The future of liberal democracies: In conversation with William Hague and Hillary Clinton

The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt

Good afternoon, everyone, and a very warm welcome to this event organised by Chatham House, on the Future of Liberal Democracies. My name is Jeremy Hunt. I’ve been organising this series of events with Chatham House. And we have been reflecting on the big issues facing the planet this century, one of which, of course, is climate change, which we’re hoping COP26 will make decisive progress towards at the end of this year in Glasgow.

But the other, which concerns the rise of China and the safety and security of open societies in that context, is one where we are only just beginning to turn our attention to what the solutions might be, and we’ve had some very distinguished guests in the series so far, Dr Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister, Margot Wallström. But none of them have attracted as much interest as our guests today, and we are absolutely delighted to welcome Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had a decisive impact on global affairs during her time as US Secretary of State.

I’m going to ask William Hague to introduce her and indeed to conduct the discussion with Secretary Clinton, and he’ll talk a bit about her experience. But the one thing I wanted to mention is the connection that Secretary Clinton has with Chatham House, because she won the Chatham House Prize in 2013, after she’d stepped down as Secretary of State, and that is a prize that’s voted on by Chatham House members, perhaps the most distinguished collection of foreign policy experts in the world. So, I think that shows the esteem with which she is held, and we are incredibly honoured to have you.

Just a few pieces of admin, everything is on the record, so the famous Chatham House phrase that Chatham House gave its name to, where things are kept off the record, won’t apply in this afternoon’s talk. You are free to tweet anything that is said, #CHEvents, and if you want to ask a question to Secretary Clinton, these will be read out by William Hague at the end of his initial discussion. Please use the Q&A function. We won’t be using the chat function or the raise hand function.

It now gives me great pleasure to hand over to Lord Hague, who I was very honoured to succeed, with someone else in-between us, as Foreign Secretary, but he was incredibly distinguished in that role, he did it for much longer than me, and his legacy lives on, I think particularly in the initiative that he set up for the prevention of sexual violence in conflict. I remember meeting Nobel Prize Winner, Dennis Mukwege, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, when I was Foreign Secretary, and that was really the result of sustained campaigning that William started when he was Foreign Secretary and, indeed, had the enthusiastic support of Secretary Clinton. So, I just wanted to mention that. Thank you, William, very much for organising this afternoon’s session, and thank you, again, Secretary Clinton for joining us. Over to you both for what I’m sure will be a fascinating discussion.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, thank you very much, Jeremy, and hello to everybody listening to us, and indeed Jeremy was my – yes, my successor, but two actually, at the Foreign Office. Boris Johnson got in there between us of course but thank you for this – for a fascinating series that you have organised, and to Chatham House for hosting it and for asking me to take part and asking me to bring a friend really.

Well, I hope everybody will agree today, I have really brought a friend in Hillary Clinton, the Former US Secretary of State. We worked together a great deal when we were in office, on the Arab Spring, on relations with Russia, on Afghanistan, and, of course, on the great relationship between our two countries, but we became firm friends, as well and I am a great admirer of Hillary’s work in so many ways and, indeed, I was there presenting that Chatham House Prize to her in 2013 and was very proud to do so. So, Hillary, first of all, welcome to this event, it’s great to see you.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Thank you so much, William, and thanks to Jeremy Hunt for organising what I think is a terrific set of conversations for Chatham House. And I just want to echo the great friendship that William and I developed over our time together working on the issues he mentioned and so many more, and it’s such a treat to be here with you, William, and to plunge into talking about some of the many, many challenges facing democracies.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, let’s plunge in, thank you, to this vast subject of the future of liberal democracies, and I thought we might start on the global condition of democracy, our overall assessment of that. Because since you and I were in office, the Arab Spring has turned to dust in most respects, Russia has become more authoritarian, China has turned in an even more totalitarian direction, global surveys have shown youth satisfaction with democracy in decline, the US capital itself has been stormed by a mob refusing to accept the result of an entirely fair election, so I think we have to ask the question, are we in a crisis of democracy? If not, what would a crisis look like? How do we think about the global condition of democracy to begin with?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

I do think we’re in a crisis of democracy and there are a host of reasons why that is so, many of them internal, and some very specific to democracies, but others are global in the impact on how democracies are able to function, how body politics are now receiving and processing information, and of course the contest between autocracy and democracy that President Biden specifically called out in recent weeks.

