Forum Index | Forum 2007 Program
Secretary Condoleezza Rice's remarks at the InterAction 2007 Annual Forum
L'Enfant Plaza Hotel
Washington, DC
April 18, 2007
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much, Randy, for that great introduction. And I just want to say that Randy Tobias has indeed had many roles in life, but none more important than the roles that he's played in government, where he has been someone who has been most involved in organizing America's compassion to the world. America is indeed a powerful nation, but it is also a compassionate nation. And when the President turned to Randy to be the first ambassador for our President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief, he really took on something that will live on and on throughout the world as a symbol of what the United States really stands for. And he's doing an equally fine job as the first Director of Foreign Assistance and as the USAID Administrator. So thank you very much, Randy. I'm honored to work with you.
I'd like to also thank Charlie MacCormack, InterAction's chairman of the board, and Sam Worthington, the president and CEO, for giving me this opportunity to join you here today. I am a great fan of InterAction. I've known of your important work and I appreciate very much a chance to talk to you about some of the things that are on my mind. I know that many of you have traveled great distances from out of town to be here in Washington this week, and I want to welcome you to this city. Now, I want you to understand that I really am a Californian now and I think of myself as simply visiting Washington, albeit for an extended period of time, but it's a nice city to visit and I'm glad you're here.
I'm also delighted to be on stage on a day in which Julia Taft is being honored for her lifetime achievements. She's a very special woman, a very special American. Congratulations, Julia. (Applause.)
I've seen the forum's agenda and you have a far-reaching and fascinating day of discussions, have had that, and you will have more in store for you tomorrow and Friday. I know that Randy is going to join you again to talk some more about our plans. But at the moment, I'm very aware that the one obstacle that's standing between you and dinner is me. (Laughter.) Therefore, I will try to keep my remarks brief and perhaps we can have time for a few questions.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, friends, in my travels as Secretary I've been fortunate to see firsthand on many occasions the inspired work that your organizations are doing on behalf of the American people in places like Afghanistan and Sudan and Liberia, where the joys and the hardships of serving those in need so often go hand in hand. I know that InterAction members, indeed many of you here, are literally working on the ground in developing nations across the world, that you're making your homes in conditions that are often hard to bear, and that you're putting yourselves and your families in difficult, even dangerous situations, without very much protection, because all of you believe in the non-negotiable demands of human dignity and in the vast potential of humankind to overcome even the worst poverty and depredation.
So before I go any further, I want to thank you on behalf of President Bush for personifying America's compassion in the world.
What I'd like to discuss with you this evening is the new approach to development assistance that President Bush and I are working to put in place. But to do that, I first want to address an even more fundamental idea, and that is the elevated role that development now plays in America's foreign policy. For much of the second half of the 20th century, our national debate about development was largely beholden to the broader divisions of the Cold War. On one side there were those who viewed foreign assistance primarily in moral terms, arguing that it was an end in itself to help developing nations reduce poverty and human suffering. On the other side were those who viewed foreign assistance primarily through the lens of national security, arguing that reducing poverty, though noble, should be subordinated to the more pressing need to win friends and influence allies, whether they used our assistance to help their people or not.
Today, I submit to you that this old division on development has given way to a new unity of purpose. The international system is experiencing a dramatic shift, one that we can trace through a series of humanitarian and political crises arising within nations, not necessarily between them; the failure of states from Somalia to Haiti, Bosnia to Afghanistan; and culminating in the events of September the 11th. As a result, we have been compelled to revise our old standard of sovereignty from mere state control to civil and global responsibility, and with it to rethink our old assumptions about international development.
We are now led to the following conclusion: In the 21st century, defined as it is thus far by an unprecedented and increasing interdependence, human development is both a moral end in itself and also a central pillar of our national security. For as long as civil conflicts can beget global crises, as long as preventable diseases destroy the social fabric of entire countries and entire continents, as long as half the human race lives on less than two dollars a day, the developing world will neither be just nor will it be stable.
Today, the idea that foreign assistance is a vital tool of our international statecraft meets with broad and growing support, not only from members of the NGO community like yourselves but also from pundits and policy experts, from civilian and military leaders alike, and from politicians on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, I would argue that the moral and security arguments for development are converging into a new national consensus. It's one that we have called transformational diplomacy and defined that goal as follows: a world of democratic well-governed states which respond to the needs of their citizens, reduce widespread poverty, and behave responsibly toward their people and toward the international system.
