Steve Andreasen Speech: American Power and Our World Today

08/28/2005

1st District DFL’ers --

Copied below is a short speech I gave last week in Tyler, Minnesota, (where my grandmother grew up), entitled “American Power and Our World Today.” My remarks were meant to be non-partisan, as was the audience of about 130 from 17 states.  Not surprisingly, all of the questions that followed my remarks expressed serious concern over the war in Iraq.

I also stopped in at the DFL booths at both the Murray and Cottonwood County Fairs on the way back from Tyler.  Thanks to all of you across the District who have worked at the 1st CD County Fair booths this summer.

As always, I’d welcome any comments you may have on the speech.

Best Regards,
Steve

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Steve Andreasen Remarks On American Power And Our World Today

Danebod Fall Folk Meeting, Tyler, Minnesota August 19, 2005

Thank you for that kind introduction.  I also want to thank Sonja Hansen Walker for inviting me to speak here today.  It’s good to be back in southwestern Minnesota.  Tyler is where my grandmother grew up, and I spent a lot of time campaigning for Congress in southwestern Minnesota in 2002.

As some of you know, I had the opportunity to speak at the Danish Family Camp in Luck – West Denmark – Wisconsin around the 4th of July holiday.  As I said to them, it has been an eventful year.

We’ve had an election in the United States last November, and determined the leadership of our country for the next four years in the White House, and two years in Congress.

We’ve also had an election in Iraq last January, and we now have an Iraqi government that is struggling to finish a constitution in the next week in the midst of a large-scale insurgency.

The 9-11 Commission presented its report to the American people last summer, and that became a national best seller.  And as a result of that report, Congress passed the first significant reform of the U.S. intelligence community in over 50 years, creating a new “National Intelligence Director” – a job that has now been filled by John Negroponte.

In March, we had another Commission issue a report on the failure of the U.S. intelligence community prior to the war in Iraq to accurately assess Iraq’s capability to produce weapons of mass destruction – that is, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Moreover, that Commission warns that our Intelligence Community may be doing no better in the case of Iran and North Korea – the two nations President Bush labeled along with Iraq as being part of an “Axis of Evil” three years ago.

We’ve had a series of revelations regarding the abuse of Afghan and Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody, and a series of internal investigations by the military into these matters.

On top of all of this, we are still engaged in a war, or depending on your point of view, at least two wars – that is, the ongoing war in Iraq, and the war against terror and the al Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden.

That’s only a short list of the highlights this past year.  But before we get in to current events, what I thought I’d do first today is just take a few minutes to give you some general thoughts on U.S. national security policy.  After that, I’ll talk briefly about some of the specific challenges that the President, the Administration, the Congress, and indeed, all of us will face in the coming year. And then finally, I’ll open it up to what is always the most interesting, which is your questions and discussion.

The United States

I want to start by talking first about the United States – specifically, about the elements of U.S. power.  Because it is “power” – that is, the ability or capacity to act or influence events – that underpins our national security policy.

Today, the United States is in a position of unprecedented power, no matter how power is measured.  This should remain true for at least the next decade, if not the next twenty years.

Military

Most people when they hear the word “power” think of U.S. military power.  Today, the U.S. military is far superior to any military, or for that matter, any combination of military forces, on the globe. In short, we are capable of fighting anywhere, and in a strictly military sense, we are capable of prevailing on the battlefield anywhere.

We saw that most recently in Afghanistan after the September 11th attacks, where U.S. and local Afghan forces drove the Taliban from power in three months.  And we saw that in 2003 in Iraq, where the U.S. military toppled a regime that had been in power for 30 years in 30 days.

There are a number of reasons why we are so dominant militarily. First, we have the resources.  We easily spend more on defense – over 400 billion dollars per year – than the next 10 countries combined.

Second, we have integrated technology and the battlefield better than any other country.  For example, we use satellites and computers to provide U.S. forces with intelligence in real time – as it’s happening.  What that means is we can give individual soldiers and units the most accurate picture in history of any battlefield while the fighting is taking place, which gives our military a huge advantage.

Third, we have an incredibly well trained, and well motivated, force – with tremendous young men and women.