So, I think, William, that the crisis is one that should demand the attention of those of us not only who have been in public life, but really every citizen in a democracy, such as yours and mine, because it’s not going to be easily resolved, and I worry greatly that, speaking from an American perspective, the divisiveness that now exists, and frankly the flaming of that divisiveness by irresponsible leaders and by technology and what it’s enabled us to unfortunately spread and for people to believe, is a serious, deep problem.

You mentioned the insurrection on January 6th, it was beyond shocking and, sadly, the attacks on democracy continue, and it’s not just coming from the former President, there are, sadly, a host of people who enabled that in the public arena, in the media, and until there is an honest reckoning from both the right and the left, because challenges to democracy that I’m seeing are coming from both directions, there will be continuing instability.

And, finally, to your point about young people, when you think about young people and you think about young people, you know, in their early 20s and even younger, they’ve had a pretty tumultuous journey so far in life, in our case starting with 9/11, but then going on with the Great Recession, the kind of setbacks that we’ve seen in various democracies under different types of leaders. And I think young people are questioning whether or not democracy can produce results and results that will be accepted, not just by the majority, as was the case with our election, but by the very vocal minority, again on the right, on the left, that continues to be very negative toward the democratic process.

So, I think it’s a crisis and I hope that many of the people who are watching us on this live stream from Chatham House will be helping to think about what we do and, first and foremost, it’s a responsibility of leaders, but also of citizens.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, let’s think about some of the things we could do in response to some of the threats you’ve mentioned, and one threat that has preoccupied me is foreign interference in democracies. You have been on the receiving end of that, perhaps more than anyone else in the world, the Muller Report established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump Presidency and worked to secure that outcome, that a great many actions were taken by a foreign power in relation to the US Presidential Election.

So now, if that could happen on such a scale in the 2016 election, let’s discuss what we should do about that. President Biden has announced sanctions on Russia just in the last few weeks in relation to interference in American democracy, do you think there is more that we need to be doing, given the repeated pattern of behaviour by Russia, and perhaps by Iran in other places, in recent elections?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Well, I do. Russia is the primary adversary when it comes to interfering in elections, and democracy more broadly, but you’re right to bring up Iran. I would add China, North Korea, anyone with cyber capacity who has seen how successful Russia has been, not only in the interference that has now been proven beyond a doubt in our election in 2016, but the continuing efforts to interfere even in the 2020 election, particularly the lead-up to it.

But I think there was also significant evidence of Russian involvement, if not influence or interference, in Brexit, there’s a lot of evidence of Russian suborning elected officials throughout Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic has just thrown out a huge group of Russian intelligence agents, there is an effort by Russia to support political parties and candidates in Europe and elsewhere who they believe will favour their interests. So, this is, yes, a very particular story about what has happened and is continuing to happen in the United States. So, what can we do?

Number one, we must demand leaders. Again, I don’t care whether you are conservative, liberal, right, left, leaders must be willing to stand up to and speak out against Russian interference or frankly interference from any foreign power, but let’s focus on Russia, and there needs to be a much greater awareness by the media of what this means. You know, we live in an instantaneous information-driven age and stories are hard for the so-called mainstream media to stay focused on.

We had an effort to overturn an election in our country on January 6th, hardly the Dark Ages, and yet it’s barely mentioned any longer in the media. Politicians who supported and encouraged it, who voted against the legitimacy of the election, regularly appear on our media and the interviewers rarely ask, if at all, well, how can you be here when you’re still lying about the election? In fact, the efforts to overturn the election, to change the electorate, continue apace. So, leaders have to understand, yes, today it might be in our case me or the Democrats, but it could be you and the Republicans, or any other political leader or party.

