Bulgarian Youth Town Hall

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY POWELL: Bravo. I enjoy these opportunities to talk to young people because most of my trips I am talking to foreign ministers, or presidents and prime ministers, or we have big conferences like we did today. And we exchange views at the official level. But with students I can have a more informal dialogue and hear what is really on your mind. I’m always interested in what your feelings are and what your hopes, your aspirations, what do you see for the future, and then I might ask you some questions, not just you asking me questions. And so when I say you, I mean you youngsters here in Bulgaria. I do this in almost every country I visit and it always turns out to be a very fascinating experience.

I am concluding my job as Secretary of State within the next month or so. And it’s been an exciting four years. I’ve been involved in conflicts - Afghanistan and Iraq -- and to see today the new president of Afghanistan being inaugurated after a free, fair election that brought him to power, and to see the coalition forces, including Bulgarians, working with the new Afghan army and Afghan security forces to bring peace to the country so that they could have these elections and then have additional elections next spring for the parliament.

We want to see that same thing in Iraq. It’s a more difficult situation. The insurgency is a more difficult one than the one in Afghanistan was, but it’s the same goal that we have. Let the people of Iraq decide how it will be governed. Let’s not let those who set car bombs and murder innocent people decide who will run a country. That’s not the 21st century world that we all want.

We are also working hard in other parts of the world, and we have been in the Middle East to try to get the peace process moving forward now that Chairman Arafat is gone. Dealing with Iran and North Korea and their nuclear programs. These are the things you read about everyday and see on your television. But there are so many other things that are going on in foreign policy. Very often foreign policy does not involve dealing with a crisis or attending a meeting such as this. It’s just daily conversations, back and forth -- with friends and nations that might not be so friendly to you – all for the purpose of strengthening relations, improving situations in different countries, helping them get their economy going, helping them put their new democracies on a more solid foundation. One of my predecessors, George Shultz, always called it "tending the garden," just going out and working with friends to make sure that everything is going well.

US- Bulgaria relations are going very well. We are so honored that Bulgaria is now a member of NATO. It is going to be fully within the EU in the not too distant future. It is so active in OSCE. and has been willing to take the chances of sending its troops to places like Afghanistan and the Balkans and Iraq. And I regret that some of those troops lost their lives, but freedom sometimes has that cost associated with it. And people say why should troops be from Bulgaria? Why should the people of Bulgaria be concerned about the freedoms of the people of Iraq or Afghanistan? But if you want to be part of the international community, and for a nation that had lost its freedom for a long period of time, I think it’s noble that you should be willing, your country, your people be willing to undertake these kind of challenges and make these kinds of sacrifices. And my heart goes out to the families of those who lost their soldiers or the two truck drivers who were so brutally murdered.

So, US-Bulgaria relations are excellent, I want to see them get even better. There are always issues we have to work on, there are always little problems one has to deal with. But on balance our relations are good. On balance, it’s a world of great opportunities as well of challenges. I’ve touched on some of the challenges, but really haven’t touched on how free trade, how the power of the information revolution is creating opportunities all around the world for people to rise up out of poverty. And how more and more countries are taking democracy to their hearts, making it their political system just as you have. And how slowly but surely over time, they see that that political democracy leads to economic democracy, which leads to economic opportunity, leads to economic growth and leads to the creation of jobs and opportunities for youngsters such yourselves.

And so with those few opening remarks, as I said to you, I am here really to listen to you. And don’t put me on trial, as if I have to sit here and answer every question. Because I am going to answer questions back. I want to hear what you think and not just you hear want I think.

SECRETARY POWELL: Let’s get started, Maria? There you are.

QUESTION: Hello, I am Maria from the American University and I am a senior there.

SECRETARY POWELL: Studying what?

QUESTION: Business Administration and Journalism. And that is why I wanted to ask this question about the war in Iraq, if you don’t mind. OK. So, there is this issue right now, the Bush Administration released information that they plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq. And my question is that in 1991, when you were Chief Commander, you vowed to go to Iraq only with an overwhelming number of troops. Now, back in 2003, when you were already a member of the Bush Administration, you accepted to go with a minimum number of troops. Why did you accept to do that?

