Remarks at The Elliott School of International Affairs

Thank you all very much, and thank you for that wonderful GW welcome. It's great to be back on campus on this very, very special occasion. And, Emily, I thank you for that most touching and gracious introduction. Madame Marshal, Chairman Harding, the distinguished gynecologist Dr. Trachtenberg -- (laughter and applause) -- President Elliott, members of the faculty, other members of the GW family who are here, Mrs. Trachtenberg, Mrs. Elliott, it really is a great delight to be with you and a great delight especially to be with the young people, the students who are here to learn, here to prepare themselves for positions of leadership in this great country of ours.

I can't tell you what a privilege it was for me a few moments ago to dedicate a new building to serve the Elliott School of International Affairs of the wonderful George Washington University.

Public buildings such as the new building are not just simply concrete and glass, not just building materials. An architect gives a building its design, and those who first labor in it raise up its spirit. That design and that spirit together give character to the life of the building, and the building in turn influences those who inhabit its halls, its rooms.

We have just come from 1957 E Street, where the new building stands. I pray that those who will pass though its portals over the many years to come will be shaped by wisdom and by a dedication to serve society. We are now assembled here at Lisner Auditorium, and that's fine, and really it's quite appropriate because our business today transcends more than just a single new building. As Dean Harding noted, this month we also celebrate the Elliott School's 15th anniversary, and the 105th anniversary of GW's International Affairs program. And so my congratulations to the entire George Washington University family on these outstanding achievements.

And I am so proud to be a member of that GW family. I am at home here. I received, as you heard, an honorary doctorate in February of 1990, when I was Dr. Trachtenberg's first commencement speaker. It's hard to believe, Steve, that 13 years have passed between that occasion and this. But I do believe that you have used those years well. It shows in many achievements, large and small, the construction that we see all over this part of town, the improvements that have been made in the curriculum, the thriving nature of the academic community that you have built here.

And so, Steve, I want to take this opportunity to thank you and Mrs. Trachtenberg for the dedication that you have given to this school, to your community, and to this wonderful city of ours. Thank you, Steve. (Applause.)

The honorary doctorate was easy. The MBA was a little more difficult. (Laughter.) And as you heard mentioned earlier, I received my letter of acceptance on June 15th, 1969, while I was in Vietnam.

Earlier that day I had been out at a landing zone -- not far from a place called Duc Pho, watching a rifle company return from patrol in the Vietnamese jungle. I was already in some ways in a kind of graduate school, the graduate school of war, a school, a place, where people were shooting at you.

On that day, I only had three weeks left to my second Vietnam tour and, of course, I was anxious to return home, return to my family. And thanks to that letter from GW, I now knew where I was headed. I was happy for that, but the first semester here was not easy-going for me. I was the oldest student in our program, seeking an MBA in data processing, a subject I knew nothing about. The Army said we had to learn about these newfangled things called computers -- and, Powell, you're going to learn about it, and if we throw you out later you will have a second skill that you can take into civilian life. (Laughter.) But I lacked much of the background one needed for such a program. I didn't have the economics or the math, the statistics. I was bewildered, and worried that the university had somehow made a mistake in admitting me. And after they took a look at my undergraduate record from the City College of New York, they were also contemplating whether they had made a mistake in admitting me. (Laughter.)

To make matters worse, I was a career Army guy now in civilian drag on campus at the height of the Vietnam war movement.

But things turned around, as they usually did. I had a great two years here. It was an important period in my life. My third child was born while I was a student here. I saw turmoil in my country. I watched riots in the city. I saw tear gas float across this campus. I've often told people that those early years of the '70s were perhaps the darkest periods in my life with respect to how my country was doing and going. But things turned around for me in a personal way at GW, and a few years later, with changes in government and with President Ford coming in, we got through that terrible period. It proves again that bleak evenings almost always, in our wonderful land with our wonderful system, bleak evenings can always give way to bright mornings. So I worked hard here, kept faith, left with a pretty good record, and was even encouraged to pursue a doctoral degree, and perhaps join the faculty. But I decided I better go back to that which I really knew something about, and that was soldiering.

