America must work closely with its allies and use both diplomatic and military strategies if it is to successfully fight terrorism, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday in ICC Auditorium.

Clark, who led NATO forces in Kosovo from 1997 to 2000, emphasized the importance of global cooperation in his address while accepting the Jit Trainor Award for distinction in the conduct of diplomacy. “This is a war that has to involve other countries,” he said. “We can’t do it without coalition partners and strong and supportive allies.”

Clark added that “we can’t win this war with bombs and bullets alone. [You] must line up law, diplomacy and force, and if you line them up correctly, you can achieve strategically decisive results without having to be militarily decisive in every operation.”

According to Clark, force, diplomacy and law create an unbeatable combination. “It takes brave soldiers, but it also takes brave diplomats,” he said.

The war in Afghanistan is going “as well as we could expect,” he said, noting that this campaign was very different from traditional warfare. He laid out the various challenges faced by the military in Afghanistan which include simultaneous planning, preparing and fighting, employing ground troops in potential “block by block” battles and constant media attention.

Clark said he was optimistic, however, that the U.S. would find suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. “Justice will be brought to him or he will be brought to justice – of that I’m very certain,” he said. If bin Laden is caught alive, Clark said he would like to see him stand trial in international court, much like Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, and be imprisoned for life.

Clark also spoke about America’s increasing isolationism in the post-Cold War period, and he criticized the public’s lack of knowledge about or interest in foreign affairs. “The 1990s was an unprecedented period of prosperity” in which the U.S. became a global leader, Clark said. “[But] as the U.S. prospered, it also neglected to be engaged abroad in a broad and effective way . We profited from a decade of looking inward but we didn’t pay our dues.”

With so much of the world’s population living in developing countries, Clark noted, America’s abundance might cause an unconscious resentment among these people, or a feeling of “we’re poor because they’re rich,” he said.

“If we’re going to profit from globalization, don’t we have an obligation to develop and create a global safety net for those less fortunate? I think we do,” he said. “It is a struggle of ideas and values.”

America will be able to achieve security by strengthening and adhering to these “founding” values of its government, Clark said. He described a “slow but inevitable revolution” of democratic principles which people continue to fight for across the world.

“We made [the 20th century] the American century,” he concluded. “Now it’s a new century . Much will be expected of us. And if we live for our values, we can make it humanity’s century as well.”

Clark spoke at Georgetown last year in a speech titled, “Kosovo, 1999: What Was Accomplished? How? Why?” He spoke about the progression of events and the discussion leading up to and including the NATO bombings of Belgrade.

Clark is the first military officer to receive the Jit Trainor award, which has been presented to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and former U.S. Middle East Envoy Dennis Ross. Upon accepting the award, he noted that his son had graduated from Georgetown and said, “I have for a long time admired this school.”