[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 30, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10193-S10195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SPEECH BY PETER R. ROSENBLATT

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from 
Kentucky.
  I have sought recognition to comment about a very profound speech 
which was made by former Ambassador Peter R. Rosenblatt to the American 
Jewish Committee in Detroit, a speech which has a unique historical 
perspective, makes an analysis of the new-fashioned war, the 
asymmetrical war of terror, comments about the trio of terrorists, 
those who harbor terrorists, and the possession of weapons of mass 
destruction, and has a perceptive analysis of the complex role of the 
United States on working through the complex relationships with so many 
countries and the United Nations as we assert our role as the world's 
sole superpower.
  This is a speech worth reading very broadly. I ask unanimous consent 
that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Then, Now and Tomorrow: America's Role in a Changing World

       Throughout recorded history the relationship amongst states 
     has been determined primarily by the largest and most 
     powerful among them and by their efforts to protect their 
     interests within a stable state system. That may seem a 
     statement of the obvious but it has become an issue now, as 
     never before. In order to understand how, why and to what 
     extent such a basic condition of human history may now be in 
     question we must reach back to the political roots of the 
     modern world.
       It all goes back almost two centuries ago to the Congress 
     of Vienna in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution 
     and the Napoleonic Wars. The victors of those wars, Britain, 
     Prussia, Austria and Russia, joined with the restored 
     royalist regime of defeated France to establish a new 
     European order which, to all intents and purposes, meant a 
     new world order. It endured, with modifications, for nearly a 
     century.
       Towards the middle of the century a number of major events 
     threatened to unravel the stable Great Power relationships 
     that had prevented major wars. The popular revolutions of 
     1848 undermined or overthrew traditional regimes, Italy was 
     reunified in 1856 and, most importantly, the reunification of 
     Germany was completed in 1871.
       In 1862 King William I of Prussia had appointed Otto von 
     Bismarck as his Chancellor. In three brief military campaigns 
     in seven years against Denmark, Austria and France, 
     respectively, Bismarck expelled the three states with 
     opposing interests in Germany and in 1871 the new German 
     Empire was proclaimed by King William, now Emperor William I.
       The German Empire emerged from this series of events as the 
     leading military power of Europe and Bismarck set to work to 
     secure the new state against the pressures that he knew would 
     inevitably build up against the leading power. Chief among 
     the sources of this pressure was defeated France, now in her 
     Second Republic and deeply embittered by her humiliation on 
     the battlefield and the loss of two border provinces. 
     Bismarck realized that French hostility to Germany had become 
     a fixture of European diplomacy and that France would ally 
     itself with any of the other three Great Powers which might, 
     at one time or another, wish to align itself Germany. 
     Bismarck saw Germany as what he called a ``satisfied'' power 
     which, after its unification, wanted nothing further from the 
     other powers and was therefore primarily interested in a 
     restoration of the stability that had prevailed since the 
     Congress of Vienna. Understanding that in a constellation of 
     five greats powers Germany must be, as he put it, on the side 
     of the three, he saw that it would be necessary for Germany 
     to ally itself with Austria-Hungary and Russia. Of the other 
     two Great Powers, France was in permanent opposition and 
     Britain, an active colonial rival of France, adhered to a 
     policy of ``magnificent isolation'' and therefore wished to 
     become no one's ally--and least of all France's.
       When Bismarck's chancellorship ended in 1890, his brilliant 
     diplomacy had secured Germany as the linchpin of Europe, the 
     leading power in an alliance structure of three, on good 
     terms with England and absolutely unassailable militarily. He 
     had created a state system so stable that even the 
     unrelenting hostility of France threatened neither the 
     security of Germany nor the peace of Europe.
