quite invigorating for you." And he said, "Ah." Enthusiasm. "It was exhilarating, amazing." [19:11] After that, he said, "Well, pretty quickly, we figured out that that really wasn't the thing. It was very violent, the regime became..." He was trying to be a diplomat, but he said, "You know, the regime became very bad. And being in Tunisia, decided that if we wanted to have more of religious values in study, we were going to do it in a peaceful way." [19:33] Then he explained his own philosophy of coalition government and so on and so forth, which is what they've done. And, you know, the Muslim brothers in Egypt are trying to their own thing, too, not quite so nicely, but clearly they're all so wary of emulating the reigning example too closely. They want better relations with Iran, but they're also somewhat deterred by that example. It's very interesting how the legacy of 1979 still ways very heavily on people's minds in that part of the world. Amb. Kurt: [20:02] Are the leaders today of the caliber or of the stature of the leaders that you talk about? Christian: [20:09] Yeah, I wonder. It's very hard to say. Again, we don't seem to have that kind of trust in leaders today that some people had then. I mean, this is a very specific set of leaders, of course. [20:25] I've been trying to, for example, I've had a particularly striking, because Deng Xiaoping was a brilliant strategic mind. We can argue about a lot of his policies, but taking a country of that size and turning that aircraft carrier around 180 degrees, actually quite rapidly, is really something extraordinary and he was indeed a very, very gifted leader and organizer, who was one of Mao's men. He grew up in Mao's shadow. he was Mao's number two, that's considered a lifelong member of the Mao faction. [20:58] Then Mao dies and what does he do? He tells everybody, "You know? Didn't really work so well, did it? What we need now is economic modernization. We've had enough revolution." And he very skillfully brackets out to people who aren't going along with it and brings everyone else on board, has a very clear strategic direction, brings people along. It's quite extraordinary, when you think about it. [21:25] Now, do we see anyone like that in China, today? Not even remotely. We see nobody knows about stature, nobody above influence, what we see now are really absolutely gray characters. It's really hard to imagine how the present system will bring up characters who dare to do something different. Amb. Kurt: [21:49] Of course, it was hard to imagine that when I was in charge. Christian: [21:51] Yeah. Now, actually, Mr. Ghannouchi, the leader of the Tunisia Islamists, is a very interesting character. He's a very big figure in a very small hall, but I find him quite extraordinary, really quite a remarkable character. Even a small country like Tunisia can have a great impact on the rest of the world. [22:14] What we might see now is, particularly when we live in a world of social media, we might see leaders in

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unexpected places exercising unexpectedly powerful input. Maybe the big countries are a bit exhausted, at this point. We've all been dealing with so many crises and crisis management. Maybe we shouldn't really expect to see the big countries offering the innovative leaders. Maybe it'll be the smaller ones. I don't know. Amb. Kurt: [22:40] One of the things, I was thinking about the examples in your book, as well, too. The ones that seem to have had the lasting success are the ones that, I would argue, brink closely to core hidden values. The ones that are transitory are ones that don't, in a sincere way. For example, certain soviet invasion in Afghanistan, I would [inaudible 23:07] . The Chinese reforms were about empowering people for their livelihood, the economy, their wellbeing, reforming some of their politics and structures in society. That had a lasting impact. That sure had a lasting impact. [23:29] Of course, then we have the Shah of the Iranian Revolution, I think just completely ran out of steam and it's just hanging on group power, now [inaudible 23:42] that connection with the people. Christian: [23:41] That's a very good observation. The striking thing that you hear from Iranians nowadays, about the Iranian Revolution, they'll always say this to you, they'll say, "You know, under the Shah, we used to drink in public and pray in private. Now it's the opposite." [23:57] You'll hear that joke or that observation over and over and over again. By turning the religious establishment into the state the Ayatollahs have succeeded in doing what the Shah could never do, which was to discredit religion. [24:14] The younger generation today, even if they're attracted to religious values in Iran, they are turned off by what the powers that be are doing because, very often, the powers that be are not genuinely religious people in any visible sense. They are corrupt and greedy and not willing to allow even those limited democratic spaces that the Iranian Constitution gives its people. [24:40] An election tomorrow in Iran and the last election represented some actual political competition, because the Iranian Constitution allows for the popular election of the president. Iranians went to the poll and they wanted to see, for goodness sake, that their votes counted. The Supreme Leaders learned from that experience, so tomorrow, it isn't going to be like that. [25:02] It's going to be very tightly controlled. All the candidates have been very, very carefully vetted, and don't expect to see a lot going on there. Most of the Iranian people are going to be, not absentee voters, but just absent. That shows exactly this kind of exhaustion of the original ideals of the revolution that you're talking about. Amb. Kurt: [25:24] I want to go back to the business in point that we were talking earlier and I forgot to raise it. Also, in 1979, there was this incident that happened in the Mosques in Saudi Arabia. Talk about that incident and the impact of that incident. Christian: [25:42] That was a huge incident. I don't know how many of you have heard this or remember it. It's actually a huge, powerful, very important incident, the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. [25:54] One of the really interesting questions I would have liked to have gotten into more deeply in my book, is the whole rivalry between the Sunnis and the Shia, because there are some scholars who say that when the