Now why have I lingered on this? Why have I spoken about Vietnam, about my shaky early experience? Am I trying to ingratiate myself with you on the cheap? Yeah, sure I am. (Laughter.) But there are serious points that I want you to take away from this experience, points that may apply to our country as well as to our individual lives. Perhaps the most important is that it really does take all kinds to make a world, and Steve touched on this earlier -- scholars, soldiers, policymakers. Not all of us are cut out to be scholars or a soldier or policymaker.

And that's fine, because American freedom, American democracy, requires all sorts of people, all sorts of partnerships, between policymakers and universities, between scholars and soldiers. Our different talents unite to form our nation's strength.

This is a truth that also applies to the affairs of state. Making American foreign policy involves a mix of perspectives and experiences, as well. On the Bush Administration national security team, the diversity of our talents, I believe, forms our strength. We are a strong team, and the President is the leader of that team. It is his foreign policy, driven by his vision of a better world, a better world that we can help shape. It is a vision that is firmly rooted in the values, hopes and principles of the electorate, the people, the American people who brought him to high office.

But a vision isn't enough. The President needs a strategy to design and execute foreign policy. And by strategy, I don't mean 19th century "grand strategy," that classical kind of strategy that used to be characteristic of an imperial sense of the world. And the reason I don't mean that is because the United States does not seek a territorial empire. We have never been imperialists. We seek a world in which liberty, prosperity and peace can become the heritage of all peoples, and not just the exclusive privilege of a few.

And by strategy here, I do mean the translation of the President's vision into policies, policies that are coherent and that will appeal to the needs of the world, the desires of people in need throughout the world. And the translation requires the establishment of priorities, and that's critical because it is through priorities that a foreign policy strategy transforms vision into reality. President Bush has a vision. He has established priorities. His policies are unified by a strategy -- which was laid out publicly about a year ago in a document called the National Security Strategy of the United States.

The National Security Strategy gained attention in the aftermath of 9/11 because it made explicit the concept of preemption -- and it made it explicit for obvious reasons. As the President says, and as anyone can understand, if you can see a clear and present threat, a danger coming at you, you do not wait for it to arrive. You deal with it. You preempt. You don't wait for it to strike. It is not a new concept, but it took on new meaning in light of the changed world we faced after 9/11.

But the President's National Security Strategy covers far more than just preemption.

Above all, the President's strategy is a strategy of partnerships. It strongly affirms the vital role of the partnerships that we have throughout the world -- our partnership with NATO, our partnership with the United Nations and with so many other precious alliances that we have created over the last 50 years.

And the President's strategy doesn't rest on old alliances. It calls for new partnerships, new alliances, to meet new challenges.

Some new partnerships are global in scope, and quite different from the old-fashioned security kinds of partnerships. I have in mind here the Global Trust Fund that we helped set up with the United Nations to fight the scourge of HIV/AIDS around the world. HIV/AIDS: the greatest killer on the face of the Earth today, the greatest weapon of mass destruction on the face of the Earth today. And the President has made this a centerpiece of his foreign policy strategy.

Other new things we are doing are regional, such as our Middle East Partnership Initiative, which provides assistance for educational, economic and political reform throughout the Arab world, so that we can say to the Arab people of the world and Muslims throughout the world that there is no reason you cannot transform your society in a way consistent with your religion, with your beliefs, but also founded on the individual rights of men and women, founded on democracy and free market concepts.

Free trade and new American initiatives for economic development also figure prominently in the President's strategy. Just the day before yesterday I stood with the President in the White House as we celebrated the completion of work on free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore, and he signed the legislation bringing them into effect. The Free Trade Area of the Americas, the expanded Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, and especially the Millennium Challenge Account, which provides billions of dollars of new development assistance to those nations most in need, those nations who are committed to democracy and openness and the individual rights of their citizens -- all of these are important initiatives in the President's approach to the world and his strategy for executing the vision that he has for a world that is better, a world that is freer, a world that has something for every one of God's children.

