The United States must continue to focus upon the ideals of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in order to succeed in the war against terror, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday in his opening address for the George F. Kennan Centennial Conference.
His speech addressed current and future U.S. foreign policy and also honored former diplomat George Kennan '25's formulation of contaiment theory during the Cold War.
"Few people ever find the right balance between the need to adopt a coldly objective attitude toward the world's danger, and the equally important need to allow oneself to embrace and to be guided by ideals," Powell said. "George Kennan found that balance, and so must we."
Powell's address on "The New Security Environment" kicked off a day-long conference celebrating Kennan's centennial birthday.
While Powell articulated an idealistic vision for U.S. foreign policy, he also defended some of the administration's more contentious foreign policy choices, including its decision to invade Iraq. He then called for the continued efforts to stem nuclear proliferation in the war against terror.
"The tragedy of September 11, 2001, was terrible enough," Powell said. "But the war on terrorism isn't just about al-Qaida, or just preventing another disaster on the scale of 9/11. The war on terrorism is even more about preventing the fusion of weapons of mass destruction with terrorist groups trying to acquire them. It's about preventing a catastrophe on a scale much larger than what happened on 9/11."
Though many international experts, including former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay, now believe that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction as had previously been claimed, Powell said that the existence of these stockpiles was beside the point.
"I have no doubt in my mind that if the international community had not acted at this time, if sanctions had been withdrawn, the international community went about its business and let Saddam Hussein ignore the will of the international community, it was just a matter of time before that intention, capability, delivery system and all the other wherewithal he had, would have produced the stockpile that would have threatened his own people again, threatened the region and threatened the world," Powell said.
U.S. policy toward Iraq has also influenced countries like Libya to give up their nuclear armaments and weapons development programs by showing them that cooperation with the United States will provide them with greater security, Powell said.
Powell also discussed a variety of policy issues, including the six-party talks with North Korea and Israel-Palestine conflict; however, he never strayed far from his themes of democracy and liberal values.
"We never give up, never stop looking for opportunities to push forward, so that we, the free peoples of the 21st century, will define our age, not the terrorists and proliferators who assail us," Powell said. "We must focus on what inspires us, on what brings the good people of the world together. We've got to fight for the positive — for liberty, for freedom, for democracy."
Crystal Tiger Award
Following his speech, Powell was awarded the inaugural Crystal Tiger Award, which is given by the undergraduate student body to a person who has had a "transformative impact on the world," according to an email from Rishi Jaitly '04, the coordinator of the award selection committee.
"I am thrilled for how receptive Secretary Powell was of our award and for how much he wanted to interact with the students," Jaitly said. "The award means a lot to him coming from the students and that is one of the intentions of the award."
Student response
While Powell received a warm reception from the audience in Richardson Auditorium, protestors from the Princeton Peace Network gathered outside to distribute fliers titled "Powell Lies, Who Dies?"
PPN member Danilo Mandic '07 said he was angry that Powell received the Crystal Tiger after "six months of lying to the U.N. and to the world, fabricating evidence, invading Iraq and massacring its population."
Powell's presence on campus required a large security detail including a personal protection detail, bomb dogs and a SWAT team. There were no security problems, Steven Healy, director of Public Safety, said.
Powell's address was followed by two panels focusing on Kennan's legacy, his contributions to foreign policy and the future of American foreign policy and containment theory.
Several of the panelists, including John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Joseph Nye '58, the dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, disagreed with Powell's statement that the invasion of Iraq would prevent other countries from pursuing nuclear programs.
"Invading states creates powerful incentives for others to gain nuclear weapons because they are a wonderful deterrent," Mearsheimer said. "Trying to transform the Arab-Muslim world into a sea of democracies is very dangerous because even democracies want nuclear weapons."
While military success in Iraq may have strengthened U.S. hard power — traditional military and diplomatic influence over other countries — the invasion itself, Nye said, may have weakened U.S. soft power — the ability to make cultural and political values attractive to other countries. He also said that North Korea will test whether the Bush administration's policy will be implementable in the future.
Nye added that the United States' "unilateralist" policy has lessened its ability to achieve its international goals.
"The paradox of American power is that the most powerful country since Rome cannot achieve its policy goals alone," he said. "Military power alone cannot produce success. We need international coalitions to address common threats. We cannot succeed by the sword alone. It was soft power that transformed the Soviet Union from within, just as Kennan had predicted."
Other panelists included Robert Tucker, a professor emeritus of politics at the University, Jack Matlock, former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Ambassador Robert Hutchings and U.S. Army Col. Dallas Brown. The conference concluded with a tribute to Kennan, given by John Lewis Gaddis, a Yale professor and Kennan's official biographer.
The conference was organized by the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
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