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Release Date: 10/01/05 00:00:00
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton University
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
75th Anniversary Celebration
October 1, 2005
Well thank you, Anne-Marie, for that really gracious introduction. It is true we did talk about the possibility of my teaching. Had I agreed to do that I would have had to bail out before the first class, which I think would have put you in a difficult spot. So maybe that worked out very well. But perhaps at sometime in the future.
It is really great to be here, though. This is a very distinguished group of people. The school is very distinguished. As you know, your dean is very distinguished and has written and spoken very thoughtfully about some of the challenges that we face in the international arena as we move into an epic at this point in which the network of relationships that will cross national boundaries increasingly thickens and we have essentially international institutions that arise not from the conventional ambassadorial routes or the big UN multilateral routes but through a series of perhaps less visible but very important routes in the legal arena and the economic arena. So you’ve got a very distinguished dean.
I’m proud to be here to speak as I close this anniversary celebration. I also follow in some very difficult footsteps, I know. My colleague Secretary Rice was here to kick-off this discussion and General Petraeus, who is I know very widely admired as a very thoughtful and skillful military leader, I understood spoke earlier today.
Of course the Woodrow Wilson School is named after Woodrow Wilson, who was a far-seeing and devoted student of the importance of America’s role in the world – an individual for whom America’s purpose was very clear. I think his words were, “to discover and maintain liberty among men.”
The desire and respect for liberty of course binds us together as Americans, but it also binds together the free nations of the world, and in fact I would venture to say binds together even those people who live in nations that are unfree. I agree with the President, who often says that we should never sell people short by assuming that they don’t aspire to the freedom and the rule of law to which we aspire and cherish. I think time and again, we’ve seen the desire for liberty and freedom and common humanity transcend geographic boundaries and unite our world.
I would say when people say it’s not possible that there are parts of the world that can’t be free or that can’t follow the rule of law, I have to go back to my experience and my recollection of being in high school and college in the 60s and 70s when the thought of the Berlin Wall coming down, and Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia and Romania being free countries, was viewed as a pipe dream. Of course now we live in a world in which that is very much true. If you look at the changes, it really ought to inspire us not to have a short-sighted horizon but a very long-range horizon and to inspire to the greatest dreams that we can dream.
But beyond the questions of liberty and freedom, there are a whole host of other ways in which our world is increasingly interdependent. We all remember when the tsunami struck Asia last December, taking hundreds of thousands of lives and destroying entire communities in the span of a few hours. Of course that is a witness to the enormous power nature has, when wind and water are thrust against what seemed to us to be very sturdy communities. It’s just awe inspiring to see how nature wipes it away in one fell swoop. But in the wake of the tsunami, we also saw something that was very elevating – an unprecedented outpouring of generosity and support from many nations of the world, including a remarkable relief effort led by the United States.
On the other hand, when Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita roared ashore last month, it devastated our own country. Large areas of the Gulf Coast were submerged either in the initial storm surge or in the subsequent flooding that occurred when the levees broke in New Orleans. And then we saw an international response turned in our direction that I think was equally uplifting. More than 130 countries and over a dozen international organizations immediately offered vital aid, supplies, and personnel to the United States to support our recovery efforts.
I had the privilege of speaking with a number of my counterparts in other countries, including England and Mexico and Germany, who were very, very quick to say not only did they offer their prayers and their hopes to our speedy recovery, but their resources and their personnel. We had the uplifting vision of Mexican military personnel actually crossing the border into the United States to assist in feeding the hungry, Dutch and German pumps were delivered to help us drain New Orleans, and Canadian officials actually delivered aid personally to residents of some affected communities. So as we continue to grapple with these unprecedented disasters and draw the necessary lessons from their aftermath, one thing is clear – in times of crisis, the international community does understand how to overlook its differences and act together to help fellow nations.
These disasters also remind us that in a world of rapid globalization and increasing interdependence, some of our greatest challenges are not strictly or exclusively domestic in origin or in effect. In the 20th century, it was commonplace to observe that globalization of commerce, communications, financial systems, and transportation forced an entirely new set of alliances in the world. And we take those alliances for granted today because they’re now a part of the functioning of our global economy and the global exchange of ideas and information.
