Statement on President Bush's Budget Request for FY 2003

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for making my full statement a part of the record, and I will give an abbreviated version of that statement to get our proceedings going. Let me begin by thanking you, Mr. Chairman, for your kind remarks, and, Mr. Lantos, for your kind remarks as well and your sobering observations with respect to foreign assistance accounts.

Let me also thank the committee for the solid support that you have provided to the administration, to the President and all of us in the administration over the last four plus months of the current crisis. And as Secretary of State, let me thank the committee for the support you have provided for my efforts to reinvigorate the Department of State, to make sure that we get the right people in the right place at the right time, and that we let them know they are in the front line of offense in our national security efforts, and that you are going to give them the tools that they need to do that job well.

Mr. Lantos, of course we would always welcome a larger budget, but in light of what the President had available to him and what he thought was appropriate for the nation at this time, I am pleased that the budget I am here to defend this morning does show an increase of almost 5 percent, offset somewhat by the supplemental that you make reference to. And it may well be that as we get in the course of this year another supplemental will be required, and I still think that as a result of these actions we will see real growth in the State Department accounts in the year that unfolds in front of us.

Chairman Hyde, you made the point that we all came together as a nation. We saw love of country in a way that we hadn't seen in a long time. And it invigorated not only all of us, but I think it invigorated the world; it showed the world what America is all about, how our diversity is a source of strength, not a source of weakness, and that we don't all sit around watching television and watching scandals, but we can come together for a common purpose and a common cause.

And as a result of our coming together in this common purpose and cause, we provide a vision to the rest of the world as to what we have to do as a civilized world to deal with this new threat that came upon us in such a vivid way on the 11th of September last. We pulled together a great coalition, a coalition that we lead because that coalition wants us to lead it; a coalition that has done more than soft applause in support of the vision; a coalition with puts British troops next to American troops in Afghanistan and German troops in combat operations on the right side, the first time they have been in such operations in 50-odd years, and with French troops and Jordanian troops and other troops, and many other nations that were willing to put their troops in harm's way, had we a need for those troops in the theatre of operations.

So in some cases we got soft applause, but in most cases we got loud applause, and we got positive acts on the part of our coalition members to be a part of this effort. And we applaud that action on their part.

We also recognize that coalitions need leadership, and we also recognize that while we're pulling together a coalition, we would like the coalition to move out all in the same manner with the left foot forward altogether. There may be times when we have to act alone, but we can't have our national interests constrained by the views of the coalition.

My job, of course, as Secretary of State, is to explain this vision, carry this vision forward, using the example given to us by President Bush, and to make sure that everybody understands that we want you to be with us, but if you can't be, we're going ahead anyway. And I think we have been successful in going forward with a vision that most people can support, and this coalition has stayed together. People said, "Well, it's going to break apart." Well, it didn't break apart. And in fact, with each passing week it is being strengthened as the President shows leadership and as we continue to put that vision out of what we have to do to defeat terrorists, deal with those nations that harbor terrorists and terrorist activities, and also deal with those nations that enable terrorists by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or the technology that lead to the development of weapons of mass destruction.

So I think we do have newly prominent threats that we have to deal with that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, but even more exciting and more interesting to me is we have newly prominent opportunities, opportunities that I will talk to as I go through my statement that were not there five months ago, were not there a year ago, newly prominent opportunities that have been made possible by the leadership that President Bush and the United States has given to this coalition against terrorism.

What I would like to do for the first part of my statement, however, Mr. Chairman, is to talk not about foreign policy, but to say just a few words about how we have used the resources that the Congress has provided to us in my first year as chief steward of the Department of State to reinvigorate the State Department, and to make sure that we are managing and running the Department in the most effective way possible.

In my first testimony before this committee last year, I said I was going to break that mold and talk about management and my stewardship of the Department. I did that because I felt I had to make the case for you that the resources challenge for the Department of State have become a serious impediment to the conduct of our foreign policy. You heard my testimony, you responded with the kind of support that I was hoping for, and I want to thank you for that. And because of your generosity and your understanding, we have already made significant progress, and in the remainder of Fiscal Year 2002, we will make more.

