Saket Vora

I was biking back to the apartment with Nader when he suddenly remembered that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was speaking on campus, at 7:30pm. It was 7:20pm. Fortunately, we were right near Kresge Auditorium so we swung over, waited in line, and slipped in despite having no tickets. Albright was humorous and insightful. The theme of the talk was a “trip around the world” where Albright would offer her views on certain hot issues. The talk opened well, with Albright remarking that she was the proud to serve as the 1st woman Secretary of State and to have Condoleezza Rice be the second, from Stanford. It was clearly a softball applause line, but only one person started applauding. Awkward laughter from the rest of the audience followed. Some her comments below, paraphrased of course.

On North Korea: “Our intelligence was wrong about Kim Jong Ill. They said he was crazy and a pervert. I went to North Korea and had talks with him. And he’s not crazy.” We need to stop talking about regime change; controlling nuclear weapons is more important.

On China: Don’t boycott the Olympic Games, but the POTUS can skip the opening ceremony. We need to understand that we are co-dependent on China. It’s like a drug addict and his pusher, but you don’t know which is which. We should always bring up the issue of human rights and Tibet with them, and know they will always bring up Taiwan.

On Burma: Sanctions or involvement with the military junta? The cyclone has brought more attention to the concept of “responsibility to protect”, in which one raises the idea of invading a country because its government isn’t protecting its citizens. But Albright says sounds nice when idealists bring it up, but it’s a very difficult academic question to consider.

Oh Delhi & Islamabad: The US-Indian nuclear treaty and how it might undermine the NPT (considering India refused to join it and then tested nuclear weapons). Albright notes that the NPT is broken (promises have been broken on both sides) and the US-India Treaty could be a new model. She sadly noted that the Communists are holding up the treaty. Pakistan has everything that would cause a foreign policy migraine.

As the conversation shifted over to Afghanistan, Albright noted that she wants to teach a class about the “unintended consequences of foreign policy.” Oh…sounds like the idea of blowback, which readers of this website have seen me discuss before.

On Iran: Holding talks isn’t the same as appeasement. (This got an applause from the audience). Albright also noted that most Americans don’t really know how complicated Iran is, specifically how many different levels of power exist. (I’d comment that that mainstream media has done a universally pathetic job on informing the American public about Iran. For such an important country to our national security and involvement in Iraq, it’s simply disgraceful.)

Albright went on to discuss the heavily one-sided education that occurs in the Middle East (in all countries), the issue of the missile defense shield in eastern Europe and the colder role Russia is taking, and finally that it’s confusing to the one to have partisan foreign policy and that whoever is the next President should probably appointment Republicans to the Cabinet (heh).

One thing I liked about Albright was how often she said the words “it’s complicated”, “it’s a difficult issue”, “there is no one good answer”. She seems to take a very pragmatic view towards foreign policy, a field that IS complex and difficult. Too many people want to just try to simplify issues down to black and white stances.

Memorial Day weekend was boring but productive. I’m farther than anyone else on my embedded systems hardware project. This week’s lab report is already done. Today Andy tipped me and Kamal off on free food from a seminar that ended on the 2nd floor of Packard. Scored a vegetable panini sandwich, fancy corn chips, twelve half-and-half packets (just ran out this morning), and a plateful of pasta salad. 15 minutes later, we attended a special talk by Bob Pease, a famous analog designer from National Semiconductor. The LM317 voltage regulator? Yeah, that’s him.