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Council on Foreign Relations
Washington, DC
[Note: The transcript begins in progress.]
BARBARA STARR: I don’t really think I probably need to read his biography to all of you. He is the undersecretary of defense for policy. To those of us in the regular Pentagon press corps, clearly, perhaps one of less than a handful of the most influential advisers to [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld. When Doug Feith walks through a Pentagon hallway, you try to pay attention to what office he’s going into, because that may give you a little hint of where the news is being made that day. So we watch him pretty closely.
As some of you probably know, Doug has announced that he plans to resign his position this summer to spend more time with his family. And one of his family members is here tonight. His son David is joining us— an aspiring journalist, I understand. And David and I will be having a discussion later about that career choice, which is a good one, David. You should proceed.
I’m going to not say much, other than to ask everyone to turn off cell phones, BlackBerries, pagers— as we say before every Rumsfeld briefing when they come in, space heaters, anything, recorders. Any device you may have that will interfere with the audio recording, turn it off, please. The meeting in this room is on the record. Council members are in other cities participating via password-protected teleconference. Doug is going to give some remarks for about 23 minutes, he tells me. And then we’re going to give him the hook, so that at about 7:00— five minutes of 7:00 or so, Doug, we can get to audience Q&A. And when we get to the audience Q&A, with such a large turnout, we’re going to want to get to as many people as possible— as many members as possible. So as we say in the Pentagon press briefings with Secretary Rumsfeld, keep your questions sharp, short, and to the point, and it will be appreciated by all so we can get to as many people as we possibly can. But now we’ll turn the podium over to Doug.
DOUGLAS FEITH: Thank you, Barb. Good evening. I appreciate the opportunity to address the Council on Foreign Relations, this productive and influential body. The Council has many claims to fame, including its having been featured in a diverse set of inane conspiracy theories— figments of the fevers of both left wing and the right. I can now empathize. As one bugbear to another, I say, it’s good to be here with you.
The policy organization, my office at the Pentagon, is now doing its part in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the QDR, which the Congress has mandated. The review requires organizations throughout the Defense Department to consider which capabilities we’ll need in coming years. The foundation of the QDR is a defense strategy which is nested inside of a national security strategy. So we’ve been obliged to think and re-think our most wide-ranging and basic ideas. It’s a healthy practice to review the basics, to question the formulation of our national security aims and re-chew our policy assumptions. Stale thought makes for bad strategy.
A key element of the president’s strategy is the interest that the United States has in seeing freedom and democracy gain ground in the world. President Bush, as you may have noticed, had something to say on this point in both his inaugural and State of the Union addresses recently. Under his direction, administration officials are considering how best to increase safety and secure civil liberties at home by, among other means, supporting freedom abroad. As we do this work, we’re paying particular attention to four phenomena in the world: the spread of weapons of mass destruction, terrorist extremism, the risks posed by failed or failing states, and the strategic choices facing important powers in the world, especially countries like China, that are growing rapidly.
Our nation’s most basic interest is to protect the freedom of the American people— our ability to govern ourselves under the Constitution. The sovereignty of the United States is another way of referring to this freedom. The United States strengthens its national security when it promotes a well-ordered world of sovereign states; a world in which states respect one another’s rights to choose how they want to live; a world in which states do not commit aggression, and have governments that can and do control their own territory; a world in which states have governments that are responsible and obey, as it were, the rules of the road.
Now, if the essence of sovereignty is that no state dictates how another organizes itself, how can respect for sovereignty be squared with President Bush’s promotion of democracy? I believe President Bush has answered this question by explaining that promoting democracy is not the same thing as asserting a right to impose governments on other states that are simply minding their own business. It would be a contradiction in terms to push democracy down the throats of people. Democracy means self-government and people can have it only if they choose it for themselves.
Over the years, U.S. presidents have encouraged democracy. And after wars, the United States has laid the foundation for democracy in countries like Japan, Germany, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But democracy can’t be sustained as an imposition. It requires that the people not only want it, but are willing to do the hard work to create and preserve the institutions important or necessary for democracy, such as: multiple centers of power; a culture of compromise; basic freedoms of conscience, religion, and speech; an independent judiciary; private property; a free press; and fair elections.