SECRETARY POWELL: It wasn’t a minimum number of troops when the plan was made by my colleagues in the Pentagon. They believed they had enough troops to deal with the mission, and they were right. They were very successful. It only took them a few weeks to defeat the Iraqi army in the field, and everybody will remember the quick dash from Kuwait all the way up to Baghdad in just a matter of weeks, and Baghdad fell very quickly.

The question then becomes, did you have enough troops in the immediate aftermath of that to impose order on the country. And as the insurgency developed in the fall of 2003 and 2004, were there enough troops there? We were hoping on contributions from other nations, and we got quite a number of nations contributing. We could have always used more. And our military adjusted the number as they saw the challenges. And as you now know, we have been going back up for the last few months in response to the challenge. And we have also expedited the training of Iraqi forces.

The real solution to the question would be the training of Iraqi forces. We do not want to be the military force that is going to be needed forever to bring order to the country or to defeat this insurgency. We want Iraqis to do this because it is just better for them to take care of their own country and for us to pull back. But it is going to take time for those Iraqi forces to be built up, and until those Iraqi forces are ready to assume full responsibility, then there is a need for the coalition forces – U.S forces, Bulgarian forces, and others.

QUESTION: Thanks.

SECRETARY POWELL: What are you studying? Political science? Why?

QUESTION: Because this is what I always wanted to do. I am interested in political science especially but in diplomacy, the current situation, everything that is happening in the world, and perhaps, how leaders can influence everything from everyday life of the individual to state behavior.

SECRETARY POWELL: You are thinking about a political office to run or to be an ambassador?

QUESTION: Oh, to be an Ambassador, like Ambassador Pardew [laughter]. I actually wanted to ask you something about the relations between the US and Russia because I saw in the press that the relations have deteriorated rapidly, in the last few days, and I was wondering how this would affect Eastern Europe, and especially the US because some journalists have actually named this the beginning of the second Cold War.

SECRETARY POWELL: No, the Cold War is not coming back. The Soviet Union is not coming back. We have good relations with Russia. President Bush and President Putin have met frequently. We all were together in Santiago, Chile two weeks ago. I met earlier today with my Russian colleague, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and we have good relations.

We have watched with admiration as Russia has gone from the days of the Cold War to an immediate collapse where they lost their political system, they lost their economic system, they broke up back into their constituent parts and we watched the Russian Federation emerge from that to put itself on a more sound footing with an economy that is starting to function, and with a political system that has the trappings of democracy.

Where we have had some disagreements with the Russians, we have not been reluctant to discuss this with them. Some of the policies that they have taken with respect to media, and some of the policies they have taken with respect to some countries on their borders where perhaps they might have handled a situation in a different way. And what can we do about some of the "frozen conflicts" as they are called in places like Abkhazia or the withdrawal of their troops from Georgia.

But because we do have good relations with them, and because we are not afraid that they are going backwards to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, we can talk candidly. If we were not good friends, I could not sit down with Foreign Minister Lavrov and say to him, "Sergei, this is what is bothering us. Tell me why you are acting in this way." And he could not then say to me, "Okay, Colin, now I’ve explained to you why I am doing this. Now let me tell you what I don’t like about what you are doing. And you explain it to me." And we have good exchanges, good dialogue. And so, the measure of a relationship and the strength of a partnership is not just a particular disagreement at a particular time, but how the partnership evolves over extended period of time. And President Bush and President Putin have a very good personal relationship, a very good political relationship, and I believe Russia has made great progress. What we would like to see is that progress institutionalized in all of the institutions of a democracy that we think are appropriate.

So, occasionally, it will be written in the press or shown in the media as a crisis. But I don’t really think it is. I think is just two nations that are friends with each other, but have differences of opinion about certain things. I will sometimes comment on some political matters in Russia, how an election was held. Guess what? They do the same thing with me, how we hold elections in the United States. Somebody can talk about one of their elections; they can talk about an election in Florida or Ohio, or something of that nature. This is what mature partners do with each other: debate, try to find answers, and try to keep the relationship moving forward in a positive way. And that is what we are doing.

How many of you want to be political scientists? How many of you want to go into business? How many of you want to be rich? [Laughter] You want to be rich, of course you do. OK, who is next?

