09 August 2001

Daschle Remarks on "A New Century of American Leadership"

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (Democrat-South Dakota) says that on "six separate occasions in just six months," the Bush Administration "has demonstrated a willingness to walk away from agreements that were embraced by many of our closest friends and allies, and broadly supported by the international community."

He listed those six agreements as follows:

• The Kyoto Protocol;

• The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;

• A measure to create an International Criminal Court;

• The Biological Weapons Protocol;

• A global agreement to curb illicit sales of small arms and light weapons; and

• The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty

"Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of each of these individual agreements," Daschle said in remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. August 9.

"I don't think reasonable people can ignore the consequences of tearing up each one," he added. "Instead of asserting our leadership, we are abdicating it. Instead of shaping international agreements to serve our interests, we have removed ourselves from a position to shape them at all.

"The Administration seems to have forgotten an essential fact of today's global age," said Daschle. "With the Cold War over, fear of a common enemy no longer keeps our allies by our side. Our allies will follow us only if we use our unparalleled strength and prosperity to advance common interests. Only then will our power inspire respect instead of resentment.

"If we continue down this path, our allies will be forced to fill the void we leave, not necessarily with our interests uppermost in their minds," the Senate Majority Leader said. "It is not enough, as President Bush has suggested, simply to send U.S. officials to international meetings... Woody Allen wasn't talking about foreign policy when he said that 85 percent of life is just showing up."

Daschle said Democrats do support mutually-agreed upon modifications to the ABM treaty and a robust national missile defense testing program.

"Under the right circumstances, we could support deployment of a limited national missile defense," he said. "However, this administration's single-minded approach jeopardizes larger U.S. political, economic, and security goals around the world."

"Certainly, the Administration is right to state that our proper response to whatever threats we face must be determined on a case-by-case assessment of our national interests," said Daschle. "But more often than not, we have a better chance to advance our national interests if we are in the game, rather than on the sidelines."

Following is the Daschle text, as prepared for delivery:

Remarks by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
A New Century of American Leadership
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Thursday, August 9, 2001

First, let me thank Lee Hamilton for inviting me to be here today. We miss Lee's voice tremendously in Congress, but we are grateful to have it as a continuing part of the public debate.

Our Constitution outlines an important role for the U.S. Senate in foreign policy. I take that role seriously, and believe that the national interest is best served through an open, cordial, and honest debate about the direction of our foreign policy. I hope to further that goal today.

The United States begins this century at a place unique in the history of the world. By any measure, the scope of our power and influence are unmatched.

With a GDP in excess of $10 trillion, our economy is larger than that of the next four largest nations combined. American innovation not only has yielded American prosperity, but fuels the engine of global growth and technological change.

Our military expenditures now are larger than those of all other countries combined. We are the only nation on the earth able to project power in every region of the earth. Consider this: B-2s stationed in Missouri flew halfway around the world to help bring an end to the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and returned home... without stopping to land.

The reach of American power is perhaps superceded only by the reach of American culture. In 1995, more than half of all the royalties and licensing fees in the world were paid to Americans. Our movies, music and media are everywhere -- the Senate may never hold confirmation hearings on Mickey Mouse, the Microsoft butterfly, or Madonna, but in many ways, they are seen as our ambassadors to the world.

At the same time we have achieved dominance, we are also confronted with the reality of truly global interdependence. By 2004, one billion people will be surfing the World Wide Web. The result is an exchange of ideas and information never before known.

I have seen the power of that exchange of information myself. For example, a few years ago, I visited Albania as part of a Congressional delegation.

While I was there, I found myself talking to a man in his early 30s.

He told me that, when he was a boy, if someone had a television with an antenna and they turned it to face the sea to receive uncensored information from Italy, police would come to their house and turn the antenna around.

For years, the Albanian government was able to keep its people shut off from the rest of the world. But as information about the changes sweeping across Central Europe crept in -- the people of Albania turned their eyes, their hearts, and, yes, their television antennas toward democracy.

Albania's road since then has been a rocky one, but in that story is a new global truth: when people live in places where human potential is unrealized, they look toward democracy. In an increasingly interconnected world, we must help them find it.

Those two trends in history - U.S. dominance and global interdependence -- would seem, in some sense, to be contradictory. Standing alone, we are stronger than ever before. And yet we are more vulnerable in more ways than ever before.