In new hires for the Foreign Service, we have made great strides. We doubled the number of young Americans who have stepped forward and said I want to take the Foreign Service Exam; I want to be part of this Department; I want to be part of this front line of offense in our national security activities. We have tripled the number of minorities who have applied for the Foreign Service Exam. Seventeen percent of those who applied for the last exam were minority, and we're going to give the exam twice this year in order to accommodate all the young Americans who are stepping forward in this time of crisis.

We have also improved our civil service recruitment by putting out new web-based recruiting tools, and once we identify the best people out there, we are trying to bring them in more rapidly. Last year it was taking us 27 months to bring somebody into the Foreign Service from the day they took the Foreign Service Exam. We now have that under a year, and we're going to drive it to an even lower number.

I want all of the men and women of the Department of State to have state-of-the-art information technology so they can be part of this rapidly changing world. I hope that as a result of the support you have provided to me, the funds that have been made available to me, we will have 30,000 State Department employees have access to the Internet within the very near future -- over the next two years, is my goal.

We have also done a lot with respect to the security of our buildings and the building of our embassies, and making sure that we are giving our people around the world good places in which to work, good places in which to live, and places that are secure, protecting them and their families. And General Chuck Williams, who I brought on board, a marvelous Army engineer, is doing a great job of that. And I think we can satisfy the Committee and the other committees of Congress that we are using the funds for embassy construction in the most effective way possible, and I think you will be very impressed at the work that General Williams and his colleagues have done.

Morale is on the upswing. We are taking care of our families, we are taking care of our people. The President's request for the Department of State and related agencies to operate our accounts, operate our facilities, is $8.1 billion. And these dollars will allow us to continue initiatives; to recruit, hire, train, and deploy; to upgrade our worldwide security readiness. It also includes $553 million to build on the funding that had been provided earlier for the increased hiring of security agents and counter-terrorism programs.

The budget request has over $1.3 billion to improve physical security and correct serious deficiencies that still exist in our facilities around the world. And as I noted earlier, the budget will support my efforts to provide state-of-the-art information technology to all of our personnel.

To Mr. Lantos' point about public diplomacy and broadcasting, this budget will enhance our public diplomacy efforts to eliminate support for terrorists, and to make sure we are getting our message out that we are not against any ethnic group, we are not against any group of people. We are against terrorists, and terrorists only. And I think we have to do a much better job of getting that message out, and I have brought on a person, Under Secretary of State Charlotte Beers, who has a broad background in marketing, in selling.

People have said, well, is that what you really need to have? Didn't she used to sell Uncle Ben's rice? The answer is yes, she did, and didn't you buy Uncle Ben's rice? And that's exactly what I want: somebody who can market our value system, somebody who can get out there and mix it up in the kind of world we're living in. And you are going to see a lot of exciting things happening. The right content, the right format, to the right audience, right now, to explain our policies, to explain what our vision is all about.

Mr. Chairman, all of the State Department and related agencies programs and initiatives are critical to the conduct of American foreign policy, and it is that foreign policy that I now want to turn my attention to. Over the past year, Mr. Chairman, I believe the broader tapestry of our foreign policy has become clear. President Bush and all of us want to encourage the growth of democracy and market economies, and to bring more nations to the understanding that the power of the individual is the power that counts; that despite the crises and troubles the world confronts, the movement to freedom is inexorable. And when evil appears to threaten that movement, America will confront that evil head-on and defeat it, as we are doing in the war on terrorism.

And so as I get into the specifics of our foreign policy -- the different regions, the different countries, the different crises -- let's not forget the power of the whole: the power of democracy and the power of the free enterprise system. And you can see how this is transforming the world.

I have to make sure that every day, while I am dealing with the crisis of the day -- while I may be, as I was this morning, talking to the President of Pakistan and the Foreign Minister of India, and talking to the Chairman of the OSCE and dealing with the "eaches" that come along, and worrying about the Middle East. I have to stand back and realize there are wonderful opportunities out there, and not be dragged into the mud by the crises, but to keep looking at that broader horizon that is out in front of us, the opportunity we have to reshape this way in a world that we couldn't have thought about just a year ago.

And let me now start to go through these various "eaches," and I want to begin with Russia. President Bush has structured a very strong relationship with Russia. The meetings that he has had over the past year with President Putin and the dialogue that has taken place on a regular basis between Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and me and Secretary Rumsfeld and his colleagues -- in fact, as I was pulling in in front of the building a few moments ago, Igor Ivanov was trying to reach me on the phone to tell me about his visit to Kabul the day before yesterday. We talk two, three, four times a week now to make sure we stay in touch, to make sure we understand one another in a way that hadn't been the case just a few months ago.

