McConnell Center for Distinguished Speaker Series
Ambassador Samantha Power
Gary Gregg: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming out on
such a beautiful morning, as it always is when we try to do an event here in the winter in
Louisville, Kentucky.
Today the McConnell Center has the great privilege of hosting our forty-seventh
distinguished speaker, and I think, though that statistic just came to me this morning, I
think our third Pulitzer Prize-winning author as well. So it’s a very special day in the life
of the McConnell Center here in the University of Louisville, and I think you are going to
be well rewarded for coming out with us tonight—this morning, I should say.
We are privileged to have Provost Shirley Willihnganz with us today, Secretary of
Labor Elaine Chao, and the Mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer, with us. Thank you all
for coming out today. [audience applause] And if you would please now rise and help
me welcome the President of the University of Louisville, Jim Ramsey, the brand-new
Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Mitch McConnell, and the Ambassador to
the United Nations, Samantha Power. [audience applause]
Jim Ramsey: Good morning.
Audience response: Good morning.
Ramsey: All right, we’re going to have a little more energy than that for this. This is a
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special event in the life of the University of Louisville. Good morning.
Audience response: Good morning.
Ramsey: Let me welcome you to the University of Louisville. As we said, we are very
honored to have you join us for this very special occasion. As I have said on many
occasions, many, many occasions, the University of Louisville is proud that Senator
Mitch McConnell is a graduate of the University of Louisville, and as I’ve said on many
occasions, no institution or organization has a greater friend than we have in Senator
McConnell. The senator is the father of the prestigious McConnell Scholars Program and
the McConnell Center. When I travel across the Commonwealth of Kentucky and visit
high schools and talk to counselors and principals and teachers, they want their very best
students to be McConnells at the University of Louisville. This is an amazing program
that brings the very best students to the University of Louisville. I know a lot of those
students are with us. They had a chance to meet with the ambassador yesterday. But
would our McConnell scholars that are with us today stand, and could we show our
appreciation to them? [audience applause] We’re proud of our McConnell Scholars.
We’re proud of the McConnell Center.
I’m just going to mention very, very briefly two other programs that I’m very
excited about that have happened at the University of Louisville because of the leadership
of Gary Gregg and the McConnell Center. First, last year we hosted thirty military
officers as part of the Secretary of the Army initiative called the Strategic Broadening
Initiative, and it was an attempt to bring captains and majors and senior
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noncommissioned officers together to talk about strategic planning in addition to tactical
operations. We were one of two academic institutions in the country to host such a
program. There were about five leadership programs across the country. We were one of
two academic institutions selected, and we are very proud of that initiative under the
leadership of the McConnell Center.
And then also we were selected as one of ninety institutions by the Department of
the Army to host this year, for an entire year, in a leadership program at the McConnell
Center an Army War College fellow. I think Colonel Chris Widener is with us today.
Colonel, if you’re here, we’d like to stand and recognize you. [audience applause] We
thank you for your many years of service to our country.
And, finally, let’s thank Gary for his amazing leadership, for all that he does for
the McConnell Center. [audience applause]
In addition to the McConnell Center, we’re proud to have the senator’s papers and
those of his wife Elaine’s papers here at the University of Louisville. The papers of
Mitch and Elaine add greatly to our academic mission and to scholarship and research at
the University of Louisville.
Because of Senator McConnell’s work on behalf of the University of Louisville,
we are a better university, much better university. Senator McConnell understands that
universities serve as engines for economic growth and enhancing the quality of life. He
has worked hard to strengthen not just the University of Louisville, but also our other
major research university in the state, the University of Kentucky. With his help, U of L
has been able to invest in important academic and research programs like the Ekstrom
Library, the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, the Center for Translational Research,
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and our Belknap Research Building. Again, I say that no university could have a better
friend than Senator Mitch McConnell.
And, oh, by the way, did I mention—I think Gary mentioned—that the senator
was recently elected the Senate Majority Leader of the United States Senate. [audience
applause] We’re pretty proud that one of our alums has that distinction. So Senator
McConnell is an alum, our friend, and our greatest football fan. Would you join me in
welcoming Senator Mitch McConnell. [audience applause]
Senator Mitch McConnell: Well, thank you very much, Jim. Obviously, at the risk of
looking like this is a mutual admiration society, I think what Jim has done here during his
tenure is truly remarkable. This is a totally different institution, in every single way
better than it was in the past, during his tenure, and, Jim, thanks for a spectacular job.
[audience applause]
When I worked with the university to start this program back in the early nineties,
I had no idea it could become what it has, and that’s largely attributable to Gary Gregg,
who’s a spectacular leader. Gary, thank you for your extraordinary service. [audience
applause]
I’m pleased to have Mayor Fischer here today, Shirley Willihnganz, the provost,
and, of course, the finest Secretary of Labor in the history of the United States, Elaine
Chao. [audience applause]
It’s my distinct pleasure today to introduce to you Ambassador Samantha Power,
our U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. She advocates passionately
among the world’s assembled nations for America’s interests. She speaks forcefully on
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the world stage to promote universal values and human rights. Ambassador Power is the
youngest U.N. ambassador in American history, yet she’s already lived many fascinating
lives. She’s been a journalist, a professor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and now a
diplomat. And not many diplomats can also claim to play basketball with George
Clooney. [audience laughter]
For the last year and a half as U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power has dealt with
problems like the Syrian conflict, the refugee crisis that followed that, the Russian
invasion of Crimea, and conflicts in Sudan and Libya. Prior to being confirmed as U.N.
ambassador in 2013, Samantha Power served as special assistant to the president and
senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the national security staff at
the White House. In that role, she focused on issues such as U.N. reform, the promotion
of religious freedom, and the protection of religious minorities, human trafficking, and
democracy and human rights.
Prior to her government service, Ambassador Power was the Anna Lindh
Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government. She taught courses on U.S. foreign policy, human
rights, and U.N. reform. She was also the founding executive director of the Carr Center
for Human Rights Policy.
Ambassador Power began her distinguished career as a young war correspondent
in Bosnia. Other dangerous assignments she braved, including East Timor, Kosovo,
Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. As a journalist, she one of the first to write about the ethnic
cleansing in Sudan, and 2004 she slipped into the rebel-held areas of Darfur.