Secondly, there must be a reckoning by the tech companies for the role that they play in undermining the information ecosystem that is absolutely essential for the functioning of any democracy. If you get to a point, and we are if not there very close to it, where you cannot have agreement on facts, on evidence, on truth, how does a democracy make decisions? And what we’ve got in the tech world, on social media platforms, is an algorithm-driven conspiracy rabbit hole that people are enticed to go down and then addicted because it is like watching constant car crashes, you cannot turn away.

And as someone who has been accused of practically everything you can possibly imagine, I know how powerful this is. I mean, outrageous falsehoods, which fuel a sense of alienation, and yet the algorithm-driven, advertising, profiting social media platforms find it, I guess, very difficult to break themselves of that addiction, so in fact they don’t. And it’s going to be up to governments and I would even hope some global rules, but let’s start with governments, to try to rein in the disinformation on the social media platforms and certainly plays to Russia’s interests, but also to other malign actors.

And I guess, finally, William, I’m pleased to see the way that President Biden is standing up to Putin and the Russians, and it is, as you know, a very delicate balance act, because there are things we need to work with Russia on, as we need to work with every country on. You named one, climate change, obviously we need to work on that, but I think that it’s very clear that unless there are some strong signals and lines drawn as to what will be tolerated in behaviour from Putin, and I would add his oligarchic elite, we will not rein in that behaviour, there’s just too much reward attached to it.

To disrupt democracy, to undermine the West’s faith in itself, that’s a dream for Putin and, you know, the old Communist apparatchiks who are still, you know, dreaming of the Soviet Union and days of glory past. And if we don’t do that – and that means holding oligarchs accountable for their misbehaviour in every country in which they misbehave, preventing them from influencing elections and Politicians and other kinds of organisations, because I don’t think there’s any doubt that it is either done wittingly or with approval from the Kremlin.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, you couldn’t be clearer than in those – than in that answer, Hillary, and I’m going to adopt your terminology there on the tech companies, I think that the algorithm-driven conspiracy rabbit hole is a very good description. And, as you say, there have to be facts, there are – as President Biden has said, there is truth and there are lies and no one could run a company if they couldn’t agree what the facts were about it, how can people run a country if you can’t agree on the basic facts?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

And that doesn’t mean you don’t argue about…

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Exactly.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

…what the policy should be, it’s not that we’re advocating uniformity, I mean, there are different ways of attacking climate change, but don’t deny it, for example. And so, I think that has to be first and foremost a demand we make of every leader, and let me just say, I had one final thought as you were talking. You know, in the information ecosystem in which we all reside, policy is boring, William, hard work to get to outcomes that are in the common interest is not very entertaining, and, you know, I think about, you know, working with you on so many thorny problems and your willingness to wade into, you know, the very difficult issue of sexual violence. You didn’t expect, you know, some kind of result overnight, but you began the process.

Well, how do you talk about that in an entertaining way on social media over time, so that people will say, “Hey, you know, William Hague and others are working on a really important, difficult problem, let’s see how well they do, let’s stay with them”? So, don’t discount the entertainment factor, I mean, we just, you know, had a President who, you know, was so entertaining he urged people to drink bleach and unfortunately a lot of people listened to that and some even did it. So, how do we try to regain the public space and try to say, “Look, we’re facing thorny, sometimes wicked, problems and there is no one answer, but let’s at least try to find some common ground based on facts and evidence?”

Lord William Hague of Richmond

And do you – just to ask you one more thing on this whole – this part of this issue, Hillary, do you think this is something that – and with the tech companies and social media, that we can change by a whole series of reforms? You know, we could say algorithms have to be transparent, that they have to give greater weight to quality news items, however those are judged, we can say that things have to have a digital imprint, so you can see where the original source of the alleged information was, there’s a whole set of things that we can try to do. Or does it need something more fundamental, is this model of addictive – the addictive echo chamber model of social media, so flawed that nations will have to bring in, maybe even with global agreement, some pretty fundamental change to the way this works?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

I think that’s the most profound and important question, William, because there’s a lot of interest right now in a bipartisan way in our country toward reining in some of the excesses. Everything from anti-trust, which would mean breaking up some of the large tech companies, to changing legislation, particularly something called Section 230, which viewed the channels on the internet as just mere passthroughs originally, so there was no liability attached to whatever was passing through the channels.

