 Sunday, October 6, 2002
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Reposted from The New York Post.
Adapted from the 2002 Wriston Lecture, which National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice delivered to a Manhattan Institute audience at the Waldorf Astoria on Tuesday, October 01, 2002.
To a Free World
Condoleezza Rice
FOREIGN policy is ultimately about security - about defending our people, our society and our values, such as freedom, tolerance, openness and diversity. No place evokes these values better than our cities.
Here in New York, about a third of the population was born abroad. Across the street from here is St. Bartholomew's, a Protestant church. Go three blocks to the east from here, and there's the Sutton Place Synagogue. Go a couple of blocks to the west, and you'll come to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Over the bridge in Queens, you'll find a Hindu temple.
Go uptown a few blocks from where we are, and you will come to the Manhattan Won Buddhist Temple on East 57th. Keep going north, and you will run into the Islamic Cultural Center on East 96th.
Go further up, and you will come to a Bronx neighborhood that used to be called "Banana Kelly" for its mix of immigrants from the Caribbean and Ireland. And there, a Jamaican-American family raised the boy who became the man who is now our secretary of state.
These facts stand as living rebukes to the extremism of our enemies, and the mindset that prevails in too many parts of the world that difference is a reason to hate and a license to kill. America is proof that pluralism and tolerance are the foundations of true national greatness. And today - 385 days after Sept. 11, 2001 - it is clear that our commitment to our ideals is stronger than ever.
IT will take years to understand the long-term effects of Sept. 11. But the tragedy brought certain verities home to us in the most vivid way.
Perhaps most fundamentally, 9/11 crystallized our vulnerability. It also threw into sharp relief the nature of the threats we face today. Today's threats come less from massing armies than from small, shadowy bands of terrorists - less from strong states than from weak or failed states. And after 9/11, there is no longer any doubt that today America faces an existential threat to our security - a threat as great as any we faced during the Civil War, the so-called "Good War" or the Cold War.
President Bush's new National Security Strategy offers a bold vision for protecting our nation that captures today's new realities and opportunities.
It calls on America to use our position of unparalleled strength and influence to create a balance of power that favors freedom. As the president says in the cover letter: we seek to create the "conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty." This strategy has three pillars:
* We will defend the peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes.
* We will preserve the peace by fostering an era of good relations among the world's great powers.
* And we will extend the peace by seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe.
DEFENDING our nation from its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the federal government. And as the world's most powerful nation, the United States has a special responsibility to help make the world more secure.
In fighting global terror, we will work with coalition partners on every continent, using every tool in our arsenal - from diplomacy and better defenses to law enforcement, intelligence, cutting off terrorist financing and, if needed, military power.
We will break up terror networks, hold to account nations that harbor terrorists and confront aggressive tyrants holding or seeking nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that might be passed to terrorist allies.
These are different faces of the same evil. Terrorists need a place to plot, train and organize. Tyrants allied with terrorists can greatly extend the reach of their deadly mischief. Terrorists allied with tyrants can acquire technologies allowing them to murder on an ever more massive scale. Each threat magnifies the danger of the other. And the only path to safety is to effectively confront both terrorists and tyrants.
For these reasons, President Bush is committed to confronting the Iraqi regime, which has defied the just demands of the world for over a decade.
We are on notice. The danger from Saddam Hussein's arsenal is far more clear than anything we could have foreseen prior to 9/11. And history will judge harshly any leader or nation that saw this dark cloud and sat by in complacency or indecision. The Iraqi regime's violation of every condition set forth by the U.N. Security Council for the 1991 cease-fire fully justifies - legally and morally - the enforcement of those conditions.
Pre-emption is not a new concept. There has never been a moral or legal requirement that a country wait to be attacked before it can address existential threats. As George Shultz recently wrote, "If there is a rattlesnake in the yard, you don't wait for it to strike before you take action in self-defense." The United States has long affirmed the right to anticipatory self-defense - from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula in 1994.
BUT this approach must be treated with great caution. The number of cases in which it might be justified will always be small. It does not give a green light to act first without exhausting other means, including diplomacy. Pre-emptive action does not come at the beginning of a long chain of effort. The threat must be very grave. And the risks of waiting must far outweigh the risks of action.
To support all these means of defending the peace, the United States will build and maintain 21st century military forces that are beyond challenge. We will seek to dissuade any potential adversary from pursuing a military build-up in the hope of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States and our allies.
Some have criticized this frankness as impolitic. But surely clarity is a virtue here. Dissuading military competition can prevent potential conflict and costly global arms races. And the United States invites - indeed, we exhort - our freedom loving allies, such as those in Europe, to increase their military capabilities.
The burden of maintaining a balance of power that favors freedom should be shouldered by all nations that favor freedom. What none of us should want is the emergence of a militarily powerful adversary who does not share our common values.
AMERICA and Europe have long shared a commitment to liberty. We also now understand that being the target of trained killers is a powerful tonic that makes disputes over other important issues look like the policy differences they are, instead of fundamental clashes of values.
To build a balance of power that favors freedom, we must also extend the peace by extending the benefits of liberty and prosperity as broadly as possible. As the president has said, we have a responsibility to build a world that is not only safer, but better.
The United States will fight poverty, disease and oppression because it is the right thing to do - and the smart thing to do. We have seen how poor states can become weak or even failed states, vulnerable to hijacking by terrorist networks - with potentially catastrophic consequences. And in societies where legal avenues for political dissent are stifled, the temptation to speak through violence grows.
We will lead efforts to build a global trading system that is growing and more free.
We will seek to bring every nation into an expanding circle of development. Earlier this year the president proposed a 50 percent increase in U.S. development assistance. But he also made clear that new money means new terms. The new resources will only be available to countries that work to govern justly, invest in the health and education of their people and encourage economic liberty. We know from experience that corruption, bad policies and bad practices can make aid money worse than useless.
AT the core of America's foreign policy is our resolve to stand on the side of men and women in every nation who stand for what the president has called the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity" - free speech, equal justice, respect for women, religious tolerance and limits on the power of the state.
We reject the condescending view that freedom will not grow in the soil of the Middle East - or that Muslims somehow do not share in the desire to be free. The celebrations we saw on the streets of Kabul last year proved otherwise.
We do not seek to impose democracy on others, we seek only to help create conditions in which people can claim a freer future for themselves. Germany, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey show that freedom manifests itself differently around the globe - and that new liberties can find an honored place amidst ancient traditions.
Because of our own history, the United States knows we must be patient - and humble. Change - even if it is for the better - is often difficult. And progress is sometimes slow. America has not always lived up to our own high standards. When the Founding Fathers said, "We, the people," they didn't mean me. Democracy is hard work. And 226 years later, we are still practicing each day to get it right.
WE have the ability to forge a 21st century that lives up to our hopes and not down to our fears. But only if we go about our work with purpose and clarity. Only if we are unwavering in our refusal to live in a world governed by terror and chaos. Only if we are unwilling to ignore growing dangers from aggressive tyrants and deadly technologies.
And only if we are persistent and patient in exercising our influence in the service of our ideals, and not just ourselves.
Copyright 2002 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reposted from The New York Post.
