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| Speakers: | Wesley K. Clark, Democratic Presidential Candidate |
|---|---|
| James M. Lindsay, Vice President, Director of Studies, Council on Foreign Relations |
November 20, 2003
Council on Foreign Relations
NEW YORK, NY
GENERAL WESLEY K. CLARK: (Applause.) Jim, thank you very much. And it’s a real pleasure to be here with you all at the Council [on Foreign Relations] today.
Fifty-seven years ago when America first faced its responsibilities as the world’s dominant power, Winston Churchill came to our shores and he delivered a warning. He called us to a higher purpose. He told us that an iron curtain had fallen across the heart of Europe. He urged us to meet this common threat not by withdrawing from the world, relying only on our own defenses, but by rallying with the world. He said, “If the Western democracies become divided, catastrophe may overwhelm us all.” Fortunately, in those fateful days, America listened to Winston Churchill. Together we built NATO. We led the world to stability and peace and eventually won the Cold War.
Earlier this year, another British prime minister came to the United States. And before a joint session Congress, Tony Blair told us, “There has never been a time when the power of America was so necessary.” And like Churchill, he also delivered a warning. He said we must work with our allies to defeat terror, and that what America must do is to show that this is a partnership built on persuasion, not command. This time, however, our leaders did not listen. They did not heed the warning. And now a new curtain has descended, not between America and its enemies, but between America and its friends.
Simply put, this administration is wrecking NATO and thereby doing incalculable damage to our security and well-being. They’ve alienated our friends, dismissed their concerns, rejected their advice. They’re leaving America an isolated nation.
I served in NATO twice, last as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. I know its value, I see its promise and potential. And if elected, I’ll strengthen it, not destroy it.
General Eisenhower once said that leadership is persuading the other fellow to want to do what you want him to do. When America led the world for the last half-century, others followed, not because we compelled them, but because we convinced them. America needs a president who can lead, and as president, that’s what I will do. I’ll rebuild our relationships abroad and strengthen the alliances which maintain them, so that we can solve problems together; so that the use of force is our last resort and not the first; and so that if America must act with force, we can call on the military, financial and moral resources of others and not act alone.
Restoring our alliance with Europe is the essential first part of my broader strategy for American national security. President Bush has created a go-it-alone approach. He’s declared the use of preemptive military force as the defining characteristic of his national security strategy.
A Clark administration would see things differently. We’d work to put in place with a Europe a reinvigorated NATO as a centerpiece of U.S. policy, and then seek not to rely on preemptive force but, instead, to use diplomatic, political, economic power and international law in preventive engagement. We’d reserve the use of force for an absolutely last resort, and then act together, if possible, and unilaterally only if we must.
This strategy of preventive engagement will not be easy. It will demand new institutions at home and new approaches to existing alliances abroad. We’re going to have to reorganize our government so that we can bring to bear the economic, diplomatic, and political potential that rests today in American institutions and in the American economy and in our population. And at home we must adapt our military so that we’re not just the best at fighting wars, but we’re the best at waging operations other than war, including peacekeeping and post-conflict operations. Only then, with these adaptations, can we prevent threats from emerging and deal with failed states before their chaos spawns terrorism, misery or mass murder.
In Asia, we need a strategy to deal with North Korea, and we’ve got to work to ensure a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue. And we face common challenges with Europe and Africa, too, where the AIDS pandemic and the struggle for democratic development continues, and in Latin America, where the rise of democracy is still at risk. And we must take up Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s challenge, the call to reform the United Nations here in New York.
During the course of this campaign, I intend to address each of these elements of a new American strategy. But with President Bush now in London, meeting with Prime Minister Blair, I want to focus today on proposals designed to repair our deteriorating relations with Europe.
We’ll call it the New Atlantic Charter. We’ll launch it with our European allies, to meet the new threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, as well as to strengthen our responses to the old threats that are still with us.
The charter will enable us, together with our allies, to reach beyond the periphery of Europe, to affect a security equation that’s increasingly global.
For the last two days, as President Bush has been visiting the United Kingdom, we’ve seen the response there, in America’s closest ally in the world. For decades, American presidents have been welcomed in London as friends of the British people, as guardians of a common set of values and interests. But today in London, too many see our president as a danger and greet him with dismay. His presence is actually undermining a brave and decent prime minister, who’s been an extraordinary friend to America for the last six years.
What went wrong? How could the Bush administration have squandered in two years the moral authority that America spent generations building and that we saw in such evidence in the spontaneous demonstrations worldwide in sympathy for America after 9/11?
