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I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger - NSA Advisor
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Original Message
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Gettin chatty with the CFR:
U.S. National Security Adviser Jones gave these remarks at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on February 8, 2009.
"Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through Generaal Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.
I think my role today is a little bit different than you might expect. Following the speech of the Vice President and the presence of our distinguished members from the U.S. House of Representatives, I thought that I would spend my time talking to you about how taking the President’s guidance and the Vice President’s comments yesterday, I would spend a few moments trying to discuss how the U.S. National Security Council intends to reorganize itself in order to be supportive. For decades, this conference in Munich has provided a truly exceptional forum for the kind of open dialogue and candid discussions that can only take place among close friends and allies. The Vice President’s attendance and his speech yesterday should send I think a very strong and sincere signal about the seriousness of our purpose when it comes to listening, engaging and building stronger partnerships with all of our friends and allies because the President feels that the transatlantic alliance is a cornerstone to our collective security.
As many of you know, I have been here coming to this conference since 1980 and I have been privileged to work and know many of you here. I would like to salute my military colleagues with whom I have not only a deep friendship but shared many of the issues that we are discussing in a positive way today. And I am delighted to be back in an altered state, so to speak.
I know there is great curiosity about President Obama among many here. And there has been wonderful enthusiasm and new energy with regard to his election from people all over the world. I would like to take just a moment to speak to you about his approach to national security and in fact international security and the role that I see the National Security Council playing. First and foremost the President’s strategic approach will be grounded in the real understanding of the challenges we face in the 21st century. We must simply better understand the environment that we are in. The President, if nothing else, is a pragmatist. He knows that we must deal with the world as it is. And he knows that the world is a very different place than it was just a few years ago. As he said in his inaugural address, the world has changed and we must change with it. And we certainly agree that the world is a multipolar place in the time frame of the moments we are in.
It is hard to overstate the differences between the 20th and the 21st centuries. We have already experienced many, many differences in the 21st century. When this conference first met, everything was viewed through the prism of the Cold War. And in retrospect, life was simpler then. It was certainly more organized. It was certainly more symmetric.
Year in and year out, the strategic environment was fairly consistent and predictable. Threats were "conventional." The transatlantic security partnership was largely designed to meet the threats of a very symmetric world. It was reactive. The NATO partnership was conceived to be a defensive and fairly static alliance. And I spent a good deal of my career in uniform serving within this framework. But to move forward, we must understand the terms national security and international security are no longer limited to the ministries of defense and foreign ministries; in fact, it encompasses the economic aspects of our societies. It encompasses energy. It encompasses new threats, asymmetric threats involving proliferation, involving the illegal shipment of arms and narco-terrorism, and the like. Borders are no longer recognized and the simultaneity of the threats that face us are occurring at a more rapid pace.
And as the President has detailed, a comprehensive approach to our national security and international security in the 21st century must identify and understand that the wider array of existing threats that threaten us. To name a few:
-Terror and extremism has taken many lives and on many continents across the globe.
-The ongoing struggle in Afghanistan and the activity along the Pakistani border is an international security challenge of the highest order.
- The spread of nuclear and chemical biological and cyber-technologies that could upset the global order and cause catastrophe on an unimaginable scale is real. It is pressing and it is time that we dealt with it.
- The overdependence on fossil fuels that endangers our security, our economies, and the health of the planet.
- Protracted tribal, ethnic, and religious conflicts.
[link to www.cfr.org]
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