Remarks at The Kennan Forum

MODERATOR: It's my pleasure now to introduce to you someone who has come here at some great inconvenience to himself. He was, as I mentioned before, scheduled to be out of the country and scheduled to be back in the country, and then scheduled to be here earlier today. And I'm impressed with the amount of effort and energy he has put into joining us here in Milwaukee for the annual Kennan Forum.

I am sorry he wasn't here earlier to see the greeting from George Kennan and the background information we presented. I think I mentioned to you, as well, that Ambassador Grossman is the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number 3 position in the Department of State. He is a career foreign service officer. He has been Ambassador to Turkey and held a number of senior positions in the Department of State including Executive Secretary to the Department of State. It is with great pleasure I welcome Ambassador Marc Grossman.

Ambassador Grossman.

UNDER SECRETARY GROSSMAN: My pleasure. Thank you all very much. William, I especially appreciate that introduction. I certainly apologize for all of the difficulty we have made in trying to get here today. And I certainly apologize to all of you that I have not been a part of this conversation that has gone on so far. But I hope you will allow me to participate for a few minutes, and then I look forward to answering questions with all of my colleagues.

For me to be involved in a forum that is connected to George Kennan is a very important thing because George Kennan for us is one of the greatest of all Foreign Service Officers. And we still value his advice. You, I know, had greetings from him today.

One of the very first letters that Secretary Powell got after he took the oath of office in January of 2001, was a lovely long letter from George Kennan, giving his perspective, giving his advice, and certainly promising his efforts to support Secretary Powell.

George Kennan, of course, is a great intellectual. And, as Arnie Kanter knows very well, I am not. George Kennan was a great public servant; I do my best.

There is something I share with George Kennan, and I wanted to share this with you. In his memoirs, which I looked at again in getting ready to come here today, Kennan recalls -- and I quote -- "My decision to try for entry into the Foreign Service was dictated mainly by the feeling that I did not know what else to do."

And I said, "Well, that's exactly the same with me." That’s exactly the reason I joined the Foreign Service. Ten days ago I celebrated my 27th anniversary in the Foreign Service. And it is a career in which I have been very proud to participate.

(Applause.)

I ask you today -- and I ask you actually every day -- to be proud of the 46,000 men and women of the State Department who serve in Kennan's tradition in 163 embassies around the world in 258 posts. They are your first line of defense. I have left outside what I hope some of you will pick up, a small passport, which we call "Your Passport to American Diplomacy."

I would not recommend that anyone use this to travel. But in this passport, I hope you will find some information that is useful to you: Our websites; how to be in contact with us if you need help in business; how to be in contact with us if you need help if you have friends or family or loved ones overseas.

I also hope you'll be proud of the role that Wisconsin plays in the world. One of the things that I have taken to doing whenever I visit a city in our country is to look up the statistics of what exports and what connection to the world there is.

Wisconsin's total exports grew from $9.5 billion in 1998 to almost $11 billion in 2002. And if you look at what you exported to Mexico because of NAFTA, went from $500 million in 1998, to almost $750 million in 2002. Milwaukee, of course, is recognized around the country as one of the most fundamental cities that export from the Midwest.

For me it’s a special pleasure to be on a podium with Arnie Kanter, who was one of my predecessors as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs during and after the Gulf War. Mr. Rothschild, I am glad to meet you as well.

The questions that you are discussing in this forum are not questions that belong only to us in the world of foreign policy or only to you here today. They are questions that belong to every democracy and to every citizen. And I must say that they are among the hardest questions with which we struggle every day.

When should a country go to war? Under what circumstances should we build up our military forces? When is war justified? What's the role of war in international affairs? And, as the title of your conference tells us, does war readiness or does preparing for war really deter potential enemies and really preserve the peace?

When I took this invitation I thought, "I am not a theologian. I can't stand up here and tell you what war is just and what war is not just." I am not a philosopher either.