       The old Emperor's grandson and successor, the arrogant and 
     foolish young William II, failed to understand Bismarck's 
     statecraft and in short order terminated the alliance with 
     Russia, throwing that country into the arms of France and 
     dividing the continent into two increasingly unstable 
     alliance blocs, which left Britain holding precarious 
     balance. William then alienated Britain by a vast naval 
     building program designed to match Britain's navy. Thus in a 
     few years time William II reversed Bismarck's diplomatic 
     accomplishments, ending a century-long period of stability 
     which had seemed to make a major war unthinkable. In its 
     place the statesmen of the time substituted uncertainty, 
     rivalry between two alliance blocs and fear, always the 
     enemies of peace. With the destruction of Bismarck's state 
     system the world lost a stability which we have not succeeded 
     in regaining in 113 years. The outcome was World War I, in 
     some ways the major tragedy of the 20th Century, which 
     destroyed the optimistic and predictable post-Napoleonic 
     world of our ancestors.
       Out of that war there emerged an entirely new and different 
     state system of five powers, an exhausted and depleted 
     Britain and France, revolutionary Soviet Russia and the 
     newest entrants into the field, Japan and the United States. 
     After fifteen years of turmoil and economic depression the 
     five were joined by a resurgent Germany under Nazi rule. 
     Unlike the stable state system of the 19th Century the inter-
     war state system was highly volatile and ultimately collapsed 
     due to the weakness and passivity of England and France, the 
     isolation of the United States and the aggressive 
     expansionism of the other three.
       World War II produced an entirely new state system of two 
     great powers with a global reach engaged in a titanic 
     struggle for dominance and survival. The cold war was a zero 
     sum game in which the advantage of one became a loss to the 
     other. The defeat of the Soviet Union in this massive half 
     century long struggle produced a result unprecedented in 
     world history; a single global power militarily, politically 
     and economically vastly more powerful than all of its actual 
     or potential rivals.
       It would be a mistake, however, to think that because this 
     is so there is no longer anything resembling a ``state 
     system'' in the world today. There are now five other powers 
     each one of which could, under appropriate circumstance, 
     present a challenge to the United States over time and with 
     which we

[[Page S10194]]

     must learn to live on a basis of mutual accommodation. These 
     are Russia, Japan, China, India and Europe, when Europe 
     becomes significantly unified to act with one voice. Each of 
     these is currently unable to present a significant challenge 
     to the United States because of severe internal problems 
     which inhibit the full realization of its potential power.
       Russia has not recovered from the wars, misrule, economic 
     mismanagement and intellectual distortions of the 20th 
     century.
       Japan, having prospered under the U.S. defense umbrella 
     through the mobilization of its ancient social and cultural 
     system, now suffers the downside of the very same system.
       China will eventually become a great military power through 
     the diversion of resources which are needed to bring its 
     entire population into the modern world and to overcome vast 
     internal demographic, social, economic and even hydrological 
     problems, any one of which would alone take a generation to 
     cope with.
       Much the same could be said of India whose agenda, in 
     addition, is still dominated by the unresolved consequences 
     of the subcontinent's messy partition in 1947.
       Western Europe, though prosperous, is disunited and 
     disarmed. It is as unprepared to assume the responsibilities 
     of a great global power as England and France were in 1939.
       The wonderful professors who taught me my freshman European 
     history course at Yale were fond of saying that ``history 
     does not repeat itself, only historians do.'' But certainly 
     this maxim does not preclude even the devoted student of 
     Professors Foord and Mendenhall from attempting the 
     occasional historical analogy. We have arrived at this new 
     phase of history very much more powerful in relation to the 
     other major powers than was Germany after 1871. But like 
     Germany then we are a ``satisfied'' power which wants nothing 
     from any other. Our diplomatic task, like Bismarck's, is 
     therefore to crate and preserve global stability. But our 
     efforts to do so will have to be focused on new and different 
     issues in addition to those which preoccupied Bismarck; and 
     they are just as subject to mismanagement, the consequences 
     of which could be even more catastrophic.
