December 2004/January 2005
Vol. X, No. 4
Condoleezza Rice Visits the Institute
Rice says true fight is against ideology of hatred and death
Institute President Richard Solomon introduced then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at an Institute event. |
According to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the War on Terror is as much “a conflict of visions as a conflict of arms,” one in which “true victory will come not merely when the terrorists are defeated by force, but when the ideology of death and hatred is overcome by the appeal of life and hope.” Rice spoke to an overflowing crowd at the Institute in mid-August. Her speech provided one of the most substantive overviews yet of the Bush administration’s plans to win that broader war.
Rice underscored President Bush’s vision of an America not merely taking sides in a geopolitical battle but taking up the cause—as the president said in his first State of the Union speech—for a “just and peaceful world.” Critical to the success of this fight, Rice explained, is confronting the long-term challenge of replacing the hopelessness and lack of opportunity that currently prevail in the Middle East with a “forward strategy for freedom.” According to Rice, that strategy so far consists of several elements:
- Supporting the people of Afghanistan and Iraq as they fight terrorism and extremism and work to build democratic governments;
- Working with NATO and our G-8 allies to create jobs, increase access to capital, improve literacy and education, protect human rights, and make progress toward democracy;
- Launching a Middle East Partnership initiative and working to establish a U.S.-Middle East free trade area;
- Broadcasting more extensively throughout the Middle East and launching a new Arabic radio service, called “Alhurra,” Arabic for “the free one.”
But more needs to be done, Rice acknowledged, and the administration’s focus in the future would be on dispelling negative myths about American society and U.S. policy and on encouraging voices of moderation and tolerance in the Muslim world. Rice noted how important it is to disaggregate the small number of Muslims who truly hate the United States—and who express that hatred through terrorism—from the vast majority of the one billion people in the world who practice the Islamic faith. Toward the first, said Rice, there can be only one response: “We must find them and defeat them.”
The vast majority of Muslims, on the other hand, hold more ambivalent, albeit still negative, feelings about the United States—and it is they who must be reached. Dispelling the myths that underlie these attitudes and instilling trust in U.S. goals and intentions is bound to be a difficult and long-range proposition. Nor must it be forgotten, said Rice, that some of those attitudes stem from real historic and political grievances. For sixty years, said Rice, the United States and its allies have practiced a realpolitik countenancing Middle East dictatorships, hoping, as President Bush has said, to “purchase stability at the price of liberty.” The inevitable result, said Rice, “is that we got neither.”
But it is also true, said Rice, that “America’s more recent relations with the Muslim world is a story of friendship and partnership”—a story that has been insufficiently appreciated. She ticked off a list of recent U.S. policies that have had a positive impact on the Muslim world, from the incorporation of Turkey into NATO to the long-standing U.S. commitment to find a lasting solution to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Rice reiterated President Bush’s call for a Palestinian state built on a just and democratic order. And she urged Israel to meet its responsibilities under the road map and help create conditions for a democratic Palestinian state to emerge. Finally, she pointed out that America’s last five wars have all been waged for the protection or liberation of Muslim people, from the first Gulf War, which liberated Kuwait, to the military actions undertaken to stop the killing in Bosnia and Kosovo, to its most recent campaigns against Afghanistan’s Taliban and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. “These are stories that need to be told and need to be heard,” said Rice.
In addition, the Muslim world needs to learn more about the United States. It needs to learn that despite its sometimes insensitive exterior the country is deeply religious and deeply attached to its own communities and families. It needs to learn that the separation between church and state allows all Americans to practice their faith, that “there is no conflict between being a good citizen and being a good Jew or Christian . . . or Muslim.”
The challenge, said Rice, is to find ways to promote voices of moderation and tolerance without provoking a counterreaction, to provide help without delegitimizing those we would help. And that effort, she said, would require the work not just of the government, but of American citizens as well.
Above all, said Rice, that effort must proceed from a simple proposition: “that America is taking the side of the millions of people in the Muslim world who long for freedom, who cherish learning and progress, and who seek economic opportunity for themselves and their children.” If history has taught us anything, said Rice, it is that “these aspirations are, indeed, universal. Their realization can be delayed by tyranny or corruption or stagnation—but they cannot be indefinitely denied.”
During a lengthy question and answer session, Rice took on some of the criticisms that have been leveled against the administration’s policies. On U.S. relations with Europe, Rice quipped that concerns over the transatlantic relationship remind her of Mark Twain’s characterization of Wagner’s music: “It’s better than it sounds.” “The transatlantic relationship is actually in very good shape,” she said, “and it’s in very good shape because we have had to confront, once again, the fact that we are an alliance of values.” On Iran, for example, the United States and the Europeans are working closely to try to reduce the risk that Iran might develop its own nuclear weapon, though—as Rice admitted—Iran had thus far proved recalcitrant. On Darfur, too, the United States and Europe worked well together to craft a UN Security Council resolution and remain in constant discussions about how to support the African Union’s efforts there.
Rice was asked about the administration’s apparent tilt toward Israel and if that was having a negative impact on perceptions of the United States in the Muslim world. Rice took the opportunity to emphasize that the administration is asking a great deal from both sides of the conflict. “The Israelis have obligations and the Israelis need to act on those obligations because they need to end the occupation that began in 1967,” said Rice. “But the Palestinians have got to give them somebody to work with. And they’ve got to embrace a leadership that does not believe that terrorism is a means to an end.”
Rice also fielded a question about how well U.S. public diplomacy efforts are succeeding in the region. Why is it, the questioner asked, that no senior official has given “this kind of a speech”—that is, the kind that Rice had just delivered—in a major Muslim nation? Rice admitted that the question was a good one and elaborated on the need to develop further public diplomacy efforts. “I’m a student of the Cold War,” said Rice. “I’m a Cold War baby. . . . And I know that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty . . . and Voice of America played an extraordinarily important part in making sure that clear and truthful messages could get out, and that people on the other side of the Iron Curtain hung on to those messages.” The government is looking hard at what new resources are needed to wage this public campaign, said Rice. “But so should this country be looking.” She urged universities to encourage student exchanges, cities to foster “sister-city” programs, and professional organizations to reach out to their colleagues in the Muslim world.
Rice concluded her talk by noting that while skeptics continue to express doubt about the viability of the future Iraqi state and criticize some of the decisions the new government has made, none of those mistakes compare with the early mistakes made in the formative years of the United States. “To this point, I have not yet seen the Iraqis make a compromise as bad as the one that in 1789 made my ancestors three-fifths of a man,” she said.
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