The moral legacy of the Democratic Party has been one of both strength and thoughtfulness when it comes to protecting America. FDR led us through to success in our greatest conflict, World War II. Harry Truman was there at the crucible of the Cold War. John Kennedy went eyeball to eyeball with the Soviets in our greatest nuclear crisis.  So we have that history. It’s only really been since the Vietnam War that we have had to labor under the perception that Democrats are deficient on national security. And there’s no reason why we should allow it.

So, what to do? It will have those substantive and political consequences if we allow it to persist that will not be to our benefit. I was struck yesterday on the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. I turned on MSNBC and they replayed their coverage from that day. It was very emotional as you watched those buildings falling.  The coverage of the unveiling of the memorial at the Pentagon, with those benches there for dozens who were killed in that strike. It is a dangerous world. We see that every day in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the tribal areas of Pakistan, with the possible succession in North Korea, with Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear capability, with events in London, or Bali, or Madrid, involving international acts of terror. And of course, we were reminded of it here at home again yesterday.

So much has changed, and we need to have a strategic doctrine and tactical steps that are combined to deal with new and emerging threats. And we need to annunciate that as Democrats, to assure the American people that we’re up to the challenge.

First, the doctrine that we relied upon so long and so well during the Cold War is not as applicable today as it used to be. The doctrine of deterrence works very well against rational actors and nation-states. But the phenomenon of global terrorism is, shall I say, our first post-nation-state struggle. These are not national entities. As a matter of fact, they transcend national borders, and that makes it much more difficult. Deterrence doesn’t work so well when your adversaries are perfectly willing to die in the pursuit of their goals. They’re suicidal.

So what do you do? You have to be more forward-leaning and proactive.  Not preemptive, but proactive. You have to harness all your nation’s capabilities. Your economic assets, your financial assets, diplomatic resources, cultural resources, as well as your military resources, in trying to prevent, limit, and deal with these problems before they come to fruition. You can’t just sit back and allow events to unfold.

This is also an asymmetric threat. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s not a level playing field. The estimates are that the annual budget—as best as we can determine such a thing—of Al-Qaeda is $10 million, not a lot more. And yet it costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually to deal with the threat that they pose. The 9/11 attack cost maybe a million dollars to carry out, and yet cost us incalculable human lives. There’s no price tag for that, but it costs us hundreds of millions of dollars to try to protect ourselves annually from that type of thing. How do you sustain a struggle that is so disproportionate?

Well, you need allies. Not because we are weak, but because they make us stronger. Allies are a force multiplied. We are not rich enough or powerful enough to deal with all the challenges that the world presents. We need a people standing by our side in pursuit of our own national security interests. This administration has weakened our alliances in a way that undermines our national security. We need a more robust and muscular diplomacy. Not, once again, because we’re afraid of acting militarily if we must, but because in an asymmetric world, it’s foolish to do that unless you absolutely have to.

Take a situation like Iran. It is much better if we can harness our allies and the rest of the world to prevent Iran from developing nuclear capability through economic, financial, and diplomatic means than to have to resort to military force because of all the unpredicted consequences that might lead to. And yet this administration has undermined our diplomatic efforts. They’re a little late to the table, now in the 11th hour, but Iran has made a lot of progress that perhaps would not have taken place if they had chosen a more subtle and effective approach to dealing with Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

We have to reform our military capabilities. We still spend way too much money dealing with the least likely threats. Some of our adversaries are evil, but they’re not stupid. The least likely threat to America is a conventional war launched by a nation- state, because they know that is going directly at us at our core strength. They’re more likely to come after us in asymmetric ways:  a biological or sniper attack of some kind, dealing with the choke point with our economy or system of finances, or irregular warfare that would wear us down and test American resolve. And yet we spend so much of our military investments on dealing with Cold War threats, rather than the newer version of threats.