Now, I would note that the war in Iraq has put that force under great strain – for example, much of the U.S. Army is committed to Iraq, leaving us with little “margin for error” in other parts of the globe.  Our National Guard and Reserve forces are serving extended tours of active duty; we learned just this week that about 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard are expected to be mobilized and deployed to Iraq and the Middle East next year, one of the largest overseas deployments of Minnesota State Guard personnel in 60 years.  And for the first time in years, our military has been struggling to achieve its recruitment goals.

But while all those trends are troubling, it should not obscure the fact that we have the best trained, best led, and best equipped military in the world today.

Another factor in our military dominance is that the only other country or competitor the U.S. has had in the last fifty years with the ability to project military power far from its own territory – that is, the Soviet Union – collapsed almost 15 years ago.  Russia today is not able to project military power outside of its borders; and in fact, it’s having a hard time maintaining control within its borders – specifically, in Chechnya.

Beyond Russia, China, militarily, remains largely a regional power. And while China may yet develop a military capability that could rival that of the United States, it is decades away from achieving that.

Now, I don’t mean to say that we don’t face military threats.  For example:  while China is not able to project military power globally, they are increasingly capable of projecting power across the Taiwan straits.  Last March, China made clear – through the passage of national legislation – that it would act militarily in Taiwan should that island move towards independence.

Also in Asia, North Korea has a very capable military force – armed with thousands of artillery, ballistic missiles, and possibly nuclear weapons – that directly threatens our forces in South Korea and Japan.

And in Iraq today, you are seeing that a very “low-tech” adversary – armed with roadside bombs and using suicide bombers – can inflict serious casualties on our forces.

But these threats – either alone, or combined – don’t change the fact that today, the U.S. remains the worlds’ only military superpower. We know that.  And the rest of the world knows that.  And that is a major element of our power.

Economic power

But our military is not the only source of U.S. power.  We have other ways to act or influence events, and I want to touch briefly on those.

The first is economic.  America remains an economic colossus.  Really our only potential economic competitor in the next decade is the European Union.

Now that’s not to say that our own economic strength isn’t tied to what’s happening overseas.  Let me give you just three examples here.

First, our economy remains dependent on energy imports, primarily from the Middle East.  We are seeing that today, with oil prices over $60 per barrel – up 50 percent just this year – and gas prices at almost $3 per gallon, depending on where you live.

Second, today we are running huge budget deficits in the United States.  This is a dramatic change from where we were just four years ago, when we had a projected budget surplus of over $5.6 trillion dollars.  These deficits are funded largely by the willingness of foreign countries to subsidize U.S. debt.  That means our economy today is tied more closely to decisions taken by central bankers in China than it has ever been before, because China today is the largest foreign financer of U.S. debt.  One way to look at it:  a child born today owes $150,000 in debt – and part of that is owed to a baby born in China, or Japan.

And third, our ability to trade openly with Europe, Japan, China, and the rest of the world is essential for the American economy to prosper.

So:  if energy prices continue to rise, or if the U.S. continues to run a huge budget deficit, or if trade barriers increase, the U.S. economy could take a serious hit.  And in each of these areas, there is cause for concern.

But, the size and diversity of our economy and our ability to innovate means we should remain the dominant economic power on the globe for some time to come, just as we are the dominant military power.

Culture and ideals

Finally, the third element of U.S. power I want to briefly mention today is that which President Bush spoke of during his second inaugural speech in January, that is, the power of our culture and the power of our ideals.

What our country has historically stood for over the past two hundred plus years – democracy, freedom, liberty, and human rights – has a powerful appeal, perhaps not everywhere, but almost everywhere.

Those ideals really do make a difference.  We have seen that recently in the Ukraine, and also, in the Middle East, in Iraq and Lebanon.

Also fair to say that anything that undercuts those ideals – such as the prisoner abuse scandal – dramatically undercuts U.S. power.

Still, despite the tragedy of Abu Ghraib, the United States remains a consistent – in fact, the most consistent – proponent of freedom and democracy.  That element of U.S. power was essential in winning the Cold War.  And it remains essential today.

Power, influence and resentment

So, if the United States is such a powerful country – militarily, economically, and culturally – why isn’t everything going our way today?