Samantha Power immigrated to this country from Ireland at the age of nine and
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was raised in Atlanta. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale and her law degree
from Harvard. Ambassador Power rose to national prominence with the publication of
her 2002 book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. The book
earned her the Pulitzer Prize and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. It also earned her the
attention of a freshman senator from Illinois named Barack Obama, who invited Ms.
Power to dinner to discuss the ideas contained in that book, and who then offered her a
slot on his Senate Office staff as a foreign policy fellow in 2005. After working in
Senator Obama’s Senate Office, Ambassador Power then moved over to his successful
2008 presidential campaign. It was there that she met her now husband, Harvard law
professor Cass Sunstein, and they have two children.
In my first meeting with her, I learned what today’s audience is soon to find out.
Ambassador Power is a compelling and engaging speaker who cares deeply about some
of the most vexing problems of our time. As a journalist, an author, and now as a
diplomat, she’s worked tirelessly to promote the belief that nations have a moral
obligation to prevent genocide.
As the U.N. ambassador, she certainly has a lot on her plate with so many points
of conflict around the world. We’re certainly honored that she’s taken the time to be with
us here today. I know she’ll have some compelling advice for the McConnell Scholars
and had a chance to offer that last night. I can’t wait to hear what she has to say, and I’m
thrilled to have Samantha Power here today.
Ambassador Power. [audience applause]
Ambassador Samantha Power: Thank you, Leader McConnell, for your kind words, for
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your vision in creating a Center dedicated to public service, and for your invitation to this
great state. I feel immensely honored to be among you.
Many of us grow up with big dreams of what we want to be when we get older. I
grew up dreaming of playing outfield for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and while I’m still not
quite ready to give up on that dream, I am told that my chances are dimming. Mitch
McConnell’s first job after graduating from the University of Louisville was interning for
Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper. That was when McConnell says he first
dreamed of becoming Senate Majority Leader. That dream became a reality on January
6th, and this is his first trip back as Leader to his home state, to his alma mater, and to the
Center he helped build. Please join me again, in congratulating him. [audience applause]
What a young Mitch McConnell could not have anticipated when he started that
Senate internship back in 1964 was how gridlocked Washington would become fifty
years later. Of course, partisanship is not new to Washington. Indeed, back when
Senator Cooper voted against party lines in one of his very first roll-call votes, he was
chased down by a senior Republican senator who asked him, “Are you a Republican or a
Democrat? When are you going to start voting with us?”
Cooper reportedly replied coolly, “I was sent here to represent my constituents,
and I intend to vote as I think best.”
But if we go by the opinion surveys, we are living through one of the most
divisive periods in American history. According to a December poll by the Pew
Research Center, Republicans and Democrats are more split along ideological lines and
partisan antipathy is deeper than at any point in the last decade. Nearly 80 percent of
Americans expect partisan divisions to stay the same or get worse in the next five years,
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and Americans believe that this will have serious consequences. Sixteen percent of
Americans polled say the failure of Republicans and Democrats to work together over the
next two years will hurt the nation some, and 71 percent said it will hurt the nation a lot.
Amidst all of this apparent rancor and partisanship, you in the audience might be
a bit surprised to see a member of President Obama’s Cabinet and the Ambassador to the
United Nations, no less, down here in Kentucky at the invitation of the new Republican
Senate Majority Leader. You might wonder whether I’m here to pick a fight or walk into
an ambush. [audience laughter] But I believe that Senator McConnell invited me
because on the central issues of American foreign policy, we actually agree on a great
deal. Undergirding this common ground are several shared premises. We are each fully
committed to keeping America safe. We each believe that human rights are universal
rights, which people of all nations strive to enjoy, and we each recognize that we cannot
be the world’s policeman and that we cannot afford to retreat from tackling the world’s
biggest challenges.
Now, on this last point, regarding the need for America to be engaged in the
world, there may be more agreement between some Republicans and some Democrats
than there is across the Republican Party or across the Democratic Party. Recent polls
are, in fact, showing isolationist sentiment at its highest point in fifty years. It is not hard
to see why. Sobered by long engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and worn down by a
seemingly endless procession of daunting global crises, many Americans feel concerned
that U.S. engagement won’t do much good and they are ready to focus our limited
resources on challenges here at home.
While this isolationist view exists, President Obama, Leader McConnell, and
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millions of Americans recognize that we must work together to ensure continued U.S.
leadership in the world. We understand that we cannot retrench, we cannot back down
from these great challenges around the world today in which our security and our
principles are on the line. And we know we need to make this case to the American
people.
You see evidence of our shared commitment to engage with the world in the way
America has responded to three foreign-policy challenges of our time: bending the curve
of a deadly Ebola outbreak; confronting violent extremism; and advancing freedom and
democracy in a decades-long military dictatorship of Burma. In all three of these
instances, our ability to marshal America’s unparalleled strength behind a single goal has
changed and saved lives and advanced both our national security interests and our values.
Now, there are, of course, great foreign policy challenges today on which there is
not consensus, issues where positions cannot be predicted on the basis of party affiliation,
such as how best to advance human rights in Cuba or how to stop Iran from obtaining a
nuclear weapon. You are no doubt familiar with the passionate debate occurring on these
issues right now, and it will not surprise you that in those areas where we disagree, I will
make the case today that President Obama is pursuing the path that has the greatest
likelihood of achieving our shared goals. I hope I can persuade you, especially him.
[audience laughter]
But what is often lost in the coverage of these debates is the fact that they are
disputes about means not ends, about tactics not objectives, about how America can
tackle complex global challenges and not whether we ought to try. As Thomas Jefferson
once put it, every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.
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In a polarized political environment, it is striking to note the bipartisan response
to two of the deadly global threats we are confronting: Ebola and violent extremism.
With each one, Republicans and Democrats rightly recognize that we could not hang
back and wait for the crises to blow over. The best way to keep America safe is to
confront these threats at their source.
