Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

222. Address by Secretary of State Shultz¹

New York, December 9, 1984

The Ethics of Power

Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, my dear friend Rabbi Israel Miller— of course, my colleague, Foreign Minister/Deputy Prime Minister Shamir. Probably all of you don’t quite realize the closeness that foreign ministers tend to feel for each other, and I have had quite an association with the Foreign Minister of Israel. He’s done wonders for the morale of those of us in the foreign ministry business because, you see, when he was promoted from Foreign Minister to Prime Minister, I wrote him a little note, and I said, “My friend, don’t forget your fellows still working down there in the foreign ministry business.” And what did he do? He held on to that foreign minister portfolio. So he raised our standing tremendously. I’m very honored to receive this degree from Yeshiva University and, of course, in such special company and including, of course, the company of the Foreign Minister of Israel.

Tonight’s Hanukkah dinner commemorates the miracle of 2,100 years ago. The flame has been a symbol for the Jewish people throughout history. Despite centuries of persecution, the spirit and the purpose of the Jewish people have burned brightly through the darkest times; today they are more vital and vibrant than ever. This is a miracle, too. But it derives in no small part from the Jewish people’s faith and dedication to your vocation as people of the word and people of the book. Your courage and moral commitment are an inspiration and example to all of us who value our great common heritage of freedom and justice.

Today, as we meet, a terrible tragedy is taking place on the other side of the globe. The atrocity of the terrorist hijacking in Tehran continues—a brutal challenge to the international community as well as to the most elementary standards of justice and humanity.² One way or another, the law-abiding nations of the world will put an end to terrorism and to this barbarism that threatens the very foundations of civilized life.

Until that day comes, we will all have to wrestle with the dilemmas that confront moral people in an imperfect world. As a nation, we once again face the moral complexity of how we are to defend ourselves and achieve worthy ends in a world where evil finds safe haven and dangers abound.

Today’s events make this topic especially relevant, but, in fact, it is an old issue. As you know so well, philosophers and sages have grappled with it for centuries, engaging the great questions of human existence: what is the relationship between the individual and his or her God, between the individual and his or her community, and between one’s community and the rest of the world? How do we make the difficult moral choices that inevitably confront us as we seek to ensure both justice and survival? The Bible and the commentaries in the Talmud provide many answers; they also leave many questions unanswered, which accurately reflects the predicament of humankind.

As Americans, we all derive from our Judeo-Christian heritage the conviction that our actions should have a moral basis. For the true source of America’s strength as a nation has been neither our vast natural resources nor our military prowess. It is, and has always been, our passionate commitment to our ideals.

Unlike most other peoples, Americans are united neither by a common ethnic and cultural origin nor by a common set of religious beliefs. But we are united by a shared commitment to some fundamental principles: tolerance, democracy, equality under the law, and, above all, freedom. We have overcome great challenges in our history largely because we have held true to these principles.

The ideals that we cherish here at home also guide us in our policies abroad. Being a moral people, we seek to devote our strength to the cause of international peace and justice. Being a powerful nation, we confront inevitably complex choices in how we go about it. With strength comes moral accountability.

Here, too, the intellectual contribution of the Jewish tradition has provided a great resource. The Talmud addresses a fundamental issue that this nation has wrestled with ever since we became a great power with international responsibilities: how to judge when the use of our power is right and when it is wrong. The Talmud upholds the universal law of self-defense, saying, “If one comes to kill you, make haste and kill him first.” Clearly, as long as threats exist, law-abiding nations have the right and, indeed, the duty to protect themselves.

The Talmud treats the more complicated issue as well: how and when to use power to defend one’s nation before the threat has appeared at the doorstep. Here the Talmud offers no definitive answer. But it is precisely this dilemma that we most often confront and must seek to resolve.

The Need to Combine Strength and Diplomacy

For the world’s leading democracy, the task is not only immediate self-preservation but our responsibility as a protector of international peace, on whom many other countries rely for their security.