As a result of this level of dialogue, I think it helped Russia understand that it had to make the right choice after September 11th, and President Putin did make the right choice. He decided that Russia would become a full and key member of the anti-terrorist coalition. Russia has played a crucial role in our success in Afghanistan by providing intelligence, bolstering the Northern Alliance, and assisting our entry into Central Asia in a way that they would have found threatening just a few months ago.

In fact, two weeks ago, my colleague, Mr. Ivanov, was asked by a television interviewer, "Comrade Igor, aren't you worried about all of these Americans running around in Central Asia? They're the enemy." And his answer was no, terrorism is the enemy, smuggling is the enemy, drug-trafficking is the enemy. Those are the things that are now the enemies. And the United States and Russia are working together to defeat these new enemies. That is the new awareness that the Russians have that we can build on as we go forward.

Similarly, the way we agreed to disagree on the ABM Treaty reflects the intense dialogue that we had over the previous 11 months, where we made it clear to them we have to go forward with missile defense; it's one of the threats we have to deal with. We know you have concerns about us leaving the ABM Treaty. Can we deal with those concerns, can we find a way to go forward with the testing in a way that you would find acceptable under the Treaty?

And we had the most intense dialogue, the presidents talking, Mr. Ivanov and I and our staffs trying to work it out. At the end of the day, we couldn't come to an agreement on this issue, and we agreed to disagree, and we notified Russia that we were going to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. And President Bush talked to President Putin. He sent me to discuss with President Putin how the announcements would be made in a way that did not rupture the relationship.

And everybody was saying, oh, my gosh, if you do that, there's going to be an arms race that will break out immediately; the relationship between the United States and the Russian Federation will go into crisis mode. None of that happened. We agreed to disagree as two mature nations speaking to one another, and now we are moving forward. The ABM Treaty disagreement is behind us. We are finding ways to cooperate with respect to the reduction of nuclear weapons, offensive nuclear weapons, the things that kill people -- not missile defense, which defends against the things that kill people.

And so Minister Ivanov and our staffs are hard at work to find a way to get all of this documented by the time of the Moscow summit in May so that we can put down at that time a legally binding agreement between the two sides on what we're doing to do to reduce strategic offensive weaponry.

And so it just shows that two mature nations can have positions of principle and find a way to move forward without either side abandoning its principle. We even managed to come to agreement on how we are going to work in NATO. We are now developing mechanisms for pursuing joint Russia-NATO consultations at 20 it's called; NATO, its 19 members, and Russia when it joins in our deliberations as NATO-Russia Council at 20. I think this will go a long way to bringing Russia more toward the West and making them more comfortable with the likelihood of the expansion of NATO at the Prague summit in the fall of this year.

I believe that the way we handle the war on terrorism, the ABM Treaty, nuclear reductions and NATO is reflective of the way we will be working with Russia in the future. At the same time, we haven't forgotten about Russian abuse of human rights in Chechnya, or about Moscow's nuclear proliferation to countries such as Iran, or Russian intransigence, which I think is slowly dissipating, with respect to changing the sanctions policy on Iraq. We also speak candidly to them about the freedom of the media.

And so even though we are getting along in a number of important areas, and I might also touch on economic cooperation, their desire to become a member of the WTO, we don't shrink from pointing out where there are deficiencies in the relationship, where we think they have to take action. And we do it on the basis of mutual respect, open dialogue, and building up a level of confidence so we can talk candidly to one another. And the way we are approaching Central Asia is illustrative of that.

Shifting to the other great nation that is of enormous interest to us, and that is China, we have tried to move in the same direction. You will recall earlier this year we had a potentially volatile situation in April when our reconnaissance aircraft was in a collision with a Chinese airplane and it landed on Hainan Island. Everybody thought this would be a crisis of long lasting duration and would fundamentally sour relations between the United States and China.

But through careful diplomacy, both sides, respecting one another's point of view, trying to find a solution, we found a solution. We got our crew home safely. We eventually got our plane home. It also set up conditions that allowed me to go to China later that summer for successful meetings that set the stage for President Bush to visit Shanghai for the APEC summit last fall. He had good meetings with President Jiang Zemin, and we have discovered in recent months that the Chinese are anxious to move forward with us on a positive agenda.

