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ROGER THOMPSON: Good evening, everyone. I'm Roger Thompson, Chairman of the Cornell College of Politics, and I'm thrilled to be here today to welcome you to a very special event, an evening with Cornell alumnus, Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz.
First, on behalf of the college Republicans, I would like to thank all of you for coming here this evening. I would also like to thank the co-sponsors of this event, the Triad Foundation, the Program on Freedom and Free Societies, the Office of University and Student and Academic Services, the Office of University Communications, the Government department, and the Einaudi Center for International Studies.
To introduce Ambassador Wolfowitz today, we have with us Professor Barry Strauss, Chair of the Cornell history department and an accomplished scholar of military history. Before I turn the podium over to him, I'll take a minute to review the procedure for the Q&A session that will follow the speech by Ambassador Wolfowitz. As you can see, in both aisles will be a microphone behind which you can line up to ask a question once Ambassador Wolfowitz concludes his address. Questions will alternate between the left and right aisles.
Please keep your questions to under 30 seconds, as I'm sure many of your fellow audience members will also want to ask a question. And now, please help me welcome Professor Barry Strauss.
[APPLAUSE]
BARRY STRAUSS: Thank you. Thank you. Well, it's a great honor to be able to introduce the ambassador here tonight.
Paul Wolfowitz is a major figure in post-Cold War foreign and security policy. His has been a long-standing quest to promote democracy using American strategic national security and geopolitical interests. And he's been an intellectual force in post-9/11 US foreign policy in the Middle East, both in war and peace.
The ambassador has spent 24 years in government service under seven different presidents. He was ambassador to Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation in the world. He served in a number of positions in the Department of Defense, most recently as Deputy Secretary of Defense. He was President of the World Bank, in which position he paid special attention to the problems of sub-Saharan Africa and to combating the culture of corruption around the world.
He is currently chairman of the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board, and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Ambassador Wolfowitz seems to me to combine idealism with realism. That's his hallmark. And let me just read a very brief selection from a recent op ed of his published in the Wall Street Journal last month that I believe illustrates this. It's called "The Case for Arming the Syrian Opposition."
It says, "Moral support is important. Recognition by the world, and particularly the leading democracies of the heroism of the Syrian people, can encourage them to continue their struggle in the face of overwhelming odds. But moral and political support are no substitute for material support. The promise of material assistance, including financial assistance, might persuade the opposition to unite behind a coherent political program."
Last but not least, Ambassador Wolfowitz is a native of Ithaca and a graduate of Cornell in the class of 1965. He majored in math and then went on to the University of Chicago, where he achieved a PhD in political science. And he has taught at Yale and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. He'll speak to us tonight on the subject, is the era of American leadership over? Please join me in welcoming back to Cornell Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz.
[APPLAUSE]
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Thank you, Professor Strauss. I've been in this place before. Looks familiar. It's a real pleasure to be back at Cornell. And as you heard, I grew up in Ithaca, so I feel as though I'm back home, as well as at my alma mater.
I want to extend a special thank you to the Cornell Republicans for inviting me. Actually, when I was growing up here, and when I went to Cornell, I was a Democrat. I'm not sure they knew that when they extended the invitation, but it's too late to change your mind now.
What might surprise you even more is back in those ancient times, Ithaca and Tompkins County were rock ribbed, solid Republican territory. In fact, I don't believe that Tompkins County sent a member to Congress that was not a Republican since the end of the Civil War right up until 1965. And of course, things have changed since then.
So I was distinctly in a minority at Ithaca High School in 1960 when I supported John Kennedy for President. As I recall, and this may be hard to believe, I think there were only about 10 of us. Of course, most of the class was pretty apolitical, so that's where I started from.
Speaking of Kennedy, I'd like to start my serious comments here. No, not yet. Sorry. I want to tell a Kennedy story, then I'm going to get more serious.
When he was President, he was invited to Yale to receive an honorary degree. And as he received the degree, he said, now I feel I have the best of both worlds-- a Harvard education and a Yale degree.
Well, you know what they say at Yale about Harvard men? They say you can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.
[LAUGHTER]
Truthfully, I really do feel I had the best of two worlds. I had an Ithaca childhood, and there's really no better place to grow up than here, even if we did occasionally have to shovel the snow off the tennis courts for spring practice. And I had a Cornell education, and I never regretted the decision to come to Cornell. And frankly, I think it's an advantage to be free of the pretentiousness that you can find at some of the other Ivy League schools, which I won't name out of politeness.
Throughout most of its history, in fact, Cornell has remained true to the commitment to diversity that was embodied in those words that Ezra Cornell spoke at the inauguration of the university, and that have become the motto of the school-- "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." And it's appropriate in keeping with that, and I hope you all know it, that Cornell was one of the first universities in the country, and the first in the Ivy League, to admit women.