Americans have always believed deeply in a world in which disputes were settled peacefully—a world of law, international harmony, and human rights. But we have learned through hard experience that such a world cannot be created by good will and idealism alone. We have learned that to maintain peace we had to be strong, and, more than that, we had to be willing to use our strength. We would not seek confrontation, but we learned the lesson of the 1930s—that appeasement of an aggressor only invites aggression and increases the danger of war. Our determination to be strong has always been accompanied by an active and creative diplomacy and a willingness to solve problems peacefully.

Americans, being a moral people, want our foreign policy to reflect the values we espouse as a nation. But, being a practical people, we also want our foreign policy to be effective. And, therefore, we are constantly asking ourselves how to reconcile our morality and our practical sense, how to relate our strength to our purposes—in a word, how to relate power and diplomacy.

How do we preserve peace in a world of nations where the use of military power is an all-too-common feature of life? Clearly, nations must be able to protect themselves when faced with an obvious threat. But what about those gray areas that lie somewhere between all-out war and blissful harmony? How do we protect the peace without being willing to resort to the ultimate sanction of military power against those who seek to destroy the peace?

Americans have sometimes tended to think that power and diplomacy are two distinct alternatives. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. The truth is, power and diplomacy must always go together, or we will accomplish very little in this world. Power must always be guided by purpose. At the same time, the hard reality is that diplomacy not backed by strength will always be ineffectual at best, dangerous at worst.

As we look around the world, we can easily see how important it is that power and diplomacy go hand in hand in our foreign policies.

In the Middle East, for instance, the United States is deeply and permanently committed to peace. Our goal has been to encourage negotiation of a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the same time we have an ironclad commitment to the security of Israel. We believe that Israel must be strong if a lasting peace in the region is to be achieved. The Israeli people must be sure of their own security. They must be sure that their very survival can never be in danger, as has happened all too often in the history of the Jewish people. And everyone in the region must realize that violence, aggression, and extremism cannot succeed, that negotiations are the only route to peace.

In Central America, aggression supported by Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union threatens the peace and mocks the yearning of the people for freedom and democracy. Only a steady application of our diplomatic and military strength offers a real hope for peace in Central America and security for the hemisphere. We have sought a dialogue with the Nicaraguan leadership. We have given full support to the Contadora peace efforts. We have provided political and economic support to those in the region who are working for peace and freedom. But we have also provided defense assistance to the region to help establish a shield behind which effective diplomacy can go forward.

I don’t know whether any of you have looked closely at the Great Seal of our country that shows the eagle with its two talons. In one is an olive branch, and the eagle is looking at the olive branch, signifying our desire for peace and reconciliation. But in the other are arrows, symbolizing just this point that I have made, right in the Great Seal of our Republic.

It is as true in our relations with the Soviet Union, and on the issue of arms control, that diplomacy alone will not succeed. We have actively sought negotiation with the Soviet Union to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both sides, but we have also continued to modernize our own forces to ensure our security and that of our friends and allies. No arms control negotiation can succeed in conditions of inequality. Only if the Soviet leaders see the West as determined to modernize its own forces will they see an incentive for agreements setting equal, verifiable, and lower levels of armament.

The Legitimate Use of Power

The need to combine strength and diplomacy in our foreign policies is only one part of the answer. There are agonizing dilemmas inherent in any decision to use our power. But we do not have to look hard to find examples where the use of power has been both moral and necessary.

A week ago, an election was held on the island of Grenada—the first free election held in that country since 1976.³ If we had not shown the will to use our strength to liberate Grenada, its people would yet be under the tyrant’s boot, and freedom would be merely a dream.

Grenada is a tiny country. Although there were some tough actions, as military campaigns go, it was quickly done. But the moral issue it posed was of enormous importance for the United States.

What we did was liberate a country, turn it back to its own people, and withdraw our forces. We left—even though Grenadians begged us to stay. The American people understood immediately that we had done something good and decent in Grenada—something we could be proud of—even if a few Americans were so mistrustful of their own society that they feared any use of American power. I, for one, am thankful that the President had the courage to do it. Yes, Grenada was a tiny island and relatively easy to save. But what would it have meant for this country—or for our security commitments to other countries—if we were afraid to do even that?