Well, that might have been acceptable 25 years ago, but once the tech companies discovered that they could basically take our data, all of our personal data, which we in the beginning had, you know, willingly turned over to them, but they could take it and sell it to advertisers to pitch products to us, then why not those who not only have a good or service to sell, but an ideology or a religious point of view or a political candidate or party?

So, the fundamental structure of the way these tech companies operate, in what is called by one very astute analyst surveillance capitalism, is so ingrained in how they function that it’s a legitimate question. Can we make changes, legislatively and through regulation, and require some kind of end of – at the end of a liability-free atmosphere that they currently operate in, if they are, you know, putting out all of this stuff into the atmosphere, or do we have to go deeper into the structure of what has been created? A lot of really smart people are thinking about this, I don’t know that there’s a consensus yet, but for all of our sakes, and particularly for the sake of the liberal democracy, we need to get to some answers.

And the final point I would make is the autocracies have seized on this from the other end of the telescope. China is creating the most effective surveillance state in the history of humanity and they are using technology that has largely been discovered and produced in the West and they are able to scan tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of people’s faces, keep track of people, hold them accountable for what they consider good deeds or bad deeds. It’s quite astonishing, it is so much of, you know, Brave New World, 1984, that we are going to see the Chinese people constantly surveilled, and they are doing it in the name of the Chinese Communist Party to maintain control, to squash dissent, to punish anyone who steps out of line, and reward those who don’t.

So, you’ve got these two extremes, you’ve got a kind of anarchic, anything goes ecosystem where the worst lies and the craziest conspiracy theories and the most horrible hateful accusations can be made and no one’s responsible for anything, and then you’ve got the very tightening down, using technology to control a huge nation, and others will follow the Chinese model. So, we really do have to figure out the best ways to address this. You know, I’d love to see the UK think of how best to do it under your system, I hope that we will get something out of Congress and the Biden administration, because this is a train that is out of control.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Okay, well, there is a fundamental issue for the future, necessary in your view, in my view, as well, actually for the survival of liberal democracy in any form that we can recognise. Let’s move on to – you mentioned – you were very kind mentioning my work on preventing sexual violence in conflict, and Jeremy mentioned that, and I want to invite you to think about this more inspiring aspect of democracy, which is that democracy can aspire to improve the condition of humanity.

It’s in democratic nations that we embark on that sort of work, and I haven’t noticed any dictatorships who are – who lead the way in the empowerment of women across the world, and this, for you, you have described this as the great unfinished business of this century, the social and political empowerment of women. Now, this is something, isn’t it, that democracies can now advance together? The Biden administration has come in, committed to many good goals on this, we can again have American leadership in this field. So, here, we’ve been thinking about the dangers to democracy, but we also have opportunities and responsibilities to improve the wider condition of humanity and only democracies can lead the way.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

That’s absolutely the case and, again, I thank you for your ground-breaking work, and what I want to add to the clearly aspirational human rights objectives, particularly when it comes to women’s rights and full participation in society that only democracies care about and only democracies are willing to support and promote. This is not just about lifting up women’s status in faraway places for the sake of doing it, although I would argue that’s a good cause and we should, but, as you know so well, William, you know, the unfinished business of women’s rights and full participation is directly connected to the future of democracy, of international security and prosperity.

If women are unable or prohibited from exercising their full range of interests in families, communities, societies, countries, those places do not advance and they become very often very fertile ground for extremism and for the kind of threats that we see most – in most recent times from, you know, Islamist theology that basically tried to suppress women’s rights.

So, I’ve long argued, and you were a champion of this view, that, yes, we should, because we are democracies, stand up for the extension of human rights to all human beings. At the core of who we are is the freedom and dignity and autonomy of every human being and we should be defending that and promoting that, but we should also do it because it’s in our interest to do it.

