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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the German Marshall Fund September 18.
Remarks of Secreatry of State Condoleezza Rice at the German Marshall Fund
September 18, 2008
Thank you to Craig Kennedy for that kind introduction.
Thank you, as well, to everyone at the German Marshall Fund for inviting me to speak with you today. The German Marshall Fund is an indispensable organization – especially for our transatlantic alliance, but increasingly for our partnerships beyond Europe as well.
You foster the unity of thought, the unity of purpose, and the unity of action that the United States and Europe need more than ever in today’s world. You have made an immeasurable impact in helping us to reaffirm and strengthen our nation’s ties with Europe these past few years. And for that I want to say, thank you.
Now, this is the first time that I have spoken to the German Marshall Fund as secretary of state. And I venture to say – it will also be my last. Thank you for recognizing that was not an applause line.
I have come here to speak with you today about a subject that has been on all of our minds recently: Russia.
Most of us are familiar with the events of the past month. The causes of this conflict – particularly the dispute between Georgia and its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – are complex. They go back to the fall of the Soviet Union. And the United States and our allies have tried many times to help the parties to resolve them diplomatically. Indeed, it was, in part, for just this reason that I traveled to Georgia the month before the conflict – as did German Foreign Minister Steinmeier, among others.
The conflict in Georgia has deep roots. And all sides made mistakes and miscalculations. But key facts are clear:
On August 7, following repeated violations of the ceasefire in South Ossetia, including the shelling of Georgian villages, the Georgian government launched a major military operation into Tskhinvali and other areas of that separatist region. Regrettably, several Russian peacekeepers were killed in the fighting.
These events were troubling. But the situation deteriorated further when Russia’s leaders violated Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – and launched a full scale invasion across an internationally-recognized border. Thousands of innocent civilians were displaced from their homes. Russia’s leaders established a military occupation that stretched deep into Georgian territory. And they then violated the ceasefire agreement negotiated by French President Sarkozy.
Other Russian actions during this crisis have also been deeply disconcerting: its alarmist allegations of “genocide” by Georgian forces … its baseless statements about U.S. actions during the conflict … its attempt to dismember a sovereign country by recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia … its talk of having “privileged interests” in how it treats its independent neighbors … and its refusal to allow international monitors and NGOs into Abkhazia and South Ossetia, despite ongoing militia violence and retribution against innocent Georgians.
What is more disturbing about Russia’s actions is that they fit into a worsening pattern of behavior over several years.
I am referring, among other things, to: Russia’s intimidation of its sovereign neighbors … its use of oil and gas as a political weapon … its unilateral suspension of the CFE Treaty … its threat to target peaceful nations with nuclear weapons … its arms sales to states and groups that threaten international security … and its persecution – and worse – of Russian journalists, and dissidents, and others.
The picture emerging from this pattern of behavior is that of a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad.
This behavior did not go unnoticed or unchallenged. We addressed it in the context of our efforts to forge a constructive relationship with Russia. But the attack on Georgia has crystallized the course that Russia’s leaders are taking – and brought us to a critical moment for Russia and the world.
A critical moment – but not a deterministic one.
Russia’s leaders are making some unfortunate choices. But they can make different ones. Russia’s future is in Russia’s hands. But its choices will be shaped, in part, by the actions of the United States, our friends, and our allies – both the incentives we provide and the pressure we apply.
We are choosing to build an international order based on liberty and the rule of law, human rights and human dignity, free markets and social justice. The preponderance of the world’s national powers are making the same choice. And we stand by it confidently.
Now, much has been said recently about how we have come to this point. And some have attempted to shift the responsibility for Russia’s recent pattern of behavior onto others. But Russia’s actions cannot be blamed, for example, on its neighbors like Georgia.
To be sure, Georgia’s leaders could have responded better to the events last month in South Ossetia, and it benefits no one to pretend otherwise. We warned our Georgian friends that Russia was baiting them, and that taking this bait would only play into Moscow’s hands.