I consider myself a modest person, a patriot, who is practicing diplomacy on your behalf. Here is what I know: that war is never a first choice, but the use of force and the preparation to use force is a choice for policymakers. And that choice must remain an option as we confront the great challenges to our democracy.

Here is what Secretary Powell, a man who knows about war, has to say -- and I quote -- "I don't like war. I have been in war. I have sent men and women into war. I have seen friends die in war. Nobody wants war, but sometimes it is necessary when you need to maintain international order."

President Bush made a speech at West Point last year. And he said that whenever the United States must resort to force, “we fight, as we always fight, for a just peace, a peace that favors human liberty. We'll defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We'll preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers, and we will extend that peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.”

So I come to you today not to pretend that I am anything that I am not, but as a practitioner of diplomacy. I offer you a couple of lessons that I have learned in my career that might be relevant to this discussion and might be relevant to your consideration of these important questions.

First, I believe we must remain strong to keep the peace. And, second, there are times that we must use force. Because I am not a theologian and because I am not a philosopher or professor, I am not here to preach a sermon or to give you a lecture about whether or when war is just. But I wanted to share with you five examples that I drew out of my own career, which I hope will let you understand why I have come to these conclusions, and why when we talk about this after this short presentation, why I come to you today with this proposition.

Example number one: NATO deploys intermediate range nuclear missiles; deterrence faces population opposition.

Twenty years ago, not unlike today, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in cities all across Europe protesting a military deployment. They opposed the deployment of NATO's intermediate range nuclear forces. They meant well. They wished for peace. But I think if we look back on it, I hope you will conclude with me that they were absolutely wrong because they were demonstrating against the core precept of the North Atlantic Treaty, which is deterrence.

The North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington in April of 1949, brought what were then 12 free nations together committed to each other's defense, committed to deterring the threat. And NATO's essential purpose then, as it is today, is what -- is to be prepared to fight, so that you don't have to fight. Believe in deterrence so that you can ensure the security and the democracy and the prosperity of all NATO members.

NATO members believe diplomacy would always be the primary tool, but it was the option of force that gave collective diplomacy its deterrent capacity. You know the history. Four more European nations joined NATO between 1952 and 1982. And in 1999, on the 50th anniversary of NATO, again in Washington, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were welcomed into the Alliance to make 19, and in Prague last year we invited seven more members to NATO to make 26.

Why do they join? They join because they still believe that this Alliance, with its commitment to deterrence is fundamental to keeping the peace.

But back to my history of 1983. Throughout the late 1970's, what had happened? The Soviet Union had built up its intermediate range nuclear forces and deployed large numbers of SS-20 missiles targeting Western Europe and was trying to divide the Alliance between Europeans and Americans. To try to balance that threat, NATO in 1979 decided that if the Soviets did not withdraw those SS-20 missiles by 1983, we would deploy Pershing and cruise missile systems in Western Europe.

The Soviets claimed that NATO was escalating the arms race. As Lord Carrington, who was then the Secretary General of NATO, and for whom I had the good fortune to work at that time, recalls in his memoirs, western governments found themselves “objects of a sustained protest campaign of anti-cruise, and the resultant muddy waters caused perfectly well-meaning people to feel confused and anxious about the course of events.”

1983 arrived; there was no progress on having the Soviets withdraw their missiles. And NATO held firm to the decision to deploy American missiles in the United Kingdom, in Belgium, in Germany, in Italy and in the Netherlands.

And what happened next? NATO's deterrent capacity was greatly strengthened. But even more important, in 1987, NATO and the Soviet Union signed a landmark arms control treaty. The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated the very missiles that had caused this standoff in the first place.

I would submit to you that that Treaty never would have happened without the courageous deployment of those missiles. We enhanced NATO's deterrent. We removed a class of weapons from this world. And, therefore, my conclusion is that being ready to defend ourselves helped to avoid conflict.