QUESTION: Which global-political system, in your consideration, for global military conflicts is more stable? Bipolar? Unipolar? Or multipolar?

SECRETARY POWELL: I don’t think you can answer the question that way. The major political-military system that is a guarantor of security in Europe is, I believe, NATO. NATO is an alliance of twenty-six nations. When I was Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early 1990s and the Soviet Union ended and the Warsaw Pact ended, people said to me, "Well, now, NATO can go away. Why do you need NATO anymore because the Warsaw Pact is gone? So, get rid of NATO." And I said, "Good idea, but there is only one problem, everybody who used to be in the Warsaw Pact is now asking for an application form to join NATO. So, why would Bulgaria want to become a member of NATO? Go from being a Warsaw Pact member to NATO? What sense does that make?"

It made the following sense -- that as a member of NATO, you are part of an integrated European alliance that has an added feature: It is a Trans-Atlantic Alliance, and it connects you to the United States and Canada, as part of a great alliance. And that is why it is now up to twenty-six.

That doesn’t mean though, that you shouldn’t also be part of the European Union, because you live in Europe, and that is an economic entity. That makes sense also. And so, is that unipolar? Multipolar? I don’t know. But does it mean that if you have NATO and the EU, does it mean that you exclude other nations in the Eurasian land mass. Does that mean that Russia is not included? No, Russia is part of the NATO-Russia Council. We wanted to make sure that Russia did not feel in any way threatened by NATO, so we created the NATO-Russia Council, and they participate with us. OK, is this still multipolar? Bipolar? Unipolar? The world doesn’t come in a way. The problems of the world don’t come in a way that you can just put a quick cliché on it. This is unipolar or multipolar.

The United States is a superpower. We are called that all the time. A Superpower with military strength, economic strength, political strength. We have had the strength to use these systems as well. But how have we used that power? Have we taken any country and made it ours? I’ll answer, no. Have we imposed our dominion over any country? Or have we come to this continent in World War I and freed it from potential Fascism? Did we do the same thing again during World War II? And after World War II, did we just pick up everything and come home? No, we tried to but we suddenly discovered that there was a new threat called the Soviet Union and Communism. It didn’t result in a "hot war," but for fifty years, we kept more than 300,000 troops here in Europe, in order to protect the West, and also, in the certain knowledge that things would change. And things did change, and we stayed the course, and we have not asked for one piece of ground or dominion over anybody or anything. All that we wanted to do was to be partners with everybody, as we are partners and friends and allies with Bulgaria.

We have also gone to Kosovo, used our military power in Kosovo to help Muslims in need. We did the same thing in Kuwait, to help Muslims in need. We did the same thing in Afghanistan, to help Muslims in need. And now, in Iraq, we are helping Muslims create a democracy where none has existed before. And in all of the cases, we hope to finish the job and go home. We always want to act with other nations. We always want to do it in a multi-lateral way.

Frequently, however, though, it is not always possible to get the kind of grouping we would like: the entire Security Council, for example. So there comes a time when you have to just get "willing nations" together to perform a mission, even if all nations within an alliance or within an organization do not agree with it. And when that time comes, very often the United States is the one that is willing to step forward and be the leader, even though we are often criticized for performing that leadership role. But Afterwards, when people see success in places like Afghanistan, then that criticism tends to go away. And that’s what I think will happen in Iraq as well, when it gets stabilized.

So, I think the world is a complex place, and I don’t accept the charge that is often made that we want a unipolar world, and that we are in competition with those who want a bipolar world. There are some nations who actively say, "We need a counter to the United States." Well, if you feel that way, then try it, but the United States is really seeking nothing but friends and partners around the world. You don’t have to "counter" us. We are not doing anything to impose our will on others. We present our case. We lead. And we press our case aggressively. But every nation that we deal with, that we work with, is a sovereign nation, free to make its own choice. Just as Bulgaria is free to make its own choice on matters of policy.

SECRETARY POWELL: We are going one, two, three. Oh, you have it all worked out? Well, I am not going to get into trouble here.

QUESTION: Petar, senior at the American University in Bulgaria. Hypothetical question. If Senator John Kerry would have won the elections and had offered you the job that you are currently taking would you have accepted? And why?