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revolution started in Iran, that the Sunni Muslims, a lot of them began saying, "Hey. What are we going to do? We can't have these Shi'ites stealing our thunder." Everybody in the Muslim world was really quite stirred up by what was happening in Iran. And in Saudi Arabia, a bunch of young radicals, now you can almost see them as sort of proto Al-Qaida types, who were very much against the moderty. Precisely, because they didn't it was conservative enough. They took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca during the pilgrimage. [26:38] They took everyone hostage and they proclaimed one of their guys to be a Messiah, the Mahdi, and basically, they were saying, "This is it, the end of days is come and it's the end of the Saudi regime." And it took the Saudi authorities weeks and 100's of dead to recapture the Mosque and take it over and get it back under control. That was a huge, huge event. [27:08] We started blaming the Iranians for it, and the Iranians started blaming us for it. It turned into this huge scandal. Muslims in Libya and in Pakistan attacked the US Embassies. It's a very, very important event because it shook the Saudi royal family to their core. It really shook them up and scared them. That was really the moment when they began realizing that we need to send our discontented, young, intensely pious, young men overseas, where they won't get us into trouble. And not only that, we're going to start spending money funding mosques and madrassas and publishing ventures overseas. We'll spread our influence over there, but we're not going to allow the radicals to do bad things here. Amb. Kurt: [inaudible 28:06] [28:01] Christian: [28:03] Exactly. It was a very faithful development. And again, it stirred up the whole Islamic world. My friend Yarrsaf Yafema, who is now [inaudible 28:16] . She wrote a fantastic book about it, by the way, which I heartily recommend. One of the reasons I didn't write about [inaudible 28:19] . But it is a hugely important moment and, I think, largely forgotten, today. It's hard to overemphasize just how important it was. Amb. Kurt: [28:24] In my own mind I equate that incident with really the beginning of the end of the Cold War framework. Christian: [28:33] Interesting. Amb. Kurt: [28:34] The Cold War lasted another 10 years. I grew up studying the Cold War and at Harvard Graduate School and wasn't aware of how the world was already changing, and now you look back on [inaudible 28:53] what we saw in the post-Cold War world [inaudible 28:56] terrorism actually go back to about this period. I've asked a lot of questions and we have an audience here and [inaudible 29:06] want to see if anyone has things that they want to bring up in the interview [inaudible 29:12] . Christian: [29:09] That'd be great. Amb. Kurt: [29:12] Keep talking.

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Audience Member 1: [29:15] I have [inaudible 29:21] I'm an intern here. In an article you published earlier this year on foreign policy, I unfortunately haven't had an opportunity to read your book. Christian: [29:25] That's OK. Audience Member 1: [29:26] And they're touching on the [inaudible 29:30] Edinburg and, kind of how [inaudible 29:37] was a new conservatism a reactionary...and you went on in length to go on how all of these great figures were reactionary. They weren't necessarily conservative in the sense that they were [inaudible 29:51] they were a new kind of conservative [inaudible 29:56] . You said that you don't know, in the article, what will come, but what are your thoughts about what the new reactionary forces will be? Christian: [30:05] Well, you've brought up a very important point, which is one of the more polemical parts of my book, where I'm trying to get people stirred up and looking at these ends in a new light. These are all very different stories, right, but do they have anything in common at all? A lot of people told me these stories have nothing in common, but when I got into them in depth, I concluded that they do. [30:25] Which is that they're all reacting, all of these politicians, all of these stories are about conservative revolutions. They're all reacting to a status quo which is rooted very much in the post-war order, an order which is defined not exclusively but very powerfully by ideas of the left -Socialism, communism. In Britain it was the post-war cradle-to-grave welfare state of the Labor Party. [30:56] What unifies these rebels is that they're all reacting against something rather similar. Kind of a, let's call it, secular 20th Century left-of-center modernization. [31:09] Thatcher was quite emphatic on this point. At one point during her election campaign, someone called her a reactionary, which in the 1970s, you have to remember, was still a really bad thing to call someone. And Mrs. Thatcher said, "Well, of course I'm a reactionary. There's a lot to react against." [31:27] [laughter] [31:27] She was quite proud of the title. This is the point that I'm trying to make about all of these leaders -- they're rebels. We've already talked about the extent to which they were transformative leaders, but they're strange rebels, because they're counter-revolutionary leaders. [31:43] They're reacting to revolutions, and like Edmund Burke, they're not just conservatives. Conservatives want the status quo, right? They want to go back to the old thing. [31:52] Well, Ayatollah Khomeini did not want to go back to the old status quo. He wanted something quite new which was ruled by the clergy.