Still, Russia’s leaders used this as a pretext to launch what, by all appearances, was a premeditated invasion of its independent neighbor. Indeed, Russia’s leaders had laid the groundwork for this scenario months ago – distributing Russian passports to Georgian separatists, training and arming their militias, and then justifying the campaign across Georgia’s border as an act of self-defense.
Russia’s behavior also cannot be blamed on NATO enlargement. With the end of the Cold War, we and our allies have worked to transform NATO – from an alliance that manned the ramparts of a divided Europe … to a means for nurturing the growth of a Europe whole, free, and at peace – and for confronting dangers, like terrorism, that also threaten Russia.
We have opened NATO to any sovereign, democratic state in Europe that can meet the standards of membership. We have supported the right of all countries emerging from communism to choose what path of development they pursue and what institutions they wish to join.
And this historic effort has succeeded. Nearly half of our NATO allies are former captive nations. And the promise of membership has been a positive incentive for these states: to build democratic institutions, to reform their economies, and to resolve old disputes, as nations like Poland, and Hungary, and Romania, and Slovakia, and Lithuania have done.
Just as importantly, NATO has consistently sought to enlist Russia as a partner in building a peaceful and prosperous Europe together. Russia has had a seat at nearly every NATO summit since 2002. So to claim that this alliance is directed against Russia is simply to ignore history. In fact, our assumption has always been– and still is –that Russia’s legitimate need for security is best served not by having weak, fractious, and poor states on its borders – but rather peaceful, prosperous, and democratic ones.
It is simply not valid, either, to blame Russia’s behavior on the United States – either for being too tough on Russia, or not tough enough … too unaccommodating of its interests or too naïve about its leaders.
Since the end of the Cold War – spanning three administrations, both Democratic and Republican – the United States has sought to encourage the emergence of a strong, prosperous, and responsible Russia. We have treated Russia not as a vanquished enemy, but as an emerging partner. We have supported – politically and financially – Russia’s transition to a modern, market-based economy and a free, peaceful society. And we have respected Russia as a great power, with which to work to solve common global problems.
When our interests have diverged, the United States has consulted Russia’s leaders. We have searched for common ground. And we have sought, as best we could, to take Russian interests and ideas into account. This was how we have approached contentious issues – from Iran, to Kosovo, to missile defense. And I have traveled repeatedly to Russia, the last two times with Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, to foster cooperation.
Increasingly, Russia’s leaders have not fully reciprocated. And their recent actions are leading some to ask whether we are now engaged in a new Cold War. No, we are not. But it does beg the question: Where did this Russia come from? How did the Russia of the 1990s become the Russia of today?
After all, the 1990s were, in many ways, a period of real hope and promise for Russia. The totalitarian state was dismantled. The scope of liberty for most Russians expanded significantly – in what they could read, what they could say, what they could buy and sell, and what associations they could form. New leaders emerged who sought to steer Russia toward political and economic reform at home, toward integration into the global economy, and toward a responsible international role.
All of this is true. But many Russians remember things differently. They remember the last decade as a time of license and lawlessness, economic uncertainty and social chaos. A time when criminals, gangsters, and robber barons plundered the Russian state and preyed on the weakest of Russian society. A time when many Russians – not just elites and former apparatchiks, but ordinary men and women – experienced a sense of dishonor and dislocation that we in the West did not fully appreciate.
I remember this Russia, because I saw it firsthand.
I remember old women selling their life’s belongings along the old Arbat – plates, broken teacups, anything to get by.
I remember the Russian soldiers returning home from Eastern Europe and having to live in tents, because the Russian state was just too weak and too poor to house them properly.