SECRETARY POWELL: Ummm. No [laughter]. I am a Republican [laughter]. It is conceivable that you can get a Cabinet officer from a different Party. Secretary Mineta, who is our Secretary of Transportation is a Democrat, not a Republican, and does a terrific job….

QUESTION: But you…

SECRETARY POWELL: No I would not have accepted it. I am a Republican. I am in President Bush’s administration, and I would not have accepted it. A nice short easy question.

QUESTION: Krasimir Kutev, University of National and World Economy, I study International Economic Relations. And Mr. Pardew mentioned that you are a success story, and probably you can share with us some formula of success or something that men must do in order to succeed.

SECRETARY POWELL: I found it necessary for me, as you will find it necessary for you, just to work very, very hard at every position you get, at every job that comes your way, whether you like that job or don’t like that job, whether it’s something you wanted to do or something you didn’t want to do. If you have to do it, do it to the best of your abilities.

So I saw every job that came my way -- it was assigned to me in the army - not a something to like or dislike, but something to do my very best in. And so, always do your very best at whatever task you’re given, whatever job you have. Never complain, never whine, never, never, you know, talk about it – just do it.

Secondly, I find it necessary to study a great deal. You’re all terribly bright students, and I was not a terribly bright student. So I probably had to study harder than you all have to study. And study never ends. It continues throughout life. I’m fairly old now, but even now, coming on a trip to Bulgaria, I spent the whole flight coming here studying, studying, studying, reading, reading, reading. reading papers that I had read two weeks ago, I have to read the latest version.

So, never ending study; willingness to work hard; confidence in yourself. and the biggest thing, I think is the ability to learn from failure. All of you will fail at something. I fail every day at something. You will have disappointments in life, things will go wrong. and to be successful you might have to know what to do with failure. And the rule I have, the lesson I give to students is when something goes wrong – a failed exam, a failed relationship, a failed opportunity, you didn’t get what you wanted, or you made a big mistake, got yourself in trouble and now you got to get out of trouble- Analyze it, What went wrong? And then analyze it specifically for one thing: What did I do wrong? Not what did he do wrong, or she do wrong, or the weather was bad, or this was wrong, or that was wrong – what did I do wrong. And once I analyze what my mistake was, or I failed to anticipate something, or where I failed to anticipate someone else’s failure, which caused my failure, I do not hold it against that person any longer. It’s my fault. And once I’ve learned the lesson, I say, OK, OK, now I wont do that again, and get smart, idiot. Then I think about it a little bit, and I roll it up, and I roll it like a piece of paper, and I throw it over my shoulder and I never think about it again.

So, when people say to me, "What is you bigger mistake?" I don’t remember. Or, "What would you do different?" You can’t do anything different. This isn’t a movie where you can make a sequel. This is life. And so, you can’t change the past. You don’t get a rewind button to change it. So, just learn from your failures. Don’t blame anyone else. Learn from your failures. You may be mad at somebody else, but get over it.
Learn from your failures and always keep moving on.

Hard work. Study all the time. Believe in yourself, believe in the system that you live in, and learn from your failures. Now I can go on for another three hours on leadership, but I won’t.

SECRETARY POWELL: We need a back row, somebody in the back row.

QUESTION: I have a question.

SECRETARY POWELL: You are not in the back row [laughter]…

QUESTION: I study international relations….

SECRETARY POWELL: See how impressive I am.

QUESTION: I study international relations at the Sofia University and I would like to ask you a question about the European Union. You talked about how important NATO was…

SECRETARY POWELL: and the EU.

QUESTION: …and the EU of course, and the EU is trying right now to create its own EU foreign and security policy. Do you think that the European Union will be able to go beyond this old Europe-new Europe divisions and create a solid foreign and security policy? or Europe will have to depend on NATO for the years from now on?

SECRETARY POWELL: It’s a fascinating question and one we spend a lot of time talking about. But so far, I think it has evolved in a healthy manner. There is a new constitution referenda that will be held and ultimately there will be foreign minister for the European Union. To expect all twenty-five members to agree unanimously on every issue is unthinkable. What fun would that be? What kind of democracy would that be if everyone agreed on everything all the time? So the European Union will have to determine how they come up with a position that their foreign minister is supposed to represent to the rest of the world.