Example 2: Bosnia and Kosovo. What I have written down here is what I remember feeling at that time: people shouldn't be put in cattle cars at the end of the 20th Century. So my second example concerns a dictator who snubbed international norms, international law: Slobodan Milosevic, who pursued ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and attacked civilian populations.

We forget sometimes that 200,000 people who were murdered, hundreds of thousands of others wounded, half of Bosnia's pre-war population, which would have been 6 million people, refugees. And think back with me at that time to one of the most horrific of these occasions, the massacre at Srebrenica, the once UN-protected city of Srebrenica.

But the United Nations at that time did what? It was there to enforce a policy that had no credible threat of force behind it. Srebrenica, in July of 1999, where families were ripped apart by separating men from women, the men methodically killed, 7000 to 10,000 men and boys massacred.

Come forward with me to Kosovo in 1999, where Milosevic again is prepared to expel from Kosovo the Kosovar Albanian population, almost 2 million people. By the time most people started to be aware of this problem, 800,000 people had already been pushed out of Kosovo before NATO struck back with military force. We pursued a 78-day air campaign, and although not perfect, it worked and we stopped the killing in Kosovo.

When I look back, what is the lesson I draw? That all of the tools of diplomacy had been exhausted in an effort to stop Slobodan Milosevic: Dayton, UN resolutions, economic sanctions and threats of force, nothing worked until NATO attacked.

And why is that? Because I believe that the dictator believed that we would never use force against him. He never took these threats seriously until March the 24th, 1999, when NATO launched Operation Allied Force, in which all NATO allies participated, and without a UN Security Council resolution, to save Kosovar Albanians from certain murder.

As Oregon Senator Gordon Smith said at the time – and it's a quote I have always kept with me – he was debating people who said we needed a UN Security Council resolution to act – he said, "You know, I thought the lesson of World War II was never again, not never again unless you have a UN Security Council resolution."

It took people too long to see that Slobodan Milosevic would not stop without a credible threat of force; that diplomacy without that credible threat of force would not shake him from his destructive ways. We want to believe that everyone will finally see it our way, will finally see it rationally, but sometimes that's not possible and force becomes the only answer to inhumanity.

Third example: Colombia, which I will call here, helping people defend their democracy.

I bring you back to our hemisphere to talk about another goal that we seek, a democratic Colombia at peace, free from terrorism and the scourge of drugs and narcoterrorism. Colombia, 40 million citizens, an area four times the size of California. Colombian democracy is under a sustained threat from three narcoterrorist organizations, the FARC, the ELN, and the AUC. What happens in Colombia matters to the United States. So we are actively engaged in helping Colombians defend their own democracy.

Now our initial investment in Colombia, starting in 2000, was in support of the former Colombian President Pastrana's idea of what he called "Plan Colombia," a way to get at all of the problems that Colombia faces -- drugs, violence, injustice, and a lack of respect for human rights. With the support of our Congress, we gave to the Colombians about a billion-and-a-half dollars to support Colombian efforts against the drug trade; to provide social and economic development and strengthen democratic institutions.

But the piece I want to focus on today, because it's very relevant I believe to the conversation that you are having, is that some of that money went to training a Colombian counter drug brigade. And that Colombia counter drug brigade uses force; it uses force against narcotics traffickers; it uses force against narcoterrorists; it uses force against the FARC and the ELN and the AUC, but here is an interesting thing.

I have been to Colombia four times and the last time was last week. And every time I am there, I meet with a group of Colombian human rights advocates, courageous people, every single one of them, and their message to me is always the same when it comes to talking about this military unit: "Train more Colombian military units," they say.

And why is that? Because this Colombian military unit that we have trained has not had one credible allegation of a human rights violation in its existence. Because the people we train, we talk to them about how to behave if you're a military officer or a military service person in a democracy. And I am always struck that these human rights people, who have true challenges in their country, they are very clear-eyed about the issue of drugs; and they are very clear-eyed about the issue of terrorism; and they are very clear-eyed about what effect Americans can have in training Colombian military units that, no doubt about it, use force.

