Wendy Sherman

...and bring together once again Democratic values and Democratic national security. But today, I have to tell you that we really started not out of a concern for the Democratic Party, but out of a concern for America's national security, which we thought was not being taken care of and was not being well stewarded, and we thought there was a better way out there that needed to get a voice. And it was the way that won us World War II, under President Truman sorry, it was the way that won us World War II under President FDR, and it was the way that won us the setup of the Cold War strategy under President Truman. And it was the way that said, America faces deadly enemies abroad, but when we defend against them, we defend against them through tools of national security such as allies, such as strong compatriots who stand by our side (not fly-by-night connections), through human rights, and through building opportunity to stave off radicalism. We don't doubt that when terrorist bombs destroy the economies of countries like Indonesia, Democrats need to fight back, as do Republicans. And we don't doubt that when dictatorial states threaten America and the rest of the world, Democrats and Republicans need to fight back. But we started because we thought there was a better way forward, and we wanted that way to get a hearing. he Truman National Security Project unites the community of Truman Democrats who share this vision of strong values and strong security, and perhaps most important we bring together the September 11th generation which are many of you here in this room we bring together folks who are current Hill staffers, political staffers, military service members, people who work in foreign policy, and we connect them so that they understand the strong security tradition that America has, and the strong values that we hold as progressives. Together, we form the back bench, not just of the Democratic Party, but really the future of America. This is a strong need for a strong national security right now in our world. It's a very dangerous time in our world, and we're thrilled that Wendy Sherman has come here to speak for us. Ambassador Sherman probably needs no introduction to most of you, ut I'm going to give you a little bit of one anyway. She's the principal of the Albright Group, which is an international advisory firm; prior to that, she was the Councilor of the Department of State, with the rank of Ambassador. At the Department of State, she served with then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright,and was Special Advisor to the President and to the Secretary of State on North Korea during a former difficult time with North Korea, and I'm sure we'll have quite a bit to say about our time right now. Prior to that she was President and CEO of the Fannie Mae Foundation, and before that she had a political career working sorry, and was also Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs with Warren Christopher, where among other things and this will also be interesting given the G8 Summit right now she led the successful efforts to provide funding for Russia and for the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, a crucial effort that was led under the last administration that, we're sad about backsliding now. On the political side, she was director of Emily's List, and directed Campaign 88 for the DNC, doing groundbreaking work in political operations and field operations. And prior to that, she was one of you she was a staffer with then-congresswoman Barbara McCulsky, now senator, and ran her first successful Senate campaign. And before that, worked with children and youth in Maryland, and served as Special Secretary for Children and Youth in that state. We're thrilled to have someone with her depth of political and policy experience during this particularly dangerous time for America and the world. Please join me in welcoming Wendy Sherman. Well thank you all and thank you to Rachel and to Matt Spence, who run the Truman National Security Project, and to my colleague Jamie Smith who works at the Albright Group, who's also one of the founding members of the Truman National Security Project. I'm very glad to be standing here amongst all of you who stand for being strong, smart, and principled. And I hope at the end of these remarks and our dialogue which will ensue shortly, you feel that I do embody the principles of Truman National Security, which I think are quite important. I also say to many of you in the room that I was once in my twenties, and in my thirties, and at the time as Rachel just pointed out, I was in a different field entirely. And what I say to people your age, and to my own daughter who is your age that's how old I am is that you never know where life will take you. And so I would urge you all, as you think about the very serious issues we're going to discuss today, that you turn off my cellphone Jane...that you go where those opportunities take you and not have too many five-year plans, or you will stop yourself from seeing where life leads. My training is, I have a Masters in Social Work and Community Organizing; I consider myself a community organizer today, my caseload has just changed from children and youth and families, to the state of Maryland and its politics, to national politics and Presidential campaigns, to the world. But the same skillset, the same ability to try to make change, continues. And so I urge you all to stick with where your heart is and what you want to do and just go for it. That said, I come to you today at a very, very difficult time. Over the last few days I've been doing a number of interviews about the G8, and for those of you who recall, the G8 began in 1975 in response to an oil crisis. And the G7, the seven industrialized nations of at the time came together to try to deal with that crisis, and over time, added