Where Industry and Security Intersect
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Good evening and thank you very much for that kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here. I would like to express my appreciation to Robert Janssen and Via Forum for holding this event and inviting me to speak to this distinguished audience of corporate executives.
Any conference today on security must address the impact that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and those thereafter have had on all of us. To be sure, those attacks occurred in the United States, and I will be speaking this evening from the perspective of an American. But all nations have had to readjust to the realities of the global system that have now become so apparent.
Of course, the realities of terrorism did not begin on September 11; they have been with us for many years. However, the events of that day profoundly affected and dramatically changed our appreciation of those realities. That appreciation is manifested in a variety of contexts. It shapes, for example, our view in the United States of the dangers posed by states that sponsor terrorism or threaten to proliferate weapons of mass destruction – such as Iraq. As you are all aware, the United Nations Security Council made clear in Resolution 1441 that it will no longer tolerate Iraq’s continued failure to comply with repeated U.N. demands to surrender or destroy its weapons of mass destruction.
In the end, the international community – one way or another – will succeed in disarming Iraq. But other threats will – and do – remain. One of the most significant threats is a new breed of global terrorism – aimed at our economies and our way of life. As the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written, we are currently involved in a struggle between those of us who wish to live in a “World of Order” and those who thrive in a “World of Disorder.”