Greyson Bryan mentioned that I've done a number of books and he told you about my last book. He was nice not to tell you that the title of my first book was The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army. Neither of those countries exist anymore--so maybe what I really am is a bit of a dinosaur. But for very good reasons indeed, this has been an extraordinary few years in the international system. And I think as we look out over the landscape of this international system we have many more extraordinary times to come.

I'd like to talk about the challenges of this post-Cold War world--and I think it's about time to stop calling it the "post-Cold War world." We can't seem to find an identity for it. But of course theCold War has been over at least since 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps it says something about the complexity of this world that we continue to refer to it in the context of some other time, rather than trying to impose some sort of order on this world in which there seems to be little order.

Indeed, I was fortunate to be a part of the Bush administration during an extraordinary time, as the Cold War ended. The period between 1989 and 1991 was a period in which I don't think any of us, had you asked us in 1989, thought the world would end up as it did. I went to the Bush administration in 1989--my anniversary will be 10 years in just a couple of weeks. Brent Scowcroft, who'd just been named National Security Advisor, called and said something like, "This fellow Gorbachev is doing some interesting things, and it might be fun to be in Washington for a while. How would you like to come be my Soviet specialist?"  And I actually said, "Well, Brent, maybe I should wait for a couple of years."  I had just come back to Stanford after a stint in the Pentagon, I had just redecorated my condominium, I had just gotten tenure, I thought I should just wait for a while. But my best friend said, "You'd better figure out what you might miss if you wait two years."

And indeed, I would have missed the unification of Germany, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union. That's what that period was like. It was extraordinary.

I think I had a really strong sense of that by being a part of that team. But I can tell you that as euphoric as the times sometimes were, they were also incredibly disorienting from time to time. Because, literally, you would get up and overnight countries were changing their social systems. They were all looking to the United States for leadership. We worried about what would happen when a country that occupied 12 different time zones with 30,000 nuclear weapons--12,000 of them pointed at the United States--when a country that was an empire, really, of 286 million people collapsed, what would that mean for international stability? It was a disorienting time.

And I had a really strong sense of this one day in February, when I went to Moscow to talk with Gorbachev's me--the man who was his advisor for US affairs, a man named Vadim Zagladen, and he was about an hour late getting to our meeting. I was sitting in his office in the Kremlin; it was snowing outside. And he came rushing in and he said, "Professor Rice, I'm sorry to be late. But every day we come in to see what disaster has befallen us now."  Suddenly I had a sense of what it was like to be on the wrong side of history.

Indeed, the United States was on the right side of history. As we look at the ruins of the Soviet Union, as we look at the hope that is Eastern and Central Europe, as we look at the landscape before us, I wonder if we have fully accepted, as the United States, responsibility for having been on the right side of history. Clearly, we helped to bring about that history with our commitment to Europe and to Asia, and our permanent commitment to the international system after 1945. Very different than the way that the United States had always conducted its business, which was to win a war and go home.

In fact, this is a country that has always worried about permanent engagement in the international system. It was George Washington, in his Farewell Address, who talked about avoiding permanent entanglements, and by entanglements he meant alliances. This was a country that thought it was best served by paying attention to its own affairs and leaving the world of foreign affairs to others.

So it's not surprising that every time the United States ends up on the right side of history as we so often have that we sometimes turn and wonder if we're really ready to accept the responsibility for that. And if indeed we are going to accept the responsibility for being on the right side of history, I think we are going to have to face four-square that there are some current challenges that we are not meeting if we wish to get to a place where this world we have helped to create is a better world 10 or 15 or 20 years from now.

During that time in 1990 and 1991, I often wondered about the wisdom of Acheson and the wisdom of Marshall and the wisdom of Truman in finding a way not just to have the United States involved in international affairs but in finding a way to structure the rules of the game so that life got better for everybody. Who would have thought that free trade, enshrined as it was in the way these people thought about international economy, at a time when the United States enjoyed better that 50 percent of the world's GNP, free trade that created competitors in places like Germany and Japan, created out of those competitors a situation in which the international economic pie grew, so that everybody got richer rather than trying to protect that which was ours? Who would have thought that it would turn out the way that it did? Who would have thought that creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and putting into it old enemies like France and Germany, would give an umbrella to democratic development in Europe, so that today we look at a Europe that is closer than ever, that is integrating into a single market, and where one can't contemplate the possibility of war between France and Germany? Who would have thought that possible?

Who would have thought that a faith in democracy to take root in places where democracy had never taken root before----in Germany, in Japan--that that faith in democracy would produce the strong and vital and vibrant democratic friends the United States now enjoys in those places? Who would have thought that that kind of foresighted vision would have created exactly the world that led us to be on the right side of history in 1989, 1990, and 1991?