With the impact of COVID, globally, we have seen women disproportionately affected. More women have lost paying jobs, more women have been forced out of the workforce because of the shutting of schools and childcare facilities, more women were on the frontlines of the pandemic in healthcare or essential services. And so we know that coming out of COVID, we’re really going to have a lot of ground to make up, because we’re going to have to try to figure out how to close an even bigger gap between women’s social and economic and political status with where it was even before the pandemic, which was by no means where it needed to be.

And, finally, the point about sexual violence, which I give you tremendous credit, because it’s easy to talk about women’s rights or women’s participation or unfinished business, which I have done for a very long time, but to put you and your government in the mix of a very difficult issue, namely sexual violence against women and girls, was a ground-breaker. It forced people to talk about an uncomfortable subject.

You and I have both been to the DRC. We have seen the results of the horrific violence against women and girls in Eastern Congo. We’ve been to refugee camps, we know that, you know, rape is a tool of war and conflict all over the world and we know the impact that that has. We know the rise in domestic violence, particularly during this pandemic, has been quite astonishing and dreadful. So, focusing on this most basic deprivation, invasion, attack on women’s rights, their freedom and their dignity is critically important and then we put it in the midst of all the other issues that still are part of this unfinished business agenda.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, thank you, and my experience was that it’s only when a major country really gets involved in an issue like that and takes a lead that the rest of the world feels free to pursue it, and I certainly hope the UK or the US can do that again on gender-based violence and many of the issues that you’ve mentioned, hopefully, at the G7 and other opportunities coming up.

And let me ask you in relation – it flows naturally from that, about where we have achieved advances for women’s rights, such as in Afghanistan, where we’re now leaving. Now, you and I were part of the NATO decision to draw down the huge NATO forces that were there ten years ago and build up the Afghan security forces, but it has worked relatively well having much smaller forces backing up the Afghans. You and I have both without conferring expressed concern about a full withdrawal from Afghanistan and think that might be a mistake. That is also your view, isn’t it?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Well, I think it’s a wicked problem, I’ve said that, and because it is, and yet I also think now that we are in the process of withdrawing, and obviously it’s not just the US contingent but the NATO troops and many contractors, if not all, civilian employees, even the sizes of our embassies, then I think we had better pay very close attention to two continuing serious challenges. The one you mentioned, what will happen to the people of Afghanistan if there is a takeover and a collapse of the government through much of the country, if not all, by the Taliban?

I have no doubt in my mind that is their objective. They are going to do whatever they can to reinstate their Emirate, as they called themselves back in the 90s and early 2000. And I think that the impact on the country, which has made a lot of positive changes – and people, sort of, brush over that, oh, yeah, okay, fine, girls are in school, in fact more children, boys and girls, are now in school, women are taking jobs, they’re starting businesses, they’re in academia, journalism, government, people act as though, well, that’s fine, now, you know, we’ve done our part, let’s go. The problem of course is that there’s no assurance whatsoever that any of that would continue after a Taliban takeover, and of course I worry about the resumption of civil war because there are still geographic areas and ethnic groups within Afghanistan that will themselves, for their own reasons, fight against a Taliban takeover.

So, therefore, what do we do, those of us who’ve invested the blood and treasure of our soldiers and our citizens? I think first we must make sure that we provide exits through visa and other asylum programmes to the many people who worked for us, for the United States and for our NATO allies. There were thousands of people working for our militaries, working for our embassies, working for, you know, various contractors and businesses and non-profit institutions, they will be the first targets of a Taliban takeover and I don’t want to see them left to that fate.

There will also be, I am afraid, a very big refugee outflow. If you look at the outflow of refugees during their civil war, you know, it was hundreds of thousands, if not a few million, going into Pakistan, going into Iran, going even further to Europe and elsewhere, and we’re going to have to be willing to deal with that. So, this whole question, that most particularly impacts women, but really impacts the entire country in the face of a recalcitrant returning Taliban is something we cannot walk away from.