I believe that commitment to diversity continues at Cornell to this day. I hope it also includes a commitment to intellectual diversity. Because diversity of opinion is one of the most important strengths of an educational institution, and for that matter, of a country, because diversity of ideas is the greatest source of creativity and innovation.
Well, I appreciate that so many of you come out on a Thursday evening-- at least it's not a Friday-- to hear some alumnus from the class of 19-- what was it-- 65. For those of you who are freshmen, if you think about it, I came here as a freshman 50 years before you did. That's a long time.
And I was thinking about what I would have thought if I were a freshman listening to some old geezer from the class of 1911 talking about what life was like back in the Taft administration. Wow.
[LAUGHTER]
I also wonder whether the freshmen in that class, which is the class of 1916, think about that year, had any idea how their world was going to be turned upside down even before they graduated. I'll have a bit more to say about that later, but let me tell you now about the three main things I want to talk about tonight.
First, about some dramatic positive changes that have characterized the world in the last 50 years and particularly in the last three decades. Second, I want to talk about some of the challenges that those changes confront us with, particularly the challenge of incorporating a whole new set of powerful countries into the international system. What one writer has called with a phrase that I think is useful, "the rise of the rest."
And finally, to explain why I think it's critical that the US continue to play a leadership role in this new and more complicated world, even though other countries will increasingly catch up with us, at least in relative and even in some cases in absolute terms. Now, you're probably worrying that this is starting to sound like a three-hour lecture. You may have a date, or at least you have to study. Let me reassure you, I'm not going to go into any of this in detail. I just want to give you a kind of a sketch.
I'm told that exhaustive scientific studies have demonstrated that the attention span of the average college student is about 27 minutes. Of course, you're Cornell students, so you're above average. So the organizers told me I can have 35 minutes, but I have to leave some time for questions. Let's see if we can manage that.
This coming October-- now is the serious Kennedy part-- marks the 50th anniversary of an event that I still remember clearly from my sophomore year at Cornell. Now, you can raise your hand without any fear of being called on. This is not a quiz. But I'm curious how many of what I'm talking about that marked 1962? Just raise your hand if you think you know.
OK, well, I'm assuming everyone who raised their hands realized that I'm talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I think it's interesting that even 50 years later you can remember something that happened long before you were born. I remember it as though it happened only a few years ago.
On October 22, 1962, President Kennedy announced to the nation that the Soviet Union had deployed offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba. And that the US was establishing a blockade, although we diplomatically called it a quarantine, of Cuba and demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles. It's no exaggeration to say that for almost a wee we all lived in fear that there might be a nuclear war, that we might not see the next month. It was a fear that only abated six days later, on October 28th, when the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, announced that they were dismantling and withdrawing all of their missiles from Cuba.
That was the most dramatic, but not the only time, when US-Soviet confrontation raised the possibility that civilization, as we knew it, might be destroyed in a nuclear exchange. Today, the Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is gone. It's true that the US and Russia still have the appalling capability to destroy one another, but it is most unlikely that we would have the kind of confrontation that would lead to that. Still far from a perfect situation, but it's such a vast improvement over the world of just 30 years ago, not to mention my time here as a sophomore. So there has been some progress.
There's also been great progress in the last 30 years in the expansion of freedom and democracy in the world. In 1981, the think tank in Washington, Freedom House, which ranks these things, counted roughly 50 countries in the world as free. By last year, that number had almost doubled to roughly 90. And as a percentage of countries in the world, it had gone from roughly 1/3 to roughly 1/2.
In many ways, in my view, what's even more remarkable than the number is the surprising character of many of those changes. Many of them are things that at least my generation thought we would never see in our lifetime. I never thought I'd see the fall of the Berlin Wall, much less the end of the Soviet Empire. I never thought I'd see the end of apartheid in South Africa, but it ended in 1994, very peacefully too, I might add.
And some of the other changes have been pretty dramatic, if perhaps a little bit less so. My own personal experience in government in the 1980s was primarily dealing with East Asia. I was fortunate to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for that region during four of those years, and then as ambassador to Indonesia for three.
In 1981, when I came to the State Department, there was not a single democracy in East Asia, with the exception of Japan, not one. Then, in 1986, a peaceful revolution in the Philippines replaced the dictator Ferdinand Marcos with a democratic government. The following year, South Korea, which hadn't known democracy in several thousand years of its history, removed the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan in a peaceful transition and has since had, I believe, five free and fair presidential elections.