Democratic institutions have proliferated around the world in recent decades, including in places with non-Western traditions and without a history of democratic politics. These institutions spread because they succeed. In liberal democratic countries people enjoy greater freedom, prosperity, and domestic tranquility than in non-democratic countries. That’s what I mean by “success.” One can make this observation and encourage countries to adopt democracy without offending the principle of sovereignty. Nor does respect for sovereignty require us to ignore the depredations of tyrannical regimes. As President Bush has said, “America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.” Even if the United States at a given moment is not in a position to help relieve such misery, Americans associate themselves with other people’s aspirations for freedom. President Bush has often said, most recently to the citizens of Iran, that where people stand for their own liberty, America will stand with them.
Promoting democracy marries pragmatism and humane principle. Hence, the president’s declaration that “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” The safety and civil liberties of Americans are more secure in a world rich in countries that respect the rights of their citizens. Skeptics— undoubtedly well represented here, in so sophisticated an audience— are naturally suspicious of claims that principle coincides with advantage. But is it not the task of statesmanship to harmonize, to the extent possible, what is right with what is beneficial?
Since the colonial era, Americans have seen our country as a “light unto the nations”--an exemplar of freedom through self-government. Even those who have argued most forcefully that America ought not go abroad looking for dragons to slay have recognized that the American example of self-government is a powerful force in the world. The United States carries out its policy of promoting democracy not in a simple black-and-white morality tale, but in the real world, a sphere of moral complexity and life-and-death challenges. Despite the preeminent position of the United States in the world, we are not all-powerful. We don’t have the luxury of restricting our cooperation in national security affairs exclusively to states with political arrangements of which we approve, any more than Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill could afford to be overly delicate about the nature of [Joseph] Stalin’s regime. Indeed, as Churchill remarked, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” But the United States can boast that our influence on our non-democratic partners has tended, over time, to broaden the domain of human freedom.
Consider the historical record. The governments of South Korea and Taiwan, for example, were non-democratic, even at times repressive, yet the U.S., for practical reasons, maintained close ties with them during the Cold War. Both were cited as instances of American inconsistency, and both are now vigorous democracies. A similar point could be made about the Philippines, Indonesia, El Salvador, and others.
U.S. devotion to a well-ordered world of sovereign states has been called into question also because of our warnings about the threat of weapons of mass destruction [WMD] in the hands of bad actors. In his State of the Union speech in 2002, President Bush said, “We’ll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” Now some criticized those words as a repudiation of classic notions of sovereignty.
It’s instructive to reflect, however, on how the concept of sovereignty has evolved over the years. The traditional idea was that governments should be immune from interference as to actions at home short of actual aggression against another state. But in the mid-20th century, for example, the civilized world modified the concept of sovereignty in light of the Nazis’ crimes against humanity. Genocide is now widely recognized as a matter of international concern and, despite the importance of sovereignty, governments are deemed outlaws if they commit genocide, even against their own people.
Then, in the 1990s, notwithstanding that Kosovo belonged to Serbia, the United States and our NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies did not permit the [former Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic regime to use the concept of sovereignty to shield its gross mistreatment of the Kosovars against international intervention. So even without an authorizing resolution from the U.N. Security Council, NATO took action against Serbia. As the enormities of genocide and other acts of gross inhumanity perturbed established ideas about international law, weapons of mass destruction now challenge statements— statesmen of the civilized world. Even a small and poor state may now be in a position to produce the means to cause devastation to other people, damage far beyond the ability of such a state ever to remedy or recompense.
The world has decided that sovereignty shouldn’t protect a government perpetrating large-scale crimes against humanity within its own borders. Before us all now hangs the question of how long-standing ideas about sovereignty can be squared with the dangers of biological or nuclear weapons. Should governments with troubling records of aggression, support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and the like be allowed to invoke sovereign rights to protect their development of catastrophic weapons that threaten the sovereign rights of others in the world? This is a question for which there is no simple, objective answer.
The importance of promoting a well-ordered world of sovereign states was brought home to Americans by 9/11, when terrorists enjoying safe haven in remote Afghanistan exploited globalization and the free and open nature of various Western countries to attack us disastrously here at home. Sovereignty means not just a country’s right to command respect for its independence, but also the duty to take responsibility for what occurs on one’s territory and, in particular, to do what it takes to prevent one’s territory from being used as a base for attacks against others.
In the war on terrorism, one of the key strategic challenges is this: How can we fight a global war against enemies who are present in so many countries with whom we are not at war? Indeed, many of these countries are friends of ours. To contemplate that question is to come to understand why the United States cannot possibly win the war on terrorism by military means alone— or by itself alone. The United States can win the war— it can defeat terrorist extremism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society— only through cooperation with allies and partners around the world.