We have emphasized that there are shared interests that we have with China, and they are global and regional: shared interests such as China's accession to the WTO, which has now occurred along with Taiwan's accession; stability on the Korean Peninsula; and we're even now talking with the Chinese about fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS, which is going to be a problem for China in the years ahead.

On such issues we can have a dialogue and we can make measurable progress, but we do not want the interests where we differ to constrain us from pursuing those where we share common goals, and that is what we are trying to do. President Jiang Xemin was one of the first world leaders to call President Bush and offer his sorrow and condolences for the tragic events of September 11. And in the almost five months since that day, China has helped in the war against terrorism. Beijing has also helped in the reconstruction effort of Afghanistan, and we hope will help even more in the future.

Moreover, China has played a constructive role in helping the United States manage the very dangerous situation between India and Pakistan. I speak to my Chinese colleague, Foreign Minister Tang, on a regular basis. Not too long ago, when President Musharraf of Pakistan was going to China on his way to another meeting, I called Foreign Minister Tang, and we coordinated our views and positions at that point, so that all of us were in sync with one another. And I think that has turned out to be a helpful way of dealing with these kinds of crises.

All of this kind of cooperation between us and the Chinese came about as a result of our efforts to rebuild the relationship after the reconnaissance plane incident. At the same time, as with Russia, we don't walk away from the tough issues. We talk to them about our commitment to human rights, and why we believe it is important. We talk to them about religious freedom, why it is important that they respect universal standards of human rights; why it is important that they not participate in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology. We don’t shrink from that.

And we continue to tell the Chinese people that if their economic development continues apace, and the Chinese people see the benefits of being part of a world that rests on the rule of law, we can continue to work together constructively. A candid, constructive, and cooperative relationship is what we are building with China -- candid where we disagree, constructive where we can see some daylight, and cooperative where we have common regional or global interests.

As we improved our relationship with China, we also reinvigorated our bilateral alliances with Japan, Korea, and Australia. And nowhere has this been more visible than in the war on terrorism, where they and all of our other Asian-Pacific friends have been so helpful. President Bush has a solid relationship with Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan, and Prime Minister Koizumi immediately offered Japan's strong support, within the confines of its Constitution. And he is working to enhance Japan's capability to contribute to such global and regional actions in the future. Always the linchpin of our security strategy in East Asia, the U.S.-Japan security alliance is now as strong a bond between our two countries as it has been in the half-century of its existence.

With respect to the Peninsula, our alliance with the Republic of Korea has also been strengthened by Korea's response to the war on terrorism, and by our careful analysis and our consultations with the South on where we need to take the dialogue with the North. President Bush has made it very clear, as clear as one could, that we are dissatisfied with the actions of North Korea; that they continue to develop and sell missiles that could carry weapons of mass destruction at the same time their people are starving to death. And we are one of the biggest contributors of food to keep them from starving to death.

So when the President said that there is an "axis of evil", and that there are evil regimes -- not evil people, but evil regimes -- and he identified North Korea as one of them, this does not mean that he is not willing to enter into a dialogue with North Korea. Our policy remains the same. As I enunciated it, with the President's permission, last summer, we are prepared to talk to the North Koreans any time, any place, any where, under any set of conditions, and with no previously set agenda. Let's start talking.

But that does not mean we will call it the way we see it. And that's what the President did the other night, and he did it with a firmness of purpose, and it was not a rhetorical flourish; it was a considered statement that he was making, a statement that all of us had seen beforehand and were pleased that he was making. And we will not shrink back from that clarity of purpose that the President had in his State of the Union address.

Both we and the Republic of Korea are ready to resume dialogue with Pyongyang at any time they are ready to do so. As I look across the Pacific to East Asia, I see a much improved security scene, and I believe that President Bush and his leadership deserve the credit for this success. Another foreign policy success that we don't talk about enough is the improvement we have achieved in our relations with Europe. In waging war together on terrorism, our cooperation has grown stronger. NATO invoked Article V for the first time on September 12th, the very day after the crisis. Since then, the European Union has moved swiftly to round up terrorists, close down terrorist financing networks, and improve law enforcement and aviation security cooperation.

