Remarks as delivered.
Thank you, Will. Thanks to all of the authors here today and to Will Marshall for helping us, as a party and as a country, meet the significant national security challenges that we face today. We are all deeply in your debt. It's going to be my privilege in just a couple of moments to introduce one of the foremost thinkers, not only in this country but anywhere in the world, on foreign policy and national security issues. And it is my privilege, as it was my father's privilege before me, to call you not only a colleague but friend, Joe. So thank you for your time here today.
There is no question that the Democratic Party faces challenges on the national security front these days. In many senses this is ironic. You look back to the roots of our party, when Thomas Jefferson fought the terrorists of his day, the Barbary pirates, down through Woodrow Wilson and then Franklin Roosevelt, who led our country in two world wars that attempted to make the world safe for democracy; Harry Truman, who drew the line against the spread of global communism; John Kennedy, who called upon us to bear any burden in the defense of freedom and liberty.
We have a long, honorable, robust tradition of being strong on national security issues. It seems to be only in recent times that the public has formed a different opinion about our party, and that is dangerous for both the country and for the party. If the perception is incorrect, it is fatal to the Democratic Party politically at a time of heightened anxiety about security issues. If the perception of weakness about our party is correct, then it is dangerous for the country, because when it comes to defending America effectively we need strong, bipartisan cooperation, and the Democrats need to be active participants in that.
I think dealing with all this has to start with the fundamental recognition that our view of the threats that we face and the national security challenges before us changed, at least for the foreseeable future, on 9-11. The doctrine of deterrence that had served us so well since the Cold War, and still works well with regard to nation states, may not serve us quite as well in dealing with non-nation threats. For example, suicidal terrorists are much more difficult to deter because, frankly, they're perfectly happy to die as long as they achieve their objectives in the process. You combine this with the spread of weapons of mass death, and the consequences of error are much greater.
It's an asymmetric threat, which is a fancy way of saying, for example, the 9-11 attack cost between $500,000 and a million dollars to carry out but has imposed upon our society tens of billions of dollars in economic damage. How do you sustain a struggle in which, for the investment of half a million dollars, you can impose upon your adversaries tens of billions of dollars -- or have imposed upon you tens of billions of dollars in costs? It makes it much more difficult. And you combine this with the notion of imminence of threat and that kind of thing, and you can argue that up one side and down the other, but depending upon your definition, if you wait until an attack is truly imminent, you of course run a greater risk that you have waited until it is too late, which in a world of weapons of mass destruction could have horrific consequences indeed.
All this is a long way of saying that we need to embrace a policy that is more aggressive, more proactive, but not reckless or self-defeating. This document has laid out a good framework, one that has been embraced by my colleague for some time, about the need to seize the initiative, exert the leadership, but also exercise the subtlety and nuance in meeting the national security challenges that face our country. Too often, the current administration has presented us with a false choice: you can either be bold and provide leadership on the one hand, or you can have nuance and subtlety in your policy on the other. In fact, those two things must go hand in hand if we are going to defend the country as we need to do.
Just three quick things I would touch upon. You know, it's important that we remember that having allies is important to our strength, not a sign of weakness, and we damage those relationships or offend our allies gratuitously at our own peril. I sit on the Intelligence Committee and I can tell you that in some areas of human intelligence we have our work cut out for us, and for some time we are going to be more reliant upon other nations' intelligence services for the kind of information and activities that we need to defend America's interests. Same thing when it comes down to cracking down on the financing for global terrorism. It's very difficult to stem the money flow if you don't have the cooperation of other governments, their financial oversight institutions, their financial institutions. We need global cooperation to choke off the support, the financial support for terror. And finally, in terms of nation-building and humanitarian aid and things of that nature, obviously we need the cooperation of other countries. America literally can't afford to go it alone.
Secondly, when it comes to reforming multilateral institutions, this is not a sign that collective security doesn't work. On the contrary, it's as important as ever. But we need to be dedicated to making sure that it can be implemented effectively. Some of this may start with the recognition of the core competencies that some institutions like the United Nations have in terms of peacekeeping, nation-building, humanitarian aid. Perhaps they are not as well suited to restraining terrorists or rogue regimes, and looking particularly at the manner in which they make decisions, it almost inevitably leads to the process of the lowest common denominator of the path of least resistance, which occasionally does not serve our interest too well. So, reforming multilateral institutions is unquestionably in the best interests of our country, rather than abandoning them, as too often has been implied by the current administration.
Finally, I just conclude with the thought that in the long run, to protect America it is the power of our ideas just as much as the power of our arms that is essential. I thought Tony Blair's speech was so brilliant when he said that, "We in the West must stand for freedom -- the freedom to worship God as you see fit, the freedom to benefit from the fruits of your own labors, the freedom to elect your representatives in your government, the freedom of association. When we stand for those ideas, we place ourselves on the right side of human history and the right side of human nature, and in so doing ensure our own security. Because in the long run, it is the ability to combine tactical pragmatism, working with some of these regimes -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for example -- with strategic idealism, standing for the things that will inspire a world to rally to our cause that will ensure our defense."
With those few thoughts let me tell you a word or two about our principal speaker today. Maybe Dick Lugar, from my home state of Indiana, said it best when he said, "There is no better partner in terms of forming a bipartisan, effective foreign policy for this country than Senator Joe Biden." He thinks as carefully and as deeply about these issues as anyone I know. He's respected on both sides of the aisle. I can tell you, from time to time when we face thorny foreign policy issues, he'll put together position papers that he'll circulate around. No better reading. I mean, when I'm struggling with issues and one of his papers comes across, I read it in depth, and it has not infrequently helped to shape my own thinking as we try and grapple with some of these issues.
So, again, I'm proud to have him as my colleague, my friend. He is a true statesman and public servant. Senator Joe Biden
