[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
SIX YEARS LATER (PART II): SMART POWER AND THE U.S. STRATEGY FOR
SECURITY IN A POST-9/11 WORLD
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 6, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-128
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman
TOM LANTOS, California TOM DAVIS, Virginia
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN L. MICA, Florida
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts CHRIS CANNON, Utah
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
DIANE E. WATSON, California MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts DARRELL E. ISSA, California
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York KENNY MARCHANT, Texas
JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
Columbia BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota BILL SALI, Idaho
JIM COOPER, Tennessee JIM JORDAN, Ohio
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
PETER WELCH, Vermont
Phil Schiliro, Chief of Staff
Phil Barnett, Staff Director
Earley Green, Chief Clerk
David Marin, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts DAN BURTON, Indiana
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
Dave Turk, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on November 6, 2007................................. 1
Statement of:
Armitage, Richard L., Commission on Soft Power, Center for
Strategic and International Studies; and Joseph S. Nye,
Jr., Ph.D., University distinguished service professor,
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University........... 13
Armitage, Richard L...................................... 13
Nye, Joseph S., Jr....................................... 96
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Armitage, Richard L., Commission on Soft Power, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, prepared statement of. 15
McCollum, Hon. Betty, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Minnesota, prepared statement of.................. 12
Nye, Joseph S., Jr., Ph.D., University distinguished service
professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, prepared statement of.......................... 100
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 8
Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts, prepared statement of.............. 4
SIX YEARS LATER (PART II): SMART POWER AND THE U.S. STRATEGY FOR
SECURITY IN A POST-9/11 WORLD
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2007
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Tierney
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tierney, Shays, Lynch, Higgins,
McCollum, Van Hollen, Hodes, Welch, Platts, Turner, and Foxx.
Also present: Representative Thornberry.
Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Andy Wright and
Andrew Su, professional staff members; Davis Hake, clerk; Dan
Hamilton, fellow; Janice Spector and Christopher Bright,
minority professional staff members; Todd Greenwood, minority
legislative assistant; Nick Palarino, minority senior
investigator and policy advisor; Benjamin Chance, minority
clerk; and Mark Lavin, minority Army fellow.
Mr. Tierney. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security and Foreign Affairs' hearing entitled, ``Six
Years Later (Part II): Smart Power and the U.S. Strategy for
Security in a Post-9/11 World,'' will come to order.
The Members will be allotted 5 minutes to give their
opening statements if they so choose at which point we will
move to opening statements for our witnesses.
I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Texas,
Congressman Mac Thornberry, be allowed to participate in this
hearing in accordance with the committee's rules and be allowed
to question the witnesses after all official members of the
subcommittee have had their first turn. Without objection, so
ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept
open for 5 business days so that all members of the
subcommittee will be allowed to submit a written statement for
the record. Without objection, that is so ordered as well.
I want to just welcome and thank everybody for attending
the important discussion that we are going to have here today.
The Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
conducts our second hearing in a series focused on long term
U.S. national security strategy, 6 years after 9/11.
We are very fortunate today to engage in what I hope will
be a robust and thought-provoking discussion with Secretary
Armitage and Dean Nye. I thank both of you gentlemen for
joining us today.
Thank you also to all the members of the CSIS Commission on
Smart Power including subcommittee member Betty McCollum, and
our guest Representative, Mac Thornberry. Thank you for the
talents and experiences you poured into the report that is
being discussed today.
It truly was an august commission. It was comprised of
leaders from all three branches of government, from non-
profits, academia and the business community. I found the
report to be insightful, and I think it will serve as a good
jumping-off point for our discussion today.
In the interest of spending as much time engaging in that
robust discussion as possible, I am going to try to keep my
remarks on the brief side.
As I noted during the first hearing in the series, even
with the amazing amount of money and energy expended and, more
importantly, the lives lost, so far on military engagements and
homeland security and intelligence since September 11, 2001,
there remains an inescapable sense that ours is a national
security policy adrift.
Unfortunately, I can't report progress in the intervening
weeks since that first hearing. In fact, the world, more than
ever, seems to be slipping away from our influence.
A nuclear and extremist-infected Pakistan is in full-blown
crisis. Its path toward democracy has been barricaded by
military rule, suspension of the Pakistani constitution and the
suppression of civil institutions capable of dissent.
U.S.-Iran relations are at a nadir, and the Bush
administration has ratcheted up its saber-rattling rhetoric, an
issue that, tomorrow, this subcommittee will continue to
explore in depth in our series, ``Iran: Reality, Options and
Consequences.''
The prospect of a Turkish invasion into the Kurdish region
of Northern Iraq conjures disastrous images of Turkish, United
States and Iraqi forces at cross purposes on a single
battlefield.
In the words of a panelist from our first hearing, we have
yet to act with the ``burst of creativity'' that was the
trademark of the United States at the beginning of the cold
war.
Secretary Armitage and Dean Nye, the report you are issuing
today will, I hope, help fill in this void.
The 9/11 Commission rightly concluded, ``long-term success
demands the use of all elements of national power.'' Not only
does your report offer concrete and innovative ways to do just
that, it also does something else I think is incredibly
helpful.
Your report spells out the path for our country to get back
on the offensive, and by that, I don't mean in the military
sense. You note in the very first paragraph of your executive
summary, ``the United States must move from eliciting fear and
anger to inspiring optimism and hope.''
We have had a lot of the fear-mongering and the anger going
on, and I think it is being reinforced every day. It was
refreshing to read the charge to inspire optimism and hope.
In the words of CSIS President and CEO, John Hamre, this
means going back to the root of what makes America great, the
fact that we are a country of both ``big ideas and common
sense;'' that our country has a ``unique blend of optimism and
pragmatism.''
These are the ideals that I think have made our country as
great as it is today, the ideals that make Americans proud to
be Americans and the ideals that cause the rest of the world to
want to follow us. Secretary Armitage and Dean Nye, as you
rightly point out, these are the ideals, when pragmatically
implemented, that will in the long term best secure the safety
of our Nation, for us, our children and for our grandchildren.
We live in dangerous world desperate for positive U.S.
leadership--leadership borne of a coherent, effective and
honorable national security strategy. And I have no doubt that
at our core, the American people have the heart, the fortitude
and the imagination to overcome current challenges.
In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us of the
``fierce urgency of now.'' It is well past time that we heed
that call, and I thank you for your contribution to that with
your report.
Mr. Shays.