After the 11th of September, we expanded what we are doing in Colombia, and we moved from just a counternarcotics mission to also allow the Colombians to be trained to do more things in counterterrorism, and, particularly, to protect a pipeline in Northern Colombia. We went to our Congress and we said, "Would you support this?" And they said, "Yes, we would. September 11th changes a lot."

And so we are now expanding our effort to train more Colombian military units. But it's very important that we all understand that these units use force. And in this case, I believe that the use of force is necessary to help Colombians defend their own democracy, a democracy that they established and a democracy that needs some space and needs some peace if it is to succeed.

As President Bush said in our National Security Strategy, "In Colombia, we recognize the link between terrorist and extremist groups that challenge the security of the state and drug trafficking activities that help finance the operation of such groups. We are working to help Colombia defend its democratic institutions and to defeat these illegal armed groups of both left and right by extending the effective sovereignty of Colombia over the entire territory of Colombia and provide basic security to the Colombian people."

Example number 4: Afghanistan, force as a deterrent, and, I would say, as a liberator. The attack of the 11th of September in New York and in Pennsylvania and in Washington changed the way that we think about our national security. And I believe that al-Qaida's goal is to destroy our way of life.

Seventeen months ago, Afghanistan was a country mired in more than two decades of conflict. Afghans were living under one of the most brutal regimes in the world, the Taliban regime. Women were oppressed, girls were denied an education, religious minorities were persecuted and the common citizen had absolutely no ability to deal with his or her life.

Afghanistan was a haven for drug producers and for drug traffickers. And tragically for this country, and the 80 other countries who lost their citizens on the 11th of September, Afghanistan was also a haven for international terrorism. Weak states like Afghanistan can pose a great -- as great a threat to our national interest as strong states. Poverty doesn't make people into terrorists or murderers. But poverty, weak institutions and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.

On October 7th, 2001, we and our coalition partners used force in Afghanistan; 27 other nations besides the United States of America have deployed more than 14,000 troops in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Today, the Taliban regime is history. Surviving terrorist elements have been forced into hiding and their networks and plans disrupted.

Is there more to do in Afghanistan? Absolutely. But let me give you a quotation from Secretary Powell:

"I am proud of what we did in Afghanistan. There is a degree of stability in Afghanistan that that country has not seen in decades. We went into Afghanistan to respond to 9/11. And now, a year-and-a-half later, the United States isn't running Afghanistan. The elected Loya Jirga put in the leadership there, and they will get ready for popular elections in another year or so. And a huge amount of money is going into rebuilding the country; schools are going up, hospitals are going up, and more than a million refugees have returned."

What about Iraq? This is another example of a threat to the peace and security of this world because it is where the crossroads of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction meet. State support for terrorism, international aggression and a sustained assault on human rights converged in a single place. And President Bush went to the United Nations last September. And it disappoints me greatly that we are not going to be able, it seems to me, anyway, to solve this problem peacefully. But it is a problem that needs to be solved, and it is a problem that I believe we will look back on some years from now, just as we looked at my other examples, as a place where force needed to be used.

Let me make one more comment, and then I will stop. And that is simply to say that the other thing that strikes me in judging the utility of force, or the necessity of force, or even the necessity of being ready to use force, is to look at what happens after force is used. Look what happened after World War II, the "Marshall Plan," again, connected very much to George Kennan.

There is a wonderful piece in Kennan's memoirs where he describes being at the National War College, having a good time. George Marshall comes back from Europe and says, Europe's a mess. Europe is full of threats. Europe is full of economies that haven't yet gotten back on their feet.

And he said to George Kennan on a Friday, “Come here on Monday, establish the policy planning staff at the State Department and your first job is to give me the elements that will then become the Marshall Plan.” The Marshall Plan was part of a set of structures that existed after World War II, that allow us to look back now and recognize that World War II was right as a war, but also was right in its outcome.

