Speech of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-9/11 WorldFrom the World Affairs Council of San FranciscoNovember 8, 2002 I want to thank the World Affairs Council of San Francisco for inviting me to join you this morning. Quite frankly, you have been on my mind in recent months. I have been thinking a great deal about organizations like this - groups of Americans who make it a point to be knowledgeable and engaged in the world beyond our borders; citizens who take it upon themselves to think critically and carefully about U.S. foreign policy. You have been on my mind, because I believe that you will decide whether or not America rises to the challenge of functioning and thriving in our new world order – an order that turned out to be very different from the one we considered in the abstract at the end of the Cold War. The Post 9/11 Context Less than two years ago, it seemed that world news was buried in our newspapers somewhere between celebrity profiles and restaurant reviews. Our world, America's world, was by no means perfect, but it was reasonably orderly and remarkably insular. And then, on the 11th of September, all of that changed. Our country came under attack, and the world suddenly seemed shockingly small and unquestionably dangerous. What followed that horror continued to be frightening and disorienting – anthrax attacks, color-coded threat levels, report after report of terrorist cells seemingly everywhere. In the weeks and months since September 11th, Americans have had to contend with these changes, and to come to grips with the reality that this could happen again, that there are forces planning to do us harm, that we cannot unconditionally guarantee our own safety. We do have enemies, but our enemy is not Islam. You have heard this before, and rightly so, from our President and from Muslim and Jewish and Christian leaders. But in making that statement today, I mean to convey more than a caution that we must take care not to condemn a great and admirable faith because of the acts of the terribly misguided few who would distort its principles and corrupt its values. What I mean today is that the fundamental source of our insecurity is not Islam. It is not another faith or culture or some alternative vision of civilization. Some have suggested that we are in the midst of a "clash of civilizations," in which, as Samuel Huntington has suggested, "the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between ‘the West and the Rest.'" But hostility toward America or other western states rarely springs forth spontaneously in the non-western world; rather it is often deliberately and carefully cultivated by leaders searching for headlines and the power that accompanies them, or for scapegoats toward which to redirect discontent. This is not a new phenomenon. Our world is one of different civilizations, to be sure – even "cultural fault lines" – but it is also a world of tremendous diversity within civilizations, and a world in which cross-civilization cooperation is frequent and ongoing. These circumstances are not the source of our collective sense of unease today. The source of our insecurity today is the simple fact that the technology and the modalities of modern society – the structural basis for our commerce and communication and way of life – have given rise to a world in which anyone, from the powerful to the powerless, can – with some planning, a little luck, and a disregard for his or her own life – unleash terrible and sweeping destruction on his or her fellows. We have seen how the very way of life that we currently fight to protect – our free and open society, with its easy access to means of education, transportation, and communication – can be exploited to cause us harm. And this fact is manifesting itself in a number of ways, some clearly political, some incomprehensible, some bound up in discredited and even mad ideas about purification or revenge or glory. The source of our insecurity is the sense that the forces seizing the initiative in the years ahead may not be many in number; they may not even be united by ideology or culture or political agenda; but they are forces that traffic in destruction and fear. Their very aim is to horrify us. Modernity has empowered these actors in a manner unprecedented in our history. The stakes, it seems, have suddenly and dramatically been raised. Tremendously destructive power is anyone's for the taking – and we mislead ourselves when we pretend that we can keep this power, in its many forms, out of the hands of those who would have us live in fear. And as we see this power used, we cannot help but sense that the future is uncertain, that our world is disordered, unpredictable, up for grabs. We feel frightened, and understandably so. In a country that is apparently so divided politically, I would venture to say that one of things nearly every American agrees upon is that we must take action in response to these circumstances – although we may disagree on just what action makes sense. The American people deserve candor, and the truth is this – we can never stop the resentful, the angry, the hopeless, or the hateful from finding the means to cause us great pain. But neither are we powerless. We can limit the scope of the destruction these forces bring, by refusing to cede to them the power to determine our destiny. Consider the tragic conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Too often, progress has been made, ground painfully won at the negotiating table, only to have the process hijacked by those with no intention of ever accepting any settlement, any peace that does not involve the annihilation of another. When these forces drive the agenda, when they decide when and where to act and the rest of the world reacts on cue, their power is amplified a thousand times over, their destructive potential is realized on an astonishing scale. As terrorism expert Brian Jenkins noted decades ago, "terrorism is theater" – and we, collectively, are the audience, whether we like it or not. We have no choice on that score. But how we let this obscene performance affect us - that is a matter within our control. I am not talking about turning the other