But we are also witnessing today a globalization of threats and challenges that face countries of the world, and these are not only intentional man-made threats but those that are natural as well. If you look at the news, you see the threat of international terrorism, perhaps most recently again this morning in Bali, potential pandemics such as avian flu, computer viruses, and even catastrophic natural events like hurricanes or tsunamis that can affect more than one country and have cascading effects on many more.
All of these threats have in common the fact that they do not begin or end within a single geographic border or sovereign country. And no country acting along can effectively shield itself from the dangers posed by these kinds of threats and challenges.
Many of you may remember the power outages a few years ago that affected the Northeastern part of the country. If you happened to be in Canada on that day, you’d remember that Canada lost power as well because Canada shares the same electrical grid in part with the United States. So it is this kind of interdependency that requires increasingly that we focus on common strategies and common systems of protection.
Of course terrorism is a particular example of that. We learned this in our own country on 9/11. We’ve seen it in Madrid, Bali, London, Egypt, Israel, and many other corners of the world since. Terrorism is a scourge that is felt globally and has to be addressed globally. To protect ourselves against those who want to stamp out liberty and freedom, and want to plunge the world into an ideology of intolerance, we have to operate through a new level of commitment and cooperation among members of the international community.
And actually, since 9/11 we’ve accomplished a great deal doing just that, working with our international partners to identify and disrupt terrorist cells, dismantle terrorist organizations, and eliminate terrorist safe-havens – all of which are essential to winning the war on terror. As the President has said repeatedly, our strategy must include fighting terrorism where it exists overseas, taking the war to the enemy, and bringing terrorists to justice before they can carry out attacks. But of course we also have to have layers of defense against terrorism, and in all of this we have to work together with our partners overseas.
If we are going to arrive at a day when terrorism no longer casts a dark cloud over the civilized world, we have to be prepared to advance international cooperation to hitherto unseen heights. And that’s because of course terrorism is also spreading its ideology of hatred and intolerance around the world, and we have to match it in geographic location point by point.
The strategy has to be somewhat different than our traditional war-making strategy. We’re not going to simply defeat terrorism by amassing superior forces in the field and then having a great set-to battle. The fact is that terrorists plan, and raise funds, and recruit operatives using a 21st century network style of organization that relies on many of the same systems and structures which drive our global commerce. They’re basically using our own positive tools as weapons against us. So these communications networks, financial services networks, transportation systems, and global supply chains become the very battlegrounds of the war against terror, because these are the critical nodes that bind us together and create our own positive networks.
And therefore we have to look at those networks, assess their vulnerabilities, see where terrorists are trying to exploit them, and respond with an international partnership in-kind. We need therefore to cut off the terrorists’ communications, we need to isolate their financial resources, and we need to eliminate their transportation capabilities – and we need to do it in a way that does not interfere with or disrupt the positive benefits we continue to get from a globalized economy and the exchange of ideas, people and services all around the world.
So what is the Department of Homeland Security doing in this new kind of struggle against an ideology of intolerance? Well over the past two years the Department has been working very closely with international partners to pinpoint vulnerabilities in our common international network, plug the gaps in the network, and we’re doing it in every area of intercourse around the world, whether it be container security to biometrics that can be used to assess who’s coming into the country and who’s leaving the country, to secure travel documents, to making sure that our maritime and air domains remain free of terrorist activity.
One example, through US VISIT, which is our system that gives us the capability to biometrically confirm the identity of all visitors at our ports of entry using a simple fingerprint, we can now check people who are coming-in, in real time have their fingerprint electronically matched against a database, see if their identity is in fact what the passport says, and let the vast majority in the country with little more than a moment or two of hesitation at the border. At the same time, US-VISIT has proved again and again that we can use it to capture people whether they are murderers, which happened a couple of weeks ago, or terrorists, as has happened previously, who are coming-in under a false identity, who pose a threat to our country, and who therefore we want to make sure are not allowed to enter and move freely.
