SENATE MAJORITY LEADER ENDORSES INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT, INTERNATIONAL POLICE FORCE, GLOBAL 'DEBT RELIEF,' GLOBAL WARMING TREATY, MORE FOREIGN AID A New
Century of American Leadership
Remarks by Senate Majority Leader
Thomas A. Daschle
The Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars
Thursday, August 9, 2001
First, let me thank Lee Hamilton for inviting me to be here
today. We miss Lee’s voice tremendously in Congress, but we are grateful
to have it as a continuing part of the public debate.
Our Constitution outlines an important role for the U.S.
Senate in foreign policy. I take that role seriously, and believe that
the national interest is best served through an open, cordial, and honest
debate about the direction of our foreign policy. I hope to further that
goal today.
The United States begins this century at a place unique
in the history of the world. By any measure, the scope of our power and
influence are unmatched. With a GDP in excess of $10 trillion, our economy
is larger than that of the next four largest nations combined. American
innovation not only has yielded American prosperity, but fuels the engine
of global growth and technological change.
Our military expenditures now are larger than those of all
other countries combined. We are the only nation on the earth able to
project power in every region of the earth. Consider this: B-2s stationed
in Missouri flew halfway around the world to help bring an end to the
ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and returned home... without stopping to land.
The reach of American power is perhaps superceded only by
the reach of American culture. In 1995, more than half of all the royalties
and licensing fees in the world were paid to Americans. Our movies, music
and media are everywhere —the Senate may never hold confirmation
hearings on Mickey Mouse, the Microsoft butterfly, or Madonna, but in
many ways, they are seen as our ambassadors to the world.
At the same time we have achieved dominance, we are also
confronted with the reality of truly global interdependence. By 2004,
one billion people will be surfing the World Wide Web. The result is an
exchange of ideas and information never before known.
I have seen the power of that exchange of information myself.
For example, a few years ago, I visited Albania as part of a Congressional
delegation.
While I was there, I found myself talking to a man in his
early 30s. He told me that, when he was a boy, if someone had a television
with an antenna and they turned it to face the sea to receive uncensored
information from Italy, police would come to their house and turn the
antenna around.
For years, the Albanian government was able to keep its
people shut off from the rest of the world. But as information about the
changes sweeping across Central Europe crept in—the people of Albania
turned their eyes, their hearts, and, yes, their television antennas toward
democracy.
Albania’s road since then has been a rocky one, but in that
story is a new global truth: when people live in places where human potential
is unrealized, they look toward democracy. In an increasingly interconnected
world, we must help them find it.
Those two trends in history—U.S. dominance and global
interdependence —would seem, in some sense, to be contradictory.
Standing alone, we are stronger than ever before. And yet we are more
vulnerable in more ways than ever before.
That is our paradox—a nation as susceptible to an explosives-laden
skiff as it is to a nuclear weapon... A nation that can be attacked by
a single terrorist, or the rising tide of global warming... A computer
virus, or a biological one... A nation unrivaled in its economic strength,
but whose strength is increasingly tied to the economic and political
stability of the rest of the world.
These contradictions create a number of challenges—some
as old as the human race, and some as new as our newest technologies.
But all demand our vigilance, and all demand our leadership.
First, we need to maintain the military strength and superiority
we now enjoy, while preparing our military to meet the threats of tomorrow.
This is our first obligation as public servants.
Second, we need to multiply our own strength by maintaining
strong, solid relations with our allies.
Third, we need to recognize that it is in our national interest
to help our former adversaries like Russia and China build pluralistic
societies tied to the West.
Fourth, we must continue to be an active force for peacemaking
from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, to the Balkans.
Fifth, we need to confront a new breed of global challenges:
proliferation, terrorism, AIDS and infectious disease, and global warming.
And sixth, we need to maintain leadership in the global
economy, expand trade, and deal with the growing economic disparities
that arise from it.
And we must do all of these while recognizing that, in the
wake of the President’s nearly two-trillion-dollar tax cut, we now have
limited budgetary resources at our disposal to do all of this.
In confronting these challenges, we face three options:
We can act alone, we can act in concert with a handful of others, or we
can try to bring together broad coalitions.
There are, to be sure, times when our national interest
will compel us to go it alone. When President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986,
when we retaliated against Saddam Hussein in 1993 or Osama Bin Laden in
1999, we were properly exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We
should continue to do so when circumstances demand it, and our goals are
advanced by it. But many of the challenges we face, and most of the new
challenges that are emerging, are global in nature and demand a global
response.