We share with the Europeans the desire for a Europe whole, free and at peace. President Bush has communicated to Europe a solid vision. He did that in his speech in Warsaw last year. He has met with the European Union at a US-EU Summit, and at the European Summit. He is looking forward to the Prague Summit later this year, when we will enlarge NATO, I'm quite sure, at -- offer invitations to aspirants to join. How many? Still to be determined.

But this suggestion that you sometimes see in intellectual circles that the United States is acting unilaterally and not consulting with our European partners, this just simply couldn't be further from the truth. If you look at my calendar, you will see how much consultation I do, beginning very early this morning with the Foreign Minister of Portugal, and a steady stream of visitors that come through my office. President Bush spreads an enormous amount of his time in direct consultations with our European friends, as well as our friends around the world.

So we believe in multilateralism. But when it is a matter of principle, and when the multilateral community does not agree with us, we do not shrink from doing that which we think is right, which is in our interest, even if some of our friends disagree with us

And particularly in Europe we recognize that there are strong points of view in Europe, and we always appreciate hearing these strong points of view -- and I hear them whether I appreciate them or not. That is part of diplomacy. That is how friends work with each other. And I just want this committee to know and Americans to know that we value the alliances that we are a part of. We value the relations that we have with all of our European colleagues, and I spend a lot of my time making sure that they understand our point of view and we take into account their point of view.

We are not ignoring the rest of the world by focusing on Europe and China, Russia and the countries around them. I am very concerned about Africa. We have worked hard to show that we do have an African agenda. President Bush chaired the forum that we had not too long ago implementing the African Growth and Opportunity Act. We are looking forward to the summit meeting in Johannesburg later this year on the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which will be one of the largest gatherings of foreign ministers and world leaders in many, many decades.

We will do more to make sure that the African Growth and Opportunity Act achieves the purposes that Congress has intended. It is off to a good start. A number of countries have seen significant increases in their ability to trade with us, and I don't want anyone to think that we are neglecting these other areas, particularly in Africa. With the HIV/AIDS crisis upon us in Sub-Saharan Africa, I am proud that the United States was in the forefront of starting the Global Trust Fund. We are adding another $200 million to our original $300 million contribution for a $500 million contribution over two years to the Global Trust Fund, in addition to hundreds of millions of additional dollars that are dedicated to HIV/AIDS work and many more hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, that the Department of Heath and Human Services invests in trying to find a cure for this terrible disease.

Mr. Chairman, we also are concerned about the situation in our own hemisphere. We are pleased that the Summit of the Americas last year was such a success. I will leave this afternoon for the Caribbean where I will participate with all the foreign ministers of CARICOM in a discussion of their needs, regional security, regional counter-drug and counter-terrorist activities, but most importantly, economic development on the CARICOM area.

And we are anxious to move forward on our agenda for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. I think that we have demonstrated to the world that we start at home by making sure we take care of things in this hemisphere, and that is based on fundamentals of democracy and open and free trade.

So I think there are enormous opportunities in this new world of post-September the 11th, but there are still continuing tragedies that we have to deal with. And no crisis, no tragedy, takes more of my time than the Middle East. I was working on this up till 8 o'clock last night in conversations with the Minister of Defense of Israel who is here, Mr. Ben Eliezer. And I spent a great deal of time in recent days with Palestinian delegations and with the Foreign Minister of Israel.

We need the end to violence in the region. With the end of violence, then we can move forward into the Tenet work plan, into the Mitchell peace plan, into the vision that President Bush laid out at the UN last fall, a vision that includes the establishment of a Palestinian state called Palestine. President Bush is the first president to say that in an international forum. We have moved quite a ways in the last year. A Palestinian state that will live side by side in peace with a Jewish state called Israel. That is our vision. We will not walk away from that vision. We will do everything we can to achieve that vision. I laid down a comprehensive view after the President's statement in my speech at Louisville. General Zinni went over to try to get the process started.

The process was stopped because of continued bombing, continued violence, and the presence of the ship, the Karine A, which showed that the Palestinians were not serious enough with respect to getting to a cease-fire. So I have made it clear to Chairman Arafat directly, and to his associates, that until the violence is ended, or come as close to ended as is reasonable, and until the incitement ends, until there is an explanation for this ship, and then an understanding that these kinds of activities cannot take place any longer, it's going to be difficult to move forward.