Well, it started when President Bush said to the world, “You’re either for us or against us.” And as a result, even some of those who were with us are now against us, and those, like Tony Blair, who are still with us pay a political price for it.
And America has been hurt as well—for the fact is, we’re less secure when our friends suffer for standing by our side. And with fewer partners, we’re left to meet dangers alone.
Even in Eastern Europe, there’s dismay. These were some of the first countries in the world to support the Bush administration in Iraq, and what did this administration do to its friends? In July it suspended all U.S. military assistance to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia and Bulgaria because they’d not yet promised Americans blanket immunity from the International Criminal Court. We even took away money for night-vision goggles for Baltic troops serving in Iraq alongside us.
One after another, American presidents have laid a foundation of moral authority for the United States. That foundation was built through our leadership in containing communism, promoting human rights, and helping the poor and sick, in promoting and developing international law. But that foundation has been badly splintered in a few short years.
This administration has been all bully and no pulpit.
The bottom line is this: The Bush administration is not interested in permanent alliances. It treats them, even NATO, as obstacles, a limitation on America’s freedom of action. Instead of enduring partnerships, it prefers to build temporary coalitions of the willing, consisting of nations, however weak, that are willing to do exactly what we say. And that’s the reason why America today in Iraq, facing a growing insurgency, has so many of its long-time allies standing on the sidelines. We’re providing 85 percent of the troops, with no help in sight. And on reconstruction costs, America has contributed $18 billion, while the EU has offered $800 million. Had the Europeans contributed that little to an American-led endeavor of this importance in the Clinton years, it would have been seen as an insult, an outrage; now it just seems normal.
Now, I know from experience that working through alliances can be difficult. Eight years ago this week, I was engaged at Dayton, Ohio, following shuttle diplomacy with Richard Holbrooke, where America used a careful mix of diplomacy, alliances, and force to end the war in Bosnia. Three years later, I was the NATO commander when we put the contributions of 19 NATO allies together to wage the war in Kosovo.
Was it more cumbersome to fight that way? Perhaps. Did it require more persuasion and argument to get things done? You bet. But we were far stronger together. We won that war, in no small measure because Milosevic could not break the will of 19 democracies united in a common cause. And today the Balkans are peaceful and stable, with our allies providing the vast majority of peacekeeping troops and the bulk of the funds for reconstruction.
You see, when we use the power, the throw weight—to put it in military terms—of international law and diplomacy as well as military force, we can achieve decisive results even without decisive force. And we proved it in Kosovo.
So I believe alliances are indispensable, not inconvenient. And I prefer coalitions of the committed rather than coalitions of convenience. And I would rather have capable European forces in Iraq with a say in making decisions than to have Tonga and the Marshall Islands with no strings attached.
But even more importantly, I believe if we work with our allies, we can engage in diplomacy, developmental assistance and a full array of other actions to deal with crises before they erupt into war, and to ameliorate the conditions which might lead to those crises in the first place.
To restore the alliance that served us so well over the past five decades, we’ve got to begin with a common understanding of the world and the threats and challenges we faced in it. We’ve got to recognize the need to be tough on the terrorists of al Qaeda and just as tough on the reasons why terrorism draws so much support from the Arab and Islamic world. We’ve got to recognize that globalization brings us the benefits of the free flow of communication, information, ideas and capital, but that it also has a dark side which allows the spread of terror, weapons of mass destruction, crime, drugs, and allows them to spread and grow with or without state sponsors.
We’ve got to recognize that the deficit of democracy in the Middle East has not only deprived hundreds of millions of people of their universal rights, but it’s also helped to create the humiliations, resentment and rage on which al Qaeda and others have fed.
We’ve got to recognize that the ongoing violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories has not only made Israelis insecure and increased the suffering of Palestinians, but it’s also been a source of anti-Americanism and danger in that region and beyond.
And finally, we’ve got to recognize that the threat of environmental disaster is real and must be addressed. And if we can build a common threat perception along these lines, then I believe we can restore the basis for collective action and American leadership in a world that wants our people to lead.
Sixty-two years ago, Churchill and Roosevelt launched the first Atlantic Charter from the deck of the USS Augusta, off the Canadian coast. As president, one of my first orders of business will be to sit down with our European allies, to agree upon a new Atlantic Charter. And this charter will begin by America declaring its commitment to work with its democratic allies as a first, not last, resort in addressing the security issues we face. European nations would make the same commitment to give primacy to NATO. Such a pledge will renew the sense of solidarity without which the NATO alliance cannot exist.
President Bush said yesterday his policy is to go multilateral as his first choice. But his record shows that NATO is an afterthought.