The second and equally concerning consequence is the return of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, to Afghanistan where, sadly, they might well be able to plan and carry out additional attacks against our countries and others in Europe and elsewhere. I think here what’s most troubling is ever since 2001, when George W Bush demanded the Taliban renounce Al-Qaeda, until literally last month, the Taliban has refused to do so. They have never broken with Al-Qaeda. You know, they say things like, “Well, we’re going to run the country, we will be, you know, the government, or we will be in coalition with others,” but they don’t ever renounce Al-Qaeda.

We assume that the current leader of Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, we assume that it will just be too great an opportunity not to try to reconvene within Afghanistan, and then of course the presence of the Islamic State, which in many places already is in competition with those who have pledged their allegiance to Al-Qaeda. So, I think there’s a lot to be worried about. As I say, the decision has been made, and, you know, for many reasons it was embraced by many sensible, thoughtful people, but that doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility of following up with these two huge sets of issues that I think are going to confront us sooner instead of later.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, Hillary, we’re going to take a few questions, there’s so much to discuss here, and first of all, I’m going to ask Jeremy Hunt to come back with us and to ask the first question, and then I’m going to select a few questions from the others sent in.

The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt

Thank you, William, and thank you, Secretary Clinton, for some fascinating insights. I wonder if I could just ask you what is the smart way to deal with China? Because, you know, right now, really, in Western democracies, there aren’t any China doves left, we’ve all become a version of China hawks, but Henry Kissinger told this series of lectures that there was a risk of unintended war this century, and of course the reason that we – one of the reasons we were able to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War was that we bankrupted them and that’s unlikely to happen with China.

So, how do you find a way to work with China on issues that we have to work with them, like climate change, at the same time as staying true to our values when it comes to the terrible mistreatment of the Uighurs, or democracy being undermined in Hong Kong, or the breach of international law in the South China Sea? What’s the smart way to solve that one?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Well, Jeremy, you have certainly outlined the challenge that we face, because, yes, just as we did during the Cold War, and, you know, a lot of people don’t like to think about history or even look back at all these days, but we actually continued to negotiate, particularly around arms control. And we continued to do everything we could, both by serving as a counter example and by supporting dissidents and by lifting up freedom and democracy, we continued to challenge the underlying corrupt system of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.

And I would say with China, there is an opportunity to do something similar, obviously updated to the 21st century. We have to be able to negotiate with China on climate change, that’s a given, but I would also argue we need to begin putting tremendous pressure on China in the court of public opinion, which still matters to them, to start negotiating on arms control. It’s a very opaque area when it comes to the Chinese nuclear programme or anything else. I mean, look at all of the questions that were raised about the lab in Wuhan, for example, we just don’t know enough, we don’t know as much as we need to know. And I believe that it’s imperative that not just the Biden administration, but all of our alliances join together in making certain demands on China, with respect to not only arms control, but human rights, where we continue to speak out, we continue – you know, there’s been a remarkable silence about what’s happened in Hong Kong, they breached an agreement that they made with you. I mean, they were willing to basically say, “Just kidding, we’re about to take over Hong Kong.” I don’t hear very much from anybody.

You know, there is such a continuing anxiety about upsetting the Chinese and there are two big reasons for that. One, Henry Kissinger mentioned, maybe some unintended consequence of war down the road somewhere, but also the economic issue, and here it’s time we recognise that we need to rebuild our own supply chains, even if that requires a certain level of subsidised industrial productivity. We cannot be dependent on the Chinese market, it’s not only bad for our economies, it is bad for our geopolitical strategic interests. Look at what happened with the lack of personal protective equipment, or certain pharmaceutical ingredients when the pandemic hit, we were at the mercy of China.

Well, we cannot let that continue and we need to work together across the Atlantic to figure out how we’re going to take back production. Now, will it be as low cost? Of course not. And how do we set our tax systems and other arrangements so that there are incentives for our businesses to return to Western democracies to produce things? And I would add that more and more businesses are seeing that unless they are low-cost producers of retail clothing, which, you know, probably will never come back for all the obvious reasons, but if they are producing anything more sophisticated, increasingly the Chinese government, through coercion, through unfair regulation, through enforced partnerships or royalty agreements, is slowly stealing that intellectual property anyway.