[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, Chairman Tierney, for holding this
second hearing examining U.S. national security strategies.
This subcommittee began looking at this issue even before
September 11, 2001, so I am pleased we are continuing this
important work.
Today, we are joined by two very distinguished witnesses,
Joseph Nye, and Richard Armitage, co-chairs of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies Commission on Smart Power.
I will leave it to the commissioners to explain their project,
but I would like to go on record that I agree with its
conclusion, ``America must revitalize its ability to inspire
and persuade rather than merely rely upon its military might.''
That is true because today we face a different type of
enemy, and we have been slow to react to this new threat.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan recalled the horrors of
the Iranian hostage crisis and the bombing of the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut. He said, ``There is a temptation to see the
terrorist acts as simply the erratic work of a small group of
fanatics. We make this mistake at grave peril, for the attacks
on America, her citizens, her allies and other democratic
nations in recent years do form a pattern of terrorism that has
strategic implications and political goals.''
In that statement, President Reagan described what has
become an overriding concern for the United States and its
allies, terrorism. President Reagan foresaw what the world saw
unfold on September 11, 2001, that terrorists would not be
deterred by geographic, political or moral borders.
President Reagan understood terrorists had their own
political philosophy that makes them inherently at war with
nations that subscribe to democracy and freedom, and he
predicted the failure to take seriously the warped ideology of
Islamic fundamentalists would lead to dire consequences for
this Nation and our allies.
During President Clinton's administrations, several
commissions, Bremer, Gilmore and Hart-Rudman concluded we
needed to recognize the threat. We need to recognize the
threat, develop a comprehensive strategy to confront that
threat, and improve, reorganize our government structure to
implement the strategy.
President Bush inherited a loose collection of Presidential
directives and law enforcement plans from President Clinton
that proved to be dramatically flawed. Regretfully, before
September 11, 2001, the Bush administration did not address
these flaws. The bottom line at the time of the 2001 attacks,
the United States had been operating for years without a
comprehensive strategy to protect us from our enemies.
The current U.S. national security strategy acknowledges
and reaffirms the reality that when all other methods fail, our
leaders must have the option to proactively use force to
protect the lives of our citizens.
What we have learned over the past three decades is our
strategies cannot be based on the naive assumption that
governments and particularly groups committed to both
sponsoring terrorism and acquiring weapons of mass destruction
won't use them. September 11th taught us there is no red line
the terrorists won't cross.
We need to keep in mind no matter how many incentives or
disincentives we develop, some terrorists are intent on our
destruction no matter the cost. Diplomacy which is not backed
up by military might is meaningless. However, as the Commission
points out, we may have been relying too much on military power
and have neglected traditional instruments of soft power such
as intense dialog and diplomacy.
With this in mind, I look forward to the testimony from our
distinguished witnesses and I hope, Mr. Chairman, you will hear
from other groups and commissions. In fact, I know you will. I
thank you for your intent to hear from other groups and
commissions about their views on how to improve our national
strategy in environment where terrorist cells may be more of a
threat than unfriendly nations.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Shays.
Ms. McCollum, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I won't take all
5 because I am hoping we will have an opportunity for robust
questions.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your kinds words and
let you know that it has been an honor to serve as a member of
the Smart Power Commission along with our House colleague, Mac
Thornberry, who is here with us today. I want to publicly thank
our witnesses today, Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye, for their
leadership as Co-Chairs of the Commission.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies took the
challenge of exploring America's current standing in the world
and how to put forward a concrete recommendation to restore
America's leadership using all of the tools in our strategic
and foreign policy toolbox. I want to stress again, this study
looked at America's standing in the world and what we need to
do to change America's standing in the world to where it was
only a few short years ago, one of respect, one of hope, one of
optimism.
We are the world's largest military. We are the world's
greatest military power. We are the world's greatest economic
power. Yet, in January 2009, the next President who will be
leading our Nation will face tremendous challenges in this
world. The world community wants U.S. leadership, not
unilateral power where we dictate and expect other countries to
yield to our policies.
The Smart Power report makes recommendations for America's
re-engagement in the world, using our capacity to improve lives
and, by doing so, we create security and inspire hope. In
short, again, we must use our power to once again become a
world in which America is admired, a world in which America is
once against respected and wanted as a partner.
Mr. Chairman, I hope my colleagues in Congress will take
this report seriously. Next year as we commence looking at the
fiscal year 2009 the new President will inherit, I hope these
recommendations are carefully considered in the future by this
Congress, and I thank you so much again for having this hearing
but including the Smart Power report as part of it.
I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Betty McCollum follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Ms. McCollum. Because your
colleagues are so taking this seriously, they are going to all
forego their statements. They have 5 days to place their
statements on the record.
We would like to go right to our witnesses, if we could. I
want to begin by introducing our panel.
The Honorable Richard L. Armitage, Secretary Armitage has a
distinguished record of service in our country including as a
decorated Vietnam veteran, as an Assistant Secretary of Defense
for International Security Affairs from 1983 to 1989 and as
Deputy Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. Secretary Armitage
is currently president of Armitage International.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Ph.D., Dr. Nye, Dean Nye served our
country as chairman of the National Intelligence Council from
1993 to 1994 and as Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Affairs from 1994 to 1995. He has also
served as dean of Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Dean
Nye is one of the foremost foreign policy authors of our day,
having written books such as Soft Power: The Means to Success
in World Politics.
Welcome to you both.
It is the policy of our subcommittee to swear you in before
you testify.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Tierney. The record will please reflect that both
witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Mr. Shays. Would we note that Mr. Armitage was slow in
getting out of his chair? [Laughter.]
Mr. Tierney. He is bigger than I am. You can notice if you
want.
Your full written reports will be put on the record, and I
believe with unanimous consent we can put a copy of the entire
prepublication report in as well.
We will give you 5 minutes, but we would like to be a
little flexible on that. We understand this report is very
important, and we would like very much to hear from each of
you. So, please proceed.
STATEMENTS OF RICHARD L. ARMITAGE, COMMISSION ON SOFT POWER,
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES; AND JOSEPH S.
NYE, JR., PH.D., UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED SERVICE PROFESSOR,
KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
STATEMENT OF RICHARD L. ARMITAGE
Mr. Armitage. Chairman, I am delighted. I will take 2
minutes rather than the 5.
I am delighted again to be in front of Mr. Shays, a man of
great conscience. I know from my own personal experience with
him during the run-up and aftermath of Iraq, the way he did his
business, I think, was a great lesson to me in how to be
involved in good governance.