cheek in the face of the kinds of terrorist threats and unspeakable crimes that have shaken our vision of the future since September 11th, and I am not suggesting that we should not make every effort to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Not at all. We were right to take military action in Afghanistan and right to defend ourselves from that kind of horrific attack. Americans have answered the call to defend the country, to assist their countrymen and women in New York and in Washington, to make sacrifices, to be watchful yet resolute, guarded but undeterred. But there is another call Americans can answer, and the American people may have a greater role to play in determining the text of the next century's history books than we ever suspected. I believe that the American people have the capacity to construct a better world, where others would only destroy the existing one. We can resist their agenda by moving forward rather than hunkering down. We can develop a foreign policy that is constructive in the face of destructive power. The Need for Engagement Specifically, the American people can demand more from our Government when it comes to foreign affairs. The uniquely powerful position of the United States confers on its Government and citizens a special responsibility to try to steer a reasonably steady course in our foreign policy despite changing Administrations and majorities in the Congress. We must rise to the occasion, by demanding a policy of principled engagement. And then, critically, we must, as a country, stand ready to support that policy over the long term. Since the horrific events of September 11th, it is increasingly clear that the United States of America cannot pretend that our national interests are not at stake in whole areas of the globe – whether we define those interests narrowly to encompass only our immediate security, or broadly to reflect our desire to promote human rights and the rule of law worldwide. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, the President was right to make plain that the US will not distinguish between the terrorists behind the attacks and those who harbor them, and he was right to propose a far more robust, less complacent policy in these cases. But state sponsors are only part of the problem. The absence of a functioning state is another. Consensus is building across the political spectrum, acknowledging that the U.S. was short-sighted when we disengaged from Afghanistan and Pakistan once we no longer had Cold War-related interests in those countries. America left a vacuum in its wake, and some of the forces that moved to fill that vacuum came to threaten our security in ways we could not have imagined. I serve as the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, and I am convinced that it makes sense to apply this lesson to sub-Saharan Africa as well. There was a time when U.S. influence was a powerful force in Angola and in the Congo, then called Zaire. The U.S. supported the governments of Liberia and Somalia in the name of combating Communism. The nature of U.S. influence was far from benign, but the consequences of U.S. indifference when the Cold War ended may well have been even more devastating. Somalia, for example, eventually collapsed into anarchy. U.S. attention turned toward Somalia briefly in the early 1990s as the country was gripped by largely man-made famine, but after the debacle of 1993 the U.S. simply turned around and left. Today, concerned about potential terrorism links between al Itihaad, a Somalia-based Islamist movement that has conducted terrorist operations beyond Somalia's borders, and al Qaeda, the U.S. finds itself with little intelligence in the region and no coherent policy for helping Somalis to make their country a more stable place, or a place less inviting to criminal opportunists. What we do know is this: No central government exists, the only entities providing educational opportunities or healthcare to Somalis are financed by extremist Islamist factions. They are starting with children, taking time to build a base of support, to embed their values in an entire culture. Their programs will not be subject to cuts due to elections or changes in the political winds. For years, we have had essentially no policy and no presence in Somalia. And now, Americans are looking at the Horn of Africa with trepidation – stumbling to address this concern, fearfully, in the dark. A world full of weak states that have become havens for international criminals helps the forces of terror in two ways: It provides a variety of havens for their operations, allowing them to take advantage of the opportunities inherent in the manifestations of lawlessness such as piracy, illicit air transport networks, and trafficking in arms, drugs, gemstones, and people. And it provides evidence for their argument that the status quo is deserving of destruction, because the world of a Somali child is a world many of us would quite readily reject. It only takes one look at Somalia, or the war-ravaged state of Congo today, or the porous borders of West Africa, to see opportunities for those who would do us harm. The only way to address these diffuse threats is through a long term commitment to re-engagement. Short-term fixes - military strikes on al-Itihaad or freezing the assets of diamond dealers involved in laundering terrorist assets - may address some immediate threats, but they do nothing to ensure that our children will not face the same problems in the years to come. We must develop policies to help bring lasting stability to these terribly unstable places, to build solid relationships and gain access to solid information. But it is difficult for Americans to make policies that ensure that 10 years from now, we are not as concerned about the very same types of threats in Somalia, perhaps coming from different sources or different individuals, that are of great concern today. It is difficult to devise and execute coherent, consistent, long term policy aimed at stabilizing such a place. The big picture and the long term have not been strengths of American foreign policy of late. Governing parties and ideologies change regularly in this country.