And so now, as Americans, what are the challenges we face? Well, there are many, but I would like to focus briefly with you on three. I think there is first the challenge of how to think about the security of this international system as we face a world in which the security threats seem to be coming from all different directions, in which there's no longer the single unifying theme of the Soviet threat. Frankly, we have been, I think, remiss in paying attention to our own armed forces and their role in securing that international environment. There was a lot of talk when the Soviet Union collapsed that the United States should worry about becoming the world's policeman. That somehow the world should worry about the United States becoming the world's policeman. I don't think that was ever a danger. Americans, if anything, are ambivalent about the use of force and ambivalent about its role in the world and using military force--certainly without benefit of alliances and without benefit of friends.

But there was and is a danger that the United States could become the world's police--and that is different from being the world's policeman. The problem is that the United States stands today as the only military force of any consequence in the world capable of doing the things that the world really needs done, whether it is making certain that war is deterred on the Korean Peninsula, that war is deterred in the Taiwan Straits, that we can damp down from time to time a potential regional hegemon like Saddam Hussein, that we can give an umbrella of peace and security to Europe as it tries to continue toward democratic development in that part of Europe that was left out of the right side of history the last time around. And America finds itself as the only force capable of that.

At the same time, we find ourselves as the force of choice to do everything from peacekeeping to maintaining no-fly zones over Iraq to being involved in humanitarian and disaster relief worldwide. During this time, the defense budget has been cut by 38 percent over 5 years. We face a situation in which we send half-crews out on patrol because we don't have the people or the spare parts or the maintenance we need to sustain full force. That, I think, is a shirking of responsibility--not just to the international system, but to the men and women that we have in uniform and ask to put their lives on the line every day.

Military pay has fallen some 15 percent below civilian pay grades. Finally, on evening news shows, you're beginning to see shows about the difficulties of recruiting. Young, dedicated Army officers who say, "I'm sorry, but I can't do anything but go to the private sector."  There are enlisted people, career enlisted people, who are using food stamps. That is an absolute shame for a country that should be accepting responsibility for what it means to be on the right side of history. To be sure, we've benefited from this peace dividend. If you look at the budget deficit reduction, it's largely come at the expense of the military budget. Maybe that's a good thing. But we had better repair this--because there is no other force in the world that can take on the responsibility for maintaining the peace. The world needs that military force.

If you think about the rise of dangerous tyrants in places like Iraq, and you wonder how long we can keep in place a policy of double containment or whatever it is we're doing with Iraq every day now; if you look at the rise of tyrants in North Korea, where I worry greatly that the desire of the North Koreans for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them is the real ticking time bomb of the non--proliferation story, not what's happening in India or Pakistan, but what's happening in Korea--one wonders if we're prepared for that kind of responsibility.

You can add to that, of course, the problems of biological and chemical warfare, ballistic missile proliferation where we find ourselves locked in a response to ballistic missile proliferation that does not permit us to use the entire range of American technology to protect ourselves, our allies, and our troops abroad. That, too, is a shirking of the responsibility for being on the right side of history.

The defense issues would be vexing and difficult enough--but that's only a part of the problem. We face, also, a massive restructuring of the international economic order. If you think of the great gift that Acheson and Marshall and Truman and others left, it was the economic prosperity that came out of the opening up of the international economy in 1947 with the Marshall Plan and the creation of strong new economies that then led to strong new democracies.

These days one has to wonder as you see the pictures of old women in Russia, banging on the doors of banks long shut to get their pathetic saving out only to find that those savings will buy them nothing in Russia today. You wonder about a country that is just existing day to day. I have a student--he's Russian--and he's from a place not too far from Moscow. He told me at one point that he was struck when he went home that the expectations of the Russian people have sunk so low. They just get up, they exist through the day, they go to bed, and they get up the next day and they find a way to exist. This is an economy that is perhaps running as much as 70-75 percent on barter. How much longer can you barter broken teapots for food?

And Russia is, of course, only the worst case of many in East and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, and other parts of the world that are struggling with this new international economy that is dominated by private capital flows, where the desire and the need to attract private capital means that you have to do very difficult things at home. Frankly, there are going to be big winners and big losers in the international economy, and if some of those big losers are also important countries, we are going to sit here 20, 25, 30 years from now, not saying, "why were we on the right side of history, and did not take care of this," but we'll be sitting again, I fear, with authoritarian regimes rising in places that simply cannot do it any other way.

I am a major supporter of the role of private capital. I think it's a good thing that markets dominate. But saying that is not to say that we don't have to worry about what happens when structures change that much. And if you think about it, the collapse of the Soviet Union not only created a huge potential welfare recipient of international aid in Russia itself-- if it's not able to find it's place in the international system--but it also took away the socialist alternative. If you were Cuba, you could get $18 million a day in subsidies to be a part of the socialist alternative. If you were India, you could cozy up to the non-aligned movement or to the Soviet Union and pretend that the discipline of the market, and the discipline of private capital, and the discipline of privatization didn't matter to you. But with no Soviet Union to support the socialist alternative, it's now very clear: there is one international economy. You'd better find your place within it, you'd better succeed, or you're going to lose and you're going to lose big-time.

That, I think, is the right side of history, the responsibility that we have not yet accepted. This is what it really means to lose the socialist alternative and to have capitalism triumph.

