THE WORK OF DIPLOMACY
by George P. Shultz
June 11, 2002
This is the text of a speech given by former Secretary of
State George P. Shultz on the occasion of the dedication
ceremony for the The George P. Shultz National Foreign
Affairs Training Center, on May 29, 2002, in Arlington,
Virginia.
THE WORK OF DIPLOMACY
by George P. Shultz
Mr. Secretary, friends of the Department of State and
Foreign Service: Todays ceremony, which links my name to
this Institute and to the Foreign Service, is an honor
beyond anything I ever imagined. I take it as a profound
compliment not only from the wonderful colleagues with whom
I served in the State Department, but also from that long
line of strong and creative men and women who have served
our countrys diplomacy across the generations. I am humbly
grateful for the tribute you offer me today.
I came into office as Secretary of State with a war going on
in the Middle East and a bigger war -- the Cold War --
keeping the world in turmoil and keeping me busy to an
extent I could hardly have imagined.
When I answered President Ronald Reagans call to service, I
also brought to the job a way of thinking developed from
years of experience in government, business, and
universities. I knew I would be dealing with many crises on
a day-to-day basis and that for American foreign policy to
succeed over time, I would have to pay attention to long-
term issues. But my experience also taught me that to
succeed in these efforts, I would need the help and support
of the people who were devoting their careers to the
understanding and conduct of diplomacy. So I would try to
strengthen the institution, to make the best use of its
people, to pay attention to their careers and their
aspirations to serve their country. I wanted to leave the
Department of State and the Foreign Service in better shape
than I found them.
In the process, I learned a few things. The Foreign Service
is the custodian of our countrys diplomatic experience in
the world: not theories or abstractions but actual
experience. Recognizing the importance of experience, I
decided, as Secretary of State, to pull together a
collection of books about American diplomacy. That
collection is still up there in Colin Powells office. (And
I know from my tenure in that office that he doesnt have
time to read those books.) The Foreign Service Institute
should be the center for such works that record our nations
diplomatic experience: ideas written down that get into
peoples heads and can make a practical difference.
The conduct of diplomacy requires a clear understanding of
what is happening and the ability to make a clear record of
it and report it honestly and in depth. This may seem
obvious and easy. It is not: it requires exceptional
intellectual skills and qualities of character and
discipline. As former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
describes, "The true diplomatist [is] aware of how much
subsequently depends on what clearly can be established to
have taken place. If it seems simple in the archives, try
it in the maelstrom."
Fast-moving media coverage, impressive though it may often
be, is almost inevitably focused on the newsworthy. The
United States must conduct diplomacy on a global scale,
clearly dependent on careful reporting from posts around the
world and interpretations by people on the ground who speak
the language and understand cultural nuances. And, of
course, results of discussions need to be written down
immediately. Memories are all too often faulty or self-
serving.
So we need to encourage careful record-keeping and teach and
nurture that skill in the foreign service. This is no mere
technical matter; in these times it takes courage, and
issues of national interest may be at stake. Even in my
time, if a cable came in from an ambassador with a highly
critical or sensitive set of observations about the country
where the ambassador was stationed, the existence of this
cable would often become the subject of rumor. Relentless
demands for that cable would almost inevitably follow. I
fought those pressures because the release of such a cable
would mean, of course, that the ambassadors role would be
diminished, sometimes even ended. Nonetheless, the pulling-
and-hauling has an impact. Candor in the cables inevitably
suffers. Reliance on telephone diplomacy increases, with
all its imprecision, vulnerability to misunderstanding, and
loss to the vital diplomatic record.
More broadly in our society, whether in business or
government, there is now a widespread and conscious
reluctance to create records -- and a disposition to destroy
them if made. What I worry about is our ability to conduct
our affairs with precision and to portray history accurately
if such records are not at hand and the statesman tries to
rely on his or her own memory, which invariably is flawed in
significant ways. A living history requires tools of
remembrance. Moreover, so much of what we do today depends
upon our understanding of the past. Each generation creates
the record of the past for succeeding generations. If we
lose that past, we are also going to lose an important key
to the future. So, members of the Foreign Service, keep
records.
The ability to comprehend other cultures must be central to
our diplomacy. This is an area of comparative advantage for
the Foreign Service. Even in this age of globalizing
influences, we are finding that traditional cultures not
only continue to exist but in many places are gaining
greater influence. Sometimes they serve a useful role as
ballast in the rough weather of globalization. At other
times, they are used -- sometimes badly misused -- in the
interests of some cause or grievance. I do not need to tell
you that those who speak the local language have a greater
sensitivity to cultural variations, a greater ability to
comprehend mood and nuance, and a heightened capacity to
convey those realities back to Washington. So the Foreign
Service Institutes world-class capacity to teach language
skills must be nourished and used.
