For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 26, 2003
Remarks by Dr. Condoleezza Rice
International Institute for Strategic Studies
London, United Kingdom
This is a wonderful opportunity to speak to such a distinguished
group of thinkers -- and to be able to do so on the soil of one of
America's oldest and truest allies is a special honor.
I feel a personal affinity for the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, because -- like the Institute -- I got my start
studying strategic weapons and arcane terminology like "throw weights"
and "MIRVs". And, like you, I've subsequently branched out into other
areas of strategic studies.
I was last in London when President Bush visited Prime Minister
Blair in July of 2001 -- two years and what seems like a lifetime ago.
Since then the United States, the United Kingdom, and all civilized
nations have been presented with unparalleled opportunities and tested
by unprecedented challenges.
No less than Pearl Harbor, September 11 forever changed the lives
of every American and the strategic perspective of the United States.
September 11 produced an acute sense of our vulnerability to attacks
that come with no warning. In the terrifying hours and days following
the attacks, we resolved that the only true defense against a threat of
this kind is to root it out at its source and address it at its
fundamental and ideological core.
A great coalition of freedom loving nations works everyday in many
different ways to detect and defeat this menace. As we have been
reminded in recent days, victory comes at great sacrifice, as British
and American soldiers gave their lives in defense of freedom.
With the help of our coalition partners, we have deposed two of the
cruelest regimes of this or any time. The Al Qaeda network has been
deprived of its chief sanctuary. Half its leadership has been captured
or killed, and the rest is on the run -- permanently. Many nations are
uniting around tougher measures to fight proliferation, and are
determined to address the challenges posed by North Korea and Iran.
But these efforts will not succeed alone. To win the War on
Terror, we must win also win a war of ideas by appealing to the decent
hopes of people throughout the world . . . giving them cause to hope
for a better life and brighter future . . . and reason to reject the
false and destructive comforts of bitterness, grievance, and hate.
Terror grows in the absence of progress and development. It thrives in
the airless space where new ideas, new hopes and new aspirations are
forbidden. Terror lives when freedom dies.
True peace will come only when the world is safer, better and
freer. That is why we are helping Afghans and Iraqis build
representative governments that will serve the decent aspirations of
their people.
That is why we are committed to building a global trading system
that is more and more free, to expand the circle of prosperity into the
Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.
That is why President Bush has proposed a 50 percent increase in
U.S. development assistance, with new funding going to countries that
govern justly, invest in the health and education of their people, and
encourage economic liberty.
That is why the President has announced -- and Congress has
approved -- a $15 billion dollar commitment to fight AIDS, a disease
that threatens whole societies and challenges our humanity.
And that is why the President has committed America's influence to
alleviating -- and, where possible, ending -- destructive regional
conflicts, from the Middle East, to Kashmir, to the Congo, and beyond.
Two years ago, President Bush told a European audience: "We share
more than an alliance. We share a civilization. Its values are
universal, and they pervade our history and our partnership in a unique
way."
Increasingly, this civilization is shared by countries throughout
the world. The bankruptcy of fascism, Nazism, and imperial communism
has given way to a paradigm of progress, founded on political and
economic liberty. The United States, our NATO allies, our neighbors in
the Western Hemisphere, Japan, and our other friends and allies in Asia
and Africa all share a broad commitment to democracy, the rule of law,
a market-based economy, and open trade. And since September 11th, the
world's great powers see themselves as falling on the same side of a
profound divide between the forces of chaos and order.
This historic change is vividly reflected in the experience of
Europe. We are rapidly closing the book on centuries of European
conflict, and opening a new, more hopeful chapter in which Europe is
whole, free, and at peace for the first time in its history. Next
year, ten European nations will join the European Union; seven will
join NATO. Russia is our partner. Lingering conflicts, such as those
in the Balkans, are being put to rest.
This confluence of common interests and common values creates a
historic opportunity to break the destructive pattern of great power
rivalry that has bedeviled the world since rise of the nation state in
the 17th century. This is, in fact, more than an opportunity. It is
an obligation.
Instead of repeating the historic pattern in which great power
rivalry exacerbates local conflicts, great power cooperation can now
solve conflicts.