actually it was the G6 added Canada, and then ultimately added Russia, until we had the G8 of today. And the G8 was supposed to look at economic issues, but time and time again, the G8 has ended up looking at whatever prominent national security issue is on the agenda. And there are two things that are very important about this G8, more than two things but two things I want to focus on. One is that the G8 is not enough anymore. Perhaps the most important meeting taking place at the G8 is the meeting that will take place on Monday, which is the outreach meeting, which includes China and Brazil and India and South Africa and Mexico, because the world is no longer about the seven or eight or nine or ten industrialized nations; it is about a global economy. And it is ironic in my view that the G8 will be dealing in a cascade of crises that I am about to discuss, and there will be no leader from the Middle East as part of those discussions. And I think one of the challenges in front of those of you who are part of the Truman National Security Project, is what ought the meetings of the future ought to look like. Should there be a G8? Should there be another forum in which discussions are held? How do we look at a world that is so interconnected, where globalization is a fact of life, where people according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, of which I am honored to be a consultant to it, have found that people accept all over the world the concept of globalization, they are even glad for what comes from globalization but they are also incredibly anxious about losing their own cultural identity, their own way of life, and are very concerned about the pace of change toward modernity. So what forum should we have to discuss these issues? How should we go about this? And I think this is a major challenge for all of us in this room. But we are where we are today with the G8 leaders meeting, and then the outreach meeting happening on Monday. And a month ago, if we all had been meeting, we would have said, well President Putin who is the host of this G8 wants to have a discussion about energy security. And given where oil prices are, a discussion about energy surely an important thing to have happen, particularly given Russia's actions in, sort of playing around with gas and oil in Russia and in the neighboring countries, and with Europe over the last few months. We would have thought that in fact there probably would have been discussion public or private about what many of us see as backsliding in Russia on democratic principles, and concerned about where Russia is headed and how it's using it's strategic assets to regain power in the world. We would have thought that would have been the constellation and if there were a national security issue, maybe it would be Iraq, which has seen escalating violence and really moving into a civil war if we're not in a civil war already. The leader of Iraq has now said we have about, this is our last chance for peace in Iraq. Ambassador Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, has now said that the secular, the violence in Iraq, sectarian violence in Iraq is now a greater problem than Al-Qaeda. So one would have thought that would have been he discussion at the G8. Then we all thought a few days ago that it would be Iran, that countries had come together, United States finally included, with a proposal to Iran and had wanted an answer before the G8 got underway. That answer wasn't forthcoming, and we thought, well there will be a lot of discussion about Iran at the G8. And then North Korea decided it wasn't getting the attention it wanted and I'll talk more about that in a minute and North Korea decided it would launch a few missiles into the Sea of Japan, and all of a sudden everybody's attention shifted and thought, OK, well this is going to be the agenda. So we have: energy security, Iraq, Iran, North Korea. And people thought, my God, how are we going to manage all of this on the plate of the G8? And then over the last 48 hours, we have all seen an escalation of violence in the Middle East that, for those of us who were at at Wye and Camp David and Shepherdstown, and saw the possibility of peace, takes my breath away. That we have this cascade of crises, of violence in virtually every part of the world, and it appears no plans to deal with it, not the high level of engagement that is needed to cope with it, and the President goes to the G8 in a weakened position without the credibility that the last remaining superpower in the world needs to really pull together and lead the world developed and developing nations in an effort to solve what are very, very difficult problems. Now I haven't even mentioned Darfur, which is not headed in the right direction in spite of the Abuja Peace Plan. Aid workers are being killed, the transfer of peacekeeping from the African Union to a UN Peacekeeping force has now been put off until at least January. I haven't mentioned Somalia, where there is increasing violence. I have not mentioned Latin America, where there are ongoing crises in terms of leadership, of governance in that part of the world. In every part of the world that we all look at today, we are facing a cascade of crises that is quite, not only astonishing, but quite serious. It is a moment, I believe, for what the Truman National Security Project stands for. And that is a unified effort, a non-partisan effort, to deal with what are some of the greatest national security challenges we have had in front of us in a very long time simultaneously. I, among many people in this room, have been very critical of the Administration for having a unidimensional, as well as often unilateral, approach to foreign policy, for taking what was always an option of preemption that was implicit and making it explicit, creating a crisis of confidence in the world about