Rice: U.S. Is Not Imperialist
Friday, August 29, 2003
CRAWFORD, Texas — The United States is no global bully, and disagreement between President Bush and U.S. allies doesn't mean their opinions aren't valued, his top foreign policy adviser says.
"We need allies and need them badly," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (search) said in a July 31 interview with ZDF German television.
The White House released a transcript of the interview Thursday in Crawford, Texas, where the president has been vacationing.
The Bush administration has parted company with America's allies on many issues, most notably with the U.S. decision early this year to lead the war in Iraq (search) without firm backing from the United Nations (search).
Other disagreements have involved the environment, a nuclear test ban treaty (search) and the international criminal court (search), among other issues.
Rice said differences of opinion are bound to happen, and that too much should not be read into them when they occur.
"Occasionally, we'll have differences," she said in the interview. "But that does not mean that the United States does not value its allies, does not value the opinions of its allies. And it, most especially, does not mean that we don't need allies."
Rice also rejected the interviewer's comparison of the United States to the Roman Empire, which sought to acquire foreign countries.
"The United States has no imperial ambitions," she said.
If a historical analogy is to be made, Rice points to the post-World War II period, when the United States helped create institutions such as NATO, spearheaded the Marshall Plan (search) and helped rebuild Germany.
"We're now trying to do that, in a sense, in the Middle East, with Iraq and with the Palestinian state and with what we've done in Afghanistan," she said. "And there, again, it is the spread of values that will make us more secure."
Rice acknowledged disagreement between the United States and other countries over how to handle Iraq, but said there was no disputing the fact that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world.
"But that Iraq was a threat, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq had used those weapons of mass destruction on its neighbors and its own people, that Iraq had ambitions in the volatile region of the Middle East and was therefore a danger to international security, these were shared premises of the entire international community," she said.
Rice said there was strong evidence and intelligence in the run-up to the war that Saddam had biological and chemical weapons and could have had a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade. Since then, troops in Iraq have uncovered "miles of documents" that will help lead to the discovery of Iraqi weapons, she said.
"I have no doubt that that picture will confirm that this was a regime that was a grave threat to international peace and security because of its intent on having the world's worst weapons," Rice said.
She refuted claims that America's credibility hinges on finding these weapons in Iraq.
"The case against Iraq was not just an issue of American intelligence," Rice said. "It was an issue, also, of intelligence services around the world - of U.N. reports that there were large quantities of missing chemical and biological agents, of defectors, including Saddam Hussein's own brother-in-laws, who had left the country and revealed major weapons programs. No, there is no issue of credibility here." |