Our charter should also establish missions for NATO that address pressing international problems, including ethnic cleansing, failed states, and, of course, we should be promoting the peaceful resolution of international disputes and deter conflict.
But most important of all, the charter will call on NATO to confront the fundamental security challenge of the 21st century—the possibility that terrorists or rogue states will acquire or use nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Together with our allies, we must review and strengthen treaties and norms, and recommit ourselves to enforce the norms we have.
Instead of opting out or spurning the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention, we will join and improve them. And when it comes to nuclear nonproliferation, we’ll ask our allies to confront the reality that states can comply with the treaty, but when ready, break out of it to build a nuclear weapon. Together we must be prepared to impose sanctions on countries that seek nuclear weapons under the cover of this treaty regime.
We’ll need to agree to do more, far more, to control weapons of mass destruction, not only the demand for such weapons, but also their supply. We must remove nuclear material entirely from the world’s most vulnerable sites. We must destroy the remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons, and upgrade public health worldwide to deal with the threat of biological weapons.
But sanctions and new controls are not enough, because if we’re going to maintain the cohesion and solidarity necessary for NATO to thrive in this new century, we’re going to have to be able to answer the most difficult question of all: When is it necessary to act preemptively with military power?
Everyone from the secretary-general of the United Nations to the president of France recognizes that a possible nexus between WMD, rogue states, and global terrorists presents the newest and most acute danger to international security. We won the Cold War with a strategy based upon the doctrine of collective security and deterrence. The Bush administration is right to suggest this doctrine needs updating, but it’s wrong to insist that the alternative be unilateral preemption.
Instead, we must embody in the Atlantic Charter agreement on collective responses—diplomatic, legal, economic. We must respond to the threat and be prepared to respond to it, just as we did to the threat of Soviet aggression. And then, one more step, as a matter of last resort, in the case of imminent danger, NATO must be prepared to take military action collectively to preempt.
Now, of course the United States will always have the right to unilateral action when other options are unavailable, but it’s so much better if we can act collectively with an alliance. And that means we must move now to set conditions and create the capabilities to enable NATO to respond rapidly and decisively as a last resort, to take such actions as interdicting shipments of WMD materials or, if necessary, to destroy WMD capabilities that have become or are about to become operational.
So that’s the military side of it and the economic side and the WMD side. But I’m still talking about preventive engagement, not preemption as our preference. We need to work with our NATO allies on a political strategy to promote reform, human rights, and the rule of law in the greater Middle East. So long as people have no peaceful outlets for expressing dissent, they’re going to seek violent outlets. So long as children in many parts of this region are educated in schools that preach hate, they’ll continue to grow into adults that practice hate.
We won’t succeed in transforming the Middle East by threatening to change regimes into democracies by military action. A better model is offered by the joint approach Europe and America took after the Cold War to transform Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Together we successfully promoted stability, security, economic reform and democratic progress throughout that region. We offered these states the opportunities to work with and participate in Atlantic and European institutions. They were encouraged to settle historic disputes, integrate their economies and adapt open political systems. Our emphasis was on carrots, not sticks; inclusion, not exclusion; and encouragement, not coercion.
As a NATO commander, I worked with these countries in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union, and I saw the salutary effects of these programs on the evolution of these countries at first hand. I see a similar role for NATO, the European Union and the United States operating once again in unison, encouraging a similar evolution within the greater Middle East.
Certainly this will be a decade’s labor or more, and certainly we won’t achieve our goals if the world sees our plan as one of coercion and military occupation. We should be looking instead for inspiration from programs like NATO’s Partnership for Peace. Middle East countries, under the right conditions, should be encouraged to join. Likewise, inclusive arrangements like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe could be adapted for and extended to the greater Middle East. A commitment by Europe and America to work in partnership along these lines should be another key component of a new Atlantic Charter.
The Bush administration has made some effort to convince our European allies that defeating these new threats and transforming the Middle East is our new transatlantic challenge. But many of our allies remain uneasy. They agree with our aims, but they mistrust our means. They fear that the only part of our strategy that we’re serious about is the use of force, and that we care more about preemption than prevention. They’re dismayed that the transatlantic partnership has become a one-way street, where our priorities are demands and their priorities are denied.
A new Atlantic Charter is more than simply revitalizing NATO; it’s a new appreciation for the perspectives and responsibilities of partners and peoples on both sides of the Atlantic.
No institution is more capable or more suited for the enlarged role than NATO itself, if only we have the vision to lead it there. But we’ve got to be candid and rebuild the set of common interests that will bring the United States and our European allies together once again.