Now this may strike you as a shockingly non-unilateralist pronouncement. Perhaps you will conclude that it represents the new diplomatic tone of the new term of this Bush presidency. In fact, recognition that allies and partners are indispensable to the war effort has animated U.S. strategy since 9/11. Top U.S. officials have said so for years, though statements to this effect tended to be ignored or underplayed by folks wedded to the thesis, as common as it is false, that the administration is run by fools committed to “go-it- alone-ism” in national security affairs. But I digress.
Let’s get back to the key question: How can we fight a global war against enemies who are present in so many countries with whom we are not at war? A key part of the answer is cooperation with partner countries. As a practical matter in most cases, only they can act as required against the terrorists on their territory. The required action may be law enforcement, it may be intelligence work, it may be a military operation, or it may be the development of an educational system that can compete with extremist madrassa schools.
We’re working with allies and partners to develop common views on the nature of the threat of terrorist extremism, and we’re assessing with them the capabilities needed to confront it. We urge our partners to do their duty as sovereign states to regulate their borders and otherwise control their territories. And we’re working to build their capacity to perform that duty. So the United States not only encourages partner action, but helps to enable it. This accounts for such various, not obviously related projects as the training and equipping of the Afghan and Iraqi security forces, military and police; counterterrorist train-and-equip efforts in Pakistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Georgia, and elsewhere; educational assistance programs in various countries; the president’s Global Peace Operations Initiative to help train, sustain, and rapidly deploy forces— initially mainly in Africa— for peacekeeping and for the more difficult missions known as “peace enforcement”; and the establishment of the new Reconstruction and Stabilization Office in the State Department to help countries develop the tools they need for civil administration.
The main elements of U.S. strategy in the war on terrorism are: one, protecting the homeland; two, disrupting and attacking terrorist networks; and three, countering ideological support for terrorism. The third— the ideological fight— we see as the key to victory. We have overthrown two regimes that supported terrorists— that of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of Saddam Hussein in Iraq; and induced a third— [Muammar el-] Qaddafi’s in Libya— to change its policies. All of this has contributed to forcing our extremist enemies to shift some of their attention from offense to defense. All of this has helped interfere with their communications, planning, weapons programs, training, and operations, as have our disruptions of terrorist financial flows and the capture or killing of approximately two-thirds of the known leadership of al Qaeda.
But we recognize that if all we do is disrupt and attack terrorist networks, we’ll not defeat our enemy. Our goal is not only to deny the terrorists what they need to operate, but ultimately to deny them what they need to survive. This is why it’s crucial to counter ideological support for terrorism.
As we see it, this effort, a long-term undertaking, has two components. First, we have to de-legitimate terrorism. As the president has said, we intend to make terrorism like the slave trade, piracy, or genocide, activities that nobody who aspires to respectability can condone, much less support. It will take a lot of work to change the way millions of people think and to undo the effects of decades in which terrorism was tolerated and even, on occasion, rewarded.
The second component of our effort to counter ideological support for terrorism is support for models of moderation, democracy, sound economics, and healthy civil society that can compete with the bloody blandishments of the extremists. As President Bush, referring to the greater Middle East, has explained, “As long as that region is a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce men and movements that threaten the safety of Americans and our friends. We seek the advance of democracy for the most practical of reasons— because democracies do not support terrorists or threaten the world with weapons of mass murder.” This is why the political and economic reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq are crucial to success in the war on terrorism.
The problems that I’ve been discussing thus far are by no means the sole focus of folks in the Defense Department. As important as are the war on terrorism and WMD proliferation, we retain our interest in relationships among the world’s major powers. Throughout history, regulating such relationships has tested the skills of statesmen. The test gets especially tough as it becomes necessary to accommodate the shifts in relative strength among those states, especially the rise of new powers. A failing grade has all too frequently come in the form of war, when the international system proved unable to balance the demands of the rising powers and the interests of the older ones. Over the last 10 to 20 years, the world’s state system has managed a number of grand adjustments gracefully and pacifically, including the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the unification of Germany, the blossoming of India, and the enlargement of NATO.
Of the new powers that are rising— developing economic strength and willing to engage in the world, through trade and otherwise— the country that can be expected to have the greatest effect on international relations is China. As in India and other rapidly developing countries, the people in China have benefited palpably from their government’s economic liberalization and from the world’s general willingness to accommodate their rise by, for example, admitting them into the global trading system. China has cultivated confidence on the part of international business people that it will remain stable and hospitable to them for trade and investment.