Similarly, in the maritime sector, we now have the Container Security Initiative that actually allows our inspectors to work with our foreign counterparts to check cargo at the 20 busiest international ports overseas, at the port of embarkation, before that cargo ever loads on a ship and enters an American port.
We’ve established new data sharing agreements with the European Union that allow us to electronically screen passengers on international flights even before they arrive in the United States. So that is putting our ability to screen and protect out ever further before people come in and place us at risk.
And of course we want to do this reciprocally. We want to afford our international partners the same ability to use our information to protect themselves as we ask them to provide us so we can protect ourselves. In fact, last week I had the privilege of meeting with a delegation from the European Union to discuss how we can further use Passenger Name Record information to meet our security goals and our privacy goals while creating the fewest possible inconveniences. One of the advantages of this, by the way, would be eliminating or drastically reducing the need for those flight diversions that you sometimes hear about on CNN when the plane is turned around because someone’s gotten on the plane who is actually on the no-fly list or a potential terrorist suspect.
All of these endeavors that DHS is undertaking recognize that we are a part of a global network and that in order for that network to function, people and goods have to be able to move across borders rapidly, efficiently, and safely, but without sacrificing either security or personal privacy.
The fact of the matter is if you stand back, fundamentally we share the same belief as other nations do all around the world in the importance of personal privacy and civil liberties. To be sure, sometimes we differ a little bit in the precise way we apply those values in the individual context in which we live.
I’ll give you one example. In many countries in Europe it’s considered unremarkable that you are required to carry a personal identification card, that the police can stop you, and if you don’t have the card you can be brought to the police station. In other countries, such as in England where they’re debating the possibility of doing this, it’s causing a considerable amount of controversy. On the other hand, there are things we routinely do or the British routinely do in terms of access to phone records and telephone dialing records that are considered to be very, very controversial in continental Europe.
The point is not that one society values privacy more than the other. We all, I think, value it a great deal. It is simply that our history and our culture tends to, in the application of this set of values, sometimes differ. That of course creates a challenge within which we need to work. We have to find a way to align our particular cultural and historical preferences so that we can work together efficiently and still at the same time all continue to commit ourselves to the fundamental values of liberty and privacy, which all free societies hold very dear.
One way to do this is the use of technology and information screening. If we can screen effectively for information we can actually be less intrusive in terms of what we do. And effective screening requires us to have two very important capabilities
First, we need to have the right kind of technology to screen dangerous people or dangerous things, while protecting sensitive information and minimizing delays and inconvenience. And second, we need to have the right kind of information and intelligence so we can quickly and accurately identify specific security risks. Both of these requirements necessitate that we and our partners overseas have sophisticated information gathering and information sharing capabilities, and sophisticated tracking capabilities.
And I’ll give you a specific example. We worry a lot about containers coming into this country, and there are millions coming in. If one were to inspect every single container, you would basically destroy global maritime trade because the time it would take to move goods and services would make it utterly impractical. At the same time, we need to make sure something really bad doesn’t come in. So the key is an intelligent use of screening in terms of information and data about what is in containers, greater visibility into the constituent pieces that wind up being put into a container before it’s sealed, and with that kind of intelligence we know where to target specifically the kinds of containers we do need to look into, either using technology that allows us to do a non-intrusive inspection or even by opening the containers and looking personally. So that’s the kind of marriage of intelligent information gathering and screening technology that we need to use as we move forward internationally.
Of course it’s obvious that when we build these systems we cannot do so in isolation. We need information and vital technology from our international partners. Most important, we need to make sure we’re building compatible systems and not creating additional vulnerabilities or inconveniences or security gaps because we’re each pursuing separate kinds of systems. This is something that I’ve spoken at great length with my European counterparts about. As we talk about systems to screen passengers, biometric passports, we need to make sure we have interoperable technology. We want to make it easier and more convenient, and this requires a degree and intensity of international cooperation, which is frankly far greater than I think what we’ve experienced in previous decades. It’s certainly far more than I envisioned when I first came into my current position.