The President's strategy is rooted, above all, in the promotion of freedom and dignity throughout the world. "America must stand firmly," the President wrote, "for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits to the absolute power of the state, free speech, freedom of worship, equal justice, respect for women and ethnic tolerance, and respect for private property." Simple values so well known to us. We stand by these values. We share these values with the world, not for the purpose of imposing them on the world, but for the purpose of letting the light of our values shine before us so that others can see and learn from them.

Our efforts to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are also an essential part of the President's strategy. These efforts led this past May to the Proliferation Security Initiative, an 11-nation effort, 11 nations coming together, and more will join, coming together to seize weapons of mass destruction-related materials that are in transit to countries of concern.

President Bush's strategy also demands that we play a role in helping to solve regional conflicts, that we not just sit back behind our oceans and not take note of problems that are out there that we can play a leadership role in solving. Not only do such conflicts cause so much suffering, they can spread. They can spread to envelop societies that are now at peace -- and they can stoke the fires of terrorism, as well. And nowhere is the American role in helping to resolve regional conflicts more important than in bringing Israelis and Palestinians to a stable peace settlement.

We have a plan. It's called the roadmap, and we stand by that roadmap. That roadmap has been agreed to by the Israelis and the Palestinians. It has been endorsed by an organization that we created, a new partnership we created, called the Quartet -- the United States, the United Nations, European Union, the Russian Federation. Also, Arab nations joining in support of the roadmap. Since the President brought the parties together at Aqaba, where they all came together to endorse the roadmap, we have made some progress down the road the peace. But not enough, and we need to redouble our efforts. We need to keep the pressure on both sides to do everything they can to get to that point where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace, Israelis in the state of Israel and Palestinians in a state of their own called Palestine.

It has not been an easy journey so far, and it will not be easy as we move ahead. Many problems remain. We support Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas' efforts to consolidate security forces all under his authority so he could go after those terrorist organizations within the Palestinian community who are destroying the dreams of the Palestinian people. We support Prime Minister Abbas' efforts to make sure that all financial authority and all financial resources are under his office so they can be used to benefit the Palestinian people and not be diverted to other purposes.

This is the way to stop, once and for all, Palestinian terrorist organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from making peace itself a hostage to their hateful ambitions. This is the way to rebuild the Palestinian society and the Palestinian economy on a sound basis to benefit all Palestinians. This is the way to a Palestinian state.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and similar organizations must be isolated. The entire international community must come together to isolate them, brand them as terrorists, and do everything we can to cut off all of the funding that has been going to these organizations over the years. Unfortunately, Chairman Yasser Arafat has not been playing a helpful role. He has not been an interlocutor for peace over the years. His actions do not move the parties farther down the road to peace.

Also unfortunate is the fact that while it takes two to make peace, it takes only one to prevent peace. If either of the parties turns away from its obligations under the roadmap, both will slide into a ditch or tumble over a cliff. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis like everything about the roadmap, but neither has an alternative that is both available and better.

The roadmap is sound, we stand by it, and we know the travelers will get to their common destination -- to peace -- if they follow that map.

Conflicts in other regions have also demanded our attention, and our compassion. The United States is engaged in so many places in the world to try to achieve solutions to regional conflicts. Whether it's in the Sudan or the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, we are hard at work. Most recently, we helped our friends in Africa bring the situation in Liberia under control. We supported ECOWAS, an African organization, West African states coming together. They came up with a political solution, they provided the troops to go in. We provided the support, the supplies, and a limited number of American troops to show our commitment, to show our dedication to this peacekeeping mission.

Now with our African friends, and with the United Nations and with the Liberians themselves, we are helping them to create a new government, a responsible government, to care for the needs of a desperate people.

But despite the breadth of our strategy, despite our policy concerns and the accomplishments that I think we've achieved, it is natural that the recent focus of U.S. foreign policy has centered on the global war against terrorism. Terrorism is a problem that has been there for years, but it hit home here on September 11th, 2001, whose second anniversary we will solemnly mark next Thursday. An outraged American people understandably wanted those responsible brought to justice.