As is the case with other major players, too— Russia, India, Japan, the European Union and, I would say, the United States— China can be seen as facing a strategic crossroads. The world is in rather high flux. International relations don’t now have the structure and the alignments that existed during the Cold War or even in the decade before 9/11. Countries are making choices that will determine what kind of world they want to live in. These countries have to define their aspirations for the future, what in the past we might— might have been called their conception of “national greatness.” For a country like China, the fundamental choice is whether it wishes to join the group of advanced economies whose relationships are governed by “rules of the road” of the international state system and who define their national purpose with reference to the freedom, well-being, and prosperity of their citizens.
As the United States’ record makes clear, we don’t see the world economic system as a zero-sum game. We envision the possibility of rising economic tides, as the saying goes, that lift all boats. China, for its part, was able to develop rapidly because it abandoned the radicalism of the Mao [Zedong] years [1935-76]. If it wants to continue to prosper, it will choose a benign path that will allow the world to accommodate its rise peacefully. The question is, do its leaders see that China’s long-term interests, including its opportunities to profit from foreign investment and trade, hinge on its becoming a respected and responsible member of an international community, and that this will in turn require that it forego the threat or use of force to pursue reunification? Sensitive and explosive issues such as relations between China and Taiwan should be addressed within the existing diplomatic framework, the essence of which is that all matters be resolved consensually and peacefully.
Other key players in the world can help the Chinese leadership understand that China’s future prosperity, stability, and dignity depend to a significant degree on China’s continued political development toward a freer society governed by a more representative political system. Such a society would be less likely to see military force as useful and more likely to seek international influence through the attractiveness of the society it builds at home. The world’s recent successes in managing great power relationships are a credit to the flexibility of the state system and the vitality of the conflict-averting “rules of the road” that I have referred to. Rising powers have understood that their worthy hopes can be realized within a well-ordered system of sovereign states. The United States and our allies and partners have an interest in fostering an environment in which China comes progressively to share that understanding.
This discussion of U.S. policy has been, I realize, a bit abstract. Some of what we do in the Defense Department is like that, and some is more down to earth. I’d like to conclude by mentioning the people in the department who are not only down to earth, but the earth they are down to is in Afghanistan and Iraq. The men and women of the U.S. armed forces serving in combat abroad are contributing bravely and brilliantly to achieving the national purposes I’ve been outlining. They are disrupting terrorist networks, helping set the conditions for the Afghans and Iraqis to create their own democratic institutions, and helping shape the global environment so that Americans can enjoy safety and civil liberties and continue to serve their historical role in the world as supporters of freedom. They make us proud and deserve our grateful recognition. We should all thank them. And I thank you. [Applause]
STARR: The evening is going to move on fairly rapidly, so I’m sure there’s a lot of questions in the audience. I’m going to take myself out of the proceedings and look for members of the Council— towards the front of the room, perhaps— that want to ask Doug something. Sir? In the red tie back there.
QUESTIONER: Thank you.
STARR: And I apologize; I’m nearsighted, so everybody’s got to put their hand way up, so I can see you.
QUESTIONER: Dan Schorr, National Public Radio. Against the background of your exposition, what are you going to do about Syria?
STARR: I’ll pick my pen up. [Laughter]
FEITH: Syria is doing a number of things that are big problems. There is important support for the insurgents in Iraq that is coming from Syria that is based in Syria. And the Syrians also continue to occupy and deny the sovereign and independent rights of the Lebanese. The Syrians are one of the major supporters of terrorism in the world, and they are pursuing weapons of mass destruction. So they are— they’re a serious problem. And we are hopeful that the attention that is focused on them and the work that we’re doing to get diplomatic attention and pressure brought to bear can induce the Syrians to change their policies. It’s— the Syrians would be better off, in many ways, if they changed their policies and were not the kind of threat to peace and stability that they are.
STARR: Okay. We’ll take the gentleman halfway down the aisle back there. Sir?
QUESTIONER: Yes. [Inaudible] You said that what the United States is seeking is a well-ordered world of sovereign states— states that nevertheless have their relations governed by rules of the road. But even America’s closest allies would say that under the present administration, the United States has picked which particular rules of the road it chooses to follow. Are we to understand that the kind of example that the United States would like to present to China over the next half century is that China then, like the United States, can wage preventative wars, so-called; that it can indefinitely intern enemy combatants? Is this the kind of example that the United States is going to set for China over the next half century?