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[32:02] Deng Xiaoping in China did not want to go back to pre-revolutionary China. He wanted to keep some aspects of the revolution -- he just wanted to make it a market-oriented Communist revolution. [32:11] So these are strange rebels. That's the title. [32:16] They're all counter-revolutionaries. I won't go on more about that. You can read the book for that. [32:23] But do I see leaders like that today? I do, but again, we live in an age which is so technocratic and so disenamored of the whole idea of dramatic change, I just don't, I see it pressing down counter-revolutionaries. [32:47] It's now a generation since we had this moment, and all of these ideas are being modified or discarded in some way. The market consensus is not even as holy as it once was, is it? I don't think so. I would say I don't see leaders quite like this. Of course, this is also a book about the Cold War, so it's a very different environment there. Amb. Kurt: [33:08] I've got to let people ask questions. But what you're saying, and another way of saying it is, there has been in modern times now a decline in belief. Christian: [33:18] Exactly. Amb. Kurt: [33:19] You can't get as committed and motivated and passionate as those leaders were and the politics were. And [inaudible 33:32] . Christian: [33:29] Look at President Obama. I mean, President Obama is a man whose heart is probably on the left of the spectrum. But he is a child of this period. [33:43] We're always going on and on about how he doesn't like to schmooze, he doesn't like to glad-hand people, he doesn't like to be abusive, he doesn't like...He's "no-drama Obama". That's very much a product of this post-Cold War period where we're very suspicious of huge ideological investments. That just is what we do. Amb. Kurt: [34:04] Yeah. There are radicals who are out there still. Christian: [34:07] That's right. Amb. Kurt: [34:09] Whether the system is to the Tea Party, it's extreme, frankly. I would say radical, but they're certainly very strong and passionate in their beliefs. But that doesn't represent the parties where people are today. Christian: [34:20] No, no, I don't think so. Amb. Kurt: [34:21] The party's much more skeptical. Christian: [34:23] I think that leaves room for idealism. I'm not saying people are not idealistic. I know a lot of young people that I'm in contact with are extremely idealistic. [34:32] But you don't hear people talking about these grand ideological designs. Revolution, I mean, who wants revolution? Anyone?

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Amb. Kurt: [34:39] Right. Unless you can get it back. The Tea Party is in many ways a reaction against grand ideological designs. . Christian: [34:44] Yeah, I would say. Amb. Kurt: [34:46] Use that, OK? Jane: [34:48] Hi, my name is Jane. I wanted to ask if you feel like there were some common personality traits that emerged when you were studying these leaders. Christian: [34:58] Oh, what a great question, common personality traits. Well, certainly one of the most interesting encounters of the 1980s, in my humble opinion, was when Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping met to discuss the handover of Hong Kong. [35:14] Now think about that for a minute. [35:16] Deng Xiaoping, who is Mr. Tough Guy, purged three times jail terms, bit of a torturer, his family taken away from him, comes back again and again and ends up leading China. OK? So this guy is, everyone who's met him, Sprnyev Brzynski, all the people who've ever met the guy, the first word that occurs to them is tough. He was 4'11". [35:43] [laughtrt] Christian: [35:44] Tiny scary little guy. And Margaret Thatcher, I mean, what can I say? You know, the... Amb. Kurt: [35:51] Tiny scary little woman. Christian: [35:53] Tiny scary little woman, with the famous head dye. It's the classic example of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. They negotiate, they negotiate, and Thatcher for once is not on a very strong footing, because there's a treaty that says Hong Kong has to be handed back to China at a certain point. [36:12] But she's trying to get as much freedom, as many concessions for the post-British Hong Kong as she can get, and Deng Xiaoping is just grinding back against her. These are both two people who are perhaps the most stubborn personalities of the 20th Century. [36:33] These are people that got where they were, both of them -- quite good common set of characteristics here -- by out-enduring the other people. Thatcher was famous for doing her homework better than anyone else in British politics. She, by the way, only needed four hours of sleep a night. That was her sleep quota. That's all she needed. [36:55] Deng Xiaoping was also an inexhaustible absolutely insurmountable workaholic. I think in that respect they have a lot in common. They would both have this kind of bulldog quality. [37:14] One of the really interesting things about my research in this topic was also the ways that these two incredibly unlikely people with completely unlikely backgrounds were talking about the same things. Thatcher has talked about the need to restore an entrepreneurial spirit among the British, and privately Deng Xiaoping was talking about the same thing.