I know that many of you wanted our definition of transformational diplomacy to be more explicitly a reflection of our commitment to poverty reduction. That was a good suggestion. We accept it. In the past five years -- (applause). In the past five years, President Bush has not only sought to shape the new consensus on development, we are working to implement it. With help from the Congress, really extraordinary support from the Congress, and from development groups like yours, the United States is now, in the words of the title you have chosen for this year's forum, setting a bold agenda for relief and development, a landmark effort to increase the quantity and improve the quality of America's foreign assistance.
First let me speak to the quality. When I first arrived at the State Department, I asked how much of our foreign assistance was being devoted to, say, promoting democracy. A few days later, the answer came back: Well, we don't really know the answer to that question. Nor did we know how much we were spending on other development goals, for much the reason that 23 different programs can sometimes not coordinate or have a central answer. We had no system that enabled us to think about and allocate our foreign assistance resources strategically, so we set out to create one. The process we have now put in place which Randy is directing seeks to use our limited foreign assistance dollars as effectively, efficiently and strategically as possible.
I know that some fear that the effect of this reform could be a shift of money away from long-term poverty reduction and towards short-term, short-sighted policy goals. I understand that concern, but I want to be absolutely clear. We realize the critical role that poverty reduction must play in prioritizing our foreign assistance and we also believe that getting this right is an important, indeed pressing matter for our own security.
In fact, I would argue that in many ways the reforms we are making are applying the very ideas that development experts have recognized as best practices for nearly a decade. For starters, our objective is long-term sustainable country progress. Put simply, we aim to cultivate partnerships not paternalism, to promote self-sufficiency not dependency, and ultimately to work ourselves out of the foreign assistance business altogether.
Now, how are we doing that? By recognizing, first of all, that a main source of persistent poverty is poor governance and a lack of effective institutions that deliver for their people. If nations are to achieve lasting development, our foreign assistance must do more than just help people to meet their short-term needs, though of course we must also meet those short-term needs. But we must help local actors to transform their own political institutions, reform their economies and create their own opportunities for social justice and the means by which to deliver it.
Our strategic framework for foreign assistance reflects this long-term approach and it builds on the key innovation of the Millennium Challenge Account, that our assistance should act as an incentive for developing countries themselves to transform the underlying conditions of poverty.
The new framework recognizes that countries cannot progress also without peace and security. They cannot progress without economic growth. They cannot progress without investing in their people. They cannot progress ultimately without governing justly and democratically. And they cannot progress when their citizens lack even the most basic humanitarian relief.
With these five goals, we are building our foreign assistance strategy around the unique needs of individual countries and we are better focusing our limited resources to help them transform their conditions.
We are also measuring the results of our assistance programs, really for the first time. We have now devised a uniform set of indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of our development efforts and to chart the progress of individual countries. In other words, we now have a comprehensive process to ensure that we are using our resources strategically and getting real results to show for it. Taken together, these reforms are improving the quality of our assistance.
But at the same time, we have continued to boost the quantity of our assistance. Since 2001, with the support and partnership of Congress, President Bush has launched the largest development agenda since the Marshall Plan. In the past six years, we have nearly tripled official development assistance worldwide and nearly quadrupled it to Sub-Saharan Africa. (Applause.)
We have begun an unprecedented $1.2 billion initiative to fight malaria and of course we have launched the President's historic $15 Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the largest effort ever by one nation to combat a single disease.
To this I would add the multilateral efforts we have led in the G-8 and in international financial institutions that could result in more than $60 billion of debt relief for 42 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries.
The American people are therefore now giving more of their hard-earned money to support international development. This alone illustrates that we are a generous and compassionate people, and furthermore it illustrates an emerging national consensus in support of the development that I spoke of earlier.
Now, bearing in mind the risk of predictions, I want to leave you with just that tonight. In the coming decades, I believe the kinds of state-building challenges we have seen so often in recent years are not going to decline. As a result, the importance of development is only going to increase and I hope that the consensus in favor of it is going to grow deeper and deeper. To meet these challenges, our government and organizations like yours and the private sector will need to continue moving from sector-based to country-based foreign assistance strategies.