And that’s why the Atlantic Charter must have a second chapter, a chapter that reflects the new perspectives and concerns of Europeans also. Just as Franklin Roosevelt offered a New Deal with the American people, we need to offer a new compact with our European allies and the international community, a new partnership that challenges us to cooperate more while challenging them to do more.
This effort must begin in Iraq. Two weeks ago, I outlined my success strategy for the war in Iraq. As I said then, I believe it’s possible to secure more international help in Iraq if we’re willing to share political control with others and turn the country over faster to legitimate Iraqi authorities.
Since I laid out that plan, President Bush has started to scrap his. But he’s still asking the American people to spend $87 billion, while others spend practically nothing. He won’t share decisions, so others won’t share the sacrifice.
Our allies, especially those, like Prime Minister Blair, who are dedicated to promoting change in the Arab world, will rightly expect us to make a greater effort to deal with their primary concern in the region. And that’s why we must promise to show leadership, to return America to its historic role of peacemaker in the Middle East, by meeting, not abdicating, our responsibility to seek an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In recent weeks, past leaders of Israel’s security services and the current chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces have spoken out. They’ve concluded that military measures alone will not provide security for Israel. I agree.
But America must not stand by any longer. I would commit America to real Middle East diplomacy again, starting in the White House, but including at all levels of our government efforts to breathe life into the road map for peace that has veered so tragically off course. We must play a leadership role again to encourage both sides to meet their commitments. The Palestinians must start. They must start by taking decisive steps to combat terrorists and the infrastructure of terrorism. But the Israelis have responsibilities also.
And the United States must also respond to very real concerns of our allies about the environment. The Bush administration has thrown aside the Kyoto Protocol, but it’s offered nothing concrete in its place. I would offer our allies real commitments to deal with their justified concerns about environmental threats. America should be willing to meet the Europeans halfway and negotiate binding reductions on emissions along the lines of the Kyoto agreement.
The United States must also rejoin efforts to establish an International Criminal Court. I would insist on changes in that agreement to allow America to participate, but by working with our allies to improve the court, rather than punishing our friends for supporting it, we would be meeting them halfway.
Each of these steps is wise policy for the United States. But because they reflect the profound concerns of our European allies, they will help breathe life into the transatlantic relationship. America’s unilateralism has given our allies an excuse, an excuse to withdraw from their global responsibilities. Why should they contribute troops and money if the United States does not give them a say? Just as our allies in Europe expect better from America, I would expect more from them.
An America committed to international law would be better able to ask our allies to help enforce its norms when they are violated. An America committed to diplomatic peace-making would have an easier time winning European contributions to military peacekeeping. An America committed to using NATO when it decides to wage war would have greater authority to ask our allies to spend more to build up their military capabilities.
Many people fear that it is too late to repair frayed bonds with our allies. But I disagree. I believe there is a powerful yearning around the world for an America that returns to its principled traditions. An America that listens, and leads again, not just by the force of arms but by the force of argument and example. An America that’s respected, not resented, not for its military might or material wealth, but for its values and vision; for the greatness of its goals, and for the generosity of its spirit. An America governed by people with ideals, not radical ideologies. An America that projects its hopes again, not just its fears. An America willing to give of itself what it demands of others.
Our friends want this long international nightmare to be over. And America will see an outpouring of support from around the world when it is.
In 1997, when I was the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern Command, I traveled to Haiti, to Port-au-Prince. And I went down, in the dark of night, to Cite Soleil. It’s a rough, tough area; no electricity, the only light being the charcoal burners of the women cooking bread cakes and other meager items, trying to scrap out a living in a very tough land.
But while I was walking up and down the street and, with the help of an interpreter, talking to the people along the side of the road, I met a man from a small village in Haiti. He wasn’t a big man, but he had the largest hands I’ve ever shaken. They wrapped completely around mine. And I talked to him about who he was and what he wanted. He was 23 years old. He’d come from a village in the interior. He wanted to go to America. He wanted an education. He wanted a chance to work. He wanted a chance to have a family. He wanted a chance for freedom. And he wouldn’t let go of my hand on that dark night. It was as though he thought that by clutching my hand, I could physically bring him with me. I wish I could have.
America should always be a beacon—a beacon of hope and freedom. But it’s going to take a change in style, a change of course and a change in leadership. That is what America needs. It’s what the world needs. And that’s why I am running for president.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
JAMES LINDSAY: Thank you very much, General. Now, as is Council custom, we’re going to go to question and answer. But before we do that, I want to do a couple of reminders. First, I would tell people, we’re going to pass a microphone around, so if you could wait until the microphone reaches you, and if you would, please speak directly into the microphone. Second is that would you please stand, state your name and your affiliation. And I’ll make a third request, if people could keep their questions short and pose them in the form of questions so that we can get as many for the general as possible, I’d appreciate it.