So, I do think that we’ve got to get smarter about how we deal with the economic threat and for people who say, “Oh, well, you know, that disrupts the market,” China has disrupted the market, China is not a free market economy. We tried, we let them in to the World Trade Organization, we sent our businesses over there, we made trade deals, they are a controlled top-down economy. You will never compete and win against them unless you take back the means of production, and it is way past due for us trying to do that, and I know that now the Biden administration is very keen on trying to re-establish our own supply chains, but we should do it in concert.

And the final thing I would say is we need – and I’m speaking from the United States’ perspective, we need to rebuild our alliances in the Asia-Pacific region. We, under the former President, basically ignored them, basically let them languish, and frankly raised a serious question for a lot of them about how much they needed to cosy up to China because we were absent, but cosying up, or at least trying to be more friendly and more involved with China, carries huge costs.

And two quick examples, I mean, Australia, which tried to do a very delicate balancing act, has found, you know, Chinese influencers, both through business and directly through espionage, just embedded in so many of their institutions that they’ve had to turn around and say, “No, you know, we’re going to clean a house here,” and the Philippines, through their Foreign Minister, very bravely just attacked China for their continuing incursion against an international legal decision into Philippine territorial waters. So, this can’t be done by one country alone, even the United States. The entire world, not just democracies in Asia and Europe and North America, but the entire world has a real stake in us trying to draw the lines more carefully about where we will work together and where we will continue to, you know, stand up against some of these bad practices coming out of China now.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Thank you, Hillary, and we’ve got dozens of questions, so I’ll just pick a few. And one is from [Lucy Mehafi], who is an American student at Cambridge, “What does Secretary Clinton think are the key things my generation should keep in mind for the future of democracy? What does she wish my generation knows moving forward?”

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Well, I’m actually quite encouraged by your generation, by young people who I think are much more globally attuned, much more tolerant and inclusive, who understand the strength of diversity in every way that that could be defined. So, there’s a lot of good, positive actions that I see and in my own country, as you know, the protests against the killing of George Floyd and others were led by young people, the protests for changes in climate policy, I mean there’s a lot of great activity happening in the younger cohort of people.

But I do think you have to be much more focused on protecting yourselves from the falsehoods of social media, which we have just been discussing, that not only requires education, as you are seeking at Cambridge, and congratulations and good luck, but it requires peer support. You know, peers who are basically calling out the lies and the falsehoods, not letting the bad actors on social media get away with it, being willing to, you know, speak up against the effort to undermine our faith in institutions and our faith in one another, because at the end of the day the most precious commodity that holds together democracies is trust and, boy, do we have a deficit of it. How do we rebuild it? How do young people rebuild it in the face of social media, which frankly is either deliberately or unwittingly undermining trust? So, this is a huge challenge for all of us, but particularly for young people.

And then, finally, you know, take seriously the opportunities of citizenship, you know, register to vote and don’t let anybody stop you from voting, no matter how hard they try, support the political leaders who you think are trying to move us forward, not turn the clock back on us. And, you know, don’t be a bystander to democracy because at the end of the day it is the only human-created system we know of that gives you at least a fighting chance – despite all of our problems and structural inequities, gives you a fighting chance to fulfil your own sense of purpose. So, that’s what I hope for.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

I’m going to throw in a couple of questions, Hillary, because I know we’re going to run out of time. One is from Vernon Bogdanor, who is a great Constitutional expert here in the UK, he says, “There is some talk in Washington of a league of democracies, is Secretary Clinton sympathetic to that idea, and, if so, what purpose would such a league serve?” And then there’s, from Hamish Kinnear, “We talk about a crisis of democracy, but populist leaders have won office through free elections, so what do liberal or left parties offer that can turn people away from populist?” So, league of democracies and what can mainstream parties offer for the future?

