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Lecture Topics
> The Marines, Commonwealth Club, and World Affairs Council
> We Are At War
> What Should We Do?
> The Middle East
> Use Less Oil
> Israel and the Palestinians
> Additional Steps
> A World of Danger and A World of Opportunity
> Photo Gallery
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The Marines, The Commonwealth Club, and The World Affairs Council
The Marines: a fighting outfit with a clear approach—“No better friend, no worse enemy”—now fighting our country's battles in Afghanistan and Iraq . The Commonwealth Club and The World Affairs Council: among the great forums in our country, with over 100 years of experience in helping citizens sort through central issues of our times. I am honored to be a member of all three.
I am proud to be a Marine. I am proud of our Marines: their fighting capacity, their will to win, their readiness to be genuinely helpful friends to all those people in Iraq and Afghanistan who seek a peaceful and constructive future. The Marines provide just the kind of strength linked to a helpful attitude that is needed. So, hats off to the Marines.
Now, in the spirit of The Commonwealth Club and The World Affairs Council, and against the background of Marine strength, let me turn to the road ahead. What is going on in the world? Where do we go from here? The answer to the first question is the key to the second, to the formation and carrying out of a comprehensive and effective American strategy.
We Are At War
We have struggled with what we have called terrorism for a long time, without quite realizing the nature of the threat. In the Reagan administration, I was a hawk on the subject. I said terrorism is a big problem, a different problem, and we have to take forceful action against it. Fortunately, Ronald Reagan agreed with me, but not many others did.
In those days we focused on how to defend against terrorism. We reinforced our embassies and increased our intelligence effort. We thought we made some progress. We established the legal basis for holding states responsible for using terrorists to attack Americans anywhere. Through intelligence, we did abort many potential terrorist acts. But we didn't really understand what motivated the terrorists or what they were out to do.
In the 1990s, the problem began to appear even more menacing. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were well known, but the nature of the threat was not yet comprehended and our efforts to combat it were ineffective. Diplomacy without much force was tried. Terrorism was regarded as a law enforcement problem and terrorists as criminals. Some were arrested and put on trial. Early last year, a judge finally allowed the verdict to stand for one of those convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Ten years! Terrorism is not a matter that can be left to law enforcement alone, with its deliberative process, built-in delays, and safeguards that may let the prisoner go free on procedural grounds.
Today, looking back on the past quarter century of terrorism, we can see that it is the method of choice of an extensive, internationally connected ideological movement dedicated to the destruction of our international system of cooperation and progress.
The movement is not centrally controlled, but is an effectively coordinated loose global network. We can see that the 1981 assassination of President Sadat, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center , the 2001 destruction of the Twin Towers , and scores of other terrorist attacks in between and in many countries, were carried out by one part or another of this movement. And the movement is connected to states that develop awesome weaponry, with some of it, or with expertise, for sale.
The intellectual and political leaders of this movement have made their objectives perfectly clear in volumes of materials produced over recent decades. The movement's objectives are in four layers or phases:
• to drive the international community's people and influences out of the Middle East (the core of the Muslim world);
• to overthrow all Arab regimes that are in a working relationship with the international community;
• to gain a more entrenched and threatening foothold on the edges of the Muslim world (Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia) and inside the Western world (Europe); and
• eventually to eliminate all vestiges of the international state system from a unified Islamic theocratic rule.
So we see how deadly opposed the Islamic terrorists are to the international state system. Our commitment to that system may account in part for the apparent lack of comprehension within the international community about the nature or even the existence of this war and a reluctance to acknowledge or discuss the religious dimension of what is now going on in the world.
The basic assumption of the international state system is that all peoples, organized as states, will be in or want to be in, the system. Conflict and war, it is also assumed, will take place between states in the system (e.g., France versus Germany ) and not against the system itself. So the foundational attitude of our side is not in accord with the current reality.
So, from a security standpoint, what is going on in the world? The international state system is under determined attack by a religiously motivated movement using terrorist attacks of dramatic lethality as its weapon of choice. The war is against this movement, not just the weapon of terror.
What Should We Do?
First and foremost, shore up the state system.
The world has worked for three centuries with the sovereign state as the basic operating entity, presumably accountable to its citizens and responsible for their well-being. In this system, states also interact with each other—bilaterally or multilaterally—to accomplish ends that transcend their borders. They create international organizations to serve their ends, not govern them.