STARR: Let me stop there. I have forgotten to ask everyone to please state their name and affiliation. My fault. Let’s have level playing ground here.
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] with Columbia University.
STARR: Thank you.
FEITH: What the United States has been doing in the world, I think, is right; is justified by well-established principles of international order and law. We have the right to defend ourselves, and that right is inherent in every country. I think that the— what I was trying to suggest in my talk is that the principles that are the rules of the road are principles that have grown up over centuries, and they adapt. And it is one of the great challenges to the world to figure out what are the proper responses to particular kinds of dangers. And I think that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of countries that have irresponsible governments, governments with records of aggression, with records of violation of their international obligations, with records of tyrannical rule at home, and various other serious problems— that represents a major challenge to the world. As I said, I don’t believe that there’s a simple answer to that, but I do believe it is something that the world has to deal with, because the simple concept of sovereignty that says a country should be left alone to develop whatever capabilities it wants to until it actually commits an aggression, was an idea that grew up in a different era when the ability to do the kind of harm that one can do with, you know, smallpox weapons was not at the fore of people’s minds.
And I think the world has a serious problem here. I don’t mean to suggest this is an easy problem. It is a serious problem and it needs to be worked out. And sometimes these rules of the road evolve. And I think that the kind of— the world would be just fine if other countries in the world followed, in general, the American example of paying attention to these things, taking them seriously, making them subjects of consultations internationally, having serious debates about them at home. I think we are a very good example to the world.
STARR: Let’s have the microphone brought to that lady on this side— dark hair, brown jacket. I can’t quite see that far. Thank you.
QUESTIONER: Thank you. This is [Inaudible] with Turkey’s Star newspaper. I believe you were in Ankara very recently, and you have expressed your concern about the dense anti-American feelings among the Turkish public, and also some statements coming from the Turkish officials. Now, I am curious to know the root base of your concern. Are you concerned about the tone or are you concerned about the substance of the relations between the two countries? Thank you.
FEITH: The point that I made in Turkey is a point that I’ve made in a number of countries with whom the United States has very important alliances or partnerships, and that is our government officials work very hard to cultivate an understanding on the part of the American people and Congress of the value of our alliances and partnerships. And when you’re talking about relationships among democratic countries, it’s crucial that the appreciation of those relationships extend beyond government officials down to the public in general, because otherwise the relationship is really not sustainable.
And the point that I have made, and I made it in Turkey and I’ve made it elsewhere, is— with respect to relationships that the United States considers to be very valuable, wants to preserve, wants to see vital long into the future— we hope that the officials in our partner countries are going to be devoting the kind of effort to building popular support for the relationship that we build in our own country. And I think that that’s extremely important. And I mean, obviously, one of the main forums for building that kind of general understanding is the Council on Foreign Relations. And countries that have an active private sector set of organizations to think about foreign policy and really devote the kind of time and attention needed to cultivate that kind of understanding for the importance of international partnerships, they’re ahead of the game. They’re better off.
Some of these remarks in Turkey I specifically made to a group of Turkish nongovernmental organizations that I was meeting with because I think that they could play the kind of role in Turkey in support of the U.S.-Turkish relationship, which I consider to be enormously important, that the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, has played over the years in cultivating American appreciation for U.S.- Turkish relations.
STARR: Let’s move over to this side of the room. Sir? Right there in the third row.
QUESTIONER: Hi. My name is Colin Kahl, a fellow— a Council fellow at the Department of Defense. Much has been made about the fact that traditionally U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has privileged stability over democracy, and the president has indicated that he is intent on shifting the balance more towards democracy, away from that bias towards stability. My question for you is, at what— what level of instability are we willing to tolerate to promote democracy in the Middle East if we are truly going to move that balance in the direction of freedom in that part of the world?
FEITH: I don’t quite see the trade-off that way. I think part of the reason that the— that the president promotes democracy is because one of the benefits that democracy gives people is stability. And one of the plagues of non-democratic rule is the instability that inevitably attends the change of [laughter]--of leadership. And so I just— I guess I just don’t buy the notion that it promotes stability to have a non-democratic government.
STARR: Let’s just keep moving down this side of the room. Just find someone down there with their hand up, the first person you come to. I can’t see that far.
QUESTIONER: Charles Gati, Johns Hopkins University. Doug, you and I have one thing in common: we both care very deeply about the security and survival of Israel. My question to you is this. With the election of a government in Iraq that is closely associated with, allied with, ideologically tied to Iran, surely Israel’s greatest enemy at the present time— most powerful one— what are you going to do to have a government in Iraq that will be at least less anti-Israel?