In December, members of Congress came together to commit $5.4 billion to
President Obama’s whole-of-government Ebola response, some 2.5 billion of which is
directed towards stopping the outbreak in West Africa. I saw the impact of U.S.
engagement firsthand when I visited the countries hardest hit by Ebola last October.
When we landed in Monrovia, Liberia, we were met by Major General Gary Volesky,
who had recently taken lead of the U.S. Joint Force Command, which operates in support
of the USAID-led Disaster Assistance Response Team in West Africa. He commands the
Army’s 101st Airborne, which is based at Fort Campbell, only a few hours away from
here. The unit, whose paratroopers earned distinction as the first to descend on
Normandy during the D-Day invasion, is now a central part of the U.S. offensive against
Ebola.
In just two months, around 1,200 engineers, doctors, lab technicians, and other
troops from Fort Campbell, together with some 1,400 other members of the military and
200 civilian responders have worked with the Liberian military to build Ebola Treatment
Units, ETUs, so that sick people are no longer turned away for lack of beds. All told, the
U.S. is building or supporting the construction of fifteen ETUs in Liberia as well as three
in Sierra Leone and two in Guinea. These men and women have helped stand up four
Army testing labs and two mobile Navy labs, and they’ve trained more than 1,500
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Liberian health professionals, teaching them both how to provide better treatment to
infected patients and how to avoid contracting Ebola.
The troops from Fort Campbell and many civilians involved in the Ebola response
effort have been supported by members of the Kentucky Air National Guard, who have
helped set up and arm an air bridge out of Dakar, Senegal, sending over 1,800 tons of
critical humanitarian aid, everything from thousands of those moon suits that help keep
health professionals and burial teams from being infected, to doctors, epidemiologists,
and humanitarian professionals who were flown into the region.
Tech Sergeant Jacob Harper led an aircraft maintenance team that successfully
managed aircraft deliveries at the Dakar Aerial Port. When he’s not helping ensure
lifesaving supplies reach Ebola-infected countries, Sergeant Harper is a part-time
Guardsman who works for the Louisville Gas & Electric as a power plant technician.
Tech Sergeant Jerrod Blanford deployed as an air cargo specialist, directly
supporting the loading of vital humanitarian cargo, personnel, and equipment. Sergeant
Blanford is a full-time Guardsman based in Louisville.
Staff Sergeant Maya Helm [phonetic] deployed as a security forces fire team
leader providing airfield entry control and mobile response within the Aerial Port. In
other words, he kept that airfield safe and efficient. A part-time Guardsman, Sergeant
Helm is a mental health associate at Our Lady of Peace Psychiatric Hospital here in
Louisville.
All three are here with us today, and I’d like to ask Jacob, Jarrod, and Maya to
stand up and be recognized together with the Kentucky Air National Guard for their
lifesaving service. [audience applause]
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All of these efforts that are so critical to ending the Ebola epidemic, the
deployment of U.S. forces, the airlift of supplies, the construction of treatment facilities,
the epidemiological work of USAID and the CDC, would be unsustainable without the
unwavering generosity of the American people and without broad bipartisan support and
funding. Republicans and Democrats have also come together to stop the spread of Ebola
by speeding up the development of drugs to treat and prevent the virus. In recent weeks,
researchers at the National Institutes of Health published findings that a possible Ebola
vaccine was safe for humans. That vaccine is now undergoing large-scale clinical trials
in West Africa. Just imagine for a moment what a game-changer a vaccine would be for
Africa, for America, and for the world.
To support that effort, Congress passed legislation in December to fast-track the
review of Ebola drugs by the Food & Drug Administration. Republican Senator Lamar
Alexander co-sponsored the bill with his Democratic colleague Senator Tom Harkin, and
he said the bill, quote, “Encourages the development of necessary but unprofitable drugs,
offering a reward for drug makers who invest the time and resources,” end quote. With
bipartisan support for bringing American ingenuity to bear on the world’s most deadly
problems, we can make, and we are making, a profound difference.
In the face of a challenge like Ebola, Americans don’t sit on the sidelines. We
roll up our sleeves and ask, “How can we help fix this?” That’s what Muriel Harris’
story shows us. Muriel lived in Liberia in the 1980s with her two young sons when war
broke out. She’d been born in Sierra Leone, so she returned her family back there. Not
long after, civil war broke out there as well. After her eleven-year-old son told her, “I’m
not ready to die,” Muriel and her family fled to the United States, where she got her
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Ph.D. in public health. She eventually took a job as a professor at the University of
Louisville’s School of Public Health.
This past July, Muriel returned to Sierra Leone to spend a few months with her
ninety-three-year-old father. When she saw the country’s brittle public health system
collapsing under the weight of the mounting epidemic and watched so many health
professionals becoming sick, she felt compelled to put her knowledge to work. She
focused on maternal and child health facilities, where she observed that there was little
oversight in admitting patients. A mother or child showing signs of illness was often sent
to the same ward as patients with no signs of Ebola infection. Muriel said sometimes
they were even placed in the same bed. One sick person could infect ten or twenty
patients, she noted.
Muriel developed a triage system to screen everyone entering the facilities
through a single entrance, where they were thoroughly examined by a healthcare
professional. Individuals with a temperature or other Ebola symptoms were either sent
directly to an Ebola treatment facility or quarantined for further observation, while those
with other symptoms were admitted to the hospital. Today the protocol that Muriel
designed is being adopted in women’s and children’s hospitals across Sierra Leone and
Liberia. Muriel only became a U.S. citizen three years ago, but her spirit of service, her
compassion, and her commitment to tackling great problems represents this country at its
very best.
Muriel is here with us this morning. Muriel, please stand. You are an inspiration
to us all. [audience applause] You’ve got some remarkable people here in Kentucky,
Mr. Leader.
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While efforts like Muriel’s have helped us make real progress to end the Ebola
epidemic, the battle is far from won. This outbreak has killed more than 8,200 people
and the cases continue to mount. In the first week of 2015, there were 248 new cases
reported in Sierra Leone alone, and, as Guinea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs so
eloquently put it when I met him in Conakry, if there’s one sick person in Liberia, then
the epidemic is not over in Guinea. That’s true for us in America too. Until the outbreak
is wiped out completely, until every last case is isolated and treated, none of us is fully
safe.