That is our paradox -- a nation as susceptible to an explosives-laden skiff as it is to a nuclear weapon... A nation that can be attacked by a single terrorist, or the rising tide of global warming... A computer virus, or a biological one... A nation unrivaled in its economic strength, but whose strength is increasingly tied to the economic and political stability of the rest of the world.

These contradictions create a number of challenges - some as old as the human race, and some as new as our newest technologies. But all demand our vigilance, and all demand our leadership.

First, we need to maintain the military strength and superiority we now enjoy, while preparing our military to meet the threats of tomorrow. This is our first obligation as public servants.

Second, we need to multiply our own strength by maintaining strong, solid relations with our allies.

Third, we need to recognize that it is in our national interest to help our former adversaries like Russia and China build pluralistic societies tied to the West.

Fourth, we must continue to be an active force for peacemaking from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, to the Balkans.

Fifth, we need to confront a new breed of global challenges: proliferation, terrorism, AIDS and infectious disease, and global warming.

And sixth, we need to maintain leadership in the global economy, expand trade, and deal with the growing economic disparities that arise from it.

And we must do all of these while recognizing that, in the wake of the President's nearly two-trillion-dollar tax cut, we now have limited budgetary resources at our disposal to do all of this.

In confronting these challenges, we face three options: We can act alone, we can act in concert with a handful of others, or we can try to bring together broad coalitions.

There are, to be sure, times when our national interest will compel us to go it alone. When President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986, when we retaliated against Saddam Hussein in 1993 or Osama Bin Laden in 1999, we were properly exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We should continue to do so when circumstances demand it, and our goals are advanced by it. But many of the challenges we face, and most of the new challenges that are emerging, are global in nature and demand a global response.

Take proliferation, for example. We've made positive strides in the past several years. We've eliminated nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. We negotiated and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention and stopped North Korea's production of nuclear fuel. And we saw countries like Brazil give up their missile programs. However, these successes must not breed complacency. India and Pakistan have joined the club of states possessing nuclear weapons. Some believe North Korea may have as well. Iraq, Iran, and Libya are trying to develop nuclear weapons. Russia still has the material and know-how to produce 60,000 nuclear weapons. At least a dozen countries have offensive biological weapons programs, and at least sixteen states have active chemical weapons programs. And these numbers represent only states, never mind the non-state actors who may be pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

Remember, it did not take a long-range missile to deliver lethal force to the USS Cole, to the World Trade Center, to our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or to disperse sarin gas in the Tokyo subway.

As the bipartisan Baker-Cutler task force recently concluded, "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States is the danger that weapons of mass destruction, or weapons-usable material, could be stolen or sold to terrorists and used against American troops abroad or civilians at home."

No less threatening - and no less demanding of our international leadership - is the global pandemic of AIDS. To date, AIDS has infected 36 million people worldwide. In the 64 days since I became Majority Leader, one million people have been infected, and over 350,000 have died in Africa alone.

For many countries around the world, AIDS is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a security crisis -- because it threatens the very institutions that define and defend the character of a society. This disease weakens workforces and saps economic strength. AIDS strikes at teachers, and denies education to their students. It strikes at the military, and subverts the forces of order and peacekeeping -- and what has happened to many countries in Africa could well happen to others if current rates of infection continue unchecked.

No border can keep AIDS out, and no border is a sufficient barrier from the responsibility to fight it. Here is an international effort where President Bush has recognized that America has an obligation to lead. But it's not enough to simply get it, we need to get it done.

I'm proud that the U.S. was the first contributor to the Global AIDS Trust Fund. In the Senate we were able to include an additional $100 million for the trust fund this year, and in a bill now working its way through the Senate, we've added another $450 million in the fight against AIDS for the coming fiscal year. These are important, but still insufficient, steps in our effort to confront and ultimately defeat this terrible disease.

Certainly, the Administration is right to state that our proper response to whatever threats we face must be determined on a case-by-case assessment of our national interests. But more often than not, we have a better chance to advance our national interests if we are in the game, rather than on the sidelines.

Two weeks ago in Bonn, Japan showed the world the benefit of being in the game -- emerging from a historic 180-nation international climate change accord as a hero and a leader. In the final agreement, Japan won significant concessions, and left Bonn with their national interests strengthened in exchange for joining the international process. By contrast, our delegates were literally booed out of Bonn.