Once that is dealt with, the violence is down, arrests are made, explanations for the ship, then the United States is ready to engage, and I'm confident that Israel will reciprocate at that point so that we can move forward. These two peoples cannot continue to kill one another. They must find a way to move forward, and it begins with an end to the violence. Then there is a roadmap that will take us to negotiations, that will lead us to the resolution of these most difficult issues that are yet ahead. The United States remains committed to that effort. We will do everything we can to make sure that the vision that all of the parties believe in is ultimately achieved.

We also have continuing problems with those nations that the President identified on the "axis of evil," and there are others that could have been tossed into this camp. With respect to Iraq, for example, the President made it clear: let the inspectors in. You have seen speculation in the press lately that the Iraqis want to discuss this. As I said yesterday to some of your Senate colleagues, there isn't much to discuss. We know what the resolution calls for: you let the inspectors in. You're the ones who claim you don't have these weapons of mass destruction; let the inspectors in. You're the ones who say that we're denying food and goods for your people. Smart sanctions will take care of that; let the inspectors in. But without conditions, we don't trust you. That's why we need inspectors, and that's why they have to be free to do it any way that they think is appropriate to establish that you are not conducting the kinds of activities that we suspect you of, which you claim you are not doing.

I just might touch finally then on Afghanistan, Mr. Chairman, before turning it over to your questions. We should be very proud of what we have accomplished in Afghanistan in the last four-plus months. We should be enormously proud of the wonderful young men and women in uniform who went and did such a brilliant job with the Northern Alliance, and toppled the Taliban and flushed the al Qaida out and has them on the run.

We should be proud of our diplomats, who did such an excellent job at the Bonn Conference in creating an interim authority. There were many people who thought it wasn't going to work, we couldn't possibly pull these people together. But it happened. A lot of credit goes to Mr. Brahimi and the United Nations, but also to our Ambassador Dobbins and a number of other people who did an excellent job in bringing this about.

Now our challenge is to support Chairman Karzai as he starts to build from nothing. I am very happy that also, with a great deal of help on the part of America's diplomats, we were able to put together an international conference on reconstruction in Tokyo, which came up with $4.5 billion. Much more will be required. Under British leadership, the International Security Assistance Force is off to a good start.

But much more needs to be done. We need a national army created in Afghanistan, we need a national police force. And we are hard at work with Chairman Karzai and his associates to make this happen. And we have to make sure a Loya Jirga takes place soon, and that we transition this interim authority into a permanent authority, and then the Afghan people have the chance to participate in full and free elections within two years' time.

So Mr. Chairman, let me just close by saying that we do have lots of challenges ahead of us, lots of crises before us. But there are so many good things that are going on -- a new look at Central Asia; India-Pakistan, even in the crisis situation they are in at the moment, there is an opportunity to solve that crisis diplomatically, and I think we will be able to do that with continued American engagement. And when that is over, we will find that America has a new set of opportunities with both India and Pakistan that we might not have had before.

In Central Asia, the Great Game will not break out again. America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia, of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before. Russia, China -- signs are looking good. Europe: solid. We are doing more with other parts of Asia. We are engaged in Africa. We are engaged in our own hemisphere.

We are engaged on the basis of principle, principle grounded in democracy as the system that works, and the others tend not to. We're engaged on the basis of free market economies, and we are pushing for trade liberalization and breaking down trade barriers, so we can help nations start up the economic ladder, and get their people out of poverty and despair.

All people want the same thing for their children: food on the table, a roof over their head, clothes on their back, schooling, health care, and a hope for a better future for your children. It comes with democracy, it comes with free market economics.

An important part of the President's speech which also undergirds our foreign policy was his talk about values in the latter part of the State of the Union speech. Not American values, not European values, not even Islamic values, but universal values of freedom, of peace. God's values, given to each man and woman on earth to pursue their destiny, limited only by their willingness to work, the system in which they are allowed to work, and by their own ambition.

That is the basis upon which we conduct our foreign policy. It is the message that I give to my staff and to my ambassadors, your ambassadors, the American people's ambassadors around the world: manifest to the world our values. Don’t preach them, don’t lecture them, just manifest them. And more and more people will come to the understanding that this is a value system they ought to take a hard look at, because it works, and the others don’t.

And I thank you for your support, and I look forward to your continued support in doing the work of America's diplomats, but more importantly, doing the work that the American people have given to us to do.