There’s also bipartisan recognition that we urgently need to counter another
deadly virus that does not respond borders: violent extremism. Some Republicans and
some Democrats may differ on various aspects of President Obama’s approach, but
strong majorities in both parties agree, as does a weary American public, that we must
confront terrorist groups and counter violent extremism, and we must ensure that other
nations shoulder their fair share of the burden. You see this bipartisan support in
Congress’ authorization of $1.6 billion for training and equipping the Iraqi and Kurdish
security forces so that they can take the lead in rolling back ISIL. You see it in the robust
commitment Congress has made to train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters,
and you see it in the large Counterterrorism Partnership Fund that President Obama set up
to strengthen the capabilities of partner countries when terrorist networks are trying to
gain a foothold, because the stronger our partners are, the better allies they can be, as we
should never have to fight these battles alone. Here Republicans like Hal Rogers, the
representative of Kentucky’s Fifth District and chair of the House Appropriations
Committee, worked hand-in-glove with his Democratic counterpart, Nita Lowey from
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New York.
The two parties also understand that one of the most effective ways to stop the
growth of terrorist groups is by targeting the repressive conditions in which they thrive.
In Syria, for example, ISIL’s dramatic rise was, in part, fueled by the barbarism of the
Assad regime, a regime that during Ramadan calibrated its bombing runs to the times and
places where Muslims were meeting to break the fast and that meticulously documented
the torture and killing of thousands of detainees, assigning each of its victims a serial
number and a case file.
Coupled with the atrocities by ISIL and other extremist groups, the Assad
regime’s brutality has produced the worst humanitarian disaster in a generation. More
than twelve million Syrians, a population nearly three times the population of the entire
state of Kentucky, currently need humanitarian aid to survive. Five million of those in
need are children, five million kids. Yet the Assad regime continues to use the suffering
of civilians as a cynical tactic of war, cutting off entire communities from food, water,
and medicine simply because they live in cities or neighborhoods controlled by
opposition groups.
In the face of this tremendous suffering, Democrats and Republicans have come
together to contribute more than any other country in humanitarian aid to Syria’s
civilians, more than three billion dollars’ worth. We are continuing to pursue a political
solution to bring this horrific conflict to an end, and Democrats and Republicans agree
that Assad not only must leave power for Syrians to have a chance at peace, he must be
held accountable for his atrocities.
Last week’s horrific attacks in Paris underscored the serious threat posed by
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individuals inspired by extremist groups and by those who travel abroad to train and fight
with terrorists, many of whom carry U.S. and E.U. passports and who may return home to
carry out attacks. The targets these terrorists chose, a satirical newspaper, a kosher
grocery store, and police officers, represents some of the most sacred values in our
pluralistic democracies: freedom of expression, religious diversity, and public security.
The more than a million people of all faiths and backgrounds who came out in the
streets of Paris yesterday were only a fraction of the multitudes of people who believe in
these values and who will not be cowed by the few who use violence to try to impose
their radical views. The Paris attacks also are a stark reminder of the importance of our
continued cooperation with partners around the world to eradicate the networks that
inspire, recruit, and train violent extremists and foreign fighters and the ideology that
helps fuel these sinister plots.
It is not only protecting American security that unites Republicans and
Democrats, but also promoting the freedoms we value most. Leader McConnell has
made a profound difference in the lives of the Burmese people. Some twenty-five years
ago, he read an article about a Burmese democracy activist named Aung San Suu Kyi,
who’d been placed under house arrest for pressing the country’s repressive military junta
to allow basic freedoms. Her supporters had been harassed, beaten, and locked up. From
that moment on, Leader McConnell has said, “I felt compelled in my own small way to
make that cause my own.”
Together with Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, Senator McConnell helped
lead a bipartisan congressional group that put in place a tough set of sanctions against the
Burmese junta, including bans on imports, visas for senior government officials, and U.S.
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investment in the country, targeted financial sanctions against military leaders and their
associates, an arms embargo, and legislation specifically aimed at preventing the regime
from profiting from trade in precious gems, a major source of income and a major source
of abuse.
At the end of 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest. In 2012, she
and others from her party, the National League for Democracy, ran in a free and fair
parliamentary bi-election. Forty-four seats were open. They won forty-three of them.
Restrictions on the press were eased. The junta announced ceasefires in several
longstanding conflicts and it released hundreds of political prisoners.
Burma’s shift was, of course, driven largely by the brave, unflagging efforts of
pro-democracy activists and the Burmese people’s growing demand for change, but the
sanctions put in place by Republicans and Democrats in Congress and by presidents from
both parties over successive administrations also played a key role. They isolated
Burma’s military leaders, denying them access to the global financial system, and
exacting a significant cost for their repressive measures.
The sanctions also signaled to activists under assault in Burma that they were not
alone. To get a sense of what that meant to them, walk over to the McConnell-Chao
Archives in the Ekstrom Library after we are finished here. You’ll see a handwritten
letter than Aung San Suu Kyi sent from house arrest in 2002 to the Leader, who she
called her “rocklike friend.” She wrote, quote, “I hope very much that we shall be able to
see the kind of developments for which we have all been working for too long. Of
course, there is still a lot to be done, but I’m confident that with firmness and
perseverance, we shall achieve our goal,” end quote.
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When Burma began to open up, when we saw what President Obama called
flickers of progress after years of darkness, Democrats and Republicans decided to offer
Burma a path to a new relationship. As Burma took steps, the United States did, too,
appointing our first ambassador in twenty-two years, resuming high-level diplomatic
talks and easing sanctions.
As Senator McConnell told Congress when arguing for lifting import bans in
2013, the sanctions largely fulfilled their goal in helping catalyze a change in the junta’s
behavior. The vast majority of changes that the United States made were conditioned
upon the regime’s meeting specific human rights and democracy benchmarks, such as
dialogue with the opposition and the release of prisoners, giving us the flexibility and the
leverage to reinstate sanctions if sufficient progress was not made.
Of course, Burma is still a long way from being a rights-respecting democracy.