And as we do, we as a nation must be prepared to commit even more of our resources to development. Indeed, I am prepared to argue in my remaining year and a half as Secretary of State that the United States with its development dollars is doing what America should for a moral cause, but it is also doing what America must for its own security and well-being. And in doing so, I hope that we can sustain a consensus behind increasing resources for development in the way that President Bush has done in his six years in office.
But that's going to demand a lot of all of us. I think you know that there is a great deal of competition for the tax dollar. We have to make the argument, we have to sustain the argument, we have to gain allies if we expect to continue to increase development assistance as we need to and as we must.
I want you to know how much we in government value the partnership with you. We value the advice, the input -- yes, even the criticism -- that we receive from your community through our Foreign Assistance Advisory Group and through the regular consultations that you have had with Randy and his staff. But most of all, we value the noble and benevolent work that you do in the good name of the American people for the weakest members of the international community.
So let us all continue to deal with the world as it is, but let us never believe that we are powerless to make the world better -- not perfect, just better -- so that all our fellow human beings can share in the blessings of freedom, of prosperity and of peace. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
MODERATOR: Thank you, Madame Secretary. Secretary Rice has agreed to take a few questions. Let me reiterate our standard ground rules. Number one, no more than one minute. Number two, a real question, not a speech. (Laughter.) Number three, state who you are and what your organization is. Also, this is for InterAction family, so no media. I know many of us have gone to the Fidel Castro school of question-and-answer, but let's do our best. (Laughter.) One minute.
QUESTION: Secretary Rice, David Beckman from Bread for the World. This is a softball question. I think this is one area, maybe the area of policy, where the Administration and the Democratic Congress have the most in common. So I just wonder, can you talk about what you're doing to reach out to the Democratic chairs of the authorizing committees and the foreign operations committees to, in fact, get consensus, to get agreement on a kind of reform that they'll support and also on more money?
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. First of all, we have really excellent relations on both sides of the aisle and -- particularly on this issue. I think you're right; I think people share a set of values and they share a set of concerns. And I meet frequently with the members of both Authorizing and Appropriations committees.
The problem is not -- sometimes, it's not an issue with the committees that know these issues very well, but just competition for the tax dollar. When we go to design the entire U.S. budget, there are a lot of important clauses and a lot of important programs, domestic and foreign. It is one reason that I think we have to get out and make the argument. I'm told that when George Marshall had the Marshall Plan, he actually went out and he sold it in the country because he needed to be able to convince the American people that this was a good use of their tax dollars.
And I think we can convince the American people and therefore, their representatives, even those who are not particularly interested in or involved in the foreign affairs side, that foreign assistance is a good use of our tax dollars. President Bush has declared the State Department a national security agency alongside the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, because so much of what we are trying to do in the world, so much of what we are trying to do in dealing with extremism, dealing with the threats to us can't be done by military force. It has to be done by improving people's lives, it has to be done by giving people hope, it has to be done by helping to create well-governed democratic states that can be allies against extremism and against terrorism.
And so that allows us, I think, to make a national security argument. But it's interesting; I've also found that the compassion argument is one that Americans respond to. Americans like the fact, I think, that there are hundreds of thousands of people in Africa who are receiving treatment because the United States of America was willing to fund the AIDS program. We were in the highlands of Guatemala with subsistence farmers who just a few years ago were barely getting by. And now, with a USAID program that has helped them to vertically integrate their business so that they now farm, they then package, and they ship directly to the United States. And the benefits of the Central American Free Trade Agreement; they are able to be well beyond subsistence farming and now, it's a kind of small business.
I think Americans like to know those stories. They like to know that we're educating girls in Afghanistan, where they were not allowed to be educated before. So I think we have two very powerful arguments, which is that the United States has always been at its best when it is proceeding both from power and values and both from power and compassion. And we can make the argument and I think we can win the argument, but we have to make it.
QUESTION: Leonard Rubenstein, Physicians for Human Rights. Thank you for coming, Madame Secretary. You mentioned that peace and security were a fundamental aspect of development and you come on a day when the President gave a speech on Darfur in which he said the time to act is now and threatened further economic sanctions if the bloodshed doesn't stop. Could you tell us how much time President Bashir will be given for that bloodshed to stop before those actions are taken?