Take proliferation, for example. We’ve made positive strides
in the past several years. We’ve eliminated nuclear weapons from Ukraine,
Belarus, and Kazakhstan. We negotiated and ratified the Chemical Weapons
Convention and stopped North Korea’s production of nuclear fuel. And we
saw countries like Brazil give up their missile programs. However, these
successes must not breed complacency. India and Pakistan have joined the
club of states possessing nuclear weapons. Some believe North Korea may
have as well. Iraq, Iran, and Libya are trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Russia still has the material and know-how to produce 60,000 nuclear weapons.
At least a dozen countries have offensive biological weapons programs,
and at least sixteen states have active chemical weapons programs. And
these numbers represent only states, never mind the non-state actors who
may be pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Remember, it did not take a long-range missile to deliver
lethal force to the USS Cole, to the World Trade Center, to our embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania, or to disperse sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. As
the bipartisan Baker-Cutler task force recently concluded, “the most urgent
unmet national security threat to the United States is the danger that
weapons of mass destruction, or weapons-usable material, could be stolen
or sold to terrorists and used against American troops abroad or civilians
at home.”
No less threatening—and no less demanding of our international
leadership—is the global pandemic of AIDS. To date, AIDS has infected
36 million people worldwide. In the 64 days since I became Majority Leader,
one million people have been infected, and over 350,000 have died in Africa
alone.
For many countries around the world, AIDS is not just a
humanitarian crisis. It is a security crisis—because it threatens
the very institutions that define and defend the character of a society.
This disease weakens workforces and saps economic strength. AIDS strikes
at teachers, and denies education to their students. It strikes at the
military, and subverts the forces of order and peacekeeping—and what
has happened to many countries in Africa could well happen to others if
current rates of infection continue unchecked.
No border can keep AIDS out, and no border is a sufficient
barrier from the responsibility to fight it. Here is an international
effort where President Bush has recognized that America has an obligation
to lead. But it’s not enough to simply get it, we need to get it done.
I’m proud that the U.S. was the first contributor to the
Global AIDS Trust Fund. In the Senate we were able to include an additional
$100 million for the trust fund this year, and in a bill now working its
way through the Senate, we've added another $450 million in the fight
against AIDS for the coming fiscal year. These are important, but still
insufficient, steps in our effort to confront and ultimately defeat this
terrible disease.
Certainly, the Administration is right to state that our
proper response to whatever threats we face must be determined on a case-by-case
assessment of our national interests. But more often than not, we have
a better chance to advance our national interests if we are in the game,
rather than on the sidelines.
Two weeks ago in Bonn, Japan showed the world the benefit
of being in the game—emerging from a historic 180-nation international
climate change accord as a hero and a leader. In the final agreement,
Japan won significant concessions, and left Bonn with their national interests
strengthened in exchange for joining the international process. By contrast,
our delegates were literally booed out of Bonn.
On six separate occasions in just six months, the Administration
has demonstrated a willingness to walk away from agreements that were
embraced by many of our closest friends and allies, and broadly supported
by the international community:
• The Kyoto Protocol;
•The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
• A measure to create an International Criminal Court;
•The Biological Weapons Protocol;
•A global agreement to curb illicit sales of small arms and light weapons;
and
•The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty
Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of each of these individual
agreements. I don’t think reasonable people can ignore the consequences
of tearing up each one. Instead of asserting our leadership, we are abdicating
it. Instead of shaping international agreements to serve our interests,
we have removed ourselves from a position to shape them at all.
The Administration seems to have forgotten an essential fact of today’s
global age. With the Cold War over, fear of a common enemy no longer keeps
our allies by our side. Our allies will follow us only if we use our unparalleled
strength and prosperity to advance common interests. Only then will our
power inspire respect instead of resentment.
If we continue down this path, our allies will be forced to fill the void
we leave, not necessarily with our interests uppermost in their minds.
It is not enough, as President Bush has suggested, simply to send U.S.
officials to international meetings... Woody Allen wasn’t talking about
foreign policy when he said that “85 percent of life is just showing up.”