       Now, why do I recite all of this history for you if the 
     facts of today's world are so very different? Well, it is 
     because the power politics of the 19th and 20th Centuries 
     persist even as we cope with an entirely new class of threats 
     arising from a totally different source. It's a bit like the 
     science fiction movies in which a world preoccupied with its 
     normal conflicts and rivalries is suddenly confronted with a 
     unifying threat from outer space. But unlike the movies, 
     there is little present evidence of a global appreciation of 
     the magnitude of the threat.
       The old world has not been abolished. International 
     relations are still largely determined by the most powerful 
     states--disproportionately our own. Just as in Bismarck's 
     day, armies, economic power and cultural influence still 
     determine the pecking order among states. Nor is there the 
     slightest reason to expect that the major states will cease 
     competing with each other.
       But since September 11, 2001 Americans and a few others 
     have become conscious of a new and terribly destabilizing 
     overlay on the traditional state system which we are just in 
     the earliest stages of understanding. I refer not just to 
     terrorism, but more broadly to the ever increasing capacity 
     of small, poor, weak states, terrorist groups, criminal 
     organizations or even individuals to gain access to the most 
     terrible weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and to use them 
     against the most powerful states or to hold them to ransom by 
     threatening their use. The fact that increasingly powerful 
     weapons are becoming ever easier and cheaper to buy or 
     produce places them within the reach of the familiar rogue's 
     gallery of terrorist sponsoring or harboring states and to 
     irresponsible non-state actors. It is not terrorists or 
     terrorist harboring states or WMDs alone that are so terribly 
     menacing and destabilizing in today's world, but the 
     conjunction of all three.
       The use of these terrible WMDs has been largely avoided up 
     until now through the doctrine of deterrence--the threat of 
     retribution as terrible or more so than the initial assault. 
     That doctrine has depended for its viability on an assumption 
     that the nation to be deterred is managed by at least 
     minimally responsible leaders with enough judgment not to 
     attack when the cost of so doing would be unacceptable. But 
     how does one deter a WMD assault by a fanatic or psychotic 
     adherent of some doctrine who has no regard for his own or 
     any one else's life? And how does one deter a group if one 
     cannot find it or if it is only one of many capable of 
     mounting a devastating attack without leaving a fingerprint? 
     And even if one were able to identify and find such a group, 
     and if one were willing and able to buy it off, how much 
     security would that bring and for how long?
       This new global configuration has come to be known as 
     asymmetrical warfare, in which the weak attack the strong 
     without hope of victory in the conventional sense. The 
     attackers have only the power to destroy. When Prussia 
     defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Germany 
     replaced France as Europe's strongest power. When the U.S. 
     won the cold war it became the sole superpower. If Al Qaeda 
     or some successor were, God forbid, to deliver a WMD to New 
     York, Washington or Chicago in a shipping container or 
     suitcase and detonate it, it could kill many Americans and do 
     grievous damage to the U.S. economy, but it could neither 
     conquer the U.S. nor replace it. The purpose of terrorist 
     organizations which pursue this form of warfare is, rather, 
     the survival of enough of them to attack again and again. 
     Chaos, not direct conquest, is the objective. The theory of 
     asymmetrical warfare conducted through terrorism is to 
     disrupt the stronger power's enconmy, social cohesion and 
     morale though massive human and material casualties so as to 
     ease the path for the terrorists' political or other 
     objectives.
       The administration has reasonably concluded that a 
     successful defense against asymmetrical warfare requires us 
     to seize and hold the initiative. We simply cannot wait until 
     the fatal conjunction between terrorists and WMDs occurs, 
     most likely in the relative security of a terrorist-harboring 
     rogue state, and we are confronted either with a WMD attack 
     or with blackmail threats of such an attack.