I have no doubt that democracy is a superior form of government to single-party
rule, but it does make our foreign policy especially susceptible to
fits and starts. Politics are supposed to stop at the water's edge,
but in reality, many elements of U.S. foreign policy are subject to
change when the Oval Office changes hands. Our democratic system sometimes
deters long-term planning and thinking, because those who execute policy
are often trying to deliver results within a 4-year time frame. Under
those circumstances, the temptation to pour our official energies into
defusing immediate crises, leaving nothing left for preventing the crises
of the future, is often irresistible. The Mistakes of the Past One of the elements that can help America to overcome this potential disadvantage is a reliance on our national values, which are not partisan and are not ephemeral. Re-engagement must not mean a return to Cold War myopias or the convenient but short-sighted patron-client politics of the past. While some would interpret de Toqueville's words as an expression of support for realpolitik, I believe that principled engagement can be a part of a "mature design" for foreign policy that suits the United States of America. Slowly, Americans are sharing in a dawning realization that subordinating basic human rights to accommodate larger strategic goals is a tactic that often comes back to haunt us. In Somalia, in Liberia, and in the Congo, the U.S. backed dictatorships utterly destroyed the institutions of the state and society, leaving civilians few tools for building a better future, and warlords ample opportunity to continue looting these countries' wealth. Regimes that thrive on corruption and injustice eventually create weak and broken states, yet it could not be more clear that our long-term national interests are on the side of accountability and respect for basic human rights. Who we are – our national identity – can and should inform how we behave. We can speak the truth about human rights abuses and publicly condemn them, even when we speak to allies and friends. We can promote democratic forms of governance and the rule of law, so that the next generations abroad as well as at home have reason to believe that they can have a voice and make a difference. Taking these steps will not make our enemies embrace us as friends, and it will not eliminate the sources of our insecurity. But making these guiding principles and core elements of policy will help to give our policy consistency and resiliency, countering the traits about which de Toqueville warned us. I am not calling for a foreign policy of moral posturing, and I am not interested in pretending that there is no tension between justice and order. I am suggesting that who we are and what we believe in must inform what we do, and that building a more stable and more secure world for our children means getting the balance between justice and order right. Getting that balance right means avoiding the mistakes of the past, like supporting the grossly corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire or Samuel Doe's reign of terror in Liberia. It means more than having governments on our side; it means having the people on our side. No American public diplomacy effort can succeed unless principled engagement is backing it up. This means supporting independent governments interested in the fate of their own people, it means supporting vibrant civil societies that can balance the power of government abroad, and it means vigorously fighting the AIDS pandemic and investing in health care and education so that people around the world have a reason to believe in the possibility of progress. The Mistakes of the Future? Just as we work to avoid the mistakes of the past, so too must we avoid a new set of mistakes in our post 9/11 world. I have spoken about these mistakes in the context of domestic issues relating to civil liberties, in my capacity as the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and during the truncated debate surrounding the USA Patriot Act. I also spoke about these mistakes in a foreign policy context during the recent Senate debate surrounding the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq. The concept that unites my thinking on these issues is guarding against fear, and more to the point, guarding against the very real possibility that fear can lead to deeply misguided policies that lead us far away from safety and security. Let me explain what I mean. I am very concerned about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, and I believe that the U.S. must address the threat that program presents. But I voted against the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq because I am not satisfied that the Administration has thought through how to deal with the weapons of mass destruction once military engagement begins or to how to stabilize the country after the Hussein regime falls. I am not convinced that an American military occupation of a Middle Eastern country is likely to make us more secure or the region more stable. But I also voted against the resolution