Remarks at the National Defense University

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Good afternoon. Mike Dunn?

GENERAL DUNN: Right here, sir.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: All right. There we go. General Dunn, Johnnie Carson, one of our foremost diplomats. Mike, thanks for letting us today share in the anniversary of your 32nd -- the 32nd anniversary of your commissioning, so I know the reason I’m really here. (Laughter.)

David, I thank you for the kind introduction. Usually when people talk about us over at Foggy Bottom, they stick to four-letter words, you know, like “bold,” “wise,” and “cute.” (Laughter.) And look, it's always happy for me to return here to the National Defense University. One thing that he didn’t note is one of the things that I am most proud of in my career and that is that I was chairman of the Board of Visitors here at the time that you got accredited, when we got accreditation for the Middle States Teachers organization.

Now, for those of us who are now in the bureaucracy and gerbil around day after day in our cage -- (laughter) -- that is something that lasts, that is something that really matters, like the ability to award master degrees for those of you who matriculate here. To me it is about the most meaningful thing I have done.

Unfortunately, these past few days have been marked by sadness for our nation. America lost a great leader on Saturday with the passing of former President Ronald Reagan. His life was defined by principles shaped with courage and colored with humor and that will be his legacy. His legacy will also be that of a true democratic statesman. He reflected the soul of America as it was, our nation’s belief, our nation’s character and our nation’s spirit; but he also embodied everything that America longed to be, our people’s hopes, our aspirations and the better angels of our nature. For all of us who served under President Reagan, for all of America's citizens who President Reagan so honorably served, he will be forever missed and forever remembered.

But perhaps it is fitting that Mr. Reagan’s passing this weekend coincided with a monumental turning point in American history: the opening of the Allied offense to liberate Europe in 1944. Over the weekend, our present President, President Bush, joined many of our European allies in Normandy to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion. This is an important time to recognize the tremendous sacrifices of America’s "greatest generation." Over a thousand members of this generation pass away every single day. Unfortunately, the time will come when we are left only with the memories of their courage and monuments to their heroism.

That generation’s courage and heroism will not be lost with them; that same selfless spirit animates the members of America’s Armed Forces today. Hundreds of thousands of our brave men and brave women in uniform are risking their lives all over the world to protect and promote our democratic ideals.

It is not just America’s soldiers who are doing dangerous work overseas. Our nation’s diplomats are also serving eagerly, performing courageously, and sacrificing willingly right alongside the men and women in uniform. When our State Department began working to fill 142 specific positions in Baghdad by June 30 for our new embassy, we received over a thousand bids for those jobs.

It is important to understand that the same spirit animates America’s soldiers and America’s diplomats because force and diplomacy are ultimately and intimately bound together. Force and diplomacy are different expressions with the same purpose; neither can function without the other.

This was clear in the run-up to D-Day when Allied diplomacy paved the way for our coordinated Allied invasion, but there has rarely been a time when the careful connection between diplomacy and force mattered more than it matters now. The United States possesses the finest military force in history. The American military can carry out any mission our interests demand while greatly minimizing the destruction of civilian lives and civilian property and simultaneously greatly maximizing the safety of our own combat forces.

The war the United States waged in Iraq last March was significantly different in all these respects from the one we fought in Europe 60 years ago. But you have to look no farther than Iraq to realize that certain things are the same in 2004 as they were in 1944. For example, it is still the soldier on a field of battle seizing and holding ground who ultimately determines the outcome of a fight. It is still a man with a bayonet on enemy territory that will bend an enemy to our will.

Iraq has also underscored another timeless truth. Never has the power of America or for that matter of any country resided solely in military might. It never has; it never will. Even that essential soldier who takes and holds ground can only stand there defending it for so long, particularly when that soldier comes from an all-volunteer force of a democratic nation.

Holding ground by force of arms is crucial but it requires an unusual degree of cooperation between individuals, between organizations and among nations. This kind of cooperation was important enough when our country was gearing up to fight conventional enemies by conventional means; it is even more crucial now in this multi-faceted fight against terrorism. This conflict which has required us to use every instrument in our nation’s toolbox from diplomacy to finance, intelligence to law enforcement and, of course, military power, this conflict also requires us to devise new tools and tactics like how to take the fight to the enemy in cyberspace.

