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- 10/21/08: Remarks by Henrietta Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance at the White House Development Summit
- 10/08/08: Remarks by Henrietta Fore, USAID Administrator and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance at The President's Freedom Agenda
- 10/01/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the Ceremony Marking the Full Operational Capacity of Africa Command (AFRICOM)
- 09/25/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at 2008 Millennium Development Goal Malaria Summit, New York - "U.S. Leadership in the Fight Against Malaria"
- 09/22/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the White House Symposium on Advancing Global Literacy - "U.S. Commitment to Advancing Global Literacy"
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Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore
Acting Director of Foreign Assistance & Acting USAID Administrator
and Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Former U.S. Secretary of State
George C. Marshall Award Ceremony
Washington, DC
August 8, 2007
Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us today, and thank you for joining us, Secretary Eagleburger and Mrs. Eagleburger. We are delighted that you are here with the United States Agency for International Development. And on behalf of USAID, allow me to congratulate you as well as Secretary Schultz on being selected as the 2007 recipients of the George C. Marshall Distinguished Lecture Series Award. This is our agency's highest honor.
Each year, USAID presents this award to those individuals whose ideals most closely embody those of General George C. Marshall and who have made outstanding contributions to international peace, stability, and development. Past honorees include such luminaries as Dr. Norman Borlaug, Dr. Amartya Sen, and Congressman Jim Colby.
George Marshall provided extraordinary leadership during an extraordinary time in our nation's history. General Marshall helped lead this country and the allied nations to victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. He was the architect of a $16.2 billion economic recovery program, which came to be known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan marked the first time in history that the victors of war agreed to rebuild the vanquished and to engage their former enemies as friends and allies. The United States Agency for International Development traces its origins to George Marshall and to this historic initiative.
There are few individuals as deserving of this honor as Secretary Eagleburger and Secretary Schultz, but let me say a few words about our very distinguished honoree who is with us today. And we look forward to honoring Secretary Schultz at a separate event in San Francisco.
Secretary Eagleburger enjoyed a brilliant 27-year career at the department of State, during which time he helped chart and guide the United States foreign policy through the end of the Cold War and the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a young Foreign Service officer in the former Yugoslavia, Secretary Eagleburger helped orchestrate the United States government's humanitarian response in Skopje, devastating earthquake of 1963, bringing significant medical assistance to Macedonia's stricken population. And if agency lore is right, this may have been the beginning of AFTA.
He also has been an outspoken advocate of economic markets and entrepreneurship as transformative instruments of United States foreign policy. Secretary Eagleburger has a very dry, very perceptive, very droll sense of humor. And he once quipped that the Foreign Service has spent 50 years concentrating on political and military affairs at a time when the U.S. economy was preeminent.
And so, as the legendary leader within the Department of State, Secretary Eagleburger also called for a greater balance and integration of all instruments of America's national security - defense, diplomacy, and development - long before it became enshrined in this country's national security strategy. With the first Gulf War and the conflict in the Balkans, Secretary of State Eagleburger confronted many of the same challenges that we face today, including ethnic conflict and state fragility and the threat of tyranny.
As the United States continues to face challenges in new ways, we can draw inspiration from the accomplishments of leaders like General Marshall, like Secretary Eagleburger, and Secretary Schultz. We all know Secretary Eagleburger's background - born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, educated in Wisconsin, served in the Army, at the Department of State, at the National Security Council, in the Department of Defense with Kissinger associates, and back to State as deputy secretary.
What you may not remember is that he was also the undersecretary for management at State Department. (Laughter.) And he was the very first person that I called when I was nominated for the undersecretary for management at State. He was legendary in this role, too. He was legendary because he decided and began to put in place that it was important that economics and business become a main part of the activities of ambassadors and Foreign Service officers in our missions worldwide. And by doing so, I think he fundamentally changed our diplomats and our embassies, and I think he contributed to American competitiveness.
And when I was first nominated, and he gave me good advice, you can imagine all the things that he said. But, of course, he said that you'll have to say no; you'll have to be creative; and you'll have to be focused. And I have tried to follow that.
But I also remember that I was in USAID as the assistant administrator for private enterprise in Asia, when Secretary Eagleburger became Secretary Eagleburger. And I have a few colleagues, such as George - (inaudible) - that were there at that time. And I can tell you that the building was joyous when Secretary Eagleburger was nominated. We were delighted. He was an extraordinary Foreign Service officer. He was extraordinary as our deputy. And he was extraordinary as our secretary.
