Donna Baker, acting president of GIA, sat down with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to field questions from the audience. Here are her responses.

Submitted beforehand:

Question: I would like to ask Secretary Albright what every registered Democrat has been wondering since the last presidential election: who will be the party’s candidate, and what will be the cornerstones of the platform for a Democrat to win the White House?

Albright: I have no idea who is going to be the candidate. We’re about to begin on a long primary process. I think that, well, we’ve already begun in many different ways, but the day after the election for Congress in November, the presidential campaign will begin. I think a lot will depend on what happens in these mid-term elections, both in terms of who the candidate will be and also an articulation of the Democratic program. Democrats are an interesting and lively group; what makes us so charming is that we have a diversity of opinions.

I think that the central aspect of the Democratic platform will be security – security not only against outside threats but also domestic issues. Obviously, homeland security, economic security, health security – a sense, really, to deal with some of the disquiet within the American population. And Democrats always have to prove something that I think we shouldn’t have to prove, which is our interest in national security. Democrats have a very good record, I think, of defending our country and of developing a national security policy which makes it possible for us to be respected internationally and not attract more problems.

So, I am a great believer in America. I am obviously a great believer in the Democratic Party. I also think we’re ready for a woman president, and I have a candidate.

Question: Secretary Albright, what do you look for in a jeweler, in reference to disclosure and ethical practices when purchasing any sort of jewelry?

Albright: I have bought jewelry everywhere. In fact, it’s a little embarrassing – if you travel around the world, my photograph is in many stores. Wherever I went, I helped the economy. What I look for is, I think, a sense that I am going into a place that has a reputation. I usually ask somebody whether they know about it. When I was Secretary, when I also shopped, obviously our Embassy was very helpful because they knew where the good places were.

But I think that what you count on is that, most jewelry stores that I would frequent are part of a system, where in fact they operate through organizations like yours where there is a rating system. So you really do count on good governance within the jewelry industry. I have to say, though, and I’m sure that everybody has experienced this – probably not people in this audience because you’re all so knowledgeable – but you do go someplace and you think, “Is this really what they say it is?” I sometimes buy stuff somewhere abroad and then go back to Washington and I think to myself, “Should I take this to my jewelry store and ask them if it’s real or not?” I’d rather not know.

I think it’s hard, for an average shopper, I think it is difficult, and therefore you try to find places word-of-mouth you have been told are reputable.

Question: Do you believe, as many suggest, that part of the answer to the instability in Iraq could be resolved by the partitioning of Iraq?

Albright: Well, let me put this in a little bit of context. I worked for a president, President Clinton, who did a great deal of reading and made sure that we all read a lot. He would assign us different books. One book that he told me I had to read was a book about the creation of the modern Middle East, and it was called “The Peace to End All Peace,” which is about how the Middle East was created after the end of the First World War And the short version is that a lot of the issues came up as the British and French bureaucracies lied to each other. Iraq is an artificial country that was created after the First World War and put together from a variety of different pieces. And so, some of the sectarian strife and ethnic conflict that we’ve been reading about definitely comes as a result of the fact that it’s an artificial country.

I, however, think that we have to be very careful in suggesting partition, per se. I think that it’s important to try to give more and more autonomy to the various regions, but I think there needs to be a central government and the territorial integrity of Iraq, I think, needs to be maintained – because of the unintended consequences of dividing it up.

I teach now at Georgetown [University], but someday I’m going to teach a course on the unintended consequences of foreign policy decisions … I think that it is important, however, in order to keep Iraq together and in order to avoid having a civil war, to give more power and autonomy to the region. It’s not beyond the intelligence of people to develop federal systems. We have it in our country and other countries have a way of doing that.

Question: The term “resource curse” is gaining traction in academic and government circles – especially as it pertains to diamonds. How can developing nations effectively harness their resources to promote internal development instead of corruption and conflict, and what must Western nations do to help them toward that goal?

Albright: It’s a very good question, and often what has happened is “resource curse” is also applied to countries that have oil. Because all of a sudden, the governments – either elected or not elected – begin to have access to huge amounts of money, and therefore do not actually need to develop budgets and try to have some kind of economic development. So, in many ways, it’s one of those issues that’s a human issue. It’s better to be rich than be poor, given that choice, but I think that if you have wealth and have no sense of discipline, ultimately it erodes everything, and that is what I think we’re talking about here.

