Dr. Condoleezza Rice Joins the Guy Benson Show and Weighs In on Syria and the Middle East, the Incoming Trump Admin, and the College Football Playoffs

Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and former Secretary of State, joined The Guy Benson Show LIVE from the Hoover Institution to evaluate the “mixed” foreign policy legacy of the Biden administration and share her optimism about the incoming Trump team, emphasizing the importance of unity and minimal infighting among its members. She also examined Syria’s uncertain future following Assad’s ouster, warning against total U.S. disengagement while acknowledging the challenges posed by various power players in the region, including Turkey and Russia. Additionally, Rice discussed the endgame of the Russia-Ukraine war, stressing the need to reject any recognition of Russian territorial gains and defense guarantees for the Ukrainians (led by the Europeans). Finally, Dr. Rice shared her thoughts on the first year of the expanded college football playoffs. Listen to the full interview below!

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GUY BENSON: Dr. Rice, great to see you.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Great to see you. And welcome to the Hoover Institution.

GUY BENSON: It is always an honor to be here. Thanks for having us back. I want to start with a big picture question about the outgoing administration’s foreign policy legacy. As you assess that over these last four years, what do you see?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I think the legacy of this administration is mixed to be, to be frank. And I think in some places they’ve done rather well, for instance, the Indo-Pacific. Mostly because people have been very concerned about China. You’ve seen a coming together of the allies, whether it’s Australia or Japan, South Korea, Philippines, which wasn’t on the table a few few years ago. And even with India, a good friend, if not an ally in some places, I just think there’s been a kind of hesitancy of a kind of incrementalism. For instance, I wonder if we’ve given the Ukrainians everything they needed at the beginning of the war rather than debating tanks, then sending tanks, debating long range artillery, then sending them. The Ukrainians have the Russians on their back foot. They might have won the war outright. And so this kind of incrementalism, trying to always talk about keeping escalation down. When you say we’re not going to escalate, you give escalation to your adversary. And I think there’s been too much of that. And then in the Middle East, the incoming administration is going to have some work to do to really strengthen some of those relationships in the Gulf where they haven’t felt particularly well treated.

GUY BENSON: Speaking of the incoming administration, as you watch that national security team, foreign policy team, diplomatic team take shape, what are you thinking so far and what will you be watching most closely?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I know a number of the people who are coming in and they are first rate. I believe that Senator Rubio, Marco Rubio is going to be a really fine secretary of state. He’s experienced. I think he’s going to be very good. I know Mike Waltz from our time working together on Afghanistan. John Ratcliffe. So I think the core team looks very, very good. And I might add, also on the economic side, we’re really proud that Kevin Hassett is going to go and be in he. I don’t know.

GUY BENSON: I mean.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Jay Bhattacharya over for a person. That’s right. And and he’ll do a great job at NIH. He he will do the right thing, which is to make sure that we’re being really innovative there. I don’t know the defense team and we’ll see where that comes out. But in so many ways, the most important thing is going to be that this team functions together, that it functions on behalf of the president in a way that you keep the internal fighting down. And remember that you’re always going for the president’s agenda. I when I was Secretary of State, I used to say to Mike, Mike would staff at the at the State Department, the people who were the diplomats at the State Department. You know what presidents really hate? They hate reading in the newspaper what the president meant to say because actually they’re the one who’s elected. So we’re here to carry out an agenda of the president of the United States on behalf of American interests and values. And let’s never forget that. And so that would be my advice to the incoming team.

GUY BENSON: For Senator Rubio, probably soon to be Secretary Rubio in particular. That’s an interesting transition, right, from the Senate, one of 100 to the top diplomat in the country. Is that going to be challenging for him or do you see that being relatively smooth of a transition? And do you have an interface with him? Because I’d imagine he would love advice from you? Well, I.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Have I’ve called him to congratulate him, and I’m going to be there for him anytime he’d like to talk. You should be careful. Your advice is actually not that valuable. So I remember thinking to the people who’d been there before, before me, it was great that I could always call on them. I think there’s really a kind of, if you will, a little bit of a fraternity of secretaries of state, but you shouldn’t overvalue your your advice. So when he needs to call me, he can call me. But I don’t think it’ll be that hard to transition. He’s been on Foreign relations. He knows the issues. The hardest part of becoming secretary of state in many ways is that you have a really very good foreign service and we shouldn’t underestimate those people. It’s a good foreign service. But making sure that they are on the same page with what the president wants to do, That’s one of your most important jobs as secretary of state, and I’m sure he’ll do that very well.