But some indication that we can make things work between the EU, NATO, and other organizations that we all participate in is what we did last year. When does EU do a military mission as opposed to NATO? Well, NATO is the major security organization of Europe, therefore, when a mission comes along, let NATO have the first opportunity to deal with it. If for one reason or another, NATO doesn’t want to deal with it or can’t deal with it, then the European Union can take a look at it ,and see if it is something that is appropriate for the EU to do. And then see if the EU wants to ask NATO for assets to help it. And then if EU decides we don’t need any more assets to do it and it’s a proper mission for us to do, then the EU can go do it. Fine, and it works out. We are doing it in Bosnia. We are doing it Macedonia. And so I think that early example of cooperation between NATO and the EU are good examples.

I work with the EU as much as I work with NATO, in fact more. When my phones are ringing in my office, sometimes it the Secretary General of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, sometimes it’s Javier Solana, the High Representative of the European Union. And I am in constant touch with both of them. Sometimes in a situation like the Ukraine, is clearly something for the EU to get involved in, and so Javier Solana is deeply involved in that and I talk to him all the time. If it was some other kind of issue using military force, for example, a training mission of Iraqi military leaders to be trained, that’s NATO. So I find it quite easy to deal with both organizations, and I’ve worked hard to maintain good relations with both. So I think they will be able to work out answers to the question you raised. But it would be inappropriate for me to talk too much about how the European Union is going to do it. NATO, I can talk all day long, I’m in NATO, but I am not in the European Union.

But just to illustrate my point. Thursday, I will be all day with NATO, in Brussels and Friday, I will be with the European Union. And it’s very common when I come to Europe and I’m in Brussels, I’ll meet with both of them. Just a few weeks ago I met in Sharm el Sheikh, two weeks ago in Egypt, with the Quartet working on the Middle East. And how would you have been represented in that? By that by the European Union in the Quartet. European Union and Russian Federation are partners. The UN and the United States, all working for peace in the Middle East. So I think it will work out.

AMBASSADOR PARDEW: We have time for one more question…

SECRETARY POWELL: We have to go to the back row or else I’m in real trouble…

AMBASSADOR PARDEW: Last question.

SECRETARY POWELL: No we got to do more, not much more but more.

QUESTION: It’s going to be a very short question that I’m tempted to ask you. As I am a student in English philology in my last year. We have been recently studying James Bond movies.

SECRETARY POWELL: Studying what?

QUESTION: We have been doing plot analysis of James Bond movies.

SECRETARY POWELL: Personalities of James bond whose?

QUESTION: …plot analysis of James Bond movies…

SECRETARY POWELL: Plot who? Oh, plot analogy…

QUESTION: Yes, and I was just wondering and because of technology and gadgets we have in that movie. I was just thinking that they are a bit out of date. Have national security gadgets gone much further than what we have in that kind of movie?

SECRETARY POWELL:: Yes [laughter], Much further [laughter]. So much further I can’t talk about it [laughter]. Cause then what would you see in a James Bond movie in the next one that comes out? [laughter], It’s interesting, a lot of things you saw in the old James Bond movies and some of the other gadgets of the old days seem so incredible, all have happened.

The day before yesterday, one of my staff members sent me an email, just as a joke and it was out of a popular science magazine in 1954 when they just had started to understand computers for the first time, transistors really hadn’t been adapted or invented yet or invented but not yet adapted. And so there was a picture of what a home computer would look like in they year 2004. And the thing would have filled up a whole corner of this room. It was huge with big wheels and whatnot [laughter]. And now what does it look like? It looks like that [gestures to a small size].

When I was a young boy there was Dick Tracy. Does everyone know, Dick Tracy was a cartoon character, he was a policeman, and he always had a wrist radio. And he would be able to talk to people on this wrist radio. And a lot of us kids wanted that toy wrist radio. And now, everyone has one. You are all walking around with telephones that are cameras. Going like this. Very annoying by the way [laughter]. But you’ve all got them. It’s amazing. So the kinds of things you see in a James Bond movie, except for cars that can suddenly elevate and becomes airplanes, just about everything else is almost true. and by the way [in a loud whisper with a gesture] we do have a car that can become an airplane [laughter].