Ms. McCollum and Mr. Thornberry, it is good spending the
day with you, and I am the better for it.
Mr. Chairman, let me tell you what this report is about.
This report is about prolonging and preserving our American
preeminence as a force for good as long as is humanly possible.
It is a report about how to complement U.S. military and
economic might which must not only be maintained but
strengthened with greater focus on American soft power which,
in our view of the Commission, has atrophied in recent years.
Mr. Chairman, as you mentioned, after 9/11, we started
exporting something that was foreign to us. It was strange. We
were exporting our fear and our anger, showing a sort of
snarling face to the world rather than the more traditional
exports that Ms. McCollum spoke about of hope, of optimism and
opportunity.
Now, we on the Commission believe that at the core of the
problem is that we have made the War on Terror the central
component of our global organization.
To be sure, terrorism is real and it is a growing threat,
but the fact of the matter remains that, absent access to WMD,
the terrorists do not pose an existential threat to our way of
life. They can hurt us. They have hurt us. They will try to
hurt us again, but they can't change our way of life. However,
we can change our way of life by the way we react to them.
If we react through the excessive use of force or rejection
of policies that are important to our friends and to our
allies, if we appear to put ourselves above international legal
norms, that encourages rather than counters terrorist
recruitment overseas.
Through some of our counter-terrorism policies, we have
established a reputation for holding a double standard. That,
indeed, has hurt our ability to engage certain partners and
allies. We have to strike that balance between the use of force
against violent extremism and other means of combating
terrorism.
Today, more than ever, after 6 years of war, our military
is overstretched, and they are weary. Our military is still the
best in the world, but it needs to be reset. However,
investments in our military should not come at the expense of
investments in our civilian tools of power nor vice versa. I
guess what I am saying is we need guns and butter.
I will stop there, Mr. Chairman, and turn it over to Joe.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Armitage follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Dean Nye.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.
Mr. Nye. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is a pleasure to be able to address you and your
distinguished colleagues on the Subcommittee on National
Security and Foreign Affairs of the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform and a particular pleasure to
see on the panel in front of us two of the distinguished
members of our Smart Power Commission, Representative
Thornberry and Representative McCollum, who were major
contributors. But that is not to implicate them. They can still
as hostile questions if they wish.
In any case, what I would like to do is pick up where Rich
left off.
This report is about power, and what we are trying to do in
the report is widen the focus. Whoever is elected President
next year is going to have a series of problems--Iraq, Iran,
Pakistan--with which we are all daily preoccupied in the press
and in the various conversations we have. Our feeling about the
report was we needed to put these in a larger, longer term
context which I gather is what you have been trying to do with
these hearings of your committee.
When I say that it is about power, I mean that the United
States is going to be the world's leading power for the next
several decades, but how we use that power in a world in which
we are confronted with the rise of Asia and with a generation-
long problem of terrorists and extremists is going to be a key
problem for us, and that is what we are trying to address.
When we talk about power, we simply mean the ability to
influence others to get the outcomes that one wants, and you
can influence others in two ways. You can do it through hard
power which is carrots and sticks, threats or payments. You can
do it through soft power which is the ability to attract. When
we talk about smart power, it is the ability to combine those
two instruments into a single coherent strategy.
If you look back historically, we did this very well as a
country during the cold war. We, in fact, were able to deter
Soviet aggression by our military capacity. At the same time,
we were able to eat away belief in communism behind the Iron
Curtain by the quality of our ideals, our public diplomacy, so
that when the Berlin Wall, it fell not to an artillery barrage
but to the onset of hammers and bulldozers.
That was a smart power strategy, and we are going to need a
strategy like that if we are going to deal with the types of
problems that I mentioned, the generation-long struggle against
extremists, terrorists and the issues of rise of new nations as
well as a series of transnational challenges.
Basically, the United States, because it will be the
biggest, will always have a certain degree of the problem of
being resented. The big kid on the block always has a bit of
envy and a bit of resistance, but it matters a lot whether the
big kid on the block is seen as a bully or as a friend. I think
what we need to do is get in front of the world the positive
views of how we can be seen as a friend, as Rich said,
exporting hope rather than fear.
If you look back at the experience of Britain in the 19th
century, Britain was the largest country and what it did was
provide a series of international public goods, things that
were good for Britain but good for others as well, and that
essentially made British power more acceptable. Such things as
freedom of the seas, an open international trading system, a
stable international monetary system, these were, if you want,
in the public good.
The United States, as the leading country, has the capacity
to serve that public good. As we do so, we serve our own
interests, but we also make our interests legitimate in the
eyes of others and therefore increase our soft power. In that
sense, it is a two for one proposition for us.
What we argued in the report was that we needed to put
these various problems that we face, which are very real
problems, in that larger context in which the United States is
seen as a country which is promoting a public good. In that
sense, we believe that we need, we had five major headings in
the report that fit under this category.
We felt that it was important to reinvigorate alliances and
institutions, that we have a long history, since the end of
World War II, as being leaders in this area, that we need to
reinvigorate that. One example that we gave of that was that it
might be wise for us to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, but
that is one of a number of examples.
We also felt, second, that we should place development in a
higher priority in our foreign policy. Development aligns our
aspirations with the aspirations of others.
Of the dimensions of development that we thought were most
important, we focused on public health and a particular
initiative on public health which would allow us to not only do
ourselves good by improving the public health conditions in
poor countries, which reduces the dangers of pandemics and the
dangers or at least the benefits of early information about
them but also helps people in those countries. In that area,
which Congresswoman McCollum was very good on in our
Commission, I think we have something very useful to say.
The third heading was public diplomacy and particularly
focusing on the fact that public diplomacy is more than
broadcasting, which tends to be one way, but that the real
value in public diplomacy is what Edward R. Murrow called the
last 3 feet, that face to face communications which is two-way.
There, we felt that the fact that there are 500,000 foreign
students in the United States was a major gain for us in soft
power, but the fact that you now have 200,000 American students
going overseas is equally important. We felt that could be
illustrated, perhaps, with one specific recommendation in the
report which is that we ought to double the size of the
Fulbright Program.
A fourth area was to maintain an open international
economy. Globalization produces problems for many people but,
on the larger picture, globalization provides opportunities for
development and growth. If we turn away from globalization, we
will in fact be hurting ourselves as well as hurting poor
people in poor countries.