       We are therefore required to embark on a non-traditional 
     policy of searching out, seizing or neutralizing through 
     diplomatic, covert or, if necessary, military means any rogue 
     states, terrorists, fanatics, criminals and psychotics who we 
     believe are actively attempting to acquire and use, or 
     threaten to use WMDs, or to harbor, support, supply or 
     passively tolerate those who would do so. The 
     administration has called this a policy of pre-emption and 
     has explained that the threat is too urgent and the costs 
     of failure too grave to allow us to respond solely through 
     the usual diplomatic requests for investigative 
     assistance, extraditions and trials by jury. In other 
     words, we are engaged in war--a type of war for which 
     there is only one historical precedent--but a war 
     nonetheless, and not a criminal prosecution.
       The precedent is, of course, Israel, which has been made a 
     testing ground for the strategy of asymmetrical warfare. All 
     the ingredients are there, even if they have not worked as 
     the attackers have planned. Terrorists are the delivery 
     vehicles. The West Bank and Gaza were designed to be the 
     harboring states after the Palestinian Authority was placed 
     in charge of the so-called Area A under Oslo and after 
     Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon. And WMDs? Well, 
     fortunately none have yet been used, but not for lack of 
     will. The Israeli authorities stopped an attempt to destroy 
     Tel-Aviv's largest office building, the Azrieli Tower, and a 
     fuel storage area north of Tel-Aviv. If either of these 
     efforts had succeeded the casualties might well have matched 
     those of 9/11.
       The asymmetrical war of terror hasn't worked against 
     Israel. The impact has been opposite that which the attackers 
     expected. Israeli morale remains high, divisive internal 
     disputes have been largely laid aside, and Israel has struck 
     back with tremendous force and effect. Later, if not sooner, 
     the impact intended for Israel may, in fact, be visited upon 
     the attacker's own society.
       Just as the war of terrorism being waged against Israel was 
     a harbinger of the war now being waged against us and the 
     rest of the civilized world, so Israel's reaction forecast 
     ours. Israel long since identified this assault as a war 
     rather than a criminal problem. Israel determined that it 
     could not afford to wait until terrorist attacks occurred to 
     take action against its sponsors. And it determined that 
     preemptive action, in order to be effective, required 
     military intervention in the harboring areas and elimination 
     of those who plan, lead and execute the assaults.
       The administration has made quite clear, through its 
     actions more than its words, that it has gotten the message. 
     It now rarely criticizes Israel for pursuing policies locally 
     which it, itself, is pursuing globally.
       Like Israel we are engaged in a twilight war in which we 
     can be certain of the full support of only a few nations. 
     Unlike Israel we do have some support from many others, but 
     only we, Britain, Australia, Poland and a few others are 
     willing to take the initiative in prosecuting the war with 
     full vigor, and only our government does so with substantial 
     popular support.
       This circumstance requires that we maintain an 
     international diplomatic posture and military force directed 
     simultaneously at maintaining our political primacy and 
     military superiority vis-a-vis other major powers, while 
     waging active diplomatic and military warfare against 
     terrorists, those who harbor or tolerate them and the 
     proliferation of WMDs.
       That is going to be expensive. We have seen that it took 
     most of our West European allies only a decade of inattention 
     and deeply slashed defense budgets to become nearly 
     irrelevant to the global strategic equation. Far from cutting 
     down on major weapons systems we are going to have to keep on 
     developing new generations of them while we reconfigure a 
     portion of our military to enable it to intervene anywhere in 
     the world on very short notice to carry on the new war and, 
     if necessary, to conduct what President Bush used to call 
     ``nation building.''
       We will also have to figure out how we are going to pay for 
     all of this without killing the goose that has been laying 
     all those golden eggs--by saddling ourselves with 
     unacceptably high taxes or huge, escalating deficits.
       It will also take active and imaginative diplomacy for us 
     to avoid the fate of William II by alienating the rest of the 
     world. We can afford to ignore or exclude a France which 
     seeks actively to undermine our national interests. But only 
     if we can ensure that it is

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     France and not we that becomes isolated in consequence. We 
     cannot win this war without the active support of most, at 
     least, of the world's major powers who see themselves to some 
     extent as our rivals. And we will require at least the 
     acquiescence of much of the rest of the world, including the 
     Islamic world, whose governments are the terrorists' primary 
     targets but many of whose ordinary people feel at least some 
     sympathy for the terrorists' proclaimed objectives.