We also know that language study is not enough. The field
of area studies, once regarded as essential but later
disparaged, needs to be given new life. When I was a dean
at the University of Chicago, I developed a strong point of
view about the value of experience. Yes, experience is a
great teacher. Formal education should develop the ability
to learn from that experience. We all have seen instances
where four or five people share an experience but only one
or two of them learn much from it. For the others, that
experience might as well never have happened. A key
objective for the Foreign Service Institute is to provide
our people with the language, analytical, and area skills
they need in order to be the ones best able to learn from
their experiences out there in the world.
Americas need for a seasoned Foreign Service and the
intelligent management of Foreign Service careers are
inextricably bound together. Half of the career service
will retire in the next six years. State and other
departments -- with the exception of the Department of
Defense -- have never handled the problem of intake well.
Secretary Powell tells me that applications for the Foreign
Service -- including lots of strong minority candidates --
are two to three times what they were in recent years, so
heres a chance to get it right. Good training is essential
-- at the beginning and throughout a productive career. The
Foreign Service Institute provides a real advantage, as a
place where careers can be developed, enhanced through
training, and provided with substantive depth. Then there
is career structure, particularly the length of the Foreign
Service career. We need to preserve access to senior
positions, so that our finest people do not resign or retire
to start their next careers just when they are coming into
the peak years of performance at the top of the Service.
Careers in the Foreign Service have their risks. You can
get shot at. On opposite walls of the entry hall to the
Main State Building are two lists of names of officers
killed in the line of duty, covering the years 1780 to 2002.
We lost 209 officers. In the first 187 years of our
history, we lost 83 officers. In the most recent 35 years,
we have lost 126. The losses per year now are almost nine
times as great as in earlier times.
All too many of those casualties were the result of acts of
terror, a reality that today confronts us in more urgent
terms and in greater magnitude than ever before. I want to
say a few words about this acute problem, one on which I
worked hard and endured the frustrations and agonies that
come with death and destruction. I remember so well flying
back from Pakistan on August 21, 1988, with the remains of a
talented and beloved Foreign Service Officer, Ambassador
Arnie Raphel. That was a sad and moving day.
September 11 was a riveting wake-up call for the people of
America. Stunned and horrified, we saw in a flash our
vulnerability. As we reacted, we also saw our strengths and
we experienced a renewal of patriotism and national pride.
We deepened our realization of how closely intertwined our
fortunes are with developments elsewhere, sometimes far away
culturally as well as geographically.
That attack was also a transforming event here and in many
places throughout the world in attitudes toward terrorism.
For decades, terrorism has been all too frequent, mostly in
the Middle East, but also in Europe and Asia, often aimed at
Americans. We saw our share of it in the 1980s, when I was
in office. The pace picked up in the 1990s, by which time
the capabilities and intentions of Osama bin Laden and his
Al-Qaeda network were well known. I said in 1984, "We
cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations,
worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond." But
for whatever reasons, we did not respond effectively during
these past two decades. Face it: the lack of effective
response encourages terrorism, not the other way around.
But now, opinion has changed. When, in that same 1984
speech, following terrorist attacks on our embassy and on
the Marine barracks in Beirut and the IRA effort to blow up
Margaret Thatcher in Brighton, I called for "active
prevention, preemption, and retaliation," and said we "must
be willing to use military force," I was disowned and
dismissed by official Washington and on leading editorial
pages. (After I had a chance to go over my thinking
carefully with President Reagan, he said he agreed with me.)
By contrast, we all cheered -- I at the top of my voice --
when Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld said on the Jim
Lehrer NewsHour on February 4 of this year:
"If you think about it, we have no choice. A terrorist can
attack at any time at any place using a range of techniques.
It is physically impossible to defend at every time in every
location against every conceivable technique of terrorism.
Therefore, if your goal is to stop it, you cannot stop it by
defense. You can only stop it by taking the battle to the
terrorists, where they are and going after them."
"When its something like smallpox or anthrax or a chemical
weapon or the radiation weapon or killing thousands of
people at the World Trade [Center], then you say to
yourself, `Well, if we cant stop terrorists at every
location of every technique at every moment of the day or
night, what must we do -- just sit here and take the blows
like the World Trade [Center], take the blows that
biological weapons would pose to us? The answer is `No.