FEITH: I don’t— I don’t think that what you said about the intimacy of the connection between the people who have gotten the plurality vote in Iraq and Iran is necessarily the case. I mean, this idea that these are people who support Iranian government policy is, I believe, not the case. And I mean, I judge that from many of the— many [of the] contacts with them that the U.S. has had, things that have been said in private and in public. I think this is— this is really a misconception to assume that Iraqi Shiites are going to be following the line of the Iranian clerical regime.
Now on the issue of Israel, to tell you the truth, Iraq has a substantial agenda of things it needs to attend to and, I mean, I don’t think that the issue of Israel is high on that list. I think it’s got a lot of work to go in defeating the insurgency, and organizing the government, and organizing the constitution-drafting process, and the next set of elections that are supposed to occur by the end of the year, and it’s got plenty to think about other than more general international relations.
STARR: Let’s take this gentleman right in the third row here, please. Either— both of you.
QUESTIONER: All right.
STARR: You guys decide who goes first. [Laughter]
QUESTIONER: Sidney Blumenthal. Don used to be my colleague at The Washington Post. [Iraqi politician] Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as an important political figure in Iraq. From your experience, how would you rate his credibility? And to what degree should the U.S. place trust in him?
FEITH: We have been saying all along that the Iraqis should pick their own leaders. There were people who didn’t think that we meant it. I believe nobody can now question that we were sincere, that the Iraqis are picking their own leaders. And the Iraqis put together those lists, the Iraqis organized their own vote, the vote came out as it did. There’s now all kinds of jockeying as to who’s going to be president, who’s going to be prime minister, and we will work with and respect whoever the Iraqis pick. I think that’s the right attitude for us. And it might surprise you to hear it, but we actually meant what we said.
STARR: Don?
QUESTIONER: Don Oberdorfer, SAIS [Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies]. I was kind of stunned by the fact that you spent so much of your address on China, and I wonder what it means. Are you really worried about China? You’ve got military relationships with China, on the one hand. On the other hand, you’re objecting to the Europeans selling arms to China, something that the United States asked the Europeans to do some years ago. What is your view of why China looms so large in your mind? And do you expect China to solve the problem for you with North Korea?
FEITH: We would be very happy if China solved our problem with North Korea. [Laughter] And I shouldn’t really be flip about that. China is in a position, I think, to have important and constructive influence on North Korea, and we would like to see them, quite seriously, address themselves to the problem and use the unique relationship and unique influence that they have to help us with that extremely serious problem.
I chose to talk about China because we often discuss the war on terrorism; Americans are focused, for obvious reasons, on the war on terrorism, on Afghanistan, on Iraq; and it was observed to me by a colleague from Asia that sometimes there’s a sense out there that we’re not paying attention, and we’re not paying attention to what people in Asia are very much focused on, which is the enormous challenge of dealing with the rise of China.
And I also think that because what I chose to talk about was the state system, and its virtues if it’s organized right and if governments have the right attitude toward it, it struck me that this is crucial to the issue of China because what our hope is, is that China is going to integrate itself in a peaceful fashion into the state system, and if it does, it will solve what otherwise would be a truly gigantic problem in international affairs.
And the state system has shown that it has the flexibility to accommodate the growth of such powers, and my view is the Chinese have major decisions to make; and the way the EU, the United States, [and] other countries operate in the world, and deal with China, and deal with the region, and deal with China’s neighbors will be influencing— for good or ill— the Chinese leadership as it makes these fateful decisions. And so I think we have a great opportunity to influence it for good. And I thought that was worth saying, so that’s why I said it.
STARR: Let’s get back down, this middle, this first gentleman on the aisle here. Sir?
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] Ilbo, Korea. As you know, the North Korea declared that they possess nuclear weapons. How are you going to cope with the situation, especially in terms of North Korea’s sovereignty, as you mentioned, and the U.S. interest?
FEITH: As you know, we have organized with China and other key friends— South Korea, Japan, Russia— the talks with North Korea, the so-called six-party talks. And the goal is that these countries, representing the interests of the international community, can induce the North Koreans to end their nuclear weapons program. The North Koreans had an international obligation in the Non-proliferation Treaty, which they violated. And this is a challenge to— not simply to the Non-proliferation Treaty; it’s the challenge to the idea that one can deal with problems of that kind through treaties. I mean, the world is a better place if treaties of that kind can be effective. And there’s been a lot of cynicism developed about those treaties because they have tended in the past to be violated without consequence.