SECRETARY RICE: Yes. My own view is that President Bashir is well beyond the time at which we are concerned about his willingness to live up to agreements that he has signed. So the time is not really for President Bashir; the time is really for the Secretary General who has recently gotten -- finally gotten agreement in a fairly clear way to the heavy support package in phase two of the Addis agreement and believes that he should now engage the Sudanese on trying to get the next phase, which is, of course, the peacekeeping force which needs to be a robust peacekeeping force under a single chain-of-command involving the UN.
And so this time is really for that diplomacy to have a chance. But the fact of the matter is we need to be prepared for the outcome that we have seen so often with the Sudanese, which is promises that are then not met. We're going to be monitoring it very carefully, we're going to be in very close contact with the Secretary General to see how it's going. We're going to be in very close contact with the regional actors. John Negroponte, Deputy Secretary, was just there. He will return in a couple of days and I'll get a direct report from him. The President's already talked to him on the phone.
But look, the suffering in Darfur has gone on too long. I was in one of those camps and we talk about the danger and the bloodshed and obviously, that's -- the killing is a terrible part of it. But we also have to talk about the daily fear that the women have of rape, we have to talk about the fact that these young children -- I met these young children playing in the dirt -- let me just say aid workers doing everything they could to make life humane for these people, but now fighting an uphill struggle; aid workers in terms of access to people, in terms of their own safety, an African Union force that is undermanned, and working as hard as they can but not really capable of meeting the challenge.
So we're going to monitor it very, very closely, but the time is for the Secretary General's diplomacy and we will see whether or not Bashir changes his pattern this time.
QUESTION: Thank you. Thank you so much for being present with us. I'm Kathy Brown and I work for Catholic Relief Services, so it's a pleasure to have you here.
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you.
QUESTION: One of the things that we hear so often from our constituency is a concern over what is happening and how we refer to it as the Holy Land, or what is happening with the Israel-Palestine conflict and from our perspective, the concern for achieving the humanitarian needs or responding to the humanitarian needs in Gaza.
We also hear that this is the linch -- this is the key, to peace throughout the Middle East and I have two questions if I might. One of them is where are we to bringing peace and two, where are we in responding to the concerns of getting humanitarian aid into the Gaza area? Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you. Let me take the second question first. On responding to humanitarian needs, the United States actually increased its humanitarian assistance considerably to the Palestinian people when it was clear that the election of Hamas was not going to allow us to carry certain kinds of programs out. And most of that aid goes through nongovernmental organizations and to the UNRWA, the UN refugee agency.
It is also the case, ironically, that aid to the Palestinian people has increased pretty dramatically over the last year, though it hasn't been going to the government. So we're doing our best to deal with the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people, but of course, we recognize that this is not a permanent solution. The permanent solution is for the Palestinians to be able to live in a state that is democratic and that is secure, next when Israel -- that is democratic and secure as well, the so-called two-state solution.
And we're working very hard, committed really to making as much progress as we can over the next months. I've said as long as I'm Secretary, it's going to be one of my highest priorities because the Palestinian people have waited a long time for their state and the Israeli people have waited a long time for the peace and security that will come from having a democratic neighbor. And so we need to work toward that.
Now when I -- I've been actually in the Middle East four times in the last five months. I suspect it'll be a few more times. And what we're trying to do is on two fronts; first on the Israeli-Arab front so that the Palestinian people have a political horizon, but the Israeli people also have a political horizon of peace with their neighbors. And I noted today that the Arab League foreign ministers met. They are going to send a delegation to talk to the Israelis about the Arab peace plan. It will, at this point, include Jordan and Egypt, which are states that already have diplomatic relations, but it's a good first step and we hope over time that that will expand so that the Israelis and the Arabs can have an important dialogue in support of the Israeli-Palestinian track.
And Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas met on Sunday. They had a good discussion. They did begin to discuss what we call the political horizon; that means the creation of a Palestinian state. And I expect to continue to try to support and push along those discussions on both fronts because the Middle East is a place that's changing quite dramatically and we recognize that some of those changes are because of policies that the United States has adopted.
But I will tell you the Middle East was not a stable place; it was a false stability. And perhaps we can create or help them to create instead a Middle East that is based on openness and on democracy and in which a Palestinian state and an Israeli state can live side by side in peace. I can think of no more important priority and frankly, no more important step that we could take and leave in place when this President leaves, because he was the president who said as a matter of policy, there should be two states, one Israel, one Palestine living side by side. And I think he'd like to be able to help deliver on that goal.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY RICE: Maybe the last question?