We need to focus on things like Special Forces and capabilities, air transport capabilities, our own cyber capabilities, these sorts of things. Secretary Gates is doing a much better job than Donald Rumsfeld, but it’s still a work in progress. The next administration and the next Congress will need continue to focus to realign our investment with the threats we face.

Finally, I’m on the Intelligence Committee, and that is one of the most important things we can do. Once a year, they come in to present the budget to the Intelligence Committee. There’s a big thick docket. The first page is blank except for a quote from Napoleon, who once said that a well-placed spy is worth two divisions.

Today, accurate intelligence could save an American city, or prevent an unnecessary war, as in Iraq. That’s how important accurate and timely intelligence is.  We are very good at what they call kinetic action, which is a euphemism for taking military action. We’re very good at that. But you can’t take out the bad guys unless you know where they are. Osama Bin Laden is the foremost case in point. So accurate intelligence is a premium in the world in which we live in today and with the kind of threats we meet. There are still way too many examples where we simply do not know enough about the grave threats that face our country, where our leading intelligence experts come to us and they say they do not know.  Blank spaces, not enough information, ambiguous information, irresolvable conflicts in the information, these sorts of problems.  We need to continue to focus on the improvement of our intelligence capabilities because that, in some ways, drives everything else.

And we face major strategic challenges to our country that have been ignored, or, in fact, exacerbated by this administration over the last seven years.  We cannot separate our national security interests and power from our economic well-being, our financial strength and our energy security. These things are inherently bound up, one into the other.

Just take energy, for example. Even an oil man like T. Boone Pickens is saying that over the next ten years we will have the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world, going from our country abroad to the producers of petroleum and natural gas. A lot of it is going to people who don’t wish us well, like Hugo Chavez. This is unsustainable. It is a major national security issue. We have to focus on this as if it were a direct military threat to our country. And yet that sense of urgency has been lacking.  I hope we can achieve it and harness it yet again.

Another example is trade imbalances. You can sustain them at 2 percent, maybe 3 percent.  Ours is at 5, 6, 7 percent. This is not sustainable. We sell off a piece of America each and every year. You can sustain consumption at a level greater than production without grave consequences to your national security interests because financial power and economic power inextricably go down and up with national security interests and power.

We have to have the ability to remove bad people when they threaten to kill Americans. That is essential. That is what national security is— that at the end of the day, we’ve exhausted every available alternative. We have to have that capability. But we’re not going to be able to kill all of the bad guys. We have to try to prevent them from being created in the first place, and were going to need allies to help us get that job done.

So, in some ways, this is a struggle of ideas. We’re helped by the fact that our adversaries’ ideas are not very compelling. A return to a medieval view of radical Islam in which women have no rights, there are no political rights, and the economy is stilted is not a very compelling vision of the future. Narrow appeals to strike nationalism, or appeals to ethnic groupings are not very compelling visions of a prosperous, forward- moving world. Our adversaries don’t really have a very compelling world view. But we have not given nearly as much thought as to who we are, what we have to offer, and what narrative we can offer to people struggling to realize their own aspirations. We need to form a narrative to expound why is it in their interest to join with America, to stand by our side, and enhance a view of a better, more prosperous, more just world. This is probably the single most important thing we can do.

So as descendants of enlightened thinking, I would offer a speech that Tony Blair gave to a joint session of Congress a few years ago: If we stand for freedom, in all of its manifestations, the freedom to enjoy the fruits of your own labor, the freedom to have you say and speak your mind, the freedom to worship God as you see fit, the freedom to associate with people of your own choosing, the freedom to choose your own political leaders. This is a powerful force in human history and a powerful force in human nature.  It puts us on the right side of those in power rather than against them. And if we can explain to people, how hard is it, how free flow of capital, of ideas, of technology, will enable them to live more prosperous more fulfilling lives, that puts us on the side of their aspirations, and not just our own.

Articulating that kind of view of the world is probably the single most important national security step we can take, because it puts us squarely on the right side of human nature and human history. We have not given nearly enough thinking to that over the last seven years, and I think now the time has come that we must.