Shortly after that, Taiwan made an almost seamless transition from the dictatorship of the Kuomintang party to a free and democratic system with a dynamic free press and regular elections of the president and parliament, arguably the first, but hopefully not the last such democracy in a Chinese society. And of course, when I say hopefully, I'm hopeful that maybe the people across the Taiwan Strait on the mainland will enjoy democracy someday before maybe even in my lifetime, hopefully in yours.
Then in 1998, Indonesia, a country that became very close to my heart when I served as ambassador in the 1980s, a country, which you should know and maybe many of you do know, has the largest Muslim population in the world. In Indonesia, the dictator Suharto was forced to step down by massive student demonstrations and by his own military. Through 50 years of independence, Indonesia had been ruled by just two people, two dictators-- first Suharto, then Sukarno. Names are similar, people were different. The rule was dictatorship throughout.
And many people, after the collapse of the Suharto regime, said that Indonesia was too poor and too Muslim to manage democracy. By the way, speaking of poor, they started poor. And in 1998, with the Asian financial collapse, the Indonesian economy dropped by 14% in real terms. So they were starting in a real hole. But now, almost 15 years later, that country has become the world's third largest democracy, with a thriving press and civil society, and three successive free and fair presidential elections, just to mention a few of the features that make it, I think, a success story. And by the way, an economy that is growing not as fast as China's, but still impressively.
30 years ago, much of Latin America was ruled by military dictators. And now, most of Latin America are democracies. And in Africa as well, although late, a number of African countries are becoming democracies. And I think increasingly, we will see that trend there.
In many ways, as I said, the quality of these changes is even more remarkable than the quantity. I think particularly of those countries that had no prior history of democracy, where people sometimes said that, in fact, their cultures were incompatible with democracy. For example, there was the famous Confucian exception, the notion that Confucian cultures are inherently authoritarian, that there is so much respect for authority, that people actually want to be ruled by a strong person. That so-called Asian values in those societies are antithetical to Western democratic values.
Well, South Korea is a Confucian society. Taiwan is a Confucian society. So there goes that exception.
And now, we may be witnessing the end of what some people call the Arab exception, with the upheaval that is sweeping the Arab world. People called it the Arab Spring because of the time of year. It was a bit premature and a bit too hopeful. But I think now people are verging in the opposite direction of premature pessimism and talking about an Islamist winter. It's much too soon to know how all of that is going to end.
If you think about it, it was 20 years ago or more when the Berlin Wall came down, and we're still seeing changes taking place in Central Europe and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. So it'll be many years before we know the true results of the present upheaval there. But the US has a large stake in the outcome, and we need to remain engaged. And as I'll mention later, I'm not sure that we are.
This enormous advance of freedom in the last 30 years has been good for the tens of millions of people whose lives have been improved directly as a result. But it's also been good for the United States because it's turned enemies into friends and has made our friends stronger and more self-reliant. And I would add something else, too. Where the United States has been seen to be on the side of freedom, and unfortunately, that hasn't always been the case. But where we have, it has greatly improved our standing in the eyes of the people of those countries.
Take a recent example, which is Libya. The Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, an expert on the Arab world named Jeffrey Feltman, visited Benghazi about a month after the US intervention that saved that city from Gaddafi's forces. He said, never in all my years in the Arab world was I ever mobbed by grateful people, pro-American people enthusiastic to meet me as I was then.
And today in Tripoli, if you can see this, if you Google it, there is a big billboard somewhere on a long road that says "Thank you all." And it has flags of about 10 countries, including our own, and right in the middle, the flag of NATO. That's good for us, as well as the Libyans.
A third area of remarkable progress in the last 30 years has been in the economic sphere. And this is, in many ways, the change that also has led to this talk about the rise of the rest. As recently as the early 1980s, there was enormous pessimism about the prospects of the developing world, so much so that people spoke about the north-south divide. That's what it was called then. You don't hear that term too much anymore. It was as though it would be a permanent feature of the international system that poor countries would remain permanently poor, and the benefits of economic growth and globalization would only accrue to the relatively wealthy countries, mostly the Anglo-Saxon countries, Europe, and Japan.
Today, that term north-south relations has practically gone out of fashion. Even the term developing countries isn't used quite so much as that new term emerging markets. In the last two decades, the global economy has roughly tripled from around 20 trillion 20 years ago to roughly 60 trillion today.
Emerging markets, formerly developing countries, have accounted for roughly half of that growth. More importantly, in my opinion, that growth has enabled hundreds of millions of people in poor countries to escape poverty. Just in China alone, the number is 400 million.
On the whole, that has been good for the United States as well. American consumers have benefited from the expansion of global trade. And American producers have benefited from the expansion of global markets. Of course, not everyone here has benefited from the competition from China and other low-cost producers. One of our challenges today is to improve the ability of all Americans to compete at the high end, where this enormous growth in global demand creates opportunities for highly productive employment.