Increasingly, the state system has been eroding. Terrorists have exploited this weakness by burrowing into the state system in order to attack it. While the state system weakens, no replacement is in sight that can perform the essential functions of establishing an orderly and lawful society, protecting essential freedoms, providing a framework for fruitful economic activity, contributing to effective international cooperation, and providing for the common defense.
Over the last decade we have seen large areas of the world where there is no longer any state authority at all, an ideal environment for terrorists to plan and train. In the early 1990s we came to realize the significance of a “failed state.” Earlier, people allowed themselves to think that, for example, an African colony could gain its independence, be admitted to the UN as a member state, and thereafter remain a sovereign state. Then came Somalia . All government disappeared. No more sovereignty, no more state. The same was true in Afghanistan . And who took over? Islamic extremists. They soon made it clear that they regarded the concept of the state as an abomination. To them, the very idea of “the state” is un-Islamic. They talk about reviving traditional forms of pan-Islamic rule with no place for the state. They are fundamentally, and violently, opposed to the way the world works, to the international state system.
The United States launched a military campaign to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda's rule over Afghanistan . Now we and our allies are trying to help Afghanistan become a real state again and a viable member of the international state system. Yet there are many other parts of the world where state authority has collapsed or, within some states, large areas where the state's authority does not run.
That's one area of danger: places where the state has vanished. A second area of danger is found in places where the state has been taken over by criminals, gangsters, or warlords. Saddam Hussein was one example. Kim Jong-Il of North Korea is another.
They seize control of state power and use that power to enhance their wealth, consolidate their rule, and develop their weaponry. As they do this, and as they violate the laws and principles of the international system, they at the same time claim its privileges and immunities, such as the principle of non-intervention into the internal affairs of a legitimate sovereign state. For decades these thugs have gotten away with it. And the leading nations of the world have let them get away with it.
This is why the case of Saddam Hussein and Iraq is so significant, and why the war against Saddam's Iraq was necessary. Above all, and in the long run, the most important aspect of the Iraq war will be what it means for the integrity of the international system and for the effort to deal effectively with terrorism. The stakes are huge and the terrorists know that as well as we do. That is the reason for their tactic of violence in Iraq . And that is why, for us and for our allies, failure is not an option. The message is that the U.S. and others in the world who recognize the need to sustain our international system will no longer quietly acquiesce in the take-over of states by lawless dictators who then carry on their depredations—including the development of awesome weapons for threats, use, or sale—behind the shield of protection that statehood provides. If you are one of these criminals in charge of a state, you no longer should expect to be allowed to be inside the system at the same time that you are a deadly enemy of it.
North Korea is such a case. The circumstances do not parallel those of Iraq , so our approach is adjusted accordingly. China , Japan , Russia and South Korea must man laboring oars. One way or another, that regime will undergo radical change or will come to an end.
Iran is another very different case, being at one and the same time an outlaw state, an Islamist enemy of the international state system, a destabilizing presence in the Gulf region, and a supporter of terrorism to stop a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. In some sense, the future of Iran is tied to the issue of our success in Iraq . The Iraqi Shia inclination to keep its religious hierarchy unsullied by direct involvement in politics and government could be used to draw Iran 's theocracy in the same direction. Through deft policy management, the U.S. should stand unambiguously on the side of the Iranian people who want to be rid of their mullah rulers, while pressuring the theocrats to abandon their efforts to dictate every aspect of Iranian society.
But make no mistake. The crucial battle is now joined in Iraq . Were we to falter or fail in Iraq , the entire Middle East would be severely threatened and war on a world scale would have only begun.
The Middle East
The Middle East is an area where governance has failed. In many countries, oil has produced wealth without the effort that connects people to reality, a problem reinforced in some of them by the fact that the hard physical work is often done by imported labor. The submissive role forced on women has led to a huge population explosion. Generations of young people have grown up in these societies with a surplus of time on their hands and a deficit of productive and honorable occupations. Since they are disconnected from reality, they can live in a world of fantasy. Denied opportunity, many have turned to a destructive, terror-using ideology. Islamism is the name most specialists have settled on. Yet these young people can see on their TV screens that a better life is possible in a great many places in the world. Whether or not they like what they see, their frustration is immense. As a result, the Middle East has produced all too many religious radicals who for years have been waging war against the international state system.
