Speeches:
Final Remarks - Robert Kuttner
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I think it’s no exaggeration to say that we have been part of a genuinely
historic event this past twenty-four hours. We have heard not only a coherent
critique of the Bush Administration foreign policy. But more importantly we’ve
heard a coherent, plausible alternative that will make us safer as a people
and as a nation. We’ve heard it from distinguished experts who represent
the bipartisan mainstream in foreign policy going all the way back to the
Kennedy Administration.
If you start with the period that began after World War II there have always
been people on the fringe of foreign policy, people who to start World War
III in the 1940’s while the United States still had a nuclear monopoly.
But of course instead we got Truman and Cannon and containment. There were
people who wanted to extend the Korean War to China. But instead Eisenhower
went to Korea and ended the war.
There were people who wanted to play nuclear roulette in the Cuban Missile
Crisis. There were people who wanted to use nuclear weapons to bomb Hanoi
into the Stone Age. But in every case the foreign policy extremists were marginalized
until this administration. The stakes are extremely high. It is not only our
adversaries who are in peril in the United States of America. But is some
of the people with their hands on the levers of power.
In a recent column I quoted the old saying that “God watches out for
fools, drunkards and the United States.” Being a good journalist and
having Google at my disposal I decided to look it up and I was startled to
learn that the author of that quote was one Otto Von Bismarck. Of course Bismarck
in the 1880’s was looking back on the first century of this republic’s
existence.
It’s fortunate habit of fighting its way out of sticky situations.
But that saying was a retrospective assessment and not a future guarantee.
Unless the people who are in charge of this country know what they’re
doing we are in a very precarious situation. I think this conference represents
a coming together of distinguished experts who have a better foreign policy,
one that combines prudence with toughness, and we are not going away.
The American Prospect, The Century Foundation, and the Center for American
Progress as our next venture will be challenging the neo-conservatives to
a series of debates because I think their ideology can withstand neither logic
nor scrutiny when measured against actual events. We will continue a website
that will display papers including articles from the Prospect and papers produced
by the other two organizations and the extraordinary remarks of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
I invite all of you and your institutions to continue to be part of this.
We’re going to give the right-wing think tanks a run for their money,
and they have a lot more money than we do. That reminds me to thank the benefactors
who made this event possible. I want to leave you with one final thought.
I heard a reporter say aren’t you papering over some of the fault lines?
Aren’t you papering over some of the disagreements? Aren’t there
people on your side who are still suffering from the Vietnam syndrome? Who
are still a little bit isolationist or a little bit uncomfortable with the
use of force?
I think if you look back on the 1990’s it was a decade when force was
combined with prudence. It’s not the use of force. It’s the reckless
use of force that trouble most of us. Even though this is a bi-partisan event,
I think it’s instructive to compare what we’ve heard over the
past twenty-four hours with what we’ve seen in the Democratic candidates’
debates.
There’s something about the debate format that impels candidates to
product differentiate, to exaggerate differences among themselves. I would
venture to say that if any of the first tier Democratic candidates had been
at this event going from Joe Lieberman to Howard Dean, the policy that you
heard espoused here would be the policy that they would embrace, and the people
who you heard representing the bi-partisan consensus would be the people to
whom they would turn.
I would add that that also describes probably half the Republicans in Congress
who when they welcomed George Bush to the White House did not really bargain
for the kind of extremist neo-con policy that ensured. So I thank you for
coming. I think this has been a genuinely historic event if not a kind of
a tipping point in which our side gained confidence and courage and coherence,
and there will be more.
Finally, let me thank my two partners. We will continue this effort with your
help. Thank you so much. (Applause)