All three of those achievements would not have been possible without American leadership. American leadership and sustaining the Western Alliance through the Cold War. American leadership in supporting democratic change in many places around the world. And American leadership in maintaining a relatively open global trading system that was the key engine of growth for so many of these countries and indeed continues to be today.
That's why Robert Kagan, son of a great Cornell Professor named Donald Kagan, who I think was actually Professor Strauss's professor. Several generations of historians in that family, at least two so far. Anyway, Robert Kagan-- sorry-- has an interesting new book called The World America Made. And he puts it that way because of what I've just said.
Now, it may sound a little bit hubristic or boastful. We didn't make that world. A whole-- millions and millions of other people made the world. Ronald Reagan, President Reagan, had a sign on his desk, which I thought is a wonderful sign. He said, there's no limit to what a person can accomplish as long as they don't care who gets the credit.
So you might say, what are we doing boasting about the world America made? Well, it is a fact-- I believe a fact that this would not have happened if the United States had retreated into an isolationist cell at the end of World War II. And I think it's important-- maybe there's such a thing as too much pride, but I think right now Americans are in danger of too little, in danger of a kind of defeatism. So I think it's important for the US to take some credit for what we've done, not to pat ourselves on the back, but so that we can have the self-confidence to face the future. Because I think defeatism, or what some people call declinism, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All of that success does present an economic challenge, but in many respects, the bigger challenge is geopolitical. As we look to the future, more and more countries will have the economic strength to be significant powers, at least on a regional scale, and some even on a global scale. Now, you may be thinking, it seems to me often this is all people think about when you say words like that we're talking about the rise of China. Well, it is the rise of China, but it's the rise of a great many other countries as well.
China has 1.2 billion people. I would remind you that the 10 countries of Southeast Asia that includes Indonesia is 600 million, twice the size of the United States. India has a population in the neighborhood of a billion. It grows so fast, I can't keep track. Within 10 years, it's going to be more than China's. Population isn't everything, but a large population of increasingly productive people translates to economic power. And you have Brazil and Turkey and South Korea, and even Indonesia and Vietnam and South Africa and Mexico increasingly important players.
Even at its best, what this means is that the world is going to be a much more complicated place. It's going to be more difficult. More countries are going to be needed to reach effective agreement on any important issue.
And in fact, I think that's why increasingly, we're seeing the so-called G20 group of countries, which means 20 countries, playing a larger role than the former G8 group, which was formerly the G7, which was formerly the G3, if you go back far enough. More and more countries need to be players. That's not such a bad thing, although it complicates life.
What is a bad thing, what is the worst possible outcome is it does increase the possibility of conflict and even of war, which brings me to my third and final point, why I think American leadership is so important. I know that some people say the US can no longer afford to play a leadership role in the world. And I agree with them in one important respect. We won't be able to play that role if we can't fix our economy, if we can't get it growing again, if we can't restore the dynamism and innovation that have characterized us so often historically. But by the way, this isn't the first time that we were pessimistic about our economy. And I hope it won't be the first time that we fail to recover.
But the key to doing that is to make the right changes here at home, not to withdraw from the world. In fact, I believe we can't afford to withdraw from the world. Let me just give you one example. During one of the Republican candidate debates, one of the poor candidates-- I think any of them would have been in the same position-- was asked the question, what would you do if you were told, as president, that terrorists had gotten a hold of one of Pakistan's nuclear weapons?
I don't remember the answer, except I remember it wasn't very impressive. I'm not sure I could give you a very impressive answer. What I can tell you is the fact that is a very plausible question is a reason why we can't afford to leave the world alone. We need, in a situation like that, to have as many options as possible, as many ways to act on our own as possible, and as many friends as possible to act with us.
How you answer that question is a very tough one. And it's not clear what you would do, and it would depend on the circumstances. But I am not prepared to say we can depend on Chinese leadership in that situation.
We might hope for a little bit of help from them. Though, I would note we haven't gotten much from them on any of these kinds of issues so far, including North Korea. We can hope for help from others, but to get that help, we need to be prepared to lead ourselves. And in a situation like that, we simply can't afford to be helpless.
Well, some would say even if our economy recovers, we've lost the will to act. And there's no question. And I'd have to be the first to admit it that two long controversial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, painful as wars always are, have made us question our role in the world.
But I think we're taking that questioning much too far. Right now in Syria, it seems as though we're paralyzed by a fear that if we act, it will somehow lead to another Iraq. Certainly understand why no one wants another Iraq, but not every situation is Iraq or Afghanistan.
The US could make a big, big difference in Syria simply by more energetic support for the Syrian opposition, who've shown, by the way, unbelievable courage. I mean, I would say, as a starting principle, when you have people that brave on your side, you should be thinking about how you can help them, not worrying about getting too involved.