I remember talking to my Russian friends – tolerant, open, progressive people – who felt an acute sense of shame during the last decade. Not at the loss of the Soviet Union, but at the feeling of not recognizing their own country anymore: the Bolshoi theater falling apart … the pensioners unable to pay their bills … the Russian Olympic team in 1992 parading into the games under a flag no one had ever seen, and receiving gold medals to an anthem no one had ever heard. There was a humiliating sense that nothing Russian was good enough anymore.
This does not excuse Russia’s behavior, but it helps to set a context for it. It helps to explain why many ordinary Russians felt relieved and proud when new leaders emerged at the end of the last decade, who sought to reconstitute the Russian state and reassert its power abroad. An imperfect authority was seen, not surprisingly, as better than none at all.
What has become clear is that the legitimate goal of rebuilding Russia has taken a dark turn – with the rollback of personal freedoms… the arbitrary enforcement of the law … the pervasive corruption at various levels of Russian society… and the paranoid, aggressive impulse, which has manifested itself before in Russian history, to view the emergence of democracy in neighboring countries – most recently, the so-called “Color Revolutions” in Georgia, and Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan – not as a source of greater security, but as a threat to Russia’s interests.
Whatever its course, though, Russia today is not the Soviet Union – not in the size of its territory, the reach of its power, the scope of its aims, or the nature of its regime. Russia’s leaders today have no pretensions to ideological universality, no alternative vision to democratic capitalism, and no ability to construct a parallel system of client states and rival institutions. The basis of Soviet power is gone.
Despite their leaders’ authoritarianism, Russians today enjoy more prosperity, more opportunity, and in some sense, more liberty than in either Tsarist or Soviet times. Russians increasingly demand the benefits of global engagement – the jobs and the technology, the travel abroad, the luxury goods and the long-term mortgages.
With such growing prosperity and opportunity, I cannot imagine that most Russians would ever want to go back to the days, as in Soviet times, when their country stood proudly isolated from Western markets and institutions.
This, then, is the deeper tragedy of the choices that Russia’s leaders are making. It is not just the pain they inflict on others, but the debilitating costs they impose on Russia itself – the way they are jeopardizing the international credibility that Russian businesses have worked so hard to build … and the way they are risking the real, and future, progress of the Russian people, who have come so far since communism.
And for what? Russia’s attack on Georgia merely proved what was already known – that Russia could use its overwhelming military advantage to punish a small neighbor. But Georgia has survived. Its democracy will endure. Its economy will be rebuilt. Its independence will be reinforced. Its military will, in time, be reconstituted. And we look forward to the day when Georgia’s territorial integrity will be peacefully restored.
Russia’s invasion of Georgia has achieved – and will achieve – no strategic objective. Russia’s leaders will not accomplish their primary war aim of removing Georgia’s government. And our strategic goal now is to make it clear to Russia’s leaders that their choices are putting Russia on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance.
Accomplishing this goal will require the resolve and the unity of responsible countries – most importantly, the United States and our European allies. We cannot afford to validate the prejudices that some Russian leaders seem to have: that if you pressure free nations enough – if you bully, and threaten, and lash out – we will cave in, and forget, and eventually concede.
The United States and Europe must stand up to this kind of behavior, and all who champion it. For our sake – and for the sake of Russia’s people, who deserve a better relationship with the rest of the world – the United States and Europe must not allow Russia’s aggression to achieve any benefit. Not in Georgia – not anywhere.
We and our European allies are therefore acting as one in supporting Georgia. President Sarkozy is to be especially commended for his leadership on this front. The transatlantic alliance is united. Just this week, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer led all 26 of our alliance’s ambassadors on a mission to Tbilisi to demonstrate our unwavering support for our Georgian friends. The door to a Euro-Atlantic future remains wide open to Georgia, and our alliance will continue to work through the new NATO-Georgia Commission to make that future a reality.
We and our European allies will also continue to lead the international effort to help Georgia rebuild – an effort that has already made remarkable headway. The United States has put forward a $1 billion economic support package for Georgia. The EU has pledged 500 million Euros. And it is preparing to deploy a large mission of civilian observers and monitors to Georgia.