So on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development, let me thank you, Secretary Eagleburger, for your leadership, your vision, and your important legacy. And if you would all please join me and congratulate Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger. (Applause.)
We will now give the award. (Off mike.)
LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: (Off mike, inaudible) - this doesn't ruin your reputation. (Laughter, inaudible.) Thank you. (Applause.)
Give me a half-hour, I'll be with you. Madame Secretary, I appreciate very much your introduction. My wife had a sneak preview of what you were going to say some time earlier. She looked at me and she said, this is so impressive. I might believe it, if I didn't know better. (Laughter.)
Also, I need to warn you all, I had some notes for a speech, and as I spent the day here talking with our director of USAID, and I don't know all these other titles you have, I've pretty well thrown it out the window now. So I haven't the vaguest idea what I'm going to talk about. But I do want to warn you of one thing. I have a tendency to be excessively blunt sometimes when I give speeches. And it's gotten me in a lot of trouble at one point or another.
But anyway, I keep trying to remember that I should proceed with the Machiavelli principle; some of you may have heard this story, but I hope most of you have not. But you may ask what the Machiavelli story is. And I will explain it to you if you like it or not.
Machiavelli was dying and they got a priest to come and give him the last rites. And Machiavelli is lying on the death bed and the priest comes and stands over him and says, my son, my son, do you repent of your sins and renounce the devil? And there was no answer. So the priest asked two or three more times, same question; no answer. Finally, in great frustration, he said, I ask you for the last time, do you repent of your sins and renounce the devil? Machiavelli looked at him and said, this is no time to make new enemies. (Laughter.)
I will try to - now that I've totally rewritten this mess anyway - I will try to avoid too much in the way of nastiness. But one thing that struck me is, as you were talking, the Marshall Plan was $16.2 billion. That today is peanuts, is it not - to show you how much things have changed. It was a great deal of money at the time.
But anyway, the Marshall Plan set a standard for aid programs ever since, and it set expectations. And the reason - it's never been matched for several reasons, but the most important reason, I think, and one of the reasons that aid programs now are far more complicated, is that we forget that the Marshall Plan was basically aimed at restoring the economies of a number of already well developed states. It is not that we were trying to help the Germans or the French or any of these people build an industry; they already had had one. And they had people who were trained to deal with these issues.
So that when the Marshall Plan was developed, it was developed to restore what had already been there, and certainly to improve it. But we need to remember that one of the reasons it was so successful is that it was aimed at restoring to nations who had a cadre of industrialists or well-done farmers, or whatever you name the category of persons. But they were already well-educated and the problem was not to try to create from whole cloth, but rather to put back into being what had been there before the war in any one of these countries.
So the Marshall Plan - and that's not taking anything away from it - but the Marshall Plan was so successful because it was aimed at precisely restoring those things that had been destroyed in the war. And there is a lesson to all of this, which I think on occasion we have forgotten since. And that is you do need to figure out what it is that is needed. And you need to figure this out not in a broad category, but rather by nation.
The director and I have been talking about that at the table. And the whole point she was making was that one of the things that they're trying to change in the USAID process is to put these programs together in terms of the needs of the country, not in terms of we're going to have $15 billion for education around the world, but what is it that is needed in country x? I gather that is what you're doing. And that, it seems to me is not only a worthwhile reform; one has to ask why it's taken so long before it was recognized as something that ought to be done.
And I would also predict to you, if it hasn't already happened, that as in so many things in our government and in the private sector too - if you will excuse me, NGOs, and people, things of this sort - there are vested interests that don't want to change that system. And a number of those vested interests, I suspect, sit in their offices up on what is called the Hill, and I can tell you from my own personal and agonizing experience that if you have a good new idea, that is not the place to try to get people to pay attention to it. (Laughter.) That is not to say that they can't be managed - Congress can certainly be managed - but it is not necessarily one of those institutions that is most anxious to embrace new and different ideas.
And if I've now gotten the USAID people here very upset because they'll now worry that the Congress is going to say, what the hell did you let that man come up here and talk to you for? (Laughter.) But there is simply no question that it's those kind of reforms - and there are a number of them, I know, that are now in the works - and it's those kinds of reforms that will make a tremendous difference.
And let me go for just a few minutes on why this, in my judgment, is so important. Everybody now, I think, recognizes that we are in a difficult time globally; more difficult than I think people expected at the time the Soviet Union collapsed. And indeed, what we have found is that the period of the Cold War was far more stable than the period we are now living in.