On six separate occasions in just six months, the Administration has demonstrated a willingness to walk away from agreements that were embraced by many of our closest friends and allies, and broadly supported by the international community:

• The Kyoto Protocol;

• The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;

• A measure to create an International Criminal Court;

• The Biological Weapons Protocol;

• A global agreement to curb illicit sales of small arms and light weapons; and

• The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty

Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of each of these individual agreements. I don't think reasonable people can ignore the consequences of tearing up each one. Instead of asserting our leadership, we are abdicating it. Instead of shaping international agreements to serve our interests, we have removed ourselves from a position to shape them at all.

The Administration seems to have forgotten an essential fact of today's global age. With the Cold War over, fear of a common enemy no longer keeps our allies by our side. Our allies will follow us only if we use our unparalleled strength and prosperity to advance common interests. Only then will our power inspire respect instead of resentment.

If we continue down this path, our allies will be forced to fill the void we leave, not necessarily with our interests uppermost in their minds. It is not enough, as President Bush has suggested, simply to send U.S. officials to international meetings... Woody Allen wasn't talking about foreign policy when he said that "85 percent of life is just showing up."

Of course, these problems did not begin with President Bush's inauguration. In many ways, as the world's only superpower, we must accept that they come with the territory. Remember, our allies weren't so enthusiastic about President Clinton calling America the "indispensable nation."

But these problems have intensified so much, and so quickly, that I fear our allies may be tempted to treat us as a dispensable nation.

There's another way, a better way. And it's not a new idea, and it's not a partisan one either. I think President Nixon summed it up best: "Free-world leadership," he said, "does not mean dictatorship to the free world. It means consultation with the free world and developing from the leaders of the free world the best possible thinking that we can develop for attacking our common problems."

American leadership in this new world begins by maintaining and modernizing the alliances we already have.

The President took a significant step last month by acknowledging the importance of our participation in the NATO-led effort to prevent the resurgence of violence in Southeastern Europe. I also believe that we need to adapt the NATO of today to the Europe of tomorrow. We encourage and support NATOs efforts to expand this important alliance. In addition, we welcome our European allies' plans to increase their collective defensive capabilities. My hope is that the actual resources will match their intentions - and that this effort will be made in concert with NATO.

We need to build on the progress we have made in Asia with our friends in Japan and South Korea. We should stand with South Korean leader Kim Dae Jong as he pursues realistic engagement policies with the North, and not undercut him in this effort.

We need to work with our friends in Mexico, as well as address issues of concern throughout Latin America, including the promotion of democracy, human rights and the fight against poverty.

We need to work with the nations of Africa, to promote democratic reform, transparent institutions of leadership, and economic growth.

And while we recognize that U.S. troops are not the world's policemen, we must also recognize that it is sometimes in our national interest to project our power for peace -- so long as we also solve the riddle of how to effectively support the efforts of others to build the economic and political institutions that sustain peace when it is time for our peacekeepers to leave.

We have to strengthen the capacity of the UN and regional organizations to develop an international cadre of economic advisors and civilian police that can replace peacekeepers. And we have to do a better job of training the trainers, as we recently did in Nigeria, so that regional militaries can help bring peace to regional conflicts.

Finally, we must reach out in a clear-eyed way to those powers in transition that were once our adversaries - Russia and China.

The 20th Century, in many ways, was the story of our triumph over two great and pernicious adversaries - Nazism and Communism. Today, we do not need a great adversary to be a great country. Unfortunately, some don't accept this reality, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they would like to see China take its place. I believe we need to take a more nuanced view.

China is a nation at a crossroads. Today, China is in the midst of sweeping economic reform. Although democracy is growing at the local level, China still has a sordid record on human rights, and still has not guaranteed the right to worship, speak, or choose one's leaders.

The release of our visiting scholars, while welcome news, was not an exception. The arrest and release of Americans is hostage diplomacy, not a sign of improvement in the way China treats its people. So the question for the U.S. is not whether we approve of everything China does - we don't.

The question is how do we get China to embrace the norms of international behavior - including the rule of law?

Not by abandoning the kind of frank and open exchange that allows us to raise our differences in the first place. Not by trying to isolate a nation with 1.2 billion people and a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching targets in the United States. And not by turning our backs on what could develop into one of the largest economies on the planet.

We have to engage China -- even as we challenge China on key areas of difference. It is in America's clear national security interest to do so. It is in America's vital economic interest to do so. And in the long run, it is the only way to help bring freedom and reform to the people of China.

Similarly with Russia: It is a good thing that we are talking with Russia about strategic stability. Russia's potential arsenal of 60,000 nuclear warheads gives us 60,000 reasons to engage.