And that doesn't mean going to war for them. They're doing the fighting. What they need is more support, financial support. We're giving them almost nothing.
Medical and humanitarian support. Where is the big airlift of medical supplies? Where are the hospital ships offshore to help wounded people, or in Turkey, for that matter?
With non-lethal military support, imagine what it would do for them if they had the ability to communicate securely in a way that Assad's forces could intercept. And yes, weapons as well. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be given defensive weapons. We're not talking about tanks and artillery. We're talking about the simple means to destroy Assad's tanks.
I think we're in danger of not repeating the mistake of Iraq. There's no danger of that. But repeating the mistake of Bosnia. That happened 20 years ago. And I suppose looking around the room, most of you were possibly in elementary school. So I don't expect you to know too much about it.
It was a bipartisan mistake. It started under President Bush, and it continued under President Clinton. For three years, we imposed an arms embargo on Bosnia, a predominantly Muslim country that was a victim of aggression from its Serbian neighbor. The Serbs had plenty of weapons. They didn't care about an arms embargo. The Bosnians had none.
And people said, well, if we give them weapons, it's going to be just like pouring gasoline on a fire. I'm sorry. What it was like was prolonging the conflict. In fact, it ended finally when the Serbs realized, because of American intervention, that they couldn't win.
But that American intervention would not have been necessary. The massacre at Srebrenica would not have happened. 200,000 people would not have had to die if we had acted to help them earlier and more decisively. And in fact, Bosnia would have been in much better shape after than it is today if that war hadn't gone on so long. I really think we're in danger of repeating that same mistake in Syria. We've done practically nothing while a bloody conflict has gone on for over a year.
The result, if Assad does finally go, it's going to be a country that's much more shattered, much more embittered, many more blood scores to settle, probably more refugees. They would be from a different sect. But there's also the real and terrible possibility he's going to survive all of this, and he will continue to rule a shattered Syria that will be a confirmed enemy of the United States and a much stronger ally of Iran.
Well, I told you I was going to skim the surface, and I see I'm nearing my 35-minute mark. So what I'd like to conclude with is by asking you to think for a moment if you were that old geezer, except young as a freshman, coming here during the Taft administration 100 years ago. The world around you would be a model of progress, unbelievable technological progress.
It's true it's not Google and the internet and all that, but it was the airplane. It was the telegraph. It was the automobile. It was the telephone. Unheard of progress.
Unbelievable economic growth. I don't know the statistics exactly, but I think world economy grew at something like twice the rate in the 30 years before World War I as it had in the previous 100. Huge expansion of world trade.
And a very long period of peace among the major powers. arguably the last major war had been the Franco-Prussian war in Europe 40 years earlier. Some people even thought that war was obsolete, that modern economics meant that people would realize it just wasn't worth it to fight.
There was a journalist named Norman Angell who wrote a book called The Great Illusion, and the illusion that he meant was the illusion that war pays. And he thought that he had demonstrated successfully that war couldn't pay. He had to pay to get the first edition out, 5,000 copies, and it took off like wildfire. I think it sold 7 million, which at that time was unheard of.
Well, it might have been nice, except in 1914, a crisis that started in the Balkans of all places got out of hand. And before you knew it, you had World War I, which was, up until that time, the bloodiest war in history. It was a catastrophe all by itself, destroyed whole generations of Europeans. And I think 200,000 Americans were killed, although we entered that war late.
But the catastrophe didn't end with World War I. World War I helped to produce Bolshevism and communism in what became the Soviet Union, which was a tragedy by itself. It helped to produce fascism in Germany and Italy, which were also tragedies by themselves. Maoism in China, which was maybe 70 million people died as a result. And then, of course, World War II, which made World War I no longer the bloodiest war in history.
And when we got through all of that, we still had the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis and all of the things that led to that. So the 20th century, which started out with such great promise, ended up as the bloodiest century in history. We cannot afford to do that a second time. If it happens in this century, I don't want to imagine what it would be like.
But it doesn't have to happen. I think an important part of preventing it from happening is for the US to remain engaged, actively engaged. There's no magic formula for what you do in particular situations. But one thing I can say for sure, if you say it's none of our business, let the world take care of itself, it's not going to take care of itself well.
We may not be perfect. We may make mistakes, but I think the chances are better if we remain involved. So I hope that our present generation of leaders and your generation, as you become leaders, will have the wisdom to see that our best chance to preserve a peaceful and prosperous world is for the US to stay engaged, to remain a leader, not necessarily the dominant power, but still, I think the essential and perhaps in many ways, the most important power. Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
ROGER THOMPSON: Thank you for that address, Ambassador. Now, we'll begin with Q&A on the left-hand side. We have exactly 20 minutes, so please try to keep your questions under 30 seconds. Thank you. Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Greetings, Dr. Wolfowitz. First, I'd like to thank you for extending us here the courtesy of your time. My name is Jeffrey Dhamakapella. I'm a national security consultant in DC, a lifelong Republican, and unapologetic neoconservative. Congruently, I'm a very big fan of your work, both in the US national security and interests.