We need to foster an open international economy as we have
in our past and do that in the context of taking care of those
who don't benefit quite as much as others from that opening. As
an example there, we felt that moving ahead with the Doha Round
and completing it was a concrete case.
Finally, we felt that if we look at the large challenges we
face in the areas of climate change and energy security, that
we have a great deal to contribute here in our tradition of
innovation. American technology and innovation can make major
contributions.
One example that we came to was the problem of coal-burning
in China. China is adding about two coal-burning plants a week.
That puts as much CO2 into the atmosphere or all
Chinese plants that burn coal put as much CO2 into
the atmosphere as we do in our transportation system in a year.
We can't stop China from doing that. This is a case where hard
power instruments won't do any good.
But if we were to develop the capacity to set up a new
institution which used or tapped into our technological
innovation to help China develop a cleaner coal itself, we
could benefit the Chinese, benefit ourselves and benefit the
rest of the world. That is another good example, if you want,
of being able to provide global public goods.
So those were the five areas that we used as examples of
how you could try to put America into this larger perspective
which makes us a friend as the big kid on the block rather than
the bully as the big kid on the block.
But, finally, we ended by saying that one of the problems
we face is how to put our own house in order. There are a
number of dimensions to that, but if you think about the way
the U.S. Government is organized, both in the executive branch
and the Congress, we are not integrated. We are not organized
to integrate the tools in our toolbox of power. We don't know
how to relate the hard power and soft power tools into a smart
power strategy.
We spend $750 billion more or less on defense. We spend
about $1.5 billion on public diplomacy. But even within those
numbers, there are problems about tradeoffs.
For example, if the Broadcasting Board of Governors wants
to save tens of millions of dollars by stopping shortwave
broadcasts in English, that is a tiny sum compared to the
larger questions in the defense budget, but there is no place
in the U.S. Government where you can tradeoff, where you can
have a strategy which asks is this a wise decision or is that a
wise decision.
We recommend in that sense that there should be a new
deputy to the President on the National Security Council, dual-
hatted with the Organization of Management and Budget, to
establish a quadrennial smart power review like the QDR in the
Defense Department for defense hard power alone and to have the
job of constantly updating and implementing it to make sure
that agency budgets and strategies fit within it.
We also felt that it is important to realize that much of
America's soft power and impact on the rest of the world is not
produced by the government but produced by our civil society.
An example would be the Gates Foundation work on HIV and other
diseases in Africa, but there are many smaller non-profit
organizations and foundations which could benefit from some
help here in terms of contacts with other parts of the world.
We felt that a government fund or institution which would
have government funding but a firewall of independent
directors, who would then support but not control American
private actors in their face to face relations with peoples in
other countries, would be a very useful additional innovation
in the area which your committee is concerned with.
So these are some examples of the types of things that are
in the report. Obviously, in this short presentation, we can't
possibly touch all the material that is there, but we did want
to give you the general flavor of what we mean when we talk
about widening the lens and putting our overwhelming current
problems in a broader and longer term perspective.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nye follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much. I thank both of you for
that.
Let me start the questioning if I can, and I am not sure
how to phrase this as eloquently as I would like, but I think
you made the point in your report very succinctly that this
idea of this War on Terror being the central premise of our
foreign policy needs to be replaced.
I think in the current political climate, I want to know
what your response is to those that seem to be just beating
that drum, that it is always the War on Terror, that to focus
on something else is weak on defense, is weak on our security.
Can you just talk a little bit more about putting into
perspective the issue of terrorism amongst all of the other
long term strategies that we need to deal with in terms of
good, solid foreign policy?
What would you say to those on both sides of the aisle,
marching down to the Presidential thing, trying to out-tough
one another by focusing only on the so-called War on Terror and
not broadening it out as you recommend?
Mr. Armitage. Well, I would start with the obvious, that a
Nation as great as ours ought to be able to do two or more
things at once.
Second, that this single focus on the Global War on Terror,
to a large extent in my view, is taking our gaze off where our
long term national equities are, for instance, the whole center
of gravity of the world is moving to Asia. Whether you look in
terms of size of population, size of military, size of GDPs,
everything, it is shifting to Asia. Whether we are able to take
advantage of that shift is a real question because we are
spending all our time on the central organizing principle of
the War on Terror.
I am not arguing, none of us on this Commission would argue
that terrorism isn't a real and, as I said, a growing threat.
But absent of WMD, it is not an existential threat.
It is not like fascism was in the thirties and forties. It
wasn't like communism was throughout the cold war. This is a
different phenomenon, and we ought to be able to do two things
at once.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Nye. I agree with that, and I don't think that one
should read the Commission recommendation here as saying we
should let down our vigilance in the struggle against
terrorism.
What we have seen over the 20th century is that terrorist
movements generally tend to last a generation. We are not done
with this.
What we have also seen is that they burn themselves out
over time if you don't overreact to them. Terrorism is a little
bit like jujitsu. You have a weak player who only defeats a
large player by using the strength of the large player against
himself.
So what we do to ourselves is often more important than
what they do to us directly, and that means that we have to be
very careful how we react. For example, if we, after a 9/11,
cut out visas for foreign students, we are serving their
interests, not ours.
Terrorism is about fear, about their gaining attention. To
the extent which we give that attention, they gain, not we.
If we also think of the fact that the words, War on
Terrorism, as a narrative have been interpreted in much of the
world as war against Islam, that is clearly not our intent, but
that may be the effect as public opinion polls show.
So what we are arguing in the Commission report is not to
let down our guard one iota in a struggle, a generation-long
struggle against terrorism but to be more careful in our
narrative in presenting to the world a much broader picture
which is what we are recommending in the Commission report and
not just a short run slogan.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
I was looking at some of the language in your report, and I
thought it was well done: Power is the ability to influence the
behavior of others to get a desired outcome. Soft power is the
ability to attract people to or side without coercion.
Legitimacy is central to soft power and, if America's
objectives are believed to be legitimate, we are more likely to
persuade people to our view.
Victory depends on attracting foreign populations to our
side and helping them build capable demographic states.
I thought that was a good choice of words, populations not
foreign governments necessarily.
Can you discuss those concepts in the context of the U.S.
role in what is going on in Pakistan today?
Mr. Armitage. Well, I was asked a similar question earlier
at lunch today, Mr. Chairman. It was if we had all these
recommendations of smart power in place today, would Pakistan
be in this position? Well, my answer was if we had all these
recommendations in place in, oh, say 1990, we may be in much
better position in Pakistan.