Young lady right here.
AUDIENCE: (Inaudible)—Rutgers University. I was curious, what are the policy implications for U.S. foreign policy for either Iraq or Israel, because you’ve made statements that the Iraq war generates hatred, the continued occupation, as well as the implications of what you’re saying about current Israeli policy?
CLARK: Well, with respect to Iraq, I published a success strategy two weeks ago. I believe it has three key ingredients.
Number one, turn the problem of responsibility in Iraq over to the Iraqis as soon as possible. Use the locally elected councils as a form of indirect democracy. Send two representatives each to [Baghdad]. Let them form a government, create staff, and step by step, begin to give them responsibilities.
End the occupation authority. Bring Paul Bremer home. Bring an international organization in, not the U.N.; create one, as we did in the Balkans. We called it the Peace Implementation Committee. Make it be the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Authority. Everybody who wants to contribute gets a seat at the decision-making table. Put a non-American in charge.
And as for the military, we need to bring NATO in. John Abizaid, the commander in the Central Command, should be reporting to the North Atlantic Council and the NATO Military Committee, as I did in the Kosovo campaign.
And then we need to be looking at changing the force structure just as quickly as we can create real Iraqi security force capabilities. We need to lighten up that force structure, make it more mobile, more agile, let it be capable of conducting intelligence-driven operations that will go after directly the elements that are threatening our forces and the new Iraqi government, and not have it filled with a large, soft logistics footprint which invites targeting.
So that’s the essence of the success strategy for Iraq.
As for the Middle East, as I said, I think it takes U.S. leadership. Israel must defend itself. Israel needs a negotiating partner. Other states in the region must do their job. But none of this is going to happen—let’s face it—without committed American leadership.
President Bush said he’d ride herd on the leaders in the region. Instead, he rode home, to the ranch.
LINDSAY: Right up front.
AUDIENCE: Yes. Marlene Sanders, formerly with CBS News. Would you clarify the circumstances of your departure from NATO?
CLARK: I’d be very happy to. It’s completely a matter of open record. It’s in my book. It’s in any number of public statements made by the secretary of defense, in which he praised my conduct. It’s in my award certificates. And there is absolutely nothing in it that has any suggestion about my character or integrity.
And let me just underscore this. Those words, whether they were intended to be or not, whether they were misspoken or not, haven’t been retracted. And they constitute a smear, and I don’t appreciate it.
And let me tell you, if there’s any question of character in this, it’s a question of whether I had the character to stand up and help the United States do what was right in the situation in the Balkans. And I did. And I’m proud of it, and we saved a million and a half Albanians from ethnic cleansing, and America should be proud of that. (Applause.)
LINDSAY: The gentleman right here.
AUDIENCE: Joel Motley, Carmona Motley. Would you talk a little bit about your campaign strategy and where you see your first primary victories coming?
CLARK: Well, I think the essence of the campaign strategy is to lay out the ideas that can help the American people recognize that we’re at a golden moment and a crucial moment in American history. We can take and end the divisions that have rent America for 30 years. We can be at the end of a period in which one party claimed for itself the exclusive mantle of patriotism and strength on national defense, and another party fought for justice and the rights of every American, because I think today is an opportunity to see that the policies of bellicose interventionism don’t work, and neither do the policies of trickle-down economics. I think we can bring all Americans together in this election. And putting out those ideas to the American people in speeches like this is the essence of my campaign.
But we’re bringing in money. We’re creating staff. This is the equivalent of—well, I made the decision to enter the campaign on the 15th of September. I announced on the 17th. And on the 19th I—on the 18th I went to Florida and on the 19th to Iowa. It’s the equivalent of launching a transatlantic voyage and building the ship as you leave the harbor. (Soft laughter.)
It’s been a great adventure. A little water’s come over the gunwales, but we’re in good shape. The ship is upright and moving swiftly toward its destination.
CLARK: We’re going to come up here to the front, if we may, and this gentle lady right here.
AUDIENCE: Hi. Dorinda Elliott from Newsweek. I wonder if you can talk about China a little bit, how you want to define or redefine the United States’ relationship with China. And what’s your reaction to the protectionist policies towards Chinese—the importation of Chinese textiles to the United States?
CLARK: Well, I think we should pursue a continuing cooperative policy with China. Clearly, they’re going to be an even larger economic force in the future. We have everything to gain by working together.