That said, my question centers around the general frustration I have, specifically the impact internal political dissidence, advocation of demonstrably suboptimal public policy of non-interventionism has had on the time critical and decisive and subsequent efficacy of United States interventionist foreign policy. I was wondering if you would touch upon your thoughts and experiences during your time as Undersecretary of Defense surrounding the impact that internal political dissidence have had, specifically regarding national will and subsequent efficacy of the United States interventionist foreign policy, as well as what steps the United States might include to insulate United States policy and decision making from political warfare and lawfare campaigns in the future?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: All in 35 minutes.
[LAUGHTER]
But I want to say something, because you said neoconservative. You're welcome to label yourself neoconservative, if that's the way you feel. I have to say, apart from or maybe partly because the term is abused so much, but what really offends me is neoconservative domestic policy has a very clear meaning. It's people who were of liberal inclinations, but came to a conclusion, more or less, that market mechanisms are the best way to achieve liberal results, so they changed the way they think.
I told you I was for John Kennedy in 1960. My feeling is I don't mean that I've never changed the way I think, but the way I think about foreign policy is in the tradition of Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Senator Henry Jackson of Washington State, and Ronald Reagan. And if you know who those people are, you know it's three Democrats and one Republican.
We have moved our foreign policy spectrum way away from the center. What used to be mainstream, what John Kennedy stood for-- I don't like these slogans, but peace through strength and promoting democracy isn't some crazy neoconservative notion. So anyway, it's important to say that not to correct you.
Look, I'm going to try to take just one cut at the question you asked, because I really do believe that a lot of damage was done to the country and to our position in the world by a certain line of irresponsible criticism of the war in Iraq. Doesn't mean that people shouldn't criticize the war. I mean, I could criticize many things about it, and I can respect people who say the whole thing was a mistake.
And certainly, when you visit with Gold Star families, which are families who've lost people in the war or the severely wounded, every time you have to ask about the price of it all. Those are legitimate issues. But I think enormous damage was done by a completely false argument, the notion that President Bush lied.
And many of the politicians who make that argument-- and I won't name names, but they're still in important positions, they're prominent senators-- believed exactly the same intelligence. They know what the intelligence said. They know it wasn't a matter of lying. They can say it was a mistake. They can try to figure out. But to say that the President of the United States took an action like that, knowing that it was based on an untruth is itself profoundly untrue.
And I guess one lesson I take from that is that when I talk about President Obama, you may have noticed I didn't use his name, but I said, good work in Libya, bad work in Syria. I'm not trying to question his patriotism or his motives. I'm trying to judge his actions on their merits.
And I think the more we can try to stick to that high ground, there's plenty of room to argue and debate, and you can even feel very passionate about it. But just try to stay honest.
ROGER THOMPSON: Go ahead, on the right-hand side.
AUDIENCE: Dr. Wolfowitz, the main, I guess, conflict that is now capturing much of the concern of the American public is the tension between Iran and Israel. And many seem to fear that the actions of either one side or the other might potentially force the United States to act in a way that might not be in its best interests or in the best interests of the world in general. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I would agree with an unstated premise of your question, which is, of all the things to worry about this year, I mean, maybe a Pakistani nuclear weapon will fall in the wrong hands, but the more immediate concern is the one you raise. And it has enormous implications. I would say, first of all, by the way, I think it's important to understand this. It's not just between Israel and Iran, although Israel is the one country that seems to be contemplating military action.
But it's now an open secret that the Saudis asked the US a couple of years ago to take action against Iran. And friends of mine who have been in meetings with congressional delegations traveling through the region, say that the country most concerned about Iranian nuclear weapons is Saudi Arabia. The second most concern of the United Arab Emirates. And the Israelis are actually a kind of distant third. But it's true-- the Israelis are the ones who may have some capability militarily to do something about it.
I have to tell you honestly, for a long time I was skeptical that they could do anything. They do have a way of surprising you. And it turns out maybe they even have bases in Azerbaijan right on the Iranian border.
I no longer am skeptical about their ability to do something. I don't know what that something is. I think the most they could do is delay an Iranian program. Delay for two years, delay for six years, delay for 10 years, it makes a big difference for how long.