GUY BENSON: Right. He was given the job by the electorate, Right. None of the bureaucrats were none of the fabulous diplomats were. One person was elected.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: One person was elected. And remembering that is very important. I had the advantage of having been national security adviser before I was secretary of state and my assistant secretaries for the. It had all been with me in the White House. And so the president knew Tom Shannon and and Dan Freed and people who had been in the White House. He won’t have that advantage, but I think he’ll he’ll understand how to manage it just fine.

GUY BENSON: The world is still digesting this really serious tremor in Syria where you have. Let’s call it what it is. A very evil regime now out. You have Assad after Moscow and you have a very uncertain future for that country. And I see the jubilation in the streets and that sort of thing. You see the emptying of the prisons and these unjustly these unjustly detained people being free and seeing their families for the first time. Heartwarming. There’s also, in my mind, at least, this fear of now what? Because sometimes you see, you know, out with the known evil in with the we don’t know and sometimes the we don’t know is worse. What do you see in Syria? Should we have a role in trying to shape events? Do we let it play? What do you think?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I really do believe that there is nothing worse than Bashar al-Assad. He was a Russian and Iranian stooge, frankly, in, you know, helping the Iranians to get weapons to Hezbollah, keeping his power through the most extreme, brutal circumstances. But you’re right, once that he’s gone, now that he’s gone, it’s going to be tough because there are these pockets that we now have to worry about. So what will the Turks do in terms of the Kurds with whom we have a relationship? What will happen with ISIS? I have been pleased to see that in on its way out, the Biden administration is taking some bombing runs against Ice sites because we do not want this to empower ISIS. And whenever you have a vacuum, you have to worry about what’s going to flow into that vacuum. And so I would say to the incoming team, we don’t have to get deeply involved in Syria, but we have forces in Iraq. We have to protect them. We have this problem with ISIS. We have to make sure that they don’t get a foothold. And so while we aren’t going to go in and try to decide who is there after the Assad regime, we have a role. We have interests. And if we don’t play our role, somebody else will play the role. And you know, I said in something recently, great powers don’t mind their own business, and so they try to shape the environment. I would rather the United States shape the environment than Russia or even our ally, Turkey.

GUY BENSON: Do you think it’s reasonable or even correct for the Israelis to do what they’ve done, a slight incursion, taking over some of the high ground and basically trying to create more of a buffer zone, given the unknowns in that in that country that borders them.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I fully understand that the Israelis are going to try to create a buffer zone and take care of their own interest. You’re also seeing Lebanon close its border, Jordan close its border. So states are going to take steps to quarantine themselves from the chaos that might unfold in Syria. But let’s be very clear. Bashar al-Assad was not just a bad man. He was just really, really bad for the region. And I have to say one thing about the Israelis here, what they’ve done in the last few months in response to the awful, barbaric events of October 7th is starting to reshape the Middle East in a favorable direction, taking care of Hezbollah, making sure that the Iranians can’t can’t reinforce Hezbollah. You know, the Iranians pulled up and left within minutes, it seems, of when Assad fell. And that tells you something about how Iran views its own weakness at this moment. And that’s thanks to the Israeli, the Israelis and the IDF. Hamas is now talking about a cease fire because all of a sudden Hamas is completely on its own. So let’s just take a moment to acknowledge that however difficult it’s been in watching what the Israelis have done, they’ve achieved something quite extraordinary.

GUY BENSON: Well, and also two utterly failed direct attacks against Israel. I mean, Iran, what what a year and change of failure and almost exposing themselves as so much weaker than a lot of people thought they were. I mean, it’s hard to view what has happened to Iran and its proxies as anything other than a catastrophe for them and therefore, great news for Israel and the civilized world.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It’s a complete catastrophe for Iran. I’ve always said that Iran was a cowardly state. They did most of their work through their proxies, what they actually but call their for defense. And now their proxies are dead in the water. Hezbollah’s leadership, Nasrallah and others, has been killed. They are those who have not been killed are in hiding. The IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Israelis killed 17 of them in a strike not too long ago. And so, yes, Iran is now exposed. Whether or not you need to go further than now to let this exposed Iran have to deal with its own internal problems. I think it’s an important policy. Question. But I do think this is a time to double down on sanctions against the Iranian regime, on isolation of the Iranian regime. Nobody should take up what is going to be an approach by the Iranians to say, all right, now let’s talk because they are feeling vulnerable. This is the time to double down on on pressure on that regime to Ukraine.