Although coalition-building is as old as warfare itself, the war against terrorism requires international cooperation on an unprecedented scale and there is certainly a compelling international interest in cooperation. Terrorists kill indiscriminately. Americans are not the only targets. We all know that citizens from more than 90 nations were murdered in the World Trade Center alone, but since then in Indonesia, Bali, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Thailand, the Philippines, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Pakistan, Russia and Israel are among the people who have suffered the indiscriminate killing of terrorists. So it is fitting that over a hundred countries have contributed to fighting terrorism since our 9/11 event.

All this international cooperation requires extensive diplomatic engagement. It is not enough simply to have boots on the ground. America needs loafers and wing-tips on the ground as well. (Laughter.) And these soldiers in boots and diplomats in Brogans are working side by side in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Long-term progress in both of these countries requires sustained and coordinated efforts in both force and diplomacy.

An overwhelming majority of the world’s nations have an interest in seeing that Iraq and Afghanistan no longer threaten their neighbors and that they become members in good standing in the international community of nations. That is why 68 different nations are making some contribution either to Afghanistan or to Iraq and sometimes to both. This broad, cooperative effort is leading to many immediate military and diplomatic success and it is putting both Iraq and Afghanistan on a path of long-term success.

But victory in Iraq or victory in Afghanistan won’t be just when our soldiers can hold a particular piece of real estate without fear of attack. Victory in Iraq and victory in Afghanistan will be when the lights stay on across both countries permanently and when clean water flows through all taps permanently, when ordinary Iraqis and ordinary Afghans can go about their business in the streets of Baghdad or in the streets of Kabul without the fear of tyranny permanently. Most important, victory will be achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan when these countries' citizens can freely and fairly choose their own leaders.

Now, in Afghanistan, the challenge of reclaiming the territory has always been greater than just driving out al-Qaida and the Taliban in a military fashion. The real challenge is to deny these groups their base of support. That means demonstrating to a deeply traumatized society that there is a viable alternative to the Taliban and to its fanatical, retrograde ideas of social order.

The only way to do that is to secure the country, help these people build a healthy civil society, institutionalize good governance. This calls for a particular kind of diplomacy, a very intimate, people-to-people diplomacy that will win the hearts and the minds of ordinary Afghan citizens.

The coalition in Afghanistan can point, I think, to some important progress in this regard, from the new constitution that the Loya Jirga adopted in January, to the completion of the Kabul-Kandahar Highway and hundreds of kilometers of secondary roads, from refurbished schools and refurbished health clinics to new power plants and irrigation projects.

Security, of course, still remains a challenge, but progress has been made on this front as well, from the successful training of the National Afghan Army, to law enforcement forces to the presence of international troops across the country.

Now, Iraq presents a similar challenge in many ways, but our President has laid out a five-stage plan to achieve a positive political future in Iraq. We are following it. The first crucial step, obviously, to give Iraq back to Iraqis. We are in the process of doing just that. Just last week, after months of working in concert with the United Nations and our friends in Iraq, the coalition announced the members of an Iraqi interim government. On June 30th we'll turn over all -- I underline all -- governmental authority to this fully sovereign body.

The second step is to continue to help the Iraqi people secure their nation. After that transfer of sovereignty on 30 June, and with the blessing of the interim government, U.S. and coalition forces will remain in Iraq as part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations. This should come as no surprise. The violent factions and foreign fighters will try to increase the tempo, the brutality and the audacity of their operations in the coming weeks. But try as they may, these reactionaries will not spoil the better future that we are helping Iraqis to build for themselves.

The third step of President Bush's plan is to continue the rebuilding of Iraq's battered infrastructure. The United Nations has committed $20 billion to that -- the United States, excuse me, has committed $20 billion to that goal, and 37 nations, as well as the World Bank and IMF, have pledged an additional 13.5 billion. For this support, the coalition has made progress. Much of Iraq's public infrastructure, including electric power generation, paved roads, clean water, has actually exceeded pre-level -- prewar levels and accessibility as well as reliability.