Why is it, for example, that we continue to have problems securing Iraq, or that we can’t get more help from other countries to secure and rebuild that country?

Or why is it that surveys done in countries overseas continue to show that America is viewed unfavorably in many, if not most countries, even our historical allies?

It is a fair observation that, while our power is at its peak, our influence in many ways seems to be eroding.

One reason is that our power naturally generates suspicion, even resentment.  That would be true no matter what our policies were.

A second reason is that we have acted unilaterally in Iraq – without the support of the United Nations, or many of our close allies.

A third reason is that – in general – we are seen as not doing enough in areas where other countries have concerns.  For example, after leading negotiations to conclude a global ban on nuclear testing in the 1990’s – an agreement first proposed by President Eisenhower – our Senate in 1999 failed to approve the Treaty.  And the Bush Administration continues to oppose ratification.

We rejected a global agreement to control dangerous pollutants that could lead to global climate change, and refuse to endorse the establishment of an International Criminal Court that would bring war criminals to justice.

But perhaps more broadly, over fifty percent of the World’s population gets by on less than two dollars a day; and the U.S. is not seen as doing all it can to change this destructive reality.

Iraq

Now, with what I’ve just said as a backdrop, I want to talk a little bit about some of the specific national security challenges that face us today, and will face us in the future.

Let’s begin with Iraq.  The conventional wisdom for some time has been that no matter what you thought of the decision taken by President Bush to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, now that we are there, we need to stay and – in President Bush’s words – “complete the mission.”

But I think for many Americans, those three words – words that the President repeated a number of times in his speech to the nation two months ago – raise at least three questions:  one, what does it mean to “complete the mission” in Iraq?  Two, how long will it take?  And three, how much will it cost?

With respect to the question “what does it mean to complete the mission?” If last Sunday’s article in the Washington Post is any guide, there are indications the Administration is starting to publicly scale back expectations for what can be accomplished in Iraq – in particular, whether the insurgency can be defeated before U.S. troops withdraw.

But assuming a “relatively” secure, stable, and democratic, Iraq remains our objective, I think it is fair to say that the elections in January have moved the process forward, for the simple reason that millions of Iraqis turned out to vote in the face of violent threats.

But:  it is still not clear seven months after those elections that a constitution will be completed this week; or if it is, that it will be approved and new elections held by early next year; or that a stable government can be formed – in particular, when one of the three major groups in Iraq, the Sunnis, has not fully committed to the process, and the two other groups – the Shiites and Kurds – are angling for a much greater degree of autonomy in the constitution than the Sunnis appear ready to concede.

Also not clear that the three major groups in Iraq – the Shiites, the Kurds and the Sunnis – are simply not biding their time and using the relative security provided by the United States military to plan and arm for a civil war once the U.S. leaves Iraq.

The fact is all three groups may be doing both – proceeding to try to work out their differences politically, while planning for the possibility of open hostilities.  We simply don’t know.

With respect to the question “how long will it take?” The answer again appears to be, “we simply don’t know,” even if the political parties in Iraq have the best of intentions.

The President said in June, “We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed and not a day longer.” But the commander of U.S. forces in the region said around that time that the insurgency in Iraq is as strong as it was six months ago, with more foreign fighters joining the fray every day.

And despite Vice President Cheney’s statement on Memorial Day that the Iraqi insurgency is in its “last throes,” there are no firm plans to begin withdrawing U.S. forces, which still number over 130,000 troops deployed in Iraq.

A week or two ago, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq indicated that significant U.S. troop reductions might be made next year, assuming progress on both the security and political side of the ledger in Iraq; but the President has not endorsed that position.

So the best that can be said is that the finish line in Iraq does not appear to be well defined, or even in sight.

With respect to the question, “how much will it cost?” We know that the Administration’s latest request for funds will put the cost of the war at $300 billion dollars, and counting, since hostilities began in March of 2003, a little over two years ago.

To give you a comparison:  we spent between $500-600 billion dollars in Vietnam between 1965 and 1973 – that is, during the eight years when hostilities were the most intense.