And there is simply no question, I think, at least when I was still in the State Department, what did we spend our time thinking about. How you managed - there were lots of things that at one point or another had to be dealt with - but an overwhelming interest was how do you manage the relationship with the Soviet Union. And if you managed that, a number of other things vitally were important were easily fixed because you were dealing with the one serious problem that faced us every day.
And so in a way, there was a stability to the relationship because neither one of us wanted to go to war really. And that stability is now gone. And if you haven't noticed that, go read your newspaper any day of the week. The fact of the matter is that this country and this world is in a period of transition - not reform - transition, change - name it whatever way you want to.
But the fact of the matter is there is - in my sense at least - this is a historical period very much similar to a number of periods in human history where the world has changed dramatically as a consequence of some particular event. Whether it be the defeat of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna and everything that meant for most of the rest of the century in Europe and well into the 20th century, or whether it be the Greek defeat of the Persians many, many centuries before that - but the changes that that led to. If the Greeks had not won that battle, that struggle, Western civilization would not look at all like it now does. And it is those kinds of changes, those kinds of events that have in fact so often changed human history, and where the consequences of the change are almost always unpredictable. We're in one of those periods right now.
And I am absolutely convinced that there is no way at this point to make much in the way of predictions as to what will develop over the course of the next decades until you examine the specific issues that we're all going to have to face. And one, for example, that I am terribly concerned about - that is the whole question of nuclear weapons. And the fact of the matter is that all of the efforts we and others have gone through to try to bring some sense and some stability to that issue are in fact not necessarily like to achieve very much if you take a look at what is now happening to several countries who seem to be intent on building those weapons.
And if the Western world does not pretty soon make it very clear to those who are venturing into this new world of building nuclear weapons, the generations that follow us will regret very much that we did not do what we could to prevent the developments and the building of nuclear weapons on the part of a number of states that have only one purpose to what they intend with those weapons. And I don't mean to go off on the nuclear issue now other than to point out that we are in a period now where what happens in the course of the next decade or so, whether it be in Iraq or in economic development in what was the Soviet Union - you name the issue - these questions now that are being dealt with or not being dealt with are going to set a new standard for the course of the 21st, 22nd centuries, I believe.
And it is in this regard, if I may come back to the reason I'm up here - it is in this regard that USAID and the similar efforts on the part of other institutions of a similar sort are absolutely critical to the world into which our children and grandchildren are going to be going. And if there is any single factor that should work toward a more peaceful century ahead of us, it is the generation of hope. Hope is the one thing that can, I think, change the future in ways that we will all applaud.
And hope comes - this is where I am a Marxist. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. But Marx and Lenin and Hegel all said that the economic issues were the critical issues in civilization, and I agree with them. We may talk about other issues, but frankly, in my judgment at least, it is how people will live in the future in terms of their wealth, their ability to educate their children, and so forth, that are the critical issues that are going to face us all in the course of the next decades.
Now, that is not to say that there aren't any number of other issues, other problems inherent in what we're facing. But, the fundamental question, I think, toward building a more stable world is to the degree we can create hope in the generations that are now with us and that will be following us, and the people in the countries where they begin to see that there is some hope for them for a better life. And what does that come back to? It comes back to the wealthy nations of the world, the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan, and some others, being willing to give up their vital fluids, if you will - to take from a movie that is too old; most of you won't remember - but to give up their wealth in coordinated ways to try to make it clear to these coming generations that there is hope for a better future.
And as far as the United States and USAID are concerned, it seems to me very clear that the reforms that you are engaged upon can make a critical difference if they can be achieved. And I applaud you and your colleagues for trying, and I hope you will be successful, because it can make a tremendous difference. And if at any time, you want me to get nasty on the subject, I'd be happy to, but I won't do it today.
I simply want to say to you all that if there is hope in the future, it comes from precisely the kinds of activities that this agency is engaged upon. And I encourage you to continue; and I encourage you to take a look at the fact that we have over 50 different institutions in the United States government who are all handing out aid money. Congress apparently felt that if one institution was good, 50 would be better. (Laughter.) And it's a tragedy, because it proliferates where in fact there should not be proliferation, and it confuses where in fact there should not be confusion.
And the fact of the matter is, it is again - it is a different set of reforms - but it is absolutely essential that a major effort be made to reduce the number of institutions that are in fact handing out assistance monies from the United States - be reduced to a sensible number. And in my judgment, all of that and all of the money involved in those efforts ought to be under the direction of one single agency, one single agency head. And she is sitting right there at this table. (Applause.)
Did I do as you told me? (Laughter.) Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. (Applause.) I keep looking behind me to see who it is you're applauding. (Laughter.)
(END)
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