Many Muslin regimes in the Middle East have finally realized that the radical variant of Islam is violently opposed to the modern age, to globalization, to secular governance and to those Muslim regimes themselves, their primary target. Saudi Arabia , Egypt , and Pakistan top the target list. Years ago these regimes, and others, began a frantic search for ways to deflect the threat. Some tried to co-opt the Islamists into their governments. Some paid extortion money. Some pushed the Islamists into other countries and then subsidized them. Some of them pumped out huge volumes of propaganda to incite the Islamists to turn their attention from the “near enemy,” such as Saudi Arabia , to the “far enemy,” Israel and the United States . Some of these targeted regimes tried all these defensive tactics in an attempt to buy time.
Since September 11, 2001, some of these Muslim regimes have begun to realize that this approach is a loser; it only strengthens their Islamist enemies, who, in recent months, have begun to turn against them directly.
So increasingly, those regimes in the Arab-Islamic world, however much they may have appeased, bought out, or propagandized the terrorists, have nonetheless now had a reality check. They have recognized that they are members of the international system of states and must find a way to reconcile their Islamic beliefs and practices to it. Saudi Arabia and others in the world of Islam must, in their own interests, recognize their own responsibility to stop the preaching of hate and to reform their societies. Young people must have access to the world of opportunity. Women must be free to play substantial roles in their societies.
Use Less Oil
Our strength and our security are vitally affected by our dependence on oil coming from other countries and by the dependence of the world economy on oil from the most unstable part of the world: the Middle East . Presidents from Eisenhower on have called for energy independence. Ike, no stranger to issues of national security, thought that if foreign oil were more than 20 percent of our consumption, we were headed for trouble. The number is now pushing 60 percent and rising. What would be the impact of terrorist sabotage of key elements of the Saudi pipeline infrastructure? Or of a takeover by Islamic extremists?
I remember proposals for alternatives to oil from the time of the first big oil crisis in 1973. Pie in the sky, I thought. But now the situation is different.
Hybrid technology is on the road and increases gas mileage by at least 50 percent. Increased attention to weight and drag can enhance performance even more. The technology is scaleable. Sequestration of effluent from use of coal may be possible. Maybe coal could be a benign source of hydrogen. Maybe hydrogen could be economically split out of water by electrolysis, perhaps using renewables such as wind power. An economy with a major hydrogen component would do wonders for both our security and our environment. With evident improvements in fuel cells, that combination could amount to a very big deal. Applications include stationary as well as mobile possibilities. And major advances are evident in the effort to turn sunlight into electricity. So all this may take time, but work now on the possibilities . Other ideas are in the air. Scientists, technologists, and commercial organizations in other countries are hard at work on these issues. The administration is coordinating potentially significant developments. We should not be put off by experts who are forever saying that the possible is improbable. Scientific advance in recent decades is a tribute to and validation of creative possibilities. Bet on them all. Sometimes long odds win.
Now is the time to push hard on research and development with augmented funds directed at identified targets such as sequestration, electrolysis, and fuel cells, and other money going to competent scientists with ideas about energy. You never know what bright people will come up with when resources and enthusiasm combine. We can enhance America 's security and simultaneously improve our environment.
Israel and the Palestinians
We must take our long-standing role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a new and deeper level, also because of a renewed recognition of the importance of the state.
In 1979 Egypt and Israel recognized each other as legitimate states and signed a treaty of peace. At that time Egypt took on the role of state negotiator with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians, who did not have a state. This was in recognition that states can make peace only with other states within the context of the international state system.
But after Islamists murdered President Sadat, Egypt dropped its role as state negotiator. Jordan took up that role, but dropped it in 1988. Since that time the negotiations have not made serious progress, despite some apparent high points, because there has been no state partner to sit across the table from the State of Israel.
But now the picture has some new possibilities. Yes, optimists should stand aside, but fatalists should, too. You do not work on probabilities in this area, just possibilities. But work we must—and with energy and timing—since the issues involved are vital in this dangerous world.
What are the possibilities? There are far more in evidence than is commonly assumed.
Security for the state of Israel is clearly an essential for fruitful negotiations. So far, nothing has worked. Those who seek to eliminate Israel have regarded efforts at Oslo or Camp David II and elsewhere as proof that terrorism works, and that every Israeli step toward peace is really a sign of weakness.
Now a security barrier is under construction. Israel has stated that its path can be changed in the event of a negotiation. Israel , with all the related turmoil, seems ready to pull back some settlements beyond the new barrier, as in Gaza . If Israel , through these measures, gains security in its land, that will be a major step toward peace. Once again, Israel will have demonstrated that it cannot be beaten militarily, this time by terrorist violence. The confirmation of this fact is essential. And, when Palestinians face the fact that terrorism has become both ineffective and self-destructive, that realization may enable them to take a major step toward peace.