Of course, these problems did not begin with President Bush’s
inauguration. In many ways, as the world’s only superpower, we must accept
that they come with the territory. Remember, our allies weren’t so enthusiastic
about President Clinton calling America the “indispensable nation.” But
these problems have intensified so much, and so quickly, that I fear our
allies may be tempted to treat us as a dispensable nation.
There’s another way, a better way. And it’s not a new idea,
and it’s not a partisan one either. I think President Nixon summed it
up best: “Free-world leadership,” he said, “does not mean dictatorship
to the free world. It means consultation with the free world and developing
from the leaders of the free world the best possible thinking that we
can develop for attacking our common problems.”
American leadership in this new world begins by maintaining
and modernizing the alliances we already have.
The President took a significant step last month by acknowledging
the importance of our participation in the NATO-led effort to prevent
the resurgence of violence in Southeastern Europe. I also believe that
we need to adapt the NATO of today to the Europe of tomorrow. We encourage
and support NATO's efforts to expand this important alliance. In addition,
we welcome our European allies’ plans to increase their collective defensive
capabilities. My hope is that the actual resources will match their intentions—and
that this effort will be made in concert with NATO.
We need to build on the progress we have made in Asia with
our friends in Japan and South Korea. We should stand with South Korean
leader Kim Dae Jong as he pursues realistic engagement policies with the
North, and not undercut him in this effort.
We need to work with our friends in Mexico, as well as address
issues of concern throughout Latin America, including the promotion of
democracy, human rights and the fight against poverty.
We need to work with the nations of Africa, to promote democratic
reform, transparent institutions of leadership, and economic growth.
And while we recognize that U.S. troops are not the world’s
policemen, we must also recognize that it is sometimes in our national
interest to project our power for peace—so long as we also solve
the riddle of how to effectively support the efforts of others to build
the economic and political institutions that sustain peace when it is
time for our peacekeepers to leave.
We have to strengthen the capacity of the UN and regional
organizations to develop an international cadre of economic advisors and
civilian police that can replace peacekeepers. And we have to do a better
job of training the trainers, as we recently did in Nigeria, so that regional
militaries can help bring peace to regional conflicts.
Finally, we must reach out in a clear-eyed way to those
powers in transition that were once our adversaries—Russia and China.
The 20th Century, in many ways, was the story of our triumph
over two great and pernicious adversaries—Nazism and Communism. Today,
we do not need a great adversary to be a great country. Unfortunately,
some don’t accept this reality, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
they would like to see China take its place. I believe we need to take
a more nuanced view.
China is a nation at a crossroads. Today, China is in the
midst of sweeping economic reform. Although democracy is growing at the
local level, China still has a sordid record on human rights, and still
has not guaranteed the right to worship, speak, or choose one’s leaders.
The release of our visiting scholars, while welcome news,
was not an exception. The arrest and release of Americans is hostage diplomacy,
not a sign of improvement in the way China treats its people. So the question
for the U.S. is not whether we approve of everything China does—we
don’t.
The question is how do we get China to embrace the norms
of international behavior—including the rule of law?
Not by abandoning the kind of frank and open exchange that
allows us to raise our differences in the first place. Not by trying to
isolate a nation with 1.2 billion people and a nuclear arsenal capable
of reaching targets in the United States. And not by turning our backs
on what could develop into one of the largest economies on the planet.
We have to engage China—even as we challenge China
on key areas of difference. It is in America’s clear national security
interest to do so. It is in America’s vital economic interest to do so.
And in the long run, it is the only way to help bring freedom and reform
to the people of China.
Similarly with Russia: It is a good thing that we are talking
with Russia about strategic stability. Russia’s potential arsenal of 60,000
nuclear warheads gives us 60,000 reasons to engage.
But it is much more than that. Russia is an emerging democracy,
a process whose outcome is still far from certain. Russia borders 14 countries,
many of which are undergoing fragile transformations of their own. The
political and economic well-being of Russia affects the well-being of
Europe and the rest of the world. This was demonstrated when Russia’s
financial crisis sent shockwaves from Frankfurt to Sao Paolo, to Tokyo,
to Wall Street.
That’s why it was troubling to watch President Bush reduce
our complex relationship with Russia to a simple matter of trust between
two leaders. The stakes are too high to base our strategic relationship
on one man’s assessment of another man’s soul.