In addition, with U.S. and European support, G-7 foreign ministers have condemned Russia’s actions and pledged to support Georgia’s reconstruction. The Asian Development Bank has committed to a $40 million loan to Georgia. The IMF has approved a $750 million stand-by credit facility. And the OSCE is making plans for expanded observers, though Moscow is still blocking this.
Conversely, Russia has found little support for its actions: A pat on the back from Daniel Ortega and Hamas is hardly a diplomatic triumph.
At the same time, the United States and Europe are continuing to support – unequivocally – the independence and territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors. We will resist any Russian attempt to consign sovereign nations and free peoples to some archaic “sphere of influence.”
The United States and Europe are solidifying our ties with Russia’s neighbors. We are working as a wider group, including our friends in Finland and Sweden, who have been indispensable partners throughout the recent crisis. We are backing worthy initiatives, like Norway’s High North policy. We are working to resolve other regional disputes, such as Nagorno-Karabakh. And we will not allow Russia to wield a veto over the future of our Euro-Atlantic community – neither what states we offer membership, nor the choice of those states to accept it. We have made this particularly clear to our friends in Ukraine.
The United States and Europe are deepening our cooperation in pursuit of greater energy independence – working with Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and Turkey, and the Caspian countries. We will expand and defend an open global energy economy from abusive practices. There cannot be one set of rules for Russia, Inc. – and another for everyone else.
Finally, the United States and Europe, as well as our many friends and allies worldwide, will not allow Russia’s leaders to have it both ways – drawing benefits from international norms, markets, and institutions, while challenging their very foundations. There is no third way. A 19th century Russia and a 21st century Russia cannot operate in the world side by side.
To reach its full potential, Russia needs to be fully integrated into the international political and economic order. But Russia is in the precarious position of being half in and half out. If Russia ever wants to be more than just an energy supplier, its leaders have to recognize a hard truth: Russia depends on the world for its success, and it cannot change that.
Already, Russia’s leaders are seeing a glimpse of what the future might look like if they persist with their aggressive behavior. In contrast to Georgia’s position, Russia's international standing is worse now than at any time since 1991. And the cost of this self-inflicted isolation has been steep.
Russia’s civil nuclear cooperation with the United States is not going anywhere now. Russia’s leaders are imposing pain on their nation’s economy. Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization is now in question. And so too is its attempt to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But perhaps the worst fallout of all for Moscow is that its behavior has fundamentally called into question whose vision of Russia’s future is really guiding the country. There was a time recently when the new president of Russia laid out a positive and forward-looking vision of his nation’s future.
This was a vision that took account of Russia’s vulnerabilities: its declining population and heartbreaking health problems ... its failure thus far to achieve a high-tech, diversified economy like those to Russia’s west and increasingly to its east … and the disparity between people’s quality of life in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a few other cities – and those in Russia’s countryside.
This was a vision that called for strengthening the rule of law, rooting out corruption, investing in Russia’s people, and creating opportunities not just an elite few, but for all Russian citizens to share in growing prosperity.
This was a vision that rested on what President Medvedev referred to as the “Four I’s”: investment, innovation, institutional reform, and infrastructure improvements to expand Russia’s economy.
And this was a vision that recognized that Russia cannot afford a relationship with the world that is based on antagonism and alienation.
This is especially true in today’s world, which increasingly is not organized around polarity – multi-, uni-, or certainly bi-. In this world, there is an imperative for nations to build a network of strong and unique ties to many influential states.
That is a far different context than much of the last century, when U.S. foreign policy was hostage to our relationship with Russia. We viewed everything through that lens, including our relations with other countries. We were locked in a zero-sum, ideological conflict with the Soviet Union. Every state had to choose sides, and this dramatically reduced our options.
Thankfully, this world is gone, and it is not coming back. As a result, the United States has been liberated to pursue a more multidimensional foreign policy. And we are doing so.