And the President set us on the task not just to get the killers of 9/11, but to instead lead a global campaign against all terrorism, against all terrorists. He did this because he understood that terrorism is not just America's problem; it is everyone's problem, it is a problem for the civilized world, and the civilized world had to come together under his leadership to deal with it. Just in recent months, terrorist attacks have made far too many headlines, in far too many places. In a resort in Bali. In a bus full of children in Jerusalem. In a Bombay marketplace. At the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. In front of a sacred mosque in Najaf, Iraq.

Our grief knows no borders. Neither does our determination to put an end to such outrages against innocent people. The war on terrorism is our number one priority, and it will remain so for as long as is necessary.

We are succeeding in the global war on terrorism. We are making progress. The victories of our armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq form part of that success. So do quieter diplomatic victories that you may not hear about, or intelligence victories or legal victories, law enforcement victories, as we go about the world, go around the world, to go every country and encourage them to participate in shutting down funding of terrorists, making sure that we share intelligence and law enforcement information, so we can get to them, root them out, and make sure that they do not have the opportunity to conduct new terrorist attacks.

Our reconstruction and humanitarian efforts translate military victory into lasting political accomplishments, and we are doing that in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our efforts will not cease. They will not falter. We will not fail. Military victory is only part of the solution. It's the reconstruction that comes afterward that leaves us with a lasting peaceful situation.

In Afghanistan, both the political reach and governing capacities of President Karzai's administration are expanding. Roads and schools are being built. Dangerous land-mines are being cleared away. A national army and police force are coming into being. A state is being rebuilt before our eyes from the ashes of war and chaos.

We know that Afghanistan's challenges are too great to be overcome overnight. So the United States is determined to help for as long as it takes to overcome them, and we are asking other nations to join us in this effort. We will be accelerating in the next several weeks our support for Afghan development, and others around the world will be generously adding to their original contributions -- and not just with money. As you know, NATO assumed responsibility for security in Kabul just last month. One of our great partners, NATO, realized that even though NATO is a European-North Atlantic organization, it now has new responsibilities it must meet in parts of the world that could never have been contemplated NATO would have to participate in when the organization was formed so many years ago.

Afghanistan remains a dangerous and an unsettled place. But the remnants of the Taliban regime and of al-Qaida will be rooted out. And, together with our allies and the Afghan people themselves, Afghanistan will be rebuilt.

In Iraq, too, it is impossible to overcome in only a few months obstacles that have been decades in the making. Every day makes clearer how horribly the Iraqi people suffered under Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party. Their national resources were diverted. The oil treasure that they had was wasted as the regime spent the money on weapons, participated in the mass production of fear, repression, and the perverse luxuries of its insatiable elite. The mass graves that are now being opened up for the whole world to see bear witness to Saddam Hussein's brutality. Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we did the right thing, that the world is better off without this despotic regime.

And now the remnants who have been left behind are still acting in character, still acting in a despotic manner, trying to destroy the hopes of the Iraqi people, and destroying water and oil pipelines. They are attacking humanitarian workers in the international community that has come there to help the Iraqi people. They are trying to deny the Iraqi people the fruits of their liberation. But they will fail.

Some foreign terrorists, too, are coming to Iraq to help Iraq's own dead-enders with their destructive work. They will fail, too. Coalition forces are ready for them. We will find them. We will isolate them. And then they will be destroyed.

The forces of destruction, the forces of the tragic past, will not stop us. Together with our allies and, most of all, together with the Iraqi people, we are undoing the disasters of Saddam Hussein's misrule.

Electrical power is returning. On August 27, generating capacity reached 3,700 megawatts and will soon go over 4,000 megawatts, which was the amount of electricity that was there before the war.

All of Iraq's universities are open and most of its secondary schools are now open as well. Since the end of July, all of Iraq's major hospitals have been up and running, as have 95 percent of local clinics. Stocks of medicine and medical technology are being rapidly replenished.

The oil industry is getting back on its feet. Oil is now flowing out, money is flowing in. Crude oil production now averages between 1.4 and 1.7 million barrels a day.

Banks are making loans in Baghdad, employment is picking up, a free press bustles with energy and advertising. Of the country's 400 courts, 300 have now reopen. Approximately 46,000 police have been hired, and another 28,000 new police will be trained over the next 18 months.

