Devote your self to a more just and secure world
Indiana University Commencement Address, Bloomington, Indiana by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar
We come to Bloomington today to celebrate a high moment in the lives of all who will receive diplomas and in the lives of all who have given love, inspiration, and support to these graduates. We say to the graduates, "You must do better than we have done. We will support your dreams because they are embodied in all that we have hoped for."
For generations, Indiana University has shined brightly as a central focus for the academic life, history, economy, and cultural achievements of Indiana. It has brought together teachers and students, good people who exemplified creativity and optimism for the future.
Yet during the past four years, you have witnessed historic and often tragic changes in the world. You have seen terrorists kill thousands of people in our country and destroy the World Trade Center and a part of the Pentagon. United States military personnel have conducted two difficult and costly wars in less than two years. You have sensed that the United States is trying to adjust to a new and very uncomfortable level of vulnerability.
These events, though distant from Bloomington, have fundamentally changed what it means to graduate from a prestigious American university. Even if you did not know anyone in the World Trade Center or anyone serving with U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, the prospect that your life will be insulated from world events has ended.
This concept of international responsibility is not a new one for Indiana University or its graduates. Sixty years ago, an IU graduate of remarkable prescience and courage was at the intellectual center of defining a new American responsibility in the world. Wendell Willkie was a son of Elwood, Indiana, who earned three different degrees from Indiana University. In 1940, he was the Republican presidential nominee, who lost to President Franklin Roosevelt by a wide margin. But his internationalist message was critical in helping our countrymen to accept Roosevelt's Lend-Lease policy and other efforts to help the Allies against Nazism prior to Pearl Harbor.
Many observers would not expect Indiana to be the first state to produce a leading advocate of a globalist American foreign policy. But Hoosiers possess a wealth of common sense and an abundance of civic responsibility. These Hoosier virtues formed the foundation of Wendell Willkie's farsighted approach to foreign policy. Willkie's common sense led him to conclude that isolationism could not protect a nation and its people from the dangers of war and international tyranny. His sense of civic responsibility pushed him toward the conclusion that the United States must exercise leadership among the community of nations.
In 1942, Wendell Willkie began a round-the-world trip in which he met with numerous foreign leaders. In 1943, he published One World, his seminal account of his world tour, which included powerful advocacy in favor of American internationalism. Willkie's ideas resonated with the American people, who bought more than two million copies of the book in its first year - an amazing number for a foreign policy treatise.
The parallels between the early 1940s and our present situation are remarkable. In 1941, just as in 2001, America had been the victim of a surprise attack that killed thousands and shattered our sense of security. Both attacks followed extended periods when American attention had turned inward. Both attacks demonstrated that the isolationist currents that were a powerful force in American politics in the 1930s and the 1990s were based on an illusion of U.S. security. Both attacks resulted in U.S. participation in global wars.
In One World, Willkie proclaimed that to win the peace that would follow World War II: "First, we must plan now for peace on a world basis; second the world must be free, politically and economically, for nations and for men, that peace may exist in it; third, America must play an active, constructive part in freeing it and keeping its peace." After 60 years, the wisdom of Willkie's words has not diminished. They are as true and urgent for the United States of 2003 as they were for the United States of 1943.
The experiences of Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001, demonstrated the hazards of unpreparedness. But they also taught and re-taught a grim lesson: trouble will find us whether we choose to be involved in the world or not. Because advances in transportation and communication have shrunk the world and because the United States is now universally regarded as the most powerful nation on Earth, this condition is even more true today than it was sixty years ago.
The world is not benign if left alone. Eventually, any fight will find its way to the biggest kid on the block. An American decision to espouse isolationism would not cause terrorists to warn Americans away from their intended targets; nor would American disengagement cause foreign governments that perpetrate human rights abuses to promote social justice.
Our economic prosperity is tied to the prosperity of the rest of the industrialized world. Our environment is deeply affected by the practices of nations far beyond our continent and hemisphere. Even maintaining individual health, once the sole province of the family doctor, now depends also on international epidemiologists and globally marketed pharmaceuticals.
But the most serious incursion into the peace of our Midwestern lives is the potential intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not just the security problem of our time. It is also the economic dilemma and the moral challenge of the coming age. On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the destructive potential of international terrorism. But the September 11 attacks do not come close to approximating the destruction that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction have made it possible for a small nation, or even a sub-national group, to kill as many innocent people in a day on our soil as national armies killed abroad in months of fighting during World War II.
Beyond the horrific loss of life, proposals to advance the standard of living throughout the world would be undercut by the uncertainty and fear that would follow a catastrophic terrorist attack. Investment would plummet, global equity markets would be depressed, the financial viability of transportation industries could collapse, real estate in major cities would lose value, and the exchange of people and ideas would be further encumbered.
The bottom line is this: for the foreseeable future, the United States and its allies will face an existential threat from the intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
Terrorist organizations have demonstrated suicidal tendencies and are beyond deterrence. We must anticipate that they will use weapons of mass destruction if allowed the opportunity. The minimum standard for victory in this war is the prevention of any of the individual terrorists or terrorists cells from obtaining weapons or materials of mass destruction.
Recently I published an article that outlined five campaigns that we must undertake to win the war on terrorism. I argued that the United States must improve diplomatic capabilities, enhance international trade, strengthen our alliances, support democracy and development worldwide, and expand our efforts to control weapons of mass destruction.
Each of the campaigns is essential. But I believe that the campaign to control weapons of mass destruction stands out as the most urgent. Terrorists armed with high explosives or firearms represent tremendous risk to society, but they do not constitute an existential threat. If we can control weapons of mass destruction - especially nuclear weapons - we can greatly reduce the risks of catastrophe.