We have to accept the fact that often the moral choices will be much less clearly defined than they were in Grenada. Our morality, however, must not paralyze us. Our morality must give us the strength to act in difficult situations. This is the burden of statesmanship.

And while there may be no clear resolutions to many of the moral dilemmas we will be facing in the future, neither should we be seduced by moral relativism. I think we can tell the difference between the use and abuse of power. The use of power is legitimate:

• Not when it crushes the human spirit and tramples human freedom, but when it can help liberate a people or support the yearning for freedom;
• Not when it imposes an alien will on an unwilling people, but when its aim is to bring peace or to support peaceful processes; when it prevents others from abusing their power through aggression or oppression; and
• Not when it is applied unsparingly, without care or concern for innocent life, but when it is applied with the greatest efforts to avoid unnecessary casualties and with a conscience troubled by the pain unavoidably inflicted.

Our great challenge is to learn to use our power when it can do good, when it can further the cause of freedom and enhance international security and stability. When we act in accordance with our principles and within the realistic limits of our power, we can succeed. And on such occasions we will be able to count on the full support of the American people. There is no such thing as guaranteed public support in advance. Grenada shows that a president who has the courage to lead will win public support if he acts wisely and effectively. And Vietnam shows that public support can be frittered away if we do not act wisely and effectively.

Americans will always be reluctant to use force. It is the mark of our decency. And, clearly, the use of force must always be a last resort, when other means of influence have proven inadequate. But a great power cannot free itself so easily from the burden of choice. It must bear responsibility for the consequences of its inaction as well as for the consequences of its action. In either case, its decision will affect the fate of many other human beings in many parts of the world.

One need only consider, again, the tragic result of the failure to use military force to deter Hitler before 1939. If the democracies had used their power prudently and courageously in the early stages of that European crisis, they might have avoided the awful necessity of using far greater force later on, when the crisis had become an irreversible confrontation.

Those responsible for making American foreign policy must be prepared to explain to the public in clear terms the goals and the requirements of the actions they advocate. And the men and women who must carry out these decisions must be given the resources to do their job effectively, so that we can count on success. If we meet these standards, if we act with wisdom and prudence, and if we are guided by our nation’s most fundamental principles, we will be a true champion of freedom and bulwark of peace.

If one were looking for a model of how nations should approach the dilemmas of trying to balance law and justice with self-preservation, one need look no further than Israel. It is not that Israel has made no mistakes in its history. In this world, that is too much to ask of any nation. But the people of Israel, in keeping with their tradition, have engaged in open, continual, and enlightened debate over the central question of when it is just and necessary to use power. It is all the more praiseworthy when one considers the great perils to its survival that Israel has faced throughout its history. Its need for strength should be self-evident; yet Israelis never consider the issues of war and peace without debating in terms of right and wrong.

We in America must be no less conscious of the moral responsibility inherent in our role as a great power and as a nation deeply devoted to justice and freedom. We look forward to the day when empire and tyranny no longer cast a shadow over the lives of men and women. We look forward to the day when terrorists, like the hijackers in Tehran, can find not one nation willing to tolerate their existence. But until that day comes, the United States will fulfill the role that history has assigned to us.

The United States must be a tireless sentinel of freedom. We must confront aggression. We must defend what is dear to us. We must keep the flame of liberty burning forever, for all mankind.

Our challenge is to forge policies that keep faith with our principles. We know, as the most powerful free nation on Earth, that our burden is great, but so is our opportunity to do good. We must use our power with discretion, but we must not shrink from the challenges posed by those who threaten our ideals, our friends, and our hopes for a better world.

1. Source: Department of State Bulletin, February 1985, pp. 1–3. Shultz delivered the address at the convocation of Yeshiva University.
2. Reference is to the December 4 hijacking of a Kuwait Airlines flight from Kuwait to Pakistan. The flight was diverted to Tehran. The hijackers killed two AID officials and released a number of hostages. Ultimately, on December 9, Iranian forces captured the hijackers and freed the remaining hostages.
3. Elections took place in Grenada on December 3.