But it is much more than that. Russia is an emerging democracy, a process whose outcome is still far from certain. Russia borders 14 countries, many of which are undergoing fragile transformations of their own. The political and economic well-being of Russia affects the well-being of Europe and the rest of the world. This was demonstrated when Russia's financial crisis sent shockwaves from Frankfurt to Sao Paolo, to Tokyo, to Wall Street.

That's why it was troubling to watch President Bush reduce our complex relationship with Russia to a simple matter of trust between two leaders. The stakes are too high to base our strategic relationship on one man's assessment of another man's soul.

Just to prove how complex our relationship is, within a few short weeks of President Bush's endorsement of Vladimir Putin as an honest, straightforward man that Americans can trust -- Putin was hugging Zhaing Zemin in Moscow, and signing a Sino-Russian treaty of friendship and cooperation - the first such pact since 1950.

We need to speak out against Russian behavior we see as retrogressive - but we have a fundamental interest in helping Russia build a modern and pluralistic democracy tied to the West.

I fear the administration is looking at our complex relationships with our allies and with Russia and China not through a spectrum of shared concerns, but rather through the prism of missile defense. What else could explain, for example, President Bush's personal embrace of Russia's President Vladimir Putin - while avoiding any public mention of Putin's crackdown on Russia's free press and the continuing atrocities in Chechnya.

The Administration seems to have turned one of its campaign promises on its head: instead of being better to our long time friends and more realistic with countries like Russia, in the name of NMD, it is doing just the opposite.

Now let me be clear: Democrats support mutually-agreed upon modifications to the ABM treaty and a robust national missile defense testing program. Under the right circumstances, we could support deployment of a limited national missile defense.

However this administration's single-minded approach jeopardizes larger U.S. political, economic, and security goals around the world: It shortchanges our ability to deal with our more immediate threats here at home. It encourages other countries to either increase their existing arsenals, develop new weapons, or seek other means to exploit perceived U.S. vulnerabilities. And -- if we choose to act unilaterally - it will make it harder to develop the necessary multilateral responses to arms control and a whole array of global issues.

Many supporters cite the recent successful intercept test as a reason to push ahead. I congratulate the scientists and engineers who made this technological feat possible. But to use the success of one or two preliminary tests as a blanket justification for deployment is premature.

I would remind everybody that in this latest test, we knew who was launching, where it was being launched from, when it was being launched, what was being launched, and the flight path it would take. For good measure, there was a homing beacon on the target missile. If our adversaries would be kind enough to meet all of these conditions, and if we are willing to accept a 50 percent success rate, then maybe I'd share their assessment.

But I wouldn't bet my life on it - let alone the security and fiscal health of the United States.

The chief threat to America is not from big, lumbering ICBMs, launched with a clear return address. The chief threats today come from biological and chemical weapons and bombs that could be smuggled in a cargo container, bus, or backpack. They come from attacks to our economic infrastructure - the computer systems, communications networks and power grids on which America is dependent. They come from terrorists who do not have the infrastructure to launch ICBMs, and who leave no return address.

National Missile Defense is the most expensive possible response to the least likely threat we face. If we are to pursue such a strategy, we need to be clear about the trade-offs.

In spite of his claims that the federal government should be able to live on a 4 percent spending increase, President Bush's budget asks for a 10 percent increase for the Pentagon, including a 57 percent increase in missile defense.

We support an increase both in the Pentagon budget and in missile defense. But a 57 percent increase this year -- along with the prospect of hundreds of billions of dollars in future years -- would cannibalize the personnel and force structure that deal with the threats we are far more likely to face.

So let's take a closer look at the trade-offs. If we were to provide overall missile defense with the 10 percent budget increase the Pentagon enjoys under the President's proposal - we could pursue a broad array of missile defense technologies consistent with the ABM treaty - which top experts tell us we can do for quite some time. We would also free up about 2.5 billion dollars this year alone.

What does 2.5 billion dollars get us? As Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution and others have shown, it would allow us to make significant investments in programs that address the more imminent, more immediate threats we face. It would allow us to substantially:

• Restore the cuts the President made in the U.S.- Russia programs to control and destroy Russia's nuclear weapons and weapons material, and find alternative employment for their nuclear scientists and workers.

• Train and equip our local emergency workers to deal with the consequences of a chemical or biological weapons attack.

• Continue to fund our modest obligations to control North Korea's nuclear fuel production and reengage the North Koreans on ending their missile program. After all, this is the front end of the potential threat missile defense is intended to address.