Don't forget that for the first time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, important Arab states have stated a willingness to promote peace between Israel and Palestine . Saudi Arabia , Egypt , and Jordan are the keystones of this structure. And remember the important initiative of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia . Under his initiative, in the event that a peace agreement is reached between the state of Israel and a state of Palestine , the Arab League states would recognize Israel as a permanent, legitimate state in the Middle East and in the international state system.
And there is a “road map” to work from. This document spells out the general directions for progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace. No document since the founding text of the peace process—the 1967 U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—has had such wide, even if tentative, international support. Israelis and Palestinians, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the “quartet”—the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations—all have indicated willingness to take this road map as a working paper of the parties to the conflict, and of the leading nations and organizations of the international state system itself. Israel 's withdrawal from Gaza should be seen as a major step along the road map.
This approach incorporates a way to fix the negotiating problems of the past twenty years. It provides for the establishment of a Palestinian State , not at the end of the negotiations, but in the midst of the effort. Of course, there is much more to making a state than an announcement. But a structure of governance can be established and, if the states of Egypt and Jordan will help, violence can be suppressed and the emerging state can control the use of force. Then there would be a Palestinian state partner for the State of Israel to negotiate with. The Palestinians charged with governance will have more leverage, and the Israelis will have more confidence that their negotiating partner can deliver on the deal that is made—because it will be a state-to-state deal. Put some projects in the mix, about water, for example, to energize those Palestinians who yearn for peace and a chance for a better life. Help them take the play from extremists so that their state has a chance for decent governance. Who knows, just maybe, possibility could become probability and then a new reality.
Additional Steps
I see our great task as restoring the vitality of the state system within the framework of a world of opportunity and with aspirations for a world of states that recognize accountability for human freedom and dignity.
All established states should stand up to their responsibilities in the fight against our common enemy, be a helpful partner in economic and political development, and take care that international organizations work for their member states, not the other way around. When they do, they deserve respect and help to make them work successfully.
International organizations are mechanisms created by the member states—historically with the United States in the lead—to serve the interests of the states as directed by them. Most notable among these institutions is the United Nations. At present, the U.N. has not grasped the fact that it, too, is a target of those making war on the international state system. The U.N. came into Iraq in the summer of 2003 in the belief that its role was to be a neutral facilitator of postwar arrangements to be worked out between the occupying power (the United States ) and the defeated Iraqi state. U.N. leaders had not understood the meaning of the revelation at the time of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center , in 1993, that the U.N. Secretariat was the terrorists' secondary target. In August 2003, the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad , basically unguarded at the insistence of the U.N., was destroyed. In May 2004, Osama bin Laden offered a reward for the assassination of Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The United States should undertake an intensive effort to bring the U.N. toward a recognition of the new reality and to work with the U.N. in Iraq to bolster its efforts to create through elections a re-legitimized Iraq that can qualify for full participation in the international state system.
International law is another pillar of the international system and, once again, a product of American leadership through most of the twentieth century. But international law was damaged during the cold war by the Soviet Union's ideological rejection of it, and by its disparagement by American commentators who felt that U.S. adherence to international law only played into Soviet attempts to manipulate it to our disadvantage.
The post-cold war decade of the 1990s did further harm to international law by permitting the production of deeply flawed, politicized negotiated texts such as the Kyoto Accord on climate change and the International Criminal Court. The United States was correct in turning away from these documents as the twenty-first century opened. Now, however, with the international system in jeopardy, the United States should initiate a comprehensive review of the status of international law and begin work to shore up its foundations, curb its excesses, and advance it in responsible, well-grounded ways.
Norms are an essential feature of the international state system and, as enshrined in documents open for signature by states—such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Genocide Convention—they make up a kind of “standard of civilization” to which members of the system can expect to be held. As with other features of the system, there is the assumption of universal applicability; that everybody either is in, or wants to be in, the international system. The current case of prisoner abuse in Iraq is, in microcosm, an example of the conundrum now facing those responsible for upholding and protecting the international system. The Geneva Conventions are based on the assumption that wars will be waged between two member states of the system, and by professional armed forces. Prisoners taken in battle may be held until the end of the conflict and then returned to the formerly belligerent state parties. During detention the professional soldier prisoners are required only to give “name, rank, and serial number.” But those waging war on the international system today are not professional soldiers of a legitimate sovereign state and, if the system is to have integrity, its privileges and immunities should not be given to those who would destroy it. While the ban on prisoner interrogation under the Geneva Conventions should not automatically be provided to “unlawful combatants” who conduct terrorist attacks against civilians as a matter of policy, they nevertheless are clearly covered by conventions involving torture. The situation, however, cannot be left as it is. The United States should inaugurate a review and study of how to handle fundamental incompatibilities that arise when a system designed to regulate itself encounters an enemy dedicated to its destruction.