It is very hard, because there are a number of other pressures going on at the moment. There are those countries in the world that have resources, either diamonds or oil, who want to show a certain amount of power in the world, and they are then happy to deal with countries that have arms who need either the diamonds or the oil, and therefore there are unholy alliances that are created.

What would be better would be if in fact there was Western assistance, not imposition. Not imposition, but assistance in terms of developing a variety of economic programs that would deal with what I think is truly the curse of our time, which is the division between the rich and the poor. And so, if countries that have resources could be persuaded by either internal or outside advisors to create development programs that provide for land reform and that allow for the poor and the middle classes to share in the wealth, they ultimately will create more stable governments.

But the hardest part is that outside help is not often welcomed, and there are always those who are willing just to buy without any kind of conditionality, and so it’s a very difficult issue. But, it’s like anybody, if you come into a windfall all of a sudden, you’re going to go out and spend money without thinking through the future, and the ultimate thing, I think, that’s very important, is a lot of the people that run “X” country would benefit from having an education where they go to get an MBA, or have some kind of developmental education so that they can live in their own countries and, in fact, help provide for some kind of orderly development. But it’s hard to say that it’s a curse – most people think, oh, you know, “We’ve just come into diamonds.” And so, the question is, how you learn that kind of discipline, and realize that ultimately, you need to feed your people.

Questions from the audience:

Question: How much of the strife in the Middle East, or really anywhere in the world, is rooted in true ideology, versus the haves and the have-nots?

Albright: A very difficult question to answer. I think that we do not know, I have to make very clear, what creates terrorists or suicide bombers. I think that we can speculate a lot about it, but I think that anybody that tells you that they know flat-out is wrong. That is not possible.

I think that a lot is those who feel that they have been disenfranchised in some way, who feel that their dignity has been questioned or undermined. And this is the anomaly: that those who don’t have an education and therefore can’t be part of the system, or those who do have an education and can’t get employment that is commensurate with their degrees.

And what I think has happened is that there is a sense that the more fundamentalist portions of every religion, frankly, are able to use some of those complaints as very legitimate recruiting ground. And it then becomes an ideology.

I think it is very interesting, for instance – I don’t know how many of you have had a chance to see, but Christiane Amanpour had an incredible special on CNN about the paths of Osama bin Laden, and how, in fact, he changed, and the recruitment practices.

I have to say, I loved the song that was performed here [“Imagine”], but I disagree and I have in my book, “The Mighty and the Almighty,” which you can buy, a part when there’s a statement in that song, “if there were no religion.” Well, the truth is, there is religion. The only example we know of no religion in the world has been the Soviet Union, which wasn’t exactly great.

So, I think we have to assume that religion exists everywhere, and that people have a level of belief and of sympathy for particular religious ideologies that vary. And what I’m advocating in my book is that we make a point of trying to understand how much of it is religion, how much of it is social issues, but they clearly get all melded together.

But there is no question in my mind that some of the issues that we see in terms of the fighting are the haves and the have-nots, which goes some to the resource question, too. That’s why I say that ultimately, the worst problem in the world is the division between the rich and the poor. The number of people in the world that are poor is huge, and what is even worse is the divide between the rich and the poor. If everybody were poor, there would not be the same kind of jealousy and animosity; it’s that divide.

Question: What are you most proud of in your life?

Albright: Well, I have to say, without being sloppy about this, I am most proud of my three daughters. They are terrific; it’s just hard to believe that my twin daughters are 45 years old, because I’m not old enough to have children that age. But I have to say that as a long-term sense of pride, that is definitely it.

In terms of my professional life, I am very proud of the fact that I worked hard and was able to have a job that I never imagined I could have – as Secretary of State of a country where I wasn’t born – and to have the honor of representing the United States and to have, and I don’t want to sound self-important in this, but the power of the United States is so incredible. And to be one of the people that actually had something to do with using the power of the United States, I hope to good ends, is something that made me very nervous, but also very proud.

And if there’s any one single set of things that I did that I’m really proud of is what we did to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, because it was something that happened on our watch. We saw people being killed. It was possible to use what I call, “the goodness of American power.” I believe in peace; I’m not a pacifist. And so I felt that as a set of decisions and issues that came out with a relatively good end, that is one that I would put right up there.