You have a responsibility to defend your country. Everyone
in the world knows -- even the UN Charter provides for --
the right of self-defense. And the only self-defense, the
only effective way to defend, is to take the battle to where
the terrorists are. They are planning, they are plotting,
they have trained thousands of terrorists very well, and we
have no choice but to find those people and root them out,
as the president said, and stop them from doing what theyre
doing and stop countries from harboring them."
So preemption with military force is now an operative idea,
with wide support. That is essential. But continuing
threats are all too real, so we must not flag or be
distracted in our efforts to end the use of this terrible
and unacceptable weapon: terrorism.
President Bush has given us the concepts we need. This is a
war, not a matter of law enforcement. States that support
terror are as guilty as the terrorists. They are in the
crosshairs, and the principle of state accountability is
being established. Our goal is not primarily to punish and
retaliate but to prevent acts of terror through intelligence
that enables us to preempt and ultimately to eliminate the
source. These are big and far-reaching ideas that must be
kept front and center: this is a war; states must be held
accountable. We are calling on states to step up to their
internal responsibilities to end any terrorist presence,
while saying also that we reserve, within the framework of
our right to self-defense, the right to preempt terrorist
threats within a states borders. Not just hot pursuit:
hot preemption. The juxtaposition of these ideas calls for
sophisticated diplomacy, clear intelligence, and the will to
act with the courage of our convictions.
This war is of worldwide dimensions and must be fought on
many fronts. I will identify six of them.
First, we have the front of the hinterlands, those places
around the world where states have failed or where no state
authority reaches. In these places, terrorists find
sanctuary where they can train and plan and can emerge to
strike again. Afghanistan was the main such area, but its
not the only place. You can name them as well as I, and you
need more than the fingers on your two hands. We have
conducted a brilliant campaign on the Afghanistan front.
Afghanistan cannot now serve as a terrorist refuge and
staging area. But an enormous task remains to be completed
there. The fires still burn. A state must be built from
the ground up and attain the legitimacy and authority to
prevent the country from sliding back into terrorist hands.
Another front is in Europe and, to a degree, in our own
country. In the liberal, open, welcoming democracies of the
West, terrorists have been able to establish themselves,
move about easily, communicate and develop their plans with
little interference from the authorities, particularly in
many European countries. The terrorists know that they can
enjoy and employ the freedoms offered by the democratic West
to plan the destruction of our liberal institutions and
societies. This, too, is a matter of making the state --
the democratic state -- effective and accountable. We in
the democratic West have to get ourselves in order. We must
enhance and better coordinate our investigative
capabilities. We must change our mind-set. Our task is to
prevent criminal acts, not just catch and punish after the
damage is done. Through intensive intelligence-sharing and
cooperative police work, the war on this front can and must
be fought effectively -- and within the framework of
protective civil rights and proper judicial procedures.
Another front that needs our attention is that of the
regimes of Arab and Islamic countries. Over the years, in
the knowledge that many of the terrorists seek their
overthrow above all else, these regimes have, each in its
own way, made their deals with the terrorists. They have
paid them off, propagandized them to focus on external
enemies, or sought to use them to build up the religious
legitimacy of those regimes. They have created a monster.
They may have bought some time for themselves, but they are
sealing their own doom if they keep on this path. Since
September 11, some of them have come to their senses. These
regimes have to take responsibility as states and they must
be held accountable. They have to stop playing the double
game. They should be encouraged and supported if they work
seriously to put their states and societies on the right
track. But I have to say, when money is collected to reward
the families of suicide bombers, that is support for
terrorism. There is no other way to describe it.
We must also look at the front where terrorists are pushing
out to radicalize countries that previously had escaped the
terrorist scourge. Most prominent and crucial here is
Indonesia, where Jihadists have in the last several years
become more visible, active, and intimidating to the
population. In the southern islands of the Philippines,
terrorists have become more daring and outrageous in their
hostage-taking and murders year by year. In Singapore, the
discovery of a sophisticated Al-Qaeda network shocked
everyone, because we consider Singapore to be one of the
most tightly run states in the world. Jihadist terrorism no
doubt has plans for the new countries of central Asia, and
for China as well.
Kashmir presents compelling issues, especially since nuclear
weapons lurk in the background. The outline of a potential
settlement is much easier to identify than is the process by
which to get there. As elsewhere, the starting point is to
hit hard against terrorism as the method of influencing
policy on any side of the problem.
And now we come to the front of the Israelis and
Palestinians, who confront each other violently and whose
conflict captures attention virtually throughout the world.