• Increase research and development into cruise missile defense. Cruise missiles are less sophisticated, more available, and therefore a more likely threat. Yet we have no defense against this more immediate threat.

• Concentrate on developing and deploying theater missile defenses, which would be needed tomorrow to protect our soldiers if we are thrust into another Gulf-like war.

• Secure our borders and points of entry against terrorism and other threats. We could beef up customs, airport and seaport security, and the Coast Guard. On a daily basis, these agencies keep drugs, criminals, and, as we saw in Vancouver last year - terrorist explosives
• from entering our country.

• Increase our counterterrorism budget to dismantle terrorist networks that have the intent - and demonstrated will - to strike Americans.

• We could fight cyberterrorism by increasing computer security. Just last week, we saw the "code red" virus paralyze computer systems worldwide, including at the Pentagon. With our economy and national security increasingly reliant on computer networks, those networks demand greater protection.

• And we could fund scholarship programs for foreign language and foreign regional studies programs and expand intelligence community staffing. Anyone who heard the chilling transcript of the exchanges between the Peruvian pilots and the American liaison officials that led to the attack on a missionary flight now understands the importance of being able to speak the language.

These are all here and now threats, and we could fund all of these programs at levels necessary to start addressing them -- without shortchanging our troops, the weapons systems they rely on, or missile defense.

Think about that: we're not talking about cutting missile defense's budget, freezing missile defense's budget, or even holding it to the four percent the President said is appropriate for government spending. If we simply increase national missile defense by the same ten percent the President proposes to increase the Pentagon budget, we can provide resources to every one of these programs, and thereby increase our security in every one of these areas.

There's one final, overarching, component of our national security - and that is our economy. Our economy is the envy of the world, and the foundation of all of our strength. Increasingly, that economic strength depends on economic engagement.

One of the most significant ways we engage the world is through trade. Four percent of the world's consumers live within the United States; 96 percent live outside our borders. The only way our economy can continue to grow is if we can sell American products to the 96 percent of consumers who live in other countries. While greater globalization is an in inevitability, the form and direction it takes are not.

We need to recognize that the benefits of trade come with real costs, and to the extent we recognize those costs and address them, we better position ourselves to maintain and enhance our status as the world's leading economic power.

We need to address head-on the concerns and fears that people have about globalization. But we should not use these concerns as a pretext for protectionism. As we move forward in opening markets and increasing trade, we need to address core labor standards and environmental protections, and help people who are dislocated by trade and globalization.

Here at home, I have introduced a proposal with Senators Baucus and Bingaman to expand the universe of people eligible for trade adjustment assistance, and the benefits they receive.

As others have suggested, the rising tide of trade does lift boats, but not all boats. Some are even capsized. We have a responsibility to expand our economy, the global economy, and to help make sure the benefits and burdens are shared fairly.

Internationally, we need to make sure that globalization does not result in the wealthy nations getting wealthier and the poor nations getting poorer... and more desperate.

We need to do our part to lift developing nations out of poverty. We need to make the necessary investments in our foreign assistance budget. We have a moral obligation to continue our efforts to relieve the debts of developing countries that use the savings to invest in their people. We need to help poor countries develop institutions and the rule of law to help them join the global economy, and provide the basic protections that are the right of all humans.

Every Memorial Day, when my brothers and I were young, my father would take us to the veterans cemetery in our hometown of Aberdeen, South Dakota. I remember standing with him, looking at all of the headstones with their service crosses. He never said a word. I remember the stillness as he stood there. I could see how moved he was. Years later, I learned he had a special understanding of the sacrifices made by those who serve.

My father was an Army Sergeant in World War II. He was in the 6th Armored Division, and landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 7th, 1944. He was injured there -- and as he recovered, one of his many duties was getting word back to the states about the dead and the missing, so their loved ones could be notified.

He saw on that beach, and in the letters he had to write, the sacrifices that our democracy has demanded of generations that came before ours.

Today's strength was bought with those sacrifices. My father's service, and the service of millions like him, is the very reason that, today, our power and influence are unmatched... the reach of our culture is unparalleled... and the hope of our democracy is a light to the nations of the world - and one young man in Albania.

God willing, the place we now enjoy in the world will not have to be secured in the future on the field of battle.

But for that to be the case, we must secure it through the wisdom of our decisions, and a recognition of our responsibilities.

Our strength is our great blessing, our freedom is our great inheritance, and by meeting our obligations we can secure them at home, and spread them throughout the world.

Thank you.