So much so-- I mean, it depends so much on facts that in Israel itself, you have the former head of Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, publicly saying Israel should not act militarily, that the costs of military action are not worth the potential gains. It is reported, though, he's not as public about this, that the defense minister, Ehud Barak, who used to be the commander of Israeli armed forces, In fact, I dealt with him very closely during the first Persian Gulf War. He's a very smart man. That he is in favor of action.
I don't know the facts, and none of us, unfortunately, can predict what will happen. And in your question is, I think, a legitimate concern that this could blow up into something quite large, not necessarily. Remember, what was it, I guess five years ago, Israel bombed a secret illegal nuclear reactor that the North Koreans had built for the Syrians in Syria. There was no reaction from Syria. In fact, they didn't even admit it for several months.
So we don't know what the reaction will be. But that doesn't mean we can assume that it's going to be as mild as Syria. If it sounds like I'm evading your question, to some extent, I am. I don't know what's going to happen.
I think either direction I'm afraid of. I mean, if nothing happens, I think Iran is going to get nuclear weapons, and I think it's very dangerous. If Israel acts militarily, they may still get nuclear weapons, and it'll be even more dangerous, probably.
What I really do believe-- so I don't know what the answer would be if I were an Israeli, or if I were an American President and asked to do it for the US do it on its own. What I wish we had been doing more actively for the last 10 years is bringing what is called the Arab Spring to Tehran, because I think political change in Iran gives us the best chance not of-- I know it's true that any Iranian government is going to want some kind of nuclear program, but they aren't going to all be as aggressive as this one is.
And I think we blew it in 2009 when the demonstrations began in Iran, and they were huge. And the United States did nothing. In fact, the president said there's no real difference between the two sides. It was an extraordinary statement.
And I think it's another example of what I'm saying of, well, we're sort of afraid of our own leadership. We're afraid that if we speak up to actively on someone's behalf, we'll hurt them. Well, it's a misjudgment. And I'll just conclude-- I'm a bit far from your question, but I mean, these events of the last year, I think, have shown that even many Arabs who don't like American policies and may even not like the United States all that much, still like the kind of political system we have and would like it for themselves.
And when President Obama spoke in Cairo in June, just before the outbreak in Tehran, spoke at Cairo University, he said, I want to talk about seven subjects. He probably did it in less than 35 minutes. Anyway, seven subjects.
He got to the fourth one, he said. The fourth subject I want to talk about is democracy. And the first thing he said was, I realize that democracy promotion is controversial. But before he could get that second sentence out, his audience erupted in applause simply at the fact that the American President was going to talk about democracy.
These are young Arabs. They might not like American policy. They probably don't like what we did in Iraq, but they love democracy. I'm not saying all Egyptians do, but these young people did. And we need to have a little more confidence in what that stands for.
And I think in the case of Iran, it's still not too late to try to be promoting change. Sorry, it's a long answer, but it's a big, big subject.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
ROGER THOMPSON: All right. Right here.
AUDIENCE: Hello, Ambassador Wolfowitz. Good evening. My name is Max McCullough. I'm a senior history major here. And my question actually speaks to what you were just talking about.
The rise to a position of global leadership that America went through following World War II was predicated on 30 years of economic and political instability and war in Europe and in the rest of the industrialized world. And so it put America in an advantageous position to assume a position of global leadership.
Now, though, with as you have outlined the rise of the rest, what I'm curious to know is, how does America continue to assert its leadership without coming into direct confrontation with powers like Brazil, Russia, India, or China, which are on the rise both economically and militarily?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: OK, first of all, quickly, I would say as far as the history goes, I mean, US power grew not just because these other countries were shattered by war, but we're a much bigger country. And once-- I mean, it's a little bit like the arithmetic with China. And in fact, I believe if the US had been engaged in Europe from 1914 instead of waiting till 1917, if we'd been engaged in Europe from 1938 instead of waiting till 1941, Europe would not have been as shattered. And we would have actually-- the world would have been better and we would have been better, and we would still have been the most important country.
I think one of the unique things that we bring, I don't like this word dominant, because I think our great strength is not that we dominate other people. Our great strength is that people want to cooperate with us. One of the challenges in Asia is going to be not preventing conflict between the US and China. It's really preventing conflict between China and Japan and China and Taiwan and China and Vietnam and maybe China and India.
And I think that kind of conflict-- I mean, you can take a view, OK, that's their problem. Jim Baker's famous words, "we don't have a dog in that fight" or Neville Chamberlain's words about, what was it, getting involved in the problems of faraway countries about which we know little. But I would hope by now we've understood that things that happen in those faraway countries come back and bite us.
And we have an ability, I think to play a middle role. It's not risk-free. I mean, you used the word confrontation. When those countries are in confrontation, we don't just step in there and sprinkle Holy water and say nice words, and they say my, my. It's partly that we come in with real strength.
