15 December 1998
(Cohen also cites importance of ties with Russia, China) (1830) Washington -- Defense Secretary Cohen says U.S. justice will strike back at terrorists -- cowards who "rejoice in the agony of their victims." Terrorists attack and "then retreat to villages where they hide behind the skirts of women and the laughter of children," he said during a recent speech to the Washington-based Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. "We have to remind those who are threatening our citizens and our societies that there's no place they can hide. "There's no place that's too remote for the long arm of justice or the long arm of response to reach them," Cohen added. The biggest challenge for the future is not posed by conventional terrorism, the secretary said, but by the terror which can be conducted with biological and chemical weapons and through cyber terrorism. If chemical and biological weapons were used, Cohen said, it would be very difficult to determine who deployed them. In a December 8 speech, the secretary also noted that recent developments in Russiaare not in the long-term interest of the United States. He pointed out, for example, that it is not in the U.S. interest for Russia to have thousands of nuclear weapons and "many tons of fissile material in unguarded laboratories." Cohen also said that the United States has "both areas of cooperation and areas of challenge" in its dealings with China. Following are excerpts of Cohen's remarks: (begin excerpts) I would say that of all the manifold types of issues that confront this country in the 21st century, there are three that I think will be at the top of our agenda. Number one, what takes place in Russia. Number two, the role that China will occupy in the next century. And number three, the role, and how we deal with the issue of chemical, biological, and cyber-terrorism. Those will be the three major challenges that we have to reconcile ourselves with. With respect to Russia, I think all of -- even though it came about very quickly, I recall that (Czech President) Vaclav Havel once addressed the joint session of Congress. And he said that things were happening so rapidly, he had little time to be astonished. And indeed, if you think about what's happened in the world today, just a few years, everything that you saw at that time has been almost completely reversed. But one thing that was clear: even though the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to come about all at once, the fact is that most of us in this room could see that in the beginning was its end; that a system that was based upon coercion and totalitarian intimidation and fear really couldn't last indefinitely; that it had the seeds of its own destruction (working) from within. And so, long before (Soviet President) Gorbachev came up with his Perestroika and his Glasnost, it really was the end of the Soviet empire. So while each of us rejoiced at that collapse of that wall and the dissolution of the Soviet empire, none of us should take too much solace in the breakdown or the melt down of the economic system or the social structure of Russia. What is taking place today is not in our long-term interest. And yes, there is a great debate still taking place inside of Russia today. And none of us should ever be supportive of pouring billions (thousands of millions) of our tax dollars down the sink of Iron Curtain institutions or corrupt banks or phony pyramid schemes. But if the Russian people are able to resolve exactly where they want to be in the next century and to pull their feet out of the past and look into the future and to push for reform, we need to support those individuals who are supporting that reform of free minds and free markets. And they have to make that determination, but we have to be at the ready to support them. Because it is not in our interest to have a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons, that has many tons of fissile material in unguarded laboratories and sheds to look into an entrophic abyss. A country such as that will not go gently in this good night. And it will run the risk of the proliferation of chemical and biological and nuclear materials which will, in fact, contribute to a great destabilization throughout the world. We need to be concerned about that and continue to work with them in a bipartisan fashion where we can. One of the most stellar examples of that is something called the Nunn-Lugar Act, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act. We need to make sure we continue to promote that. That act has been responsible for allowing Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine all to become nuclear-free. So we need to find areas in which we can cooperate when it's in our mutual interests, and we need a bipartisan support for that from the Congress and from the country. The same is true with respect to China. I have been to China on quite a few occasions....I can tell you there's been a dramatic transformation from the first time I went to China in 1978. At that time, all I saw throughout China was the Mao suit. Men and women dressed completely alike, very austere, no hotels, no private cars. I think if anyone went there today, you'd see a dramatically different society. We have great areas of potential cooperation with China. We also have some areas of confrontation in terms of being able to challenge each other on issues that we believe very strongly in. We support President Nixon's one-China policy. We support the three communiques. But we also continue to support the promotion of human rights. We also continue to support our commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act. So we have both areas of cooperation and areas of challenge. And we have to understand as we deal with Russia and China as well what the difference in those lines are -- where we can confront (and) where we can, in fact, cooperate. And so, it's terribly important that we remain engaged and we do so in a fashion that is very straightforward, that we treat each other with respect, that we not try to humiliate another country or to engage in a public discourse which is designed to try to break down their own pride and self-respect. That is the way in which we have to conduct foreign policy with China and with other countries as well. The third area that I mentioned has to do with terrorism. All of us are aware of what has taken place throughout the globe, and indeed, in our own country. And it would be a mistake to think that terrorism is something that happens outside of the United States. You only have to think of what took place at the World Trade Center and what took place in Oklahoma City to know that terror stalks our own country as well. And we have to be wary of what kind of future we're facing with terrorism. We know that terrorists are cowards. They rejoice in the agony of their victims. They then retreat to villages where they hide behind the skirts of women and the laughter of children, and dare you to strike back. And strike back, we will. We have to remind those who are threatening our citizens and our societies that there's no place they can hide. There's no place that's too remote for the long arm of justice or the long arm of response to reach them. But the biggest challenge we face in the future is not only from the conventional type of terrorism. It has to do with biological and chemical weapons and cyber-terrorism. These are the issues where it's going to be much harder to fall upon or rely upon deterrents. Deterrence works when we're talking about dealing with state-sponsored acts. It's much more difficult to talk about deterrence as far as chemical and biological weapons because by the time you determine that they've been used, you have a very difficult time determining who, in fact, caused them to be used. Deterrence is not going to be sufficient to prevent their use in the future. We have to depend upon defense. We have to depend upon intervention, and we have to promote the safety of our citizens both here and abroad. This is something, once again, that we need bipartisan support for. It's going to require a great deal of effort, and it's going to require something else. It's going to require more intelligence-gathering. It's something that we have failed to really face up to in this country so far. And that is: if you want us to deal with terrorism -- meaning us, our society -- to deal with terrorism, we have to try to interrupt it before it's ever inflicted. To do that, we need more information from a variety of sources. And the more information we gather, the more compromise there is on the right of privacy, which is in pretty short order today in any event. And so, we're going to have to reconcile how much we're willing to give up in the way of our individual liberties in order to be secure. And we have yet to face up to that kind of dilemma as a free society. But it's something that is going to challenge us. It will become very evident the next time we have any kind of a terrorist act and the people of this country call upon us to do something. It's a challenge that I think is going to confront all of us. And I submit to you we have to dedicate all of our resources to see if we can't deal with it in a constructive fashion.... Let me end it with a quote taken from President Nixon. He said about 15 years ago, he said that there was no question whether America can win an arms race, an economic race, or political race. He suggested that the real contest was the battle of wills. And he said that "real peace requires that we resolve to use our strength in ways short of war. There is, today, a vast gray area between peace and war, and the struggle will largely be decided in that area. But nothing that today's generation can leave for tomorrow's will mean more than the heritage of liberty. The struggle to protect freedom and to build real peace can raise the sights of Americans from the mundane to the transcendent, and from the immediate to the enduring." Ultimately, he was saying that America's security and stability absolutely is essential to global security. (end excerpts)