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[37:35] Thatcher is talking about rewarding good work with incentives, private ownership for people who own government housing. Let's have them buy their own houses. [37:47] Deng Xiaoping, in private, is talking to his aides. He's not saying any of this in public. But he's just in Singapore and he's been to Japan, and he says, we need to do things the way they do in Singapore and Japan. The worker there can buy his own apartment, work an assembly line. In Singapore a worker can use his bonus and buy his own car. And he's so amazed by all of this. [38:14] In private, they're talking about very similar things. They both ended up soliciting advice from Len Freedman, because [inaudible 38:25] . There's a very interesting parallel there. I'm not even going to try to form my own. Amb. Kurt: [38:25] You can just put your mic over there. Yeah, OK, there you go. Better? Better? Christian: [38:32] Yeah. That's... Awigad: [38:32] Thank you very much. Awigad [inaudible 38:39] . I wondered if you had included... Amb. Kurt: [38:37] Oh, yours is all taken? Yours is OK. Christian: [38:40] Mine is OK? Awigad: [38:43] I'm wondering if it included 1980 along 1979. That would have brought us to the election of Ronald Reagan, who was truly a transformational leader. I'm wondering how you see these leaders, a few of them, in your book, related to Reagan's revolution and his election in 1980. Christian: [39:03] That's an excellent point. Well, there are two things there. I'll be very frank with you. Reagan is an extremely important transformational leader. To me he belongs to a slightly later moment. [39:16] That's the main reason why I didn't include him in the book. He becomes president in 1981, right? And then he really gets going in the course of 1981, and that's just a beat later than the period I wanted to look at. [39:32] That's the main reason why I didn't include him. No disrespect to Ronald Reagan. [39:37] But the second reason, which is much more atmospheric, is actually that I realized at a certain point I wanted to write a book about the world. There's so many books that we write now, we American writers, which are supposedly about the world, but they're really just about us. [39:56] In my career I ended up living overseas for many, many, many years. I don't even want to tell you how many. I've had the great good fortune to see the world from a genuinely global perspective.

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[40:09] I realized it would be kind of fun -- and it's no deeper than that really -- it would be kind of fun to write a truly global book which is not just about us. Of course, the United States was a huge actor in all of these dramas. [40:23] In retrospect, I would say, one of the most important things that happened this year was when Deng Xiaoping came to Washington to meet with Carter and sign off on the normalization of diplomatic relations. Retrospect, an absolutely huge and important thing, which is a very important pre-condition for all the further reforms in China. [40:41] I'm not saying the United States is not important. Of course it is. But I also found myself increasingly attracted by a story that wasn't just another story about American politics, and there have also been a lot of great books about Reagan. [40:54] But I became fascinated by this combination of moments. Amb. Kurt: [40:59] Yes. Audience Member 2: [41:00] Christian, who else did you consider putting in the book? Are there others strange revolutionaries that didn't make the cut? Christian: [41:08] Wow. I have to think about that one a second. Well, I just got so enamored of this bunch, that I never really considered alternatives. [41:19] It's important to emphasize this is not a history of the year 1979, right? It's a very select story that I'm trying to tell. I didn't talk about the revolution in Nicaragua. I didn't talk about Camp David, which is a date they commissioned. [41:37] I just became so fascinated by this, I guess I didn't really think about other protagonists. [41:43] John Paul II, by the way, whom we haven't talked about, is one of the most amazing characters in the story. Just a moment, I want to say, by far probably the most intelligent of this group of leaders. Just sheer brain power. [41:58] He had two doctorates. They were real doctorates, from real universities, one in theology, and one in philosophy. He spoke more languages than we even really still understand. He was an extraordinary pastoral minister to his flock when he was a priest in Krakow. He went on sporting trips with us. He wrote a great book about sex, which people don't realize. [42:26] We all think of him as this very dogmatic, Catholic conservative. Which, you know, in many respects he was. But he actually wrote a remarkable book motivated by his own experiences with his pastoral work in Poland, about sex, because he felt the church hadn't really written anything good about that. [42:43] He experienced personally both Nazism and Stalinism directly, which had a huge influence on his quite radical thinking about human rights. Another really remarkable leader whom I think in many respects doesn't get the credit he's due.