Progress is being made, and because the Coalition is making such progress, far more Iraqis worry about our leaving too soon than about our staying too long. They need not worry, for we will neither leave too soon, nor stay too long.

As you have been reading in your newspapers for the last several days, we have begun consultations with our Security Council colleagues on a new UN resolution concerning Iraq. In this resolution we will invite the Iraqi Governing Council to submit a plan and a timetable for them to write a constitution, develop political institutions, and conduct free elections. All of this leading to their resumption of sovereignty over their country, over their own people.

This is our single goal, our only goal, to allow the Iraqi people to regain sovereignty, but sovereignty based on democracy, sovereignty based on freedom, sovereignty based on peaceful existence with one's neighbors. This has been the President's goal from the very beginning, and this new resolution will move us further along toward that goal.

There are some of my Security Council colleagues who would like to move faster, some who say be a little more careful. We will listen to all of the comments that will be coming in, and we will try to adjust and adapt to those comments, as long as it is consistent with what I have just described as our overall goal.

The resolution would also authorize a United Nations multilateral force, with a U.S. commander. There's nothing unusual about this. With a force this size and with the majority of that force coming from one country, that country is the provider of the commander. And we have seen this model work on many occasions in the past and we are confident it will work now -- keeping in mind there are already 30 nations standing side by side with us in Iraq, and we hope with this new resolution more nations will be encouraged to become a part of this noble effort.

The resolution would also permit the United Nations to play a more comprehensive and active role in the transition back to Iraqi sovereignty. We are receiving suggestions, as I said, and I look forward to working with our 14 partners on the Security Council to produce a new resolution as quickly as possible.

But we are doing more than that. We are looking, at an Iraq donors' conference in Madrid in October to further mobilize international efforts to help the Iraqi people reconstruct their country and rebuild their lives.

Our efforts will augment and encourage the most important kind of progress that is being made in Iraq, which is political progress. Iraqis are organizing themselves in so many ways now for self-government. Many municipal and village councils are operating according to representative principles. The Iraqi Governing Council recently named a 25-man cabinet, which was sworn in on Wednesday. It is already beginning to govern.

Behind every statistic and every political accomplishment is something that is even more important: the end of fear, and a new spirit of freedom being born. That spirit is spreading far and wide. In the end, it will prove unstoppable. In the end, democracy will come to Iraq. In the end, those who are trying to stop -- those who are conducting these terrorist attacks, those who don't realize that there is a new wave sweeping over that part of the world, they will be dealt with.

And democracy will come to Iraq. And when it does, all those in the Middle East who are in thrall to their own fears of change will be faced with a choice. They can move forward with the rest of the world, or stagnate in their own insecurities. Those imprisoned, not by Islam, certainly, but by a lack of confidence in their societies' ability to embrace a better future, will no longer be able to intimidate others into joining their cabals of the closed-minded.

That is a day to which the many lovers of liberty in the Middle East look forward to. And I hope that as long as we remain engaged, as we lead an international coalition, they will not be disappointed.

That will be a great day, indeed. But our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq are not without cost. I know that the President is deeply grateful, as are we all, for the outstanding service and the painful sacrifices that American men and women in uniform are making in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We are grateful, too, for the service and sacrifices being made by the soldiers of dozens of other nations who are also contributing to the effort.

Every loss of life, every wound, is a tragedy. But not a loss in vain. Not to face up to and fight the hatred that is at the core of all terrorism, is to be complicit in hatred's consequences. That we will never be. Every loss that we suffer becomes a stone in the citadel we are building against terrorism, and against hatred. None of these lives have been lost in vain. As the Secretary of State, as an American citizen and as a former solider, I am so enormously proud of those wonderful young men and women that you see out there doing their job every day on behalf of the Iraqi people, on behalf of the cause of freedom and in the global war against terrorism. I hope you are as proud of them as I am. (Applause.)

Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict have absorbed much of our energy in recent months. But by no means all. Less well appreciated and less visible in the daily headlines is the other work that we are at, other work that we are succeeding at, in other important domains of U.S. foreign policy. Not least among these is the focus we have placed on better relations with the world's major powers.