As we talk of course about international interdependence and cooperation, we should pay special attention to our own neighborhood here in North America, because nowhere is this more critical than with our neighbors to the north and to the south – Canada and Mexico. That’s one of the reasons the President launched an initiative with the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico called the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
The purpose of this partnership is to recognize that we need to continue to endorse and encourage a vital trading partnership with Canada and Mexico and at the same time we have to have a common playbook for managing security at our land borders, sharing intelligence, improving shared infrastructure, and all doing so without any cost to cross-border trade.
Through this partnership, which we’ve been working on and which I’ve been involved personally, our countries have agreed to coordinate efforts in all of these areas, and we are already seeing some of the positive benefits this kind of alliance provides. We have a new tri-lateral trusted traveler program that will allow traveling between our countries to be yet easier and more secure for frequent border-crossers. And we are doing the same thing with respect to cargo and trade as well – lanes that allow reliable shippers to pass their cargo much more rapidly between countries so we can get the benefit of NAFTA and our other trading alliances.
But I also would be remiss in talking about our neighbors if I didn’t spend a moment taking about the particular challenge of illegal migration across the border, which I think is an issue of great sensitivity now in this country and in other countries as well. We have to acknowledge the fact that vast numbers of illegal migrants entering this country pose three challenges. There is a challenge to security. Some fraction of the people coming across are actually criminals or could be intending to do harm. There is a challenge to sovereignty. It seems to me one of the basic prerequisites of having a country and a national government is some ability to control one’s own borders.
And of course there is a big humanitarian dimension, because we see people being taken advantage of and exploited by organized criminal groups who bring them across the border. They can become victims of crime, they can be stranded in the desert. Sadly, every year in the Sonoran desert of Arizona you hear of individuals who die because they were left alone. There is no water and there is no food. I will tell you that our Border Patrol agents put their own lives at risk plunging into rivers and climbing down cliffs in order to rescue people who are stranded. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they do not.
That’s why it’s very important for us as we move forward to really begin to put the resources and the planning and strategy in place to finally gain effective control of our borders. A key piece of that, though, will be a recognition that without some legalized channel for temporary workers, as the President has said, you are putting an enormous tide of economic migration up against our ability to control the border, and that would make it very much more difficult. A successful strategy is a holistic strategy that creates a channel for legal economic activity for temporary workers, which is something of course being very much debated now. And then with that channel we reduce the pressure of illegal migration and we can then focus our resources on the things we are most concerned about.
Finally, let me talk about one other issue. We, of course, want to be friends to the world. I mean, this is a university and we want to attract the best and the brightest from all over the world, not only to share what they have to contribute, but so that we can share our values and create goodwill all over the world for the people returning home.
In the wake of 9/11, I think we are acutely aware that both the reality and maybe to some larger extent the image of America as an unwelcoming country began to spread in some parts of the world. I’ve spoken with Secretary Rice about it, and I’ve spoken with the President about it. We’re all committed to making sure the world views us as a welcome place for those who want to visit, who want to study, and ultimately for those who want to migrate and become American citizens.
So that as we continue to make sure our security is being attended to, we need to be more streamlined and more effective in welcoming people. We’ve done this in the area of student visas and we’re more user-friendly on-line, and we want to continue to be moving in the direction of simplifying and lowering the burdens for those who want to come into this country, in a way that doesn’t sacrifice security, but in a way that both in reality and in our image tells the world please come to the United States, we want to welcome you as our ancestors were welcomed in this country in the generations past.
We’ve seen a world that has come together to defeat tyranny in generations past, whether it was Nazi tyranny, or whether it was tyranny more recently in the latter part of the 20th century. We’ve seen a world come together to defeat oppression in South Africa. We’ve seen a world come together to reduce human pain and suffering. As in the difficult trials in the past that we have confronted and surmounted, I’m convinced that together we can build the necessary alliances to confront our current international challenges – terrorism, pandemic disease, and natural catastrophes – and that we will do so all the better if we work together internationally.
I can tell you that we will work tirelessly toward this goal, and I am confident that our partners and our allies will join us in doing so. I think the challenge for you all will be - those of you who are students – as you enter the world is to seize the ability to enlist in this great struggle and help us move forward so that we leave our children a legacy of success in the same way our forbearers left one to us.
Thank you.
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This page was last reviewed/modified on 10/01/05 00:00:00.