The Cold War was an unconventional war, as is the war on terrorism. The irony of our situation today is that victory in the current war depends very much on cleaning up the remnants of the previous war. Even with incredibly effective campaigns to fundamentally change attitudes and political realities in the world, we cannot guarantee that terrorists will not strike. But we are not helpless. We can develop the international practices and norms that can almost guarantee that terrorists will not have access to nuclear weapons. In doing so, we can transform our world into a place that is more secure and more connected than it has ever been.
In an important article in The National Interest last Fall, Graham Allison and Andrei Kokoshin, former high-ranking Defense officials for the United States and Russia, respectively, made this very point. They wrote: "Though the world's stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials are vast, they are finite. The prerequisites for manufacturing fissile material are many and require the resources of a modern state.....While challenging, a specific program of actions to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of the most dangerous groups is not beyond reach, if leaders give this objective highest priority and hold subordinates accountable for achieving this result."
As part of the global war against terrorism, the United States and its allies must establish a worldwide system of accountability for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In such a system, every nation that has weapons and materials of mass destruction must account for what it has, safely secure what it has, and demonstrate that no other nation or cell will be allowed access. If a nation lacks the means to do this, the international community must provide financial and technical assistance. This process will be expensive and painstaking, but international security and prosperity hang in the balance. We must commit the resources and political will required to preserve modern society and the futures of our children and grandchildren.
Some nations, after witnessing coalition military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq may decide to proceed along a co-operative path of accountability regarding their weapons and materials of mass destruction. But other states may decide to test the world's will and staying power. Vigorous and timely joint diplomacy by the United States and all cooperative nations would greatly increase the likelihood of peaceful outcomes. When nations resist such accountability and when all diplomatic and economic tools fail, however, the United States and other responsible nations cannot rule out the use of military force.
While admitting this necessity, we should spare no effort to establish absolute accountability through peaceful means. In 1991, I joined with former Senator Sam Nunn to establish the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. This initiative brought Americans and Russians together to ensure the safety and destruction of the huge stockpile of weapons and materials of mass destruction left over from the former Soviet Union that were in jeopardy of theft or accidental use. The program has demonstrated over the last decade that extraordinary international relationships are possible to improve controls over weapons of mass destruction.
Working in concert, the United States and Russia have destroyed more than 6,000 nuclear warheads, any one of which could have destroyed a city the size of Indianapolis. In addition, we have dismantled hundreds of bombers, missiles, and submarines that were built to deliver nuclear weapons. The Nunn-Lugar Program is employing in peaceful pursuits tens of thousands of Russian weapons scientists who are no longer tempted to sell their knowledge. The program also has made progress toward protecting nuclear material, biological weapons laboratories, and chemical weapons stockpiles. Beyond statistics, the program has served as a bridge of communication and cooperation between the United States and Russia, even when other aspects of the relationship were in decline. It has improved military-to-military contacts and established greater transparency in areas that used to be the object of intense secrecy and suspicion.
Now we must not only accelerate weapons dismantlement in Russia, we must replicate our work with Russia in as many countries as possible and build a global coalition to support non-proliferation.
Many questions have been raised about the security of Pakistan's nuclear program and similar questions will be raised about India's. The exact status of Iraq's weapons and materials of mass destruction is still being investigated. North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya, and other nations present unique and difficult proliferation challenges. We cannot afford to be defeatist. Using the Cooperative Threat Reduction model, we should attempt to forge relationships to control weapons of mass destruction in previously reticent or hostile nations.
I believe that the United States has a window of opportunity to address proliferation threats around the world. We must make the safe storage, accountability, and destruction of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons a fundamental objective of American foreign policy.
Our power and status have conferred upon us a tremendous responsibility to humanity. If the world is to be secure and just and prosperous, the United States and individual Americans must devote themselves to international leadership. Wendell Willkie graduated from this University in 1913 - exactly ninety classes ago. But more recently, James T. Morris graduated from Indiana University and volunteered to help me lead Indianapolis during the civil rights movement of 1968. He later served I.U. on its Board of Trustees and is now Director of the United Nations World Food Program. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has shared with me stories of the courage and stamina of Jim Morris as he ventured into North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan and a host of other countries in which, collectively, 24,000 people die each day from starvation and another 8,000 perish from combinations of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and mal-nutrition. Among the graduates of 2003, many will devote their lives, as Willkie and Morris have done, to furthering the idealism that embodies the United States. Some of you will choose the calling of diplomacy, politics, humanitarian work, or military service. You all must know as doctors and lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs, artists and economists, musicians and engineers, clergy and scientists that you can contribute greatly to achieving a more just and secure world.
This does not require conformity of thought or agreement with government policies. It does not require sacrifice of individual goals and dreams of family and material prosperity - though some may make those sacrifices. But it does require that each of you think beyond your immediate world and find within yourself the will to contribute. It does require that you understand how blessed you are to sit here today and how much our country will depend on you. And it does require you to understand that as we honor you as a graduate of one of the greatest universities in the most powerful nation on earth that you must have a global outlook and accept global responsibilities.
In "One World" Willkie declared: "America must choose one of three courses after this war: narrow nationalism, which inevitably means the ultimate loss of our own liberty; international imperialism, which means the sacrifice of some other nation's liberty; or the creation of a world in which there shall be an equality of opportunity for every race and every nation. I am convinced the American people will choose, by overwhelming majority, the last of these three courses." I, too, am convinced that the vast majority of American people believe that we have a moral responsibility to foster the concepts of opportunity, free enterprise, the rule of law, and democracy.
I am confident that you will not be intimidated or defeated by those choosing terror and suicide. You will affirm the importance of the diploma you have earned today, growing in your ability to worship, to continue learning, to expand your capacity to love and to build a strong family. You will surely find excitement in serving others in a world without limits that now invites you to enter.