Condoleezza Rice on National Security Strategy

IFP3004 Introduction to International Relations

Portfolio submission task 5. Great Powers: the United States of America.

Dr. Condoleeza Rice discusses President’s National Security Strategy, 25.02.02.

Condoleeza Rice’s speech is from 2002. It was given after The US invasion of Afghanistan, but before that of Iraq. It remains a classic statement of security strategy, linking liberal concerns to security issues.

The task: To read Rice’s speech and draw out and discuss the implications of her answers to the following questions. Give your own account of what you think she means and then say what you think a liberal, realist and Marxist might say about it. Would they agree or disagree? Why?

1. What are the major security problems facing the world today? How does her idea of the world in the C21 differ from others?

2. What does a ‘balance of power in favour of freedom’ mean?

3. Look at each of the three pillars of the strategy.

1. How will the US defend the peace?

What are the prospects for Great Power Rivalry?

What is the relationship between Power and Values?

What does ‘progress’ mean?

1. How will the US preserve the peace?

What does she understand by Great Power Cooperation?

iii. How will the US extend the peace?

What does she understand by political and economic liberty?

How important are these idea for the US?

How does she understand the relation between progress and national difference?

Foreign policy is ultimately about security — about defending our people, our society, and our values, such as freedom, tolerance, openness, and diversity. No place evokes these values better than our cities. Here in New York, about a third of the population was born abroad. Across the street from here is St. Bartholomew’s, a Protestant church. Go three blocks to the east from here and there’s the Sutton Place Synagogue. Go a couple of blocks to the west, and you’ll come to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Over the bridge in Queens, you’ll find a Hindu temple. Go uptown a few blocks from where we are and you will come to the Manhattan Won Buddhist Temple on East 57th. Keep going north and you will run into the Islamic Cultural Center on East 96th.

Go further up and into the Bronx and you will come to a neighborhood that used to be called “Banana Kelly” because it was a mix of immigrants from the Caribbean and Ireland. And there, a Jamaican-American family raised the boy who became the man who is now our Secretary of State.

These facts stand as living rebukes to the extremism of our enemies, and the mindset that prevails in too many parts of the world that difference is a reason to hate and a license to kill. America is proof that pluralism and tolerance are the foundations of true national greatness. And today — 385 days after September 11, 2001 — it is clear that our commitment to our ideals is stronger than ever.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center were the bookends of a long transition period. During that period those of us who think about foreign policy for a living searched for an overarching, explanatory theory or framework that would describe the new threats and the proper response to them. Some said that nations and their militaries were no longer relevant, only global markets knitted together by new technologies. Others foresaw a future dominated by ethnic conflict. And some even thought that in the future the primary energies of America’s Armed Forces would be devoted to managing civil conflict and humanitarian assistance.

It will take years to understand the long-term effects of September 11th. But there are certain verities that the tragedy brought home to us in the most vivid way.

Perhaps most fundamentally, 9/11 crystallized our vulnerability. It also threw into sharp relief the nature of the threats we face today. Today’s threats come less from massing armies than from small, shadowy bands of terrorists — less from strong states than from weak or failed states. And after 9/11, there is no longer any doubt that today America faces an existential threat to our security — a threat as great as any we faced during the Civil War, the so-called “Good War”, or the Cold War.

President Bush’s new National Security Strategy offers a bold vision for protecting our Nation that captures today’s new realities and new opportunities.

It calls on America to use our position of unparalleled strength and influence to create a balance of power that favors freedom. As the President says in the cover letter: we seek to create the “conditions in which all nations and all societies can chose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty.”

This strategy has three pillars:

• We will defend the peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes.
• We will preserve the peace by fostering an era of good relations among the world’s great powers.
• And we will extend the peace by seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe.

Defending our Nation from its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government. And as the world’s most powerful nation, the United States has a special responsibility to help make the world more secure.

In fighting global terror, we will work with coalition partners on every continent, using every tool in our arsenal — from diplomacy and better defenses to law enforcement, intelligence, cutting off terrorist financing, and, if needed, military power.

We will break up terror networks, hold to account nations that harbor terrorists, and confront aggressive tyrants holding or seeking nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that might be passed to terrorist allies. These are different faces of the same evil. Terrorists need a place to plot, train, and organize. Tyrants allied with terrorists can greatly extend the reach of their deadly mischief. Terrorists allied with tyrants can acquire technologies allowing them to murder on an ever more massive scale. Each threat magnifies the danger of the other. And the only path to safety is to effectively confront both terrorists and tyrants.

For these reasons, President Bush is committed to confronting the Iraqi regime, which has defied the just demands of the world for over a decade. We are on notice. The danger from Saddam Hussein’s arsenal is far more clear than anything we could have foreseen prior to September 11th. And history will judge harshly any leader or nation that saw this dark cloud and sat by in complacency or indecision.