what would happen next to any given country in the world. An Administration that could not come to cohesion within itself about how to approach the world should we be confrontational? should we engage? should we be a hawk and lead with our military, or should we use force in service of diplomacy? and that lack of Administration cohesion has lead to a multiplicity of approaches that has left the world confused and America without the strength, the power, and the principal that needs to lead in the world, an Administration that I believe has not been clear about our own principled approach to human rights and to civil liberties as we do challenge very real security risks in the world that face the 9/11 generation. So although I have been critical and launched all of those critiques on the Administration, today we all need to pull together and implore the President to engage in the world, to have plans for how he is going to engage in the world, to use himself, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President, the Deputy Secretary of State, people outside of the Administration, to be the envoys, the emissaries, to the parts of the world that are in crisis, to come to the G8 tomorrow with both leadership, strength and humility; to take the awesome power of the United States of America and use it to work with others to solve what are very, very difficult problems which are cascading crises growing out of control. So it is not in our interest today to beat the President up, it is in our interest today to urge him to do what is necessary to solve these very difficult problems. So let me take a couple of minutes taking a couple of them, and then what I really enjoy the most is engaging in a dialogue, both hearing your comments, your thoughts, your questions and sort of going back and forth on all of this. On Iran, I think that the President, this Administration, have finally begun to do what I wish they had done many, many months ago. But that is to try to put a cohesive plan together with our partners to present to Iran a package, and two pathways: a pathway of suspending, and ultimately ending their highly enriched uranium program, and a path where they don't and bear the consequences of not doing so. And I think it is right to now take Iran back to the security council and to try to move this forward, and we have seen that the careful work that has gone into this is now resulting in, in fact, a coherent and cohesive world response to the Iranian challenge. The package may not be good enough, the diplomacy may not be strong enough, the engagement may now be dispersed because there are so many crises in front of us, but at least we are on a path that is coherent, cohesive, strong, powerful, clear, and agreed to. North Korea-- you can sit down on the floor, cross-legged-- not you, the ones who don't have silver hair like we do, they can sit on the floor. North Korea...you've probably heard me say once or twice something about North Korea in the last week. Over the five years of the Bush Administration, nearly six now, we've gone from North Korea having enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons, plutonium that was developed by North Korea during Bush 41 no plutonium was created during the entire Clinton Administration to now North Korea having enough plutonium, most intelligence analysts believe, for four, six, eight, ten nuclear weapons and maybe having those nuclear weapons. We have gone from a posture of North Korea following through on a moratorium against testing their missiles that was negotiated by the Clinton Administration, to them now blowing that moratorium and launching missiles. At the end of the day, the fault here lies with North Korea. If there is a bad guy here, the bad guy is North Korea. But the United States, being the last remaining superpower, the only country in the world that can meet the objectives of Iran and North Korea for a regime security, is the United States of America. And it is why both countries have wanted the US in direct talks in some way, and the United States in the Iranian situation has said, yes we will join as a direct participant in the talks if you suspend your highly-enriched uranium program. Ambassador Chris Hill finally said on his recent tour to the region this last few days that, at least on the informal level, the six-party talks have reconvened, there will be direct talks within the context of the six-party talks. This is crucial, not because, you know, it's a matter of who wins the argument, it is crucial because the United States is the only remaining superpower and the only power that can ensure the security of the North Korean regime. It is not a regime that any of us in this room wish would be. Every one of us in this room would not want to live in North Korea, I can assure you. But we have to deal with the regime as it is, not as we wish it to be, because I can tell you that when I started my life in North Korealand, I too thought that North Korea would implode within a couple of years of when Madeline Albright became Secretary of State, and I was so wrong. And the Bush Administration thought if they would just squeeze North Korea a little tighter, stop, freeze its financial assets because of its counterfeiting, that North Korea would implode. And it will not. Certainly not during the Bush Administration. And so it is incumbent upon us to try to protect the region's security and our national security by engaging in North Korea, like them them or not and there's every reason not to like them. The President himself said the other day, in an interview that he did, that we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. It was a great statement; I wish he would have said it six years ago. Because it takes a kind of diplomacy that is strong, that is powerful, that uses force in service of diplomacy, to in fact engage in the