But we're not just rebuilding things. We're investing in Iraq's most valuable resource, its people. Millions of children have been vaccinated. Millions of children are currently in school with new textbooks.

The final two phases of our plan will be to encourage broad international support for the success of a free Iraq and to help assure Iraq's free, constitutionally based elections at the end of -- by the end of 2005.

We are working with our partners in the United Nations to finalize a new UN Security Council resolution. This resolution will express international support for Iraq's interim government, reaffirm the world's commitment to the Iraqi people, and encourage UN members to support this effort.

This pledge of support from the community of nations is extraordinarily important as Iraq fully reclaims its future through national elections in December of next year. And I predict to you that this resolution will be voted affirmatively tomorrow in the UN Security Council resolution 15-0.

Our purposes in Iraq and Afghanistan are honorable. They are important. But we need to find a way to make better progress in integrating force and diplomacy. Our Armed Forces are not training primarily for reconstruction and humanitarian projects, or for the diplomacy and statecraft that usually go along with such missions, nor our diplomats or our aid workers really trained to work in a nontraditional environment. And this is not talking about the need for security, but also for the quick judgment and the immediate action of the battlefield.

More importantly, our soldiers and diplomats do not necessarily have the habits and the organizations in place to work together on joint missions, and this suggests to me that we must extend our understanding of military transformation. It must include transformation of mindsets, institutions, and the way we cooperate internally and with our international partners. We're not there yet. I think we're getting there. We're breaking some new ground, adding innovations in the way we conduct operations. NATO, for example, has taken on its first significant out-of-area operation with ISAF in Afghanistan. Sixteen of the 26 NATO members are now engaged in separate, standalone coalition activities in Iraq. Other nations, nations such as our friends in Jordan, are training Iraqi police forces on their territory.

In Afghanistan, we've developed the concept of Provincial Reconstruction Teams. These groups are a combination of military-civil affairs and civilian professionals composed of and led by different nations. These integrated reconstruction teams are cooperating to provide dispersed security and reconstruction support across the nation of Afghanistan.

Adapting our people and adapting our processes to new realities is more than just a theoretical exercise. It is a practical necessity if we are to meet the many new challenges of the 21st century. The nature of our international system is shifting. Some of the most significant challenges to international security now arise within states, not between them. These challenges can take the form of failed states, such as Haiti or Liberia. They can also take the form of civil war, like the horrible conflict in Sudan, the gross abuses of human rights, like the humanitarian disaster in Darfur. Then there are the long-term challenges of countries in transition, countries like North Korea, who could travel down any number of positive or problematic paths in the coming years.

We've also got to consider the transnational challenges in the same light as the challenges arising within states. The most obvious example is the transnational terrorism of which I was just speaking. But there is also the challenging of stemming the spread of infectious diseases, like HIV/AIDS, stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Pandemic diseases do not stop neatly at national borders, nor does WMD proliferation.

Sometimes it seems that every country in the world was in some way touched by the A.Q. Khan network. These are the challenges we must meet and the opportunities we must seize in the 21st century. Some of them look just like the ones I wrestled with when I was a much younger man, way back in the 20th century. (Laughter.) Many of the challenges are new, and it is up to all of you to develop the ideas and the practices that will continue to keep our nation strong and safe for many decades to come.

Indeed, in the coming months and years, many of you will be deploying either to Iraq or Afghanistan or, for some of you, redeployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. There you will find that the questions I hope that you have pondered here about leadership, about military force and diplomacy, are not quite so academic.

This university has given you a great foundation of learning and can serve you well for life. You are prepared now to succeed as American soldiers and officers, diplomats and ambassadors, thinkers and leaders. You are prepared to defend our country's way of life from yet another enemy of liberty. You are prepared to accept the torch from our "greatest generation" and to bear it with honor. On your courage and on your strength depend the success of our nation, the safety of our people and the future of freedom.

On behalf of all my colleagues at the Department of State, I thank you for your commitment to peace and to prosperity for our country and for all the countries of the world, and we look forward to serving alongside of you. Good luck and Godspeed. Thank you.

(Applause.)
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