Question: What would you say would be the most significant thing that would help empower the United Nations to really put a much more positive foot forward, where many times we see weakness and ineptness? 

Albright: I am a great supporter of the United Nations for any number of reasons, some of it my own personal history. As I said, I wasn’t born in the United States. My father was a Czechoslovak diplomat, and his last assignment was as representative to the United Nations to deal with the problem of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. It is a good example of the good and the bad in the United Nations. My father is dead, I’m old, and the issue goes on. So that is part of the problem.

But the United Nations, I think we all have to remember, is a body that was created by the United States as a way to deal with international problems. It is a complicated body. When I was there, if I might say this, I tried very hard to be a professor, to give an intellectual construct to what I was seeing. At that time there were 183 countries in the U.N., and I felt that most of the countries there wanted to be part of an international system and worked in order to have it work. But it now has 192 countries with very different interests, and as far as I’m concerned, it needs to be reformed very, very badly … But I think we need to strengthen the U.N. – not easy in the United States, because there really are people in the U.S. who believe that the U.N. has black helicopters that swoop down in the middle of the night and steal your lawn furniture. And then, there are Americans who truly do not like the U.N. because it’s full of foreigners, which frankly can’t be helped. So, it’s very hard for us to be fully supportive of it.

Question: Do you believe the jewelry industry has responsibility for what it buys, and that it has to be sensitive to the problems that are endemic in West Africa, where you have a tremendous amount of poverty? Would you support the idea of fair trade jewelry?

Albright: You have asked a really serious question that I know is of great concern to everybody here and something that I actually have spent quite a lot of time on. The whole issue of conflict diamonds was something that was very apparent when we were in office and the assistant secretary for Africa that I had, Susan Rice [former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs] – this is an issue that she dealt with. And Tony Lake [former National Security Advisor], who had been the national security advisor and somebody that spent a lot of time – even after he left office – working on Africa, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to deal with the issue and begin to develop a set of rules that would make clear that diamonds, that the illicit trade in diamonds and the money that came from them, would not be used in order to sponsor or in any way be involved in providing support for those that were killing each other.

And it’s clearly a difficult issue and one that does that needs to be worked on, and there have been international agreements. I think that the Kimberley Process that has been put in place is a very important aspect of this that has to be pursued and from my understanding of it, is working and has to have a great deal of your support as well as public support. There is a general difficulty – and it goes again to the resource problem that we talked about – it is very hard to control everything everywhere, as we know.

The question is to what extent there are international agreements that put the process into place and then institutions within whatever industry that actually carry out the rules. But it requires good governance within whole industries in order to make things work.

There have been any number of things, for instance, that had to do with other issues. In terms of ending apartheid, the Sullivan Principles were a set of rules that corporations put into place that they would not be dealing with a variety of companies, and so it requires that kind of support.

I also think, and let me just explain a little bit of what it is I also do. As was mentioned, I started a company called the Albright Group, which goes to show you who chose the name. We do a lot of work in terms of helping American corporations abroad, and one of the things that we do is actually work with American corporations on what we call their social responsibility issues. Because part of what is happening is that as American corporations, particularly, are abroad, they will not prosper if they are not good citizens in the countries where they are. Which I think requires giving back, in some cases doing charitable work, in some cases making sure that various laws are abided by within a particular country. Among the various things that I did when I was in office was we had the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Anti-Corruption Act. Any number of things where we were trying to put in some kind of international norms to have our corporations in other countries live by.

I do believe that it is part of social responsibility of your industry and others to give back and to make sure that, particularly the African continent, isn’t sucked out of its resources. Because it’s too easy to do. The terrible part, I think, about what’s going on in Africa now, is Africa was clearly exploited by whites for decades, a century. It is now being exploited by its own black leaders, some of whom, like [Robert] Mugabi, who has basically ruined Zimbabwe, having been the person who was kind of the prototype independence leader. And so I think to the extent that it’s possible for the companies from the outside to set a good example, it’s very important. One of the things that I did when I was Secretary was to establish a prize for American corporations that actually were able to be “good citizens” in the countries where they are.