But it was the failure of Britain in 1914 to come in with real strength that allowed the Germans to think they could win a quick war. And it was the failure again, in some respects, the United States in the 1930s that led to that same conclusion. I'm not saying there's a recipe. I mean, I really do believe every situation is different. And too often we're fighting the last war.
We got into Vietnam because we were fighting Munich. We got into-- well, let me not go on with the list. I think we often are trying to avoid the last situation. That's not right. But avoiding the world entirely is just I think it's a formula for trouble.
ROGER THOMPSON: I just want to make one quick warning before we continue. Unfortunately, we have only time for one more question, so go ahead.
AUDIENCE: My name is Ben. I'm a high school student. And my question for you is, do you think that the leading from behind strategy in Libya could be a template for future wars and could be our future US strategy, rather than going in unilaterally or virtually unilaterally?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: By the way, no one admits to using the word leading from behind, although someone obviously did. But I mean, I think we kind of did that in Libya. And I think it was a mistake, not 100% a mistake. I mean, I do think it's a good strategic principle to get other people to do as much as possible.
And it's often the case that if they think you're going to take over and do everything for them, then they won't do anything. But I think we just tilted that one too far in the wrong direction. And in particular, what troubles me is that when it came to direct support for the Libyan revolutionaries-- I think they call themselves or freedom fighters, opposition, whatever word you want to use-- they had to turn to this little mini state in the Persian Gulf called Qatar for their weapons.
There was no reason the United States couldn't have been supplying them. We didn't even have to send people into Libya to train. There are many ways it could have been done.
Well, the Qataris are not-- look, they're not the worst people in the world, but they are in some ways Islamists of a pretty bad kind up there with the Saudis. The people that they support in Libya today are doing things like digging up graves at mosques because they think it's sacrilegious to bury people anywhere where you can venerate the grave. They tried to destroy a statue in downtown Tripoli because it offended their religious aesthetic sense. It's like the people who blew up the famous Buddhas in Afghanistan and Bamiyan.
I mean, if Libyans want to live that way, we can't stop them. But we certainly shouldn't sit back and let a different foreign power, namely Qatar, empower the people with the worst objectives. So I guess in answer to your question, I think there is a lot of room to hang back a little bit so that other people take some responsibility. But once they've taken that responsibility-- and God knows, the Libyans certainly took responsibility-- we should be more active in helping people who are-- to use the word loosely-- on our side.
I think we got time for one more, actually, right?
ROGER THOMPSON: Go ahead. Someone want to get up?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Who surrendered the microphone prematurely?
AUDIENCE: Thank you, Ambassador. My name is Ankur Bajaj, Jr, chemistry and economics double major. So my question centers around, I guess, the role of sub-national actors or sub-state actors. And I guess, how the world is progressing given globalization, how do you feel the American leadership and calculus shifts given this change?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think it-- I'm always a little suspicious of people who say something is brand new and it's never been seen before. And Professor Strauss studies ancient history and would probably be even more upset when people say that. But I do think there's something going on here with the way in which technology empowers even very small non-state actors for good and for ill.
It was a little bit silly 10 years ago when people wrote as though this is all a good thing and nothing bad can happen from it. And I said, well, wait a minute, what about global terrorism? And this was before 9/11.
I think this issue of cybersecurity is huge, just huge. And the damage that could be done to our country if some cyber criminal or cyber state figures out how and decides they want to shut down our electric power system. It's not just economic. I mean, people are going to die in hospitals. People may even run out of food and water. We are so dependent on certain pieces of critical infrastructure. And the idea that a handful of-- I mean, I don't want to keep you up too much tonight, but I think a relatively small number of people with the wrong intentions could do a lot of harm.
On the other hand, I think one of the reasons why I'm a little more optimistic than maybe other people that Egypt's not going to turn into a new kind of dictatorship is that I think that it is a Facebook generation. And they haven't asserted themselves very well. It's the old organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood, that have sort of so far taken over.
But I think it's going to empower a more enlightened, more freedom-loving type of person. And I think that's a good thing. But I think true of almost all technology. It's an instrument. And in the right hands, technology is good, and in the wrong hands, it's bad. And we shouldn't think that this new technology is somehow automatically going to make us better or worse. But it does create some new opportunities, new challenges. Thank you for your patience. And it's be fun.
[APPLAUSE]
With democracy on the rise among nations, new challenges confront the United States, said Paul Wolfowitz '65, President George W. Bush's deputy secretary of defense (2001-05) and former president of the World Bank, during a lecture at Bailey Hall on April 12, 2012.
Wolfowitz's talk was sponsored by the Cornell College Republicans, the Program on Freedom and Free Societies, and the Divisions of University Communications and Student and Academic Services.