In recent months some have questioned whether this is possible --
or even desirable. Some argue that Europe and America are more divided
by differing worldviews than we are united by common values. More
troubling, some have spoken admiringly -- almost nostalgically -- of
"multipolarity," as if it were a good thing, to be desired for its own
sake.
The reality is that "multi-polarity" was never a unifying idea, or
a vision. It was a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war
but it did not promote the triumph of peace. Mulit-polarity is a
theory of rivalry; of competing interests -- and at its worst --
competing values.
We have tried this before. It led to the Great War -- which
cascaded into the Good War, which gave way to the Cold War. Today this
theory of rivalry threatens to divert us from meeting the great tasks
before us.
Why would anyone who shares the values of freedom seek to put a
check on those values? Democratic institutions themselves are a check
on the excesses of power. Why should we seek to divide our capacities
for good, when they can be so much more effective united? Only the
enemies of freedom would cheer this division.
Power in the service of freedom is to be welcomed, and powers that
share a commitment to freedom can -- and must -- make common cause
against freedom's enemies. This is not a description of a unipolar
world. As the President's National Security Strategy states, "there is
little lasting consequence that the United States can accomplish in the
world without the sustained cooperation of allies and friends."
Today, it is the combined strength of Europe, the United States and
other freedom-loving democracies that stands against the tyrants and
the angry few seeking to impose their will on the many.
For more than half a century Europe worked hard to make
intra-European conflict no more than a memory . . . and to channel
Europe's vast resources and energies towards productive, life-affirming
ends. The vision was to rid Europe of "poles" and to unite Europeans
around shared goals and common values.
America has strongly supported the European project. We have paid
dearly to support Europe's transformation and integration -- because it
was in our interests and because it was so clearly consistent with our
values. Through this transformation and in the defeat of communism,
Europe and America proved our determination and ability to stay the
course until the task is done.
We need that same spirit today. We need that spirit to deny the
world's most dangerous weapons to the world's most dangerous regimes.
We need it to prepare NATO to take on critical missions beyond Europe
-- a project already well-begun. We need that spirit to embolden the
great multi-lateral institutions -- particularly the United Nations --
to defeat the common enemies of civilization: terror, poverty,
sickness, and oppression. We need that spirit to help people across
the globe -- perhaps none more so than the people of the Middle East --
who are seeking a future of greater freedom, greater prosperity,
democracy, and the rule of law.
We have learned, the hard way, that our values and our security
cannot be separated. The people of Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout
the Middle East, deserve the same chance for a better life that we all
enjoy.
Democracy is not easy. Its institutions are not the natural
embodiment of human nature but its aspirations certainly are. Our own
histories should remind us that the union of democratic principle and
practice is always a work in progress. When the Founding Fathers said
"We the People," they did not mean me. My ancestors were three-fifths
of a man. But America has made enormous progress toward a multi-ethnic
democracy.
Our long and continuing journey is a reason for humility, not
hubris that leads one to say that there are those who are not ready for
democracy and therefore not deserving of freedom's promise.
In Europe, reconciliation between formally hostile peoples --
Hungarians and Romanians, Poles and Ukrainians, French and Germans --
was achieved through the spread of democracy, security, and freedom.
True peace between Israel and a future Palestine must be rooted in
prosperity through economic freedom, and democracy founded upon the
rule of law and respect for human rights, and the defeat of terror.
Europe and the United States must turn to the Middle East with the same
vision, determination, and patience that we exhibited in building a
united transatlantic community after 1945.
If we and the people of the Middle East are not bold enough today,
we face a future in which the freedom deficit continues to create
ideologies of hatred that threaten civilization as we know it. Like
other bold struggles before it, this is the work of a generation,
continuing long after most of the governments currently in power have
faded into memory.
We have important work to do . . . work that cannot be done by any
of us alone . . . and cannot be done well if we are working at cross
purposes.
Let us, then, lay aside the quest for new "poles" and turn our
energies to creating what President Bush has called "a balance of power
that favors freedom" -- where we defend freedom against its enemies and
support those across the globe seeking to build freedom in their own
societies.
As German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said recently, "Surely we
are all agreed that we only want one pole in global politics around
which we orientate ourselves, the pole of freedom, peace and justice."
I, for one, could not agree more.
Thank you.
|