The reason I say that is one of the things we are wrestling
with now is the fact we have a gap of about 10 or maybe 12
years of no interaction with Pakistan military officers and no
meaningful interaction with government figures. So we have
really cut ourselves out of the game for a while. So the people
are going to be sort of pivotal in the next few years in
Pakistan, we have no knowledge of.
So I would argue that smart power is something that only
can be judged over a significant period of time. It can't
solely be judged by opinion polls and how much affection the
United States is held in.
It is somewhat like what Joe Henley famously responded to
when asked was the French Revolution successful, and he said it
is too soon to tell. That is kind of a smart power. For 1, 2, 3
years, it is going to be soon to tell.
Mr. Tierney. I guess part of my point was we have a
situation over there now where the middle class, the lawyers,
the judges, the business people or whatever seem to be on one
side of the fence and the military establishment on the other.
I would guess that we have to be real careful about whether or
not we side with the people of Pakistan or are perceived to be
siding with or against them on this, and it is going to be a
real delicate use of smart power in that situation.
Mr. Armitage. I think the question of Pakistan is so
complicated that you are right. People seem to be on one side
and the military, and I would say the elites on the side with
President Musharraf.
The question then is what happens with our involvement in
this?
Do we actually add to the situation in a positive way by
publicly being seen as promoting Ms. Bhutto? I think opinion
polls in Pakistan would say, no, we have actually had the
reverse phenomenon. We have actually hurt her. So she is seen,
to some extent, as an American girl.
Mr. Tierney. Well, if we supported just her and not
supported the democratic process and let it go wherever it
goes.
Mr. Armitage. And you will notice our Ambassador today made
a very graphic point of going with a CBS camera crew to the
electoral commission to make the point we want elections,
democratic, open and fair.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. We have been after him to make that
statement months and months and months ago. Today is as good as
any day, I guess.
Mr. Platts.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your and
the ranking member's hosting the hearing and, to both of our
witnesses, thank you for your many years of dedicated service
to our Nation including with this Commission.
Actually, the chairman touched the first issue I wanted to
raise which is trying to apply the principles espoused in the
report to the current environment in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan are kind of interrelated. Mainly, I think one of
the very important points you make is when we talk about soft
power, that legitimacy is critical to being able to invoke soft
power, be successful.
In Afghanistan, one of the issues, having just returned
with my colleague, Steve Lynch from Massachusetts, a couple
months back, the drug trade in Afghanistan is a huge problem.
From individuals serving there, both military and civilian,
that I have met with there or here, our legitimacy within the
populace of Afghanistan is diminished because of the drug
issue. We are saying what we want in hope that President Karzai
will do, but we are standing by while nothing happens.
In a similar issue in Pakistan where we are working with
President Musharraf while he is cracking down now, as the
chairman referenced, throwing others and lawyers in jail. Both
of those issues, to me, seem to undercut our legitimacy to
build relationships with the people of those nations to then be
with us in the War on Terror.
That would be the first question, and then I have a
followup. So, thank you.
Mr. Armitage. Thank you, sir.
I think the two are somewhat different. Legitimacy in
Afghanistan, I think was certainly there immediately following
our invasion. Certainly, the hopes were high, and there wasn't
any question about the speed and the agility of the U.S. forces
to bring about a change of a hated regime.
Where we have begun to be questioned is whether we are
competent enough to actually follow through on this, and that
is where, in Afghanistan, I believe our legitimacy begins to be
questioned.
On Pakistan, I think it is slightly different. It is quite
clear. I personally have a high regard for President Musharraf
and what he has done, what he has personally suffered and, by
the way, what his country has suffered in the federally
administered tribal areas of 800 or so killed, now 300 soldiers
captured and missing. So he has sacrificed a good bit.
Having said that, however, if he is not able and we are not
able to make him live up to the word he gave us, then we have
to hammer him, I am afraid.
Now I think there are two ways to do it. You can just stand
up and make a declaratory policy or you can say you think he is
wrong, he has made a bad error and we wish, as a friend, he
would correct that error. I think that is the way to handle
this initially.
The accusation will be is that we are weak and sort of a
little weasel-worded. The stakes are too high in Pakistan for
all of us, I think, to be too declaratory at this early a
stage.
He has moved a bit back to, as I understand, having
elections in January, thank goodness. I think the next move is
to get him to again say he will get out of uniform and start
letting these folks out of jail and jail terrorists and
extremists and not legitimate opposition.
Mr. Nye. I agree with what Rich said. On Afghanistan, the
drug problem is a very severe problem. On the other hand,
unless we do something on security first and economic
opportunities other than drugs, we are not going to solve the
drug problem.
I think the success in Afghanistan is going to be
absolutely crucial. We are not only invested there in the terms
of the legitimacy of why we went in, but we are invested there
in the sense that we have our NATO alliance heavily involved.
It is crucial that we not lose that, and that is probably
going to take more military force from the American side, but
it is also going to take more resources to provide the economic
developments and the components that we call soft power. That
would be a smart strategy there.
On the Pakistan case, I agree with that as well, with what
Rich said. I think we should be pressing very hard for General
Musharraf to get out of uniform and to hold elections and, if
not, I think we have to ask ourselves whether we need to
reassess.
Mr. Platts. A quick followup, Dean, your answer about
Afghanistan and the humanitarian or the non-military investment
is my followup in the big picture, not just Afghanistan and
Pakistan because to be able to do what the Commission
recommends or the principles espoused, having our public
support is critical.
How do we better get the American public to understand that
investing in USAID projects, investing in humanitarian
assistance, all the non-military assistance around the world is
equally important to the military investment we make in
protecting us?
In central Pennsylvania, I never have a problem with the
vote for military. When I vote for foreign aid, the public at
large doesn't yet understand the importance. Is there any
suggestions how to better educate the public how they are
directly connected?
Mr. Nye. I think it is a tough sell, as you know better
than I, but on the other hand, the extent to which we can
explain to the public that this is in our interest. In other
words, for American security, we need to make sure that things
are changing there.
Remember when the cold war was on, when the Russians were
in Afghanistan, Afghanistan got a lot of attention, a lot of
money. The Soviets withdraw. Afghanistan goes off our radar.
If you said to an American, why should I spend money on
anything for aid in Afghanistan, the answer would have been it
is too bad for the Afghans, what is going on there, but what
difference does it make to us?