Some of the other examples that I have tried to raise for you today, Bosnia and Kosovo: is everything right there? Clearly, not. But there is progress. Slobodan Milosevic is in the Hague. 800,000 people have returned to their homes in Kosovo. And we have reduced, and reduced, and reduced our military presence there.

When you think about Afghanistan, all of the things that have gone on there, is there much more to do? Absolutely.

But have we accomplished a lot in Afghanistan? Over a million refugees have returned to Afghanistan, schools are open, the economy is beginning to function. There is a huge international effort involved now in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and the United States along with other countries is playing a very important role in that. The results are clear that Afghanistan is on a path to have a different set of choices.

Will Afghanistan ever be a democracy like the United States or Switzerland? I don't know the answer to that question.

But will Afghanistan ever again become the pad, the base, the launching point for a terrorist attack on us, or our allies, or our friends? I should hope not, and that is the investment that we are making.

Let us think forward a little bit. If, I repeat if, there has to be armed conflict in Iraq, I can tell you that we have done a tremendous amount of work in attempting to try to consider what kind of Iraq there ought to be after conflict. There ought to be an Iraq that's multi-ethnic; and there ought to be an Iraq that's democratic. There ought to be an Iraq without weapons of mass destruction; there should be an Iraq at peace with its neighbors; and there should be an Iraq in which Iraqis are in charge of their own future, and in charge of their own sovereignty.

If there has to be a conflict, the first area that we will work in will clearly be the humanitarian; but then there will be a huge effort made in terms of reconstruction. We have also been dealing for many, many months now with Iraqis outside of Iraq, and we hope soon to be dealing with Iraqis inside of Iraq to bring a new governmental structure to that area. People say, “but it's impossible. They are always going to fight. They are not worth it. They will never be democratic.”

I'll give you another lesson from the 27 years I have been in the Foreign Service. I have come more and more to believe -- and I didn't believe this when I was younger, but I believe it today -- I have come to believe that nobody in this world should be denied the right to have a chance at democracy because of their geography, because of their culture, because of their religion, because of their color.

They may not succeed. And they may not succeed in the way that we wish, but that is something that everyone ought to have a right to try. And this ability to be free is something that we ought to be able to offer to the Iraqis.

So what do we learn from this history? Not really history, it's a biography, if you will, about what it looks like from where I sit. And what it looks like from where I sit is: we were successful in Western Europe with NATO and the Marshall Plan. We were successful in keeping the peace with NATO and succeeded in what we used to call Eastern Europe, and now call Central Europe; indeed, mostly, we now call them NATO members. We have succeeded a little bit – there’s more work to do – but we are on the right path in the Balkans; we have succeeded a little bit and are on the right path in Afghanistan.

So I am not here to give you a 20 minute commercial for war, or to say that we are without challenges, or that every single thing that I have done, or that we have done in foreign policy these past few years has been successful; that would not be true.

I have walked the battlefields of Verdun and Gallipoli. I have visited U.S. cemeteries in Normandy and North Africa. And both Arnie Kanter and I have been to Andrews Air Force Base too many times to welcome home the bodies of our colleagues, who have given the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our country.

I understand that 60 years ago, Winston Churchill was here at the Pabst Theater. It caught my eye because in the Wall Street Journal last week, his grandson wrote this: “Had the allies held firm and shown the same resolve to uphold the rule of law among nations that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are demonstrating today, there is little doubt that World War II, with all its horrors, could have been avoided; indeed, it was for that reason that Winston Churchill always called World War II the ‘Unnecessary War’.”

So, as I started my presentation to you, the questions posed by this year's forum aren't just for Washington policymakers, or journalists, or academics, or other people who have titles. These are the fundamental questions of democracy and they belong to everyone. Leadership in this world is not easy. I end with a final thought from George Kennan, and I quote, “The best an American can look forward to on most days is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop, where few have been before, where few can follow and few will consent to believe that he has actually been.”

I thank you very much.