Let’s do. I feel bad if we don’t do something over there. It’s just amazing what technology has done. What have you discovered about the plots of James Bond movies? They all seem to have the same plot.

QUESTION: That is exactly what we discovered [laughter]

SECRETARY POWELL: 007 comes in. bad guy about to do something very bad. A lot of very beautiful women around. a lot of car chases and fancy gadgets. Bad guy goes at the end. and James Bond gets the girl. [Laughter]

QUESTION: Have you studied English filmology too? [laughter]

SECRETARY POWELL: OK

QUESTION: Hello. Svetlana, from the University of National and World Economy, I’m saying that last century started something we can say with war on terrorism. And this century it is one of the biggest problems of the world. Do you think that we can win in this war? Do you think that the dark can win too? And how do you see which are the ways for us?

SECRETARY POWELL: Unfortunately terrorism isn’t a new threat. You can go back in history and find terrorist events that change history. The murder of the archduke in Sarajevo in 1914 was a terrorist activity that brought World War I into being and killed tens of millions of people. You can go further back in history and find other acts of terrorism.

In recent times, however, the access to explosives, access to potentially weapons of mass destruction makes terrorism an even more dangerous phenomenon. and we also find that there are people who are willing to kill themselves in committing an act of terror. Such as we saw in the World Trade Center and the pentagon. there are those who will not participate in the political process of the kind that you now have and we have. They want to fight against such civil behavior. And so they are willing too kill themselves for whatever their cause is. And we have to defeat them.

Now, will we eliminate all terror? No. Just as it wasn’t fully eliminated in the past, it won’t be fully eliminated now. But by exchanging information, by sharing intelligence information, by participating in law enforcement activity, by guarding our borders better and by knowing who is moving through our countries and by controlling weapons of mass destruction, and by having nonproliferation programs, we can make it harder for terrorists to operate and harder for them to get the materials they need to conduct acts of terror.

It’s going to be with us for a while. See what happened in Jeddah yesterday. See what happened in Spain over the last couple of days. The civilized world has to speak with one voice that such action is not tolerated. It is against civilization. Terror is an attack not just against a particular country, it is an attack on all of us because none of us are immune. Spain, Beslav in Russia, what’s happened in so many parts of the world, Bali, pick your place, all of it has to be fought against, and nobody can say it didn’t happen here so we don’t have to worry about it. It will happen here too if we are not all unified in this effort. So we have to work together to defeat terrorism, whether we will be ever be successful in getting rid of every terrorist who potentially might come along, I don’t think so. But we can do much better than we are now and that is our goal and that is our objective and we have to do it for the sake of civilization.

QUESTION: You talked about Kosovo. I am a student from Kosovo. I wanted to ask your opinion about the situation there now? And the region, the whole Balkans region, the black hole of the earth. And do you have any ideas of how to get out of that situation?

SECRETARY POWELL: Kosovo?

QUESTION: Yes. Black hole of … and you have any ideas of how it can get out of that situation?

SECRETARY POWELL: There is no war in the Balkans at the moment but we still have a long way to go to stabilize all the countries in the Balkans. In Kosovo, there will be some challenges ahead as we decide what to do with Kosovo; we are trying to make sure that it meets certain standards before we can make a judgment as to what status they should have, independence or what? I think that’s a way in the future.

So I think what we have to do is to continue to work with the nations that used to be part of the former Yugoslavia. Where they were held together by pressure and force and the strong personality of Tito and that all came apart and they all went their separate ways. We have to allow each of these countries to root itself in solid democratic institutions, build their economies. If their economies are not built up, there will always be instability. People want jobs, they want a better life, they don’t want instability, they want jobs. They want to be able to provide for their families, educate their children and have healthcare, a good apartment or a good home, that’s what everybody wants. And if we can achieve that economic growth in a concept, a theory of political democracy, then the Balkans can become stable. But we have a long way to go and the United States is prepared to be committed in the Balkans in the political ways, and to some extent in the military ways, and certainly economically for a long time to come.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you all very much and now I really do have to go. I’ve enjoyed it. I wish we had more time.

[Applause]