What we are saying is, we would like to see pressure brought to bear, so that there are consequences for the violation of a treaty of that kind. And so the six parties are the forum for dealing with this challenge by North Korea to the nonproliferation regime. And the goal is to get the problem resolved diplomatically.
STARR: The gentleman just about three aisles back on the aisle, right there. Sir?
QUESTIONER: Thank you. Peter Baumbusch with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. Like everyone in this room and, I assume— every American— I’m very concerned about our war with al Qaeda and how we make policy involving that. And like, I assume, most people in this room, I read the 9/11 commission report, which quoted some material of yours, which— maybe correctly or incorrectly. But according to the commission report, you indicated shortly after 9/11 that Iraq was a non-al Qaeda target, and you suggested going after countries in Southeast Asia and perhaps Latin America. My question to you is, were they also non-al Qaeda targets, or who was an al Qaeda target? Was Iraq an al Qaeda target? Were they— I’m confused as to who’s an al Qaeda target. Thank you.
FEITH: You are referring to an item in the 9/11 commission report that talked about a memorandum that my office drafted. I believe it was about a week after the 9/11 attack, when it was— if it was— it wasn’t a week, it was nine days. I mean, it was within a few days of the 9/11 attack. And what that memorandum dealt with was, at that time, it was not absolutely clear who [inaudible]--
The major change that President Bush brought about in U.S. policy after 9/11, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, was, as opposed to what U.S. government did in the ‘90s, when we had the first World Trade Center bombing, and the attack on Khobar Towers, and the East Africa embassies, and the USS Cole, and the like, where the U.S. government sent out the FBI to do a criminal investigation, President Bush said after 9/11 that this was a war. And so what that meant was if we were at war with terrorism, we were at war with what we understood— and we’d been working on developing our understanding of this concept— was a network of terrorist organizations and their state supporters and their non-state supporters. And what distinguishes a war from a law enforcement action is that in a war, one is not looking for the individual perpetrators of specific acts; one is fighting a larger enemy. And in saying that we were at war against the terrorist network, the president was directing us to be thinking about how does one deal with that network.
And what that memorandum did was, it looked at the broader issue of the network and was asking questions— and it was simply posing questions, because this was very early on and we were trying to think things through. And if you recall, I mean, the immediate aftermath of 9/11, that was a time that an enormous amount of thinking had to be done really fast about things that were of great moment. And we were thinking what is the best way to attack that network to achieve surprise, to achieve results, to achieve the kind of perturbations of the network that could create other intelligence or targeting opportunities. I mean, we were trying to apply as much sophistication to the analysis of a rather new strategic challenge— the fight against a network of that kind— as we could. And I think it was a perfectly sensible set of questions to ask.
I know that there have been a few news stories written about that reference in the 9/11 commission report that I think tended to oversimplify and mock the idea that we were asking these questions. But, I mean, that’s life. I think the memorandum in fact was quite sensible and represented a serious effort to deal with, as I said, an important and novel strategic challenge.
STARR: I think there’s another question back in the middle there.
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] I’m really confused. [Inaudible]--the year 2000, we said we didn’t care about the internal affairs of most major countries— China, Russia; 9/11, we had a war on terror— not with us, you’re against us. And our allies we chose on the basis of that. And now we’re talking about freedom and democracy. I realize 9/11 has come in between it. It’s only five years. Which is more important— democracy, freedom, the war on terror? And how will our allies know that next year we won’t “roll out a new product,” as Karl Rove said before the war in Iraq, and therefore, they can just wait us out? You know, some of our most democratic allies think that our policies made no sense. And frankly, I heard you, and I’d like you to clarify, repeat one of the things that they think makes the least sense, and that was the link between 9/11 and Iraq. And if you did say that, I think you should know better because there isn’t one. So my question is, what’s it going to be next year? You know, which is it? Terror? The war on democracy? How do countries know if they’re our allies or our enemies?
FEITH: It’s interesting. I’ve talked with people from lots of countries. They don’t express the confusion that you just voiced. I’m a little confused about what, exactly, you were saying in your question. First of all, I did not say anything about a connection between Iraq and 9/11, so you must have misheard. The idea of promoting democracy as part of our national security policy, as I was trying to say in my talk, goes back long before 9/11. I think it’s been an important element of U.S. national security policy for a long time. I mean, it is in a great bipartisan American national security tradition. So I don’t understand the point that you’re suggesting that we discovered democracy after 9/11. It’s hard to know how to respond to the question because I think the premises are not right.