The world is much changed since I was a soldier in Germany, Vietnam and later in Korea, or even when I was a soldier here at GW. The world changed profoundly in November of 1989, when the Berlin Wall was breached, never to be repaired. That date marked the end of the Cold War and, before long, of the Soviet Union itself.

Those events ended the epoch of intense and dangerous struggle between liberty and totalitarianism that had shaped most of the 20th century. For most of the 20th century, it was fascism versus democracy, communism versus democracy. The potential of more world wars, in addition to the two world wars that we saw.

All that has changed. All that is complete different. The President fully understands the essence of what this means. As he wrote in his National Security Strategy, "Today the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war. Today, the world's great powers find themselves on the same side."

This is good news. For too many years, too many centuries, the imperial habits of great powers squandered untold resources and talent and lives jousting for real estate, glory and gold. Instead of wasting lives and treasure opposing each other as in the past, today's powers can pull in the same direction to solve problems common to all. If we do pull together, we will begin to redeem history from so much human folly.

One of those common problems, of course, is terrorism. We do not see the war against terrorism and the nurturing of constructive relations with the major powers as competing tasks. They are complementary. We conduct the war on terrorism with an eye toward greater major power cooperation. And we seek enhanced great power cooperation with an eye turned toward success in the war on terrorism.

The logic of this approach rests in the fact that terrorism threatens world order itself. But by so doing, it creates a common interest in defeating terrorism among all the powers of the world that value peace, prosperity and respect the rule of law. That common interest is one source of a rare and remarkable opportunity: America's chance to enjoy for the first time in a hundred years excellent relations with all the world's major powers simultaneously.

Of course, we have a head start in this, for America is blessed with many enduring great power friendships. None of these are more important than those great power relationships represented in NATO.

Some observers predicted when I was here as a student that NATO would wither after the Cold War, and that the United States and the European Union would end up on a collision course. It has not been so, and will not be so. I remember when I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on my last occasion here, people were saying, well, you know, "Why do we still need a NATO?" Some of my Russian general friends were saying, "Look, if the Warsaw Pact goes away," they were saying in the early '90s, "why do you still need NATO? No Warsaw Pact, no Soviet Union, no NATO." And my answer was, "It's hard to close a club where people are still asking for membership applications." (Laughter.)

And so rather than withering, NATO has thrived. It's grown, gone from 16 to 19, now to 26 nations this coming year. And as for our relations with the European Union, never has our common agenda been so large and mutually beneficial -- from advancing free trade to counter-proliferation efforts.

And so let there be no doubt that the partnership we have with our European friends is a strong partnership. Yes, it is true that we have differences with some of our oldest and most valued NATO allies. But these are differences among friends. The Transatlantic partnership is based so firmly on common interests and values that neither feuding personalities nor divergent perceptions can derail it. We have new friends and old friends alike in Europe. They are all, in the end, friends, best friends.

That is why the President continues to talk about partnerships, not about polarities. Some authorities suggest that we must move to a multipolar world. But there need be no poles among nations that share basic values. We have no desire to create such poles, either. Indeed, we must work to overcome differences, not to polarize them.

We work hard to have the best relations with nations large and small, old and new. But it is important that we concentrate on those major powers, and especially on those with which we have had different and difficult relations over the years.

Our relationship with Russia and China and India fall into this category. And just look at where we are now. Our relationship with Russia has been dramatically transformed -- for the better -- since that November evening in 1989. Americans and Russians no longer point growing arsenals of strategic missiles at one another. Indeed, thanks to President Bush and President Putin's leadership, we are now radically reducing our strategic weapons' arsenals. In Moscow, we have a committed partner in fighting terrorism and in combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction worldwide.

U.S.-Russian commercial relations, too, have expanded, and will expand further to mutual benefit -- not least in the energy sector.

The new relationship that is developing between Russia and NATO, too, has real substance. From sharing intelligence on terrorism to working together to deal with humanitarian crises and peacekeeping tasks, the NATO-Russia Council is operational and working -- something that would have been absolutely unthinkable just 15 or so short years ago.