STAFF: Last -- one last question.
SECRETARY RICE: Yes.
QUESTION: Thank you, Madame Secretary. I'm Geri Sicola with the American Friends Service Committee Quaker organization. You've got Quakers and Catholics at this table. It's a very dangerous mix. (Laughter.)
First of all, I'm enormously encouraged by your recognition of the importance of dealing with poverty and development as well as the fact that sometimes, U.S. policy has possibly undermined peace and stability in certain places. I and my boss were recently part of a delegation of representatives of religious communities to Iran. We were the first delegation of Americans to be invited by and to meet with the president since the revolution. As you might imagine, it was a profound and awesome experience.
My question -- and you might wonder why does this kind of a question come from a group like ours that are involved in relief and development. And I'm reminded of an African saying that when two elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers, and we in this room are often the ones who have to clean up when the grass suffers. My question really is about the basic philosophy, now that you are in the State Department, of what we mean by diplomacy.
I wonder how we can resolve conflict peacefully when we are not in official negotiation and dialogue with those with whom we differ. And your thoughts on how we might get to the table of dialogue and conversation to prevent another disaster. Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, sometimes it is possible to move international politics forward by diplomacy and dialogue, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes, for instance, and I'm -- you may not agree, but in Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't think they were options after many years. The Taliban was not open to dialogue and diplomacy.
My own view is that after 12 years of defying the international community, Saddam Hussein's regime was not open to dialogue and diplomacy. But that doesn't mean that there aren't cases with people with whom you disagree that dialogue and diplomacy might work. And you should always be looking for those opportunities.
But the way that I think about how one conducts diplomacy is that it isn't just a matter of talking; it isn't just a matter of dialogue. It is really a matter of aligning your interests with the other parties' interests to see if you can find common ground. And sometimes in order to do that, there have to be certain principles in place that are understood, certain actions have to have been taken, certain groundwork has to have been laid, and you sometimes need others in order to help align those interests.
So let me give you an example of where I think we've gotten the alignment to a place that we might be able now, through dialogue and diplomacy, to make progress: North Korea. The North Korean nuclear program has now become an issue not just with the United States, but also for all of North Korea's neighbors. With the right countries at the table to bring to bear the right sets of incentives and disincentives so that when people talk, there is some chance that it might move forward. And so diplomacy has to have an underlying infrastructure, an underlying set of incentives and disincentives if you're going to make progress. That's really what we mean by negotiation.
Now with Iran, I would like nothing better -- as a matter of fact, I stood in the State Department at the end of May and I said the United States is prepared to reverse 27 years of policy of not talking to Iran and I will meet my counterpart anyplace, anytime, anywhere. But there is one international condition that has been established that needs to be met. And that is that Iran should cease its reprocessing and enrichment activities because the problem with allowing that to just continue while we talk is that the state gets better and better at doing it and therefore, gains more and more capability and potential to develop a nuclear weapon.
And it's not our condition. It was the condition of the Europeans, it's the condition of the Security Council, it's the condition of the IAEA. And so I have been asking myself the question not why won't we talk to Tehran, but why doesn't Tehran want to talk to us? Because meeting just that one international condition would bring Iran and the United States into face-to-face contact to talk about whatever is on their mind and whatever is on our mind. We have not limited it. We've said we'll talk about anything.
Now we don't -- we're not cut off increasingly from the Iranian people. One thing that we've tried to do is to make very clear that whatever differences we have with the Iranian Government, we don't have differences with Iranian people and their great culture and their desire to be recognized for that great culture. I don't know if you know; we've had several exchanges of people to Iran and Iranian people here. American wrestlers were in Iran, and by the way, got standing ovations wherever they went. The Iranian disaster relief professionals were here in the United States. We've had people from their equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
And so we're trying to open up those channels, but when governments talk, it's not enough just to talk. It is important to have some way of gauging the ability to come to some common ground or actually, the result can be worse. And so I look forward to the day when I can sit in with my European colleagues, the Russians, the Chinese and my Iranian counterpart and see if we can find common ground on a civil nuclear program for Iran that would not carry with it the risk of the creation of a nuclear weapon.
Thank you very much. I appreciate very much being with you.
(Applause.)