STARR: Let’s jump up back here in the front. Okay.
QUESTIONER: Ariel Cohen, the Heritage Foundation. You mentioned democracy. You mentioned the war on terror. We had 15 out of 19 hijackers coming from Saudi Arabia. You had a network of foundations, both private and government-supported, in Saudi Arabia that funded terrorist activities [the] world over. We also are dependent on Saudi oil to a great extent. The global economy depends on Saudi oil. Where are we these days vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia in terms of fighting terrorism, cutting funding, and promoting democracy? Thank you.
FEITH: The Saudis have over the last period been hit several times by terrorist attacks that have rocked the Saudi leadership. And I think it has awakened many people in Saudi Arabia to a problem that many Saudis were instrumental in creating. And we have seen a change of attitude on the part of many Saudi officials toward the terrorism problem and a recognition— and you’ve seen it; I mean, they’re— the crown prince has made statements about extremist preaching by clerics, and there is a greater seriousness on the part of Saudi military forces, Interior Ministry people on the terrorism problem. They’re beginning to think more seriously about their own counterterrorism capabilities.
So I think that the fact that they’ve been hit quite hard recently has helped kind of adjust their view of some of these problems, and you know, we’re working with them. As you know, my colleague, [Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Adviser] Fran Townsend, was just over in Saudi Arabia at this conference that they had, and she had various talks with them. I mean, we certainly would welcome additional efforts by them to deal with this problem because there’s no question that the problem has important roots that run back into Saudi Arabia.
STARR: Let’s take— I guess we’re getting towards a last question or so, one or two more. Let’s take the gentleman by the door there, please.
QUESTIONER: Robert Gard, independent consultant on international security. Immediately after 9/11, the president talked about combating terrorist organizations with a global reach. This has morphed into a war on terrorism, which is a kind of tactical means. It’s like a war on frontal assaults or envelopments. And now even insurgent organizations are considered terrorists. Wouldn’t it make sense to go back to the original concept and get this thing straight?
FEITH: That is a question that we have spent a lot of time thinking about. That’s one of Secretary Rumsfeld’s favorite questions. He has questioned— I mean, he likes to do this, to challenge basic ideas— he has spent hours with his team, examining the issue of whether the term “war on terrorism” is correct. He’s not sure that “war” is quite correct, and he’s not sure that “terrorism” is quite correct, and he wants us to think about it. He says the problem with calling it a war is that it tends to focus people’s attention on the military aspects of the war which, as important as they are, are not the full picture. And you need to, as the saying goes, use all instruments of national power, which is enormously important and is the reason that I was stressing the importance of the ideological part of the war. So there’s a problem with the word “war.” And then you rightly point out that terrorism is a tactic.
What I would say in defense of the term, though, is it’s important to cast one’s mind back to 9/11. When the 9/11 attack occurred, as I was saying before, we didn’t know exactly who did it. We, early on, understood that it was a terrorist attack; one didn’t know, you know, absolutely precisely for a while. We understood that the war, again, as opposed to a law enforcement matter, would have to be against the terrorist network. It wouldn’t make sense to simply focus on a particular organization or a fragment of an organization. In the terrorist world there are lots of, as I put it, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. So you get groups like Islamic Jihad joining with al Qaeda, and then you get other groups that split up. And so you couldn’t come up with an easy identification of the enemy by a list of organizations, or even a list of organizations and state sponsors.
And so under the circumstances, making the point that what we were fighting was an evil, and describing it as the evil of terrorism— the purposeful targeting of ordinary people— I think was a darn good way to do it, under the circumstances. And I think it does tend to emphasize this extremely important moral issue involved in the war, which is the purposeful targeting of people going about their ordinary lives. And as a short handle for what it is, I think it remains a good term.
But it is certainly a good thing to question it, and the points that you’ve raised, I can assure you, Secretary Rumsfeld has raised and we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it because it affects your concept of the nature of the war.
STARR: Well, unfortunately, I know there’s a lot more questions, but I’m sort of getting the hook from the front of the room here, because as I understand it, the Council on Foreign Relations has an unblemished record of being on time to start and on time to finish. And far be it from me to violate that record. So I think we’ll thank Doug. We’ll thank his son, David, for joining us this evening. [Applause]
And you can all do what the Pentagon press corps does— Shanghai him in the hallway; get him to answer more questions! [Laughter]
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