http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/brzezinski-z-10-31.html
By Zbigniew Brzezinski Web Exclusive: 10.31.03 Print Friendly | Email Article
The following is a transcript of the speech delivered by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski on Oct. 28 at New American Strategies for Security and Peace, a conference co-sponsored by the Prospect in Washington, D.C. The speech followed an introduction by David Aaron, a former deputy national security adviser.
David, distinguished guests, friends, and there's some overlap between the two categories. It's very touching to be introduced by a close friend, a colleague who worked very closely with me for four years, with whom we tried to forge policies that would be responsive to the realities of power and to the demands of principle.
To the extent that there were any accomplishments to which I can lay claim I am certainly more than eager rightfully so to share them with David Aaron. What more can I say about that introduction. Since our relationship with President Jimmy Carter was invoked perhaps the only additional thing I can say is to repeat what he recently said after being equally generously introduced.
He came up to the podium and said of all of the introductions I have ever heard this one was the most recent.
Ladies and gentlemen, forty years ago almost to the day an important Presidential emissary was sent abroad by a beleaguered President of the United States. The United States was facing the prospect of nuclear war. These were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Several emissaries went to our principal allies. One of them was a tough-minded former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson whose mission was to brief President De Gaulle and to solicit French support in what could be a nuclear war involving not just the United States and the Soviet Union but the entire NATO Alliance and the Warsaw Pact.
The former Secretary of State briefed the French President and then said to him at the end of the briefing, I would now like to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed with nuclear weapons. The French President responded by saying, I do not wish to see the photographs. The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me. Please tell him that France stands with America.
Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary who would go abroad and say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction which threaten the United States? There's food for thought in that question. Fifty-three years ago, almost the same month following the Soviet-sponsored assault by North Korea on South Korea, the Soviet Union boycotted a proposed resolution in the U.N. Security Council for a collective response to that act.
That left the Soviet Union alone in opposition, stamping it as a global pariah. In the last three weeks there were two votes on the subject of the Middle East in the General Assembly of the United Nations. In one of them the vote was 133 to four. In the other one the vote was 141 to 4, and the four included the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
(snip)
Ultimately at issue, and I end on this, is the relationship between the new requirements of security and the traditions of American idealism. We have for decades and decades played a unique role in the world because we were viewed as a society that was generally committed to certain ideals and that we were prepared to practice them at home and to defend them abroad.
Today for the first time our commitment to idealism worldwide is challenged by a sense of security vulnerability. We have to be very careful in that setting not to become self-centered, preoccupied only with ourselves and subordinate everything else in the world to an exaggerated sense of insecurity.
We are going to live in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to learn to live in it with dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness. Thank you. (Applause)
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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