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Well, on the league of democracies, sometimes called an alliance or a community of democracies, that was actually an idea that was first generated by Secretary Madeleine Albright during the Clinton administration in the 90s, and we carried it on for a while. In fact, as Secretary of State, I attended, you know, one of the gatherings that was held in Poland and we were particularly focused on the new democracies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the returning democracies in some cases.

I do think it’s a worthwhile endeavour. I don’t kid myself that it has some magic formula for righting the wrongs and healing the wounds of illiberal democracy, but I do think it is worthwhile for democracies to stand up for themselves. You know, quit being cowed or ambiguous about the value of democracy. I mean, we keep, as I said, getting hit from the right and the left about all the problems in democracy, I think it’s time for those of us who can’t think of a better alternative to start standing up for democracy.

And that leads me to the second question. When I was Secretary of State, I used to pay particular attention to those countries that held free elections and then we used to say that they were won and done. They held the election, they elected somebody who people thought was, you know, a democrat of the right or the left, maybe populistic in policy and rhetoric, but nevertheless part of an electoral system, and then that person began to become more and more authoritarian, more willing to go after the press, more willing to go after political opponents, and we’ve seen that, we’ve seen that most dramatically in Europe in Hungary, but unfortunately there are a few other places that are showing worrisome tendencies.

So, look, as I said earlier, populists are entertaining, you know, people can’t turn away. If you’re willing to say anything without regard to truth, fact, evidence, reality, then, my gosh, people are thinking, “How authentic, how real,” or maybe, “This person is saying what I was thinking.” It’s very entertaining and so I’m not advocating that people from the centre left or the centre right of our political parties don’t try to be more effective, but you can’t go as far as the other side does without becoming just a copycat. So, it requires a very clear sense of how better to communicate using every tool that we possibly have.

You know, I, for most of the 2020 campaign, thought that Joe Biden was the best person that we could, as Democrats, nominate to beat Trump because, number one, he was familiar, people had some sense that he’d been around for a while, so he wasn’t new and untried and that was a good contrast with Trump. He early on said we were in a fight for the soul of our nation, which, you know, some sophisticates said, “Oh, how extreme,” or, you know, “Really, that’s too far.”

I thought it was right where it needed to be, because, you know what, we were in a fight for the soul of our nation and I think Biden ran a textbook perfect campaign to reassure people, to encourage people who had seen what Trump had done, that there was a better way. But look how many more votes Trump got, you know, I beat him by three million votes in the popular vote back in 2016, but he improved by about seven million plus votes, so people who saw what he did for four years liked it.

Now, luckily for the United States and our future, Joe Biden did even better, but it requires elected officials and candidates to be as honest as possible to break through the static of information that every person is living in the midst of today, not to become the entertaining populist who says whatever and basically wants to be an authoritarian, but to stress positive results.

And I just want to end by saying, you know, it’s clear that a science-based approach has helped to rein in the pandemic, and I think this is a great time for leaders to be able to say, again, “You know what, it’s not easy asking you to wear a mask and be socially distant, I know it’s hard, but it’s the only way that we know of to break it, and now you’ve got to get a vaccine,” to try to build credibility in dealing with the one universal experience that everybody, Republican, Democrat, right, left, populist, whatever, have all endured and try to rebuild, again, you know, that fact-based trust that is necessary.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

Well, thank you, Hillary, we’ve got so many more questions, but I promised we would finish within the hour, so we have to wrap it up now. Thank you everybody who sent in questions and who’s been listening to us, and thank you above all to you, Hillary, for your clarity, your commitments, your integrity. I think anybody who didn’t know you on this call would see why I am such a fan of yours and have strongly supported what you’ve been doing for so many years. And we’re grateful to you for taking the time, you could easily say you don’t do these things anymore, but you take the trouble to pass on your experience and to give your views on the basis of such vast experience to all of us. So, for everybody at Chatham House and associated with it, I know they will be very grateful, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to have this sort of discussion with you, again, we’ve had many discussions in the past, so we’re immensely grateful. Thank you to Jeremy Hunt and thank you for your time.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Thank you all very much.

Lord William Hague of Richmond

And our meeting is closed. Thanks very much everybody, have a good evening.