However, I do believe that trade agreements must be enforced, and this administration has been late and slow in enforcing them. I’ll enforce trade agreements and our responsibilities much sooner and much more effectively.
I do fault the administration, though, in one very important aspect of our relations with China. I don’t believe we should be asking China to help us with our problem in North Korea. I believe it’s a mistake. I believe we should have talked directly to the North Koreans. We did it during the Cold War. We did it to build an armistice at the end of the Korean War. We talked directly to the Soviet Union even when we were potential adversaries in the Cold War. We talked directly to the North Koreans during the Clinton administration. And there’s no reason why this administration won’t and why it’s asked China to do it. Instead of asking China to carry our burdens of diplomacy in the Far East, we should have brought to China the solution to their problem of a potentially nuclear-capable North Korea.
AUDIENCE: Yes, Gary Rosen from Commentary Magazine. You talked a lot about NATO but very little about the United Nations. I’m wondering, would NATO approval have been enough for us to go into Iraq, as it was in Kosovo?
CLARK: It’s a good question. It would have depended on why we couldn’t get United Nations approval. As I look at it, in the Kosovo campaign, we did what we had to do. We went with the largest coalition, the people most directly affected. We had not only NATO, but we had humanitarian law precedent for this from the 1971 case of the Indian intervention into east Pakistan, as I recall. And we’d made every effort and were simply told that the—one country would veto our effort to go further.
We did have a U.N. Security Council resolution though—I think it was 1199—which gave us Chapter 7 authority to deal with the humanitarian crisis. So we pulled together as much as we could possibly pull together, and then we acted.
I fault this administration because they didn’t use force as a last resort. They hadn’t exhausted the diplomatic options. And they went in without a proper plan for what happens next or adequate forces to accomplish the mission of what happens next. It’s the exact opposite of the case from Kosovo. There, we exhausted diplomacy. We used force reluctantly. We had a plan for what would happen next. We had the forces already in line. This administration, sadly, didn’t learn from our experience.
LINDSAY: Let me go over to this side. This gentleman right here.
AUDIENCE: My name is Khalid Azim with Morgan Stanley. My question, sir, is about the administration’s policy toward South Asia, and in particular the work going on in Afghanistan.
CLARK: The work of?
AUDIENCE: The work going on in Afghanistan. Could you critique the administration’s policy there?
CLARK: Oh, I think the administration’s policy in Afghanistan has been a world class bait-and-switch. The president promised us Osama bin Laden, dead or alive. But it seems clear from the record, at least that portion that’s emerged, that even before the first bombs had fallen on Afghanistan, the administration was planning to go after Saddam Hussein instead. And during the time when General Tommy Franks should have been planning how to finish the job in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden by putting in the right number of U.S. forces with the right missions to box off Tora Bora and take him down, instead, apparently he was dusting off the plans to go after Iraq, and preparing to brief them to Pentagon or perhaps to the White House.
And so, I think that set the stage for our policy in Afghanistan. It’s been a policy of half measures, in which we failed to commit the resources, the leadership, the troops that were required to follow through on the promises made to Hamid Karzai. And as a result, the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating today.
We need to reinvigorate that effort. And what I’ve proposed is that we go after Osama bin Laden directly; that we ask our Saudi friends to face up to the test, to form with us a joint force to go into the border region with Pakistani and Afghan assistance, the border region between the two countries. And if Newsweek magazine can somehow localize Osama bin Laden, then I’ll bet the United States government, acting with Saudis and others, can find him and take him out. (Laughter, applause.)
LINDSAY: In the back of the room. That gentleman. He has quite kindly raised his hand.
The mike’s making its way to you.
AUDIENCE: General, well done. You’re doing fine on the campaign trail. But this is not NATO, this is the United States of America. Many Europeans and others with dollars appear to be voting with their feet. What’s going on with America’s money and with our economy?
LINDSAY: Could I get you to identify yourself, please?
AUDIENCE: I’m Richard Whalen, former contributing editor of Fortune.
LINDSAY: Thank you.
CLARK: Well, what I’ve seen is an administration that doesn’t really have sound economic policies. It’s relied a lot on Alan Greenspan. And the cost of money is low, lower than it’s ever been. And Americans have done—the American consumers—have done their part. Perhaps with an irrational optimism, they’ve continued to spend and take advantage of bargains in durable goods, automobiles, and refinancing of their homes, while the administration has pursued a policy of tax cuts for the wealthy. I think if they’d pursued the right economic policies, we could have had our recovery a year ago, and we could have had a real recovery that would have generated jobs and helped bring America back into the promise of the 1990s when there was a virtuous circle.