world, negotiate, and reach the objective, which is our national security and the world's security. That's the objective. So what I hope happens in North Korea, though I don't see any good signs that it will, is that somehow or other we do get a UN Security Council resolution that condemns what North Korea has done because it was a provocative and dangerous act, that there is some behavior that the world community insists that North Korea no longer engage in. I'm slightly more optimistic today that somewhere in the back rooms of discussions between Japan, China, and Russia and the United States, and South Korea, that there will be an agreement on some kind of a resolution. But mark my words, folks: once there's a resolution, North Korea still has its nuclear weapons and it still has its missile capability. And so we have to go back to the negotiating table and figure out how to get back there. Though I must say, it sounds like no one's having any good luck at the moment getting North Korea back to the table. And when we're back to the table, whoever's the negotiator for the United States has to come to the negotiating table with something in their pocket. Early on, Condi Rice got Chris Hill the authority to negotiate with North Korea, it's part of why we got the September agreement, but then any further negotiations Chris came to those negotiations, I believe, with very little in his pocket, and if you have nothing in your pocket for a negotiation, you have nothing. And that's what's occurred. On Iraq, which probably should have been at the first of my list here, because Iraq is really the crux of the matter, Iraq is the venture, the Pandora's Box that we opened, that we conflated with the very important War Against Terrorism. I didn't mention in my opening here the horrific events in India of the last week, which also is on the radar screen of the G8. That Iraq is the reason that the US has lost credibility in the world, that there is concern in the world for what we stand for, what's America really stand for because of Abu Ghraib and because of Guantanamo, because our military is overstretched and people wonder, well if there is another conflict, will America be able to do anything though I have enormous faith in the American military and their capabilities, astounding capabilities, unparalleled anywhere in the world even today, even with Iraq, but pretty stretched. But Iraq is not heading in the right direction, as I mentioned. The President had hoped, I think, in his both bilateral meetings at the G8 and among the G8, there would really be a commitment to follow through on the donor commitments that had been made to help Iraq rebuild its infrastructure, I think that's going to be #555 at the rate we're going in the cascade of crises. I'm not going to go through all of the other ones that are in front of us, except to say on the Middle East, that what has happened, to repeat myself, is breathtaking. Israel has every right to defend itself. I hope that all sides, however, do whatever they can to ensure that this situation does not escalate out of control. We seem to be heading in the wrong direction on that hope at the moment. And I also hope that although Secretary Rice probably has a great deal of important business at the G8 on all of these other issues that we've discussed, I hope that the President does send her to the region, or a very high-level envoy, to also work alongside of the three envoys that Kofi Annan has now sent to the region, to try to talk down the parties and to get to a better place, because the last forty-eight hours, I think, show all of us how fast this tinderbox can go up in flames, and how possible there is for a risk for a greater regional war. I'm hopeful we won't get to that place, but it's not impossible to get there. So my summary message is the one that I started with a few minutes ago, which is that we all can deliver, I think, a pretty powerful and in my view deserved critique of how the Bush Administration has approached national security and foreign policy. But today, we are at such a serious place. In the last three days the stock market has dropped four hundred points. It dropped one percent in two and a half hours today. The price of oil was at $78, it's backed up to I think a $77.80, but none the less is staggeringly high on the world's concerns. And so we have a world economic crisis that we may be facing as well, which really hits the pocketbooks of the men and women that we all work for, in whatever policy role that we are in the world. So we have to stand together and urge the President to engage, to come with plans, to think through what he's doing, to come with strength and power and humility to the work at the G8, so that we move beyond the rhetoric of, "It's my way or the highway," and we move to a new road to the future, a road that we all travel together. I'm going to stop now, and be glad to take your questions and comments and get a little bit of a dialogue and a discussion going. Thank you. Do you feel that the UN can or even will be a successful forum in the next fifty years for conflicts that are going on? I think that...I have a very personal and proud feeling about the UN. My parents were at the founding of the UN. My father had been a Marine is still a Marine, obviously, once a Marine always a Marine in World War II, and he helped organize a group of veterans to help found the UN, because there was a belief that, having come through World War II, that we needed a forum for nations to talk with each other. And I believe we need that forum today. There are many things the UN needs to do better; there are all kinds of reforms that we all continue to work for in the UN, but is definitely an institution, if it did not exist we would have to create it. It's going to, I believe change in the next decade in ways none of us can probably imagine, because of the