Just to prove how complex our relationship is, within a
few short weeks of President Bush’s endorsement of Vladimir Putin as an
honest, straightforward man that Americans can trust—Putin was hugging
Zhaing Zemin in Moscow, and signing a Sino-Russian treaty of friendship
and cooperation—the first such pact since 1950.
We need to speak out against Russian behavior we see as
retrogressive—but we have a fundamental interest in helping Russia
build a modern and pluralistic democracy tied to the West.
I fear the Administration is looking at our complex relationships
with our allies and with Russia and China not through a spectrum of shared
concerns, but rather through the prism of missile defense. What else could
explain, for example, President Bush’s personal embrace of Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin—while avoiding any public mention of Putin’s crackdown
on Russia’s free press and the continuing atrocities in Chechnya.
The Administration seems to have turned one of its campaign
promises on its head: instead of being better to our long time friends
and more realistic with countries like Russia, in the name of NMD, it
is doing just the opposite.
Now let me be clear: Democrats support mutually-agreed upon
modifications to the ABM treaty and a robust national missile defense
testing program. Under the right circumstances, we could support deployment
of a limited national missile defense.
However this administration’s single-minded approach jeopardizes
larger U.S. political, economic, and security goals around the world:
It shortchanges our ability to deal with our more immediate threats here
at home. It encourages other countries to either increase their existing
arsenals, develop new weapons, or seek other means to exploit perceived
U.S. vulnerabilities. And, if we choose to act unilaterally, it will make
it harder to develop the necessary multilateral responses to arms control
and a whole array of global issues.
Many supporters cite the recent successful intercept test
as a reason to push ahead. I congratulate the scientists and engineers
who made this technological feat possible. But to use the success of one
or two preliminary tests as a blanket justification for deployment is
premature.
I would remind everybody that in this latest test, we knew
who was launching, where it was being launched from, when it was being
launched, what was being launched, and the flight path it would take.
For good measure, there was a homing beacon on the target missile. If
our adversaries would be kind enough to meet all of these conditions,
and if we are willing to accept a 50 percent success rate, then maybe
I’d share their assessment.
But I wouldn’t bet my life on it—let alone the security
and fiscal health of the United States. The chief threat to America is
not from big, lumbering ICBMs, launched with a clear return address.
The chief threats today come from biological and chemical
weapons and bombs that could be smuggled in a cargo container, bus, or
backpack. They come from attacks to our economic infrastructure—the
computer systems, communications networks and power grids on which America
is dependent. They come from terrorists who do not have the infrastructure
to launch ICBMs, and who leave no return address.
National Missile Defense is the most expensive possible
response to the least likely threat we face. If we are to pursue such
a strategy, we need to be clear about the trade-offs.
In spite of his claims that the federal government should
be able to live on a 4 percent spending increase, President Bush's budget
asks for a 10 percent increase for the Pentagon, including a 57 percent
increase in missile defense.
We support an increase both in the Pentagon budget and in
missile defense. But a 57 percent increase this year—along with the
prospect of hundreds of billions of dollars in future years—would
cannibalize the personnel and force structure that deal with the threats
we are far more likely to face.
So let's take a closer look at the trade-offs. If we were
to provide overall missile defense with the 10 percent budget increase
the Pentagon enjoys under the President's proposal, we could pursue a
broad array of missile defense technologies consistent with the ABM treaty
which top experts tell us we can do for quite some time. We would also
free up about 2.5 billion dollars this year alone.
What does 2.5 billion dollars get us? As Michael O'Hanlon
at the Brookings Institution and others have shown, it would allow us
to make significant investments in programs that address the more imminent,
more immediate threats we face. It would allow us to substantially:
- Restore the cuts the President made in the U.S.- Russia programs to
control and destroy Russia's nuclear weapons and weapons material, and
find alternative employment for their nuclear scientists and workers.
- Train and equip our local emergency workers to deal with the consequences
of a chemical or biological weapons attack.
- Continue to fund our modest obligations to control North Korea's nuclear
fuel production and reengage the North Koreans on ending their missile
program. After all, this is the front end of the potential threat missile
defense is intended to address.
- Increase research and development into cruise missile defense. Cruise
missiles are less sophisticated, more available, and therefore a more
likely threat. Yet we have no defense against this more immediate threat.
- Concentrate on developing and deploying theater missile defenses,
which would be needed tomorrow to protect our soldiers if we are thrust
into another Gulf-like war.