On 9/11, we found out that bad conditions in a poor country
half-way around the world could make a huge difference to us. I
think that is the kind of argument you need to make to show
your constituents and our fellow citizens that it is in our
interest as well as the interest of the others to do something
about this.
Mr. Armitage. Congressman, not having to stand, it is much
easier for us to answer your question than perhaps for you and
your colleagues, but I have always found it somewhat effective
to be absolutely frank.
Dr. Nye and I aren't professional do-gooders. We are
fellows who pride ourselves, to the extent we can, on being
realists and people who practice sort of cold calculations of
national security. I would argue that many of the elements of
smart power that we talk about are not a matter of
philanthropy. It is a matter of cold calculations of national
security.
Now that is rather dramatic talk and dramatic, florid
language to use, but I find that actually putting it in those
terms, you get a different, slightly different reception. This
is not a matter of sort of an airy-fairy, well, let's all feel
good and sing Kumbaya. This is cold calculations of national
security.
Mr. Platts. Thank you both.
Mr. Chairman, thanks for your discretion.
Mr. Tierney. Ms. McCollum, you are recognized for 5
minutes.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One of the smart power recommendations that I would like to
highlight and I also strongly endorse is the creation of the
cabinet level Department of International Development to bring
in integrated, coherent strategy and structure to our foreign
assistance.
In light of what we have seen happen where there was very
little oversight input from the Congress, I would like you
gentlemen to elaborate on your recommendation why you think
this is a smart use of power.
I would just add I think the VOA, Voice of America, and
some of the programming that is being cut over there probably
might not be looked at being cut if we had a cabinet level
where we are looking at an integrated approach.
Mr. Armitage. Thank you, Ms. McCollum.
I think it is a good recommendation if you don't take the
point of view that Washington can solve the problems and a
cabinet level office has to look like Homeland Security or one
of these other organizations. In fact, I would say that our
studies showed that the burden should be to push things out
into the field.
So I would argue if this is not a large bureaucracy but it
is an operational bureaucracy in Washington that pushes things
out to the field, then it is an excellent idea.
Mr. Nye. I think what we concluded was that you needed in
addition to these better integration devices in the field at
the embassy team level, you needed to have a voice around the
Oval Office who could speak for development. The Secretary of
State has a lot of things on her plate or his plate, and you
need somebody who can also speak with authority about the
importance of development issues.
We also felt or I felt rather--that is I think Rich and I
feel, but it is not official in the Commission report--that the
abolition of the U.S. Information Agency was a mistake, that
its absorption into the State Department actually did not raise
its capacity but lowered our capacity in public diplomacy.
In the Commission report, as you know, we didn't quite
recommend the recreation of the USIA--some commissioners didn't
want to go that far--but we did say that something should be
done to raise the prominence of this public diplomacy function.
So both the development voice and the public diplomacy voice
need better representation at higher levels. There are still
some differences in detail about exactly how that should be
accomplished.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Ms. McCollum.
Mr. Turner, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Turner. Thank you so much. Mr. Chairman, thank you for
having this hearing, and I also want to thank our two panel
members for your efforts in bringing this report forward.
I think almost everybody, upon reading this report, will
agree with the sort of sense that you have given of our current
status, of where we are and the real importance of addressing
it.
The how-to, I appreciate your recommendations and also some
of the focus that you have given. I note you indicate there is
no silver bullet. So, as we look at these, it is one of those
hard to define areas as to how do we move forward and how do we
know that we are being successful.
One of the things that is recognized in your report that I
find is a conflict in our view of how we are perceived
internationally is that you acknowledge that America is still
viewed as the land of opportunity, that people still look to us
as an opportunity for them, and you go on then to say that as
the land of opportunity, that we must lead.
I want to tell you a story. I recently was in Poland, and I
was talking to a woman about the time when Poland was free of
communism and had begun to set a new course, and I asked her to
speak about it and speak about how exciting that must have been
to get their country back and freedom and what the future held.
She said, well, I didn't think about it much at the time. I
thought about, well, now I can go to America.
I thought that was interesting because, here, I am asking
her to speak of her own nationalism and of the opportunities,
and her translation to freedom after all these years was and
now I want to go to America.
How is it that we can be perceived so poorly but yet still
be that symbol of people want to go to when they think of their
own freedom?
Mr. Nye. Well, one of the interesting things about soft
power's ability to attract is that it grows out of our culture,
out of our values and out of our policies. When we ask people
in public opinion polls, why we have lost that attraction, it
tends to be disagreement with our policies, not with our values
and culture.
That is good news. Policies can change. Values and cultures
don't. The fact that the United States still is seen as a land
of opportunity, a land of openness means that a great deal of
our soft power is produced by our civil society, not by the
government.
The great danger is to make sure that in response to
terrorist incidents or other such things, that we don't cut
ourselves off from that value of openness, that openness of
opportunity. Others can come here. Others can study here. This
is the land of opportunity. That is attractive to others.
If we get ourselves into a mentality of cutting back, no
visas, no immigrants, no trade, that would be this example of
jujitsu that I mentioned in which the terrorists are using our
strength against ourselves, and your Polish woman's example is
a perfect case of that.
Mr. Armitage. Congressman, I think that story makes me very
proud and it is indicative of the fact, I think, that most
nations, most, really want us to be what Ronald Reagan would
say, that shining city on the hill.
But where the disappointment comes in is when our actions
don't meet our words, and then we introduce the possibility
that we are living a double standard, that we are two-faced,
etc. That brings in the cynicism about us and our motives.
We are talking a lot about the low esteem in which we are
held in some parts of the world. We ought to also recognize
that in places like the African continent, we are not in that
bad of shape throughout the continent and certainly in Asia we
are in somewhat better shape. So this is a mixed picture.
I think we ought to look at what is going right in terms of
public opinion in Asia and Africa and ask our questions of why.
One of the reasons in Africa is very clearly the pep for
initiatives on infectious diseases, HIV-AIDS. It is very well
recognized although the President doesn't get much credit for
it.
Mr. Turner. China is another area--if I might, Mr.
Chairman--if you could comment on it. You recognize in your
report the rise of China's influence through using soft power
and smart influence. Would you please comment on that for a
moment?
Mr. Nye. Well, China has been very adept in combining the
rise of its hard power seen in its economy and military
investments with soft power which is in diplomacy and
investment in culture and efforts present a smiling face to the
rest of the world.