dynamic that I spoke of between the G8 and the developing world and the understanding that nothing happens without all of us together. One of the other items on the agenda, at least at the margins of the G8, is the Doha Round, and whether there's any life left in the Doha Round whatsoever. Well it was the Doha Development Round, because it was not just about making the industrialized world stronger, it was about making the developing world stronger. And so we no longer live in a world where the industrialized nations lead everybody in their direction, we now have a world where we all have to pull together to ensure that all of the boats rise together in this world. Or we are going to see more tension and conflict between those who have and those who have not, between those who, although they want the good things that come from globalization, are anxious about what modernity is going to do to their way of life. So we have to find a way to affirm people's cultural identity, their religious identity, and still ensure that if they choose to have those things in life that we all take for granted, they can have them. Madam Ambassador, regarding North Korea, you mentioned the need to deal with things as they go forward and to come to the table with something. But for the past ten years, North Korea has always come to the table with nothing and walked away with something, and policy-wise, I see the effectiveness...we need to have direct negotiations, we need to offer something, but politically, how would you advise Democrats to defend themselves against charges that we are rewarding bad behavior, that we are coddling dictators when all we do is offer incentives without any meaningful repercussions if they do not eventually agree to go back on a nuclear program? North Korea should absolutely eliminate their nuclear weapons program and should eliminate their long-range missile capability, and have discussions about monitoring and controlling their mid- and short-range deployment of missiles, and they should stop all exports of missiles and missile technology. There's no question about that. In the Clinton Administration, we did two things, three things that were very important in that regard. In 1993, when there was a crisis around their production of plutonium and they pulled out of the NPT and threw out the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, the United States was ready to take military action if North Korea was not going to deal, and was not going to pull back from their nuclear weapons program. Former Secretary Bill Perry said he came no closer to telling the President we were ready for war than he did at that time, and we had already begun to flow troops and to, in fact begin to take the military actions that were necessary to say to North Korea, "You will not this red line. You will not cross this red line." And between the tough actions of the Clinton Administration, Ambassador Bob Gallucci's superb negotiating skills, Secretary Christoper's very strong position, and most importantly, President Clinton's resolve, former President Carter in Pyongyang with Kim Il-Sung, showing that in fact America would deal while at the same time creating very tough red lines and hard lines. North Korea blinked, in fact negotiated the agreed framework, and although the agreed framework was not perfect, for the years of its life about eight to ten years, depending on how you count it North Korea produced no plutonium. Had the agreed framework not been in place, North Korea during that time would have produced enough plutonium for probably fifty nuclear bombs. So I consider that a pretty good record. And in fact, the highly enriched uranium program, at the end of the Clinton Administration, to the best of my knowledge...although North Korea was seeking technology including centrifuges to start such a program, they didn't really get that program underway until the Bush Administration, when it was apparent to them that the Bush Administration was going to take a different tact it would be anything but Clinton they would not proceed to pick up the second important thing we did which was to undertake a missile negotiation that I believe was on the verge of being successful when the Clinton Administration ran out of time. And I think if the Bush Administration had picked up those cards, we might have gone from missile moratorium to an elimination of their long-range missile program, of their exports of all missile and missile technology. We can never know for sure, but I think we had a very good shot at it. The other thing I would say as a Democrat is that is, one does not negotiate on the basis of trust. One does negotiate on the basis of verification, and if you're a good negotiator and a tough negotiator you get more than you give. But you can't test your opponent unless you have that negotiation. You cannot test their intent unless you spend some time with them and get to know them. I don't know whether North Korea will ever, now, pull back from their nuclear weapons program. They have seen that, the lesson they took out of Iraq was, those who don't have nuclear weapons and long-range missiles are attacked by the United States of America. That's the lesson they took. The lesson they took out of our bombing of Serbia was, those who don't have missiles to respond are attacked. And so the lessons they've taken are that they've watched Iran, and they've seen Iran take one bad behavior after another, and although it isn't the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration has now said, "We'll engage with you, we'll put a package together with you and we'll even give you light-water reactors, the very thing we've taken away from North Korea." So North Korea says, "Well, why not us?" So I think that Democrats have been very tough on North Korea, I think we have made progress on North Korea, one has to assume, ev