And that relationship with Russia can expand as far as our creativity and mutual effort will let it. We are closer than ever, with this new relationship with Russia and the other former republics of the Soviet Union, we are closer than ever to a Europe whole, free and at peace -- a Europe that definitely includes Russia, a Europe that will not in this century face the kinds of challenges that was faced in the century past.

Perhaps most important, American and Russian political and economic philosophies are converging. Russia today is more democratic than not. It is also more a market economy than not. We should be patient as Russia develops its democratic institutions, and as the painful hangover of Soviet-era corruption is rooted out and the rule of law firmly established.

We do not agree on everything. Earlier this year, we had hoped for a more supportive Russian attitude toward our Iraq policy. We still hope for more change in Russia's attitude toward the Iranian nuclear program. And we differ over aspects of Russian policy in Chechnya. But the relationship as a whole is no longer locked in knee-jerk antagonism. That's what is important. We now have the necessary level of trust required to solve even the most difficult issues that exist between us.

While Russia is still developing its democracy, India's democracy dates from its independence in 1947. And with recent economic reforms setting institutional roots, India is developing into a mature market economy. As Indians themselves are the first to admit, however, their country still faces many challenges. Illiteracy, poverty, many others, which hamper their progress.

We want to work with India. We want to help India overcome its challenges, and we want to help ourselves through a closer association with one of the world's richest and most ancient cultures. We have therefore worked very hard to deepen our relationship with India. The two largest democracies on earth are no longer estranged, as they had been for many years. At the same time, we have done this in a way that also allowed us to improve our relationship with Pakistan, a country with domestic challenges of its own.

Aside from their domestic challenges, India and Pakistan live with the legacy of their dispute over Kashmir. About 15 months ago, you will all recall, we were fearful of a major war breaking out on the subcontinent, possibly a nuclear war. A distinct possibility. So, once again, with our partners, we came together, and working with India and Pakistan we defused that crisis, and now we see the situation improving as they reach out to one another. And we look forward to helping them in every way that we can.

What the United States has done in South Asia is an example of "turning adversity into opportunity" -- to quote President Bush. In a different way, we have done the same thing with the other major power I'd like to touch on, China.

Sino-American relations didn't get off on the best foot in this administration. You will remember in April of 2001 there was an incident where we lost one of our airplanes in a collision with a Chinese plane and it landed on the island. We had a crisis on our hands. We got through that crisis in a two-week period, and every since then our relationship has been on the upswing, constantly going up. And today, I would submit U.S. relations with China are the best they have been since President Nixon's first visit.

This is not just because the 9/11 attacks led us to shuffle priorities. It's not just because we championed Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization. It's not just because a new generation of leadership is taking the Chinese ship of state in hand. It is certainly not because we've ignored basic differences we have with China on their human rights practices or their proliferation activities or the reluctance of China's leadership to match political reform to economic reform. We have not ignored these differences.

The relationship has improved for a reason that transcends all these particulars. It is that neither we nor the Chinese leadership anymore believe that there is anything inevitable about our relationship -- either inevitably bad or inevitably good.

We believe that it is up to us, together, to take responsibility for our common future. And we do not conceive that future in zero-sum terms. The National Security Strategy puts it directly: "We welcome the emergence of a strong, peaceful and prosperous China." And we seek a constructive relationship with that China. Indeed, we welcome a global role for China, so long as China assumes the responsibilities commensurate with that role.

Chinese leaders know all this. Neither false fear about the future nor the overhang of Cold War enmity prevents us from cooperating where our interests coincide. And a case in point concerns the Korean Peninsula.

American and Chinese interests in Korea may not overlap completely, but they do so considerably. Neither side wishes to see nuclear weapons developed and deployed by the North Koreans on the Peninsula. Neither side enjoys the specter of the chronicled debacle that is the North Korean economy. Neither side has any interest in a worsening refugee crisis on China's border. Neither side relishes a North Korean regime that runs drugs and weapons, and that counterfeits currencies, or that engages in the periodic extortion of its neighbors though brinksmanship military conduct. Neither side, to be sure, has any interest in another Korean war.

We have worked to transform our common interests with China into solid and productive cooperation over the challenges posed by North Korea. We are doing so, as well, in conjunction with Japan, Russia, and South Korea.