That is a smart strategy. If you are a rising power, the
last thing you want to do is create fear in other people to
ally against you. You want to combine soft power with your hard
power as a smart power. China, as they said at their own 17th
Party Congress a week or so ago, China realizes that soft power
is in its interest.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
We have four votes that are coming up. The first one is a
15-minute vote. The subsequent ones are 5 minutes. We are going
to run up as close as we can to the line. We promise to keep
our word and have you gentlemen both out of here well before 4
p.m.
So we will run down and we will vote. It may take 25-30
minutes and then come back if we can.
Mr. Higgins, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Armitage, you had said the military has to be reset,
which got me thinking. On a recent trip to Afghanistan and
Pakistan with Congressman Lynch and Platts, the one hopeful
sign was the attitude of the American military. In the most
difficult places along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, it was
the military folks who were emphasizing that this was equal
parts. Their mission is equal parts, military and equal parts,
humanitarian.
What we had observed was the medics, for example, doing
surgery on a young boy whose fingers were fused together. This
is what they did in addition to treating injured soldiers which
was promoting good will amongst the folks in these very remote
Afghan villages.
So my question is resetting the military, is it an
integration of humanitarian work within the military or is it a
greater emphasis on humanitarian work as separate and distinct
from the military operation?
Mr. Armitage. First of all, there is no question,
Congressman Higgins, that the military can and does participate
in soft power activities. You mentioned one on the Afghan-
Pakistan border. There are many, well, the tsunami relief in
Indonesia, an application of soft power that dramatically
changed the view of Indonesia citizenry toward the United
States.
But I think there is a danger for all of us, and there is
certainly a danger for our servicemen. We are calling on our
service people time and time again to do things. Sometimes they
are things they train for, and humanitarian assistance is one
of the missions. We participated in it back in Vietnam.
But if we call on them time and time again because they are
organized and they are used to making chicken salad out of you
know what, we run the risk of having the other elements of our
great bureaucracy become more and more incompetent to do a job
that they should be paid to do.
We are arguing that the military will do splendidly and
will perform splendidly in any mission you give them. We want
other elements of our bureaucracy to perform equally splendidly
alongside and integrated with them in a strategic way.
Mr. Nye. I would agree with what Rich just said. The
military can contribute a great deal to our soft power. If you
look at the role that the Navy is now playing. It is
interesting how they are contributing in this way, but they
also have to be able to have the capacity to do their military
job.
Sometimes, because they are a well functioning bureaucracy
in comparative terms, we turn to them to do more than they
should. The answer or remedy for that is to improve the
capacities and resources for our civilian agencies.
Mr. Higgins. Let me give just a final thought on this. It
seems as though perhaps what is needed in the post-9/11 era is
the post-World War II American strategy which because of our
great military and economic superiority, at the end of World
War II, we had the world at our feet. As opposed to
demonstrating arrogance, we traveled the world and demonstrated
not only military superiority, not only economic superiority
but, more important than anything else, a generous spirit and
created international organizations which would become forums
of the jurisdictions within which international conflict would
be resolved.
It just seems to me that the past 6 years have been a
meandering and a trial and error type of policy that finds us
in a very, very difficult situation relative to isolation. The
United States is isolated.
So what can we do at this point, given everything that has
been done over the past 6 years, to strengthen these
international organizations toward the goal of creating a
greater emphasis on smart strategic power?
Mr. Nye. You go ahead.
Mr. Armitage. Well, there is no question in our report we
want to have greater involvement in these international
organizations and at a minimum, let's face it, every suggestion
that comes from an IO is not one that we necessarily will agree
with and we shouldn't in many cases.
But it seems, to me, incumbent upon us that when we don't
agree to offer an alternative, and I think that goes a long way
in the international community. You are part of the team. You
just don't agree with some of the aspects that the coach is
trying to put into the game plan. So you have alternatives.
This is very much, I think, the way we should go.
There is a larger question, I think, sir, in your question.
That is have we been searching around for our purpose in the
world? Some might say that it is the Global War on Terror. That
is why we are here, for this one event.
I, personally, think it is quite a bit more than that. I
think that I don't know why we are the sole superpower, why
providence has granted this, but I know what it means. It means
that we have, as a Nation, interest in every part of the globe
and nothing really substantial is really going to take part in
any part of the globe unless we are somewhere involved.
Now I think we ought to have a national dialog. If that is
the case, if you accept that definition of a superpower, what
is our purpose in the world?
I think as we found out from what we called a dialog with
America. We sent teams out from CSIS in four different States,
and they went to universities and video shows and everything,
just meeting with normal folks.
Much to our surprise, my surprise, folks were not
isolationalists. I had always thought they were reluctant
internationalists. They were not reluctant at all. They did not
like to be held in low esteem. They wanted an America who was
involved in the great activities of the day in a positive way,
and this was a very uplifting development for me through the
course of this.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Shays, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
I am going to take Mr. Thornberry's time later and yield
him time.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Thornberry, 5 minutes.
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to
be here.
I remember being down at that witness table in the spring
of 2001, testifying about changing the structure of the
government to better meet the threat posed by terrorism. This
subcommittee has often been on the cutting edge of changes that
were needed, and I appreciate its hearing here today.
That is really what I want to ask you all or invite you to
address. This subcommittee involves government reform. Are we
structured in a way to meet the challenges of the future?
Some people would say that it is a matter of personality.
We are going to have a new administration. They are going to
have new cabinet officers. They can make it work.
I would invite your all's view about whether it is
personality or whether more structural reform, whether it is
organizational or authorities, might be considered by this
subcommittee.
Mr. Armitage. Well, I think any amount of changing the line
diagram would fail if you have incompetent people in major
spots. So, to a large extent, personalities matter a lot.
Whenever, in our bureaucracy, there is talk about reform or
changing the structure, there is lot of neuralgia. Goldwater-
Nichols was the last one. I actually sat at this table and
argued against it along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. So I know about sort of the bureaucratic
encrustations that act against any movement.
We were talking earlier about 1947, President Truman's
dramatic decision having the Department of Defense and the CIA.
Did anyone like it at the time? Probably not too much, but it
was necessary.
Our timing, as you know, Mr. Commissioner, of this report
is rather deliberate. We are trying to get this issue involved
in the Presidential debates. We are not naive. We are not
ingenues. We know that this is not going to be in any way,
shape or form accepted wholeheartedly by anyone, but if we can
start this debate, then with pushes and shoves and whatnot from
the committee, maybe we can get a little altitude on this
thing.