The civilian government is still subordinate to the military, and the constitution continues
to give the military the broad authority to dismiss Parliament and veto any constitutional
amendment. Attacks against the Rohingya and other Muslim groups have even
increased, egged on by extremist monks, particularly in Burma’s Rakhine State. Yet
virtually no one has been held accountable, and the humanitarian situation continues to
deteriorate, with more than 100,000 Rohingya confined in squalid camps. Making
matters worse, the government recently proposed legislation that would force the
Rohingya to renounce their ethnicity in order to be registered as citizens.
Back in September 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi made her first trip to the United
States since she was released from house arrest. In addition to meeting with President
Obama and receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, she came here to the McConnell
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Center. In remarks to a group of students, she spoke of a need to, quote, “distinguish and
discriminate between what is genuine progress and what is just progress on the surface,”
end quote.
That is the challenge that we face today, ensuring that Burma builds on the areas
in which it has made progress and avoids backsliding, and we have to be prepared to
adapt our strategy to the conditions we observe, including setbacks. We—and when I say
“we,” I’m confident that Leader McConnell shares this view—we have to examine every
tool in our toolkit and ask how can we take steps that may contribute to empowering the
Burmese people in helping the country move toward genuine democratic reform. Our
tools include incentivizing continued progress, shining a bright light on the government’s
shortcomings, and imposing targeted sanctions on individuals who stand in the way of
change. In October, for example, we announced new sanctions against a senior Burmese
official and businessman Aung Thon [phonetic] for fueling violence and corruption and
undermining key democratic reforms. His assets in the United States have been frozen
and U.S. companies are prohibited from doing business with him.
We still have great hope for Burma’s future. When President Obama made his
second visit to Burma in November, he held a town hall with participants in the Young
Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, a U.S. government program aimed at strengthening
and connecting rising leaders in the region. Even a few years ago, the idea that a U.S.
president would be able to host an open discussion in Rangoon with several hundred
youth leaders, and that it would be open to the press and streamed live would have seem
unimaginable, yet not only were the young leaders there, but many came waving big
protest signs, several of which said “Reform is Fake.”
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Even more remarkable was the question-and-answer session. The first student
who took the microphone was from Rakhine State, where the worst anti-Muslim attacks
and discrimination have occurred. He said, quote, “I’ve experienced some sectarian and
racial violence firsthand in my region. How can I be part of educating my generation to
promote tolerance and respect cultural differences?” end quote.
And just like that, a Burmese student asked President Obama about one of the
country’s most alarming problems which the Burmese government bears enormous
responsibility for and too often acts as though doesn’t exist. That open discussion and the
critical questions it allowed young leaders to raise was as important for the advancement
of Burmese democracy as any closed-door discussion between heads of state. Young
leaders who’ve experienced the freedom of describing the problems that they see are not
likely to give up that right without a struggle.
Now, for all of the areas of bipartisan agreement, there are times when even when
we share the same principles, we draw different conclusions about the best way to
achieve them. Consider Cuba, where the U.S. embargo has been in place since 1961.
That was the year that a young band from Liverpool played their first show at the Cavern
Club, To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize, and the Berlin Wall was erected.
Last month, with the Castro communist government still firmly entrenched after more
than fifty-five years of an embargo explicitly designed to topple it, President Obama
decided it was time to try something new.
Now, while there is strong bipartisan support for the policy changes that President
Obama announced recently, and one’s views on Cuba tend not to divide along party lines,
some members of Congress believe that the embargo should not be loosened in any way.
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Some of the embargo’s staunchest defenders are Democrats and Republicans with deep
ties to the island, people whose families came to America fleeing Castro’s horrible
repression. These are men and women who are completely dedicated to doing all they
can to ensure that Cubans on the island get to enjoy true freedom.
So it is important to acknowledge that while there may be disagreements on the
best way to get there, we share that common goal of advancing the rights of the Cuban
people. In shifting not this overall goal but U.S. tactics, President Obama instructed
Secretary of State Kerry to start talks on normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba,
putting us in a position to press our criticisms directly with the Cuban government. He
ordered a review of Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, and he took a
series of steps to increase travel, commerce, and the flow of information into and out of
Cuba.
The reforms will make it easier for Americans, our best ambassadors, to visit
Cuba. They will multiply telecommunications links between the U.S. and Cuba, aiming
to increase the paltry 5 percent of Cubans who have access to the Internet, which is a
powerful tool for ensuring access to information. If increased connectivity can spread the
virus of violent extremism, so too can it spread the hunger for liberty and freedom. All of
these changes will allow greater interaction between Americans and Cubans and more
opportunities for the Cuban people to shape their own future.
Even though the Castro regime has been repressing the Cuban people for decades,
it is America that has been seen as Goliath picking a fight with David. I’ve seen this
firsthand at the United Nations. Last October, for the twenty-third year in a row, the
U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
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Out of the U.N.’s 193 member states, we were only one of two that voted to defend the
embargo.
Within Cuba, the Castro government has used the embargo as an excuse for its
problems and a pretext for its repression. In 2003, for example, the government rounded
up seventy-five of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders, journalists, and
democracy activists, and swiftly sentenced them to an average of twenty years in prison.
Many were prosecuted under a law that criminalizes any act advancing the aim of the
U.S. embargo, a provision the Cuban government interpreted broadly to include alleged
crimes such as writing articles critical of the government and participating in
unauthorized political marches.
President Obama assessed that if we waited for the Castro government to grant
the Cuban people basic rights before changing our policy, we would leave the prospect
for change in the hands of the Cuban government, which has the greatest incentive to
maintain the status quo and deny greater access to the outside world. The changes that
President Obama announced take away the Castro’s most trusted alibi for abuse, helping
empower the Cuban people to secure the greater freedoms that they want and deserve.
The change in policy also denies repressive governments in the region the ability to
continue cynically to use our Cuba policy to deflect attention from their own abuses, such
as Ecuador’s crackdown on the press or Venezuela’s imprisonment of key opposition
leaders.