because I was not satisfied by the justifications invoked for supporting it. In particular, the relentless attempt to link 9/11 and the issue of Iraq was deeply disappointing to me, culminating in the President's singularly unpersuasive attempt in Cincinnati to interweave 9-11 and Iraq, to make the American people believe that there are no important differences between the perpetrators of 9-11 and Iraq. I believe it is dangerous for the world, and especially dangerous for us, to take the tragedy of 9-11 and the word "terrorism" and all their powerful emotion and then too easily apply them to many other situations -- situations that surely need our serious attention but are not necessarily the same kinds of threats as individuals and organizations who have shown a willingness to fly planes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon. I was concerned at the time of that vote, and I remain concerned, that the Administration appears to use 9-11 and the language of terrorism and the connection to Iraq too loosely, almost like a bootstrap. Our President has been resolute when he has stated that we refuse to live in fear. He is right to make that plain. But we must not overreact or get tricked or get trapped out of fear. When we view our options through the fog of fear, when we permit that fog to obscure the distinctions between one situation and another, we are likely to make some dangerous choices. We also run the risk of undermining the very values that the men and women of our military fight to defend when we create a climate in which those who would question the wisdom of U.S. invasion of Iraq at this time are lumped in the same category with the hopelessly misguided few who are unwilling to thoroughly condemn terrorism and unwilling to seek the destruction of the perpetrators of 9/11. In 1954, reporting on Senator Joseph McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow made a valuable point about fear. He said: "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment unpopular." The American people have a right to know what kinds of national commitments an invasion of Iraq may entail. They have a right to know whether or not there is any meaningful connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. They certainly have a right - and even a duty - to ask those questions. Invoking the very real fear of additional terrorist attacks - a fear that we all share - is not an adequate answer to any of those questions. Conclusion The fight against terrorism and against the perpetrators of the crimes of 9/11 is unquestionably our first foreign policy priority. It is the immediate answer to the "do something" impulse and the desire to impose order that we all feel when confronted by our uncertain world. But, as I have suggested, that fight is more likely to succeed if it is bolstered by sustained, coherent , principled American engagement with the rest of the world. I believe that our future depends upon the people doing something more than supporting the fight against al Qaeda. They must make a sustained commitment to supporting that policy of principled engagement. A diverse constituency is developing just such a commitment today. Those of you in this room are a part of this movement. So are American businesses working overseas, Peace Corps volunteers, students studying abroad, American communities sistering with foreign cities, and professionals pooling technical expertise with colleagues around the globe. All of these nonpoliticized forms of engagement remain stable throughout election cycles, and piece by piece, they provide a backbone of common sense and basic understanding on which American governments from any party can build when developing foreign policy. We need many, many more of these bridge-builders, and we need for them to make themselves heard in their communities, in the Congress, and at the voting booth. In these disorienting times, it may seem tempting to many Americans to focus all of our energies on domestic defenses and homeland security, let the military and law enforcement professionals root out terrorism abroad, and hope for the best. But that approach is all about reaction, and it puts the forces of destruction in the driver's seat. When Americans demand policy that makes sense, make connections and build linkages across borders, they are a steadying influence abroad and at home. They suggest that we need not chose between the global status quo and a future of destruction and violence. They suggest that American is interested in a third choice, an alternative in which we join together to build a better future. Our culture has never been a fatalistic one. We can and must refuse to hunker down and ride out a manufactured clash of civilizations. We can see not only potential enemies, but also potential allies, when we reach out beyond our borders. In the wake of September 11, these efforts are more important than ever before. Our national circumstances cry out for participation and initiative, and for a reinvigorated sense of citizenship. I commend you for answering that call. |
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