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[42:58] When you get stuck on a leader like that, it's kind of hard. It's a pretty high bar. There aren't many John Paul II's around, again, even today. Amb. Kurt: [43:07] I was thinking about him as well. He had that same stubbornness manufactured in original thinking. Good point. Christian: [43:14] Yeah, I'd call it that. Absolutely. Amb. Kurt: [43:16] Absolutely. Yeah. Audience Member 3: [43:19] It's a terrible thing, but they have survived assassination attempts. That's another story. Christian: [43:23] That's right. That's something that quite fascinates me a lot. You know, we're writing about people who achieved their goals. These are all leaders who achieved their goals, but we should never forget what a role contingency and chance played in history. [43:38] Any of these people could have been cut down in their prime. Thatcher survived a very famous assassination attempt by the IRA when they blew up her hotel in Brighton. I interviewed Norman Tebbit, who was one of the people injured in that attack. His wife is still paralyzed because of it. [43:55] Apparently the Maoists tried to assassinate Deng Xiaoping countless times. We still don't know how many times. [44:01] Ayatollah Khomeini, of course, the Shah thought about actually killing him at one point. Some of the other ayatollahs intervened and raised his clerical rank to make it impossible to execute him. [44:14] There are all these moments when any one of these people could have been wiped out. Amb. Kurt: [44:20] And Reagan... Christian: [44:22] And those moments didn't happen. And Reagan was the victim of a very serious assassination attempt. Amazingly, he survived that. [44:30] John Paul II, of course, don't forget, also took some bullets. It is worth thinking about that aspect of just how quickly history can turn into something else. Sal Raman: [44:44] Hi, my name is Sal Raman. I'm a Muslim at [inaudible 44:53] . [44:52] My question is about Islamic leadership. I'm a practicing Muslim here in America a new generation is coming up here. [45:02] We love our religion. We love that we can practice it here much more freely than some of the other Muslim countries. I want to know about your advice for American Muslims, a population that's pretty young. How we can get more active, politically active, and be a help to each other. Amb. Kurt: [45:28] Fantastic.

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Christian: [45:30] I'd say, be vocal, organize. The one fascinating thing about the American political system is how dramatically it rewards mobilization. [45:42] I was reading a great article about -- this involves a digression, forgive me, but relevant -- about gun control in the United States. In the order of new books, great new book I recommend by David Cole who makes the point that in fact the National Rifle Association is not a huge politic group. It's actually a fairly small number of people, and the amount of money that they get is also not huge. [46:07] They really are mostly ordinary gun owners, but they are incredibly good at mobilizing. They tend to be people who feel very strongly about the right to bear arms. They feel very strongly about that. [46:20] That's a huge political advantage, because when you feel so totally about something, you will get your people out there and you will defeat that measure on background checks. Even though it's, in my view, kind of common sensical and really not much to object about it, even if you're a gun owner. [46:39] That's a very good point that there are interest groups in the United States which very often punch above their weight because they feel very, very strongly about what they do. [46:50] I've actually been waiting to see a kind of an organized Muslim lobby in the United States which defends Islamic values, and also consistently denounces terrorism in whatever form, denounces Muslims killing other Muslims. [47:07] It's up for it, but it's very hard, because as you know much better than I, Muslims in the United States are an incredibly diverse bunch of people. They share Islam, which is something pretty good, but very often not much else. [47:22] That's the main challenge. It's simply the organizational challenge of turning yourselves into a proper mobilized lobby. If you can do that, I think that you can have quite an impact. Amb. Kurt: [47:37] It's a really good point. I would make an additional point in answering that, too. [47:43] I feel that there has been, it's needs changing a little bit, there has been reluctance on the part of the Muslim-American community to really get very vocal against Muslims who have become so militant and so violent, and so twisted their religion they don't really want to take them on. [48:07] Until there is a leader or a catalyst that's willing to be very outspoken, like a Thatcher, or like a Pope John Paul on Communism, who's going to say, that's not us and that is perverting what we are -- it's that sort of strength that I think is really what hasn't been seen yet. Think that would be really important. [48:30] Anyone from the audience, once more, you want to? Everyone's dying to get to the cookies? [48:36] [laughter]

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Christian: [48:38] Well, listen, I want to thank you so much for coming. I know that some of you were worried about the weather, maybe. You could have easily stayed at home and boarded up your windows. Thank you very, very much for coming. [48:54] By the way, I just want to say, my email address is christian.caryl@Gmail.com. My twitter handle is ccaryl, c-c-a-r-y-l. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to get your feedback. Thank you very much for coming. Amb. Kurt: [49:11] Thank you, Christian. [49:11] [applause]

Transcription by CastingWords