GUY BENSON: We had on this show recently Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, retired, who will be the envoy, the special envoy from President Trump on this conflict with the task of bringing the conflict to a resolution. And I think there’s a lot of appetite among the American people to see it resolved among people in the EU, of course. And some polls show that Ukrainians themselves have moved in that direction. On the other hand, there’s also this great and I think, completely founded fear of appearing to reward Putin or the Russians in any way for what they’ve done, because this is their war that they started with no justification. So what are some like, what’s the matrix of options for how perhaps to resolve this type of conflict as you see it?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: First, let me say I have a lot of confidence in Keith Kellogg. He’s a very sound person, and I think he’ll do this well. So let’s start there. So I think they’re really three questions that we have to ask ourselves as we try to end this war. And by the way, this war probably does need to let me say stop. And I’m going to make a distinction between stop and end. Now, that may sound a little odd, but what we don’t want to do is to have a peace that rewards Vladimir Putin. And it might well be that what we have to do is to get this war to a place that sometimes is called a frozen conflict. I would not want to see and this is the first question how do you prevent Vladimir Putin from thinking that he’s won? Well, one thing is the United States of America never recognizes Russian sovereignty over those four provinces in the east. You simply say, as we did, by the way, for 45 years, we did not recognize the Soviet Union’s sovereignty over the Baltic states. And if we don’t recognize it, nobody will invest there. And they’ll be stuck with the Donbass region in the east, which is very difficult, and it’s mostly Rust Belt. And so do not recognize Russian sovereignty over those, what.

GUY BENSON: Do you call it? Like how do you budget?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: You simply say we do not recognize Russian sovereignty over those over those provinces. Even if the Russians are there, you just don’t recognize it. Secondly, we need to rebuild the part of Ukraine that is really the center of Ukraine’s economy. That’s the West key than Lviv and places like that. Guys, we’re sitting here. There are knowledge based workers, coders, software engineers working in those places for Western companies. And I’ve been told by some of those Western companies they’re having their best years doing that. And so how do we support them? We might consider whether those Russian central bank assets, the 300 billion or so, might be given to rebuild Ukraine. And by the way, I would make a distinction between the assets of personal Russian assets, because there you have to be careful about how people think about investing in the United States. But the central bank assets use them. Final point. We’re going to have to figure out how we keep Vladimir Putin from trying again. And that’s our joint project in Ukraine.

GUY BENSON: It stops if he wants to, then started again in the future once he’s rearmed in, etc.. That’s the stop or the pause doesn’t really help.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It doesn’t really help him. It helps him. And so how do you do that? You arm the Ukrainians so that they can help defend themselves. I’m glad the Biden administration is getting all this equipment to them. We should continue to do that so that they can hold at risk certain things that matter to Vladimir Putin. One of the things that’s not been understood is the right the Ukrainians don’t even have a navy, and yet they’ve effectively pushed the Russian navy out of their bases in the Black Sea that they occupied since Catherine the Great. How do we keep the Ukrainians in a position to do that kind of thing? And then we have to say, what kind of security guarantee are we? And I would put an emphasis on the Europeans willing to give the Ukrainians. And so if you can do those three things, don’t recognize Vladimir Putin’s conquests, rebuild the Ukrainian economy using some of those Russian assets and keep at risk things that matter to Vladimir Putin so that he can’t try again. I think there may be a way to to stop this war.

GUY BENSON: What would Putin get out of it, though? Because as awful as he is, he has to feel like he has gained something, whether it’s to save face or what have you. He doesn’t want to look totally humiliated. So how do you thread that needle?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, that’s one reason that I think not having a peace treaty as opposed to a kind of armistice might work better because he can call whatever he he’ll say, you know, he conquered part of Ukraine and so far he’ll say that to his population and so forth. But the truth of the matter is, you would be waiting him out. Vladimir Putin has destroyed his country. It’s become a large North Korea. And in time, the fact that they are not going to be able to fully exploit their energy resources because the big four companies like Exxon and and BP and Shell aren’t going back in there and they won’t have the technology to do that. The ruble is dropping like a stone. The a million people have left Russia the best and the brightest. He’s destroyed that country. And so make him live with that for a while. Look, I would have preferred that Ukraine win outright. I would have. But I think because we were so incremental in the way that we helped them, that’s not likely to happen. I’ve been the strongest supporter of Ukraine and what they might do, but in the east, they’re running up against Russian mess. The Russians have lost 200,000 people and they’ve had 600,000 casualties. And they just keep throwing people at the problem, you know, and it’s not. By the way, the blond boys from St Petersburg and Moscow. It’s the poor kids from Dagestan and the poor kids from Habakkuk, and they’re just being thrown into a meat grinder. And I just don’t know that Ukraine wants to or can continue in that kind of war of attrition. I have all that. The manpower and I and I have been reading the polls that some Ukrainians are saying, you know, we’ve achieved a lot. Remember that what Putin intended to do was to march to Kiev, overthrow the government, put in a pro-Russian government. They went with five days provisions. The Russian army did five days provisions and they’re dressed uniforms for the paraded Kiev. So he lost that war. He isn’t able to keep them out of the Black Sea in the way that he was in the first days of the war. And so we need to start to emphasize what Ukraine has achieved to this point and to think about how we sustain an independent, democratic and prosperous Ukraine going forward, even if there may be some territory that they know that they don’t control.