I don’t think the diamonds were responsible for what happened in Sierra Leone. There were whole other factors there. I have to say, I went to Sierra Leone – I don’t know how many of you have been there, but – I was in a state of shock, because I went to this place, where, it was a camp, and the people there were divided, seated, according to what limb they had lost. So they were there, people with no arms, or people with no legs, or I held this little girl who was about 2 years old, who didn’t have an arm. And for no reason whatsoever – who could she ever hurt?

We are watching some very serious stability issues in all these countries. Clearly, provision of money from whatever source is part of the problem. So, whatever this industry can do, through the Kimberley Process, or whatever way, to make sure that you are not a part of that story, I think is in the best tradition of GIA.

Question: How can this industry come together to reduce the threat of terrorism?

Albright: I hate to say that somebody who had a job like Secretary of State gets to be a sentimental slob, but you [Donna Baker] were standing next to me, and whenever I see all those flags I get all teary. Because I really do think there are so many possibilities for us working together, when instead what we’re trying to figure out is who’s in the axis of evil and who hates us more or who do we hate more, so I would like to see things be different.

And I do think that there are very practical aspects in terms of good governance issues and setting an example. The thing that I also found very interesting was when I was Secretary, and it’s true of so many things, is that I think most business people, in order to actually do it right, have pretty good principles – those that have lasted. And I think that in many ways, the countries that you all are in, whatever nationality, can have good governance issues that then spread into other areas.

For me, if I were to think of thing that has to be done, it has to do with education. Generally, because if people have some level of education, it helps entire societies. And also for good reasons, not just because I’m a feminist, but the education of girls is a very important for all societies.

The other things that I think have to be done are through various programs that your businesses in other countries have. Businesses have huge tentacles and can have good health programs, good worker laws, anti-corruption, various things that if one company does, and then through whether Chambers of Commerce or various associations, can spread the word to others, makes a difference. The other part is – and that’s why a Symposium like this is so good – is it develops networks and levels of understanding that you don’t have if you’re sitting in one office. So, there are some very practical aspects.

And the other, frankly, is not to be afraid of somebody who doesn’t look exactly like you. I think that is the most important part – to see the individual.

Question: How can I tell international [GIA] students who feel that the doors are closed when they apply for their Visa and not open – how can I tell these students that they are welcome to the United States, instead of how many of them feel – that they are closed to coming and studying in the United States.

Albright: Well, you have a hard job, because there is a very serious problem. As I said, I teach at Georgetown and I spend a lot of time, obviously, at various universities. I think that it’s evident in our classrooms that we have fewer foreign students, international students, and people are accepted by “X” university and then can’t get their Visa and so they go to Canada or Australia or the United Kingdom and don’t come to the United States.

And I think that we are making such a mistake, because first of all, I think that I’ve responded to this in other questions, but in terms of networks formed, education provided, if Americans look at this from a purely selfish point of view, it is that our students are losing by not having the enrichment of having international students in their classes.

Now, it is very hard, because this country was traumatized by 9/11. And instead of having what President Roosevelt said, which is “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” we now use fear as a national policy. And I am very, very concerned about that.

And it is not past the intelligence of a bureaucracy to try to figure out, who is a student, a bona fide student, who will enrich him or herself along with the other people in the class. The problem is, and I think that this is probably an issue for GIA as well as everybody, is that then educational institutions that have accepted international students and advocated for their Visas, also have a responsibility to make sure that the students really are students, and that they fulfill their curriculum obligations, that they really are studying. That they are there full-time, and if they’re not there full-time, what is it that they’re doing, because it is a two-way aspect to it.

And I know we’ve had that discussion at Georgetown. We have an administration that says, we have a way of knowing whether somebody is really a student. But, you know, I think we are living in a very difficult time. I am very troubled and I’ll conclude with this, as I’ve said many times, I’m an immigrant. A legal one, but I am an immigrant.

And I think that this country has been so enriched by people who have come here from other places, and we are going through a very troubling debate on immigration – and it’s probably a lot harder here in San Diego than a lot of places – and the question is, how we are going to get immigration legislation that allows people to come into this country without losing our civil liberties?

I   will never, ever forget my gratitude for having grown up in this country. And I obviously have benefited from it in a way that is unique, in many ways. Most immigrants actually are people who would like to stay where they are born, who want to live in a place where they have family, language, culture, and therefore it goes back to an original question here, which is that we all have to help the developing countries to have economies that can support their people so that they don’t have to leave and become a part of the issue.