At the same time, just as in Burma, we remain clear-eyed about just how
repressive Cuban authorities remain. We know that the release of fifty-three political
prisoners in recent days by the Cuban government, welcome as that step is and heartening
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as that is for their families, does not resolve the larger human rights problems on the
island. In 2014 alone, a Cuban human rights group reported that the government had
carried out nearly 8,900 short-term detentions to prevent activists from gathering or
simply to harass them and stifle descent. Indeed, just three days after the U.S. and Cuban
announcements of steps to change the relationship, a Cuban artist named Tania Bruguera
announced a plan to hold an event in Havana’s historic Revolution Square. The purpose,
she wrote, was for Cubans, quote, “to discuss via an open microphone what kind of
nation they want for themselves,” end quote. She promoted the event on Twitter and
Facebook with the hashtag “YoTambienExijo,” “I too demand.”
Tanya was picked up before she made it to the Revolution Square. She and
around a dozen other activists and journalists were detained on the morning of the event
by the Cuban authorities. Dozens of other activists, bloggers, and artists were placed
under house arrest so they couldn’t even reach the square. But something pretty
remarkable happened next. A letter began circulating, expressing support for Tanya’s
attempt to foster free expression. Nearly three hundred Cuban artists signed it and many
more supporters. In spite of genuine fear, Cubans were speaking out, and the Castro
government was forced to explain why it would rather arrest a woman than let her speak
freely in a public square.
Now, just as not everyone agrees with the approach we’ve taken on Cuba, the
same is true on Iran. Americans across the political spectrum who care passionately
about keeping this country and our allies safe have different views on how to do so.
There’s a clear consensus among Republicans and Democrats that we can’t and will not
allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. As President Obama has argued consistently since
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taking office, a nuclear-armed Iran, quote, “would be a game changer in the region. Not
only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest
allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into
the hands of terrorists,” end quote. It would also seriously undermine the global
nonproliferation regime that is a core national security interest, and as the president has
made clear, we will always keep options on the table to defend our security and the
security of our allies.
We all agree that sanctions have played a critical role in isolating Iran and
bringing the Iranian government to the table to work toward a comprehensive plan aimed
at preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The toughest sanctions were put in
place by President Obama, with robust bipartisan leadership, including from Senator
McConnell, and our vigorous enforcement of these sanctions is also what is helping keep
Iran at the negotiating table. The talks with Iran have produced some meaningful
progress. The joint plan of action interim agreement reached in November 2013, which
was recently extended until June 30th of this year, not only required Iran to freeze the
advance of its nuclear program, but also created a new, more vigorous inspection regime
that granted the International Atomic Energy Agency expanded access to Iran’s nuclear
facilities so that we could better ascertain if Iran is meeting its commitments.
And throughout the negotiations, we have kept the sanctions architecture on Iran
in place, including key oil, banking, and financial measures. In sum, we have continued
to apply pressure and we have halted and even rolled back parts of Iran’s nuclear
program, all the while working toward a comprehensive solution that to gain U.S. support
would need to assure the international community of the exclusively peaceful nature of
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Iran’s nuclear program going forward.
And, importantly, notwithstanding the skepticism that all of us bring to these
negotiations, the IAEA has reported that Iran has kept its commitments under the interim
agreement. Now, when we started this process, we knew that reaching an agreement with
Iran was going to be extremely difficult and that the talks might not succeed. That is still
the case. After over a year of negotiations, significant gaps remain between our
negotiating positions, but we are still at the negotiating table for one reason and one
reason alone. We assess that we still have a credible chance of reaching the agreement
we want, which is what is in the best interest of America’s security as well as the security
of our allies. The moment we stop believing that, the moment we judge that the risk of
negotiating exceed the benefits and that Iran’s leaders are not prepared to do what is
necessary, we will end the negotiations and work with Congress as we always have to
apply more pressure. But we have not reached that point yet and it is in none of our
interests to see Iran return to advancing its nuclear program.
Now, some members of Congress believe that the time has come to ratchet up
sanctions on Iran. They argue that this is the most effective way to achieve the goal,
again, the goal that we share of getting Iran to give up its nuclear program. We in the
administration believe that at this time increasing sanctions would dramatically
undermine our efforts to reach this shared goal. Let me explain why. First, imposing
new sanctions now will almost certainly end a negotiations process that has not only
frozen the advances of Iran’s nuclear program but that could lead us to an understanding
that would give us confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature. If new sanctions were
imposed, Iran would be able to blame the United States for sabotaging the negotiations
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and causing the collapse of the process, and we would lose the chance to peacefully
resolve a major national security challenge.
Second—and this may seem counterintuitive—new sanctions will actually likely
weaken the sanctions pressure on Iran by undermining crucial international support for
the existing multilateral sanctions against Iran. The negotiations have worked so far in
large part because we have remained united on our side of the negotiating table, with the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China. Other countries have also
supported the international sanctions regime that we, the European Union, and the U.N.
Security Council have built. If our international partners believe that the United States
has acted prematurely by adding new sanctions now, as they most surely would, their
willingness to enforce sanctions collectively is likely to wane. And broad international
enforcement is what has made our sanctions exponentially more effective than bilateral
sanctions alone.
We’ve made great strides in bringing the international community together in
isolating Iran and imposing significant costs on Tehran for pursuing a nuclear program
that has raised profound concerns. That consensus is what gives us leverage with Iran. If
we pull the trigger on new nuclear-related sanctions now, we will go from isolating Iran
to potentially isolating ourselves. We go from a position of collective strength to a
position of individual weakness.
Now, imagine for a moment another scenario. If Iran cannot agree to a solution
and we have remained united with our negotiating partners, we will have even greater
international support and urgency in beefing up the sanctions-based approach. Sanctions
did indeed help to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and this is a point Leader
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McConnell makes often, and we agree with him wholeheartedly. But sanctions did not
stop the advance of Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations have done that, and it is in our
interest not to deny ourselves the chance to achieve a long-term comprehensive solution
that would deny Iran a nuclear weapon.