We can see that terrorist extremists have gotten their hands
around the throat of the Palestinian movement. Those hands
need to be wrenched away so that people with determined but
constructive attitudes can emerge to take over leadership in
a restructured Palestinian Authority. Strength and
diplomacy must go hand in hand: fight terrorism relentlessly
even as negotiations for peace get started again. We now
have some developments to work with, but nothing comes
easily.
I offer three thoughts.
First, in Negotiation 101, we teach a negotiator to study
his opposition. You want counterparts capable of taking
"yes" for an answer and of delivering on tough commitments.
Saudi Arabia has led Arab states into an initiative on
behalf of the Palestinians. For the first time since King
Hussein bowed out in 1988, states on the Arab side are
involved. So I welcome the Presidents and the Secretarys
effort to move this initiative forward and bring this
potentially important measure of state-based competence to
the negotiating table. Realists recognize that progress
will only come with emerging experience of commitments that
are not only made but kept. Whatever the vision of a final
settlement, that vision will come into being through a step-
by-step process.
Second, declare a commitment to an eventual Palestinian
state up front. But make clear that a proclamation does not
create a functioning state. Patterns of government must be
created and the legitimacy of leaders established so that
properly made sovereign decisions are effective, and means
of accountability for policy decisions and for handling
funds are instituted. If a Palestinian state were to be
established without a far-reaching reform of the present
Palestinian Authority, it would be a failed state at birth.
And just as a Palestinian state can hardly even begin to
function effectively where citizens cannot move about from
one urban center to another, so the state of Israel cannot
agree to anything other than its own secure, defensible, and
internationally recognized borders.
Third, realize that transformation in this tiny area is a
necessity. Palestinians and others in the region now lead
miserable lives without the light of hope for a better
future. Israelis continue to live within the lethal
environment of a hostile neighborhood. A major effort is
imperative to improve the quality of life in the region:
security, water, education, health, the opportunity to
create the jobs on which standards of living depend. Help
in the form of private as well a public initiatives is
critically needed. So there is lots of work to do.
Finally there is the most important problem of all -- what
is in the minds of the worlds people. There are still
those who profess not to know the difference between a
terrorist and a freedom fighter. The difference is clear.
The definition of terrorism is simple and unmistakable.
Terrorists use random violence on as large a scale as
possible against civilian populations to make their points
or get their way. Anyone who claims to be confused at this
point in history will have to face up to being known as an
apologist for terrorism.
We have a war to win. Every tool available must be used
aggressively. The message of the Great Seal of our Republic
is front and center once more. The eagle faces the olive
branches to show that the United States always seeks peace,
but holds onto the arrows to show that the United States
understands that, if we are to be effective in seeking
peace, we must be strong. The message comes from the
earliest days of our Republic: strength and diplomacy go
together.
The end of World War II brought a compelling opportunity to
put in place a new vision of how the world would work.
Looking back at the remarkably creative response to that
opportunity, we see Foreign Service officers -- George
Kennan, Chip Bohlen, Foy Kohler, and others, notably Paul
Nitze -- as well as the soldier-statesman of that time,
George C. Marshall, developing the ideas and the
institutions that shaped the way one American generation
after another engaged the world during the dangerous Cold
War years. Once again, with the huge changes in world
affairs since those days, punctuated by the trauma of
September 11 and the shifts in attitude toward state
accountability and rights to preemption, the times demand a
new burst of creativity and sustained efforts to achieve
needed transformation. Now the ball is in the hands of a
new generation of Foreign Service Officers, under Colin
Powell, todays distinguished soldier-statesman, able to
work with a president, George W. Bush, who is decisive,
bold, and resolute.
So I salute the members of the Foreign Service and this
center for learning the practice of diplomacy. We are lucky
that you and your leaders are strong, experienced, and wise.
You have lots of work to do.
Let me conclude with a story from my time in office. When
an ambassador had made it through the hurdles of nomination
and confirmation, I invited him or her to my office and
said, "Before you can leave, you have one more test. Go
over to that globe and show me that you can identify your
country." Without exception, the ambassador-to-be spun the
globe and located the country to which he would be posted.
One day, the late Mike Mansfield, already many years our
ambassador to Japan and an old friend from my previous times
in the cabinet, came in for a visit just before he was to
return to Tokyo. I told him about my little test and said,
"Mike, how about you?" He and I laughed, and he went to the
globe. Mike put his hand on the United States and said,
"Heres my country."
In this setting dedicated to representation, always remember
Mikes words. Be proud to be a citizen, let alone a
representative, of the greatest country ever, the United
States of America.