As it is, I think the recovery continues to be measured. And you can’t measure, ultimately, this recovery by statistics alone, because when I’m traveling around the country, the 7 percent quarterly results posted by the Bush administration, they don’t mean much. Not even the 125,000 new jobs created, because in many cases they’re not the right kinds of jobs. When I talk to friends in Michigan and Wisconsin, they tell me about the $17.70-an-hour jobs, with overtime and sick leave, that they’ve lost. A fifth of Michigan’s manufacturing jobs—200,000 jobs—have gone, and they’re replaced by service jobs. At best, some of these who are unemployed are getting new jobs, but for half the pay or less. They’re replacing what they call single wage- earner jobs with the kinds of jobs that force wives and spouses to go back to work, to disrupt families and break hearts.
So, there’s 8.8 million unemployed; 2 million long-term unemployed, and goodness knows how many who have been downgraded in jobs that have cost them their self-respect, their sense of independence, and damaged their abilities to take care of their families.
I think the recovery’s got a long way to go. And I think we could have been—gone a lot further if we’d had an administration that would have faced up to the economic problems and put forward real proposals instead of sticking with an ideologically derived tax cut for the wealthy.
LINDSAY: Let’s go back to this side of the room. That gentleman right there. We will get a microphone to you momentarily.
AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is Martin Scrully, with the National Albanian-American Council. General, I’d like to ask you a question. We’re going to go back to Kosovo again. As far as this administration handling the postwar and the final status, what are your thoughts on that?
CLARK: I think the administration has neglected its responsibilities in the Balkans in general. At the beginning of the administration, there was an effort to pull out of the Bosnia mission entirely. General Colin Powell blocked it. He said: all in together, all out together, that was the pledge. But now the administration, even now, is trying to wriggle out of the remaining 1,200-troop commitment in Bosnia.
And as far as Kosovo is concerned, we should long ago have taken the lead in pressing the international community and especially the European Union to get real on this problem and move it toward a final status determination. It’s the progress in this that will enable the people of Kosovo to invest and grow and develop and will help remove the incentives for the human rights violations and the enmity and friction that still plague that troubled land.
LINDSAY: All the way in the back, right next to you, Carolyn.
AUDIENCE: General Clark, Peter Kellner from Endeavor. What are your ideas on the state of public health, the infrastructure of public health globally right now? Do you see it in foreign policy terms?
CLARK: Well, clearly when you’re dealing with global public health, you have to look first at AIDS. And as we’ve said, AIDS is a national security problem; it’s beyond a health problem. It’s ravaging nations in Africa, and we simply have to fight it. If we don’t fight it with medicine and preventive measures now, we’ll be sending troops there by the thousands in the decades to come as the environmental and economic and human catastrophe there spreads shock waves across Africa and into the Middle East. So that’s where I would look first.
Beyond that, I’m a big proponent of research in biotechnology and other areas, particularly with respect to the threat of bio-terrorism. I think if we invest wisely and work carefully, if we use the modern biotechnologies that are now becoming available, we can find antigens to many of the most common biological weapons and we can help reduce the threat of bio-weapons.
Of course, we’ve still got to invest in our ability to respond should a bio-terrorism incident occur, but the key, I think, is to recognize that we can take preventive measures, and we should.
LINDSAY: General, I want to exercise the presider’s prerogative and follow up on your answer to the gentleman’s question about AIDS. It seems to me the Bush administration argues that it has actually made AIDS a focal point of some of its efforts, and I guess I want to understand where you are different from the president on this issue. Do you think it—how would a Clark presidency handle the issue differently?
CLARK: Well, with respect to the narrow issue of AIDS, the difference is that I would really put money into the problem, whereas this administration has put mostly an empty promise into the problem.
But beyond that, I think as I’ve looked at the issue institutionally here in the United States, and as I said early in a speech, we really need to—we need some new organization in our government. We really need an agency that can help us deal with the problems of failing states, that can bring to these problems the same kind of focal point of attention—research, development, a cadre of experts, men and women who can lead efforts in the field and testify in front of Congress and pull behind them corporations. Maybe it won’t be Lockheed Martin, but maybe it’ll be something else. Maybe it’ll be some biotech company, but something that will help offset the balance, because it’s far better to prevent conflicts than it is to have to fight them.
And for the life of me, I can’t understand why, in a country that spends $400 billion a year on its armed forces, we can’t organize more systematically a real effort to diagnose the causes of conflicts and look at how we might prevent them in a systematic, experimental, scientific way, and then deploy the resources actually to assist, whether it’s directly or through the U.N. Development Program or some other means.