Russia, it's a pity, in some ways, became a sort of poster child for economic reform. There are places in East/Central Europe that are doing very well. The Czech Republic is doing very well. Poland is a remarkable success story. This is a country where the prediction is for 6 percent growth next year. This is a country where, in 1989, Lech Walesa told President Bush a little story. He said, "We have a little parable in Poland. There are two ways that the Polish economy can get fixed. One is natural, and the other is supernatural. The natural way is that angels come down from heaven and they fix the Polish economy. The supernatural way is that the Poles fix it themselves." Well, in fact, the Poles fixed it themselves--and what a wonderful story it is. But Poland was not Russia, and Russia was not Poland. In thinking that we could transfer that experience, with the IMF, with privatization, to Russia, which is a far more complex and difficult place, a place that always seems to take very good ideas and mutate them into something a little bit peculiar, corruption and taxes that are 120 percent of income, where the desire to do everything in barter because you can't count on the currency tomorrow, where banks were basically arbitrage houses that were fleeing private capital out of the country--and, by the way, the lead private capital was that of the Russians themselves--really, this was a mutation, and we now have to deal with that.

But that shouldn't obscure the fact that there have been successes, and that somehow the ability to build the infrastructure that is needed for capitalism to actually work, whether for a small business, or banking systems, or commercial codes, or the rule of law--that we'd better go back to first principles in some of these places and make sure that that is done.

Finally, I think that being on the right side of history has left us a responsibility to ask questions as Americans about what values we're promoting. I have been really struck by the so-called "values debate" in our foreign policy. I am quite certain that the American people will neither tolerate nor support a foreign policy that is devoid of values. Values are important to us. We are not the Europeans, with a concept of realpolitik that doesn't care about the internal workings of other countries. When I'm told, "you should grow up and be that way," I think, well, then we just wouldn't be very American. And perhaps we wouldn't have been a part of the engine that helped create democracy in the rest of the world.

The real question is not should we create democratic values abroad, it's how should we promote democratic values abroad and what democratic values we're promoting. First and foremost, I think it's important to remember that democracy takes time. This democracy is better than 200 years old. It didn't get built in a day. When the Founding Fathers said, "We, the People," they didn't mean me. They didn't mean many of the women in this room. My ancestors were three-fifths of a man. It takes a long time. Democracy is always a work in progress. You have to get up every day and put another brick in place. And you have to get the fundamentals right. Rulers have to be accountable to the ruled. You need a free press; you need private property; you need people to be able to express themselves religiously so that spiritually they are fulfilled. You have to get the basics right.

But it takes a long time to build the institutions of democracy. We go wrong when we tell other countries that they have to do it overnight because more than anything, it has to be organic. It has to be a part of your indigenous culture and values, or it will never take hold. And democracy looks different in Germany and in Japan and in the United States. That is only right.

We also talk a lot, and we should continue to talk a lot, about individual freedom and individual liberty. But we need also to talk about the other piece that has helped us to develop as a fully mature democracy at home. That is the role of the community, the role of civil society, the role of the Red Cross, the role of the Salvation Army, and the role of private philanthropy in a country like this. All of which says something, not just about the individual's desire to succeed as an individual, but about the individual's commitment to society's succeeding as a whole. We talk not enough about that when we talk about building democracies. We don't talk enough about what it means to be a multi-ethnic democracy and, heaven know, in parts of the world where difference is still a license to kill, it is awfully important that we find a way to talk about how hard it is, how cacophonous it is, but how important it is to have a society in which ethnicity, citizenship and territory are not linked; where, in fact, you can be African-American or Hispanic-American or Italian-American, but you can be American first. That is the critical part of what has made this democracy work.

In many ways, I'm a typical American story. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1954. Don't count--I'm 44. The Civil Rights Act passed 10 years later. Birmingham was a violent place in 1963-64; I lost a little friend in that church bombing in 1964, at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. But our parents really did have us convinced that you couldn't have a hamburger at Woolworth's but you could be president of the United States. They did it because they believed that with education as a possibility for us all, that was really true.

If you look at the story of how education--and higher education--has transformed people in our own society; if you look at the fact that this is partially an immigrant story, so the fact that Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, is in fact an immigrant child, if you look at that in America you also see a very important story about the vibrancy of this democracy. And it continues. A former head of state of a small East Asian country said to me once, "You know why America will always lead? Because America will always attract the best and brightest from around the world. It's the one place you can go and be a citizen and be an American, whether you are a software engineer in India or Malaysia, you can go and be American."

Somehow that piece, also, about the values needs to be communicated. Because in the final analysis, we will not secure this world, we will not make this world more prosperous unless the values are there in which that can take place.

It is absolutely true that this military needs to be stronger, it needs to be given greater resources, it needs to protect and defend. It is, after all, democracy's strongest shield and its mightiest sword. It is true that we have to remain free traders, that we have to maintain an attitude about the international system that says, when everybody gets richer, the world is a much better place. But it is particularly true that we cannot do that without talking about the values that sustain democracy, that make it possible for everybody to participate in that growth. That, perhaps, is the best lesson of what we did well in 1947 and need to do well again.

Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure being with you.

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