These differences of opinion on what are the most effective strategies in U.S.
foreign policy, whether we’re seeking to promote Cubans’ human rights or trying to
prevent Iran from acquiring fissile material for a bomb, carry the highest stakes. To fail
to debate them and to fight for what we think is the best approach would suggest that we
are not taking our responsibilities seriously enough. Indeed, as Aung San Suu Kyi said in
November when she was asked at a press conference with President Obama about the
different strategies of those fighting for democracy in Burma, she said, quote, “We would
like to talk to those who disagree with us. That, again, is what democracy is about. You
talk to those who disagree with you, you don’t beat them down, you exchange views, and
you come to a compromise, a settlement that would be best for the country,” end quote.
Another politician known for his supreme skill in crafting compromise was
Kentucky statesman Henry Clay. As some of you may know, Leader McConnell wrote
his undergrad thesis on Clay and keeps a large portrait of Clay above his desk in his
Senate office, and he routinely points to Clay’s, quote, “marvelous combination of
compromise and principle,” end quote, as a model for public servants and for him
personally in his new role.
Clay’s last major act of public service in 1850 was to broker a compromise
between northern and southern states that kept the union from breaking apart. As we all
know, the settlement proved fleeting; a civil war would erupt a decade later. But Clay’s
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remarks to the Senate at that time feel strikingly prescient for our current moment. Clay
told fellow senators who were about to give up on seeking agreement, quote, “The most
disastrous consequences would occur, in my opinion, were we to go home doing nothing
to satisfy and tranquilize the country upon these great questions. What will be the
judgment of mankind? What will be the judgment of that portion of mankind who are
looking upon the progress of this scheme of self-government as being that which holds
out the highest hopes and expectations of ameliorating the condition of mankind? What
will their judgment be? What will be the judgment of our constituents when we return to
them and they ask us, ‘How have you left your country?’”
Clay’s question is more pressing today that ever before because it is no longer
only Americans who are looking to us to tackle these great questions; it is the world.
And more than ever before, ensuring America’s enduring security and prosperity requires
us to address challenges far beyond our borders. If America gets so bogged down in
political divisions that we lose sight of the principles that unite us, if we present our
nation with a false choice between tackling challenges abroad and fixing problems at
home, and if, as Clay warned, we, quote, “do nothing to satisfy or tranquilize the country
on these great questions,” end quote, we will fall short in our duty as public servants.
If asked how have we left the country, the answer will be “Not well.” But we
know we can do better, and we know we can do better together. We have seen the
tremendous difference the United States can make when we tackle the great problems of
our time. We see it in the lifesaving impact of individuals like Muriel Harris and the
Kentucky Air National Guardsmen whose efforts to confront a deadly disease at its
source have helped make us safer here at home. We see it in the work of our brave
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soldiers, law enforcement officers, diplomats, and humanitarians, who are bringing all
tools to bear in the fight against violent extremism. We see it in the policies the United
States has pursued to help empower young Cubans and Burmese who are struggling with
great bravery and at great risk to carve out the freedoms that they have long been denied.
And while we are not there yet, we see it in the tough, principled negotiations the United
States is leading to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Only by engaging in these global challenges will we be able to serve America’s
interests, and when, as Clay warned, the American people ask us, “How have you left
your country,” we will have the answer that they, that we, yearn to hear.
Thank you so much. [audience applause]
Gregg: Thank you, Ambassador Power, for those remarks and particularly pointing out
the heroes that we have amongst us today. I’d like to call upon Meagan Floyd, who is a
McConnell Scholar, recently returned from Asia in her service as a Fulbright, to begin
asking some questions from you, the audience. Meagan.
Meagan Floyd: Thank you. Our first question is who is the United States’ greatest ally
today? And also is there a specific country you feel has been previously ignored by U.S.
foreign policy that you would like to revitalize relations with?
Power: Thank you so much. Leader McConnell mentioned in his generous introduction
that I have become a diplomat. [audience laughter] So while an immediate hierarchy
springs to mind in answer to your first question, I would say we have many wonderful
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allies with whom we work closely. [audience laughter]
No, I mean, look, in the Middle East, certainly Israel is our strongest ally in the
region, the only democracy in the region. We work extremely closely with them. We
also have very close ties, of course, with the government of Jordan and with the Egyptian
government in working on dealing with shared security threats. And in that region in
particular, we stress both the importance of political reform right alongside discussing,
again, our shared security interests at a time when the region is very volatile.
In the United Nations, across the United Nations, I must say I have such a
privilege in being in my job because I get to see the impact of democratization, also on
how countries cooperate with the United States, so the strong traditional democracies like
the United Kingdom and France, with whom I get to work on the Security Council every
day, and our European partnerships and alliances, but also seeing countries like East
Timor or Tunisia, who’ve come out of such difficult circumstances, beginning also to
lead on issues related to civil society and democracy within the United Nations.
So we have a long list of allies. We are constantly working through our
embassies and through other tools abroad and, frankly, through the citizen diplomacy that
many of you are doing to try to strengthen the ties between peoples as well as between
governments. One of the reasons that I chose to single out Cuba and Burma is that I
think they offer two examples at very different stages of development, to be sure, but of
cases where we think stepped-up people-to-people engagement and stepped-up direct
engagement and direct relaying of our criticisms and our concerns can move the needle
more quickly than it has moved up to this point in the case of Cuba.
That was both questions.
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Floyd: Okay. How does the U.S. government measure the return on investment for the
U.S. contributions to the United Nations? And also do you believe the U.N. is still an
effective institution?
Power: [chuckles] Okay. [audience laughter] These are both excellent questions, and I
ask myself both questions often in my current role.
In terms of the effectiveness of the United Nations, let me take that question first.
The U.N. is a big behemoth of an organization and it is both a gathering place, much like
this one, where countries come together to be themselves. So there are 193 countries,
more than half of which are not democratic. That presents a lot of challenges when you
have countries that don’t respect human rights and fundamental freedom or pose a threat
to international peace and security, getting the whole kind of organization, getting the
ship to kind of turn in the way that promotes human rights, advances economic
development, promotes international peace and security. That’s going to be challenging,
and that’s why, again, the cause of political reform, democratization that we are pursuing
bilaterally and with many of our allies is so important to over time also strengthening the
importance of the United Nations itself.