GUY BENSON: Finally, to the really important stuff. College football playoffs. That’s the first one that we’ve seen of this magnitude, Right. How do you feel about it? I mean, I have mixed feelings on it. The college football and sports landscape has been moving dramatically even since you and I last spoke a year ago. You excited for this? Starting in, what, about a week?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, I’m excited. Although I was on the committee, you know, when we only had four spaces. And I’m a little worried about the depth. I’m not sure that there are 12 teams that really should be competing. But it’s fine. I’m excited for watching the games. You know, my alma mater, Notre Dame, will be in there and so I’ll be pulling for the Irish. Since the Cardinals, Stanford Cardinals are not in it this year. But look, the college landscape is changing so dramatically. And I do worry that we are losing the idea that these are student athletes, that the value proposition is really a college degree. Because if I was on a commission for I chaired a commission for the in for the NCAA men’s college basketball, 59% of D1 players think they’re going to the NBA. The real number is 1.5%. All these kids need a plan B, It’s a college degree. And so if we could get that back in the mix of how we talk about this, I’d be a lot happier.

GUY BENSON: Some of the realignment that we’ve seen has led to some very strange things. Right. I’m a Northwestern guy and we have, you know, Oregon rolling into Evanston next year for a Big Ten matchup, which just feels wrong and dirty in some ways. And then there’s a lot of I have it on good authority, a lot of really smart people at this place. How do they feel about Stanford joining something called the Atlantic Coast Conference?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: So while it is a little wild. Yes. The last time I looked, we aren’t on the Atlantic coast, but then Colorado wasn’t actually on the Pacific either. So this has been going on for a while. Look, it’s hard. We didn’t have many options as the PAC 12 began to kind of disintegrate before our very eyes. And and our goal was to make sure that our elite athletes could compete against elite competition. And the SEC, for us, in many ways, there are a lot of likeminded universities there. And, you know, the Dukes and the North Carolina’s and the Notre Dame’s the the academically very strong institutions. But I’d be the first to say the travel stuff. And it’s especially tough for some sports, not every sport, but for some sports. And like a.

GUY BENSON: Tuesday night volleyball.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Game is like.

GUY BENSON: Saturday football.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Exactly. It’s very it’s tough. And so we are you know, our faculty are trying to be supportive of our athletes and trying to make sure they can still have the the full academic experience while they’re doing all this travel. To be fair, elite athletes travel a lot anyway. But I yeah, it would have been better if we could have stayed with something that looked more geographically reasonable. But yeah, coherent. But that’s not where we are. And I’m, I’m more concerned right now that we just find a way to keep the academic experience at the core of what our athletes do.

GUY BENSON: On the professional side. How about those Broncos? I believe the technical term is in the hunt. Eight and five. Were you expecting this?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, I’m not going to say I wasn’t expecting it, but let me just say that I think yeah, let me just say that I’m very pleased. Sean Payton’s a great coach. Bowness is a terrific young man and I think he’s showing tremendous leadership skills. But we’re not there yet and you’ve got to take it one game at a time. And hopefully if we’re back here, we could have talked about the Broncos first playoff experience, a playoff appearance in quite some time. But I’m just going to watch the games one at a time. And I tell you, I do get butterflies. It’s it’s different.

GUY BENSON: But they’re right there.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: They’re there. They’re right there. But you have to get over the hump. So let’s let’s take it the Colts next week and go from there.

GUY BENSON: Our producer, executive producer became a football fan about two years ago. She was going to pick a team, any team. And against all of our advice, she picked the New York Jets. Now, as a part owner of the Broncos, would you like to invite Christine to become a Broncos fan or should she stick with her team through thin and thin?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: No, no. You you stick with your team, whatever the circumstances. I know that from a long time. You know, I used to be the orange and brown, not the orange and blue as Cleveland as a Cleveland fan. But look, all of these teams, the great thing about the NFL is everybody’s got a chance to come back through the draft and through the salary cap and all of that. And so, yeah, stick with your team, but I will tell you how you pick your teams is going to be very interesting. My mom, who had never been a football fan, my dad and I were huge football fans. She got tired of being left out. So one day she walks and she says, I’m picking that team, the 1972. Who? Miami Dolphins. So your pick was a good pick. So I’d say to your producer, go ahead and stay with your jets. They they’ll be back.

GUY BENSON: Dr. Condoleezza Rice on The Guy Benson Show here at Hoover. Again, thank you so much for having us, Madam Secretary. We really appreciate.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It. It was a pleasure being with you and happy holidays to everybody. Merry Christmas.

GUY BENSON: And we will be right back. A fresh perspective on the topics of the day. It’s Guy Benson.