And of course, even more compelling then the dollar cost is the human cost, where we have over 1,800 American dead, and over 13,000 wounded, as well as significant numbers of Iraqi civilian dead and wounded.  I read this past week that this month has turned out to be the fourth costliest month of the war for U.S. forces in Iraq – and it’s not over yet.

Last year, President Bush’s national security advisor – now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice – gave a speech where she talked about a “generational commitment” to Iraq, along the lines of the commitments this country made to rebuild postwar Germany and Japan.

I have no doubt that the President is committed to seeing this through – he said again in June, and at his ranch last week, that abandoning Iraq will not happen on his watch.  But as the costs of the war become more transparent, the American public – a majority of whom now believe the war in Iraq was a mistake – may increasingly question whether we can achieve our objective at an acceptable price.  This seems even truer today than it did two months ago in Luck.

The War on Terror

The second national security challenge I want to touch on today is the broader “war on terror” – specifically, the war against Al Qaeda – the group that struck us on September 11th.

One thing we need to all understand is that Al Qaeda is still out there; they have not been defeated; and they are still determined to strike at America and its allies, wherever they can.

One point I do take issue with President Bush on is the statement he made repeatedly during the 2004 campaign – and again just this past weekend – that we are fighting in Iraq so that we don’t have to fight terrorism within our own borders.

The reality – as we learned last month in London – is that Al Qaeda is a global organization; and their battlefield is anywhere they can inflict casualties on the United States.  As a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, that battlefield now includes Iraq; but it also includes the U.S.

We have not seen the last of Al Qaeda, and I fully expect they will try again to strike us here, in the United States.

We are still in a race against time to strengthen our defenses at home – airports, seaports, our borders with Canada and Mexico.  We need to do more, and spend more, to defend chemical plants, oil refineries, and nuclear power plants across the United States.  And we also need to do more to make our transportation infrastructure – subways, trains and buses – harder for terrorists to strike.

Just last March, the Commission on Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction pointed out how vulnerable we were to the threat of attack from biological weapons.  In fact, they said that the U.S. was simply “lucky” to have avoided such an attack.

We also need to do more to drain the swamps of poverty overseas that provide both an infrastructure where terrorists can successfully operate, as well as a breeding ground for recruits.  Of every dollar our government spends, less than one penny goes to foreign assistance.  If we were serious about fighting a “war on terror” on all fronts, that commitment needs to be greatly expanded, and it needs to take priority over other objectives, both overseas, and at home.

Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

The third national security challenge I want to touch briefly on is the threat of nuclear proliferation.  This is the issue that both President Bush and Senator Kerry agreed during the campaign was the greatest threat facing our nation today.

There are three dimensions to the nuclear problem.  To begin with, more countries have nuclear weapons today than at any time in our planet’s history; and there are many more countries that could move to develop nuclear arms in a very short period of time.

The two nations we are the most concerned about are North Korea, and Iran.  Just a few months ago, North Korea announced it had nuclear weapons.  While we don’t know a lot about North Korea’s nuclear program, we do know they did produce a small amount of plutonium – perhaps enough to make a weapon or two – over a decade ago.  And we know they recently kicked out international inspectors that were in North Korea to ensure they would not produce more plutonium.  So we have every reason to be concerned that North Korea is telling the truth when they say they are a nuclear power.

The second country we are concerned about is Iran, who has now admitted to having a secret program to produce enriched uranium. Iran claims this is for the development of a nuclear power industry. The U.S. and many other countries believe it is for a nuclear weapons program.

In the case of North Korea, there is some good news:  the North Koreans have returned to “six party” talks involving the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.  The next round of talks will begin the week of August 29.  Also, the U.S. is now engaging North Korea “1 on 1,” something the Bush Administration had refused to do for over two years.  That said, we still appear to be a long ways from reaching agreement with North Korea on how to end their nuclear weapons program.

And we may be in even deeper difficulties with Iran.  Just last week, Iran rejected a European proposal to resolve the impasse over Iran’s program to produce enriched uranium.  Iran then took the provocative step of restarting their enrichment program, which they had previously agreed to “freeze” during talks with the Europeans.  So both Iran and North Korea are proving to be very tough nuts to crack.