We are now charting forward-looking agendas with fellow multiethnic democracies like Brazil and India, and with emerging powers like China and Vietnam – relationships that were once colored by Cold War rivalry.
We are now transforming our alliances in Asia with Japan and South Korea, Australia and the Philippines – expanding them from platforms for our common defense to catalysts for fostering regional security, advancing trade, promoting freedom, and building a dynamic Asia-Pacific region.
We are now rebuilding relationships with countries like Libya, whose leaders are making the responsible choice to join the international order.
We are now deepening partnerships, rooted in shared principles, with nations across Africa – and to support the new African agenda for success in the 21st century: governing justly, investing in people, fighting disease and corruption, and driving development through economic freedom.
We are now moving beyond 60 years of policy in the broader Middle East– during which Cold War necessity led successive U.S. administrations to support stability at the price of liberty, ultimately achieving neither.
And we are now charting a hopeful future with our friends and allies in the Americas – from whom we were, at times, deeply estranged during the Cold War. We are now pursuing a common hemispheric vision of democratic development, personal security, and social justice.
Anachronistic Russian displays of military power will not turn back the tide of history. Russia is free to determine its relationships with sovereign counties. And they are free to determine their relationships with Russia – including in the Western hemisphere.
But we are confident that our ties with our neighbors – who long for better education, better health care, better jobs, and better housing – will in no way be diminished by a few, aging Blackjack bombers, visiting one of Latin America’s few autocracies, which are themselves being left behind by an increasingly peaceful, prosperous, and democratic hemisphere.
Our world today is full of historic opportunities for progress, as well as challenges to it – from terrorism and proliferation, to climate change and rising commodity prices. The United States has an interest in building partnerships to resolve these and other challenges. And so does Russia.
The United States and Russia share an interest in fighting terrorism and violent extremism. We and Russia share an interest in denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and stopping Iran’s rulers from acquiring the world’s deadliest weapons. We and Russia share an interest in a secure Middle East where there is peace between Israelis and Palestinians. And we and Russia share an interest in preventing the Security Council from reverting to the gridlocked institution it was during the Cold War.
The United States and Russia shared all of these interests – and more – on August 7. And we share them still today on September 18. The Sochi Declaration, which President Bush and then-President Putin signed earlier this year, provided a strategic framework for the United States and Russia to advance on our many shared interests.
We will continue, by necessity, to pursue our areas of common concern with Russia. But it would be a real shame if our relationship were never anything more than that – for the best relationships are those among states that share not only interests, but goals, and aspirations, and yes, values.
Whatever the differences between our governments, we will not let them obstruct a deepening relationship between our societies.
So we will continue to sponsor Russian students and teachers, judges and journalists, labor leaders and democratic reformers who want to visit America. We will continue to support Russia’s fight against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. And we will continue to support all Russians who want a future of liberty for their great nation.
I sincerely hope the next president and the next secretary of state will visit Russia, will take time to speak with Russian civil society, and will give interviews to Russia’s diminished but enduring independent media.
The United States and our friends and allies – in Europe, but also in the Americas, and Asia, and Africa, and the Middle East – are all confident in our vision for the world in this young century: one in which great power is defined not by spheres of influence, or zero-sum competition, or the strong imposing their will on the weak – but by open competition in global markets, trade and development, the independence of nations, respect for human rights, governance by the rule of law, and the defense of freedom.
This vision of the world is not without its problems, or setbacks, or even significant crises– as we have seen in recent days. But it is this open, interdependent world, more than any other in history, that offers all human beings a greater opportunity for lives of peace, prosperity, and dignity.
Whether Russia’s leaders overcome their nostalgia for another time, and reconcile themselves to the sources of power and the exercise of power in the 21st century – this still remains to be seen. The decision is Russia’s – and Russia’s alone. And we hope that Russia’s leaders choose responsibly – for the sake of their people, and for the sake of the world.