- Secure our borders and points of entry against terrorism and other
threats. We could beef up customs, airport and seaport security, and
the Coast Guard. On a daily basis, these agencies keep drugs, criminals,
and, as we saw in Vancouver last year—terrorist explosives—from
entering our country.
- Increase our counterterrorism budget to dismantle terrorist networks
that have the intent—and demonstrated will—to strike Americans.
- We could fight cyberterrorism by increasing computer security. Just
last week, we saw the "code red" virus paralyze computer systems worldwide,
including at the Pentagon. With our economy and national security increasingly
reliant on computer networks, those networks demand greater protection.
- And we could fund scholarship programs for foreign language and foreign
regional studies programs and expand intelligence community staffing.
Anyone who heard the chilling transcript of the exchanges between the
Peruvian pilots and the American liaison officials that led to the attack
on a missionary flight now understands the importance of being able
to speak the language.
These are all here and now threats, and we could fund all
of these programs at levels necessary to start addressing them—without
shortchanging our troops, the weapons systems they rely on, or missile
defense.
Think about that: we're not talking about cutting missile
defense's budget, freezing missile defense's budget, or even holding it
to the four percent the President said is appropriate for government spending.
If we simply increase national missile defense by the same ten percent
the President proposes to increase the Pentagon budget, we can provide
resources to every one of these programs, and thereby increase our security
in every one of these areas.
There's one final, overarching, component of our national
security—and that is our economy. Our economy is the envy of the world,
and the foundation of all of our strength. Increasingly, that economic
strength depends on economic engagement.
One of the most significant ways we engage the world is
through trade. Four percent of the world's consumers live within the United
States; 96 percent live outside our borders. The only way our economy
can continue to grow is if we can sell American products to the 96 percent
of consumers who live in other countries. While greater globalization
is an in inevitability, the form and direction it takes are not.
We need to recognize that the benefits of trade come with
real costs, and to the extent we recognize those costs and address them,
we better position ourselves to maintain and enhance our status as the
world's leading economic power.
We need to address head-on the concerns and fears that people
have about globalization. But we should not use these concerns as a pretext
for protectionism. As we move forward in opening markets and increasing
trade, we need to address core labor standards and environmental protections,
and help people who are dislocated by trade and globalization.
Here at home, I have introduced a proposal with Senators
Baucus and Bingaman to expand the universe of people eligible for trade
adjustment assistance, and the benefits they receive. As others have suggested,
the rising tide of trade does lift boats, but not all boats. Some are
even capsized. We have a responsibility to expand our economy, the global
economy, and to help make sure the benefits and burdens are shared fairly.
Internationally, we need to make sure that globalization
does not result in the wealthy nations getting wealthier and the poor
nations getting poorer... and more desperate. We need to do our part to
lift developing nations out of poverty. We need to make the necessary
investments in our foreign assistance budget. We have a moral obligation
to continue our efforts to relieve the debts of developing countries that
use the savings to invest in their people. We need to help poor countries
develop institutions and the rule of law to help them join the global
economy, and provide the basic protections that are the right of all humans.
Every Memorial Day, when my brothers and I were young, my
father would take us to the veterans cemetery in our hometown of Aberdeen,
South Dakota. I remember standing with him, looking at all of the headstones
with their service crosses. He never said a word. I remember the stillness
as he stood there. I could see how moved he was. Years later, I learned
he had a special understanding of the sacrifices made by those who serve.
My father was an Army Sergeant in World War II. He was in
the 6th Armored Division, and landed on the beaches of Normandy on June
7th, 1944. He was injured there—and as he recovered, one of his many duties
was getting word back to the states about the dead and the missing, so
their loved ones could be notified.
He saw on that beach, and in the letters he had to write,
the sacrifices that our democracy has demanded of generations that came
before ours.
Today's strength was bought with those sacrifices. My father's
service, and the service of millions like him, is the very reason that,
today, our power and influence are unmatched... the reach of our culture
is unparalleled... and the hope of our democracy is a light to the nations
of the world—and one young man in Albania.
God willing, the place we now enjoy in the world will not
have to be secured in the future on the field of battle. But for that
to be the case, we must secure it through the wisdom of our decisions,
and a recognition of our responsibilities.
Our strength is our great blessing, our freedom is our great
inheritance, and by meeting our obligations we can secure them at home,
and spread them throughout the world.
Thank you.
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