Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the Bush administration’s record in the war on terror and offered an upbeat assessment for the future of transatlantic relations in an hour-long address before a capacity crowd in Gaston Hall on Friday.
Powell delivered the fourth annual Herbert Quandt Distinguished Lecture on the eve of the third anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and at the end of a week that has seen a surge in terrorist attacks in Russia and Indonesia in addition to increased American troop casualties in Iraq.
“We didn’t start this struggle. We didn’t invite it. And we don’t relish it,” he said. “But we have no choice but to engage and prevail in this struggle because our freedoms and our hopes for a better world depend on us meeting this challenge and defeating it.”
While Powell said that it was difficult to measure progress in a war that was “unlike any other,” he listed the administration’s achievements – the ousting of regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, increased cooperation from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in uprooting terror cells and coercive diplomacy that brought Libya to concede its weapons programs.
“All of these achievements have come about because the United States of America was willing to stand firm,” he said, “because President Bush was willing to stand firm.”
The address aimed to assess American relations with Europe and Powell said that the end of the Cold War had ushered in the need for the restructuring in the alliances between Europe and the U.S.
Powell dismissed the idea that Europe and America had grown apart as a result of the end of the Cold War.
“There’s some doubt that we can restore the bonds this time around,” he said. “They say the Cold War is over. The Soviet threat no longer binds us together. We have a capabilities gap and a values gap that are too wide to bridge we’re told. Not true. Don’t believe it.”
Powell described changes in Europe, including “a revolutionary experiment in continent-wide federalism” ushered in by the expanding European Union as well as new American attitudes that shifted away from a “Eurocentric” view of the world, as the contributing factors to the alliance’s realignment.
“I’d be worried if we weren’t restructuring and reconstructing our relationship in the face of the dramatic changes we’ve experienced over the past dozen years,” he said. “That would be a sign of a falling, failing alliance. That would be a sign of stagnation.”
He listed past events that had seen disagreements between Europeans and Americans, including the Suez Canal crisis, France’s military withdrawal from NATO, the Vietnam War and the American deployment of intermediate range missiles in Western Europe, noting that the transatlantic alliance had been able to overcome these disagreements.
“Our past differences across the Atlantic were never so significant that they prevented us from acting on shared interests, acting on principles that related to matters of highest importance,” he said. “And that’s still the case.”
In a 30-minute question-and-answer session that followed, students queried the secretary on a range of issues, from the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to internal disagreements within the administration over the Iraq war.
Powell outlined his responsibility to President Bush as one who would counsel and inform the president about his different options, and that it was the president, not any particular cabinet member, that had been elected to make the final decisions.
After the president makes his decision, Powell said, it remains everyone’s responsibility to carry out that decision, adding that Bush had “not made a decision that I have found difficult to execute.”
“We might be debating something at the margin or the nuance and that’s the way government runs,” he said. “The president is served when he has differences of opinion.”
One day after labeling the humanitarian crisis in Darfur as “genocide” before a Senate hearing, Powell said that the United States was prepared to “ratchet up the pressure” on the Sudanese government by threatening sanctions. But he added that there were no plans for the use of military force.
Powell also said that elections in Afghanistan would go on as scheduled, highlighting the beginning of the presidential campaign last week in preparation for the Oct. 9 elections and the fact that 18 candidates, including two women, were vying for the office.
“They haven’t gotten to televised ads yet,” he joked. “I’m not sure that they’re ready for that much democracy yet.”
Before beginning his address, Powell lauded Georgetown University for its recent work with the State Department, including its role in co-sponsoring two Afghan-American reconstruction summits. He also applauded the role of the School of Foreign Service in preparing students for work in the Foreign Service, referring to the SFS as a “farm team” for the State Department.