       Well, that brings us back to our starting point this 
     evening; our relationship with the world's other major 
     powers. Anti-proliferation efforts and the war against 
     terrorism cannot be conducted successfully by the U.S. alone. 
     Therefore, it is necessary for us simultaneously to conduct 
     our relationships and to contain our rivalries with these 
     powers--perhaps it would be more accurate to say their 
     rivalries with us--in the traditional manner on one level, 
     even as we seek to lead them in a priority joint campaign 
     against a global threat which some of them do not regard as 
     seriously as we, but which has or soon will target all of 
     them.
       To some extent, this is happening even now. France, with 
     which we have serious and perhaps enduring differences of a 
     geopolitical nature, is cooperating with us in intelligence 
     sharing in relation to the war on terrorism. China, which 
     views us as a rival for influence in East Asia, is beginning 
     to cooperate with us in dealing with the nuclear threat posed 
     by its North Korean ally. And China and our old adversary, 
     Russia, identify their campaigns against separatism amongst 
     their Moslem minorities with our war on terrorism--a very 
     uncomfortable fit for us.
       The United Nations Security Council, seen after 9/11 as the 
     logical instrument for organizing the world consensus against 
     terrorism, proved incapable in the face of discord over Iraq 
     among its permanent members. It was therefore bypassed, for 
     much the same reason that it was bypassed during most of the 
     cold war. Its structure no longer reflects the realities of 
     the current global state system--if it ever did--and it is 
     unlikely to realize its full potential until it, along 
     with the entire United Nations system, is restructured. 
     The UN today is a shambles, and not merely because Nauru 
     with 6,000 citizens has the same General Assembly vote as 
     China's 1.2 billion, nor because Libya is elected to chair 
     the UN Human Rights Commission, or Iraq the Disarmament 
     Commission or Syria becomes a non-permanent member of the 
     Security Council, or that the UN and its agencies spend 
     vast amounts of their time, effort and resources debating 
     and implementing annual resolutions directed exclusively 
     against Israel. No, the UN is a shambles because so much 
     of what it does is irrelevant to the world's major issues 
     that it lacks credibility even among those of its members 
     who are chiefly responsible for its distortions.
       But before we dismiss the UN as entirely irrelevant let us 
     recall a few salient truths:
       Metternich could conduct the Congress of Vienna, Bismarck 
     the Congress of Berlin and Wilson the Versailles peace 
     conference with four other principles and reshape the world. 
     We are relatively far more powerful than any of those 
     principals were, but we cannot be as effective as they were 
     then in our war against terrorism, even with the co-operation 
     of the 15 members of the Security Council.
       The world has become so small and dangerous a place that we 
     cannot even consider trying to stabilize it without the 
     active participation of much of the rest of the world.
       Therefore, if the UN did not already exist it would have to 
     be invented. Only we, with our enormous power and influence, 
     can make it work to focus the world's attention upon the 
     current version of the threat from outer space.
       So here we are, the most powerful nation the world has ever 
     known; and what is our number one global problem? A 
     collection of small to medium third world countries none of 
     which has ever won a war against anyone, with economies a 
     tiny fraction of ours, most of whose people are still living 
     in the Middle Ages, and rag-tag gangs of fanatics and 
     criminals which, if they should ever acquire the world's most 
     powerful weapons, may be undeterrable and unappeasable and 
     may use these weapons rather than submit.
       The real authority in our world may be distributed--albeit 
     unevenly--among six major powers. But neither we, as the 
     first among them, nor a majority of them as in Bismark's 
     alliance system nor all of them acting together, as in 
     Vienna, Berlin, Versailles or last year in Security Council 
     Resolution 1441, can absolutely ensure our safety. But we 
     have no alternative but to try to create sufficient harmony 
     among the world's principal powers to turn back the dark 
     forces that threaten civilization.

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