Our agenda is ambitious, but it is succeeding. The fact that we now have a six-party framework for talks over North Korea's nuclear program stands as testimony. Once again, we worked with partners. We found nations with like interests to ours with respect to Korea to come together and form this six-party grouping with includes the North Koreans. A very multilateral approach to diplomacy. And we very much appreciate the leadership role that the Chinese have played in trying to find a solution to this problem.

We still have a long way to go before we achieve success in dealing with North Korea's dangerous nuclear weapons program. We have no intention of invading or attacking North Korea, and we have told our partners and the North Koreans that. We have stated our intentions, openly and honestly: we want peace, not war; we want security, not fear, to envelop Korea and its neighbors. But we will not yield to threats and blackmail. We will not take any options off the table. Now is the time for North Korea to alter its behavior, to end its nuclear program in a verifiable manner.

I believe strongly that a diplomatic solution can be achieved, and when it has been achieved, we will have demonstrated that American diplomacy is designed to satisfy not only American national interests, but the interests of international security as well. We will show that the equities of other powers can be best advanced along with American ones, not in opposition to them.

And so we have a National Security Strategy that is based on a vision, a vision that includes strong partnerships, not unilateralism, but strong partnerships with our traditional allies and our new friends in the world stage. It includes a concern for the well-being of mankind throughout the world. We're investing in HIV/AIDS programs. We're doing everything we can with respect to economic development of developing nations, with respect to poverty elimination. It is a broad, broad, comprehensive strategy.

Ladies and gentlemen, our relations among the major nations of the world will remain a key structural element that will shape the future of international security. We must not take the present peace among the major powers for granted. That peace will not just take care of itself as time passes. We have to work at it, and we will. We will remain engaged.

Yes, of course we want to promote democracy in the world now. We want to help people raise themselves from poverty now. We want to transform the inadequate system of global public health now. We are in pursuit of these goals, too, now. But only if the deep peace of our era can be "preserved, defended and expanded," can our long-term goals be achieved.

And make no mistake, these are the central goals of American foreign policy in the 21st century. We fight terrorism because we must. We seek a better world because we can, because it is our desire, it is our destiny to do so. That is why we devote ourselves to democracy, development, global public health, human rights -- as well as to the structure of global peace that enables us to pursue our vision for a better world.

These are not mere high-sounding decorations for our interests. They are our interests. They are the purposes that our power serves.

Because this is so, I know that America's reputation for honesty and compassion will endure. Today America's motives are impugned in some lands. But as we "preserve, defend, and expand" the peace that free peoples won in the 21st century, I believe we will see America vindicated in the eyes of the world, speedily in our time, in the 21st century.

That vindication will not come not only because of one man or one administration. It will come to America, to its true friends and allies, and to all of us -- including the scholars and students of the Elliott School, as we work together in partnership, the kind of partnership that your chairman and dean and your president has spoken about.

And friends, I would be remiss in this presentation if I did not close it with a personal note.

This university opened up a world for me, a new world. I first came here as an Infantry Lieutenant Colonel having spent, at that time, something like 12 years in uniform in solid infantry work. And I came to GW and found my horizon widened, my mind opened. I learned so much here that was so tremendously useful to me as I went on to different assignments.

I returned as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to receive an honorary degree from my alma mater. I learned more here than data processing and business technique. I learned about real management and genuine leadership. Most of all, as each and every one of the students here is learning now, I learned about my own potential. I discovered a part of myself I didn't know for sure was even there. And that's a lot to learn and I have an undying gratitude to the faculty of GW and to all who worked to make this institution so great.

I wish all of the students here the same opportunity for learning that I received here. I know that you will take advantage of the opportunity that is here.

I am so happy, so very happy to be here today to dedicate your new building, a building that will be serving noble purposes, the noble purposes for which it has been constructed. And I am so pleased to be a neighbor across the street. Now that you have put up the new building, now that you have shaped it, my young friends, may it shape you as you go from strength to strength. As you prepare yourself to become the new leaders of this great nation in the 21st century, GW will prepare you for that in an absolutely outstanding way. Of this, I am sure.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)