Mr. Nye. Personality matters, but so do structures, and we
are not structured now to use our full tool kit of power. We
have the tools, but we don't know how to put them together. If
we are going to have a serious strategy, it is going to require
a much better integration of the tools that we have. So I would
argue that, yes, we are going to need structural reforms.
Mr. Thornberry. I would yield back to Mr. Shays.
Mr. Shays. I am just going to ask one question and put it
on the record and then when my turn comes up.
I am uneasy with this concept of terrorism as if it is some
ethereal being. The 9/11 Commission was very clear: we are
confronting Islamist terrorists who would do us harm.
I am going to be asking you why you just referred to it as
terrorism in your conversation. I do agree with your basic
point, that hard power plus soft power equals smart power, but
I just don't understand how we are leaving out the word,
Islamist.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Do you want to answer that?
Mr. Shays. No. We will get it later. I want to leave it.
Mr. Tierney. Gentlemen, if you will excuse us, then we will
come back in about 15 to 20 minutes if we are lucky and get
another 15 to 20 minutes and then let you go. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Tierney. I apologize to Dean Nye. At a later point, we
had no idea that there was one procedural vote. We still have
three votes that we haven't done yet. They are still on the
first vote.
Mr. Armitage. Well, how did it come out? Did we impeach or
not?
Mr. Tierney. I also want to respect your time on this.
Mr. Armitage. Not at all, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Shays had a question hanging in the air
which you have now had all this time to get prepared for.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The question was why do we call it terrorism when the 9/11
Commission unanimously said this isn't terrorism, it is
Islamist terrorists and they have been targeting us for years?
Mr. Armitage. I asked Joe why, I think, he used the term
that you took issue with, and he said he blew it. It was
inadvertent. The near term threat is al Qaeda which is Islamist
and that is what we have to concentrate on.
I take issue with the word, terrorism. It is the only time
in my recorded history when Mr. Rumsfeld and I were on the same
side of the issue. Terrorism is a tactic, and so I would prefer
the Islamist extremists right now and then there could be other
extremists out in the future.
I mean the lesson that people learned, and there are some
funny people out there, is it could be transported to other
terrorist groups who don't happen to be Islamist, but you are
exactly right. This is the present threat. This is a proper
acknowledgment would be Islamist extremism or terrorists.
Mr. Shays. Well, you got me to think about the term,
terrorists, to radicals or extremists because you say terrorism
is basically a tactic threat.
Mr. Armitage. Yes, I have just noted that we didn't have a
war against kamikazes. It was a tactic. You don't have a war
against snipers. It is a tactic, and that is what terrorism is,
a tactic, in my view.
So it is a semantic thing and probably not even in
important. It has just always occurred to me.
Mr. Shays. One of the things that I wrestle with is in the
fifties I grew up where I began to understand that we had to
confront the Soviet threat and we basically contain, react and
mutually assure destruction, but the American people bought
into that.
I don't have a sense that the American people have a sense
of what the threat is and what our strategy is to deal with
that threat, and I don't feel like we have debate about it in
the public marketplace. I don't think our candidates talk about
what our strategy needs to be, and it just surprises me that we
haven't had that.
I will just make another point to you. I am struck by the
fact that even the strategy to deal with the Communist threat
got changed a bit after Sputnik. I felt it primarily was
military in the beginning, and then we said, my gosh, it is
military, it is economic, it is technology. In the end, we
probably beat them as much by technology and our economy as we
did with our military might.
Mr. Armitage. Indeed, I think we probably didn't get off to
the right foot in the cold war, but you know we did apply smart
power.
Let me give you an example. I was being facetious about the
Joe Henley French Revolution comment, but one of the advisors
to Gorbachev was a fellow by the name of Yakovlev. He is the
fellow who came up with the term, perestroika.
Actually, back in the bad days of the cold war when we were
tightly constraining the number of Soviet citizens who might
come here, he actually studied at Columbia, and he studied
under a professor who taught him about pluralism. Yakovlev went
back to the then Soviet Union with an idea that pluralism could
work, and 20 years later he was the advisor. So it took a while
to realize that investment, but we realized that investment.
Mr. Shays. Well, let me just thank you for all your good
work to our country and service for so many years. You have
been an advisor to so many people, and I appreciate all your
input whenever I have called on you. Thank you.
Mr. Armitage. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I am going to ask
you just one brief question.
Mr. Armitage. Yes, sir.
Mr. Tierney. We had Walter Isaacson testifying on an
earlier panel, and one of the things he was talking about was
the possible creation of new treaty alliances.
Mr. Armitage. Proper which, sir? I have left one ear in
Vietnam, so I am having a little trouble.
Mr. Tierney. I don't know which side to talk to.
He talked about creating some new treaty alliances, the
possibility of that. Do you foresee any of that, rearranging
some of the alliances that we have or staying within the
existing ones moving forward?
Mr. Armitage. I don't see rearranging our existing
alliances. We do see new structures.
For instance, sir, we have a G8 structure which we well
know we think we could add usefully five other members to that
for certain items such as environment and things of that
nature. We envision making more use of the G20 which together
counts for about 80 percent of the gross domestic product of
the world, about 80 percent of the carbon emissions. So there
are new groupings that we can see, using some of the existing
structures and expanding them.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Secretary, is there anything you would
like to comment on to leave us with today?
Mr. Armitage. No. I very much appreciate your making the
effort.
Mr. Tierney. Well, I appreciate you and Dean Nye coming
forward today, and I appreciate the report and hard work of the
entire Commission and the two of you gentlemen. I appreciate
again, as Mr. Shays said, all your service to the country.
Mr. Armitage. My pleasure, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Shays wants to add the last word.
Mr. Shays. I have just one last question. I don't want to
get you in trouble if this isn't a question you want to answer.
When I have gone to Iraq, I have been struck by the fact that
had we had an embassy there, we would have known what a
pathetic condition the economy was and so on. We just would
have had people around.
I am just struck by the fact that we should have an embassy
in North Korean, in Iran, in Cuba, and not have politics play a
role in whether or not we have in place.
Mr. Armitage. Well, back in 1991, when we still had an
embassy there, we knew a lot. We didn't know, however, that
Saddam Hussein was going to strike into Kuwait. So we will know
some things and not others.
Your broader point, from my point of view, we ought to be
talking to our enemies as much as we are talking to our
friends, and we ought to have the courage of our own
convictions and confidence in our abilities to sit at a table
with these characters and not have our pockets picked. That has
been lacking.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Armitage. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Shays, thank you.
[Whereupon, at 3:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]