Just as membership in the international state system entails professional armed services, so also does it require a professional diplomatic and foreign service. Recent decades have revealed a growing imbalance between the two in the role of the United States in the world. The Foreign Service has been allowed to deteriorate. The terms of service have worsened. The structure of the career has been truncated and distorted. The best young people have been told to put off seeking entrance even as the best veterans have been hurried out of the corps. Political appointees—a necessary and welcome part of the service—have encroached too far into the most professional sectors. Secretary of State Colin Powell has turned these trends around, but there is much more work to do. In the terrorist war being waged today, diplomacy—as is always the case—should be our first line of defense, the forward presence where national interest and security and justice for, and within, the international system may be advanced without a wider war. So a professional, well-managed American diplomacy must be a top priority. We need more representation around the globe. Just as there is no substitute for boots on the ground, there is no substitute for eyes and ears to help us understand and deal with global developments.
We need to remind ourselves and our partners of an ancient message: the Great Seal of our Republic carries that message, as clear and relevant to these times as to our early days. The central figure is an eagle holding in one talon an olive branch and in the other, thirteen arrows. As President Harry Truman insisted at the end of World War II, the eagle will always face the olive branch to show that the United States will always seek peace. But the eagle will forever hold onto the arrows to show that, to be effective in seeking peace, you must have strength and the willingness to use it.
Strength and diplomacy: they go together. They are not alternatives; they are complements. Both must be developed at the highest professional level and used in a coordinated fashion.
In 1917, a few months after the United States declared that it would enter the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson organized a group of generalists and specialists knowledgeable across the range of international affairs to prepare an approach for the United States to take when peace was restored. This effort became known as “The Inquiry.” Now, in the midst of war, something similar may be needed, suitable for the present situation in which a long war must be fought to preserve the international state system, even as that system must shore itself up from within and build or rebuild institutions for peace even as the conflict continues.
A World of Danger and A World of Opportunity
I cannot emphasize too strongly the danger and extent of the challenge we are facing. We are engaged in a war, a long and bitter war. Our enemies will not simply sit back and watch as we make progress toward prosperity and peace in the world.
The civilized world has a common stake in defeating the enemy. We now call this what it is: a war. In war, you act on both offense and defense. The diplomacy of incentives, containment, deterrence, and prevention, are all made more effective by the demonstrated possibility of forceful preemption. You work diplomacy and strength together on a grand and strategic scale and on an operational and tactical level. This means fighting the war on the ground in Iraq . It means diplomacy around the world and at international organizations. And it means, no less, taking serious steps toward energy independence here at home.
September 11 forced us to comprehend the extent and danger of the challenge. We began to act before our enemy was able to extend and consolidate his network. If we put this in terms of World War II, we are now sometime around 1937. In the 1930s, the world failed to do what it needed to do to head off a world war. Appeasement never works. Today we are in action. We must not flinch. With a powerful interplay of strength and diplomacy, we can win this war.
We and our partners throughout the world can then work and live in a time of immense promise. Scientific and technological advances are breathtaking virtually across the board. The impact on the human condition and human possibilities is profound. New technologies are changing the way we live and work, globalizing access to an extraordinary range of information. People everywhere can see that economic advance has taken place in countries of every size, with great varieties of ethnic, religious, and cultural histories. So we should not be surprised—as Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation, and The Wall Street Journal carefully document—that open economic and political systems are becoming more common.
So an unprecedented age of opportunity is ahead, especially for low-income countries long in poverty. The United States and our allies can rally people all over the world. Don't let the terrorists take away our opportunities. We have the winning hand. We must play that hand with skill and confidence.
Photo Gallery
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In performance before and after the lecture, the Marine Band from Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, entertained the audience with a program ranging from patriotic songs and service hymns to New Orleans-style jazz.
 Following the presentation of the colors and our National Anthem, a "living sculpture" interpretation of Joe Rosenthal's legendary Mt. Suribachi flag-raising photograph draws enthusiastic applause.
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Enjoying a lighter moment are, from left:
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