I think that’s the answer to the larger question, and I see AIDS and the effort to assist in combating the pandemic of AIDS as a subset of that.
LINDSAY: Okay. Caroline, could you come down here to David?
AUDIENCE: David Phillips with the Council on Foreign Relations. Iran has shown that it’s susceptible to pressure, through its willingness to suspend its enrichment program and sign the additional protocol. Do you support continued pressure on Iran or the European approach, which is more incentive-laden?
CLARK: Well, I think you can never entirely remove the possibility of pressure in international relations. It’s a question of what kinds of pressure.
But before I would conclude that Iran has shown its willingness to yield to pressure, I have to say that I think the administration’s formulation of the “axis of evil” probably did as much to incentivize the emergence of a threat as it did to warn Americans of the potential. And I’ve labeled it the worst single formulation in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years.
Now having said that, what this administration created was a dynamic in the Middle East of an expectation of continuing conflict. There were rumblings in Washington, writings in the neoconservative circles, gossip in the cocktail parties and so forth about how Iraq was first and then Syria and then Lebanon and then you could see a sort of military hopscotch going on.
That can’t help our efforts in Iraq. In fact, I’m concerned that it may have created an incentive for states in the region to hope that the United States will fail in our obligation to help the Iraqi people, simply because they fear “we’ll be next.”
So I hope that, as we haven’t gone into Syria, that fact has taken some of the incentive away from the Iranians to want to hasten their nuclear development.
But I’m under no illusions. This is a country that has proceeded down the course of the development of nuclear weapons. I support what the Europeans are doing. I support engagement. But as I said, I think we all have to recognize that countries that support the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but then move forward covertly and have the potential of breaking out, those countries have to be watched and potentially sanctioned. And Iran will still bear careful watching. And I wouldn’t remove the possibility of pressure from that.
LINDSAY: We’re going to go to the right side, this lady.
AUDIENCE: Meena Bose, U.S. Military Academy. General Clark, given that North Korea has violated the 1994 Agreed Framework repeatedly, how can the United States most to effectively ensure that North Korea doesn’t expand its nuclear program?
CLARK: Well, it’s an important question. And we saw the 1994 Agreed Framework start to come under fire in the late-1990s, when our Congress failed to deliver the fuel oil that the agreement called for on time. There were a lot of concerns with this. And people asked, you know, why should you work with a regime like that and support it, because everybody knows how awful this regime is and how brutal it is to its own citizens. Sometime during that period, I guess, the North Korean regime began to recognize that it needed some more trading material. And so it began this uranium-enrichment program, and it launched a three-stage rocket over Japan. And we responded, and we began more intensive talks with the North Koreans.
This administration put an end to all that. It labeled North Korea as a member of the “axis of evil.” And I’m not going to be Kim Jong Il’s lawyer or defender. It’s a terrible, brutal regime. And I’m under no illusions as to where it’s headed. But I think the best solution is to talk directly to North Korea, to have them understand that their security is not enhanced by nuclear weapons, that it’s harmed by nuclear weapons; and that the best means for ensuring their own survival is not to become a nuclear power, but to become a peaceful power; and that we should be talking with them directly to make that case.
You can’t predict where such discussion will lead. But we know where it should lead. It should lead to the renunciation and abandonment of their nuclear program. And I think that talking with them is the right place to begin.
LINDSAY: One final question. This gentleman right here.
AUDIENCE: Seymour Topping with Columbia University. General, would you comment on the Ashcroft security policies, and in particular the Patriot Act?
CLARK: Well, I don’t—I don’t particularly care for the Patriot Act. I understand why it was passed, and I think there—in principle, one must ensure that law enforcement has the tools necessary to do the job. And some of what was in the Patriot Act was a grab bag of measures that had been previously proposed.
But I think this measure needs to be opened for full legislative review. No Patriot Act II. No use of the Patriot Act for other crimes beyond terrorism. And I would call for the suspension of the search-and-seizure provisions of the Patriot Act immediately. Go back to the previous methods. Lay out every single instance where the provisions of the Patriot Act have been invoked. Let’s find out why they were invoked, why other measures wouldn’t have worked, what was the benefit of invoking them, and lay out for the American people, and their elected representatives, but for the American people, exactly what the benefits are of surrendering the rights that are surrendered in the Patriot Act. And only then is it going to be clear whether nor not we should move forward. But I’m doubtful, and I certainly don’t support a Patriot Act II.
LINDSAY: General Clark, according to the official clock in the room, it is now 3:30. I promised your people I would have you done at 3:30. On behalf of the members of the audience—(applause)—I want to say thank you very much.
CLARK: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.
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