But in addition to the U.N. being a meeting place, it is also an actor in its own
right, and here I would point to the IAEA, a U.N. agency, the World Health Organization,
the World Food Program, the performance of U.N. peacekeepers, which is very uneven
around the world, but, nonetheless, who put themselves in harm’s way in some of the
most difficult environments, in Mali, where there are terrorists and extremists who are
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targeting peacekeepers, and they’ve taken more casualties in Mali than in any mission in
recent years, South Sudan, where there’s been a horrific outbreak of ethnic violence, and
as soon as the ethnic violence started, many embassies were pulling their people out. The
U.N. was sending their peacekeepers in, going toward the fire.
So, again, the sort of functional sides of the U.N. are not by any means perfect,
and there’s an awful lot of bureaucracy and not anywhere near the kind of efficiency that
I think we would argue would be optimal and we push for every day, but by the same
token, if these agencies and if peacekeepers weren’t performing the work that I’ve
described and much more that I haven’t described, there would be tremendous loss and
tremendous suffering, even more suffering, much more suffering, than there is going on
in the world today.
In terms of the return on the investment, I think what we have sought to put in
place is much more accountability, much more transparency, where you have to post
budgets online and have whistleblower protections within the various U.N. agencies.
Where we travel, I travel an awful lot both on my own as a member of the president’s
cabinet but also with the U.N. Security Council to go see these U.N. missions in person,
and not just sort of send them off into the night and take the U.N.’s word for it in terms of
how they’re performing, but actually get out there and test the missions and hold them to
account again in person.
So that’s kind of how we gauge the return on investment, and it’s a mixed picture.
I mean, some missions, some agencies are better performers than others, just like in any
institution, unfortunately, but with more accountability, more transparency, we’re trying
to ensure that the trend lines go in the right direction. And, again, I come back to my first
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point: the more democratization we see, the more that the United States and our allies
continue to push the agenda, again, that Leader McConnell pushed for so many years
with regard to Burma, the more we will start to see more responsible stakeholders in the
international system.
Floyd: Thank you very much, Ambassador Powers. These will be our last two questions
for today. What is the U.S. prepared to do in response to the rising anti-Semitism in
Europe, particularly France? And do you believe that the president missed a vital
opportunity to stand in solidarity with our allies against the entity of terrorism by not
attending yesterday’s march in Paris?
Power: Thank you so much. So on the first question, let me just say that several months
ago, President Obama asked me to attend a ministerial meeting in Berlin. It was the
second annual conference OSCE, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
the second ever conference dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, and a couple things
were noteworthy about this conference. First, I’ve been proud of being in my role and in
my job many times because it’s a tremendous privilege to get to represent the United
States every day, but I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder than I was at this conference,
because we brought with us a civil society delegation, again, dedicated to the cause of
combating anti-Semitism, and while other countries also brought civil society
delegations, their delegations were comprised almost exclusively of Jewish groups who
were understandably extremely alarmed at the rise in anti-Semitism. Our delegation
included all the leading Jewish groups, of course, and they played an extremely important
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role, but also the American Islamic Congress, NAACP, Human Rights Firsts. Basically
human rights groups and civil rights groups in this country have recognized that antiSemitism is not just a threat to Jewish people. Anti-Semitism is a threat to liberal values
everywhere. And the diversity of that coalition and the conviction with which people of
all backgrounds and all religions spoke is extremely important.
The second important feature of the conference, I think, is it provided an
occasion—and this was the first in ten years. The last one had been the United States had
been represented by Secretary Powell, Secretary of State Powell, but this conference
provided an occasion to review the statistics in terms of the amount of intimidation,
harassment, violent attacks, and immigration. And the statistics are extremely alarming.
The third, very disappointing, feature of this conference is that there was a major
drop-off in the level of attendance by European governments. So while I’m a member of
the Cabinet and thus a minister, and here was a ministerial, many, many more
governments this time sent more junior officials rather than sending ministers in the way
that they had done ten years ago.
So at just the time the problem’s getting worse, you don’t have civil society
engaged sufficiently across Europe in particular, and the anti-Semitism is, of course, even
more rife in other parts of the world, especially the Middle East, but you don’t have
publics seized with this issue, or hadn’t, at least, didn’t at the time of this conference a
couple months ago, in the same way that I think here we understand that it’s a threat to
liberalism and to democracy as a whole.
And moreover, notwithstanding, again, these alarming rise in attacks and
intimidation and in slurs, you didn’t have at the highest level of government people
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across Europe, at least, seized with the issue in the way that they needed to be. And
being a relatively undiplomatic diplomat from time to time, this is something that I
pointed out to the gathering of officials from across Europe. So that is something that has
to change. There has to be higher-level engagement not just in Europe but across the
world, and particularly, again, across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin
America. I mean, this is a genuine problem and it’s not just a problem confined to
extremists. It’s becoming a mainstream, a very, very mainstream problem.
President Obama, in terms of signaling his leadership on anti-Semitism and on
countering violent extremism, obviously is leading a global coalition to try to defeat ISIL,
which poses one of the most monstrous threats not just to the Jewish people but to
Christians, to Yazidis, to Shia and to Sunni, who don’t agree with their monstrous
ideology. And I think you can count on President Obama in the coming days to be just as
vocal as he has been, to be leading the world in terms of mobilizing not just the military
response, which is the most visible to many, but the law enforcement response. He sent
Attorney General Eric Holder over to Paris immediately in the wake of the attacks, along
with our deputy head of Homeland Security.
Dealing with this problem is going to require education, messaging, law
enforcement cooperation, border guards talking to one another and cooperating to a much
greater extent, intelligence sharing. So he has been very, very forceful publicly and very
forceful inside the U.S. government in making very clear that no resources can be spared
in dealing with what is becoming a more and more diffuse and more and more deadly
threat posed by Islamic extremism and terrorism, I should say, of all kinds, because there
are other terrorist groups as well that these same resources need to be brought to bear to
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counteract.
[audience applause]
Gregg: Ambassador Power, we thank you deeply for your commitment to public service,
we thank you for your leadership, and we thank you for joining us on the campus of the
University of Louisville, and we have a small token of our appreciation for you being
with us.
Power: Thank you.
Gregg: Would you join me one more time in thanking Ambassador Power.
[audience applause]
[End of presentation]
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