In addition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons to various states – like North Korea and Iran – more groups have access to the knowledge and materials needed to build these weapons, even without the help of a nation state.

When I bought my first lap top computer four years ago, one of my friends – a former nuclear weapons designer – said I had more computing power at my fingertips than he had when he designed new nuclear bombs.  On top of this, the phenomenon of “globalization” – that is, the ease of trade, travel, and exchanges of information over the Internet – have increased the risks that a terrorist group can design and build a nuclear bomb.

Third, we still have a huge overhang of nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War, and we have been too slow to deal with that.

The U.S. and Russia still have hundreds of ballistic missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at each other, even though we are now “partners” with Russia.  Many of these weapons can be launched within minutes and hit their targets in less than a half an hour.  And there remains the risk of an accidental or unauthorized launch of a nuclear ballistic missile, which could kill millions.  By comparison, a nuclear bomb exploding in a major city would make the recent tsunami tragedy in the Indian Ocean look like a relatively small event.

We should be taking advantage of the opportunity we have – now that the Cold War is history – to first secure, and then get rid of, as many of these weapons as we can.  One of the groups I work with – called the Nuclear Threat Initiative, headed by former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia – is focused on this problem; but the government should be doing more.  Senator Nunn has been asking the question:  in the wake of a nuclear catastrophe, what would we wish we had done to prevent it, and why aren’t we doing it now?  Today, terrorists are racing to get these weapons – and we need to speed up our own efforts to make sure they don’t get them.

New Threats

Finally, before moving on to your questions, I would simply note that in addition to the challenges of Iraq, the war on terror, and nuclear proliferation, there are new threats emerging that could dramatically impact our security.

The global AIDS epidemic is ravaging Africa; and it appears to pose a similar threat in China, Russia, and India.  There is also the potential for other global epidemics that our public health system is not sufficiently prepared for.

There is also the threat of global climate change.  We have fallen in to the trap of thinking of this as something that is “far off into the future.” But changing climate patterns that could devastate rain forests, disrupt agriculture and raise sea levels could happen relatively soon, in years or decades, not centuries.

Finally, as I said earlier, much of the world continues to live in poverty, disconnected from the benefits of a global economy.  This creates real inequalities that contribute to the development of failed states, like Somalia and Afghanistan, that are breeding grounds for terrorists and that jeopardize international security.

Cooperation Against Common Threats

So that’s at least part of the picture our President, Congress and our country face as we wade in to President Bush’s second term.

On top of that, there are the truly “unknowns.” President Truman, for example, never thought he would fight a war in Korea.  Presidents Kennedy and Johnson certainly didn’t expect to have over 500,000 men in Vietnam at the end of the decade when they took office.  And the first President Bush did not expect to see the collapse of the Soviet Union during his presidency.  So we should also expect surprises.

Finally, the last point I’d make is that one thing we do know is that it will take more than just American power to successfully deal with these threats – whether known, or unknown.  We will need allies; we will need cooperation among states; and we will need the credibility and respect that comes with the judicious use of our power – whether military, economic or cultural.

Because without allies, without cooperation, without credibility and without respect, our power is greatly reduced, and the risks to our national security are greatly increased.

In the spring, I teach a course in “Crisis Management in Foreign Affairs” at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. This year, we studied the Cuban Missile Crisis, the War in Vietnam, and the Iran Hostage Crisis.  One of the striking things to me is that only a handful of students in my class of thirty had any contemporary memories of these crises – most of them had only read about Cuba and Vietnam, and most of them were born after the Iran Crisis was over.  Many of them were still in elementary school when the Cold War ended in 1991.

I think it’s safe to say that many here today – including me – remembers what it looks like when world leaders cooperate against common threats.  That’s the approach both Democratic and Republican Administrations took with our allies to win the Cold War.  And it’s exactly that kind of international teamwork that is needed now to stabilize Iraq, to prevail in the war on terror, to prevent North Korea and Iran from becoming a nuclear menace, and to ensure that terrorists cannot ever gain access to a nuclear bomb.

In short:  we must be as focused on fighting the new threats we face in this century as we were in fighting the communist threat in the last century.  And with that, I want to thank you again for inviting me here today, and I’ll take your questions.